Chapter viii.

A receipt to regain the lost affections of a wife, which hath never

been known to fail in the most desperate cases.

The captain was made large amends for the unpleasant minutes which he

passed in the conversation of his wife (and which were as few as he

could contrive to make them), by the pleasant meditations he enjoyed

when alone.

These meditations were entirely employed on Mr Allworthy's fortune;

for, first, he exercised much thought in calculating, as well as he

could, the exact value of the whole: which calculations he often saw

occasion to alter in his own favour: and, secondly and chiefly, he

pleased himself with intended alterations in the house and gardens,

and in projecting many other schemes, as well for the improvement of

the estate as of the grandeur of the place: for this purpose he

applied himself to the studies of architecture and gardening, and read

over many books on both these subjects; for these sciences, indeed,

employed his whole time, and formed his only amusement. He at last

completed a most excellent plan: and very sorry we are, that it is not

in our power to present it to our reader, since even the luxury of the

present age, I believe, would hardly match it. It had, indeed, in a

superlative degree, the two principal ingredients which serve to

recommend all great and noble designs of this nature; for it required

an immoderate expense to execute, and a vast length of time to bring

it to any sort of perfection. The former of these, the immense wealth

of which the captain supposed Mr Allworthy possessed, and which he

thought himself sure of inheriting, promised very effectually to

supply; and the latter, the soundness of his own constitution, and his

time of life, which was only what is called middle-age, removed all

apprehension of his not living to accomplish.

Nothing was wanting to enable him to enter upon the immediate

execution of this plan, but the death of Mr Allworthy; in calculating

which he had employed much of his own algebra, besides purchasing

every book extant that treats of the value of lives, reversions, &c.

From all which he satisfied himself, that as he had every day a chance

of this happening, so had he more than an even chance of its happening

within a few years.

But while the captain was one day busied in deep contemplations of

this kind, one of the most unlucky as well as unseasonable accidents

happened to him. The utmost malice of Fortune could, indeed, have

contrived nothing so cruel, so mal-a-propos, so absolutely destructive

to all his schemes. In short, not to keep the reader in long suspense,

just at the very instant when his heart was exulting in meditations on

the happiness which would accrue to him by Mr Allworthy's death, he

himself--died of an apoplexy.

This unfortunately befel the captain as he was taking his evening walk

by himself, so that nobody was present to lend him any assistance, if

indeed, any assistance could have preserved him. He took, therefore,

measure of that proportion of soil which was now become adequate to

all his future purposes, and he lay dead on the ground, a great

(though not a living) example of the truth of that observation of

Horace:

_Tu secanda marmora

Locas sub ipsum funus; et sepulchri

Immemor, struis domos._

Which sentiment I shall thus give to the English reader: “You provide

the noblest materials for building, when a pickaxe and a spade are

only necessary: and build houses of five hundred by a hundred feet,

forgetting that of six by two.”