Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/184

174 analogy to William Wood; and now the branches are all cut off, he stands ready with his axe at the root.

Upon this subject of perpetual absentees I have spent some time in very insignificant reflections; and considering the usual motives of human actions, which are pleasure, profit, and ambition, I cannot yet comprehend how those persons find their account in any of the three. I speak not of those English peers or gentlemen, who, beside their estates at home, have possessions here, for in that case the matter is desperate; but I mean those lords, and wealthy knights, or squires, whose birth, and partly their education, and all their fortune (except some trifle, and that in a very few instances) are in this kingdom. I knew many of them well enough during several years, when I resided in England; and truly I could not discover that the figure they made, was by any means a subject for envy; at least it gave me two very different passions. For, excepting the advantage of going now and then to an opera, or sometimes appearing behind a crowd at court, or adding to the ring of coaches in Hyde Park, or losing their money at the chocolate house, or getting news, votes, and minutes about five days before us in Dublin; I say, beside these, and a few other privileges of less importance, their temptations to live in London were beyond my knowledge or conception. And I used to wonder, how a man of birth and spirit, could endure to be wholly insignificant and obscure in a foreign country, when he might live with lustre in his own; and even at less than half that expense, which he strains himself to make without obtaining any one end, except that which happened