THE following letter comes to me from that excellent man in holy orders, whom I have mentioned more than once, as one of that society who assist me in my speculations. It is a Thought in Sickness,' and of a very serious nature, for which reason I give it a place in the paper of this day.

"SIR,

"THE indisposition which has long hung upon me, is at last grown to such a head, that it must quickly make an end of me, or of itself. You may imagine, that whilst I am in this bad state of health, there are none of your works which I read with greater pleasure than your Saturday's papers. I should be very glad if I could furnish you with any hints for that day's entertainment. Were I able to dress up several thoughts of a serious nature, which have made great impressions on my mind during a long fit of sickness, they might not be an improper entertainment for that occasion.

Among all the reflections which usually rise in the mind of a sick man, who has time and inclination to consider his approaching end, there is none more natural than that of his going to appear naked and unbodied before him who made him When a man considers, that as soon as the vital union is dissolved, he shall see that Supreme Being, whom he now contemplates at a distance, and only in his works or, to speak more philosophically, when by some faculty in the soul he shall apprehend the Divine

Being, and be more sensible of his presence, than we are now of the presence of any object which the eye beholds, a man must be lost in carelessness and stupidity, who is not alarmed at such a thought. Dr. Sherlock, in his excellent treatise upon death, has represented, in very strong and lively colours, the state of the soul in its first separation from the body, with regard to that invisible world which every where surrounds us, though we are not able to discover it through this grosser world of matter, which is accommodated to our senses in this life. His words are as follow.

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That death, which is our leaving this world, is nothing else but our putting off those bodies, teaches us, that it is only our union to these bodies, which intercepts the sight of the other world the other world is not at such a distance from us, as we may imagine; the throne of God, indeed, is at a great remove from this earth, above the third heavens, where he displays his glory to those blessed spirits which encompass his throne; but as soon as we step out of these bodies, we step into the other world, which is not so properly another world, (for there is the same heaven and earth still,) as a new state of life. To live in these bodies is to live in this world; to live out of them, is to remove into the next, for while our souls are confined to these bodies, and can look only through these material casements, nothing but what is material can affect us; nay, nothing but what is so gross, that it can reflect light, and convey the shapes and colours of things with it to the eye: so that though within this visible world, there be a more glorious scene of things than what appears to us, we perceive nothing at all of it; for this veil of flesh parts the visible and invisible world: but when we put off these bodies, there are new and surprising wonders present themselves to our view; when these material spectacles are taken off, the soul, with its own naked eyes, sees what was invisible

same spirit, It is my duty to speak truth, though it is not my duty to be in an office. One of the fathers has carried this point so high as to declare, ' He would not tell a lie, though he were sure to gain heaven by it.' However extravagant such a protestation may appear, every one will own, that a man may say very reasonably, 'He would not tell a lie, if he were sure to gain hell by it;' or, if you have a mind to soften the expression, that he would not tell a lie to gain any temporal reward by it, when he should run the hazard of losing much more than it was possible for him to gain. 0.

No. 511. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16.

Quis non invenit turbâ quod amaret in illa?

OVID, Ars Am. i. 175.

Who could fail to find,

In such a crowd, a mistress to his mind?

"DEAR SPEC.

"FINDING that my last letter took, I do intend to continue my epistolary correspondence with thee, on those dear confounded creatures, women. Thou knowest, all the little learning I am master of is upon that subject; I never looked in a book, but for their sakes. I have lately met with two pure stories for a Spectator, which I am sure will please mightily, if they pass through thy hands. The first of them I found by chance in an English book called Herodotus, that lay in my friend Dapperwit's window, as I visited him one morning. It luckily opened in the place where I met the following account. He tells us that it was the manner among the Persians to have several fairs in the kingdom, at which all the young unmarried women were annually exposed to sale. The men who wanted wives came hither to pro

vide themselves; every woman was given to the highest bidder, and the money which she fetched laid aside for the public use, to be employed as thou shalt hear by and by. By this means the richest people had the choice of the market, and culled out the most extraordinary beauties. As soon as the fair was thus picked, the refuse was to be distributed among the poor, and among those who could not go to the price of a beauty. Several of these married the agreeables, without paying a farthing for them, unless somebody chanced to think it worth his while to bid for them, in which case the best bidder was always the purchaser. But now you must know, Spec., it happened in Persia, as it does in our own country, that there were as many ugly women as beauties or agreeables; so that by consequence, after the magistrates had put off a great many, there were still a great many that stuck upon their hands. In order, therefore, to clear the market, the money which the beauties had sold for, was disposed of among the ugly; so that a poor man, who could not afford to have a beauty for his wife, was forced to take up with a fortune; the greatest portion being always given to the most deformed. To this the author adds, that every poor man was forced to live kindly with his wife, or in case he repented of his bargain, to return her portion with her to the next public sale.

"What I would recommend to thee on this occasion is, to establish such an imaginary fair in Great Britain: thou couldst make it very pleasant, by matching women of quality with coblers and carmen, or describing titles and garters leading off in great ceremony, shopkeepers and farmers' daughters. Though, to tell thee the truth, I am confoundedly afraid that as the love of money prevails in our island more than it did in Persia, we should find that some of our greatest men would chuse out the portions, and rival one another for the richest piece of deformity; and that on the contrary, the tcasts and belles would be bought

VOL. VI.-22*

Thou

up by extravagant heirs, gamesters, and spendthrifts. couldst make very pretty reflections upon this occasion in honour of the Persian politics, who take care, by such marriages, to beautify the upper part of the species, and to make the greatest persons in the government the most graceful. But this I shall leave to thy judicious pen.

"I have another story to tell thee, which I likewise met in a book. It seems the general of the Tartars, after having laid siege to a strong town in China, and taken it by storm, would set to sale all the women that were found in it. Accordingly, he put each of them into a sack, and after having thoroughly considered the value of the woman who was inclosed, marked the price that was demanded for her upon the sack. There were a great confluence of chapmen, that resorted from every part, with a design to purchase, which they were to do unsight unseen. The book mentions a merchant in particular, who observing one of the sacks to be marked pretty high, bargained for it, and carried it off with him to his house. As he was resting with it upon a half way bridge, he was resolved to take a survey of his purchase upon opening the sack, a little old woman popped her head out of it; at which the adventurer was in so great a rage, that he was going to shoot her out into the river. The old lady, however, begged him first of all to hear her story, by which he learned that she was sister to a great Mandarin, who would infallibly make the fortune of his brother-in-law as soon as he should know to whose lot she fell. Upon which the merchant again tied her up in his sack, and carried her to his house, where she proved an excellent wife, and procured him all the riches from her brother that she promised him.

"I fancy, if I was disposed to dream a second time, I could make a tolerable vision upon this plan. I would suppose all the unmarried women in London and Westminster brought to mar