some dozens of us for that use. We led a melancholy life in his possession, being busy at those hours wherein current coin is at rest, and partaking the fate of our master; being in a few moments valued at a crown, a pound, or a sixpence, according to the situation in which the fortune of the cards placed us. I had at length the good luck to see my master break, by which means I was again sent abroad under my primitive denomination of a Shilling.

"I shall pass over many other accidents of less moment, and hasten to that fatal catastrophe when I fell into the hands of an artist, who conveyed me under ground, and, with an unmerciful pair of sheers, cut off my titles, clipped my brims, retrenched my shape, rubbed me to my inmost ring; and, in short, so spoiled and pillaged me, that he did not leave me worth a groat. You may think what confusion I was in to see myself thus curtailed and disfigured. I should have been ashamed to have shewn my head, had not all my old acquaintance been reduced to the same shameful figure, excepting some few that were punched through the belly. In the midst of this general calamity, when every body thought our misfortune irretrievable, and our case desperate, we were thrown into the furnace together, and, as it often happens with cities rising out of a fire, appeared with greater beauty and lustre than we could ever boast of before. What has happened to me since this change of sex which you now see, I shall take some other opportunity to relate. In the mean time, I shall only repeat two adventures, as being very extraordinary, and neither of them having ever happened to me above once in my life. The first was, my being in a poet's pocket, who was so taken with the brightness and novelty of my appearance, that it gave oc

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 libræ ?

PERS. Sat. IV. 10.

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

DRYDEN

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

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, with out 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 crowda 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 bad 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 countenances." There shall be a strict regard had to this in my Female Library, which shall be furnished nothing that shall give supplies to ostentation. r impertinence; but the whole shall be so diges. a for the use of my students, that they shall not go out of character in their inquiries, but their knowledge appear only a culti vated innocence.

N° 249. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11,1710.

Per varios casus, per tot discrimina verum,

Tendimus.

VIRG. n. I. 208.

Through various hazards, and events, we move.

DRYDEN.

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 hints 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 piece of money lying