to the brother gardeners, you ought to know, that, as they are half vegetable, the animal part of them will never have spirit enough to consent to the transplanting of the vegetable into distant dangerous climates. They, happily for themselves, have no other idea, but to dig on here, eat, drink, and sleep.

As to more important business, I have nothing to write you, you know best the course of it. Be (as you always must be) just and honest; but if you are unhappily romantic, you shall come home without money, and write a tragedy on yourself. Mr. L. told me that the Grevilles and he had strongly recommended the person the governor and you had proposed for that considerable office, lately fallen vacant in your department, and that there were good hopes of succeeding. He told me also that Mr. P. had said, it was not to be expected that offices such as that is, for which the greatest interest is made here at home, could be accorded to your recommendation; but that as to the middling or inferior offices, if there was not some particular reason to the contrary, regard would be had thereto. This is all that can be reasonably desired. And if you are not infected with a certain Creolian distemper, (whereof I am persuaded your soul will utterly resist the contagion, as I hope your body will that of their natural ones) there are few men so capable of that imperishable happiness, that peace and satisfaction of mind, at least, that proceed from being reasonable and moderate in our desires, as you are. These are the treasures, dug from an inexhaustible mine in our own breasts, which, like those in the kingdom of heaven, the rust of time cannot corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. I must learn to work at this mine a little more, being struck off from a certain hundred pounds a year, which you know I had. West, Mallet and I, were all routed in one day. If you would know whyout of resentment to our friend in Argyle-street. Yet I have hopes given me of having it restored with interest, some time or other-ah! that some time or other is a great deceiver. Coriolanus had not yet appeared upon the stage, from the little dirty jealousy of

Tullus, towards him who alone can act Coriolanus. Indeed the first has entirely jockeyed the last off the stage for this season; but I believe he will return on him next season, like a giant in his wrath. Let us have a little more patience, Paterson; nay, let us be cheerful. At last all will be well; at least all will be over-here I mean: God forbid it should be hereafter. But as sure as there is a God, that will not be so. Now that I am prating of myself, know that after fourteen or fifteen years, the Castle of Indolence comes abroad in a fortnight. It will certainly travel as far as Barbadoes: you have an apart ment in it as a night pensioner, which you may remember I fitted up for you during our delightful party at North Ha. Will ever those days return again? Don't you remember our eating the raw fish that were never catched? All our friends are pretty much in statu quo, except it be poor Mr. Myttleton. He has had the severest trial a human tender heart can have; but the old physi cian, Time, will at last close up his wounds, though there must always remain an inward smarting. Mitchell is in the house for Aberdeenshire, and has spoken modestly well. I hope he will be in something else soon, none deserves better; true friendship and humanity dwell in his heart. Gray is working hard at passing his account: I spoke to him about that affair. If he gives you any trouble about it, even that of dunning, I shall think strangely, but I dare say he is too friendly to do it; he values himself justly on being friendly to his old friends, and you are among the oldest. Symmer is at last tired of quality, and is going to take a semicountry house at Hammersmith. I am sorry that honest, sensible Warrender, (who is in town) seems to be stunted in church preferment. He ought to be a tall cedar in the house of the Lord; if he is not so at last it will add more fuel to my indignation, that burns already too intensely, and throbs towards an eruption.

Peter Murdoch is in town, tutor to Admiral Vernon's son, and is in good hopes of another living in Suffolk, that country of tranquillity where he will then burrow himself in a wife, and be happy. Good-natured,

diet and exercise (so) changed, that the constitution of his body, or head rather, could not sustain it, and he fell into an apoplexy and palsy, which numbed his parts, and he never recovered the strength of them." This chief justice was selected for the express purpose of deciding against the liberties of the City of London, in the question of warrants.

GOVERNMENTS.

All governments stand either upon will or power, or condition and contract: the first rule by force, the second by the laws. All laws are either fundamental, and thus invariable, such as those for the punishment of robbery and murder, or temporary and alterable,such as those relating to trade, roads, &c. LETTER from the EARL OF BUCHAN to Mr. S. relative to THOMSONIANA. Dear Sir,-Mr. Cuthbert, of Ednam, shewed me, when I was last in London, two or three interesting letters of Thomson's, which would be an acquisition to

the editor of the Thomsoniana.

