the following genuine letter; and desire all who think they may be concerned in future speculations on this subject, to send in what they have to say for themselves for some incidents in their lives, in order to have proper allowances made for their conduct.

'MR. SPECTATOR,

Jan. 5, 1711-12.

THE subject of your yesterday's paper, is of so great importance, and the thorough handling of it may be so very useful to the preservation of many an innocent young creature, that I think every one is obliged to furnish you with what lights he can to expose the pernicious arts and practices of those unnatural women called bawds. In order to this the enclosed is sent you, which is verbatim the copy of a letter written by a bawd of figure in this town to a noble lord. I have concealed the names of both, my intention being not to expose the persons but the thing. I am, SIR,

Your humble servant.'

'MY LORD,

'I HAVING a great esteem for your honour, and a better opinion of you than of any of the quality, makes me acquaint you of an affair that I hope will oblige you to know. I have a niece that came to town about a fortnight ago. Her parents being lately dead she came to me, expecting to a found me in so good a condition as to a set her up in a milliner's shop. Her father gave fourscore pound with her for five years: her time is out, and she is not sixteen: as pretty a black gentlewoman as ever you saw; a little woman, which I know your lordship likes; well shaped, and as fine a complexion for red and white as VOL. V.

K

ever I saw; I doubt not but your lordship will be of the same opinion. She designs to go down about a month hence, except I can provide for her, which I cannot at present. Her father was one with whom all he had died with him, so there is four children left destitute; so if your lordship thinks proper to make an appointment where I shall wait on you with my niece, by a line or two, I stay for your answer; for I have no place fitted up since I left my house, fit to entertain your honour. I told her she should go with me to see a gentleman, a very good friend of mine; so I desire you to take no notice of my letter, by reason she is ignorant of the ways of the town. My lord, I desire if you meet us to come alone; for upon my word and honour you are the first that I eyer mentioned her to. So I remain

Your LORDSHIP'S

Most humble servant to command.

I beg of you to burn it when you've read it.'

T.

No. 275. TUESDAY, JANUARY 15, 1711-12.

-tribus Anticyris caput insanabile

HOR. Ars Poet. ver. 300.

A head, no hellebore can cure.

I was yesterday engaged in an assembly of virtuosos, where one of them produced many curious observations which he had lately made in the anatomy of an human body. Another of the company communicated to us several wonderful dis

coveries, which he had also made on the same subject, by the help of very fine glasses. This gave birth to a great variety of uncommon remarks, and furnished discourse for the remaining part of the day.

The different opinions which were started on this occasion presented to my imagination so many new ideas, that by mixing with those which were already there, they employed my fancy all the last night, and composed a very wild extravagant dream.

I was invited, methought, to the dissection of a beau's head, and a coquette's heart, which were both of them laid on a table before us. An imaginary operator opened the first with a great deal of nicety, which upon a cursory and superficial view, appeared like the head of another man; but upon applying our glasses to it, we made a very odd discovery, namely, that what we looked upon as brains, were not such in reality, but an heap of strange materials wound up in that shape and texture, and packed together with wonderful art in the several cavities of the skull. For, as Homer tells us, that the blood of the gods is not real blood, but only something like it; so we found that the brain of a beau is not a real brain, but only something like it.

The pineal gland, which many of our modern philosophers suppose to be the seat of the soul, smelt very strong of essence and orange-flower water, and was encompassed with a kind of horny substance, cut into a thousand little faces or mirrors, which were imperceptible to the naked eye, insomuch that the soul, if there had been any here, must have been always taken up in contemplating her own beauties.

We observed a large antrum or cavity in the

sinciput, that was filled with ribbons, lace, and embroidery, wrought together in a most curious piece of net-work, the parts of which were likewise imperceptible to the naked eye. Another of these antrums or cavities was stuffed with invisible billetdoux, love-letters, pricked dances, and other trumpery of the same nature. In another

we found a kind of powder, which set the whole company a sneezing, and by the scent discovered itself to be right Spanish. The several other cells were stored with commodities of the same kind, of which it would be tedious to give the reader an exact inventory.

There was a large cavity on each side the head, which I must not omit. That on the right side was filled with fictions, flatteries, and falsehoods, vows, promises, and protestations: that on the left with oaths and imprecations. There issued out a duct from each of these cells, which ran into the root of the tongue, where both joined together, and passed forward in one common duct to the tip of it. We discovered several little roads or canals running from the ear into the brain, and took particular care to trace them out through their several passages. One of them extended itself to a bundle of sonnets and little musical instruments. Others ended in several bladders, which were filled either with wind, or froth. But the large canal entered into a great cavity of the skull, from whence there went another canal into the tongue. This great cavity was filled with a kind of spungy substance, which the French anatomists call galimatias, and the English, nonsense.

The skins of the forehead were extremely tough and thick, and what very much surprised us, had not in them any single blood vessel that

we were able to discover, either with or without our glasses; from whence we concluded, that the party when alive must have been entirely deprived of the faculty of blushing.

The os cribriforme was exceedingly stuffed, and in some places damaged with snuff. We could not but take notice in particular of that small muscle which is not often discovered in dissections, and draws the nose upwards, when it expresses the contempt which the owner of it has, upon seeing any thing he does not like, or hearing any thing he does not understand. I need not tell my learned reader, this is that muscle which performs the motion so often mentioned by the Latin poets, when they talk of a man's cocking his nose, or playing the rhinoceros.

We did not find any thing very remarkable in the eye, saving only, that the musculi amatorii, or, as we may translate it into English, the ogling muscles, were very much worn and decayed with use; whereas, on the contrary, the elevator, or the muscle which turns the eye towards heaven, did not appear to have been used at all.

I have only mentioned in this dissection such new discoveries as we were able to make, and have not taken any notice of those parts which seem to be met with in common heads. As for the skull, the face, and indeed the whole outward shape and figure of the head, we could not discover any difference from what we observe in the heads of other men. We were informed, that the person to whom this head belonged, had passed for a man above five and thirty years; during which time he eat and drank like other people, dressed well, talked loud, laughed frequently, and on particular occasions had acquitted himself tolerably at a ball or an assembly; to which one of the