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with him. Who but himself ever left a throne to learn to sit in it with more grace? Who ever thought himself mean in absolute power, till he had learned to use it?

If we consider this wonderful person, it is perplexity to know where to begin his encomium. Others may in a metaphorical or philosophic sense be said to command themselves, but this emperor is also literally under his own command. How generous and how good was his entering his own name as a private man in the army he raised, that none in it might expect to outrun the steps with which he himself advanced! By such measures this godlike prince learned to conquer, learned to use his conquests. How terrible has he appeared in battle, how gentle in victory! Shall then the base arts of the Frenchman be held polite, and the honest labours of the Russian barbarous? No; barbarity is the ignorance of true honour, or placing anything instead of it. The unjust prince is ignoble and barbarous, the good prince only renowned and glorious.

Though men may impose upon themselves what they please by their corrupt imaginations, truth will ever keep its station: and as glory is nothing else but the shadow of virtue, it will certainly disappear at the departure of virtue. But how carefully ought the true notions of it to be preserved, and how in dustrious should we be to encourage any impulses towards it! The Westminster school-boy that said the other day he could not sleep or play for the colours in the hall, ought to be free from receiving a blow

for ever.

But let us consider what is truly glorious according to the author I have to-day quoted in the front of my paper.

The perfection of glory, says Tully, consists in these three particulars: "That the people love us; that they have confidence in us; that being affected with a certain admiration towards us, they think we deserve honour." This was spoken of greatness in the commonwealth. But if one were to form a consummate glory under our constitution, one must add to the above mentioned felicities a certain necessary

inexistence, and disrelish of all the rest, without the prince's favour. He should, methinks, have riches, power, honour, command, glory; but riches, power,

No. 140.] FRIDAY, AUGUST 10, 1711.
-Animum curis nunc huc, nunc dividit illue.
VIRG. Æn. iv. 285.

This way and that the anxious mind is torn..

WHEN I acquaint my reader that I have many other letters not yet acknowledged, I believe he will own what I have a mind he should believe, that I have no small charge upon me, but am a person of some consequence in this world. I shall therefore employ the present hour only in reading petitions in the order as follows:

"MR. SPECTATOR,

" I have lost so much time already, that I desire, upon the receipt hereof, you will sit down immediately and give me your answer. And I would know of you whether a pretender of mine really loves me. As well as I can, I will describe his manners. When he sees me he is always talking of constancy, but vouchsafes to visit me but once a fortnight, and then is always in haste to be gone. When I am sick, I hear he says he is mightily concerned, but neither comes nor sends, because, as he tells his acquaintance with a sigh, he does not care to let me know all the power I have over him, and how impossible it is for him to live without me. When he leaves the town, he writes once in six weeks, desires to hear from me, complains of the torment of absence, speaks of flames, tortures, languishings, and ecstasies. He has the cant of an impatient lover, but keeps the pace of a lukewarm one. You know I must not go faster than he does, and to move at this rate is as tedious as counting a great clock. But you are to know he is rich, and my mother says, as he is slow he is sure; he will love me long, if he love me little; but I appeal to you whether he loves at all. Your neglected humble servant,

"LYDIA NOVELL.

"All these fellows who have money are extremely saucy and cold; pray, Sir, tell them of it."

"MR. SPECTATOR,

"I have been delighted with nothing more through the whole course of your writings, than the substantial account you lately gave of wit, and I could wish would take some other opportunity further the corrupt taste the age is run into; which He should, methinks, be popular because a favourite, few popular authors, whose merit in some respects and a favourite because popular. Were it not to has given a sanction to their faults in others. Thus make the character too imaginary, I would give him the imitators of Milton seem to place all the excelsovereignty over some foreign territory, and make

honour, command, and glory, should have no charms,
but as accompanied with the affection of his prince. I am chiefly apt to attribute to the prevalency of a

lency of that sort of writing either in the uncouth

him esteem that an empty addition without the kind or antique words, or something else which was highly

regards of his own prince. One may merely have an idea of a man thus composed and circumstantiated, and if he were so made for power without an incapacityt of giving jealousy, he would be also glorious without possibility of receiving disgrace. This humility and this importance must make his glory immortal.

