will know these circumstances relate to them : and, though the regard to virtue is dead in them, 1 hare some hopes from their fear of shame upon reading this in your paper; which I conjure you to publish, if you have any compassion for injured virtue.

"sylvia."

" Mr. Spectator, " I Am the husband of a woman of merit, but am fallen in love, as they call it, with a lady of her acquaintance, who is going to be married to a gentleman who deserves her. I am in a trust relating to this lady's fortune, which makes my concurrence in this matter necessary; but I have so irresistible a rage and envy rise in me when I consider bis future happiness, that against all reason, equity, and common justice, I am ever playing mean tricks to suspend the nuptials. I have no manner of hopes for myself: Emilia, for so I'll call her, is a woman of the most strict virtue; her lover is a gentleman who of all others I could wish Hit friend: but envy and jealousy, though placed so unjustly, waste my very being; and with the torment and sense of a demon, I am ever cursing what I cannot but approve. I wish it were the beginning of repentance, that I sit down and describe my present disposition with so hellish an aspect; but at present the destruction of these two excellent persons would be more welcome to me than their happiness. Mr. Spectator, pray let me have a paper on these terrible groundless sufferings, and do all you can to exorcise crowds who are in some degree possessed as I am.

" Cannibal."

" Mr. Spectator, " I Have no other means but. this to express my thanks to one man, and my resentment against another.—My circumstances arc as follow: I have been for five years last past courted by a gentleman of greater fortune than I ought to expect, as the market for women goes. You must, to be sure, have observed people who live in that sort of way, as all their friends reckon it will be a match, and are marked out by all the world for each other. In this view we have been regarded for some time, and I have above these three years loved him tenderly. As he is very careful of his fortune, I always thought he lived in a near manner, to lay up what he thought was wanting in my fortune to make up what he might expect in another. Within these few months I have observed his carriage very much altered, and he has affected a certain air of getting me alone, and talking with a mighty profusion of passionate words, how I am not to be resisted longer, how irresistible his wishes are, and the like. As long as I have been acquainted with him, I could not on such occasions say downright to him, ' You know you may mnke me yours when you please.' But the other night he wiiii great frankness and impudence explained to me, that he thougut of me only as a mistress. I answered this declaration as it deserved ; upon which he only doubled the terms on which be proposed my yielding. When my anger heightened upon him, lie laid me he was sorry be had made so little use of the unguarded hours we bad been together so remote from company, ' as indeed,' continued he, ' so we are at present.' I flew from him to a neighbouring gentlewoman's house, and, though her husband was in the room, threw myself on a couch, and burst into a passion of tears. My friend desired her husband to leave the room. ' But,' said he, ' there is something so extraordinary in this, that 1 will partake in the affliction; and, be it what it will, 6he is so much Tour friend, that she knows you may command what services I can do her.' The man sat down by me, and spoke so like a brother, that I told him my whole affliction. He spoke of the injury done me with so much indignation, and animated me against the love he said he saw I had for the wretch who would have betrayedTne, with so much reason and humanity to my weakness, that I doubt not of my perseverance. His wife and he are my comforters, and I am under no more restraint in their company than if I were alone; and I doubt not but in a small time contempt and hatred will take place of the remains of affection to a rascal.

" I am, Sir, your affectionate reader,

" Dobinda." " Me. Spectator, " I Bad the misfortune to be an uncle before I knew my nephews from my nieces; and now we are grown up to better acquaintance, tbev deny me the respect they owe. One upbraids me with being their familiar, another will hardly be persuaded that 1 am an uncle, a third calls me little uncle, and a fourth tells me there is no duty at all to an uncle. I have a brother-in-law whose son will win all my affection, unless you shall think this worthy of your cognizance, and will be pleased to prescribe some rules for our future reciprocal behaviour. It will be worthy the particularity of Tour genius to lay down rules for his conduct, who was, as it were, Wn an old man; in which you will much oblige,

" Sir, your most obedient servant,

" COKNELIUS NEPOS." STEELE. T.

No. 403. THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 1712.

Qui more* hominnm multorum vidit Dor. Aits. Poet. 142.

So many towns, such change of manners saw. Roscommon.

When I consider this great city in its several quarters and divisions, I look upon it as an aggregate of various nations distinguished from each other by their respective customs, manners, and interests. The courts of two countries do not so much differ from one another, as the court and city, in their peculiar ways of life and conversation. In short, the inhabitants of St. James's, notwithstanding they live under the same laws, and speak the same language, are a distinct people from those of Cheapside, who are likewise removed from those of the Temple on the one side, and those of Smithfield on the other, by several climates and degrees iu their way of thinking and conversing together.

For this reason, when any public affair is upon the anvil, I Iotc to hear the reflections that arise upon it in the several districts and parishes of London and Westminster, and to ramble up and down a whole day together, in order to make myself acquainted with the opinions of my ingenious countrymen. By this means I know the faces of all the principal politicians within the bills of mortality: and as every coffee-house has some particular statesman belonging to it, who is the mouth of the street where he lives, 1 always take care to place myself near him, in order to know his judgment on the present posture of affairs. The last progress that I made with this intention was about three month ago, when we had a current report of the king of France's death. As I foresaw this would produce a new face of things in Europe, and many curious speculations in our British coffee-houses, I was very desirous to learn the thoughts of our most eminent politicians on that occasion.

