jufted in your Life-Time; but I hope your Affection to your MOTHER will not make you partial to your AUNT. TO tell you, Sir, my own Opinion: Tho' I cannot find any ancient Records of any Acts of the SOCIETY OF THE UGLY FACE s, confidered in a publick Capacity; yet in a private one they have certainly Antiquity on their Side. I am perfwaded they will hardly give Place to the LowNGERS, and the LowNGER Sare of the fame Standing with the University it self.

THO' we well know, Sir, you want no Motives to do Juftice, yet I am commiffioned to tell you, that you are invited to be admitted ad eundem at CAMBRIDGE; and I believe I may venture fafely to deliver this as the Wifh of our whole University.

To Mr. SPECTATOR.

The humble Petition of WHO and WHICH, Sheweth,

ΤΗ

HAT your Petitioners being in a forlorn and deftitute Condition, know not to whom we fhould apply our felves for Relief, because there is hardly any Man alive who hath not injured us. Nay we fpeak it with Sorrow, even You your felf, whom we should fufpect of fuch a Practice the laft of all Mankind, can hardly acquit your felf of having given us fome Caufe of Complaint. We are defcended of ancient Families, and kept up our Dignity and Honour many Years, till the Jackfprat THAT fupplanted us. How often have we found our felves flighted by the Clergy in their Pulpits, and the Lawyers at the Bar? Nay, how often have we heard in one of the most polite and auguft Affemblies in the Univerfe, to our great Mortification, thefe Words, That "THAT that noble L durged; which if one of us had had Justice done, would have founded nobler thus, That • WHICH that noble Ld urged. Senates themselves, the Guardians of British Liberty, have degraded us, and preferred THAT to us; and yet no Decree was ever given against us. In the very Acts of Parliament, in which the utmost Right fhould be done to every Body, WORD, and Thing, we find our felves often either not ufed, or ufed one instead of another. In the first and best Prayer Children are taught they learn to misuse us: Our Father

Father WHICH art in Heaven, fhould be, Our Father WHO art in Heaven; and even a CONVOCATION, after long Debates, refused to confent to an Alteration of it. In our general Confeffion we fay,-----Spare Thou them, O God, WHICH confefs their Faults, which ought to be, WHO confefs their Faults. What Hopes then have we of having Juftice done us, when the Makers of our very Prayers and Laws, and the most learned in all Faculties, feem to be in a Confederacy against us, and our Enemies themselves must be our Judges,

.

THE Spanish Proverb fays, Il fabio muda confcio, il necio no; i. e. A wife Man changes his Mind, a Fool never will. So that we think You, Sir, a very proper Person to addrefs to, fince we know you to be capable of being convinced, and changing your Judgment. You are well able to fettle this Affair, and to you we fubmit our Cause. We defire you to affign the Butts and Bounds of each of us; and that for the future we may both enjoy cur own. We would defire to be heard by our Council, but that "we fear in their very Pleadings they would betray our 'Cause: Befides, we have been oppreffed fo many Years, that we can appear no other way, but in forma pauperis. All which confidered, we hope you will be pleased to do that which to Right and Juftice fhall appertain.

R

N° 79.

I

And your Petitioners, &c.

Thursday, May 31.

Oderunt peccare boni virtutis amore.

Hor.

Have received very many Letters of late from my Female Correspondents, most of whom are very angry with me for Abridging their Pleasures, and looking feverely upon Things, in themfelves indifferent. But I think they are extreamly Unjuft to me in this Imputation: All that I contend for is, that thofe Excellencies which are to be regarded but in the fecond Place, fhould not precede more weighty Confiderations. The Heart of Man deceives him in fpite of the Lectures of half a Life fpent in Difcourfes on the Subjection of Paffion; and I do not know why one may not think the Heart of Wo

man

man as Unfaithful to it felf. If we grant an Equality in the Faculties of both Sexes, the Minds of Women are lefs cultivated with Precepts, and confequently may, without Difrefpect to them, be accounted more liable to Illufion in Cafes wherein natural Inclination is out of the Interests of Virtue. I fhall take up my present Time in Commenting upon a Billet or two which came from Ladies, and from thence leave the Reader to judge whether I am in the right or not, in thinking it is poffible Fine Women may be mistaken.

THE following Addrefs feems to have no other Defign in it, but to tell me the Writer will do what the pleases for all me.

Mr. SPECTATOR,

I

Am Young, and very much inclined to follow the Paths of Innocence; but at the fame time, as I have a plentiful Fortune, and am of Quality, I am unwilling to refign the Pleafures of Distinction, fome lit⚫tle Satisfaction in being Admired in general, and much greater in being beloved by a Gentleman, whom I defign to make my Husband. But I have a Mind to put off entring into Matrimony till another Winter is over my Head, which (whatever, mufty Sir, you may think

of the Matter) I defign to pass away in hearing Mufick, going to Plays, Vifiting, and all other Satisfactions which Fortune and Youth, protected by Innocence and Virtue, can procure for,

SIR, Your most humble Servant,

M. T.

• MY Lover does not know I like him, therefore having no Engagements upon me, I think to stay and know whether I may not like any one elfe better.

