fer them to the great Doctor Mandeville's fable of the Bees.

Among other enemies that have been encouraged to fall upon the gamester in his distress, is bigotry or religion; for I consider both these terms as expressions of the same idea. Bigotry then accuses us with exercising our employment on a Sunday; but this accusation is the effect of such complicated folly, ignorance, and malice, that it could have had no other author..... Not to insist that a gentleman is under no moral obligation to regard one day more than another, is he to be insulted for doing that which has a direct tendency to destroy luxury, root and branch, on a Sunday? Shall virtue, in this enlightened age, be given to ceremony? and patriotism be stigmatized as impiety? I have, on every other article, been able to keep my temper; but I can never bear the cant of bigotry with patience.

There is, however, another charge, which I shall not obviate as an imputation of profaneness, but of folly. It is said we utter the most horrid oaths and imprecations; that we invocate beings whom we do not believe to exist, and denounce curses that can never be fulfilled. This has indeed, been practised in our assemblies; but by those only who are novices in the profession; for among other advantages that arise from gaming, is such a silent acquiescence in the will of fortune, as would do honour to a stoick; or, at least, a calm philosophical immutability of countenance, by which all that passes in the bosom is concealed.

This acquisition, it must be confessed, requires some parts, and long practice: but there have been many il lustrious examples of it among us. A gentleman, my particular friend, who had the honour to be many years an eminent gamester, being without money, committed a robbery upon the highway to procure another stake, that he might return to his profession. It happened. unfortunately that he was taken; and though he had great interest with some persons that shall be nameless,

yet he was convicted and hanged. This gentleman's ill luck continued all the time that he was in gaol, so that he was compelled to dispose of his body to the surgeons, and lost the money to a friend who visited him in the cells, the night before execution. He appeared, however, next morning, with great composure; no reflection on the past, no anticipation of the future, caused him once to change countenance during his passage to the gallows; and though he was about to receive death from a greasy scoundrel, whom he knew once to have been a butcher; yet he swore but two oaths in the cart, and was so indifferent as to what should afterwards befall him, that he bravely refused to say Amen to the prayers.

If by your communication of these hints, the clamours of slander shall be silenced, and the true character of a Gamester shall be more generally known, I have secrets which may be communicated entre nous..... and the next dead set.....you understand me.....I am a man of honour, and you may command,

Sir, yours, &c

TIM. COGDIE.

No. XXX. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17.

Felices ter et amplius

Quos irrupta tenet copula: nec malis

Divulsus querimoniis

Suprema citius solvet amor die.

HOR.

Thrice happy they, in pure delights,

Whom Love with mutual bonds unites ;
Unbroken by complaints or strife,
And binding each to each for life.

FRANCIS.

THOUGH I devote this lucubration to the ladies, yet there are some parts of it which I hope will not be wholly useless to the gentlemen; and perhaps, both may expect to be addressed on a subject, which to both is of equal importance; especially after I have admitted the public recommendation of it by my correspondent Mr. Townly.

It has been universally allowed, and with great reason, that between persons who marry, there should be some degree of equality with respect to age and condition. Those who violate a known truth, deserve the infelicity they incur: I shall, therefore, only labour to preserve innocence by detecting error.

With the ladies it is a kind of general maxim, that "the best husband is a reformed Rake".....a maxim which they have probably derived from comedies and novels, in which such a husband is commonly the reward of female merit. But the belief of this maxim is an incontestible proof, that with the true character of a rake the ladies are wholly unacquainted. "They have," indeed, "heard of a wild young gentleman, who would rake about the town, and take up his lodging at a bagnio; who had told many a girl a pretty story, that

:

was fool enough to believe him; aud had a right to many a child that did not call him father. But that in some of these frolics he thought no harm and for others he had sufficiently suffered." But let the Adventurer be believed, those are words of dreadful import, and should always be thus understood:

"To rake about town, and lodge at a bagnio, is to associate with the vilest and most abandoned of human beings; it is to become familiar with blasphemy and lewdness, and frequently to sport with the most deplorable misery to tell pretty stories to credulous girls, is to deceive the simplicity of innocence by cunning and falsehood to be the father of a nameless progeny, is to desert those whose tears only can implore the protection, to which of all others they have the strongest and tenderest claim: it is more than to be a man without affection: it is to be a brute without instinct. To think no harm in some of these frolics, is to have worn out all sensibility of the difference between right and wrong; and to have suffered for others, is to have a body contaminated with diseases, which in some degree are certainly transmitted to posterity."

It is to be hoped, that the mere exhibition of this picture, will be sufficient to deter the Ladies from precluding happiness by marrying the original; and from discouraging virtue, by making vice necessary to the character which they prefer.

But they frequently act upon another principle, which, though not equally fatal and absurd, may yet produce great infelicity.

When the Rake is excluded, it will be generally supposed, that superior intellectual abilities ought always to determine the choice. "A man of fine sense," is indeed a character of great dignity; and the Ladies have always been advised to prefer this to every other, as it includes a capacity to bestow "that refined, exalted, and permanent felicity, which alone is worthy of a rational being." But I think it probable, that this

advice, however specious, has been often given for no other reason than because to give it flattered the vanity of the writer, who fondly believed he was drawing his own character, and exciting the envy and admiration of his readers. This advice, however, the ladies universally affect to approve, and probably for a similar reason; since every one imagines, That to hold intellectual excellence in high estimation, is to demonstrate that she possesses it.

As he that would persuade, should be scrupulously careful not to offend, I will not insinuate that there are any ladies by whom the peculiar beauties of an exalted understanding cannot be discerned, and who have not, therefore, a capacity for half the pleasure which it can bestow. And yet, I think, there is another excellence which is much more essential to conjugal felicity, Good-Nature.

I know that Good-Nature has, like Socrates, been ridiculed in the habit of Folly; and that Folly has been dignified by the name of Good-Nature. But by GoodNature, I do not mean that flexible imbecility of mind which complies with every request, and inclines a man at once to accompany an acquaintance to a brothel at the expence of his health, and to keep an equipage for a wife at the expense of his estate. Persons of this disposition have seldom more benevolence than fortitude, and frequently perpetrate deliberate cruelty.

In true Good-Nature, there is neither the acrimony of spleen, nor the sullenness of malice; it is neither clamorous nor fretful; neither easy to be offended, nor impatient to revenge. It is a tender sensibility, a participation of the pains and pleasures of others; and is, therefore, a forcible and constant motive to communicate happiness and alleviate misery.

As human nature is, from whatever cause, in a state of great imperfection, it is surely to be desired, that a person whom it is most our interest to please, should not see more of this imperfection than we do ourselves.