his cares with the most agreeable object imaginable. Diana and her train are always described as inhabi tants of the woods, and followers of the chase. To be well diverted, is the safest guard to innocence; and, methinks, it should be one of the first things to be regarded among people of condition, to find out proper amusements for young ladies. I cannot but think this of riding might easily be revived among them, when they consider how much it must contribute to their beauty. This would lay up the best portion they could bring into a family, a good stock of health, to transmit to their posterity. Such a charming bloom, as this gives the counte nance, is very much preferable to the real or affect ed feebleness or softness, which appear in the faces of our modern beauties.

The comedy, called "The Ladies Cure," re presents the affectation of wan looks and languid glances to a very entertaining extravagance, There is, as the lady in the play complains, something so robust in perfect health, that it is with her a point of breeding and delicacy to appear in public with a sickly air. But the natural gaiety and spirit which shine in the complexion of such as form to themselves a sort of diverting industry, by choosing recreations that are exercises, surpass all the false ornaments and graces that can be put on by applying the whole dispensary of a toilet. An healthy body and a cheerful mind, give charms as irresistible as inimitable. The beauteous Dyctinna, who came to town last week, has, from the constant prospect in a delicious country, and the moderate exercise and journies in the visits she made round it, contracted a certain life in her countenance, which will in vain employ both the painters and the poets to represent. The becoming negligence in her dress, the severe sweetness of her looks, and a certain in

nocent boldness 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 be. lieve 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 fa. milies, where all the girls hear of in this life is, that it is time to rise and come to dinner, as if they were so insignificant as to be wholly provided for when they are fed and cloathed.

It is with great indignation that I see such crowds of the female world lost to human society, and condemned to a laziness which makes life pass away with less relish than in the hardest labour. Pa lestris 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 dėsigned 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 under. standing as wives, and regulate their tenderness as parents. It has been very often said in these Lucu. brations, "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 with nothing that shall give supplies to ostentation or impertinence; but the whole shall be so digested for the use of my students, that they shall not go out of character in their in. quiries, but their knowledge appear only a cultivated innocence.

N° 249. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1710

Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum,
Tendimus.-

VIRG. En. 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 a piece 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 an odd 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 his 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 utspeakable 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