no means lessened, when he found the convent to which Clelia had given the preference before all others, was one where this young friar supplied a confessional chair.

It happened that Leander was brought to the abbess in the capacity of a physician, and he had one more opportunity offered him of beholding Clelia through the grate.

She, quite shocked at his appearance, burst out into a sudden rage, inveighing bitterly against his presumption, and calling loudly on the name of the blessed virgin and the holy friar. The convent was, in short, alarmed; nor was Clelia capable of being pacified, till the good man was called, in order to allay, by suitable applications, the emotions raised by this unexpected interview.

Leander grew daily more convinced, that it was not only verbal communications which passed between Clelia and the friar: this, however, he did not think himself fully warranted to disclose, till an accident of a singular nature, gave him an opportunity of receiving more ample testimony.

The confessor had a favourite spaniel, which he had lost for some time, and was informed at length that he was killed at a village in the neighbourhood, being evidently mad. The friar was at first not much concerned; but in a little time recollected that the dog had snapped his fingers the very day before his elopement. A physician's advice was thought expedient on the occasion, and Leander was the next physician. He told him, with great frankness, that no prescription he could write, had the sanction of so much experience as immersion in sea water: the friar, therefore, the next day,

set forward upon his journey; while Leander, not without a mischievous kind of satisfaction, conveys the following lines to Clelia :

66 MY CHARMING CLELIA, "THOUGH I yet love you to distraction, I cannot but suspect that you have granted favours to your confessor, which you might, with greater innocence, have granted to Leander. All I have to add is this, that amorous intercourses of this nature, which you have enjoyed with Friar Laurence, put you under the like necessity with him of seeking a remedy in the ocean.

"Adieu! LEANDER !"

Imagine Clelia guilty; and then imagine her confusion. To rail was insignificant, and to blame her physician was absurd, when she found herself under a necessity of pursuing his advice. The whole society was made acquainted with the journey she was undertaking, and the causes of it. It were uncharitable to suppose the whole community uuder the same constraint with the unhappy Clelia. However, the greater part thought it decent to attend her some went as her companions, some for exercise, some for amusement, and the abbess herself as guardian of her train, and concerned in her society's misfortunes.

What use Leander made of his discovery is not known. Perhaps, when he had been successful in banishing the hypocrite, he did not show himself very solicitous in his endeavours to reform the sinner.

N.B. Written when I went to be dipped in the salt water.

HISTORY preserves the memory of empires and of states, with which it necessarily interweaves that of heroes, kings, and statesmen. Biography affords a place to the remarkable characters of private men. There are likewise other subordinate testimonies, which serve to perpetuate, at least prolong, the memories of men, whose characters and stations give them no claim to a place in story. For instance, when a person fails of making that figure in the world which he makes in the eyes of his own relations or himself, he is rarely dignified any farther than with his picture whilst he is living, or with an inscription upon his monument after his decease. Inscriptions have been so fallacious, that we begin to expect little from them beside elegance of style. To inveigh against the writers, for their manifest want of truth, were as absurd as to censure Homer for the beauties of an imaginary character. But even paintings, in order to gratify the vanity of the person who bespeaks them, are taught, now-a-days, to flatter like epitaphs.

Falsehoods upon a tomb or monument may be entitled to some excuse, in the affection, the gratitude, and piety, of surviving friends. Even grief itself disposes us to magnify the virtues of a relation, as visible objects also appear larger through tears. But the man who, through an idle vanity, suffers his features to be belied or exchanged for others of a more agreeable make, may, with great truth, be said to lose his property in the portrait: in like manner, if he encourage the painter to belie his dress,

he seems to transfer his claims to the man with whose station his assumed trappings are connected.

I remember a bag-piper, whose physiognomy was so remarkable and familiar to a club he attended, that it was agreed to have his picture placed over their chimney-piece. There was this remarkable in the fellow, that he chose always to go barefoot, though he was daily offered a pair of shoes. However, when the painter had been so exact as to omit this little piece of dress, the fellow offered all he had in the world, the whole produce of three nights' harmony, to have those feet covered in the effigy, which he so much scorned to cover in the original. Perhaps he thought it a disgrace to his instrument to be eternized in the hands of so much apparent poverty. However, when a person of low station adorns himself with trophies to which he has no pretensions to aspire, he should consider the picture as actually telling a lie to posterity.

The absurdity of this is evident, if a person assume to himself a mitre, a blue garter, or a coronet, improperly; but station may be falsified by other decorations, as well as these.

But I am driven into this grave discourse, on a subject perhaps not very important, by a real fit of spleen. I this morning saw a fellow drawn in a night-gown of so rich a stuff, that the expense, had he purchased such a one, would more than half have ruined him; and another coxcomb, seated by his. painter in a velvet chair, who would have been surprised at the deference paid him, had he been offered a cushion.

XVII. AN ADVENTURE.

Auricula.".

Gaudent prænomine molles

It is a very convenient piece of knowledge for a person upon a journey, to know the compellations with which it is proper to address those he happens to meet by his way. Some accuracy here may be of use to him, who would be well directed either in the length or the tendency of his road, or be freed from any itinerary difficulties incident to those who do not know the country. It may not be indeed imprudent to accost a passenger with a title superior to what he may appear to claim: this will seldom fail to diffuse a wonderful alacrity in his countenance, and be, perhaps, a method of securing you from any mistake of greater import

ance.

I was led into these observations by some solicitudes I lately underwent, on account of my ignorance in these peculiarities. Being somewhat more versed in books than I can pretend to be in the orders of men, it was my fortune to undertake a journey, which I was to perform by means of inquiries. I had passed a number of miles without any sort of difficulty, by help of the manifold instructions that had been given me on my setting out at length, being something dubious concerning my way, I met a person, whom, from his nightcap and several domestic parts of dress, I deemed to be of the neighbourhood. His station of life appeared to me, to be what we call a gentleman