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shall surmount all other difficulties; and inspired by so noble a motive for the care of my fortune, as the belief she is to be concerned in it, I will not despair of receiving her one day from her father's own hand.

"I am, Sir,

"Your most obedient, humble Servant,

"CLYTANDER."

"TO HIS WORSHIP THE SPECTATOR.

"The humble petition of Anthony Title-page, stationer, in the center of Lincoln's-inn-fields. "Showeth,

"That your petitioner and his forefathers, have been sellers of books for time immemorial: that your petitioner's ancestor, Crouchback Title-page, was the first of that vocation in Britain; who keeping his station (in fair weather) at the corner of Lothbury, was, by way of eminency, called The Stationer,' a name which from him all succeeding booksellers have affected to bear: that the station of your petitioner and his father has been in the place of his present settlement ever since that square has been built: that your petitioner has formerly had the honor of your worship's custom, and hopes you never had reason to complain of your pennyworths: that particularly he sold you your first Lilly's Grammar, and at the same time a Wit's Commonwealth, almost as good

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That while your petitioners stand ready to receive passengers with a submissive bow, and repeat with a gentle voice, Ladies, what do you want? pray look in here;' the worriers reach out their hands at pistol-shot, and seize the customers at arms' length.

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That while the fawners strain and relax the muscles of their faces, in making a distinction be tween a spinster in a colored scarf and a handmaid in a straw hat, the worriers use the same roughness to both, and prevail upon the easiness of the passengers, to the impoverishment of your petitioners.

"Your petitioners therefore most humbly pray, that the worriers may not be permitted to inhabit the politer parts of the town; and that Roundcourt may remain a receptacle for buyers of a more soft education.

"And your Petitioners," etc.

The petition of the New-exchange, concerning the arts of buying and selling, and particu larly valuing goods, by the complexion of the seller, will be considered on another occasion.-T.

Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis
Tempus eget.-

VIRG. N., ii, 521.
These times want other aids.-DRYDEN,

as new: moreover, that your first rudimental No. 305.] TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1711-12. essays in spectatorship were made in your petitioner's shop, where you often practiced for hours together, sometimes on the little hieroglyphics either gilt, silvered, or plain, which the Egyptian woman on the other side of the shop had wrought in gingerbread, and sometimes on the English youths who in sundry places there were exercising themselves in the traditional sports of the

field.

OUR late newspapers being full of the project now on foot in the court of France for establish ing a political academy, and I myself having received letters from several virtuosos among my foreign correspondents, which give some light into that affair, I intend to make it the subject of this day's speculation. A general account of this project may be met with in the Daily Courant of last Friday, in the following words, translated from the Gazette of Amsterdam:

"From these considerations it is; that your petitioner is encouraged to apply himself to you, and to proceed humbly to acquaint your worship, that he has certain intelligence that you receive great numbers of defamatory letters designed by their authors to be published, which you throw Paris, February 12. "It is confirmed, that the aside and totally neglect: Your petitioner there-King has resolved to establish a new academy for fore prays, that you will please to bestow on him those refuse letters, and he hopes by printing them to get a more plentiful provision for his family; or, at the worst, he may be allowed to sell them by the pound weight to his good customers the pastry-cooks of London and Westminster.

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"That your petitioners have, with great industry and application, arrived at the most exact art of invitation or entreaty: that by a beseeching air and persuasive address, they have for many years last past peaceably drawn in every tenth passenger, whether they intended or not to call at their shops, to come in and buy; and from that softness of behavior have arrived among tradesmen at the gentle appellation of The Fawners.'

"That there have of late set up among us certain persons from Monmouth street and Long-lane, vho by the strength of their arms, and loudness

politics, of which the Marquis de Torey, minister and secretary of state, is to be protector. Six academicians are to be chosen, endowed with proper talents, for beginning to form this academy, into which no person is to be admitted under twenty-five years of age: they must likewise have each an estate of two thousand livres a year, either in possession, or to come to them by inheritance. The King will allow to each a pension of a thou sand livres. They are likewise to have able masters to teach them the necessary sciences, and to instruct them in all the treaties of peace, alliance, and others, which have been made in several ages past. These members are to meet twice a week at the Louvre. From this seminary are to be chosen secretaries to embassies, who by degrees may advance to higher employments."

