I shall omit no endeavours to render their per- | see a pen that has been long employed in writsons as despicable, and their practices as odious, in the eye of the world, as they deserve.

'It is the unanimous opinion of our whole society, that since the race of mankind is granted to have decreased in stature from the beginning to this present, it is the intent of nature itself, that men should be little; and we beWe therefore proceeded to fit up the club-lieve that all human kind shall at last grow room, and provide conveniences for our accom- down to perfection, that is to say, be reduced to modation. In the first place we caused a total our own measure. I am, very literally, your removal of all the chairs, stools, and tables, which humble servant, BOB SHORT.' had served the gross of mankind for many years. The disadvantages we had undergone while we made use of these, were unspeakable. The president's whole body was sunk in the elbow chair: and when his arms were spread over it, he appeared (to the great lessening of his dignity) like a child in a go-cart. It was also so wide in the seat, as to give a wag occasion of saying, that notwithstanding the presi dent sat in it, it was a sede vacante.

already acquainted with the nature and design | like a fly that the boys have run a pin through of our institution; the characters of the mem-and set a walking. He once challenged a tall bers, and the topics of our conversation, are fellow for giving him a blow on the pate with what remain for the subject of this epistle. his elbow as he passed along the street. But The most eminent persons of our assembly what he especially values himself upon is, that are, a little poet, a little lover, a little politician, in all the campaigns he has made, he never and a little hero. The first of these, Dick Dis. once ducked at the whiz of a cannon-ball. Tim tich by name, we have elected president, not was full as large at fourteen years old as he is only as he is the shortest of us all, but because now. This we are tender of mentioning, your he has entertained so just a sense of the stature, little heroes being generally choleric. as to go generally in black, that he may appear yet less. Nay, to that perfection is he arrived, that he stoops as he walks. The figure of the man is odd enough: he is a lively little creature, with long arms and legs: a spider is no ill emblem of him. He has been taken at a distance for a small windmill. But indeed what principally moved us in his favour was his talent in poetry, for he hath promised to undertake a long work in short verse to celebrate the heroes of our size. He has entertained so great a respect for Statius, on the score of that line,

46

'Major in exiguo regnabat corpore virtus." "A larger portion of heroic fire

Did his small limbs and little breast inspire" that he once designed to translate the whole Thebaid for the sake of little Tydens.

These are the gentlemen that most enliven our conversation. The discourse generally turns upon such accidents, whether fortunate or unfortunate, as are daily occasioned by our size. These we faithfully communicate, either as matter of mirth, or of consolation to each other. The president had lately an unlucky fall, being unable to keep his legs on a stormy day; whereupon he informed us, it was no new disaster, but the same a certain ancient poet had been subject to, who is recorded to have been so light, that he was obliged to poise himself against the wind with lead on one side and his own works on the other. The lover confessed the other night that he had been cured of love to a tall woman by reading over the legend of Ragotine in Scarron, with his tea, three mornings suc cessively. Our hero rarely acquaints us with "Tom Tiptoe, a dapper black fellow, is the any of his unsuccessful adventures. And as most gallant lover of the age. He is particu-for the politician, he declares himself an utter larly nice in his habiliments; and to the end justice may be done him that way, constantly employs the same artist who makes attire for the neighbouring princes and ladies of quality at Mr. Powel's. The vivacity of his temper inclines him sometimes to boast of the favours of the fair. He was the other night excusing his absence from the club upon account of an assignation with a lady, (and, as he had the vanity to tell us, a tall one too) who had consented to the full accomplishment of his desires that evening; but one of the company, who was his confidant, assured us she was a woman of humour, and made the agreement on this condition, that his toe should be tied to

hers.

enemy to all kind of burlesque, so will never discompose the austerity of his aspect by laughing at our adventures, much less discover any of his own in this ludicrous light. Whatever he tells of any accidents that befall him, is by way of complaint, nor is he to be laughed at, but in his absence.

"We are likewise particularly careful to com municate in the club all such passages of history, or characters of illustrious personages, as any way reflect honour on little men. Tim Tuck having but just reading enough for a military man, perpetually entertains us with the same stories, of little David, that conquered the mighty Goliah, and little Luxembourg, that made Louis XIV. a grand monarque, never for'Our politician is a person of real gravity, getting little Alexander the Great. Dick Disand professed wisdom. Gravity in a man of tich celebrates the exceeding humanity of this size, compared with that of one of ordinary Augustus, who called Horace Lepidissimum bulk, appears like the gravity of a cat compared Homunciolum; and is wonderfully pleased with with that of a lion. This gentleman is accus-Voiture and Scarron, for having so well detomed to talk to himself, and was once overheard scribed their diminutive forms to all posterity. to compare his own person to a little cabinet, He is peremptorily of opinion, against a great wherein are locked up all the secrets of state, reader, and all his adherents, that Æsop was and refined schemes of princes. His face is not a jot properer or handsomer than he is repale and meagre, which proceeds from much presented by the common pictures. But the watching and studying for the welfare of Eu- soldier believes with the learned person above. rope, which is also thought to have stinted his mentioned; for he thinks, none but an impudent growth: for he hath destroyed his own consti- tall author could be guilty of such an unmantution with taking care of that of the nation.nerly piece of satire on little warriors, as his He is what Mons. Balzac calls "a great distiller of the maxims of Tacitus." When he speaks, it is slowly, and word by word, as one that is loth to enrich you too fast with his observations: like a limbec, that gives you, drop by drop, an extract of the simples in it.

