Too great avidity of praise will sometimes betray an author into a studied attempt at fine writing, where the thought will not carry the style; writers of this sort are like those tasteless dabblers in architecture, who turn the gable ends of barns and cottages into castles and temples, and spend a world of plastering and pains to decorate a pig-sty. They bring to my mind a ridiculous scene, at which I was present the other day: I found a lady of my acquaintance busily employed in the domestic education of her only son; the preceptor was in the room, and was standing in an attitude very much resembling the erect gentleman I had seen that morning in the bookseller's window: the boy kept his eyes fixed, and seemed to govern his motions by certain signals of the feet and arms, which he repeated from the preceptor. In the course of my conversation with his mother, I chanced to drop my glove upon the floor, upon which he approached to pick it up, but in a step so measured and so methodical that I had done the office for myself before he had performed his advances. As I was about to resume the conversation, the mother interrupted me, by desiring I would favour her so far as to drop my glove again, that Bobby might have the honour of presenting it to me in proper form: all this while the boy stood as upright as an arrow, perfectly motionless; but no sooner had I thrown down my gauntlet than he began to put one foot slowly in advance before the other; upon which the preceptor of politeness cried out, one !-first position!-The boy then made another movement of his feet, upon which the master repeated-two!-second position;-This was followed by another, and the echo again cried out-three! very well-third position! bend your body slowly!-At the word of command the automaton bent his body very deliberately, its arms hanging down in parallel perpendiculars to the floor,

like the forelegs of a quadruped. The glove being now taken up by the right hand, was placed with great decorum upon the back of the left hand; the trunk of the animal was slowly restored to its erect position, and the glove presented with all due solemnity. As I was in hopes the ceremony was now over, upon hearing the teacher cry bravo! I thought it time to make my compliment of, thank you, pretty Master! but I was again in a mistake, for the mother begged me not to hurry her dear Bobby, but allow him time to make his bow, and still hold the glove in my hand: this was an operation of no slight consequence, for in the time it took him up a nimble artist might have made the glove: at last, however, it was over, and the boy was putting himself in order of retreat, when the master observing that I had omitted the necessary bend of my wrist upon receiving the glove, for want of which the whole had been imperfect, proposed a repetition of the manœuvre, in which Bobby should be the dropper, and himself the picker up of the glove. This proposal struck me with such horror that, taking a hasty leave of the lady, in which first, second, and third position were probably huddled all together, I departed, repeating to myself, in the words of Foigard, all this may be very fine, but upon my soul it is very ridiculous.

No. IV.

LADY Thimble is one of those female pedants who, with quick animal spirits, a pert imagination, great selfconceit, and a homely person, sets herself up for a woman of talents: she has as much of the learned languages as a boarding school girl carries home of French upon her first holidays, when Miss assures

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you she can call for what she wants, and though she won't utter a word in the parlour from pretended modesty, insults the ignorance of the chambermaid with an eternal jargon of bad grammar, worse pronounced. This learned lady is the only child of a wealthy trader of the city of London, who, having never advanced in his own education beyond the erudition of the countinghouse, took care his daughter should be instructed in every thing he did not understand himself, and as the girl grew exceedingly vain of the applause of the pedagogue, who read to her, the merchant grew as vain of the scholarship of his child, and would listen to the sound of Latin or Greek with as much superstitious respect as a Gentoo does to the Shanscrite language of the Brahmins.

Miss, in the meantime, became an insufferable slattern in her clothes and person, her handkerchiefs and aprons were full of ironmoulds from the drippings of the inkhorn, and her stockings full of holes from her neglect of the needle: these were, in fact, badges of affectation rather than of oversight, and you could not pay your court to her better than by rallying her about them. She wore a head of false hair, not because her own was thin, but because a wig was thrown on in an instant; this was sometimes done with a negligence that seemed studied, and when the learned Ventosus vouchsafed to visit her, she was sure to wear her wig awry, as Alexander's courtiers did their heads, in honour of her guest: there was, indeed, an unseemly humour settled in her nose, but this she got by studying Locke upon the human understanding after dinner; before she could develope the whole doctrine of innate ideas the humour deepened many shades, which, however, on the whole may be allowed to be getting off, pretty well for a student in metaphysics. No face

could bear the addition of a red nose better than Lady Thimble's: but a more alarming accident had befallen her in her astronomical studies, for as she was following a comet in his perihelion through the solutions of Sir Isaac Newton, her cap caught fire, and she was forced to break off in the midst of a proposition, by which means she dropped a stitch in the demonstration, and never was able to take it again; her skin being cruelly scorched by this system of the comets, she wears a crimson scar upon her cheek, not indeed as an ornament to her beauty, but a trophy of her science.

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Her works are pretty voluminous, especially in manuscript; but censorious people affect to whisper, that she performed one work in concert with the pedant her master, and that, though this composition was brought secretly into the world, it is the only one of her producing that bids fair for posterity: this story, and the remark upon it, I had from a lady, who is one of her intimate friends, but she assured me she gave no credit to it herself, and considered all such scandalous insinuations as the effects of malice and envy.

At the age of seven and twenty, by the persuasion of her father, she was joined in the bands of wedlock to Sir Theodore Thimble: this gentleman had been lately dubbed a knight for his services to the crown in bringing up a county address; his father, Mr. David Thimble, had been an eminent tailor in the precincts of St. Clement's, in which business he had, by his industry and other methods, raised a very respectable fortune in money, book debts, and remnants: in his latter years Mr. Thimble purchased a considerable estate in Essex, with a fine old mansion upon it, the last remaining property of an ancient family. This venerable seat, during the life of Mr. Thimble, remained uncontaminated by the pre

sence of its possessor, but upon his death it fell into the occupation of young Theodore, who, disdaining the crosslegged art by which his father had worked himself into opulence, set out upon a new establishment, and figured off as. the first gentleman of his family: he served as sheriff of the county, and acquired great reputation in that high office by the elegant and well cut liveries which he exhibited at the assizes; a lucky address from the county gave him a title, and the recommendation of a good settlement procured him his present lady, whom we have been describing.

As I have been in long habits of friendship with the worthy citizen her father, I could not resist the many pressing invitations he gave me to pay a visit to his daughter and Sir Theodore at their country seat, especially as he prefaced it by assuring me I should see the happiest couple in England; and that although I had frequently opposed his system of education, I should now be convinced that Arabella made as good a housewife, and understood the conduct of her family as well as if she had studied nothing else; and this, he was sure, I would confess, if he could prevail with me to accompany him to her house.

On the day following this conversation we set out together, and in a few hours found ourselves at the promised spot: as I remembered this fine old mansion in the days of its primitive simplicity, when I was ushered to its gates through a solemn avenue of branching elms, that arched over head in lofty foliage, and formed an approach in perfect unison with the ancient fashion of the place, I must own I was much revolted to find that Sir Theodore had begun his improvements with a specimen of his father's art, by cutting an old coat into a new fashion my favourite avenue no longer existed; the