observe the present state of vice and virtue, the offenders are such, as one would think, should have no impulse to what they are pursuing; as in business, you see sometimes fools pretend to be knaves, so in pleasure, you will find old men set up for wenchers. This latter sort of men are the great basis and fund of iniquity in the kind we are speaking of: you shall have an old rich man often receive scrawls from the several quarters of the town with descriptions of the new wares in their hands, if he will please to send word when he will be waited on. This interview is contrived, and the innocent is brought to such indecencies as from time to time banish shame and raise desire. With these preparatives the hags break their wards by little and little, till they are brought to lose all apprehensions of what shall befall them in the possession of younger men. It is a common postscript of a hag to a young fellow whom she invites to a new woman, • She has, 1 assure you, seen none but old Mr. Such-a-one. It pleases the old fellow that the nymph is brought to him unadorned, and from his bounty she is accommodated with enough to dress her for other lovers. This is the most ordinary method of bringing beauty and poverty into the possession of the town: but the particular cases of kind keepers, skilful pimps, and all others who drive a separate trade, and are not in the general society or commerce of sin, will require distinct consideration. At the same time that we are thus severe on the abandoned, we are to represent the case of others with that mitigation as the circumstances demand. Calling names does no good; to speak worse of any thing than it deserves does

only take off from the credit of the accuser, and has implicitly the force of an apology in the behalf of the person accused. We shall, therefore, according as the circumstances differ, vary our appellation of these criminals; those who offend only against themselves, and are not scandals to society, but out of deference to the sober part of the world have so much good left in them as to be ashamed, must not be huddled in the common word due to the worst of women; but regard is to be had to their circumstances when they fell, to the uneasy perplexity under which they lived under senseless and severe parents, to the importunity of poverty, to the violence of a passion in its beginning well grounded, and all other alleviations which make unhappy women resign the characteristic of their sex, modesty. To do otherwise than thus, would be to act like a pedantic Stoic, who thinks all crimes alike, and not like an impartial Spectator, who looks upon them with all the circumstances that diminish, or enhance the guilt. I am in hopes, if this subject be well pursued, women will hereafter, from their infancy, be treated with an eye to their future state in the world: and not have their tempers made too untractable from an improper sourness or pride, or too complying from familiarity or forwardness contracted at their own houses. After these hints on this subject, I shall end this paper with the following genuine letter; and desire all who think they may be concerned in future speculations on this subject, to send in what they have to say for themselves for some incidents in their lives, in order to have proper allowances made for their conduct.

VOL. VI.-8

" MR. SFECTATOR,

Jan. 5, 1712.

The subject of your yesterday's paper (No. 266) is of so great importance, and the thorough handling of it may be so very useful to the preservation of many an innocent young creature, that I think every one is obliged to furnish you with what lights he can to expose the pernicious arts and practices of those unnatural women, called bawds. In order to this, the enclosed is sent you, which is verbatim the copy of a letter written by a bawd of figure in this town to a noble lord. I have concealed the names of both, my intention being not to expose the persons but the thing.-1 am, Sir,

'MY LORD,

"Your humble servant.

'I having a great esteem for your honour, and a better opinion of you than of any of the quality, makes me acquaint you of an affair that I hope will oblige you to know. I have a niece that came to town about a fortnight ago. Her parents being lately dead, she came to me, expecting to have found me in so good a condition as to set her up in a milliner's shop. Her father gave fourscore pound with her for five years; her time is out, and she is not sixteen; as pretty a black gentlewoman as ever you saw; a little woman, which I know your lordship likes: well shaped, and as fine a complexion for red and white as ever I saw: I doubt not but your lordship will be of the same opinion. She designs to go down about a month hence, except I can provide for her, which I can not at present. Her father was one with whom all he had died with him; so there is four chil

'dren left destitute: so if your lordship thinks fit to make an appointment where I shall wait on you with my niece, by a line or two, I stay for. your answer; for I have no place fitted up since I left my house, fit to entertain your honour. I told her she should go with me to see a gentleman, a very good friend of mine: so I desire you to take no notice of my letter, by reason she is ignorant of the ways of the town. My lord, I desire if you meet us, to come alone; for upon my word and honour you are the first that ever 1 mentioned her to. So I remain,

it.'

"Your Lordship's

'Most humble servant to command.

'I beg of you to burn it when you have read

STEELE.

T.

No. 275. TUESDAY, JANUARY 15.

-tribus Anticyris caput insanabile

HOR. ARS. POET.

A head, no hellebore can cure.

WAS yesterday engaged in an assembly of virtuosos, where one of them produced many curious observations which he had lately made in the anatomy of a human body. Another of the company communicated to us several wonderful discoveries which he had also made on the same subject, by the help of very fine glasses. This gave birth to a great variety of uncommon remarks,

and furnished discourse for the remaining part of the day.

The different opinions which were started on this occasion, presented to my imagination sc many new ideas, that by mixing with those which were already there, they employed my fancy all the last night, and composed a very wild extravagant dream.

I was invited, methought, to the dissection of a beau's head and of a coquette's heart, which were both of them laid on a table before us. An imaginary operator opened the first with a great deal of nicety; which upon a cursory and superficial view appeared like the head of another man: but upon applying our glasses to it, we made a very odd discovery, namely, that what we looked upon as brains were not such in reality, but a heap of strange materials wound up in that shape and texture, and packed together with wonderful art in the several cavities of the skull. For, as Homer tells us that the blood of the gods is not real blood, but only something like it; so we found that the brain of a beau is not a real brain, but only something like it.

The pineal gland, which many of our moder philosophers suppose to be the seat of the soul, smelt very strong of essence and orange-flower water, and was encompassed with a kind of horny substance, cut into a thousand little faces or mirrors, which were imperceptible to the naked eye; insomuch that the soul, if there had been any here, must have been always taken up in contemplating her own beauties.

We observed a large antrum, or cavity, in the sinciput, that was filled with ribands, lace, and