and Virtue.  It is the ordinary Foundation for Mens holding a Commerce with each other, and becoming familiar, that they agree in the same sort of Pleasure; and sure it may also be some Reason for Amity, that they are under one common Distress.  If all the Rich who are lame in the Gout, from a Life of Ease, Pleasure, and Luxury, would help those few who have it without a previous Life of Pleasure, and add a few of such laborious Men, who are become lame from unhappy Blows, Falls, or other Accidents of Age or Sickness; I say, would such gouty Persons administer to the Necessities of Men disabled like themselves, the Consciousness of such a Behaviour would be the best Julep, Cordial, and Anodine in the feverish, faint and tormenting Vicissitudes of that miserable Distemper.  The same may be said of all other, both bodily and intellectual Evils.  These Classes of Charity would certainly bring down Blessings upon an Age and People; and if Men were not petrifyed with the Love of this World, against all Sense of the Commerce which ought to be among them, it would not be an unreasonable Bill for a poor Man in the Agony of Pain, aggravated by Want and Poverty, to draw upon a sick Alderman after this Form;

  Mr.  Basil Plenty,

  SIR,

You have the Gout and Stone, with Sixty thousand Pound Sterling; I have the Gout and Stone, not worth one Farthing; I shall pray for you, and desire you would pay the Bearer Twenty Shillings for Value received from,

  SIR,
  Your humble Servant,
  Lazarus Hopeful.

  Cripple-Gate,
  Aug. 29, 1712.

The Reader’s own Imagination will suggest to him the Reasonableness of such Correspondence; and diversify them into a thousand Forms; but I shall close this as I began upon the Subject of Blindness.  The following Letter seems to be written by a Man of Learning, who is returned to his Study after a Suspence of an Ability to do so.  The Benefit he reports himself to have received, may well claim the handsomest Encomium he can give the Operator.

  Mr.  SPECTATOR,

’Ruminating lately on your admirable Discourses on the Pleasures of the Imagination, I began to consider to which of our Senses we are obliged for the greatest and most important Share of those Pleasures; and I soon concluded that it was to the Sight: That is the Sovereign of the Senses, and Mother of all the Arts and Sciences, that have refined the Rudeness of the uncultivated Mind to a Politeness that distinguishes the fine Spirits from the barbarous Gout of the great Vulgar and the small.  The Sight is the obliging Benefactress, that bestows on us the most transporting Sensations that we have from the various and wonderful Products of Nature.  To the Sight we owe the amazing Discoveries of the Height, Magnitude, and Motion of the Planets; their several Revolutions about their common Centre of Light, Heat, and Motion,