The Weekly Entertainer, or Agreeable and Instructive Repository, Volume XVII, 1791 annual edition.

Various writers. 1791 edition, Volume XVII. Printed by Goadby and Lerpiniere. Sherborne.

The Weekly Entertainer
Or Agreeable and Instructive Repository
Containing A Collection of Select Pieces
Both in Prose and Verse, Curious Anecdotes,
Instructive Tales, and Ingenious Essays on Different Subjects

Monday, April 4, 1791
Further extracts from Sir Brooke Boothby's Letter to the Right Hon. Edmund Burke

"It is of the essence of power to increase by its own force; wherever the greatest quantum is found to that all inferior quantities will gravitate as to a common centre. For this reason Mr. Locke when he gave a form of government to one of the colonies in America limited its duration to an hundred years. To fabricate eternal machinery either physical or moral belongs only to the hand of God. Not so far has God himself condescended to the versatility of his creatures that he has already given us two dispensations differing considerably from each other. The very regulation of time by which everything else is regulated has been found subject to error and requiring change. To the Julian has succeeded the Gregorian system, and to that another must succeed if the world should so long endure. Our poor little institutions like our watches require to be periodically wound up and frequently repaired. They all contain in their very essence and original concoction latent principles of destruction. It is the best office of the collective wisdom of the times to mark the decay and retard its progress, and when the day comes, as come it must sooner or later, that the machine ceases entirely to answer the purposes for which it was constructed, to direct the formation of a new one if possible on a better principle and of more durable materials."

The Weekly Entertainer, owned by Robert Goadby and published 1783 - 1819, was a popular British periodical in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, known for its wide-ranging content.

A delightful quirk of this book: Marginalia on several pages are answers to charades, enigmas, rebuses, and other word games.

Etsy.com/shop/TheCharmedbookshop
Visit TheCharmedBookshop.com for more books for children and collectors

Condition: Good. Lacks dust jacket, as issued. Marbled wood cover boards with brown leather backstrip: Heavy wear and rubbing, front and back, with a section of paper missing on the lower right of the front cover; mild to moderate wear along the edges; corners are bumped; crackling of the backstrip, and bumped at the head and tail; cracked at the back endpapers, at the bottom of the gutter; headband at the tail of the spine is unraveling and needs repair. Previous owners' names on front fly leaf, including possible original owner; name in light pencil on back paste-down. Text block is square and tight, with a small brown stain on the fore edge. Some foxing else pages are undamaged and complete.