not with more than her behaviour and good qualities deserve. And it was with a great deal of pleasure I heard her maid dwell so long upon her commendation. She informed me, that after her father's death, her mother and she lived for a while together in great poverty. But her mother's spirit could not bear the thoughts of asking relief of any of her own, or her husband's acquaintance; so that they retired from all their friends, until they were providentially discovered by this new-married woman, who heaped on them favours upon favours. Her mother died shortly after, who, while she lived, was better pleased to see her daughter a beggar than a servant. But being freed by her death, she was taken into this gentlewoman's family, where she now lived, though much more like a friend or companion, than like a

servant.

"I went home full of this strange adventure, and about a week after, chancing to be in company with Mr. T. the rejected lover, whom I mentioned in the beginning of my letter, I told him the whole story of his angel, not questioning but he would feel on this occasion the usual pleasure of a resenting lover, when he hears that fortune has avenged him of the cruelty of his mistress. As I was recounting to him at large these several particulars, I observed that he covered his face with his hand, and that his breast heaved as though it would have burst, which I took at first to have been a fit of laughter; but upon lifting up his head I saw his eyes all red with weeping. He forced a smile at the end of my story, and parted.

"About a fortnight after I received from him the following

letter.

“Dear Sir,

"I AM infinitely obliged to you for bringing me news of my angel. I have since married her, and think the low circum

stances she was reduced to, a piece of good luck to both of us, since it has quite removed that little pride and vanity, which was the only part of her character that I disliked, and given me an opportunity of showing her the constant and sincere affection, which I professed to her in the time of her prosperity.

"Your's, R. T.”

No. 160. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14.

Solventur risu tabulæ, tu missus abibis.-Hop.

FROM writing the history of lions, I lately went off to that of ants, but to my great surprise, I find that some of my good readers have taken this last to be a work of invention, which was only a plain narrative of matter of fact. They will, several of them, have it, that my last Thursday and Friday's papers are full of concealed satire, and that I have attacked people in the shape of pismires, whom I durst not meddle with in the shape of men. I must confess, that I write with fear and trembling, ever since that ingenious person, the Examiner, in his little pamphlet, which was to make way for one of his following papers, found out treason in the word Expect.

But I shall, for the future, leave my friend to manage the controversy in a separate work, being unwilling to fill with disputes a paper which was undertaken purely out of good will to my countrymen. I must, therefore, declare, that those jealousies and suspicions, which have been raised in some weak minds, by means of the two above-mentioned discourses concerning ants or pismires, are altogether groundless. There is not an emmet in all that whole narrative, who is either whig or tory;

and I could heartily wish, that the individuals of all parties among us, had the good of their country at heart, and endeavoured to advance it by the same spirit of frugality, justice, and mutual benevolence, as are visibly exercised by members of those little commonwealths.

After this short preface, I shall lay before my reader a letter or two which occasioned it.

"MR. IRONSIDE,

"I HAVE laid a wager, with a friend of mine, about the pigcons that used to peck up the corn which belonged to the ants. I say that by these pigeons you meant the Palatines. He will needs have it, that they were the Dutch. We both agree that the papers upon the strings which frighted them away, were Pamphlets, Examiners, and the like. We beg you will satisfy us in this particular, because the wager is very considerable, and you will much oblige two of your

" OLD IRON,

"DAILY READERS."

"WHY SO rusty? Will you never leave your innuendoes? do you think it hard to find out who is the tulip in your last Thursday's paper? or can you imagine that three nests of ants is such a disguise, that the plainest reader cannot see three kingdoms through it? the blowing up of the neighbouring settlement where there was a race of poor beggarly ants, under a worse form of government, is not so difficult to be explained as you. imagine. Dunkirk is not yet demolished. Your ants are enemies to rain, are they? Old Birmingham, no more of your ants, if you do not intend to stir up a nest of hornets."

"WILL WASP."

VOL. IV.-21*

"DEAR GUARDIAN,

"CALLING in yesterday at a coffee-house in the city, I saw a very short, corpulent, angry man, reading your paper about the ants. I observed that he reddened and swelled over every sentence of it. After having perused it throughout, he laid it down upon the table, called the woman of the coffee-house to him and asked her, in a magisterial voice, if she knew what she did in taking in such papers! The woman was in such a confusion, that I thought it a piece of charity, to interpose in her behalf, and asked him, whether he had found any thing in it of dangerous import. 'Sir, (said he,) it is a republican paper from one end to the other, and if the author had his deserts' He here grew so exceeding choleric and fierce, that he could not proceed; until, after having recovered himself, he laid his finger upon the following sentence, and read it with a very stern voice'Though ants are very knowing, I do not take them to be conjurors: and, therefore, they could not guess that I had put some corn in that room. I perceived, for several days, that they were very much perplexed, and went a great way to fetch their provi. sions. I was not willing, for some time, to make them more easy; for I had a mind to know, whether they would at last find out the treasure, and see it at a great distance, and whether smelling enabled them to know what is good for their nourishment.' Then throwing the paper upon the table; 'Sir, (says he,) these things are not to be suffered—I would engage, out of this sentence, to draw up an indictment that

' He here

lost his voice a second time, in the extremity of his rage, and the whole company, who were all of them tories, bursting out into a sudden laugh, he threw down his penny in great wrath, and retired with a most formidable frown.

"This, sir, I thought fit to acquaint you with, that you may

make what use of it you please. I only wish that you would sometimes diversify your papers with many other pieces of natural history, whether of insects or animals; this being a subject which the most common reader is capable of understanding, and which is very diverting in its nature; besides, that it highly redounds to the praise of that Being, who has inspired the several parts of the sensitive world with such wonderful and different kinds of instinct, as enable them to provide for themselves, and preserve their species in that state of existence wherein they are placed. There is no party concerned in speculations of this nature, which, instead of inflaming those unnatural heats that prevail among us, and take up most of our thoughts, may divert our minds to subjects that are useful, and suited to reasonable creaturcs. Dissertations of this kind are the more proper for your purpose, as they do not require any depth of mathematics, or any previous science, to qualify the reader for the understanding of them. To this I might add, that it is a shame for men to be ignorant of these worlds of wonders which are transacted in the midst of them, and not to be acquainted with those objects which are every where before their eyes. To which I might further add, that several are of opinion, there is no other use in many of these creatures, than to furnish matter of contemplation and wonder to those inhabitants of the earth, who are its only creatures that are capable of it.

"I am, sir,

"Your constant reader, and humble servant."

After having presented my reader with this set of letters, which are all upon the same subject, I shall here insert one that has no relation to it. But it has always been my maxim, never to refuse going out of my way to do any honest man a service, especially when I have an interest in it myself.