These thoughts are apt to draw me beyond the

vicious, though pardonable in that great man.* The admirers of what we call point, or turn, look upon it as the particular happiness to which Cowley, Ovid, and others, owe their reputation, and therefore endeavour to imitate them only in such instances. What is just, proper, and natural, does not seem to be the question with them, but by what means a quaint antithesis may be brought about, how one word may be made to look two ways, and what will

usual length of this paper; but if I could suppose be the consequence of a forced allusion. Now, ordinary things, I would say these sketches and faint though such authors appear to me to resemble those images of glory were drawn in August, 1711, when who make themselves fine, instead of being wellJohn, Duke of Marlborough, made that memorable dressed, or graceful: yet the mischief is, that these march wherein he took the French lines without beauties in them, which I call blemishes, are thought

such rhapsodies could outlive the common of

bloodshed.-T.

The colours taken at Blenheim, in 1704, were fixed up in Westminster-hall, after having been carried in procession through the city.

↑ The sense seems to require "without a capacity," but all Che copies read as here.

to proceed from luxuriance of fancy and overflowing of good sense. In one word, they have the character of being too witty; but if you would acquaint

• So Philips in his Cyder is careful to mispell the words "orchat, sovran," after Milton, &c.

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"MR. SPECTATOR,

"PARTHENΟΡΕ."

ment of our sex will, I hope, in your own opinion, sufficiently excuse me from making any apology for the impertinence of this letter. The great desire I have to embellish my mind with some of those graces which you say are so becoming, and which you assert reading helps us to, has made me uneasy until I am put in a capacity of attaining them. This, Sir, I shall never think myself in, until you shall be pleased to recommend some author or authors to my perusal.

"I thought indeed, when I first cast my eye on Leonora's letter, that I should have had no occasion for requesting it of you; but to my very great concern, I found on the perusal of that Spectator, I was entirely disappointed, and am as much at a loss how to make use of my time for that end as ever. Pray, Sir, oblige me at least with one scene, as you were pleased to entertain Leonora with your prologue. I write to you not only my own sentiments, but also those of several others of my acquaintance, who are as little pleased with the ordinary manner of spending one's time as myself: and if a fervent desire after knowledge, and a great sense of our present ignorance, may be thought a good presage and earnest of improvement, you may look upon your time you shall bestow in answering this request not thrown away to no purpose. And I cannot but add that, unless you have a particular and more than ordinary regard for Leonora, I have a better title to your favour than she: since I do not content myself with a tea-table reading of your papers, but it is my

" Last night, as I was walking in the Park, I met a couple of friends. Pr'ythee, Jack,' says one of them, let us go and drink a glass of wine, for I ain fit for nothing else.' This put me upon reflecting on the many miscarriages which happen in conversations over wine, when men go to the bottle to re-entertainment very often when alone in my closet.

move such humours as it only stirs up and awakens. This I could not attribute more to any thing than to the humour of putting company upon others which men do not like themselves. Pray, Sir, declare in your papers, that he who is a troublesome companion to himself, will not be an agreeable one to others. Let people reason themselves into good humour before they impose themselves upon their friends. Pray, Sir, be as eloquent as you can upon this subject, and do human life so much good, as to argue powerfully, that it is not every one that can swallow who is fit to drink a glass of wine.

"Your most humble servant."

To shew I am capable of improvement, and hate flattery, I acknowledge I do not like some of your papers; but even there I am readier to call in question my own shallow understanding than Mr. Spectator's profound judgment.

"I am, Sir, your already (and in hopes of being more your) obliged servant,

"PARTHEΝΙΑ."

This last letter is written with so urgent and serious an air, that I cannot but think it incumbent upon me to comply with her commands, which I shall do very suddenly.-T.

"I this morning cast my eye upon your paper No. 141.] SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 1711.

Migravit ab aure voluptas

"SIR,

concerning the expense of time. You are very

obliging to the women, especially those who are not young and past gallantry, by touching so gently upon gaming: therefore I hope you do not think it wrong to employ a little leisure time in that diversion; but I should be glad to hear you say something upon the behaviour of some of the female gamesters.