Cardinal Richelieu's politics made France the terror of Europe. The statesmen who have appeared in that nation of late years have, on the contrary, rendered it either the pity or contempt of its neighbors. The cardinal erected that famous academy which has carried all the parts of polite learning to the greatest height. His chief design in that institution was to divert the men of genius from meddling with politics, a province in which he did not care to have any one else interfere with him. On the contrary, the Marquis de Torcy seems resolved to make several

young men in France as wise as himself, and is therefore taken up at present in establishing a Dursery of statesmen.

Some private letters add, that there will also be erected a seminary of petticoat politicians, who are to be brought up at the feet of Madame de Maintenon, and to be dispatched into foreign courts upon any emergencies of state: but as the news of this last project has not been yet confirm ed, I shall take no further notice of it.

Several of my readers may doubtless remember that upon the conclusion of the last war, which had been carried on so successfully by the enemy, their generals were many of them transformed into ambassadors; but the conduct of those who have commanded in the present war, has it seems, brought so little honor and advantage to their great monarch, that he is resolved to trust his affairs no longer in the hands of those military gentlemen.

The regulations of this new academy very much deserve our attention. The students are to have in possession or reversion, an estate of two thousand French livres per annum, which, as the present exchange runs, will amount to at least one hundred and twenty-six pounds English. This, with the royal allowance of a thousand livres, will enable them to find themselves in coffee and snuff; not to mention newspapers, pens and ink, wax and wafers, with the like necessaries for politicians.

A man must be at least five-and-twenty before he can be initiated into the mysteries of this academy, though there is no question but many grave persons of a much more advanced age, who have been constant readers of the Paris Gazette, will be glad to begin the world anew, and enter themselves upon this list of politicians.

The society of these hopeful young gentlemen is to be under the direction of six professors, who, it seems, are to be speculative statesmen, and drawn out of the body of the royal academy. These six wise masters, according to my private letters, are to have the following parts allotted to

them.

The fourth professor is to teach the whole art of political characters and hieroglyphics; and to the end that they may be perfect also in this practice, they are not to send a note to one another (though it be but to borrow a Tacitus or a Machiavel) which is not written in cipher.

Their fifth professor, it is thought, will be chosen out of the society of Jesuits, and is to be well read in the controversies of probable doctrines, mental reservation, and the rights of princes. This learned man is to instruct them in the grammar, syntax, and construing part of Treaty Latin; how to distinguish between the spirit and the letter, and likewise demonstrate how the same form of words may lay an obligation upon any prince in Europe, different from that which it lays upon his most Christian Majesty. He is likewise to teach them the art of finding flaws, loop-holes, and evasions in the most solemn compacts, and particularly a great rabbinical secret, revived of late years by the fraternity of Jesuits, namely, that contradictory interpretations of the same article may both of them be true and valid.

When our statesmen are sufficiently improved by these several instructors, they are to receive their last polishing from one who is to act among them as master of the ceremonies. This gentleman is to give them lectures upon the important points of the elbow-chair and the stair-head, to instruct them in the different situations of the right hand, and to furnish them with bows and inclinations of all sizes, measures, and proportions. In short, this professor is to give the society their stiffening, and infuse into their manners that beautiful political starch, which may qualify them for levees, conferences, visits, and make them shine in what vulgar minds are apt to look upon as trifles.

I have not yet heard any further particulars, which are to be observed in this society of unfledged statesmen; but I must confess, had I a son of five-and-twenty, that should take it into his head at that age to set up for a politician, I think I should go near to disinherit him for a blockhead. Beside, I should be apprehensive lest the same The first is to instruct the students in state arts which are to enable him to negotiate between legerdemain; as how to take off the impression potentates, might a little infect his ordinary beliaof a seal, to split a wafer, to open a letter, to fold vior between man and man. There is no question it up again, with other the like ingenious feats of but these young Machiavels will in a little time dexterity and art. When the students have ac- turn their college upside down with plots and complished themselves in this part of their pro- stratagems, and lay as many schemes to circumfession, they are to be delivered into the hands of vent one another in a frog or a salad, as they may their second instructor, who is a kind of posture-hereafter put in practice to overreach a neighbor

master.

