esteem men of sense have to the fair sex, as this article of visits. A young lady cannot be married, but all impertinents in town must be beating the tattoo from one quarter of the town to the other, to show they know what passes. If a man of honour should once in an age marry a woman of merit for her intrinsic value, the envious things are all in motion in an instant to make it known to the sisterhood as an indiscretion, and publish to the town how many pounds he might have had to have been troubled with one of them. After they are tired with that, the next thing is, to make their compliments to the married couple and their relations. They are equally busy at a funeral, and the death of a person of quality is always attended with the murder of several sets of coach-horses and chairmen. In both cases, the visitants are wholly unaffected, either with joy or sorrow; for which reason, their congratulations and condolences are equally words of course; and one would be thought wonderfully ill-bred, that should build upon such expressions as encouragements to expect from them any instance of friendship.

Thus are the true causes of living, and the solid pleasures in life, lost in show, imposture, and impertinence. As for my part, I think most of the misfortunes in families arise from the trifling way the women have in spending their time, and gratifying only their eyes and ears, instead of their reason and understanding.

A fine young woman, bred under a visiting mother, knows all that is possible for her to be acquainted with by report, and sees the virtuous and the vicious used so indifferently, that the fears she is born with are

abated, and desires indulged, in proportion to her love of that light and trifling conversation. I know I talk like an old man; but I must go on to say, that I think the general reception of mixed company, and the pretty fellows that are admitted at those assemblies, give a young woman so false an idea of life, that she is generally bred up with a scorn of that sort of merit in a man, which only can make her happy in marriage ; and the wretch, to whose lot she falls, very often receives in his arms a coquette, with the refuse of a heart long before given away to a coxcomb. . . .

[Tatler, No. 109.

A Fashionable Inventory

THE lady hereafter-mentioned, having come to me in very great haste, and paid me much above the usual fee, as a cunning-man, to find her stolen goods, and also having approved my late discourse of advertisements, obliged me to draw up this, and insert it in the body of my paper.

ADVERTISEMENT

Whereas Bridget Howd'ee, late servant to the Lady Fardingale, a short, thick, lively, hard-favoured wench of about twenty-nine years of age, her eyes small and bleared, and nose very broad at bottom, and turning up at the end, her mouth wide, and lips of an unusual thickness, two teeth out before, the rest black and uneven, the tip of her left ear being of a mouse colour, her voice loud and shrill, quick of speech, and something of a Welsh accent, withdrew herself on Wednesday last from her ladyship's dwelling-house, and, with the help of her consorts, carried off the following goods of her said lady: viz. a thick wadded calico wrapper, a musk-coloured velvet mantle lined with squirrelskins, eight night-shifts, four pair of silk stockings curiously darned, six pair of laced shoes, new and old, with the heels of half two inches higher than their fellows; a quilted petticoat of the largest size, and one of canvas with whale-bone hoops; three pair of stays,

bolstered below the left shoulder, two pair of hips of the newest fashion, six round-about aprons with pockets, and four striped muslin night-rails very little frayed; a silver pot for coffee or chocolate, the lid much bruised; a broad-brimmed flat silver plate for sugar with Rhenish wine; a silver ladle for plumbporridge; a silver cheese-toaster with three tongues, an ebony handle, and silvering at the end; a silver posnet to butter eggs; one caudle and two cordialwater cups, two cocoa-cups, and an ostrich's egg, with rims and feet of silver, a marrow-spoon with a scoop at the other end, a silver orange-strainer, eight sweetmeat spoons made with forks at the end, an agatehandle knife and fork in a sheath, a silver tonguescraper, a silver tobacco-box, with a tulip graved on the top; and a bible bound in shagreen, with gilt leaves and clasps, never opened but once. Also a small cabinet, with six drawers inlaid with red tortoiseshell, and brass gilt ornaments at the four corners, in which were two leather forehead-cloths, three pair of oiled dog-skin gloves, seven cakes of superfine Spanish wool, half a dozen of Portugal dishes, and a quire of paper from thence; two pair of bran-new plumpers, four black-lead combs, three pair of fashionable eyebrows, two sets of ivory teeth, little the worse for wearing, and one pair of box for common use; Adam and Eve in bugle work, without fig leaves, upon canvas, curiously wrought with her ladyship's own hand; several filigrane curiosities; a crotchet of one hundred and twenty-two diamonds, set strong and deep in silver, with a rump-jewel after the same fashion; bracelets of braided hair, pomander and seed-pearl ; a large old purple velvet purse embroidered, and

shutting with a spring, containing two pictures in miniature, the features visible; a broad thick gold ring with a hand-in-hand engraved upon it, and within this poesy, 'While life does last, I'll hold thee fast'; another set round with small rubies and sparks, six wanting; another of Turkey stone, cracked through the middle; an Elizabeth and four Jacobuses, one guinea, the first of the coin, an angel with a hole bored through, a broken half of a Spanish piece of gold, a crown-piece with the breeches, an old nine-pence bent both ways by Lilly the almanack-maker, for luck at langteraloo, and twelve of the shells called blackmoor's teeth; one small amber box with apoplectic balsam, and one silver gilt of a larger size for cachou and carraway comfits, to be taken at long sermons, the lid enamelled, representing a cupid fishing for hearts, with a piece of gold on his hook; over his head this rhyme, 'Only with gold, you me shall hold.' In the lower drawer was a large new gold repeating watch made by a Frenchman; a gold chain, and all the proper appurtenances hung upon steel swivels, to wit, lockets with the hair of dead and living lovers, seals with arms, emblems, and devices cut in cornelian, agate, and onyx, with cupids, hearts, darts, altars, flames, rocks, pickaxes, roses, thorns, and sunflowers; as also variety of ingenious French mottos; together with gold etuys for quills, scissors, needles, thimbles, and a sponge dipped in Hungary water, left but the night before by a young lady going upon a frolic incog. There was also a bundle of letters, dated between the years one thousand six hundred and seventy, and one thousand six hundred and eighty-two, most of them signed Philander, the rest Strephon, Amyntas, Cory