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" I have observed ladies, who in all other respects are gentle, good-humoured, and the very pinks of good breeding; who, as soon as the ombre-table is called for, and sit down to their business, are immediately transmigrated into the veriests wasps in

nature.

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In the present emptiness of the town, I have several applications from the lower part of the players, to admit suffering to pass for acting. They in very obliging terms desire me to let a fall on the ground, a stumble, or a good slap on the back, be reckoned a jest. These gambols I shall tolerate for a season, because I hope the evil cannot continue longer than until the people of condition and taste return to town. The method, some time ago, was to entertain that part of the audience who have no faculty above that of eye-sight with rope-dancers and tumblers; which was a way discreet enough, because it prevented confusion and distinguished such as could show all the postures which the body is capable of, from those who were to represent all the passions to which the mind is subject. But though this was prudently settled, corporeal and intellectual acters ought to be kept at a still wider distance than to appear on the same stage at all; for which reason I must propose some methods for the improvement

the bear-garden, by dismissing all bodily actors to that quarter.

In cases of greater moment, where men appear in public, the consequence and importance of the thing can bear them out. And though a pleader or preacher is hoarse or awkward, the weight of his matter commands respect and attention; but in theatrical speaking, if the performer is not exactly proper and graceful, he is utterly ridiculous. In

it is extremely foreign from the affair of comedy
Subjects of this kind, which are in themselves disa
greeable, can at no time become entertaining, but by
passing through an imagination like Shakspeare's to
form them; for which reason Mr. Dryden would not
allow even Beaumont and Fletcher capable of imi-
tating him.

But Shakspeare's magic could not copied be:
Within that circle none durst walk but he.

cases where there is little else expected but the "I should not, however, have troubled you with pleasure of the ears and eyes, the least diminu- these remarks, if there were not something else in tion of that pleasure is the highest offence. In this comedy, which wants to be exercised more than acting, barely to perform the part is not commend- the witches: I mean the freedom of some passages, able, but to be the least out is contemptible. To which I should have overlooked if I had not observed avoid these difficulties and delicacies, I am informed, that those jests can raise the loudest mirth, though that while I was out of town, the actors have flown they in the air, and played such pranks, and run such modesty. hazards, that none but the servants of the fire-office, "We must attribute such liberties to the taste of tilers, and masons, could have been able to perform that age: but indeed by such representations a poet the like. The author of the following letter, it sacrifices the best part of his audience to the worst; seems, has been of the audience at one of these en- and, as one would think, neglects the boxes, to write tertainments, and has accordingly complained to me

are painful to right sense, and an outrage upon

to the orange-wenches.

upon it: but I think he has been to the utmost de- "I must not conclude till I have taken notice of

gree severe against what is exceptionable in the play he mentions, without dwelling so much as he might have done on the author's most excellent talent of humour. The pleasant pictures he has drawn of life should have been more kindly mentioned, at the same time that he banishes his witches, who are too dall devils to be attacked with so much warmth.

"MR. SPECTATOR,

"Upon a report that Moll White had followed you to town, and was to act a part in the Lancashire Witches, I went last week to see that play. It was my fortune to sit next to a country justice of the peace, a neighbour (as he said) of Sir Roger's, who pretended to show her to us in one of the dances. There was witchcraft enough in the entertainment almost to incline me to believe him; Ben Jonsont was almost lamed: young Bullock† narrowly saved his neck: the audience was astonished; and an old acquaintance of mine, a person of worth, whom I would have bowed to in the pit, at two yards distance, did not know me.

"If you were what the country people reported you-a white witch-I could have wished you had been there to have exercised that rabble of broomsticks with which we were haunted for above three hours. I could have allowed them to set Clod in the tree, to have scared the sportsmen, plagued the justice, and employed honest Teague with his holy water. This was the proper use of them in comedy, if the author had stopped here; but I cannot conceive what relation the sacrifice of the black lamb, and the ceremonies of their worship to the devil, have to the business of mirth and humour.