This artist is to teach them how to nod judiciously, to shrug up their shoulders in a dubious case, to connive with either eye, and in a word, the whole practice of political grimace.

ing prince or state.

any such relaxations of morality, such little jeux d'esprit, ought not to be allowed in this intended seminary of politicians, shall leave to the wisdom of their founder.

We are told that the Spartans, though they punished theft in the young men when it was discovered, looked upon it as honorable if it succeeded. Provided the conveyance was clean and unsusThe third is a sort of language-master, who is pected, a youth might afterward boast of it. This, to instruct them in a style proper for a minister say the historians, was to keep them sharp, and in his ordinary discourse. And to the end that to hinder them from being imposed upon, either this college of statesmen may be thoroughly prac-in their public or private negotiations. Whether ticed in the political style, they are to make use of it in their common conversations, before they are employed either in foreign or domestic affairs. If one of them asks another what o'clock it is, the other is to answer him indirectly, and, if possible, to turn off the question. If he is desired to change a louisd'or, he must beg time to consider of it. If it be inquired of him whether the King is at Versailles or Marly, he must answer in a whisper. If he be asked the news of the last Gazette, or the subject of a proclamation, he is to reply that he has not yet read it; or if he does not care for explaining himself so far, he needs only draw up his brow in wrinkles, or elevate the left shoulder.

In the meantime, we have fair warning given us by this doughty body of statesmen: and as Sylla saw many Mariuses in Caesar, so I think we may discover many Torcys in this college of academicians. Whatever we think of ourselves, I am afraid neither our Smyrna nor St. James's will be a match for it. Our coffee-houses are, indeed, very good institutions; but whether or no these our British schools of politics may furnish out as able envoys and secretaries as an academy that is set apart for that purpose will deserve our serious

"SIR,

consideration, especially if we remember that our country is more famous for producing men of in"If you flattered me before I had this terribi tegrity than statesmen; and that, on the contrary, malady, pray come and see me now: but if you French truth and British policy make a conspicu- sincerely liked me, stay away, for I am not the ous figure in nothing: as the Earl of Rochester has very well observed in his admirable poem upon that barren subject.-L.

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"I WRITE this to communicate to you a misfortune which frequently happens, and therefore deserves a consolatory discourse on the subject. I was within this half-year in the possession of as much beauty and as many lovers as any young lady in England. But my admirers have left me, and I cannot complain of their behavior. I have within that time had the small-pox: and this face, which (according to many amorous epistles which I have by me) was the seat of all that is beautiful in woman, is now disfigured with scars. It goes to the very soul of me to speak what I really think of my face; and though I think I did not overrate my beauty while I had it, it has extremely advanced in its value with me, now it is lost. There is one circumstance which makes my case very particular; the ugliest fellow that ever pretended to me, was and is most in my favor, and he treats me at present the most unreasonably. If you could make him return an obligation which he owes me, in liking a person that is not amiable. But there is, I fear, no possibility of making passion move by the rules of reason and gratitude. But say what you can to one who has survived herself, and knows not how to act in a new being. My lovers are at the feet of my rivals, my rivals are every day bewailing me, and I cannot enjoy what I am, by reason of the distracting reflection upon what I was. Consider the woman I was did not die of old age, but I was taken off in the prime of youth, and according to the course of nature may have forty years after-life to come. I have nothing of myself left which I like, but that

I am,

Sir, your most humble Servant,
"PARTHENISSA."

When Louis of France had lost the battle of Ramilies, the addresses to him at that time were full of his fortitude, and they turned his misfortune to his glory; in that, during his prosperity, he could never have manifested his heroic constancy under distresses, and so the world had lost the most eminent part of his character. Parthemissa's condition gives her the same opportunity: and to resign conquests is a task as difficult in a beauty as a hero. In the very entrance upon this work she must burn all her love-letters; or since she is so candid as not to call her lovers, who follow her no longer, unfaithful, it would be a very good beginning of a new life from that of a beauty, to send them back to those who wrote them, with this honest inscription, "Articles of a narriage treaty broken off by the small-pox." I have known but one instance where a matter of this kind went on after a like misfortune, where the lady, who was a woman of spirit, wrote this billet to her lover:

same

"CORINNA."