That I might begin as near the fountain-head as possible, I first of all called in at St. James's, where I found the whole outward room in a buzz of politics. The speculations were but very indifferent towards the door, but grew finer as you advanced to the upper end of the room, and were so very much improved by a knot of theorists, who sat in the inner room, within the steams of the coffee pot, that I there heard the whole Spanish monarchy disposed of, and all the line of Bourbon provided for in less than a quarter of an hour.

I afterwards called in at Giles's, where I saw a board of French gentlemen sitting upon the life and death of their grand monarqutThose among them who had espoused the whig interest, very positively affirmed, that he departed this life about a week since, and therefore proceeded without any further delay to the release of their friends in the galleys, and to their own re-establishment; but, finding they could not agree among themselves, 1 proceeded on my intended progress.

Upon my arrival at Jenny Man's, I saw an alert young fellow that cocked his hat upon a friend of his, who entered just at the same time with myself, and accosted him after the following manner.—" Well, Jack, the old prig is dead at last. Sharp's the word. Now or never, boy. Up to the walls of Paris directly." With several other deep reflections of the same nature.

1 met with very little variation in the politics between Charingcross and Covent-garden. And upon my going into Wills', I found their discourse was gone off from the death of the French king to that of Monsieur Boileau, Racine, Corneille, and several other wets, whom they regretted on this occasion, as persons who would Save obliged the world with very noble elegies on the death of so great a prince, and so eminent a patron of learning.

At a coffee-house near the Temple, I found a couple of young eenllemen engaged very smartly in a dispute on the succession to the Spanish monarchy. One of them seemed to have been retained as advocate for the duke of Anjou, the other for his Imperial majesty. They were both for regulating the title to that kingdom by the'statute laws of England: but finding them going out of my depth, I passed forward to Paul's church-yard, where I listened with great attention to a learned man who gave the company an aecount of the deplorable state of France during the minority of the deceased king.

I then turned on my right hand into Fish-street, where the chief politician of that quarter, upon hearing the news (ufter having taken a pipe of tobacco, and ruminated for some time), " If," says he, " the king of France is certainly dead, we shall have plenty of mackerel this season : our fishery will not be disturbed by privateers, as it has been for these ten years past." He afterwards considered how the death of this great man would affect our pilchards, and by several other remarks infused a general joy into his whole audience.

I afterwards entered a by coffee-house that stood at the upper Mid of a narrow lane, where I met with a nonjuror, engaged very family with a laceman who was the great support of a neighbouring conventicle. The matter in debate was, whether the late French king was most like Augustus Csesar or Nero. The controversy was carried on with great heat on both sides, and as each of them looked upon me very frequently during the course of their debate, I was under some apprehension that they would appeal to me, and therefore laid down my penny at the bar, and made the best of my way to Cheapside.

I here gazed upon the signs for some time before I found one to my purpose. The first object I met in the cotrte room, was a person who expressed a great grief for the death of the French king; bat, upon his explaining himself, I found his sorrow did not arise from the loss of the monarch, but for his having sold out of the Bank about three days before he heard the news of it: upon »hich a haberdasher, who was the oracle of the coffee-house, anil bad his circle of admirers about him, called several to witness that lie had declared his opinion above a week before, that the French king was certainly dead: to which he added, that, considering the late advices we had received from France, it was impossible that it could be otherwise. As he was laying these together, and dictating to his hearers with great authority, there came in a gentleman from Garraway's, who told us that there were several letters from France just come in, with advice that the king was in good health, and was gone out a-hunting the very morning the post came away: upon which the haberdasher stole off his hat that hung upon a wooden peg by him, and retired to his shop with great confusion. This intelligence put a stop to my travels which I had prosecuted with much satisfaction ; not being a little ;'leased to hear so many different opinions upon so great an event, and to observe how naturally upon such a piece of news every one is apt to consider it with regard to his particular interest and advantage.

Addisos. L.

No. 404. FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 1712.

Nom omnia possumus omnei. Tiro. Icl. Viii. 63.

With different talents form'd, we variously excel.

Nature does nothing in vain: the Creator of the universe has nppointed everything to a certain use and purpose, and determined it to a settled course and sphere of action, from which if it the least deviates, it becomes unfit to answer those ends for which it was designed. In like manner it is in the dispositions of society; the civil economy is formed in a chain, as well as the natural: and in either case the breach but of one link puts the whole in some disorder. It is, I think, pretty plain, that most of the absurdity and ridicule we meet with in the world, is generally owing to the impertinent affectation of excelling in characters men are not fit for, and for which nature never designed them.

Every man has one or more qualities which may make him useful to himself or others. Nature never fails of pointing them out; and while the infant continues under her guardianship, she brings him on in his way, and then offers herself for a guide in what remains of the journey; if he proceeds in that course he can hardly miscarry. Nature makes good her engagements; for, as she never promises what she is not able to perform, so she never fails of performing what she promises. But the misfortune is, men desuis« what they may he masters of, and affect what they are not fit for;