ficial parts of life, than the folid and fubftantial 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 gewgaws, are fo many Iures to women of weak minds and 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 noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's felf; and in the next, from the friendship and converfation of a few select companions : It loves fhade and folitude, and naturally haunts groves and fountains, fields and meadows: In short, it feels every thing it wants within itself, and receives no addition from multitudes of witneffes and fpectators. On the contrary, falfe 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 admiration which the raifes in others. She flourishes in courts and palaces, theatres, and affemblies, and has no existence, but when the 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 husband, 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 economy, and 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 sometimes live in town, not to enjoy it fo properly as to grow weary of it, that they may renew in them felves the relifh 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 confides her husband as her steward, and looks upon difcretion and good housewifery as little domeftick virtues, unbering a woman of quality. She thinks life loft in her own family, and fancies herself out of the world who he is not in the ring,, the play-house, or the drawing-rom: She 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 another. 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 poor-fpirited unpolished creature. What a mortification would it be to Fulvia, if the knew that her setting herself to view, is but expofing herself, and that fhe 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 fhow, in the character of Camilla; who though the feems to have fhaken off all the other weakpeffes 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, fhe unfortunately caft her eye on a Trojan, who wore an embroidered tunick, a beautiful coat of mail, with a mantle of the fineft purple. A golden bow, fays he, hung upon his shoulder; his gar ment was buckled with a golden clafp, and his head covered with an helmet of the fame fhining metal. The Amazon immediately angled out this well-dreffed warrior, being feized with a woman's longing for the prettyappings that he was adorned with:

-Totumque incauta per agmen

Famineo præda & fpoliorum ardebat amore..

Æn. 11. ver. 782.

This heedlefs purfuit after thefe glittering trifles, the poet (by a nice concealed moral) reprefents to have been the destruction of his female hero.

Monday,

Monday, March 19.

N° 16

Quod verum atque decens

فوع

curo rogo, omnis in hoc fum. Hor. Ep. 1. 1. 1. ver. 11 What right, what true, what fit, we juftly call, Let this be all my care

I

for this is all.

POPE Have received a letter, defiring me to be very fatirical upon the little muff that is now in fashion; another informs me of a pair of filver garters buck led below the knee, that have been lately feen at the Rainbow coffee-house in Fleet-ftreet; a third fends me an heavy complaint againft fringed gloves. To be brief, there is fcarce an ornament of either fex which one or other of my correfpondents has not inveighed against with fome bitternefs, 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 cor rect thofe depraved fentiments that give birth to all those little extravagancies which appear in their outward drefs and behaviour. Foppifh and fantastick ornaments are only indications of vice, not criminal in themselves. 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 dress, with out defcending to the drefs itfelf; though at the fame time I must own, that I have thoughts of creating att officer under me, to be intitled, 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

the body, while the other is fweetning 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 bottomed periwigs, with feveral other incumbrances of drefs, that they ftand in need of being pruned very frequently, left they should be oppreffed with ornaments, and over-run with the luxuriancy of their habits. 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 excrefences. 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 to the emolument of the publick; for I would not do any thing of this nature rafhly and without advice.

There is another set of correfpondents to whom I must addrefs myself in the second 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 laft poft 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, Paftora, or the like, at the bottom of a fcrawl, I conclude on course 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, I fhall 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 fhort, I have fo much of a Dravcanfir in me, that I fhall pass over a fingle foe to charge whole armies. It is not Lais or Silenus, but the harlot and the drunkard, whom I shall endeavour to expofe; and shall confider the crime as it

appears

appears in a fpecies, not as it is circumftanced in an individual. I think it was Caligula, who wifned the whole city 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 ftroke at a collective body of offenders. At the same time I am very sensible, that nothing spreads a paper like private calumny and defamation; but as my fpeculations are not under this neceffity, they are not exposed to this temptation.

In the next place I must apply myself to my party' correfpondents, who are continually teazing me to take' notice of one another's proceedings. How often am I afked by both fides, if it is poffible for me to be an un-' concerned fpectator of the rogueries that are commit-' ted 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 stand as neuter or a looker-on in the divifions of his country. How-' ever, 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 publick 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 said under the three foregoing heads, will, I am afraid, very much retrench the number of my correfpondents: 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 furprising ftory which he does not know how to tell, if he has difcovered any epidemical vice which has escaped my observation, or has heard of any uncoinmon 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 affiftance in the working of them up for a pubFick entertainment.