"The gentleman who writ this play, and has drawn some characters in it very justly, appears to have been misled in his witchcraft by an unwary follewing the inimitable Shakspeare. The incantations in Macbeth have a solemnity admirably adapted to the occasion of that tragedy, and fill the mind with a suitable horror; besides that the witches are a part of the story itself, as we find it very particularly related in Hector Boetius, from whom he seems to have taken it. This therefore is a proper machine where the business is dark, horrid, and bloody; but

Alluding to Shadwell's comedy of the Lancashire Witches, which had been lately acted several times, and was advertised

the moral with which this comedy ends. The two young ladies having given a notable example of outwitting those who had a right in the disposal of them, and marrying without the consent of parents-one of the injured parties, who is easily reconciled, winds up all with this remark,

Design whate'er we will,

There is a fate which over-rules us still,

"We are to suppose that the gallants are men of merit, but if they had been rakes, the excuse might have served as well. Hans Carvel's wife was of the same principle, but has expressed it with a delicacy which shows she is not serious in her excuse, but in a sort of humorous philosophy turns off the thought of her guilt, and says,

That if weak women go astray,

Their stars are more in fault than they.

"This no doubt is a full reparation, and dismisses the audience with very edifying impressions.

"These things fall under a province you have partly pursued already, and therefore demands your animadversion, for the regulating so noble an entertainment as that of the stage. It were to be wished that all who write for it hereafter would raise their genius, by the ambition of pleasing people of the best understanding; and leave others to show nothing of the human species but risibility, to seek their diversion at the bear-gardens, or some other privileged place, where reason and good manners have no right to disturb them. "I am, &c." August 8, 1711."

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Whom love's unbroken bond unites.

THE following being genuine, and the images of a worthy passion, I am willing to give the old lady's admonition to myself, and the representation of her own happiness, a place in my writings.

"MR. SPECTATOR, August 9, 1711. "I am now in the sixty-seventh year of my age, do not strike at the root of the greatest evil in life, and read you with approbation; but methinks you which is the false notion of gallantry in love. It is,

for the very night which this Spectator is dated.
+ The names of two actors then upon the stage.

Duferent incidents in the play of the Lancashire Witches.
SPECTATOR-Nos. 21 & 22.

+ The concluding distich of Shadwell's play.
M

and has long been, upon a very ill foot; but I who have been a wife forty years, and was bred up in a way that has made me ever since very happy, sea through the folly of it. In a word, Sir, when 1 was a young woman, all who avoided the vices of the age were very carefully educated, and all fantastical objects were turned out of our sight. The tapestry-hangings, with the great and venerable simplicity of the Scripture stories, had better effects than now the loves of Venus and Adonis, or Bacchus and Ariadne, in your fine present prints. The gentleman I am married to made love to me in rapture, but it was the rapture of a Christian and a man of honour, not of a romantic hero or a whining coxcomb. This put our life upon a right basis. To give you an idea of our regard one to another, I enclose to you several of his letters, writ forty years ago, when my lover; and one writ the other day, after so many years cohabitation.

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"MADAM,

"Your servant,

"ANDROMACHE."

August 7, 1671.

If my vigilance, and ten thousand wishes for your welfare and repose, could have any force, you last night slept in security, and had every good angel in your attendance. To have my thoughts ever fixed on you, to live in constant fear of every accident to which human life is liable, and to send up my hourly prayers to avert them from you; I say, Madam, thus to think, and thus to suffer, is what I do for her who is in pain at my approach, and calls all my tender sorrow impertinence. You are now before my eyes, my eyes that are ready to flow with tenderness, but cannot give relief to my gushing heart, that dictates what I am now saying, and yearns to tell you all its achings. How art thou, oh my soul, stolen from thyself! how is all my attention broken! my books are blank paper, and my friends intruders. I have no hope of quiet but from your pity. To grant it would make more for your triumph. To give pain is the tyranny, to make happy the true empire of beauty. If you would consider aright, you would find an agreeable change in dismissing the attendance of a slave, to receive the complaisance of a companion. I bear the former in hopes of the latter condition. As I live in chains without murmuring at the power which inflicts them, so I could enjoy freedom without forgetting the mercy that gave it.

