During the reign of George II. the commercial consequence of Great Britain had rapidly in、creased, and had given rise to various alterations in our modes of living, and to characters which had not hitherto subsisted. Luxury and refinement, the invariable attendants on extended commerce, had pervaded a much larger portion of society than in the days of Addison, and the mutations in the fashionable world had kept pace with the facilities of extravagance and caprice.

The dissipation and manners of the metropolis, which, during the publication of the Tatler and Spectator, had few opportunities of spreading far beyond the capital that gave them birth, possessed, towards the middle of the eighteenth century, a free and rapid access to every quarter of the kingdom; and, as Sir John Hawkins has observed, "the maid of honour and the farmer's wife put on a cap of the latest form, almost at the same instant." To the great improvements in travelling, occasioned by the universal establishment of turnpike roads, good inns, and light carriages, are we to attribute this remarkable alteration, which imparted, if not an improved, yet certainly a very novel appearance to provincial life, excited a very curious emulation, added fresh effervescence to affectation, and gave play to a new series of eccentricities and follies.

The state also both of the capital and the country had received great modification from the wide dissemination of literature; the foundation for this salutary change had been laid by Steele and Addison, and, at the period when the Rambler started into existence, its effects on society were very evident and striking. To be acquainted with letters was now no longer a disgrace to the fine gentleman; classical studies, indeed, were deemed necessary to all whose circumstances placed them above manual labour; and the ladies, to whom spelling and writing hadbeen formerly acquisitions of great magnitude, were, in the days of Johnson, very universally partakers of the most elegant refinements of education.

To this general distribution of literary intelligence, which, at the period under consideration, not only operated strongly upon the upper and middle, but likewise on the lower ranks of society, great assistance had been given by the establishment of the Gentleman's Magazine, in 1731; a miscellany which soon acquired an unprecedented circulation, and, by affording a most respectable arena for diffident scholars and young authors, created in the English republic of letters a very ardent spirit of emulation. To the Journal of Cave was added, in the year 1749, the "Monthly

Review," the herald of a vast and increasing series of periodical criticism. These productions, still among the most respectable of their kind, have a just claim, through their influence in accelerating the dispersion of knowledge, to the formation of distinct epochs in the annals of our literature. In the year 1750, the former had for nineteen years been contributing powerfully toward the progress of literary information; and the latter had very successfully begun a career which has gradually converted the nation into a body of critics.

Another natural consequence of a diffused taste for letters was a vast increase in the number of authors; many of whom, as will ever be the case, were notoriously inadequate to the duties of their profession. Collectively, however, their influence upon society became every day more powerful and decided; they were the directors of public opinion, and consequently their precepts and conduct became an object of serious attention. The state of literature and its disciples has, therefore, furnished Johnson with a new and fertile topic of discussion; he delighted to expatiate on the fate and fortunes, the pleasures and miseries, the vices and follies, of the sons of learning;-and he has alternately launched with success the shafts of ridicule and the weapons of reproof..

The modes of town life, its dissipation, and the characters that figured in the Beau Monde, were likewise, in 1750, very dissimilar to those which existed at the period of the Spectator, and they have consequently furnished our author with some novel and poignant themes for satire. The fashionable hours, even in domestic life, began to intrude upon the night; the amusements of the capital were commencing that career of continuity to which we are now familiarized; the play, the opera, and the masquerade, soliciting their votaries. on the same night in regular succession. The Beau and Belle, such as they are described in the pages of Steele, no longer were in being; Will Honeycombe would have been an object of con- . tempt, for the fop now assumed a much greater portion of frivolity, levity,, and extravagance. The professions were dropping their exterior characteristics; the divine was too often mistaken for the layman; the physician had dismissed his cane and wig, and the lawyer his suit of black. The merchant, the tradesman, and the mechanic, had each stepped beyond their former spheres; the first had assumed the airs of a man of gallantry and fashion, and was as often seen in the ballroom as the counting-house; the shop-keeper had arrogated to himself the name and consequence of the merchant; and the mechanic, having

laid aside his apron, had no longer the mortification of carrying a badge, which from its form, or colour, or material, might be indicative of his employment.

To these mutations and follies was added a subject of very serious animadversion, the increasing scepticism of the age; a topic which has drawn from the pen of Johnson several admirable papers in support of religion and its evidences.

It is probable, that for many months previous to the publication of the first number of the Rambler, its author had been weighing in his mind the propriety and utility of such a vehicle for public. instruction, and had been collecting materials for his purpose, as they were presented to him in his intercourse with society; at least, this was certainly the case with the early part of the work, as on the first blank leaf of a Common Place Book, which was afterwards in the possession of Mr. Boswell, he had written " To the hundred and twenty-eighth page, collections for the Rambler," and subsequently, "In all, taken of provided materials, thirty." With these hints, or notanda, and with a mind rich in observation on life and manners, he commenced "The Rambler;" a title, however, by no means happily chosen, as it corresponds not with the tenor of the work, of