The lover thought there was something so sprightly in her behavior, that he answered: "MADAM,

"I am not obliged since you are not the same woman, to let you know whether I flattered you or not; but I assure you I do not, when I tell you I now like you above all your sex, and hope you will bear what may befall me when we are both one, as well as you do what happens to yourself now you are single; therefore I am ready to take such a spirit for my companion as soon as you please.

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'AMILCAR."

If Parthenissa can now possess her own mind and think as little of her beauty as she ought to have done when she had it, there will be no great diminution of her charms; and if she was formerly affected too much with them, an easy behavior will more than make up for the loss of them. Take the whole sex together, and you find those who have the strongest possession of men's hearts are not eminent for their beauty. You see it often happen that those who engage men to the greatest violence, are such as those who are strangers to them would take to be remarkably defective for that end. The fondest lover I know, said to me one day in a crowd of women at an entertainment of music, "You have often heard me talk of my beloved; that woman there," continued he, smiling, when he had fixed my eye," is her very picture." The lady he showed me was by much the least remarkable for beauty of any in the whole assembly; but having my curiosity extremely raised, I could not keep my eyes off her. Her eyes at last met mine, and with a sudden surprise she looked round her to see who near her was remarkably handsome that I was gazing at. This little act explained the secret. She did not understand herself for the object of love, and therefore she was so. The lover is a very honest, plain man; and what charmed him was a person that goes along with him in the cares and joys of life, not taken up with herself, but sincerely attentive, with a ready and cheerful mind, to accompany him in

either.

I can tell Parthenissa for her comfort, that the beauties, generally speaking, are the most imper tinent and disagreeable of women. An apparent desire of admiration, a reflection upon their own merit, and a precise behavior in their general con duct, are almost inseparable accidents in beauties. All you obtain of them, is granted to importunity and solicitation for what did not deserve so much of your time, and you recover from the possession of it as out of a dream.

You are ashamed of the vagaries of fancy which so strangely misled you, and your admiration of a beauty, merely as such, is inconsistent with a tolerable reflection upon yourself. The cheerful good-humored creatures, into whose heads it never entered that they could make any man unhappy, are the persons formed for making men happy. There is Miss Liddy can dance a jig, raise paste, write a good hand, keep an account, give a reasonable answer, and do as she is bid; while her eldest sister, Madam Martha, is out of humor, has the spleen, learns by reports of people

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of higher quality new ways of being uneasy and
displeased; and this happens for no reason in the
world, but that poor Liddy knows she has no such
thing as a certain negligence that is so becoming;
that there is not I know not what in her air; and
that if she talks like a fool, there is no one will
say,
"Well! I know not what it is, but every-
thing pleases when she speaks it."

namely, that the loss which the commonwealth suffered by the destruction of its youth, was like the loss which the year would suffer by the destruction of the spring. The prejudice which the public sustains from a wrong education of children, is an evil of the same nature, as it in a manner starves posterity, and defrauds our country of those persons, who, with due care, might make an eminent figure in their respective posts of life. "I have seen a book written by Juan Huartes, a Spanish physician, entitled Examen de Ingenios, wherein he lays it down as one of his first positions, that nothing but nature can qualify a man for learning; and that without a proper temperament for the particular art or science which he studies, his utmost pains and application, assisted by the ablest masters, will be to no purpose.

'He illustrates this by the example of Tully's son Marcus.

Ask any of the husbands of your great beauties, and they will tell you that they hate their wives nine hours of every day they pass together. There is such a particularity forever affected by them that they are encumbered with their charms in all they say or do. They pray at public devotions as they are beauties. They converse on ordinary occasions as they are beauties. Ask Belinda what it is o'clock, and she is at a stand whether so great a beauty should answer you. In a word, I think, instead of offering to administer consolation to Parthenissa, I should congratulate her me- "Cicero, in order to accomplish his son in that tamorphosis; and however she thinks she was not sort of learning which he designed him for, sent the least insolent in the prosperity of her charms, him to Athens, the most celebrated academy at she was enough so to find she may make herself a that time in the world, and where a vast concourse, much more agreeable creature in her present ad-out of the most polite nations, could not but versity. The endeavor to please is highly promoted by a consciousness that the approbation of the person you would be agreeable to, is a favor you do not deserve; for in this case assurance of success is the most certain way to disappointment. Good-nature will always supply the absence of beauty, but beauty cannot long supply the absence of good nature.

