Women of moderate fortunes are contented with tails moderately long; but ladies of true tafte and diftinction fet no bounds to their ambition in this particular. I am told, the Lady Mayorefs, on days of ceremony, carries one longer than a bell-wether of Bantam, whose tail you know is trundled along in a wheel-barrow.

Sun of China, what contradictions do we find in this ftrange world! not only the people of different countries think in oppofition to each other, but the inhabitants of a fingle ifland are often found inconfiftent to themselves; would you believe it? this very people, my Fum, who are fo fond of feeing their women with long tails, at the fame time dock their horfes to the very rump!!!.

But you may eafily guefs that I am no way dif pleafed with a fashion which tends to increase a demand for the commodities of the Eaft, and is fo very beneficial to the country in which I was born. Nothing can be better calculated to increafe the price of filk than the prefent manner of dreffing. A lady's train is not bought but at fome expence, and after it has swept the public walks for a very few evenings, is fit to be worn no longer: more filk must be bought in order to repair the breach, and fome ladies of peculiar œconomy are thus found to patch up their tails eight or ten times in a feafon. This unneceffary confumption may introduce poverty here, but then we fhall be the richer for it in China.

The man in black, who is a profeffed enemy to this manner of ornamenting the tail, affures me, there are numberlefs inconveniences attending it, and that a lady dreffed up to the fashion is as much a cripple as any in Nankin. But his chief indignation is levelled at thofe who drefs in this manner, without a proper fortune to fupport it. He affures me, that he has known fome, who would have a

tail, though they wanted a petticoat, and others, who, without any other pretenfions, fancied they became ladies merely from the addition of three fuperfluous yards of ragged filk; I know a thrifty good woman, continues he, who thinking herfelf obliged to carry a train like her betters, never walks from home without the uneafy apprehenfions of wearing it out too foon; every excurfion fhe makes gives her new anxiety, and her train is every bit as importunate, and wounds her peace as much as the bladder we fometimes fee tied to the tail of a cat.

Nay, he ventures to affirm, that a train may often bring a lady into the most critical circumftances; for thould a rude fellow, fays he, offer to come up to ravish a kifs, and the lady attempt to avoid it, in retiring the muft neceffarily tread upon her train, and thus fall fairly upon her back, by which means every one knows,-her cloaths may be spoiled.

The ladies here make no fcruple to laugh at the fmallness of a Chinese flipper, but I fancy our wives at China would have a more real caufe of laughter, could they but fee the immoderate length of an European train. Head of Confucius! to view a human being crippling herself with a great unwieldy tail for our diverfion; backward fhe cannot go, forward the must move but flowly, and if ever the attempts to turn round, it must be in a circle not fmaller than that defcribed by the wheeling crocodile, when it would face an affailant. And yet to think that all this confers importance and majefty! to think that a lady acquires additional refpect from fifteen yards of trailing taffety! I cannot contain; ha, ha, ha; this is certainly a remnant of European barbarity; the female Tartar dreffed in fheep-tkins, is in far more convenient drapery. Their own writers have fometimes inveighed against the abiurdity of this fashion, but perhaps it has never been ridiculed fo VOL. III. Y

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well as upon the Italian theatre, where Pafquarielo being engaged to attend on the countefs of Fernambroco, having one of his hands employed in carrying her muff, and the other her lap-dog, he bears her train majestically along by fticking it in the waistband of his breeches. Adieu.

A DISPUTE has for fome time divided the philofophers of Europe; it is debated, whether arts and fciences are more ferviceable or prejudicial to mankind. They, who maintain the cause of literature, endeavour to prove their usefulness from the impoffibility of a large number of men fubfifting in a finall tract of country without them; from the pleasure which attends the acquifition; and from the influence of knowledge in promoting practical morality.

They who maintain the oppofite opinion, display the happinefs and innocence of thofe uncultivated nations who live without learning; urge the numerous vices which are to be found only in polifhed fociety, enlarge upon the oppreffion, the cruelty and the blood which muft neceffarily be fhed, in order to cement civil fociety, and infift upon the happy equality of conditions in a barbarous ftate, preferable to the unnatural fubordination of a more refined conftitution.

This difpute, which has already given fo much. employment to fpeculative indolence, has been managed with much ardour, and (not to fupprefs our fentiments)

fentiments) with but little fagacity. They who infift that the fciences are useful in refined fociety are certainly right, and they who maintain that barbarous nations are more happy without them, are right also; but when one fide for this reafon attempts to prove them as univerfally useful to the folitary barbarian, as to the native of a crowded commonwealth; or when the other endeavours to banith them as prejudicial to all fociety, even from populous ftates as well as from the inhabitants of the wilderness, they are both wrong; fince that knowledge which makes the happiness of a refined European, would be a torment to the precarious tenant of an Afiatic wild.

Let me, to prove this, tranfport the imagination for a moment to the inidft of a foreft in Siberia. There we behold the inhabitant, poor indeed, but equally fond of happinefs with the moft refined philofopher of China. The earth lies uncultivated and uninhabited for miles around him; his little family and he the fole and undifputed poteffors. In fuch circumftances Nature and Reafon will induce him to prefer a hunter's life to that of cultivating the earth. He will certainly adhere to that manner of living which is carried on at the fmalleft expence of labour, and that food which is moft agreeable to the appetite; he will prefer indolent though precarious luxury to a laborious though permanent competence, and a knowledge of his own happinefs will determine him to perfevere in native barbarity.

În like manner his happiness will incline him to bind himself by no law: laws are made in order to fecure prefent property, but he is poffeffed of no property which he is afraid to lofe, and defires no more than will be fufficient to fuftain him; to enter into compacts with others, would be undergoing a voluntary obligation without the expectance of any reward. He and his countrymen are tenants, not rivals,

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rivals, in the fame inexhauftible foreft; the increafed poffeffions of one by no means diminishes the expectations arifing from equal affiduity in another; there are no need of laws therefore to reprefs ambition, where there can be no mischief attending its mott boundlefs gratifications.

Our folitary Siberian will, in like manner, find the sciences not only entirely ufelefs in directing his practice, but difgufting even in fpeculation. In every contemplation our curiofity must be firft excited by the appearances of things, before our reason undergoes the fatigue of inveftigating the causes. Some of thofe appearances are produced by experiment, others by minute enquiry; fome arife from a knowledge of foreign climates, and others from an intimate study of our own. But there are few objects in comparifon which prefent themfelves to the inhabitant of a barbarous country; the game he hunts, or the tranfient cottage he builds, make up the chief objects of his concern; his curiofity therefore must be proportionably lefs; and if that is diminifhed, the reafoning faculty will be diminished in proportion.

Befides, fenfual enjoyment adds wings to curiofity. We confider few objects with ardent attention, but thofe which have fome connection with our withes, our pleasures, or our neceffities. A defire of enjoyment first interests our paffions in the purfuit, points out the object of inveftigation, and Reafon then comments where Senfe has led the way. An increase in the number of our enjoyments therefore neceffarily produces an increafe of fcientific refearch; but in countries where almoft every enjoyment is wanting, Reafon there feems deftitute of its great infpirer, and fpeculation is the business of fools when it becomes its own reward.

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