next day, set forward upon his journey, while Leander, not without a mischievous kind of satisfaction, conveys the following lines to Clelia.

66

Though I yet love you to distraction, I cannot "but suspect that you have granted favours to your "confessor, which you might, with greater innocence, "have granted to Leander. All I have to add, is this, "that amorous intercourses of this nature, which you "have enjoyed with friar Laurence, put you under the "like necessity with him of seeking a remedy in the 66 ocean.

"Adieu! LEANDER !"

IMAGINE Clelia guilty; and then imagine her confusion. To rail was insignificant, and to blame her physician was absurd, when she found herself under a necessity of pursuing his advice. The whole society was made acquainted with the journey she was undertaking, and the causes of it. It were uncharitable to suppose the whole community under the same constraint with the unhappy Clelia. However, the greater part thought it decent to attend her. Some went as

her

her companions, some for exercise, some for amusement, and the abbess herself as guardian of her train, and concerned in her society's misfortunes.

WHAT use Leander made of his discovery is not known. Perhaps when he had been successful in banishing the hypocrite, he did not shew himself very solicitous in his endeavours to reform the sinner.

N.B. Written when I went to be dipped in the salt-water.

ON

ON VANITY.

ISTORY preserves the memory of empires and of states, with which it necessarily interweaves that of heroes, kings, any statesmen. Biography affords a place to the remarkable characters of private men. There are likewise other subordinate testimonies, which serve to perpetuate, at least prolong, the memories of men, whose characters and stations give them no claim to a place in story. For instance, when a person fails of making that figure in the world which he makes in the eyes of his own relations or himself, he is rarely dignified any farther than with his picture whilst he is living, or with an inscription upon his monument after his decease. Inscriptions have been so fallacious, that we begin to expect little from them beside elegance of style. To inveigh against the writers, for their manifest want of truth, were as absurd as to censure Homer for the beauties of an imaginary character—But even paintings, in order to gratify the

vanity

vanity of the person who bespeaks them, are taught now-a-days, to flatter like epitaphs.

FALSEHOODS upon a tomb or monument may be entitled to some excuse in the affection, the gratitude, and piety, of surviving friends. Even grief itself disposes us to magnify the virtues of a relation, as visible objects also appear larger through tears. But the man who through an idle vanity suffers his features to be belied or exchanged for others of a more agreeable make, may with great truth be said to lose his property in the portrait. In like manner, if he encourage the painter to belie his dress, he seems to transfer his claim to the man with whose station his assumed trappings are connected.

I REMEMBER a bag-piper, whose physiognomy was so remarkable and familiar to a club he attended, that it was agreed to have his picture placed over their chimney-piece. There was this remarkable in the fellow, that he chose always to go barefoot, though he was daily offered a pair of shoes. However, when the painter had been so exact as to omit this little piece of dress, the fellow offered all he had in the world, the

whole

whole produce of three nights' harmony, to have those feet covered in the effigie, which he so much scorned to cover in the original. Perhaps he thought it a disgrace to his instrument to be eternized in the hands of so much apparent poverty. However, when a person of low station adorns himself with trophies to which he has no pretensions to aspire, he should consider the picture as actually telling a lie to posterity.

THE absurdity of this is evident, if a person assume to himself a mitre, a blue garter, or a coronet, improperly; but station may be falsified by other decorations as well as these.

BUT I am driven into this grave discourse, on a subject perhaps not very important, by a real fit of spleen. I this morning saw a fellow drawn in a nightgown of so rich a stuff, that the expense, had he purchased such a one, would more than half have ruined him; and another coxcomb, seated by his painter in a velvet chair, who would have been surprised at the deference paid him, had he been offered a cushion.

AN