- What studies please, what most delight,
And fill men's thoughts, they dream them o'er at night.

CREECH.

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