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dustry. As for my dear, never man was so enamoured as I was of her fair forehead, neck, and arms, as well as the bright jet of her hair; but to my great astonishment I find they were all the effect of art. Her skin is so tarnished with this practice, that, when she first wakes in a morning, she scarce seems young enough to be the mother of her whom I carried to bed the night before. I shall take the liberty to part with her by the first opportunity, unless her father will make her portion suitable to her real, not her assumed countenance. This I thought fit to let him and her know by your

means.

'I am, sir,

• Your most obedient

humble servant.'

I cannot tell what the law, or the parents of the lady, will do for this injured gentleman, but must allow he has very much justice on his side. I have indeed very long observed this evil, and distinguished those of our women who wear their own, from those in borrowed complexions, by the Picts and the British. There does not need any great discernment to judge which are which. The British have a lively animated aspect; the Picts, though never so beautiful, have dead uninformed countenances. The muscles of a real face sometimes swell with soft passion, sudden surprise, and are flushed with agreeable confusions, according as the objects before them, or the ideas presented to them, affect their imagination. But the Picts behold all things with the same air, whether they are joyful or sad; the same fixed insensibility appears upon all occasions. A Pict, though she takes all that pains to invite the approach of lovers, is obliged to keep them at a certain distance;

confidence in them, they will not talk against us before our faces, though they may do it with the same safety as if it were behind our backs. In the mean time, I cannot forbear thinking how naturally a historian who writes two or three hundred years hence, and does not know the taste of his wise forefathers, will make the following reflection, " In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Italian tongue was so well understood in England, that operas were acted on the public stage in that language."

Music is certainly a very agreeable entertainment: but if it would take the entire possession of our ears, if it would make us incapable of hearing sense, if it would exclude arts that have a much greater tendency to the refinement of human nature; I must confess I would allow it no better quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his commonwealth.

ADDISON.

THE VALETUDINARIAN.

No. 25.

THE following letter will explain itself, and needs no apology.

Sir,

'I am one of that sickly tribe who are commonly known by the name of Valetudinarians; and do confess to you, that I first contracted this ill habit of body, or rather of mind, by the study of physic. I no sooner began to peruse books of this nature, but I found my pulse was irregular; and scarce ever read the account of any discase that I did not fancy myself af

flicted

flicted with. Dr. Sydenham's learned treatise of fevers
threw me into a lingering hectic, which hung upon
me all the while I was reading that excellent piece. I
then applied myself to the study of several authors who
have written upon phthisical distempers, and by that
means fell into a consumption; till at lengh, growing
very fat, I was in a manner shamed out of that imagi-
nation. Not long after this I found in myself all the
symptoms of the gout, except pain; but was cured of
it by a treatise upon the gravel, written by a very in-
genious author, who (as it is usual for physicians to con-
vert one distemper into another) eased me of the gout
by giving me the stone.
me the stone. I at length studied myself
into a complication of distempers; but, accidentally
taking into my hand that ingenious discourse written.
by Sanctorius*, I was resolved to direct myself by a
scheme of rules, which I had collected from his obser-
vations. The learned world are very well acquainted
with that gentleman's invention; who, for the better
carrying on of his experiments, contrived a certain ma-
thematical chair, which was so artificially hung upon
springs, that it would weigh any thing as well as a
pair of scales. By this means he discovered how
many ounces of his food passed by perspiration, what
quantity of it was turned into nourishment, and how
much went away by the other channels and distribu-
tions of nature.

"Having provided myself with this chair, I used to

*Sanctorius or Santorius, the ingenious inventor of the first thermometer, was a celebrated professor of medicine in the university of Padua, early in the 17th century, who, by means of a weighing chair of his own invention, made and ascertained many curious and important discoveries relative to insensible perspiration.

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study, eat, drink, and sleep in it; insomuch that I may be said for these last three years to have lived in a pair of scales. I compute myself, when I am in full health, to be precisely two hundred weight, falling short of it about a pound after a day's fast, and exceeding it as much after a very full meal; so that it is my continual employment to trim the balance between these two volatile pounds in my constitution. In my ordinary meals I fetch myself up to two hundred weight and half a pound; and if after having dined I find myself fall short of it, i drink just so much small beer, or eat such a quantity of bread, as is sufficient to make me weight. In my greatest excesses I do not transgress more than the other half pound; which, for my health's sake, I do the first Monday in every month. As soon as I find myself duly poised after dinner, I walk till I have perspired five ounces and four scruples; and when I discover, by my chair, that I am so far reduced, I fall to my books, and study away three ounces more. As for the remaining parts of the pound, I keep no account of them. I do not dine and sup by the clock, but by my chair; for, when that informs me my pound of food is exhausted, I conclude myself to be hungry, and lay in another with all diligence. In my days of abstinence I lose a pound and a half, and on solemn fasts am two pound lighter than on other days in the year.

I allow myself, one night with another, a quarter of a pound of sleep, within a few grains more or less; and if upon my rising I find that I have not consumed my whole quantity, I take out the rest in my chair. Upon an exact calculation of what I expended and received the last year, which I always register in a book, I find the medium to be two hundred weight, so that I cannot discover that I am impaired one ounce in my

health

health during a whole twelvemonth. And yet, sir, notwithstanding this my great care to ballast myself equally every day, and to keep my body in its proper poise, so it is, that I find myself in a sick and languishing condition. My complexion is grown very sallow, my pulse low, and my body hydropical. Let me therefore beg you, sir, to consider me as your patient, and to give me more certain rules to walk by than those I have already observed, and you will very much oblige

Your humble servant.'

This letter puts me in mind of an Italian epitaph written on the monument of a Valetudinarian; Stavo ben, ma per star meglio, sto qui.

ADDISON.

LÆTITIA AND DAPHNE.

No. 33.

A FRIEND of mine has two daughters, whom I will call Lætitia and Daphne: the former is one of the greatest beauties of the age in which she lives, the latter no way remarkable for any charms in her person. Upon this one circumstance of their outward form, the good and ill of their life seems to turn. Lætitia has not, from her very childhood, heard any thing else but commendations of her features and complexion; by which means she is no other than nature made her, a very beautiful outside. The consciousness of her charms has rendered her insupportably vain and insolent, towards all who have to do with her. Daphne, who was almost twenty before one civil thing had ever been said to her, found herself obliged to acquire some

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