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furnish the young gentleman with a multitude of great examples and accidents that might insensibly have instructed him in his designed studies. He placed him under the care of Cratippus, who was one of the greatest philosophers of the age, and as if all the books which were at that time written had not been sufficient for his use, he composed others on purpose for him: notwithstanding all this, history informs us that Marcus proved a mere blockhead, and that nature (who, it seems, was even with the son for her prodigality to the all the rules of eloquence, the precepts of philofather) rendered him incapable of improving by sophy, his own endeavors, and the most refined conversation in Athens. This author therefore proposes, that there should be certain triers or examiners appointed by the state, to inspect the genius of every particular boy, and to allot him the part that is most suitable to his natural

No. 307.] THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1711-12, talents.
-Versate diu, quid ferre recusent,

Quid valeant humeri.

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Plato in one of his dialogues tells us, that Socrates, who was the son of a midwife, used to say, that as his mother, though she was very skillful in her profession, could not deliver a woman unless she was first with child, so neither could he himself raise knowledge out of a mind where nature had not planted it.

"Accordingly, the method this philosopher took, of instructing his scholars by several interrogatories or questions, was only helping the birth, and bringing their own thoughts to light.

"Though I believe none of your readers more "The Spanish doctor above-mentioned, as his admire your agreeable manner of working up speculations grew more refined, asserts that every trifles than myself, yet as your speculations are kind of wit has a particular science correspondnow swelling into volumes, and will in all proba- ing to it, and in which alone it can be truly exbility pass down to future ages, methinks I would cellent. As to those geniuses, which may seem to have no single subject in them, wherein the ge-have an equal aptitude for several things, he reneral good of mankind is concerned, left unfi- gards them as so many unfinished pieces of nature nished. wrought off in haste.

"I have a long time expected with great impatience that you would enlarge upon the ordinary mistakes which are committed in the education of our children. I the more easily flattered myself that you would one time or other resume this consideration, because you tell us that your 168th paper was only composed of a few broken hints; but finding myself hitherto disappointed, I have ventured to send you my own thoughts on this subject.

"I remember Pericles, in his famous oration at the funeral of those Athenian young men who perished in the Samian expedition, has a thought very much celebrated by several ancient critics,

"There are indeed but very few to whom nature has been so unkind, that they are not capable of shining in some science or other. There is a certain bias toward knowledge in every mind, which may be strengthened and improved by proper applications.

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The story of Clavius is very well known. He was entered in a college of Jesuits, and after having been tried at seve al parts of learning, was upon the point of being dismissed as a hopeless

* Christopher Clavius, a geometrician and astronomer author of five volumes in folio, who died at Rome in 1612, aged 75.

blockhead, until one of the fathers took it into his head to make an essay of his arts in geometry, which, it seems, hit his genius so luckily, that he afterward became one of the greatest mathematicians of the age. It is commonly thought that the sagacity of these fathers, in discovering the talent of a young student, has not a little contributed to the figure which their order has made in the world.

several companies, and disciplined by the public. The old men were spectators of their performances, who often raised quarrels among them, and set them at strife with one another, that by those. early discoveries they might see how their several talents lay, and, without any regard to their quality, disposed of them accordingly, for the service of the commonwealth. By this means, Sparta soon became the mistress of Greece, and famous through the whole world for her civil and military discipline.

"If you think this letter deserves a place among your speculations, I may perhaps trouble you with some other thoughts on the same subject. "I am," etc.

X.

