fault I am writing against. It must be owned, to our shame, that our common people, and most who have not travelled, have an irrational contempt for the language, dress, customs, and even the shape and minds of other nations.1 Some men, otherwise of sense, have wondered that a great genius should spring out of Ireland; and think you mad in affirming, that fine odes have been written in Lapland.

"This spirit of rivalship, which heretofore reigned in the two universities, is extinct, and almost over betwixt college and college. In parishes and schools the thirst of glory still obtains. At the seasons of foot-ball and cock-fighting, these little republics reassume their national hatred to each other. My tenant in the country is verily persuaded, that the parish of the enemy hath not one honest man in it.

"I always hated satires against women, and satires against men: I am apt to suspect a stranger who laughs at the religion of the faculty: my spleen rises at a dull rogue, who is severe upon mayor and aldermen; and I was never better pleased than with a piece of justice executed upon the body of a Templar, who was very arch upon parsons.

"The necessities of mankind require various employments; and whoever excels in his province is worthy of praise. All men are not educated after the same manner, nor have all the same talents. Those who are deficient deserve our compassion, and have a title to our assistance. All cannot be bred in the same place; but in all places there arise, at different times, such persons as do honour to their society, which may raise envy in little souls, but are admired and cherished by generous spirits.

"It is certainly a great happiness to be educated in societies of great and eminent men. Their instructions and examples are of extraordinary advantage. It is highly proper to instil such a reverence of the governing persons, and concern for the honour of the place, as may spur the growing members to worthy pursuits and honest emulation; but to swell young minds with vain thoughts of the dignity of their own brotherhood, by debasing and vilifying all others, doth them a real injury. By this means I have found that their efforts have become languid, and their prattle irksome, as thinking it sufficient praise that they are children of so illustrious and ample a family. I should think it a surer as well as more generous method, to set before the eyes of youth such persons as have made a noble progress in fraternities less talked of; which seems tacitly to reproach their sloth, who loll so heavily in the seats of mighty improvement. Active spirits hereby would enlarge their notions; whereas, by a servile imitation of one, or perhaps two, admired men in their own body, they can only gain a secondary and derivative kind of fame. These copiers of men, like those of authors or painters, run into affectations of some oddness, which perhaps was not disagreeable in the original, but sits ungracefully on the narrow-souled transcriber.

"By such early corrections of vanity, while boys are growing into men, they will gradually learn not to censure superficially; but imbibe those principles of general kindness and humanity, which alone can make them easy to themselves, and beloved by others.

"Reflections of this nature have expunged all prejudice out of my heart; insomuch, that, though I am a firm protestant, I hope to see the pope and cardinals without violent emotions; and though I am naturally grave, I expect to meet good company at Paris.

"I am, SIR,

"Your obedient servant."

'MR. SPECTATOR,

'I FIND you are a general undertaker, and have, by your correspondents or self, an insight into most things; which makes me apply myself to you at present in the sorest calamity that ever befel man. My wife has taken something ill of me, and has not spoke one word, good or bad, to me, or anybody in the family, since Friday was seven-night. What must a man do in that case? Your advice would be a great obligation to,

'SIR, your most humble servant,

'MR. SPECTATOR,

'RALPH THIMBLETON.'

July 15, 1712.

'WHEN you want a trifle to fill up a paper,

in inserting this you will lay an obligation on
'Your humble servant,

'OLIVIA.'

"DEAR OLIVIA,

"IT is but this moment I have had the happiness of knowing to whom I am obliged for the present I received the second of April. I am heartily sorry it did not come to hand the day before; for I can't but think it very hard upon people to lose their jest, that offer at one but once a-year. I congratulate myself, however, upon the earnest given me of something farther intended in my favour, for I am told, that the man who is thought worthy by a lady to make a fool of, stands fair enough in her opinion to become one day her husband. Till such time as I have the honour of being sworn, I take leave to subscribe myself,

T.

'Dear OLIVIA, your fool elect,

NICODEMUNCIO.'

No. 433. THURSDAY, JULY 17, 1712.

Perlege Mæonio cantatas carmine ranas,
Et frontem nugis solvere disce meis.

MART. Epig. clxxxiii. 14.

To banish anxious thought, and quiet pain,
Read Homer's frogs, or my more trifling strain.

THE moral world, as consisting of males and females, is of a mixed nature, and filled with several customs, fashions, and ceremonies, which would have no place in it were there but one sex. Had our species no famales in it, men would be quite different creatures from what they are at present: their endeavours to please the opposite sex polishes and refines them out of those manners which are most natural to them, and often sets them upon modelling themselves, not according to the plans which they approve in their own opinions, but according to those plans which they think are most agreeable to the female world. In a word, man would not only be an unhappy, but a rude unfinished creature, were he conversant with none but those of his own make.

Women, on the other side, are apt to form themselves in every thing with regard to that other half of reasonable creatures, with whom they are here blended and confused: their thoughts are ever

By Steele. See note at the end of No. 324, on letter T.

turned upon appearing amiable to the other sex; they talk, and move, and smile, with a design upon us; every feature of their faces, every part of their dress, is filled with snares and allurements. There would be no such animals as prudes or coquettes in the world, were there not such an animal as man. In short it is the male that gives charms to womankind, that produces an air in their faces, a grace in their motions, a softness in their voices, and a delicacy in their complexions.

As this mutual regard between the two sexes tends to the improvement of each of them, we may observe that men are apt to degenerate into rough and brutal natures who live as if there were no such things as women in the world; as, on the contrary, women who have an indifference or aversion for 'their counterparts in human nature are generally sour and unamiable, sluttish and censorious.

I am led into this train of thoughts by a little manuscript which has lately fallen into my hands, and which I shall communicate to the reader, as I have done some other curious pieces of the same nature, without troubling him with any inquiries about the author of it. It contains a summary account of two different states which bordered upon one another. The one was a commonwealth of Amazons, or women without men;1 the other was a republic of males, that had not a woman in their whole community. As these two states bordered upon one another, it was their way, it seems, to meet upon their frontiers at a certain season of the year, where those among the men who had not made their choice in any former meeting, associated