cap, riding after him, with a large portmanteau and a wax-cloth bag. An excise-officer, who was passing, talked of examining his baggage. John opened the portmanteau and bag, and shewed him what was within. Nothing but parchments and papers relating to a law-suit, about two roods of ground, which had lasted for six winter sessions, between him and his neighbour Dr. Testy.-A little squat man rode by him on a dun poney: John said this was his master's country-lawyer, who had been of the greatest use to him in his process, and who indeed scarce did any thing else but attend to this gentleman's affairs.

January 5. A jolly, red-faced, middle-aged gentleman, with his servant in the chaise along with him, and little medicine chest, as he called it, with square bottles, and labels upon them written in Dutch. Came to town to consult about his gout; but his man told the chamber-maid, he always left the country when a club broke up in a little town near him, of which he was the oldest member. John said he wished the winter were fairly over, and they were got safe out of Edinburgh again; because it was hard living in this town of ours. • In the country,' said John, we get drunk but once a-day, and are generally in bed by eleven.'

January 6. In a return chaise from the west Richard III. and Hamlet Prince of Denmark.— Set down the Queen at the Tap-room. Ophelia and her three children to come by the caravan.

Mem. to the waiter, who is an old acquaintance of Richard's, to send to the waggon for the parcels: my legs and back to my own lodgings: Falstaff's belly, and Bardolph's nose, to Hallion's.

January 8. Passed a coach with Ladies; two maid-servants, and an old butler, in a chaise behind, the gentleman and his son on horseback. Mr.from -shire, gone to his own house, No. 7.—

Send word to the poor widow who lost her husband last week.

Here the journal stopped short, for that gentleman's good actions are not easily traced; but I could supply the blank, for No. 7. is the house of my excellent friend Benevolus. From the country, where he has encouraged industry, and diffused happiness all around him, he comes at this season, like the sun, to cheer and gladden the inhabitants of another hemisphere. He comes to town to find a new scene for his own virtues, and to shew his children that world which is to profit by theirs. The society which he enjoys, and into which he introduces his family, is chiefly of that sort which is formed to instruct and to improve them. If sometimes of a gayer or more thoughtless kind, it is however always untainted with vice and undebased by folly; for there are no social moments, however much unbent or unrestrained, on which a wise and good man does not stamp somewhat of the purity and dignity of his own nature. At Benevolus's table, I have seen the same guests behave with the most perfect propriety and good manners, who but a few doors from him held a conversation and deportment equally repugnant to both. Nor does his benignity hold out less encouragement to the worthy, than his good sense and virtue impose reverence on the unthinking. At his table, unassuming merit sits always at her ease, and conscious obligation feels perfect independence, Nobody ever cites his power or his rank, but to il lustrate the nobleness of his mind; nor speaks of his wealth, but as the instrument of his benevolence. Ꮓ

N° 55. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1786.

To the AUTHOR of the LOUNGER.

BUT indeed I have generally remarked, that people did so only because they could not do better.' So says Colonel Caustic of the manners of certain individuals in his own days, who sometimes, as well as we, transgressed the bounds of strict decorum, and tried to make rudeness pass for raillery, or indecency for wit. I admit the fairness of his judgment in the cases there spoken of; and I heartily wish they were the only instances where we indulge our foibles under false pretenses, and absurdly attempt to make a merit of our defects. But I am afraid there are few kinds of imposition which we are more given to practise on the world, and even on ourselves; and that too in particulars far more important than those so offensive to the Colonel, though in this I should regret to be understood as meaning that the latter are of little moment.

I find, Sir, I am personally too much interested in this subject to speak long of it in general terms. At the same time I have no intention, like some of your correspondents, to give you a history of myself. Suffice it to know, that though by birth a gentlewoman, and educated to prospects which I well remember were the envy of my young companions, I was long ago reduced, by the misfortunes of my family, to accept, and even to be thankful for a very humble station; and have lived these many years as the attendant of a lady, who is indeed of the same blood with myself, but whom I now must needs call

my superior. It is with her, as a striking example of the self-deception mentioned, that I mean to bring you and your readers acquainted; in hope no doubt, at the same time, to meet with some sympathy in my sufferings under her dominion.

Not that I would represent my patroness as without her share of merit neither; for good qualities she certainly has. But what has marred the whole fruit and harvest of them, this lady was born-with too strong feelings, to use her phrase for it, or, to speak my own sense of the matter-with pretty violent passions. By proper means, employed at an early period of life, this vivacity of disposition might, at least to a certain degree, have been corrected. But while she was a child, her parents were too fond of her to chastise her faults, or perhaps to discern that she had any; and she lost these tutors before reaching the age when her behaviour to themselves might possibly have taught them the propriety of showing less indulgence. She had besides the misfortune, for such I must account it, of being reckoned, when grew up, among the finest women of her time; a circumstance which did not much contribute to restrain the sallies of caprice, nor to engage her in the profitable but ungrateful labour of discovering her defects. Add to this, she was introduced to the world while as yet a mere girl, and precisely at that æra of fashion, when, owing I believe to certain novels then recently published, and in the very height of their popularity, the style of conversation was wholly sentimental; and the women universally vied one with another (in which they were imitated by some of the men) in making proof of the strength and the delicacy of their feeling.

she

Miss Nettletop was of the very frame and constistution to be caught with the prevailing malady. Fond of admiration to excess, and delighted with

the generous system that raised mere speculative sensibility, of which she had enough, to the very top of the list of virtues, she quickly distinguished herself among its declared votaries. The Gospels of Sentiment (if so I may call the books in question) were never out of her hands; she had their texts and phraseology at all times in her mouth; and thus, by perpetual indulgence in one melting strain, having in time persuaded herself that she was in truth one of the tenderest and most refined of human beings, she gave herself up at last entirely to the direction of her feelings as instinctive guides, far surer and more infallible than observation or reflection.

Had her delusion stopped here, it would have been comparatively innocent, and more properly_the subject of ridicule than of serious complaint. But, alas, Sir! what was a most unlucky oversight in learning to think thus favourably of her own heart, and to entertain this so profound respect for her emotions, she omitted to take the necessary pains for distinguishing the different kinds of emotion one from another, nor separated with perfect justice the amiable from the disagreeable; but inadvertently, among the multitude of those that had the sufferings of her neighbour for their object, contracted a leaning also toward some few others, hidden under the former, I suppose, which tended purely to her own gratifi

cation.

The truth is, that Miss Nettletop, perhaps without being conscious of it, had not been the less ready to inlist among the proselytes of Sentiment, that she found, or thought she found, in their creed, the appearance of an apology for certain vivacities, which, as already hinted, it would have cost her some trouble to get the better of; and even saw a specious pretence, in various instances, for holding them out as so many perfections. No wonder she