tion be founded on truth, it is a truth sorely to be lamented, since nothing is so inimical to beauty as the shadow of ill-nature; and the lips from which harsh animadversions are perpetually flowing do their own cause a more serious injury than that of those they are traducing. Thus I would not desire a more ample revenge upon a fair calumniator, than that which she executes upon herself. It would be unrelenting, indeed, to require more in satisfaction than it costs a fine eye to sympathise in its expression with a malignant tongue: and our resentment should almost turn to pity, when we see the most beautiful mouth deposit its honey together with its sting in the wound it inflicts.

Where an addiction to calumny arises from a deep depravity of mind, from a savage union of ignorance and pride, it were folly to expect a cure from such considerations as these; but I am persuaded that more than half the scandal of the world is either a resource of inoccupation, a substitute for sense, a mere efflorescence of vulgar wit, or an idle superficial habit without malice or meaning. I think I could do a great deal in these latter cases, could I once raise in the minds of my fair countrywomen an adequate sense of the damages their beauty sustains in such perilous amusements, and show them as in a mirror the physical deformity of this indecent practice. I shall bestow no farther remarks in this place on its moral turpitude; but shall wait till the leveling philosophy of the present day, in its march of paradoxical confusion, after all the other distinctions between vice and virtue shall have been overthrown, shall send forward its pioneers to destroy the barriers between candour and detraction.

In the mean time, my readers will not be displeased with this passage from Lucian-" There is no more

effectual instrument of calumny than the love of novelty, which is natural to all mankind, joined to the disgust arising from satiety, and a passion for the marvellous and incredible: add to this, that we are all fond, I know not why, of listening to private suspicions which are whispered to us. I know many whose ears itch with calumny, as if they were tickled with a feather. No wonder that with such assistance she persuades all, especially where she is in no danger of being confronted. The calumniated, like a city taken by night, are slain in their sleep.'

Not above a week ago, I passed a few hours, which were among the most agreeable of my life, at the female society, where the topic of the evening was the subject of my present paper. After a multitude of very sage and pleasant observations, Miranda entertained us with the following little story.

A certain widow, though pretty much advanced in life, had a mind to marry again. As her fortune was very large, she thought herself entitled to a young husband: and accordingly fixed her eyes upon a handsome youth, who had nothing but his personal recommendations to depend upon. She plainly perceived that there would be no difficulty on his part, but she dreaded the censure and ridicule of her. neighbours. In this perplexity, she communicated her wishes and alarms to a maiden sister, who lived in her house, and who possessed an uncommon share of shrewdness and address for all such occasions. "Sister," says the amorous widow, "what think you of Leander? It is surely the picture of my late husband. Alas! I should never have yielded my heart but to this irresistible resemblance. What shall I do? for I am in a dreadful consternation about what my neighbours may say of me, being well acquaint

ed with their malice and cruelty:-the purest love is not sheltered from their ill-natured ridicule. Were it not for that, this dear young man should-but-" "How absurd is all this, my dear sister!" replied the other. "Follow your inclinations, and don't tell me of such foolish fears. You will be sung, hooted, halloo'd after, and chalked up, for eight days; -on the ninth, they will think no more of you than one thinks of a friend one has quitted for three months. That ass which you see yonder, shall, if you please, impose silence on the whole parish about you the morning after your nuptials."-"That ass!" "Yes, that ass. Marry, I say, and leave the rest to me and my ass." The widow was easily persuaded, and the marriage was concluded, on the credit of the ass. Dreadful outcry in the parish--rough music before their doors-not a soft thing could be heard from the mouth of either party for the noise of kettles and frying-pans. In the mean time, the sister had painted the ass as green as a parrot; and out rushed the phenomenon, with a triumphant bray, into the midst of the crowd. In an instant every kettle and pan was mute, and every soul in the parish crowded round so strange a prodigy. "A green ass! Good heavens! who could have believed it! Well, wonders will never cease. How surprising is Nature in all her operations!"66 I dreamed," cries an old woman, "of this very ass a week ago. I am sure it betokeneth something bad to our town. A number of white mice appeared in the same manner just before the plague that happened in my youth." Such observations and exclamations as these took place of the clamour about the new-married couple. The green ass lasted its eight days, and then there was no more curiosity about the green ass than there

had been about the new-married couple the moment the ass appeared.

Miranda's story entertained us all extremely; and my mother, forgetting her usual composure, laughed till the shagreen spectacles tumbled from her nose. I now thought it an excellent time to relate to them an extraordinary dream, which had happened to me about three weeks before, and of which I had thought it worth while to make some memorandums, that I might introduce it when the occasion presented itself. As it was thought curious by this judicious society, it may perhaps entertain my readers.

About a quarter of an hour before I retired to bed, I happened to find in the window-seat, a volume of the Spectator; and, opening it, fell by chance upon that paper in which he gives us the dissection of a coquette's heart. The idea took such possession of my brain, that, as soon as I laid my hand upon my pillow, it produced the following dream.

Methought I was in a large room, where a gentleman of the faculty was giving lectures on anatomy. Upon inquiring what was his subject, I was given to understand that it was the ear of an old maid, whose propensity to scandal had distinguished her, even among her sisterhood. We could observe nothing peculiar in the external form of the ear, unless a greater number of those tortuous cavities which are so admirably designed by nature, in its construction of that organ, to collect the circumambient undulations of sound, and give it a circulation and refraction in its passage. Our operator next proceeded to open the lobe, in the cellular substance of which we discovered a greenish liquor, that turned the colour of every thing which it touched; and a small

sprinkling of it upon the surgeon's hand gave him all the appearance of being ill of the measles. The auditory passage was extremely narrow, and not funnelled as in other subjects, but singularly twisted, while its inner surface was covered with little knots; so that altogether it looked as if there was only room for one part of a story to enter, and that in a broken and mutilated condition. The portio dura of the auditory nerve was perfect, but the portio mollis had become completely ossified; and this was, our anatomist assured us, a peculiarity he had always discovered in maids above the age of five and thirty. The wax of the meatus auditorius was unusually bitter, and the mucilage of the periosteum fermented prodigiously with salt of wormwood. The passage into the neck-bone was formed like that in owls, and projected further out above than below, so that the least possible sound might be perceived. I should not forget that the wax, which is reckoned by Pliny and others to possess a healing virtue, was in this subject not only without those balsamic qualities, but actu ally brought a blister upon a young person's hands who tried it in this view. On applying our own ears as close as we could to the concha of the ear in question, we could distinctly hear a whizzing sound in a smaller degree like the blasts of a coal-mine; and upon bringing a fresh-blown rose as near to it as we could, it immediately hung its head, and appeared as if the sun had been on it a whole day. We conceived this to be that innate air on which some anatomists have insisted. The form of the concha put me in mind of those places of whose powers of conveying sounds we read such prodigious effects in history; as the prison of Dionysius, which could raise a whisper to the roar of a cannon; or the aqueducts of Claudius, which could carry a voice sixteen miles.