casion to the finest burlesque poem in the British language, entituled, from me, The Splendid Shilling. The second adventure, which I must not omit, happened to me in the year 1703, when I was given away in charity to a blind man; but indeed this was by mistake, the person who gave me having thrown me heedlessly into the hat among a pennyworth of farthings."

N 250. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1710,

Scis enim justum gemina suspendere lance

Ancipitis libre?

PERS. Sat. IV. 10.

DRYDEN

Know'st thou, with equal hand, to hold the scale?

From my own Apartment, November 13.

I LAST winter erected a court of justice for the correcting of several enormities in dress and behaviour, which are not cognizable in any other courts of this realm. The vintner's case, which I there tried, is still fresh in every man's memory. That of the petticoat gave also a general satisfaction: not to inention the more important points of the cane and perspective; in which, if I did not give judgments and decrees according to the strictest rules of equity and justice, I can safely say, I acted according to the best of my understanding. But as for the proceedings of that court, I shall refer my reader to

VOL. V.

N° 248. ness in all her behaviour, are the effect of the active recreations I am talking of,

But instead of such, or any other as innocent and pleasing method of passing away their time with alacrity, we have many in town who spend their hours in an indolent state of body and mind, without either recreations or reflections. I am apt to believe there are some parents imagine their daughters will be accomplished enough, if nothing interrupts their growth, or their shape. According to this method of education, I could name you twenty families, where all the girls hear of in this life is, that it is time to rise and to come to dinner, as if they were so insignificant as to be wholly provided for when they are fed and clothed.

It is with great indignation that I see such crow da of the female world lost to human society, and condenined to a laziness, which makes life pass away with less relish than in the hardest labour. Palestris in her drawing-room, is supported by spirits to keep off the returns of spleen and melancholy, before she can get over half of the day for want of something to do, while the wench in the kitchen sings and scowers from morning to night.

The next disagreeable thing to a lazy lady, is a very busy one. A man of business in good company, who gives an account of his abilities and dispatches, is hardly more insupportable, than her they call a notable woman, and a manager. Lady Goodday, where I visited the other day, at a very polite circle, entertained a great lady with a recipe for a poultice, and gave us to understand, that she had done extraordinary cures since she was last in town. It seems a countryman had wounded himself with his scythe as he was mowing; and we were obliged to hear of her charity, her medicine, and her hu

mility, in the harshest tone and coarsest language imaginable.

What I would request in all this prattle is, that our females would either let us have their persons, or their minds, in such perfection as nature designed them.

The way to this is, that those who are in the quality of gentlewomen, should propose to themselves some suitable method of passing away their time. This would furnish them with reflections and sentiments proper for the companions of reasonable men, and prevent the unnatural marriages which happen every day between the most accomplished women and the veriest oafs, the worthiest men and the most insignificant females. Were the general turn of women's education of another kind than it is at present, we should want one another for more reasons than we do as the world now goes. The common design of parents, is to get their girls off as well as they can; and they make no conscience of putting into our hands a bargain for our whole life, which will make our hearts ache every day of it. I shall, therefore, take this matter into serious consideration, and will propose, for the better improvement of the fair sex, a "Female Library." This collection of books shall consist of such authors as do not corrupt while they divert, but shall tend more immediately to improve them as they are women. They shall be such as shall not hurt a feature by the austerity of their reflections, nor cause one impertinent glance by the wantonness of them. They shall all tend to advance the value of their innocence as virgins, improve their understanding as wives, and regulate their tenderness as parents. It has been very often said in these Lucubrations, "that the ideas which most frequently pass through our imaginations, leave traces of them

selves in our counten: ices. There shall be a strict regard had to this is my Female Latrary, which shall be form beta sothing that shall give supe pairs to ostrutatione impertinences but the whole shall be so diges 1 for the use of my students, that they shall not 29 out of chracter in their inquies, but their knowledge appear only a culti

vated innocence.

N° 249. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11,1710.

Per varios casus, per tot disecimina verum,

Tendimus

VIRG. E. 1. 28.

DRYDEN,

Through various hazarde, and events, we move,

From my own Apartment, November 10.

I WAS last night visited by a friend of mine, who has an inexhaustible fund of discourse, and never fails to entertain his company with a variety of thoughts and bints that are altogether new and uncommon, Whether it were in complaisance to my way of living or his real opinion, he advanced the following paradox: that it required much greater talents to fill up and become a retired life than a life of business Upon this occasion he rallied very agreeably the busy men of the age, who only valued themselves for being in motion, and passing through a series of trifling and insignificant actions. In the heat of his discourse, seeing spicce of money lying

on my table, "I defy," says he, any of these active persons to produce half the adventures that this Twelvepenny-piece has been engaged in, were it possible for him to give us an account of his life."

My friend's talk made so odd an impression upon my mind, that soon after I was a-bed I fell insensibly into an unaccountable reverie, that had neither moral nor design in it, and cannot be so properly called a dream as a delirium.

Methought the Shilling that lay upon the table reared itself upon its edge, and, turning the face towards me, opened its mouth, and in a soft silver sound, gave me the following account of his life and adventures:

"I was born," says he, "on the side of a mountain, near a little village of Peru, and made a voyage to England in an ingot, under the convoy of Sir Francis Drake. I was, soon after my arrival, taken out of my Indian habit, refined, naturalized, and put into the British mode, with the face of Queen Elizabeth on one side, and the arms of the country on the other. Being thus equipped, I found in me a wonderful inclination to ramble, and visit all the parts of the new world into which I was brought. The people very much favoured my natural disposition, and shifted me so fast from hand to hand, that, before I was five years old, I had travelled into almost every corner of the nation. But in the beginning of my sixth year, to my unspeakable grief, I fell into the hands of a miserable old fellow, who clapped me into an iron chest, where I found five hundred more of my own quality who lay under the same confinement. The only relief we had, was to be taken out and counted over in the fresh air every morning and evening. After an imprisonment of several years, we heard