A strain of war-like music.

“I could not but observe the satisfaction the father took in the forwardness of his son, and that these diversions might turn to some profit, I found the boy had made remarks which might be of service to him during the course of his whole life.  He would tell you the mismanagements of John Hickathrift, find fault with the passionate temper of Bevis of Southampton, and loved St. George for being the champion of England; and by this means had his thoughts insensibly moulded into the notions of discretion, virtue, and honour.

“I was extolling his accomplishments, when the mother told me that the little girl who led me in this morning was, in her way, a better scholar than he.  ‘Betty,’ says she, ’deals chiefly in fairies and sprites, and sometimes, in a winter night, will terrify the maids with her accounts, till they are afraid to go up to bed.’

“I sat with them till it was very late, sometimes in merry, sometimes in serious discourse, with this particular pleasure which gives the only true relish to all conversation, a sense that every one of us liked each other.  I went home considering the different conditions of a married life and that of a bachelor.  And I must confess it struck me with a secret concern to reflect that, whenever I go off, I shall leave no traces behind me.  In this pensive mood I returned to my family, that is to say, to my maid, my dog, and my cat, who only can be the better or worse for what happens to me."*

Tatler, 96.

You will be sorry to know that, a few Tatlers further on, the kind mother of this happy family dies.  But Steele was himself so much touched by the thought of all the misery he was bringing upon the others by giving such a sad ending to his story, that he could not go on with the paper, and Addison had to finish it for him.

The Spectator, you know, succeeded the Tatler, and it was while writing for the Spectator that Steele took seriously to politics.  He became a member of Parliament and wrote hot political articles.  He and Swift crossed swords more than once, and from being friends became enemies.  But Steele’s temper was too hot, his pen too hasty.  The Tories were in power, and he was a Whig, and he presently found himself expelled from the House of Commons for “uttering seditious libels.”  Shut out from politics, Steele turned once more to essay-writing, and published, one after the other, several papers of the same style as the Spectator, but none of them lived long.

Better days, however, were coming.  Queen Anne died, and King George became a king in 1714, the Whigs returned to power, Steele again received a Government post, again he sat in Parliament, and a few months later he was knighted, and became Sir Richard Steele.  We cannot follow him through all his projects, adventures, and writings.  He was made one of the commissioners for the forfeited estates of the Scottish lords who