I have heard WILL. HONEYCOMB fay, A Woman feldom writes her Mind but in her Poftfcript. I think this Gentlewoman has fufficiently difcovered hers in this. I'll lay what Wager fhe pleases against her prefent Favourite; and can tell her that he will Like Ten more before she is fixed, and then will take the worft Man fhe ever liked in her Life. There is no end of Affection taken in at the Eyes only; and you may as well fatisfie thofe Eyes with feeing, as controul any Paffion received by them

only,

only. It is from Loving by Sight that Coxcombs fo fre quently fucceed with Women, and very often a Young Lady is bestowed by her Parents to a Man who weds her (as Innocence it felf,) tho' fhe has, in her own Heart, given her Approbation of a different Man in every Affembly she was in the whole Year before. What is wanting among Women, as well as among Men, is the Love of laudable Things, and not to rest only in the Forbearance of fuch as are Reproachful.

HOW far removed from a Woman of this light Imagination is Eudofia! Eudofia has all the Arts of Life and good Breeding with so much Ease, that the Virtue of her Conduct looks more like an Instinct than Choice. It is as little difficult toher to think justly of Perfons and Things, as it is to a Woman of different Accomplishments, to move ill or look aukward. That which was, at first, the Effect of Inftruction, is grown into an Habit; and it would be as hard for Eudofia to indulge a wrong Suggeftion of Thought, as it would be to Flavia, the fine Dancer, to come into a Room with an unbecoming Air.

BUT the Misapprehenfions People themselves have of their own State of Mind, is laid down with much discerning in the following Letter, which is but an Extract of a kind Epiftle from my Charming Mistress Hecatiffa, who is above the Vanity of external Beauty, and is the better Judge of the Perfections of the Mind.

Mr SPECTATOR,

:I

Write this to acquaint you, that very many Ladies, as well as my felf, fpend many Hours more than we used at the Glafs, for want of the Female Library of which you promifed us a Catalogue. I hope, Sir, in the Choice of Authors for us, you will have a parti 'cular Regard to Books of Devotion. What they are, and how many, must be your chief Care; for upon the Propriety of fuch Writings depends a great deal. I have known those among us who think, if they every Morn⚫ing and Evening spend an Hour, in their Clofet, and read over fo many Prayers in fix or feven Books of Devotion, all equally nonfenfical, with a fort of Warmth, (that might as well be railed by a Glafs of Wine, or a Drachm of Citron) they may all the rest of their time

: go

go on in whatever their particular Paffion leads them to. The Beauteous Philautia, who is (in your Language) an Idol, is one of these Votaries; fhe has a very pretty furnished Clofet, to which she retires at her appointed Hours: This is her Dreffing-room, as well as Chappel? fhe has conftantly before her a large Looking-glafs, and upon the Table, according to a very Witty Author, Together lye her Prayer-Book and Paint,

At once t'improve the Sinner and the Saint.

IT must be a good Scene, if one could be present at it, to fee this Idel by turns lift up her Eyes to Heaven, and fteal Glances at her own dear Perfon.

It cannot

but be a pleasant Conflict between Vanity and Humiliation. When you are upon this Subject, chufe Books which elevate the Mind above the World, and give a pleafing Indifference to little things in it. For want of fuch Inftructions, I am apt to believe fo many People take it in their Heads to be fullen, crofs and angry, under Pretence of being abftracted from the Affairs of this Life, when at the fame time they betray their Fondness for them by doing their Duty as a Task, and pouting and reading good Books for a Week together, Much of this I take to proceed from the Indiscretion of the • Books themselves, whofe very Titles of Weekly Preparations, and fuch limited Godlinefs, lead People of ordinary Capacities into great Errors, and raife in them a Mechanical Religion, intirely diftinct from Morality. I know a Lady fo given up to this fort of Devotion, that tho' fhe employs fix or eight Hours of the twentyfour at Cards, the never miffes one conftant Hour of Prayer, for which time another holds her Cards, to which fhe returns with no little Anxiousness till two or three in the Morning. All these Acts are but empty Shows, and, as it were, Compliments made to Virtue; the Mind is all the while untouched with any true Pleasure in the Purfuit of it. From hence I prefume it arifes that fo many People call themselves Virtuous, from no other Pretence to it but an Abfence of Ill. There is Dulcianara is the most infolent of all Creatures to her Friends and Domesticks, upon no other Pretence in Nature but that (as her filly Phrafe is) no one can fay Black is her Eye, She has no Secrets, forfooth, which fhould