unamiable; not that they can be faid to be virtuous, but as they live without scandal; and being under the common denomination of being such, men fear to meet their faults in those who are as agreeable as they are innocent.

I take the bully among men, and the fcold among women, to draw the foundation of their actions from the fame defect in the mind. A bully thinks honour confifts wholly in being brave; and therefore has regard to no one rule of life, if he preserves himself from the accufation of cowardice. The froward woman knows chastity to be the first merit in a woman; and therefore fince no one can call her one ugly name, she calls all mankind all the rest.

Thefe ladies, where their companions are fo imprudent as to take their speeches for any other, than exercises of their own lungs and their husbands patience, gain by the * force of being refifted, and flame with open fury, which is no way to be oppofed but by being neglected; though at the fame time human frailty makes it very hard to relish the philofophy of contemning even frivolous reproach. There is a very pretty inftance of this infirmity in the man of the best fenfe that ever was, no lefs a perfon than Adam himself. According to Milton's description of the first couple, as foon as they had fallen, and the turbulent paffions of anger, hatred, and jealousy, first entered their breaft; Adam grew moody, and talked to his wife, as you may find it in the three hundred and fifty-ninth page, and ninth book, of Paradife Loft, in the octavo edition, which out of heroics, and put into domeftic ftyle, would run thus:

Madam, if my advices had been of any authority with you, when that ftrange defire of gadding poffeffed you this morning, we had ftill been happy; but your curfed vanity and opinion of your own conduct, which is certainly very wavering when it feeks occafions of being proved, has ruined both yourself and me, who trusted you.'

Eve had no fan in her hand to ruffle, or tucker to pull down; but with a reproachful air she answered : F 6 • Sir,

Sir, do you impute that to my defire of gadding which, might have happened to yourself, with all your wifdom and gravity? The ferpent spoke fo excellently, and with fo good a grace, that Befides, what harm

had I ever done him, that he fhould defign me any! Was I to have been always at your fide, I might as well have continued there, and been but your rib ftill; but if I was fo weak a creature as you thought me, why did you not interpofe your fage authority more abfolutely? You denied me going as faintly, as you fay I refifted the ferpent. Had not you been too easy, neither you nor I had now tranfgreffed.'

Adam replied, Why, Eve, haft thou the impudence to upbraid me as the cause of thy tranfgreffion for my indulgence to thee? Thus will it ever be with him who trufts too much to woman: at the fame time that fhe refuses to be governed, if the fuffers by her obftinacy, the will accufe the man that fhall leave her to herself.'

Thus they in mutual accufation spent

The fruitless hours, but neither felf condemning;
And of their vain conteft appear'd no end.

This, to the modern, will appear but a very faint piece of conjugal enmity: but you are to confider, that they were but just begun to be angry, and they wanted new words for expreffing their new paffions; but her accufing him of letting her go, and telling him how good a speaker, and how fine a gentleman the devil was, we muft reckon, allowing for the improvements of time, that she gave hin the fame provocation as if he had called him cuckold. The paffionate and familiar terms, with which the fame cafe, repeated daily for fo many thousand years, has furnished the prefent generation, were not then in use; but the foundation of debate has ever been the fame, a contention about their merit and wisdom. Our general mother was a beauty; and hearing there was another now in the world, could not forbear, as Adam tells her, fhewing herfelf, though to the devil, by whom the fame vanity made her liable to be betrayed.

I cannot

I cannot, with all the help of fcience and aftrology, find any other remedy for this evil, but what was the medicine in this first quarrel; which was, as appears in the next book, that they were convinced of their being both weak, but the one weaker than the other.

If it were poffible that the beauteous could but rage a little before a glafs, and fee their pretty countenances grow wild, it is not to be doubted but it would have a very good effect: but that would require temper: for lady Firebrand, upon obferving her features fwell when her maid vexed her the other day, ftamped her dreffingglafs under her feet. In this cafe, when one of this temper is moved, fhe is like a witch in an operation, and makes all things turn round with her. The very fabric is in a vertigo when she begins to charm. In an inftant, whatever was the occafion that moved her blood, fhe has fuch intolerable fervants, Betty is fo awkward, Tom cannot carry a meffage, and her husband has fo little respect for her, that the, poor woman, is weary of this life, and was born to be unhappy.

Defunt multa.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The feafon now coming on in which the town will begin to fill, Mr. Bickerstaff gives notice, that from the firft of October next, he will be much wittier than he has hitherto been.'

NO.

No. 218. THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 1710.

Scriptorum chorus omnis amat nemus, ac fugit urbes.

HOR. Ep. 2. lib. 2. ver. 77. .

The tribe of writers, to a man, admire
The peaceful grove, and from the town retire.

From my own Apartment, August 30.

FRANCIS.

I CHANCED to rife very early one particular morning this fummer, and took a walk into the country to divert myself among the fields and ineadows, while the green was new, and the flowers in their bloom. As at this feafon of the year every lane is a beautiful walk, and every hedge full of nofegays, I loft myself with a great deal of pleasure among feveral thickets and bufhes that were filled with a great variety of birds, and an agreeable confusion of notes, which formed the pleasanteft fcene in the world to one who had paffed a whole winter in noise and smoke. The frefhnefs of the dews that lay upon every thing about me, with the cool breath of the morning, which inspired the birds with fo many delightful instincts, created in me the fame kind of animal pleasure, and made my heart overflow with such secret emotions of joy and fatisfaction as are not to be described or accounted for. On this occafion, I could not but reflect on the beautiful fimile in Milton.

As one who long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick, and fewers annoy the air,
Forth iffuing on a fummer's morn, to breathe
Among the pleasant villages, and farms
Adjoin'd, from each thing met conceives delight:
The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,
Or dairy, each rural fight, each rural found.

Thofe,

Thofe, who are converfant in the writings of polite authors, receive an additional entertainment from the country, as it revives in their memories thofe charming descriptions with which such authors do frequently abound.

I was thinking of the foregoing beautiful fimile in Milton, and applying it to myfelf, when I obferved to the windward of me a black cloud falling to the earth in long trails of rain, which made me betake myself for fhelter to a house which I faw at a little distance from the place where I was walking. As I fat in the porch, I heard the voices of two or three perfons, who seemed very earnest in difcourfe. My curiofity was raised when I heard the names of Alexander the Great and Artaxerxes; and as their talk feemed to run on ancient heroes, I concluded there could not be any fecret in it; for which reason I thought I might very fairly liften to what they faid.

After feveral parallels between great men, which appeared to me altogether groundless and chimerical, I was furprised to hear one fay, that he valued the Black Prince more than the duke of Vendofme. How the duke of Vendofme should become a rival of the Black Prince I could not conceive: and was more ftartled when I heard a fecond affirm with great vehemence, that if the emperor of Germany was not going off, he fhould like him better than either of them. He added, that though the feafon was fo changeable, the duke of Marlborough was in blooming beauty. I was wondering to myfelf from whence they had received this odd intelligence; efpecially when I heard them mention the names of feveral other great generals, as the prince of Heffe, and the king of Sweden, who, they faid, were both running away. To which they added, what I entirely agreed with them in, that the crown of France was very weak, but that the marshal Villars ftill kept his colours. At last one of them told the company, if they would go along with him, he would fhew them a chimney-fweeper and a painted lady in the fame bed, which he was fure would very much please them. The fhower, which had driven them as well

as