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P. S. 1 was here interrupted by the receipt of my letters, among which is one from a lady who is not a little offended at my translation of the discourse between Adam and Eve. She pretends to tell me my own, as she calls it, and quotes several passages in my works, which tend to the utter disunion of man and wife. Her epistle will best express her. I have made an extract of it, and shall insert the most material passages.

"I suppose you know we women are not too apt to forgive: for which reason, before you concern yourself any further with our sex, I would advise you to answer what is said against you by those of your own. I enclose to you business enough, until you are ready for your promise of being witty. You must not expect to say what you please, without admitting others to take the same liberty. Marry come up! you a Censor? Pray read over all these pamphlets, and these notes upon your Lucubrations; by that time you shall hear further. It is, I suppose, from such as you that people learn to be censorious, for which I and all our sex have an utter aversion; when once people come to take the liberty to wound reputations"

This is the main body of the letter; but she bids me turn over, and there I find

"If you will draw Mrs. Cicely Trippet according to the enclosed description, I will forgive you all.'

"To ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Esquire.

"The humble Petition of Joshua Fairlove, of Stepney,

"SHEWETH,

"That your Petitioner is a general lover, who for some months last past has made it his whole business to frequent the bye-paths and roads near his

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dwelling, for no other purpose but to hand such of the fair sex as are obliged to pass through them. "That he has been at great expence for clean gloves to offer his hand with.

"That towards the evening he approaches near London, and employs himself as a convoy towards home.

"Your Petitioner therefore most humbly prays, that for such his humble services he may be allowed the title of Esquire."

Mr. Morphew has orders to carry the proper instruments and the Petitioner is hereafter to be writ to upon gilt paper, by the title of Joshua Fairlove, Esquire.

N° 220. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1710.

Insani sapiens nomen ferat æquus iniqui,
Ultra quam satis est, virtutem si petat ipsam.

HOR. 1 Ep. vi. 15.
Even virtue, when pursu'd with warmth extreme,
Turns into vice, and fools the sage's fame.

FRANCIS.

From my own Apartment, September 4.

HAVING received many letters filled with compliments and acknowledgments for my late useful discovery of the political Barometer, I shall here communicate to the public an account of my ecclesiastical Thermometer, the latter giving as manifest prognostications of the changes and revolutions in church, as the former does of those in state; and both of them being absolutely necessary for every prudent subject who is resolved to keep what he has, and get what he can.

The church Thermometer, which I am now to treat of, is supposed to have been invented in the reign of Henry the Eighth, about the time when that re

ligious prince put some to death for owning the Pope's supremacy, and others for denying transubstantiation. I do not find, however, any great use made of this instrument, until it fell into the hands of a learned and vigilant priest or minister, for he frequently wrote himself both one and the other, who was some time Vicar of Bray. This gentleman lived in his vicarage to a good old age; and, after having seen several successions of his neighbouring clergy either burned or banished, departed this with the satifaction of having never deserted his flock, and died vicar of Bray. As this Glass was at first designed to calculate the different degrees of heat in religion, as it raged in popery, or as it cooled and grew temperate in the Reformation; it was marked at several distances, after the manner our ordinary thermometer is to this day, viz. “ Extreme Heat, Sultry Heat, Very Hot, Hot, Warm, Temperate, Cold, Just Freezing, Frost, Hard Frost, Great Frost, Extreme Cold,"

It is well known that Torricellius, the inventor of the common weather-glass, made the experiment in a long tube which held thirty-two feet of water; and that a more modern virtuoso, finding such a machine altogether unwieldy and useless, and considering that thirty-two inches of quicksilver weighed as much as so many feet of water in a tube of the same circumference, invented that sizeable instrument which is now in use. After this manner that I might adapt the Thermometer I am now speaking of to the present constitution of our Church, as divided into High and Low, I have made some necessary variations both in the tube and the fluid it contains. In the first place, I ordered a tube to be cast in a planetary hour, and took care to seal it hermetically, when the Sun was in conjunction with Saturn. I then took the proper precautions about the fluid, which is a compound of two very different

liquors; one of them a spirit drawn out of a strong heady wine; the other a particular sort of rockwater, colder than ice, and clearer than crystal. The spirit is of a red fiery colour, and so very apt to ferment, that unless it be mingled with a proportion of the water, or pent up very close, it will burst the vessel that holds it, and fly up in fume and smoke. The water on the contrary, is of such a subtle piercing cold, that unless it be mingled with a proportion of the spirits, it will sink almost through every thing that it is put into: and seems to be of the same nature as the water mentioned by Quintus Curtius, which, says the historian, could be contained in nothing but in the hoof, or, as the Oxford manuscript has it, in the scull of an ass. The Thermometer is marked according to the following figure; which I set down at length, not only to give my reader a clear idea of it, but also to fill my Paper. Ignorance.

Persecution.

Wrath.

Zeal.

CHURCH.

Moderation.

Lukewarmness.

Infidelity.
Ignorance.

The reader will observe, that the Church is placed in the middle point of the glass, between Zeal and Moderation; the situation in which she always flourishes, and in which every good Englishman wishes her, who is a friend to the constitution of his country. However, when it mounts to Zeal, it is not amiss; and, when it sinks to Moderation, is still in a most admirable temper. The worst of it is, that when it once begins to rise, it has still an inclination to ascend; insomuch that it is apt to

climb up from Zeal to Wrath, and from Wrath to Persecution, which always ends in Ignorance, and very often proceeds from it. In the same manner it frequently takes its progress through the lower half of the glass; and, when it has a tendency to fall, will gradually descend from Moderation to Lukewarmness, and from Lukewarmness to Infidelity, which very often terminates in Ignorance, and always proceeds from it.

It is a common observation, that the ordinary Thermometer will be effected by the breathing of people who are in the room where it stands; and indeed it is almost incredible to conceive how the glass I am now describing will fall by the breath of a multitude crying "Popery;" or, on the contrary, how it will rise when the same multitude, as it sometimes happens, cry out in the same breath, "The Church is in danger."

As soon as I had finished this my glass, and adjusted it to the above-mentioned scale of religion; that I might make proper experiments with it, I carried it under my cloke to several coffee-houses, and other places of resort about this great city. At St. James's Coffee-house the liquor stood at Moderation but at Will's, to my great surprize, it subsided to the very lowest mark on the glass. At the Grecian it amounted but just one point higher; at the Rainbow it still ascended two degrees; Child's fetched it up to Zeal; and other adjacent coffeehouses, to Wrath.

It fell in the lower half of the glass as I went further into the city, until at length it settled at Moderation, where it continued all the time I staid about the Exchange, as also while I passed by the Bank. And here I cannot but take notice, that through the whole course of my remarks, I never observed my glass to rise at the same time the stocks did.

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