the fuperficial parts of life than the solid and substantial bleffings of it. A girl who has been trained up in this kind of converfation, is in danger of every embroidered coat that comes in her way. A pair of fringed gloves may be her ruin. In a word, lace and ribbons, filver and gold galloons, with the like glittering gew-gaws, are fo many lures to women of weak minds or low educations, and when artificially displayed, are able to fetch down the most airy coquette from the wildest of her flights and rambles. True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noife; it arifes, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's felf; and, in the next, from the friendfhip and converfation of a few select companions; it loves fhade and folitude, and naturally haunts groves and fountains, fields and meadows: in fhort, it feels every thing it wants within itself, and receives no addition from multitudes of witneffes and fpectators. On the contrary, false happiness loves to be in a crowd, and to draw the eyes of the world upon her. She does not receive any fatisfaction from the applaufes which the gives herself, but from the adıniration which the raifes in others. She flourishes in courts and palaces, theatres and affemblies, and has no existence but when fhe is looked upon. Aurelia, though a woman of great quality, delights in the privacy of a country life, and paffes away a great part of her time in her own walks and gardens. Her hufband, who is her bofom friend and companion in her folitudes, has been in love with her ever fince he knew her. They both abound with good fenfe, confummate virtue, and a mutual esteem; and are a perpetual entertainment to one another. Their family is under fo regular an œconomy, in its hours of devotion and repaft, employment and diverfion, that it looks like a little commonwealth within itself. They often go into company, that they may return with the greater delight to one another; and fometimes live in town, not to enjoy it fo properly as to grow weary of it, that they may renew in themselves the relish of a country life. By this means they are happy in each other, beloved by their children, adored by their fervants, and are become the envy, or rather the delight, of all that know them. How How different to this is the life of Fulvia! the confiders her husband as her steward, and looks upon diferetion and good housewifry as little domeftic virtues, unbecoming a Woman of Quailty. She thinks life loft in her own family, and fancies herself out of the world when he is not in the Ring, the Play-house, or the Drawing-room; fhe lives in a perpetual motion of body, and restleffness of thought, and is never eafy in any one place, when the thinks there is more company in an other. The miffing of an opera the first night would be more afflicting to her than the death of a child. She pities all the valuable part of her own fex, and calls every woman of a prudent, modeft, and retired life, a poorfpirited unpolished creature. What a mortification would it be to Fulvia, if the knew that her fetting herself to view is but expofing herfelf, and that the grows contemptible by being confpicuous. I cannot conclude my paper, without obferving, that Virgil has very finely touched upon this female paffion for drefs and how, in the character of Camilla; who, though the feems to have fhaken off all the other weakneffes of her fex, is ftill defcribed as a woman in this particular. The poet tells us, that, after having made a great flaughter of the enemy, the unfortunately caft her eye on a Trojan, who wore an embroidered tunic, a beautiful coat of mail, with a mantle of the finest purple. "A "golden bow," fays he, " hung upon his fhoulder; his 66 garment was buckled with a golden clafp, and his "head was covered with an helmet of the fame fhining "metal." The Amazon immediately fingled out this well-dreffed warrior, being feized with a woman's longing for the pretty trappings that he was adorned with: Totumque incauta per agmen Famineo prada & fpoliorum ardebat amore.. This heedlefs purfuit after thefe glittering, trifles, the poet (by a nice concealed moral) represents to have been the deftruction of his female hero. C Monday N° 16. Monday, March 19. Quod verum atque decens curo & rogo, & omnis in hoc fum. HOR. 1. Ep. II. POPE. What right, what true, what fit we justly call, I very fati HAVE received a letter, defiring me to be rical upon the little Muff that is now in fashion; another informs me of a pair of filver Garters buckled below the knee, that have been lately feen at the Rainbow Coffee-house in Fleet-ftreet; a third fends me an heavy complaint against fringed Gloves. To be brief, there is fcarce an ornament of either fex which one or other of my correfpondents has not inveigh'd against with fome bitterness, and recommended to my obfervation. I must therefore, once for all, inform my readers, that it is not my intention to fink the dignity of this my paper with reflections upon red-heels or top-knots, but rather to enter into the paffions of mankind, and to correct thofe depraved fentiments that give birth to all thofe little extravagancies which appear in their outward drefs and behaviour. Foppish