In one of my rambles, or rather speculations, I looked into the great
hall where the bank is kept, and was not a little pleased to see the
directors, secretaries, and clerks, with all the other members of that
wealthy corporation, ranged in their several stations, according to the
parts they act in that just and regular economy. This revived in my
memory the many discourses which I had both read and heard concerning the
decay of public credit, with the methods of restoring it; and which, in
my opinion, have always been defective, because they have always been
made with an eye to separate interests and party principles.
The thoughts of the day gave my mind employment for the whole night; so
that I fell insensibly into a kind of methodical dream, which disposed
all my contemplations into a vision, or allegory, or what else the reader
shall please to call it.
Methoughts I returned to the great hall, where I had been the morning
before; but to my surprise, instead of the company that I left there, I
saw, towards the upper end of the hall, a beautiful virgin, seated on a
throne of gold. Her name, as they told me, was Public Credit. The
walls, instead of being adorned with pictures and maps, were hung with
many Acts of Parliament written in golden letters. At the upper end of
the hall was the Magna Charta, with the Act of Uniformity on the right
hand, and the Act of Toleration on the left. At the lower end of the
hall was the Act of Settlement, which was placed full in the eye of the
virgin that sat upon the throne. Both the sides of the hall were covered
with such Acts of Parliament as had been made for the establishment of
public funds. The lady seemed to set an unspeakable value upon these
several pieces of furniture, insomuch that she often refreshed her eye
with them, and often smiled with a secret pleasure as she looked upon
them; but, at the same time, showed a very particular uneasiness if she
saw anything approaching that might hurt them. She appeared, indeed,
infinitely timorous in all her behaviour: and whether it was from the
delicacy of her constitution, or that she was troubled with vapours, as I
was afterwards told by one who I found was none of her well-wishers, she
changed colour and startled at everything she heard. She was likewise,
as I afterwards found, a greater valetudinarian than any I had ever met
with, even in her own sex, and subject to such momentary consumptions,
that in the twinkling of an eye, she would fall away from the most florid
complexion and the most healthful state of body, and wither into a
skeleton. Her recoveries were often as sudden as her decays, insomuch
that she would revive in a moment out of a wasting distemper, into a
habit of the highest health and vigour.
I had very soon an opportunity of observing these quick turns and changes
in her constitution. There sat at her feet a couple of secretaries, who
received every hour letters from all parts of the world, which the one or
the other of them was perpetually reading to her; and according to the
news she heard, to which she was exceedingly attentive, she changed
colour, and discovered many symptoms of health or sickness.
Behind the throne was a prodigious heap of bags of money, which were
piled upon one another so high that they touched the ceiling. The floor
on her right hand and on her left was covered with vast sums of gold that
rose up in pyramids on either side of her. But this I did not so much
wonder at, when I heard, upon inquiry, that she had the same virtue in
her touch, which the poets tell us a Lydian king was formerly possessed
of; and that she could convert whatever she pleased into that precious
metal.
After a little dizziness, and confused hurry of thought, which a man
often meets with in a dream, methoughts the hall was alarmed, the doors
flew open, and there entered half a dozen of the most hideous phantoms
that I had ever seen, even in a dream, before that time. They came in
two by two, though matched in the most dissociable manner, and mingled
together in a kind of dance. It would be tedious to describe their
habits and persons; for which reason I shall only inform my reader, that
the first couple were Tyranny and Anarchy; the second were Bigotry and
Atheism; the third, the Genius of a commonwealth and a young man of about
twenty-two years of age, whose name I could not learn. He had a sword in
his right hand, which in the dance he often brandished at the Act of
Settlement; and a citizen, who stood by me, whispered in my ear, that he
saw a sponge in his left hand. The dance of so many jarring natures put
me in mind of the sun, moon, and earth, in the _Rehearsal_, that danced
together for no other end but to eclipse one another.
The reader will easily suppose, by what has been before said, that the
lady on the throne would have been almost frighted to distraction, had
she seen but any one of the spectres: what then must have been her
condition when she saw them all in a body? She fainted, and died away at
the sight.
_Et neque jam color est misto candore rubori_;
_Nec vigor_, _et vires_, _et quae modo rise placebant_;
_Nec corpus remanet_--.
OVID, _Met. iii._ 491.
--Her spirits faint,
Her blooming cheeks assume a pallid teint,
And scarce her form remains.
There was as great a change in the hill of money-bags and the heaps of
money, the former shrinking and falling into so many empty bags, that I
now found not above a tenth part of them had been filled with money.
The rest, that took up the same space and made the same figure as the
bags that were really filled with money, had been blown up with air, and
called into my memory the bags full of wind, which Homer tells us his
hero received as a present from AEolus. The great heaps of gold on
either side the throne now appeared to be only heaps of paper, or little
piles of notched sticks, bound up together in bundles, like Bath faggots.
Whilst I was lamenting this sudden desolation that had been made before
me, the whole scene vanished. In the room of the frightful spectres,
there now entered a second dance of apparitions, very agreeably matched
together, and made up of very amiable phantoms: the first pair was
Liberty with Monarchy at her right hand; the second was Moderation
leading in Religion; and the third, a person whom I had never seen, with
the Genius of Great Britain. At the first entrance, the lady revived;
the bags swelled to their former bulk; the piles of faggots and heaps of
paper changed into pyramids of guineas: and, for my own part, I was so
transported with joy that I awaked, though I must confess I would fain
have fallen asleep again to have closed my vision, if I could have done
it.