home, that you are obliged to sit down undressed to a spoilt dinner with a family out of humour. The Captious Visitor

If the weather be too hot, or too cold for him; if it be windy or showery; if he has slept ill the night before; if he is hungry or sick; if he is tired or sore; if he has lost a bett upon the road; if he has quarrelled with his friend; if he has been rebuked by his wife; or in short, if any thing has offended him, he is sure to take his revenge in full, by finding fault with every thing that was designed for his entertainment. In this disposition of mind, there is nothing safe but the shady gravel walk, with the few plain and necessary resting places, which leads to the undisguised farm, or the navigable river.

HE will be sure to allow you no postulatum. He absolutely denies the existence of hermits, mandarins, and the whole heathen system of divinities. He disputes the antiquity of your ruin, and the genuineness of your hermitage: nay, he will descend to cavil at the bell with which the hermit is supposed to ring himself to prayers. He is so cruel as to controvert your supposition that the new-made water is a river, though he knows it must have cost you an immense sum, and that it covers the richest meadow-ground you are master of. He leads the company to every sunk fence which you chuse should be unobserved. If he suspects a building to be new-fronted, he finds out a private way to the decayed side of it; happy if he can discover it to have been a stable or a pigstye. His report of your place, after he has left it, is exactly of a piece with his behaviour, while

there. He either describes it as a bog that will not bear a horse, or as a sand that cannot produce a blade of grass. If he finds in reality neither bog nor barren sand, his wishes supply his belief, and he labours to persuade himself and others that one of these defects is the characteristic of your soil, but that you hate to be told of it, and always deny it.

ÓNE cannot but admire his ingenuity in particular cases, where it has been judged impossible to find a fault. If you lead him to a knowl of uncommon verdure varied with the fortunate disposition of old oaks, commanding the most rural scenes, and, at a proper distance, the view of a large city, he shrugs up his shoulders and tells you it wants water. If your principal object be a lake, he will strain a point to report it green and stagnated; or else take the advantage of a thunderstorm to pronounce it white or yellow. If you have a stream, he laments the frequency of floods; if a tide-river, the smell of mud at low-water. He detects your painted cascade, misconstrues your inscriptions, and puns upon your motto's. Within doors he doubts if your pictures are originals, and expresses his apprehensions that your statues will bring the house down.

As I wish most sincerely to reconcile these gentlemen to each other, I shall recommend to the IMPROVER the example of a particular friend of mine. It is said in Milton, that before the angel disclosed to Adam the prospect from the hill in paradise, he

purg'd with euphrasy and rue

His visual nerve, for he had much to see:

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385

so this gentleman (borrowing the hint from Milton, but preferring a more modern ophthalmic) upon the arrival of his VISITORS, takes care to purge their visual nerves with a sufficient quantity of CHAMPAGNE; after which, he assures me, they never SEE a fault in his IMPROVEMENTS.

ANONYMOUS

One who is never pleased

ARACHNE has accustomed herself to look only on the dark side of every object. If a new poem or play makes its appearance, with a thousand brilliances, and but one or two blemishes, she slightly skims over the passages that should give her pleasure, and dwells upon those only that fill her with dislike. If you shew her a very excellent portrait, she looks at some part of the drapery which has been neglected, or to a hand or finger that has been left unfinished. Her garden is a very beautiful one, and kept with great neatness and elegancy; but if you take a walk with her in it, she talks to you of nothing but blights and storms, of snails and caterpillars, and how impossible it is to keep it from the litter of falling leaves and worm-casts. If you sit down in one of her temples, to enjoy a delightful prospect, she observes to you, that there is too much wood, or too little water; that the day is too sunny, or too gloomy; that it is sultry, or windy; and finishes with a long harangue upon the wretchedness of our climate. When you return with her to the company, in hopes of a little cheerful conversation, she casts a gloom over all, by giving you the history of her

own bad health, or of some melancholy accident that has befallen one of her daughter's children. Thus she insensibly sinks her own spirits, and the spirits of all around her, and at last discovers, she knows not why, that her friends are grave.

ANONYMOUS

By con

One who looks on the bright side MELISSA is the reverse of all this. stantly habituating herself to look only on the bright side of objects, she preserves a perpetual cheerfulness in herself, which by a kind of happy contagion, she communicates to all about her. If any misfortune has befallen her, she considers it might have been worse, and is thankful to providence for an escape. She rejoices in solitude, as it gives her an opportunity of knowing herself; and in society, because she can communicate the happiness she enjoys. She opposes every man's virtues to his failings, and can find out something to cherish and applaud in the very worst of her acquaintance. She opens every book with a desire to be entertained or instructed, and therefore seldom misses what she looks for. Walk with her, though it be but on a heath or a common, and she will discover numberless beauties, unobserved before, in the hills, the dales, the broom, the brakes, and the variagated flowers of weeds and poppies. She enjoys every change of weather and of season, as bringing with it something of health or convenience. In conversation it is a rule with her never to start a subject that leads to any thing gloomy or disagreeable; you therefore never hear

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her repeating her own grievances, or those of her neighbours, or (what is worst of all) their faults and imperfections. If any thing of the latter kind be mentioned in her hearing, she has the address to turn it into entertainment, by changing the most odious railing into a pleasant raillery. Thus Melissa, like the bee, gathers honey from every weed; while Arachne, like the spider, sucks poison from the fairest flowers.

MR. MOORE

One who teazes with Advice

ANOTHER good sort of a man is he, who upon every occasion, or upon no occasion at all, is teazing you with ADVICE. This gentleman is generally a very grave personage, who happening either to have out-lived his passions, or to have been formed without any, regulates all his actions by the rules of prudence. He visits you in a morning, and is sorry to hear you call those persons your friends who kept you at the King's-arms last night after the clock had struck twelve. He tells you of an acquaintance of his, of a hundred and two years old, who never was up after sun-setting, nor abed after sun-rising. He informs you of those meats which are easiest of digestion, prescribes watergruel for your breakfast, and harangues upon the poison of made dishes. He knows who caught a fever by going upon the water, and can tell you of a young lady who had the rheumatism in all her limbs by wearing an India persian in the middle of October. If at a jovial meeting of friends, you happen to have drank a single glass