N° 87. SATURDAY, JUNE 20, 1713.

Constiterant hinc Thisbe, Piramus illine,

Inque vicem fuerat japtatus anhelitus oris,

OVID. Met. iv. 71.

Here Pyramus, there gentle Thisbe, strove

To catch each other's breath, the balmy breeze of love.

My precautions are made up of all that I can hear and see, translate, borrow, paraphrase, or contract, from the persons with whom I mingle and converse, and the authors whom I read. But the grave discourses which I sometimes give the town, do not win so much attention as lighter matters. For this reason it is, that I am obliged to consider vice as it is ridiculous, and accompanied with gallantry, else I find in a very short time I shall lie like waste paper on the tables of coffee-houses. Where I have taken most pains I often find myself least read. There is a spirit of intrigue got into all, even the meanest of the people, and the very servants are bent upon delights, and commence oglers and languishers. I happened the other day to pass by a gentleman's house, and saw the most flippant scene of low love that I have ever observed. The maid was rubbing the windows within side of the house, and her humble servant the footman was so happy a man as to be employed in cleaning the same glass on the side towards the street. The wench began with the greatest severity of aspect imaginable, and breathing on the

glass, followed it with a dry cloth; her opposite observed her, and fetching a deep sigh, as if it were his last, with a very disconsolate air did the same on his side of the window. He still worked on and languished, until at last his fair one smiled, but covered herself, and spreading the napkin in her hand, concealed herself from her admirer, while he took pains, as it were, to work through all that intercepted their meeting. This pretty contest held for four or five large panes of glass, until at last the waggery was turned into a humorous way of breathing in each other's faces, and catching the impression. The gay creatures were thus loving and pleasing their imaginations with their nearness and distance, until the windows were so transparent that the beauty of the female made the man-servant impatient of beholding it, and the whole house besides being abroad, he ran in, and they romped out of my sight. It may be imagined these oglers of no quality, made a more sudden application of the intention of kind sighs and glances, than those whose education lays them under greater restraints, and who are consequently more slow in their advances. I have often observed all the low part of the town in love, and taking a hackney-coach have considered all that passed by me in that light, as these cities are composed of crowds wherein there is not one who is not lawfully or unlawfully engaged in that passion. When one is in this speculation, it is not unpleasant to observe alliances between those males and females whose lot it is to act in public. Thus the woods in the middle of summer are not more entertaining with the different notes of birds, than Ithe town is of different voices of the several sorts of people who act in public; they are divided inte

classes, and crowds made for crowds. The hackney-coachmen, chairmen, and porters, are the lovers of the hawker-women, fruitresses, and milkmaids. They are a wild world of themselves, and have voices significant of their private inclinations, which strangers can take no notice of. Thus a wench with fruit looks like a mad woman when she cries wares you see she does not carry, but those in the secret know that cry is only an assignation to an hackney-coachman who is driving by, and understands her. The whole people is in an intrigue, and the undiscerning passengers are unacquainted with the meaning of what they hear all round them. They know not how to separate the cries of mercenary traders, from the sighs and lamentations of languishing lovers. The common face of modesty is lost among the ordinary part of the world, and the general corruption of manners is visible from the loss of all deference in the low people towards those of condition. One order of mankind trips fast after the next above it, and by this rule you may trace iniquity from the conversations of the most wealthy, down to those of the humblest degree. It is an act of great resolution to pass by a crowd of polite footmen, who can rally, make love, ridicule, and observe upon all the passengers who are obliged to go by the places where they wait. This licence makes different characters among them, and there are beaux, party-men, and free-thinkers in livery. I take it for a rule, that there is no bad man but makes a bad woman, and the contagion of vice is what should make people cautious of their behaviour. Juvenal says, there is the greatest reverence to be had to the presence of children ; it may be as well said of the presence of servants, and it would be some kind of virtue, if

we kept our vices to ourselves. It is a feeble authority which has not the support of personal respect, and the dependence founded only upon their receiving their maintenance of us is not of force enough to support us against an habitual behaviour, for which they contemn and deride us. No man can be well served, but by those who have an opinion of his merit; and that opinion cannot be kept up, but by an exemption from those faults which we would restrain in our dependents.

Though our fopperies imitated are subjects of laughter, our vices transferred to our servants give matter of lamentation. But there is nothing in which our families are so docile, as in the imitation of our delights. It is therefore but common prudence to take care, that our inferiors know of none but our innocent ones. It is, methinks, a very arrogant thing to expect, that the single consideration of not offending us should curb our servants from vice, when much higher motives cannot moderate Our own inclinations. But I began this paper with an observation, that the lower world is got into fashionable vices, and above all to the understanding the language of the eye. There is nothing but writing songs which the footmen do not practise as well as their masters. Spurious races of mankind, which pine in want, and perish in their first months of being, come into the world from this degeneracy. The possession of wealth from affluence seems to carry some faint extenuation of his guilt who is sunk by it into luxury; but poverty and servitude accompanied with the vices of wealth and licentiousness, is I believe, a circumstance of ill peculiar to our age. This may, perhaps, be matter of jest, or is overlooked by those who do not turn their thoughts upon the actions of others.

But from that one particular, of the immorality of our servants arising from the negligence of masters of families in their care of them, flows that irresistible torrent of disasters which spreads itself through all human life. Old age oppressed with beggary, youth drawn into the commission of murders and robberies, both owe their disaster to this evil. If we consider the happiness which grows out of a fatherly conduct towards servants, it would encourage a man to that sort of care, as much as the effects of a libertine behaviour to them would affright us.

Lycurgus is a man of that noble disposition, that his domestics, in a nation of the greatest liberty, enjoy a freedom known only to themselves, who live under his roof. He is the banker, the counsel, the parent of all his numerous dependents. Kindness is the law of his house, and the way to his favour is being gentle, and well-natured to their fellow-servants. Every one recommends himself, by appearing officious to let their patron know the merit of · others under his care. Many little fortunes have streamed out of his favour; and his prudence is such, that the fountain is not exhausted by the channels from it, but its way cleared to run new meanders. He bestows with so much judgment, that his bounty is the increase of his wealth; all who share his favour, are enabled to enjoy it by his example, and he has not only made, but qualified many a man to be rich.