thrifts. Thou couldst make very pretty reflections upon this occasion in honour of the Persian politics, who took care, by such marriages, to beautify the upper part of the species, and to make the greatest persons in the government the most graceful. But this I shall leave to thy judicious pen.

I have another story to tell thee which I likewise met with in a book. It seems the general of the Tartars, after having laid siege to a strong town in China, and taken it by storm, would set to sale all the women that were found in it. Accordingly, he put each of them into a sack, and after having thoroughly considered the value of the woman who was enclosed, marked the price that was demanded for her upon the sack. There were a great confluence of chapmen, that resorted from every part, with a design to purchase, which they were to do "unsight, unseen. The book mentions a merchant in particular, who observing one of the sacks to be marked pretty high, bargained for it, and carried it off with him to his house. As he was resting with it upon a half-way bridge, he was resolved to take a survey of his purchase. Upon opening the sack a little old woman popped her head out of it; at which the adventurer was in so great a rage that he was going to shoot her out into the river. The old lady, however, begged him first of all to hear her story, by which he learned that she was sister to a great mandarin, who would infallibly make the fortune of his brother-in-law as soon as he should know to whose lot she fell. Upon which the merchant again tied her up in his sack,

and carried her to his house, where she proved an excellent wife, and procured him all the riches from her brother that she had promised him.

I fancy if I was disposed to dream a second time, I could make a tolerable vision upon this plan. I would suppose all the unmarried women in London and Westminster brought to market in sacks with their respective prices on each sack. The first sack that is sold is marked with five thousand pounds: upon the opening of it, I find it filled with an admirable housewife of an agreeable countenance; the purchaser upon hearing her good qualities pays down her price very cheerfully. The second I would open, should be a five hundred pound sack: the lady in it, to our surprise, has the face and person of a toast: as we are wondering how she came to be set at so low a price, we hear that she would have been valued at ten thousand pounds, but that the public had made those abatements for her being a scold. I would afterwards find some beautiful, modest, and discreet woman, that should be the top of the market; and perhaps discover half a dozen romps tied up together in the same sack, at one hundred pounds a head. The prude and the coquette should be valued at the same price, though the first should go off the better of the two. I fancy thou wouldst like such a vision, had I time to finish it; because, to talk in thy own way, there is a moral in it. Whatever thou mayest think of it, pr'ythee do not make any of thy queer apologies for this letter as thou didst for my last. The women love a gay lively fellow, and are never angry at the railleries of one who is

their known admirer. I am always bitter upon them, but well with them. Thine,

ADDISON.

C HONEYCOMB.'

0.

No. 512. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17.

· Lectorem delectando, pariterque monendo..
HOR. ARS. POET.

Mixing together profit and delight.

THERE is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice. We look upon the man who gives it us as offering an affront to our understanding, and treating us like children or idiots. We consider the instruction as an implicit censure, and the zeal which any one shows for our good on such an occasion as a piece of presumption or impertinence. The truth of it is, the person who pretends to advise, does in that particular exercise a superiority over us and can have no other reason for it, but that in comparing us with himself, he thinks us defective either in our conduct or our understanding. For these reasons, there is nothing so difficult as the art of making advice agreeable; and indeed all the writers, both ancient and modern, have distinguished themselves among one another, according to the perfection at which they have arived in this art. How many devices have been made use of to render this bitter portion palatable! Some convey their instructions to us in the best chosen words, others in the most harmonious numbers;

VOL. X.

some in points of wit, and others in short proverbs.

But among all the different ways of giving counsel, I think the finest and that which pleases the most universally is fable, in whatsoever shape it appears. If we consider this way of instructing or giving advice, it excels all others because it is the least shocking, and the least subject to those exceptions which I have before mentioned.

This will appear to us, if we reflect, in the first place, that upon the reading of a fable we are made to believe we advise ourselves. We peruse the author for the sake of the story, and consider the precepts rather as our own conclusions than his instructions. The moral insinuates itself imperceptibly; we are taught by surprise, and become wiser and better unawares. In short, by this method a man is so far over-reached as to think he is directing himself, while he is following the dictates of another, and consequently is not sensible of that which is the most unpleasing circumstance in advice.

In the next place, if we look into human nature, we shall find, that the mind is never so much pleased as when she exerts herself in any action that gives her an idea of her own perfections and abilities. This natural pride and ambition of the soul is very much gratified in the reading of a fable: for, in writings of this kind, the reader comes in for half the performance; every thing appears to him like a discovery of his own; he is busied all the while in applying characters and circumstances, and is in this respect both a reader and a composer. It is no wonder therefore that on such occasions, when the