The case is very hard; and I fear the plea she is advised to make, from the similitude of a man who is in duresse, will not prevail. But though I despair of remedy as to the mother, the law gives the child his choice of his father where the birth is thus legally ambiguous.

"To ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Esquire.

"The humble Petition of the Company of Linendrapers, residing within the liberty of Westminster,

"SHEWETH,

"That there has of late prevailed among the ladies so great an affectation of nakedness, that they have not only left the bosom wholly bare, but lowered their stays some inches below the former mode.

"That, in particular, Mrs. Arabella Overdo has not the least appearance of linen; and our best customers shew but little above the small of their backs.

"That by this means your petitioners are in danger of losing the advantage of covering a ninth part of every woman of quality in Great-Britain.

"Your Petitioners humbly offer the premises to your Indulgence's consideration, and shall ever, &c."

Before I answer this petition, I am inclined to examine the offenders myself.

N° 216. SATURDAY, AUGUST 26, 1710.

-Nugis addere pondus.

HOR. 1 Ep. i. 42.

Weight and importance some to trifles gives.

R. WYNNE.

From my own Apartment, August 25. NATURE is full of wonders; every atom is a standing miracle, and endowed with such qualities, as could not be impressed on it by a power and wisdom less than infinite. For this reason, I would not discourage any searches that are made into the most minute and trivial parts of the creation. However, since the world abounds in the noblest fields of speculation, it is, methinks, the mark of a little genius, to be wholly conversant among insects, reptiles, animalcules, and those trifling rarities that furnish out the apartment of a virtuoso.

There are some men whose heads are so oddly turned this way, that though they are utter strangers to the common occurrences of life, they are able to discover the sex of a cockle, or describe the generation of a mite, in all its circumstances. They are so little versed in the world, that they scarce know an horse from an ox; but, at the same time, will tell you with a great deal of gravity, that a flea is a rhinoceros, and a snail an hermaphrodite. I have known one of these whimsical philosophers, who has set a greater value upon a collection of spi

ders than he would upon a flock of sheep, and has sold his coat off his back to purchase a tarantula.

I would not have a scholar wholly unacquainted with these secrets and curiosities of nature; but certainly the mind of man, that is capable of so much higher contemplations, should not be altogether fixed upon such mean and disproportioned objects. Observations of this kind are apt to alienate us too much from the knowledge of the world, and to make us serious upon trifles; by which means they expose philosophy to the ridicule of the witty, and contempt of the ignorant. In short, studies of this nature should be the diversions, relaxations, and amusements; not the care, business, and concern of life.

It is indeed wonderful to consider, that there should be a sort of learned men, who are wholly employed in gathering together the refuse of nature, if I may call it so, and hoarding up in their chests and cabinets such creatures as others industriously avoid the sight of. One does not know how to mention some of the most precious parts of their treasure, without a kind of an apology for it. I have been shewn a beetle valued at twenty crowns, and a toad at an hundred but we must take this for a general rule, "That whatever appears trivial or obscene in the common notions of the world, looks grave and philosophical in the eye of a Virtuoso."

To shew this humour in its perfection, I shall present my reader with the legacy of a certain Virtuoso, who laid out a considerable estate in natural rarities and curiosities, which upon his death-bed he bequeathed to his relations and friends, in the following words:

THE WILL OF A VIRTUOSO.

I Nicholas Gimcrack, being in sound health of mind, but in great weakness of body, do by this my

of opinions, are as ready to change their conduct in point of sentiment as of fashion. The well-disciplined part of a court are generally so. perfect at their exercise, that you may see a whole assembly, from front to rear, face about at once to a new man of power, though at the same time they turn their backs upon him that brought them thither. The great hardship these complaisant members of society are under, seems to be the want of warning upon any approaching change or revolution; so that they are obliged in a hurry to tack about with every wind, and stop short in the midst of a full career, to the great surprize and derision of their beholders.

When a man foresees a decaying ministry, he has leisure to grow a malecontent, reflect upon the present conduct, and by gradual murmurs fall off from his friends into a new party, by just steps and measures. For want of such notices I have formerly known a very well-bred person refuse to return a bow of a man whom he thought in disgrace, that was next day made secretary of state; and another, who after a long neglect of a minister, came to his levee, and made professions of zeal for his service the very day before he was turned out.

This produces also unavoidable confusions and mistakes in the descriptions of great men's parts and merits. That antient Lyric, Mr. D'Urfey, some years ago writ a dedication to a certain lord, in which he celebrated him for the greatest poet and critic of that age, upon a misinformation in Dyer's Letter, that his noble patron was made lord chamberlain. In In short, innumerable votes, speeches, and sermons, have been thrown away and turned to no account, merely for want of due and timely intelligence. Nay, it has been known, that a panegyric has been half printed off, when the poet,

upon the removal of the minister, has been forced to alter it into a satire.

For the conduct therefore of such useful persons, as are already to do their country service upon all occasions, I have an engine in my study, which is a sort of a Political Barometer, or, to speak more intelligibly, a State Weather-glass, that, by the rising and falling of a certain magical liquor, presages all changes and revolutions in government, as the common glass does of the weather. This Weather-glass is said to have been invented by Cardan, and given by him as a present to his great countryman and contemporary Machiavel; which, by the way, may serve to rectify a received error in chronology, that places one of these some years after the other. How or when it came into my bands, I shall desire to be excused, if I keep to myself; but so it is, that I have walked by it for the better part of a century to my safety at least, if not to my advantage; and have among my papers a register of all the changes, that have happened in it from the middle of queen Elizabeth's reign.

In the time of that princess it stood long at Settled Fair. At the latter end of king James the First, it fell to Cloudy. It held several years after at Stormy; insomuch, that at last, despairing of seeing any clear weather at home, I followed the royal exile, and some time after finding my Glass rise, returned to my native country, with the rest of the loyalists. I was then in hopes to pass the remainder of my days in Settled Fair: but alas! during the greatest part of that reign the English nation lay in a dead calm, which, as it is usual, was followed by high winds and tempests, until of late years; in which, with unspeakable joy and satisfaction, I have seen our political weather returned to Settled Fair. I must only observe, that for all this last summer my