sons of good stature and fierce demeanour, as well members of the Terrible Club, as others of the like exterior ferocity, whose ambition is to cock and look big, without exposing themselves to any bodily danger, will repair to his lodgings, they shall, provided they bring their swords with them, be furnished with shoulder-belts, broad hats, red feathers, and halberts, and be transported without further trouble into several courts and families of distinction, where they may eat and drink and strut at free cost." As this project was not communicated to me for a secret, I thought it might be for the service of the above-said persons to divulge it with all convenient speed; that those who are disposed to employ their talents to the best advantage, and to shine in the station of life for which they seem to be born, may have time to adorn their upper lip, by raising a quickset beard there, in the form of whiskers, that they may pass to all intents and purposes for true Swissers.

INDEFATIGABLE NESTOR,

Give me leave to thank you, in behalf of myself and my whole family, for the daily diversion and improvement we receive from your labours. At the same time I must acquaint you, that we have all of us taken a mighty liking to your lion. His roarings are the joy of my heart, and I have a little boy, not three years old, that talks of nothing else, and who, I hope, will be more afraid of him as he grows up. That your animal may be kept in good plight, and not roar for want of prey, I shall, out of my esteem and affection for you, contribute what I can towards his sustenance; 'Love me, love my lion,' says the proverb. I will not pretend at any time to furnish out a full meal for him; but I shall now and then send him a

savoury morsel, a tid-bit. You must know, I am but a kind of holiday writer, and never could find in my heart to set my pen to a work of above five or six periods long. My friends tell me my performances are little and pretty. As they have no manner of connexion one with another, I write them upon loose pieces of paper, and throw them into a drawer by themselves; this drawer I call the lion's pantry. I give you my word, I put nothing into it but what is clean and wholesome nourriture. Therefore pray remember me to the lion, and let him know, that I shall always pick and cull the pantry for him; and there are morsels in it, I can assure you, will make his chaps to water.

I am, with the greatest respect, Sir,

Your most obedient Servant,

and most assiduous Reader.

I must ask pardon of Mrs. Dorothy Care, that I have suffered her billet to lie by me these three weeks without taking the least notice of it. But I believe the kind warning in it, to our sex, will not be now too late.

GOOD MR. IRONSIDE,

I have waited with impatience for that same unicorn you promised should be erected for the fair sex. My business is, before winter comes on, to desire you would precaution your own sex against being Adamites by exposing their bare breasts to the ri gour of the season. It was this practice amongst the fellows, which at first encouraged our sex to show so much of their necks. The downy dock-leaves you speak of would make good stomachers for the beaux. In a word, good Nestor, so long as the men take a

pride in showing their hairy skins, we may with a much better grace set out our snowy chests to view. We are. we own, the weaker, but at the same time, you must own, much the more beautiful sex.

I am, Sir,

Your humble Reader,

DOROTHY CARE.

No. 172. MONDAY, SEPT. 28, 1713.

- Vitam excoluere per artes.

VIRG. En. vi. 663.

They graced their age with new invented arts. ·

DRYDEN.

MR. IRONSIDE,

I HAVE been a long time in expectation of something from you on the subject of speech and letters. I believe the world might be as agreeably entertained on that subject, as with any thing that ever came into the lion's mouth. For this end I send you the following sketch; and am yours,

PHILOGRAM.

Upon taking a view of the several species of living creatures our earth is stocked with, we may easily observe, that the lower orders of them, such as insects and fishes, are wholly without a power of making known their wants and calamities. Others, which are conversant with man, have some few ways of ex

pressing the pleasure and pain they undergo by certain sounds and gestures; but man has articulate sounds whereby to make known his inward sentiments and affections, though his organs of speech are no other than what he has in common with many other less perfect animals. But the use of letters, as significative of these sounds, is such an additional improvement to them, that I know not whether we ought not to attribute the invention of them to the assistance of a power more than human.

There is this great difficulty which could not but attend the first invention of letters, to wit, that all the world must conspire in affixing steadily the same signs to their sounds, which affixing was at first as arbitrary as possible; there being no more connexion between the letters and the sounds they are expressive of, than there is between those sounds and the ideas of the mind they immediately stand for. Notwithstanding which difficulty, and the variety of languages, the powers of the letters in each are very nearly the same, being in all places about twenty

four.

But be the difficulty of the invention as it will, the use of it is manifest, particularly in the advantage it has above the method of conveying our thoughts by words or sounds, because this way we are confined to narrow limits of place and time: whereas we may have occasion to correspond with a friend at a distance, or desire, upon a particular occasion, to take the opinion of an honest gentleman who has been dead this thousand years. Both which defects are supplied by the noble invention of letters. By this means + we materialize our ideas, and make them as lasting as the ink and paper, their vehicles. This

making our thoughts by art visible to the eye, which nature had made intelligible only by the ear, is next to the adding a sixth sense, as it is a supply in case of the defect of one of the five nature gave us, namely, hearing, by making the voice become visible.

Have any of any school of painters gotten themselves an immortal name, by drawing a face, or painting a landscape; by laying down on a piece of canvass a representation only of what nature had given them originals? What applauses will he merit, who first made his ideas to sit to his pencil, and drew to his eye the picture of his mind! Painting represents the outward man, or the shell; but cannot reach the inhabitant within, or the very organ by which the inhabitant is revealed. This art may reach to represent a face, but cannot paint a voice. Kneller can draw the majesty of the queen's person; Kneller can draw her sublime air, and paint her bestowing hand as fair as the lily: but the historian must inform posterity, that she has one peculiar excellence above all other mortals, that her ordinary speech is more charming than song.

But to drop the comparison of this art with any other, let us see the benefit of it in itself. By it the English trader may hold commerce with the inhabitants of the East or West Indies, without the trou, ble of a journey. Astronomers, seated at a distance of the earth's diameter asunder, may confer; what is spoken and thought at one pole, may be heard and understood at the other. The philosopher who wished he had a window in his breast, to lay open his heart to all the world, might as easily have revealed the secrets of it this way, and as easily have left them to the world, as wished it. This silent art of speaking by letters, remedies the inconvenience arising from distance of time, as well as place; and is much beyond that of the Egyptians, who could pre