and fantastic ornaments are only indications of vice, not criminal in themfelves. Extinguish vanity in the mind, and you naturally retrench the little fuperfluities of garniture and equipage. The bloffoms will fall of themselves when the root that nourishes them is destroyed. I fhall therefore, as I have faid, apply my remedies to the first feeds and principles of an affected drefs, without defcending to the drefs itfelf; though at the fame time I must own, that I have thoughts of creating an officer under me, to be entituled, "The Cenfor of small "Wares," and of allotting him one day in a week for the execution of fuch his office. An operator of this nature might act under me with the fame regard as a furgeon to a phyfician; the one might be employed in healing those blotches and tumours which break out in the body, while the other is fweetening the blood and rectifying the conftitution. To speak truly, the young people of both fexes are fo wonderfully apt to fhoot out into long fwords or fweeping trains, bushy head-dreffes, or full-bottom'd perriwigs, with feveral other incumbrances of drefs, that they stand in need of being pruned very frequently, left they should be oppreffed with ornaments, and over-run with the luxuriance of their ha bits. I am much in doubt, whether I fhould give the preference to a quaker that is trimmed clofe and almoft cut to the quick, or to a beau that is loaden with fuch a redundance of excrefcences. I must therefore defire my correfpondents to let me know how they approve my project, and whether they think the erecting of fuch a petty cenforship may not turn emolument of the Public; for I would not do of this nature rafhly and without advice. to the any thing There is another fet of correfpondents to whom I muft addrefs myself in the fecond place; I mean fuch as fill their letters with private fcandal and black accounts of particular perfons and families. The world is fo full of ill-nature, that I have lampoons fent me by people who cannot fpell, and fatires compofed by those who scarce know how to write. By the last post in particular, I received a packet of scandal which is not legible; and have a whole bundle of letters in womens hands that are full of blots and calumnies, infomuch, that when I fee the name Calia, Phillis, Pastora, or the like, at the bottom of a fcrawl, I conclude on courfe that it brings me fome account of a fallen virgin, a faithlefs wife, or an amorous widow. I must therefore inform thefe my correfpondents, that it is not my defign to be a publisher of intrigues and cuckoldoms, or to bring little infamous ftories out of their prefent lurking-holes into broad day-light. If I attack the vicious, Ffhall only fet upon them in a body; and will not be provoked, by the worft ufage I can receive from others, to make an example of any particular criminal. In short, I have fo much of a Drawcanfir in me, that I fhall pafs over a fingle foe to charge whole armies. It is not Lais nor Silenus, but the Harlot and the Drunkard, whom I fhall endeavour to expofe; and fhall confider confider the crime as it appears in a fpecies, not as it is circumstanced in an individual. I think it was Caligula who wished the whole ciry of Rome had but one neck, that he might behead them at a blow. I fhall do, out of humanity, what that emperor would have done in the cruelty of his temper, and aim every stroke at a collective body of offenders. At the fame time I am very fenfible, that nothing spreads a paper like private calumny and defamation; but as my fpeculations are not under this neceflity, they are not expofed to this temp tation. In the next place, I must apply myfelf to my party correspondents, who are continually teazing me to take notice of one another's proceedings. How often an I afked by both fides, if it is poffible for me to be an unconcerned fpectator of the rogueries that are committed by the party which is oppofite to him that writes the letter. About two days fince I was reproached with an old Grecian law, that forbids any man to ftand as a neuter or a looker-on in the divifions of his country. However, as I am very fenfible my paper would lofe its whole effect, fhould it run into the outrages of a party, I fhall take care to keep clear of every thing which looks that way. If I can any way affuage private inflammations, or allay public ferments, I fhall apply myself to it with my utmost endeavours; but will never let my heart reproach me with having done any thing towards increafing thofe feuds and animofities that extinguish religion, deface government, and make a nation miferable. What I have faid under the three foregoing heads will, I am afraid, very much retrench the number of my correspondents: I fhall therefore acquaint my reader, that if he has started any hint which he is not able to purfue, if he has met with any furprifing ftory which he does not know how to tell, if he has difcovered any epidemical vice which has escaped my obfervation, or has heard of any uncommon virtue which he would defire to publish; in fhort, if he has any materials that can furnish out an innocent diverfion, I fhall promise him my best affistance in the working of them up a public entertainment. for |