in your petitioner's shop, where you often prac tised for hours together, sometimes on his books upon the rails, sometimes on the little hieroglyphics, either gilt, silvered, or plain, which the Egyptian women, on the other side of the shop, had wrought in gingerbread, and sometimes on the English youth, who in sundry places there were exercising themselves in the traditional sports of the field.

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 aside and totally neglect; your petitioner therefore 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:

And your petitioner shall ever pray, &c.

TO THE SPECTATOR.

The humble petition of Bartholomew LadyLove, of Roundcourt, in the parish of St. Martin's in the Fields, in behalf of himself and neighbours,

SHOWETH,

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 behaviour, have arrived among tradesmen at the gentle appellation of The Fawners.'

That there have of late set up amongst us certain persons from Monmouth-street and Longlane, who, by the strength of their arms, and loudness of their throats, draw off the regard of all passengers from your said petitioners, from which violence they are distinguished by the name of the The Worriers.'

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 arm's length.

That while the Fawners strain and relax the muscles of their faces, in making distinction between a spinster in a coloured 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, &c.

The petition of the New-Exchange, concern

VOL. VI.-13

ing the arts of buying and selling, and particularly valuing goods by the complexion of the seller, will be considered on another occasion.'

OUR late newspapers being full of the project now on foot in the court of France, for establishing 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:

Paris, February 12.-It is confirmed that the king has resolved to establish a new academy for politics, of which the Marquis de Torcy, 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 pen

sion of a thousand 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 neighbours. 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 nursery 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 Madam de Maintenon, and to be despatched into foreign courts upon any emergencies of state; but as the news of this last project has not been yet confirmed, I shall take no farther 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 their generals were many of them transenemy,

formed into ambassadors: but the conduct of those who have commanded in the present war has, it seems, brought so little honour 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 them.

The first is to instruct the students in state legerdemain; as how to take off the impression of a seal, to split a wafer, to open a letter, to fold it up again, with other the like ingenious feats of