The last I shall mention is Tim Tuck, the hero. He is particularly remarkable for the length of his sword, which intersects his person in a cross line, and makes him appcar not un

battle of the mouse and the frog. The politician is very proud of a certain king of Egypt, called Bocchior, who, as Diodorus assures us, was a person of very low stature, but far exceeded all that went before him in discretion and politics.

'As I am secretary to the club, it is my business whenever we meet to take minutes of the transactions. This has enabled me to send you the foregoing particulars, as I may hereafter other memoirs. We have spics appointed in

every quarter of the town, to give us informations of the misbehaviour of such refractory persons as refuse to be subject to our statutes. Whatsoever aspiring practices any of these our people shall be guilty of in their amours, single combats, or any indirect means to manhood, we shall certainly be acquainted with, and publish to the world for their punishment and reformation. For the president has granted me the sole property of exposing and showing to the town all such intractable dwarfs, whose circumstances exempt them from being carried about in boxes; reserving only to himself, as the right of a poet, those smart characters that will shine in epigrams. Venerable Nestor, I salute you in the name of the club.

"By no means think, therefore, my dear friends, when I shall have quitted you, that I cease to be, or shall subsist no where. Remember that while we live together, you do not see my mind, and yet are sure that I have one actuating and moving my body; doubt not then but that this same mind will have a being when it is separated, though you cannot then perceive its actions. What nonsense would it be to pay those honours to great men after their deaths, which we constantly do, if their souls did not then subsist? For my own part, I could never imagine that our minds live only when united to bodies, and die when they leave them; or that they shall cease to think and understand when disengaged from bodics, which, without them, have neither sense nor reason: on the contrary, I believe the soul when separated from matter, to enjoy the greatest purity and simplicity of its nature, and to have much more wisdom and light than while it was united. We see when the body dies what becomes of all the parts which composed it; but we do not see the mind, either in the body, or when it leaves it. Nothing more resembles death than sleep, and it is in that state that the soul chiefly shows it has something divine in its nature. How much more then must it show it when entirely disengaged?"

To the Author of the Guardian. 'SIR,-Since you have not refused to insert matters of a theological nature in those excellent papers with which you daily both instruct and divert us, I earnestly desire you to print the following paper. The notions therein advanced are, for aught I know, new to the English reader, and if they are true, will afford room for many useful inferences.

'No man that reads the evangelists, but must observe that our blessed Saviour does upon every occasion bend all his force and zeal to rebuke and correct the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Upon that subject he shows a warmth which one meets with in no ether part of his sermons. They were so enraged at this public detection of their secret villanies, by one who saw through all their disguises, that they joined in the prosecution of him, which was so vigorous, that Pilate at last consented to his death. The frequency and vehemence of these representations

"I cannot, my friends, forbear letting you know what I think of death; for methinks I view and understand it much better, the nearer I approach to it. I am convinced that your fathers, those illustrious persons whom I so much loved and honoured, do not cease to live, though they have passed through what we call death; they are undoubtedly still living, but it is that sort of life which alone deserves truly to be called life. In effect, while we are confined to bodies, we ought to esteem ourselves no other than a sort of galley-slaves at the chain, since the soul, which is somewhat divine, and descends from heaven as the place of its original, seems debased and dishonoured by the mixture with flesh and blood, and to be in a state of banishment from its celestial country. I cannot help thinking too, that one main reason of unit-of our Lord, have made the word Pharisee to be ing souls to bodies was, that the great work of the universe might have spectators to admire the beautiful order of nature, the regular motion of heavenly bodies, who should strive to express that regularity in the uniformity of their lives. When I consider the boundless activity of our minds, the remembrance we have of things past, our foresight of what is to come; when I reflect on the noble discoveries and vast improvements, by which these minds have ad-actions of our Lord in the four evangelists. One vanced arts and sciences; I am entirely per- of them, St. Luke, continued his history down suaded, and out of all doubt that a nature which in a second part, which we commonly call The has in itself a fund of so many excellent things Acts of the Apostles. Now it is observable, cannot possibly be mortal. I observe further, that in this second part, in which he gives a that my mind is altogether simple, without the particular account of what the apostles did and mixture of any substance or nature different suffered at Jerusalem upon their first entering from its own; I conclude from thence that it upon their commission, and also of what St. Paul is indivisible, and consequently cannot perish. I did after he was consecrated to the apostleship

looked upon as odious among Christians, and to mean only one who lays the utmost stress upon the outward, ceremonial, and ritual part of his religion, without having such an inward sense of it, as would lead him to a general and sincere observance of those duties which can only arise from the heart, and which cannot be supposed to spring from a desire of applause or profit.

