our natures; such as those which lead us to an endless happiness in our life succeeding this. I herewith send you Dr. Lucas's Practical Christianity, for your serious perusal. If you have already read it, I desire you would give it to one of your friends who has not. I think you cannot recommend it better than in inserting by way of specimen these passages which I point to you, as follows.

That I have, in this state I am now in, a soul as well as a body, whose interest concerns me, is a truth my sense sufficiently discovers: For I feel joys and sorrows, which do not make their abode in the organs of the body, but in the inmost recesses of the mind; pains and pleasures which sense is too gross and heavy to partake of, as the peace or trouble of conscience in the reflection upon good or evil actions, the delight or vexation of the mind, in the contemplation of, or a fruitless enquiry after, excellent and important truths.

Out

And since I have such a soul capable of happiness or misery, it naturally follows, that it were sottish and unreasonable to lose this soul for the gain of the whole world. For my soul is I myself, and if that be miserable, I must needs be so. ward circumstances of fortune may give the world occasion to think me happy, but they can never make me so. Shall I call myself happy, if discontent and sorrow eat out the life and spirit of my soul? if lusts and passions riot and mutiny in my bosom? if my sins scatter an uneasy shame all over me, and my guilt appals and frights me? What avails it me, that my rooms are stately, my tables full, my attendants numerous, and my attire gaudy, if all this while my very being pines and languishes away? These indeed are rich and pleasant things, but I nevertheless am a poor and miserable man.

Therefore I conclude, that whatever this thing be I call a soul, though it were a perishing, dying thing, and would not out-live the body, yet it were my wisdom and interest to prefer its content and satisfaction before all the world, unless I could chuse to be miserable, and delight to be unhappy.

This very consideration, supposing the uncertainty of another world, would yet strongly engage me to the service of religion; for all it aims at, is to banish sin out of the world, which is the source and original of all the troubles that disquiet the mind; 1. Sin, in its very essence, is nothing else but disordered, distempered passions, affections foolish and preposterous in their choice, or wild and extravagant in their proportion, which our own experience sufficiently convinces us to be painful and uneasy. 2. It engages us in desperate hazards, wearies us with daily toils, and often buries us in the ruins we bring upon ourselves; and lastly, it fills our hearts with distrust, and fear, and shame; for we shall never be able to persuade ourselves fully, that there is no difference between good and evil; that there is no God, or none that concerns himself at the actions of this life and if we cannot, we can never rid ourselves of the pangs and stings of a troubled conscience; we shall never be able to establish a peace and calm in our bosoms; and so enjoy our pleasure with a clear and uninterrupted freedom. But if we could persuade ourselves into the utmost height of atheism, yet still we shall be under these two strange inconveniences : 1. That a life of sin will be still irregular and disorderly, and therefore troublesome: 2. That we shall have dismantled our souls of their greatest strength, and disarmed them of that faith which can only support them under the afflictions of this present life.'

N° 64. MONDAY, MAY 25, 1713.

-Levium spectacula rerum.

VIRG. Georg. iv. ver. 3.

Trifles set out to shew.

I AM told by several persons whom I have taken into my ward, that it is to their great damage I have digressed so much of late from the natural course of my precautions. They have addressed and petitioned me with appellations and titles, which admonish me to be that sort of patron which they want me to be, as follows.

TO NESTOR IRONSIDE, ESQ.

• Patron of the industrious.

The humble petition of John Longbottom, Charles Lilly, Bat. Pidgeon, and J. Norwood, capital artificers, most humbly sheweth,

‹ THAT your petitioners behold with great sorrow, your honour employing your important moments in remedying matters which nothing but time can cure, and which do not so immediately, or at least so professedly, appertain to your office, as do the concerns of us your petitioners, and other handicraft persons, who excel in their different and respective dexterities.

That as all mechanics are employed in accommodating the dwellings, clothing the persons, or

preparing the diet of mankind, your petitioners ought to be placed first in your guardianship, as being useful in a degree superior to all other workmen, and as being wholly conversant in clearing and adorning the head of man.

6

That the said Longbottom, above all the rest of mankind, is skilful in taking off that horrid excrescence on the chins of all males, and casting, by the touch of his hand, a chearfulness where that excrescence grew; an art known only to this your

artificer.

That Charles Lilly prepares snuff, and perfumes, which refresh the brain in those that have too much for their quiet, and gladdens it in those who have 'too little to know their want of it.

That Bat. Pidgeon cuts the luxuriant locks growing from the upper part of the head, in so artful a manner, with regard to the visage, that he makes the ringlets, falling by the temples, conspire with the brows and lashes of the eye, to heighten the expressions of modesty and intimations of goodwill, which are most infallibly communicated by ocular glances.

That J. Norwood forms periwigs with respect to particular persons and visages, on the same plan that Bat. Pidgeon corrects natural hair; that he has a strict regard to the climate under which his customer was born, before he pretends to cover his head; that no part of his wig is composed of hair which grew above twenty miles from the buyer's place of nativity; that the very neck-lock grew in the same country, and all the hair to the face in the very parish where he was born.

That these your cephalic operators humbly intreat your more frequent attention to the mechanic arts, and that you would place your petitioners at

the head of the family of cosmetics, and your petitioners shall ever pray, &c.'

• TO NESTOR IRONSIDE, ESQ.

Guardian of good fame.

The memorial of Esau Ringwood sheweth,

THAT though nymphs and shepherds, sonnets and complaints, are no more to be seen or heard in the forests and chases of Great Britain, yet are not the huntsmen who now frequent the woods so barbarous as represented in the Guardian of the twenty-first instant; that the knife is not presented to the lady of quality by the huntsman to cut the throat of the deer; but after he is killed, that instrument is given her, as the animal is now become food, in token that all our labour, joy, and exultation in the pursuit, were excited from the sole hope of making the stag an offering to her table; that your honour has detracted from the humanity of sportsmen in this representation; that they demand you would retract your error, and distinguish Britons from Scythians.

The humble petition of Susanna How-d'ye-call most humbly sheweth,

THAT your petitioner is mentioned at all visits, with an account of facts done by her, of speeches she has made, and of journeys she has taken, to all which circumstances your petitioner is wholly a stranger; that in every family in Great Britain,