In a word, this enthusiasm for which I am pleading, is a beneficent enchantress, who never exerts her magic but to our advantage, and only deals about her friendly spells in order to raise imaginary beauties, or to improve real ones. The worst that can be said of her is, that she is a kind deceiver, and an obliging flatterer. Let me conjure you, then, good Clytander, not to break up her useful enchantments, which thus surround us on every side; but spare her harmless deceptions in mere charity to mankind. I am, &c.

II. TO PHILOTES.

I SHOULD not have suffered so long an interval to interrupt our correspondence, if my expedition to Euphronius had not wholly employed me for these last six weeks. I had long promised to spend some time with him before he embarked with his regiment for Flanders; and, as he is not one of those Hudibrastic heroes who choose to run away one day that they may live to fight another, I was unwilling to trust the opportunity of seeing him to the very precarious contingency of his return. The high enjoyments he leaves behind him, might, indeed, be a pledge to his friends that his caution would at least be equal to his courage, if his notions of honour were less exquisitely delicate. But he will undoubtedly act as if he had nothing to hazard; though, at the same time, from the generous sensibility of his temper, he feels every thing that his family can suffer in their fears for his danger. I had an instance, whilst I was in his house, how much Euphronia's apprehensions for his safety are

ready to take alarm upon every occasion. She called me one day into the gallery, to look upon a picture which was just come out of the painter's hands; but the moment she carried me up to it, she burst out into a flood of tears. It was drawn at the request, and after a design of her father, and is a performance which does great honour to the ingenious artist who executed it. Euphronius is represented under the character of Hector, when he parts from Andromache, who is personated, in the piece, by Euphronia; as her sister, who holds their little boy in her arms, is shadowed out under the figure of the beautiful nurse with the young Astyanax.

I was so much pleased with the design in this uncommon family-piece, that I thought it deserved particular mention; as I could wish it were to become a general fashion to have all pictures of the same kind executed in some such manner. If, instead of furnishing a room with separate portraits, a whole family were to be thus introduced into a single piece, and represented under some interesting historical subject, suitable to their rank and character, portraits, which are now so generally and so deservedly despised, might become of real value to the public. By this means, history-painting would be encouraged among us, and a ridiculous vanity turned to the improvement of one of the most instructive, as well as the most pleasing, of the imitative arts. Those who never contributed a single benefit to their own age, nor will ever be mentioned in any after-one, might by this means employ their pride and their expense in a way, which might render them entertaining and useful

both to the present and future times. It would require, indeed, great judgment and address in the painter, to choose and recommend subjects proper to the various characters which would present themselves to his pencil; and undoubtedly we should see many enormous absurdities committed, if this fashion were universally to be followed. It would certainly, however, afford a glorious scope to genius, and probably supply us, in due time, with some productions which might be mentioned with those of the most celebrated schools. I am persuaded, at least, that great talents have been sometimes lost to this art, by being confined to the dull, though profitable, labour of senseless portraits; as I should not doubt, if the method I am speaking of were to take effect, to see that very promising genius, who, in consequence of your generous offices, is now forming his hand by the noblest models in Rome, prove a rival to those great masters whose works he is studying.

It cannot, I think, be denied, that the prevailing fonduess of having our persons copied out for posterity, is, in the present application of it, a most absurd and useless vanity; as, in general, nothing affords a more ridiculous scene, than those grotesque figures which usually line the mansions of a man who is fond of displaying his canvassancestry:

Good Heaven! that sots and knaves should be so vain
To wish their vile resemblance may remain;

And stand recorded, at their own request,

To future times a libel or a jest !—Dryden.

You must by no means, however, imagine that I absolutely condemn this lower application of one of

the noblest arts. It has certainly a very just use, when employed in perpetuating the resemblances of that part of our species, who have distinguished themselves in their respective generations. To be desirous of an acquaintance with the person of those who have recommended themselves by their writings or their actions to our esteem and applause, is a very natural and reasonable curiosity. For myself, at least, I have often found much satisfaction in contemplating a well-chosen collection of the portrait kind, and comparing the mind of a favourite character, as it was either expressed or concealed in its external lineaments. There is something, likewise, extremely animating in these lively representations of celebrated merit; and it was an observation of one of the Scipios, that he could never view the figures of his ancestors without finding his bosom glow with the most ardent passion of imitating their deeds. However, as the days of exemplary virtue are now no more, and we are not, many of us, disposed to transmit the most inflaming models to future times; it would be but prudence, methinks, if we are resolved to make posterity acquainted with the persons of the present age, that it should be by viewing them in the actions of the past. Adieu. I am, &c.

III. TO PALAMEDES.

July 4, 1739.

NOTWITHSTANDING the fine things you allege in favour of the Romans, I do not yet find myself disposed to become a convert to your opinion: on the contrary, I am still obstinate enough to maintain that the fame of your admired nation is more daz

zling than solid, and owing rather to those false prejudices which we are early taught to conceive of them, than to their real and intrinsic merit. If conquest, indeed, be the genuine glory of a state, and extensive dominions the most infallible test of national virtue, it must be acknowledged that no people in all history have so just a demand of our admiration. But if we take an impartial view of this celebrated nation, perhaps much of our applause may abate. When we contemplate them, for instance, within their own walls, what do we see but the dangerous convulsions of an ill-regulated policy? as we can seldom, I believe, consider them with respect to foreign kingdoms, without the utmost abhorrence and indignation.

But there is nothing which places these sons of Romulus lower in my estimation, than their unmanly conduct in the article of their triumphs. I must confess, at the same time, that they had the sanction of a god to justify them in this practice. Bacchus, or (as sir Isaac Newton has proved) the Egyptian Sesostris, after his return from his Indian conquests, gave the first instance of this ungenerous ceremony. But though his divinity was confessed in many other parts of the world, his example does not seem to have been followed, till we find it copied out in all its insolent pomp at Rome.

It is impossible to read the descriptious of these arrogant exhibitions of prosperity, and not to be struck with indignation at this barbarous method of insulting the calamities of the unfortunate. One would be apt, at the first glance, to suspect that every sentiment of humanity must be extinguished in a people, who could behold with pleasure the