This is plain from the history of the life and

until his journey to Rome, we find not only no | Sadducees pursuing St. Paul even to death at opposition to Christianity from the Pharisees, his coming to Jerusalem, in the twenty-first of but several signal occasions in which they as- the Acts. Ile then, upon all occasions, owned sisted its first teachers, when the Christian himself to be a Pharisee. In the twenty-second church was in its infant state. The true, zea-chapter he told the people, that he had been bred lous, and hearty persecutors of Christianity at up at the feet of Gamaliel after the strictest that time were the Sadducees, whom we may manner, in the law of his fathers. In the twentruly call the free-thinkers among the Jews. ty-third chapter he told the council that he was They believed neither resurrection, nor angel, a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee, and that he nor spirit, i. e. in plain English, they were was accused for asserting the hope and resurdeists at least, if not atheists. They could out-rection of the dead, which was their darling wardly comply with, and conform to the esta- doctrine. Hereupon the Pharisees stood by blishment in church and state, and they pre- him, and though they did not own our Saviour tended, forsooth, to belong only to a particular to be the Messiah, yet they would not deny but sect; and because there was nothing in the law some angel or spirit might have spoken to him, of Moses which in so many words asserted a and then if they opposed him, they should fight resurrection, they appeared to adhere to that in against God. This was the very argument a particular manner beyond any other part of Gamaliel had used before. The resurrection the Old Testament. These unen, therefore, justly of our Lord, which they saw so strenuously dreaded the spreading of Christianity after the asserted by the apostles, whose miracles they ascension of our Lord, because it was wholly also saw and owned, (Acts iv. 16,) seems to founded upon his resurrection. have struck them, and many of them were converted (Acts xv. 5,) even without a miracle, and the rest stood still and made no opposition.

'Accordingly, therefore, when Peter and John had cured the fame man at the beautiful gate of the temple, and had thereby raised a wonderful expectation of themselves among the people, the priests and Sadducees, (Acts iv,) clapt them up, and sent them away for the first time with a severe reprimand. Quickly after, when the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, and the many miracles wrought after those severe instances of the apostolical power had alarmed the priests, who looked upon the temple-worship, and consequently their bread, to be struck at; these priests, and all they that were with them, who were of the sect of the Sadducees, imprisoned the apostles, intending to examine thein in the great council the next day. Where, when the council met, and the priests and Sadducees proposed to proceed with great rigour against them, we find that Gamaliel, a very eminent Pharisce, Saint Paul's master, a man of great authority among the people, many of whose determinations we have still preserved in the body of the Jewish traditions, commonly called the Talmud, opposed their heat, and told them, for aught they knew, the apostles might be actuated by the Spirit of God, and that in such a case it would be in vain to oppose them, since, if they did so, they would only fight against God, whom they could not overcome. Gamaliel was so considerable a man among his own sect, that we may reasonably believe he spoke the sense of his party as well as his own. St. Stephen's martyrdom came on presently after, in which we do not find the Pharisees, as such, had any hand; it is probable that he was prosecuted by those who had before imprisoned Peter and John. One novice indeed of that sect was so zealous, that he kept the clothes of those that stoned him. This novice, whose zeal went beyond all bounds, was the great St. Paul, who was peculiarly honoured with a call from heaven, by which he was converted, and he was afterwards, by God himself, appointed to be the apostle of the Gentiles. Besides him, and him too reclaimed in so glorious a manner, we find no one Pharisee, either named or hinted at by St. Luke, as an opposer of Christianity in those earliest days. What thers might do we know not. But we find the

We see here what the part was, which the Pharisees acted in this important conjuncture. Of the Sadducees, we meet not with one in the whole apostolic history that was converted. We hear of no miracles wrought to convince any of them, though there was an eminent one wrought to reclaim a Pharisee. St. Paul we see, after his conversion, always gloried in his having been bred a Pharisee. He did so to the people of Jerusalem, to the great council, to king Agrippa, and to the Philippians. So that from hence we may justly infer, that it was not their institution, which was in itself laudable, which our blessed Saviour found fault with, but it was their hypocrisy, their covetousness, their op pression, their overvaluing themselves upon their zeal for the ceremonial law, and their adding to that yoke by their traditions, all which were not properly essentials of their institution, that our Lord blamed.

But I must not run on. What I would observe, sir, is that atheism is more dreadful, and would be more grievous to human society, if it were invested with sufficient power, than religion under any shape, where its professors do at the bottom believe what they profess. I despair not of a papist's conversion, though I would not willingly lie at a zealot papist's mercy, (and no protestant would, if he knew what popery is) though he truly believes in our Saviour. But the free-thinker, who scarcely believes there is a God, and certainly disbelieves revelation, is a very terrible animal. He will talk of natural rights, and the just freedoms of mankind, no longer than until he himself gets into power; and by the instance before us, we have small grounds to hope for his salvation, or that God will ever vouchsafe him sufficient grace to reclaim him from errors, which have been so immediately levelled against himself.

'If these notions be true, as I verily believe they are, I thought they might be worth publishing at this time, for which reason they are sent in this manner to you by, sir, your most humble servant,

'M. N.'