Jam proterva

"How different from this manner of education is that which prevails in our own country! where nothing is more usual than to see forty or fifty boys of several ages, tempers, and inclinations, ranged together in the same class, employed upon the same authors, and enjoined the same tasks! Whatever their natural genius may be, they are all to be made poets, historians, and orators alike. They are all obliged to have the same capacity, to No. 308.] FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, bring in the same tale of verse, and to furnish out the same portion of prose. Every boy is bound to have as good a memory as the captain of the form. To be brief, instead of adapting studies to the particular genius of a youth, we expect from the young man, that he should adapt his genius to his studies. This, I must confess, is not so much to be imputed to the instructor as to the parent, who will never be brought to believe, that his son is not capable of performing as much as his neighbor's, and that he may not make him whatever he has a mind to.

"If the present age is more laudable than those which have gone before it in any single particular, it is in that generous care which several welldisposed persons have taken in the education of poor children: and as in these charity-schools there is no place left for the overweening fondness of a parent, the directors of them would make them beneficial to the public, if they considered the precept which I have been thus long inculcating. They might easily, by well examining the parts of those under their inspection, make a just distribution of them into proper classes and divisions, and allot to them this or that particular study, as their genius qualifies them for professions, trades, handicrafts, or service, by sea or land.

"How is this kind of regulation wanting in the three great professions!

"Dr. South, complaining of persons who took upon them holy orders, though altogether unqualified for the sacred function, says somewhere, that many a man runs his head against a pulpit, who might have done his country excellent service at the plow-tail.

"In like manner many a lawyer, who makes but an indifferent figure at the bar, might have made a very elegant waterman, and have shone at the Temple stairs, though he can get no business in the house.

"I have known a corn-cutter, who with a right education would have been an excellent physi

cian.

To descend lower, are not our streets filled with sagacious draymen, and politicians in liveries? We have several tailors of six feet high, and meet with many a broad pair of shoulders that are thrown away upon a barber, when perhaps at the same time we see a pigmy porter reeling under a burden, who might have managed a needle with much dexterity, or have snapped his fingers with geat ease to himself, and advantage to the public. "The Spartans, though they acted with the spirit which I am here speaking of, carried it much further than what I propose. Among them it was not lawful for the father himself to bring up his children after his own fancy. As soon as they were seven years old, they were all listed in

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Fronte petet Lalage maritum.

1711-12.

HOR. 1 Od. 5, lib. ii, ver. 15.

-Lalage will soon proclaim

Her love, nor blush to own her flame.-CREECH.

MR. SPECTATOR,

"I GIVE you this trouble in order to propose my. self to you as an assistant in the weighty cares which you have thought fit to undergo for the public good. I am a very great lover of women, that is to say, honestly; and as it is natural to study what one likes, I have industriously applied myself to understand them. The present circumstance relating to them is, that I think there wants under you, as Spectator, a person to be distinguished and vested in the power and quality of a censor on marriages. I lodge at the Temple, and know, by seeing women come hither, and afterward observing them conducted by their counsel to judges' chambers, that there is a custom in case of making conveyance of a wife's estate, that she is carried to a judge's apartment, and left alone with him, to be examined in private, whether she has not been frightened or sweetened by her spouse into the act she is going to do, or whether it is of her own free will. Now, if this be a method founded upon reason and equity, why should there not be also a proper officer for examining such as are entering into the state of matrimony, whether they are forced by parents on one side, or moved by interest only on the other, to come together, and bring forth such awkward heirs as are the product of half love and constrained compliances? There is nobody, though I say it myself, would be fitter for this office than I am: for I am an ugly fellow, of great wit and sagacity. My father was a hale country 'squire, my mother a witty beauty of no fortune. The match was made by consent of my mother's parents against her own, and I am the child of the rape on the wedding night; so that I am as healthy and as homely as my father, but as sprightly and agreeable as my mother. It would be of great ease to you, if you would use me under you, that matches might be better regulated for the future, and we might have no more children of squabbles. I shall not reveal all my pretensions until I receive your answer: and am, Šir,

64

"MR. SPECTATOR,

Your most humble Servant
"MULES PALFREY."

"I am one of those unfortunate men within the city-walls, who am married to a woman of quality, but her temper is somewhat different from that of Lady Anvil. My lady's whole time and thoughts are spent in keeping up to the mode both in apparel and furniture. All the goods in my house

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