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"Before the light this morning dawned upon the earth I awaked, and lay in expectation of its return, not that it could give any new sense of joy to me, but as I hoped it would bless you with its cheerful face, after a quiet which I wished you last night. If my prayers are heard, the day appeared with all the influence of a merciful Creator upon your person and actions. Let others, my lovely charmer, talk of a blind being that disposes their hearts; I contemn their low images of love. I have not a thought

guage to ladies; but you have a mind elevated above the giddy notions of a sex ensnared by flattery, and misled by a false and short adoration into a solid and long contempt. Beauty, my fairest creature, palls in the possession, but I love also your mind: your soul is as dear to me as my own; and if the advantages of a liberal education, some knowledge, and as much contempt of the world, joined with the endeavours towards a life of strict virtue and religion, can qualify me to raise new ideas in a breast so well disposed as yours is, our days will pass away with joy; and old age, instead of introducing melancholy prospects of decay, give us hope of eternal youth in a better life. I have but few minutes from the duty of my employment to write in, and without time to read over what I have writ; therefore beseech you to pardon the first hints of my mind, which I have expressed in so little order.

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"It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love, and yet attend business. As for me, all that speak to me find me out, and I must lock myself up, or other people will do it for me. A gentleman asked me this morning, 'What news from Holland?' and I answered, She is exquisitely handsome.' Another desired to know when I had been last at Windsor; I replied, 'She designs to go with me.' Pr'ythee, allow me at least to kiss your hand before the appointed day, that my mind may be in some composure. Methinks I could write a volume to you, but all the language on earth would fail in saying how much, and with what disinterested passion,

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"Next to the influence of heaven, I am to thank you that I see the returning day with pleasure. To pass my evenings in so sweet a conversation, and have the esteem of a woman of your merit, has in it a particularity of happiness no more to be expressed than returned. But I am, my lovely creature, contented to be on the obliged side, and to employ all my days in new endeavours to convince you and all the world of the sense I have of your condescension in choosing,

"Madam, your most faithful,

most obedient humble servant."* "He was, when he writ the following letter, as agreeable and pleasant a man as any in England :"MADAM, October 20, 1671.

"I beg pardon that my paper is not finer, but I am forced to write from a coffee-house where I am attending about business. There is a dirty crowd of busy faces all around me talking of money, while all my ambition, all my wealth, is love: love, which animates my heart, sweetens my humour, enlarges my soul, and affects every action of my life. It is to my lovely charmer I owe that many noble ideas are continually affixed to my words and actions: it

which relates to you, that I cannot with confidence is the natural effect of that generous passion to crebeseech the All-seeing Power to bless me in. May ate in the admirers some similitude of the object be direct you in all your steps, and reward your in- admired; thus, my dear, am I every day to improve nocence, your sanctity of manners, your prudent from so sweet a companion. Look up, my fair one, youth, and becoming piety, with the continuance of

his grace and protection. This is an unusual lan

• Richard Steele.

to that heaven which made thee such, and join with served) they who resolve to be merry, seldom are me to implore its influence on our tender innocent so; it will be much more unlikely for us to be well

hours, and beseech the author of love to bless the rites he has ordained, and mingle with our happiness a just sense of our transient condition, and a resignation to his will, which only can regulate our minds to a steady endeavour to please him and each other. "I am, for ever, your faithful servant."*

" I will not trouble you with more letters at this time, but if you saw the poor withered hand which sends you these minutes, I am sure you would smile to think that there is one who is so gallant as to speak of it still as so welcome a present, after forty years' possession of the woman whom he writes to. June 23, 1711.

"MADAM,

"I heartily beg your pardon for my omission to write yesterday. It was no failure of my tender regard for you; but having been very much perplexed in my thoughts on the subject of my last, made me determine to suspend speaking of it until I came myself. But, my lovely creature, know it is not in the power of age, or misfortune, or any other accident which hangs over human life, to take from me the pleasing esteem I have for you, or the memory of the bright figure you appeared in, when you gave your hand and heart to,

T.