*

In the Kelso newspapers, and others, and in many of the periodical publications, there appeared,three or four years ago, a series of juvenile letters of Thomson, which may be fit for Thomsoniana; but I have not considered them with sufficient attention to say so with certainty. Mr.Sargent, of Sussex, son of Sargent the friend of Thomson, mentioned in the curious letter which I gave you some time since, is possessed of several letters from Thomson to his father, and of an original picture of the Poet, which was given by him to the said Sargent. The Poet is represented in dishabille, but with a green velvet night-cap, selon la mode de ses jours. This is a maiden portrait, and should be engraved for the frontispiece of the Thomsoniana.

Old Sargent used to say that he never heard his friend the Poet tell an indecent story but once, which was to illustrate the power of excessive pleasure, to remove female modesty and restraint in the union of sexes.

This, and the prayer to a certain noble member,are the only amatory pieces or anecdotes of a grosser nature relating to Thomson, the poet, I have ever met * A work projected by the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

The French are cleanly in their persons, tho' dirty in their houses. Tinned copper baths are preferred to marble— Chinese baths on the Italian Boulevards

-common ones in a noble building near the Palais Royal-floating ones on the river. They read, work, and eat in them, the refreshment being placed on a floating cask, in the shape of a vase.

MILITARY REGIMEN.

Under Bonaparte all feudal distinctions vanished-equality was preserved by equality of service-wealth obtained nothing-military merit every thing. All the Lycees might be considered as military bodies; their studies, their repasts, and even their exercises, were regulated, not as before by the bell, but by a drum. The Royal MilitaryCollege at Sandhurst, is exactly modelled after the French military schools.

FRENCH POLICE.

The Minister of Justice was at the head of the police, when Bonaparte at once suppressed and subdivided this department, by a division of powers. Fouché, with four counsellors, superintended the four different quarters, while the Maires and subordinates were anxious on their parts to defeat, denounce, and seize on all suspected persons.

All France was subdivided like Paris, with a subordinate chief in each, and a Lieutenant de Police, like a spider, placing himself in the centre, with lines of communication on every side, felt every impression, and generally inveigled the wretched victim in the midst of that web,which he spread for his destruction.

The court of Bonaparte was the most splendid in Europe. Marshals, ambassadors, princes sovereigns, surrounded his throne, and obeyed his mandates.

DUTCH AND FRENCH.

The Dutch are clean in their houses and dirty in their persons. The French exactly the reverse-clean in their sons, but dirty in their houses.

LEGION OF HONOUR.

per

Bonaparte, like Burke, had an eye to "the cheap defence of nations," after beating down all the republican forms and usages, he endeavored to make heroes, by means of the milliner and the toy-shop-half a yard of scarlet ribbon, and a little badge of gold. These were sent, not to warriors alone, but to men of letters and men of science, and he himself holding a solemn court at the Tuilleries, in 1804, from a golden vase first bestowed these insignia on the commanders of the legion.

The Legion of Honour possessed a palace and considerable revenues. The sons were educated at the expence of the nation and the daughters were bred up without cost to their parents.

EDUCATION IN FRANCE.

The ancient mode of education is deemed obsolete, but the College of Louis le Grand subsists with regular degrees under the name of a Lyceum.

In the primary, which answer to our parochial schools,theLycees Prytaneum, or central schools, are a kind of college in which Latin or Greek are taught, together with mathematics, mechanics, astronomy, geography, and chemistry. In the Prytaneum of Paris, about 300 pupils are educated at the expence of

government, and the remainder paid for at the trifling expence of about 1000 francs a year. Education under the late government assumed a martial air, and every pupil was fitted to become a soldier after the manner of antiquity. Genius was encouraged by means of appropriate progress, and still more by solemnly proclaiming the names of those who excelled, in the same manner with those of the victors at theOlympic games.

AERIAL GARDENS.

The Swedes lay earth on the Birch bark, with which they cover their houses, and thus possess aerial gardens.

WILTON.

