The many Expressions of Joy and Rapture I use in these silent Conversations have made me for some Time the Talk of the Parish; but a neighbouring young Fellow, who makes Love to the Farmer’s Daughter, hath found me out, and made my Case known to the whole Neighbourhood.

’In planting of the Fruit-Trees I have not forgot the Peach you are so fond of.  I have made a Walk of Elms along the River Side, and intend to sow all the Place about it with Cowslips, which I hope you will like as well as that I have heard you talk of by your Father’s House in the Country.

    ’Oh! Zelinda, What a Scheme of Delight have I drawn up in my
    Imagination!  What Day-Dreams do I indulge my self in!  When will the
    Six Weeks be at an End, that lye between me and my promised
    Happiness?

    ’How could you break off so abruptly in your last, and tell me you
    must go and dress for the Play?  If you loved as I do, you would find
    no more Company in a Crowd, than I have in my Solitude._

    ‘I am, _&c._’

  ’On the Back of this Letter is written, in the Hand of the Deceased,
  the following Piece of History.

Mem. Having waited a whole Week for an Answer to this Letter, I hurried to Town, where I found the Perfidious Creature married to my Rival.  I will bear it as becomes a Man, and endeavour to find out Happiness for my self in that Retirement, which I had prepared in vain for a false ungrateful Woman.

  I am, _&c._

* * * * *

No. 628.  Friday, December 3, 1714.

  ‘Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis avum.’

  Hor.

  Mr. SPECTATOR,

’There are none of your Speculations which please me more than those upon Infinitude and Eternity. [1] You have already considered that Part of Eternity which is past, and I wish you would give us your Thoughts upon that which is to come.

’Your Readers will perhaps receive greater Pleasure from this View of Eternity than the former, since we have every one of us a Concern in that which is to come:  Whereas a Speculation on that which is past is rather curious than useful.

’Besides, we can easily conceive it possible for successive Duration never to have an End; tho’, as you have justly observed, that Eternity which never had a Beginning is altogether incomprehensible; That is, we can conceive an Eternal Duration which may be, though we cannot an Eternal Duration which hath been; or, if I may use the Philosophical Terms, we may apprehend a Potential though not an Actual Eternity.

’This Notion of a future Eternity, which is natural to the Mind of Man, is an unanswerable Argument that he is a Being designed for it; especially if we consider that he is capable of being Virtuous