"Madam, your most grateful husband,

and obedient servant."*†

No. 143.1 TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 1711. Non est vivere, sed valere, vita-MARTIAL, Epig. lxx. 6. For life is only life, when blest with health.

It is an unreasonable thing some men expect of their acquaintance. They are ever complaining that they are out of order, or displeased, or they know not how, and are so far from letting that be a reason for retiring to their own homes, that they make it their argument for coming into company. What has any body to do with accounts of a man's being indisposed, but his physician? If a man laments in company, where the rest are in humour enough to enjoy themselves, he should not take it ill if a servant is ordered to present him with a porringer of caudle or posset-drink, by way of admonition that he go home to bed. That part of life which we ordinarily understand by the word conversation, is an indulgence to the sociable part of our make; and should incline us to bring our proportion of good-will or good-humour among the friends we meet with, and not to trouble them with relations which must of necessity oblige them to a real or feigned affliction. Cares, distresses, diseases, uneasinesses, and dislikes of our own, are by no means to be obtruded upon our friends. If we would consider how little of this vicissitude of motion and rest, which we call life, is spent with satisfaction, we should be more tender of our friends than to bring them little sorrows which do not belong to them. There is no real life but cheerful life; therefore valetudinarians should be sworn, before they enter into company, not to say a word of themselves until the meeting breaks up. It is not here pretended that we should be always sitting with chaplets of flowers round our heads, or be

crowned with roses in order to make our entertainment agreeable to us; but if (as it is usually ob

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pleased, if they are admitted who are always complaining they are sad. Whatever we do, we should keep up the cheerfulness of our spirits, and never let them sink below an inclination at least to be well pleased. The way to this, is to keep our bodies in exercise, our minds at ease. That insipid state wherein neither are in vigour, is not to be accounted any part of our portion of being. When we are in the satisfaction of some innocent pleasure, or pursuit of some laudable design, we are in the possession of life, of human life. Fortune will give us disappointments enough, and nature is attended with infirmities enough, without our adding to the unhappy side of our account by our spleen or ill-humour. Poor Cottilus, among so many real evils, a chronical distemper and a narrow fortune, is never heard to complain. That equal spirit of his, which any man may have, that, like him, will conquer pride, vanity, and affectation, and follow nature, is not to be broken, because it has no points to contend for. To be anxious for nothing but what nature demands as necessary, if it is not the way to an estate, is the way to what men aim at by getting an estate. This temper will preserve health in the body, as well as tranquillity in the mind. Cottilus sees the world in a hurry, with the same scorn that a sober person sees a man drunk. Had he been contented with what he ought to have been, how could, says he, such a one have met with such a disappointment? If another had valued his mistress for what he ought to have loved her, he had not been in her power. If her virtue had had a part of his passion, her levity had been his cure; she could not then have been false and amiable at the same time.

Since we cannot promise ourselves constant health, let us endeavour at such a temper as may be our best support in the decay of it. Uranius nas arrived at that composure of soul, and wrought himself up to such a neglect of every thing with which the generality of mankind is enchanted, that nothing but acute pains can give him disturbance, and against those too he will tell his intimate friends he has a secret which gives him present ease. Uranius is so thoroughly persuaded of another life, and endea

vours so sincerely to secure an interest in it, that he pain as quickening of his pace to a

home, where he shall be better provided for than in

his present apartment. Instead of the melancholy views which others are apt to give themselves, he will tell that has forgot he is mortal, nor will he think of himself as such. He thinks at the time of his birth he entered into an eternal being; and the short article of death he will not allow an inter

ruption of life; since that moment is not of half the duration as his ordinary sleep. Thus is his being one uniform and consistent series of cheerful diversions and moderate cares, without fear or hope of futurity. Health to him is more than pleasure to another man, and sickness less affecting to him than indisposition is to others.

I must confess, if one does not regard life after this manner, none but idiots can pass it away with any tolerable patience. Take a fine lady who is of a delicate frame, and you may observe, from the hour she rises, a certain weariness of all that passes about her. I know more than one who is much too nice to be quite alive. They are sick of such strange frightful people they meet; one is so awkward, and another so disagreeable, that it looks like a penance to breathe the same air with them. You see this is

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