Wilton, 3 miles distant from Salisbury, possesses an invaluable collection of antiquities. In the court before the grand front of the house,stands a column of white Egyptian marble from the Arundelian collection; the statue of Venus on the top has been greatly admired. On each side of the entrance arch, Egyptian statues, and in the porch, built by Inigo Jones, is the bust of Hannibal. In the vestibule are the busts of Theophrastus, Caligula, Julia, &c.; there are also two columns of the Provonazzo, or peacock marble. The apartments generally shewn are the great hall, the old billiard room, the white marble table room, the new dining room, the hunting room, the cube room, the colonnade room, the stone hall, and the bugle room.

DR. SMOLLETT

lived in two different houses in Chelsea, and practised his profession there. A very respectable apothecary, Mr.North, when he was learning his business with Mr. Reid of that place, recollects that Dr. S. attended a young gentleman at the great school towards the end of Church lane. On his death he recollects to have seen Smollett's corpse, to discover the nature of his disease; and on that occasion remembers to have lost all appetite for dinner.

GEORGE ROSE.

LordNorth said to Mr. John, in reply to the observation that he had seen his beautiful house in Hampshire, and conversed with Mr.Rose:-"What George Rose gone into the country' to bloom unseen, and waste his sweetness on the desert air ?'"

SIR,

LETTER OF MARY WOLSTONCROFT, Author of the Rights of Woman. Saturday morning. I am engaged to dine with Mrs. Barlow at Mr. Johnson's next Sunday; but I will drink tea with you and Mrs. S. on Monday, should you be disengaged, for I wish to tell you both, in person, that employments, cares, low spirits in short a legion of devils have made me put off this visit till it has the appearance of rudeness. My compliments attend Mrs. S. Yours, &c. M. W.

DOMESTIC SLAVERY

was not unknown in Scotland at the beginning of the 18th century, for it appears by judicial records,thatAlexander

"THE

Stewart, found guilty of theft, was "gifted by the justice as a perpetual servant to Sir John Areskine, of Alva, the 5th of Dec. 1701."

PRESCRIPTION of the late DR. BUCHAN for a NERVOUS LADY. Apply the plaster over the regions of the stomach, and let it continue on as long as it will stick.

Take a tea-spoonful of the tincture of the columbo root in half a glass of cold spring water twice or thrice a day.

Walk or ride out every day, eat solid diet, take a cheerful glass of wine, and keep company with friends of a cheerful temper of mind, and laugh at all physicians and physick.

Dirt-Eaters.

HE inhabitants of Uruana, belong to those nations of the savannahs (Indios andantes,) who, more difficult to civilize than the nations of the forest, (Indios del monte,) have a decided aversion to cultivate the land, and live almost exclusively on hunting and fishing, They are men of very robust constitution; but ugly, savage, vindictive, and passionately fond of fermented liquors. They are omnivorous animals in the highest degree; and therefore the other Indians, who consider them as barbarians, have a common saying, 'nothing is so disgusting that an Otomac will not eat it.' While the waters of the Oroonoko and its tributary streams are low, the Otomacs subsist on fish and turtles. The former they kill with surprising dexterity, by shooting them with an arrow, when they appear at the surface of the water. When the rivers swell, which in South America as well as in Egypt and in Nubia, is erroneously attributed to the melting of the snows, and which occurs periodically in every part of the torrid zone, fishing almost entirely ceases. It is then as difficult to procure fish in the rivers which are become deeper, as when you are sailing

on the open sea. It often fails the poor missionaries, on fast-days as well as flesh days, though all the young Indians are under the obligation of fishing for the convent.' At the period of these inundations, which lasts two or three months, the Otomacs swallow a prodi gious quantity of earth. We found heaps of balls in their huts, piled up in pyramids three or four feet high. These balls were five or six inches in diameter. The earth which the Otomacs eat is a very fine and unctuous clay, of a yellowish grey colour; and, being slightly baked in the fire, the hardened crust has a tint inclining to red, owing to the oxid of iron which is mingled with it. We brought away some of this earth, which we took from the winter provision of the Indians; and it is absolutely false, that it is steatitic, and contains magnesia. Mr. Vauquelin did not discover any traces of this earth in it; but he found that it contained more silex than alumin, and three or four per cent of lime.

"The Otomacs do not eat every kind of clay indifferently; they choose the alluvial beds or strata that contain the most unctuous earth, and the smoothest to the feel. I inquired of the missionary, whether the moistened clay were made to undergo, as Father