$85. Painting disagreeable in Women. § 85. Painting disagreeable in Women. A lady's face, like the coat in the Tale of a Tub, if left alone, will wear well; but if you offer to load it with foreign ornaments, you destroy the original ground.

Among other matter of wonder on my first coming to town, I was much surprised at the general appearance of youth among the ladies. At present there is no distinction in their complexions, between a beauty in her teens and a lady in her grand climacteric; yet at the same time I

could not but take notice of the wonderful variety in the face of the same lady. I have known an olive beauty on Monday grow very ruddy and blooming on Tuesday; turn pale on Wednesday; come round to the olive hue again on Thursday; and, in a word, change her complexion as often as her gown. I was amazed to find no old aunts in this town, except a few unfashionable people, whom nobody knows; the rest still continuing in the zenith of their youth and health, and falling off, like timely fruit, without any previous decay. All this was a mystery that I could not unriddle, till, on being introduced to some ladies, I unluckily improved the hue of my lips at the expence of a fair one, who unthinkingly had turned her cheek; and found that my kisses were given (as is observed in the epigram) like those of Pyramus, through a wall. I then discovered, that this surprising youth and beauty was all counterfeit; and that (as Hamlet says) “God nad given them one face, and they had made themselves another."

I have mentioned the accident of my carrying off half a lady's face by a salute, that your courtly dames may learn to put on their faces a little tighter; but as for my own daughters, while such fashions prevail, they shall still remain in Yorkshire. There, I think, they are pretty safe; for this unnatural fashion will hardly make its way into the country, as this vamped complexion would not stand against the rays of the sun, and would inevitably melt away in a country dance.

The ladies have, indeed, been always the greatest enemies to their own beauty, and seem to have a design against their own faces. At one time the whole countenance was eclipsed in a black velvet mask; at another it was blotted with patches: and at present it is crusted over with plaster of Paris. In those battered belles who still aim at conquest, the practice is in some sort excusable; but it is surely as ridiculous in a young lady to give up beauty for paint, as it would be to draw a good set of teeth merely to fill their places with a row of ivory.

Indeed, so common is the fashion among the young as well as the old, that when I am in a group of beauties, I consider them as so many pretty pictures; looking about me with as little emotion as I do at Hud-on's: and if any thing fills me with admiration, it is the judicious arrangement of the tints, and delicate touches of the painter. Art very often seems almost to vie with nature: but my attention is too frequently diverted by considering the texture and hue of the skin beneath; and the picture fails to charm, while my thoughts are engrossed by the wood and canvass. Connoisseur.

§ 86. On the Progress of the Arts.

The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety.

The first labour is enforced by necessity. The savage finds himself incommoded by heat and cold, by rain and wind; he shelters himself in the hollow of a rock, and learns to dig a cave where there was none before. He finds the sun and the wind excluded by the thicket, and when the accidents of the chase, or the convenience of pasturage, leads him into more open places, he forms a thicket for himself, by planting stakes at proper distances, and laying branches from one to another.

The next gradation of skill and industry produces a house, closed with doors, and divided by partitions; and apartments are multiplied and disposed according to the various degrees of power or invention: improvement succeeds improvement, as he that is freed from a greater evil grows impatient of a less, till ease in time is advanced to pleasure.

The mind, set free from the importunities of natural want, gains leisure to go

skies of their own; are furnished with all accommodations for animal subsistence, and are supposed to be the abodes of intellectual life; all which, together with our earthly habitation, are dependent on that grand dispenser of divine munificence, the sun; receive their light from the distribution of his rays, and derive their comfort from his benign agency. The sun, which seems to perform its daily stages through the sky, is in this respect fixed and immovable; 'tis the great axle of heaven, about which the globe we inhabit, and other more spacious orbs, wheel their stated courses. The sun, though seemingly smaller than the dial it illuminates, is abundantly larger than this whole earth, on which so many lofty mountains rise, and such vast oceans roll. A line extending from side to side through the centre of that resplendent orb, would measure more than eight hundred thousand miles; a girdle formed to go round its circumference would require a length of millions. Were its solid contents to be estimated, the account would overwhelm our understanding, and be almost beyond the power of language to express. Are we startled at these reports of philosophy? Are we ready to cry out in a transport of surprise, "How mighty is the Being who kindled such a prodigious fire, and keeps alive from age to age such an enormous mass of flame!" let us attend our philosophic guides, and we shall be brought acquainted with speculations more enlarged and more inflaming.

This sun, with all his attendant planets, is but a very little part of the grand machine of the universe: every star, though in appearance no bigger than the diamond that glitters upon a lady's ring, is really a vast globe, like the sun in size and in glory; no less spacious, no less luminous, than the radiant source of the day: so that every star is not barely a world, but the centre of a magnificent system; has a retinue of worlds, irradiated by its beams, and revolving round its attractive influence, all which are lost to our sight in unmeasurable wilds of ether. That the stars appear like so many diminutive and scarce distinguishable points, is owing to their immense and inconceivable distance. Immense and inconceivable indeed it is, since a ball, shot from a loaded cannon, and flying with unabated rapidity, must travel at this impetuous rate almost seven hundred thousand years, before it could

reach the nearest of these twinkling luminaries.

While, beholding this vast expanse, I learn my own extreme meanness, I would also discover the abject littleness of all terrestrial things. What is the earth, with all her ostentatious scenes, compared with this astonishing grand furniture of the skies? What, but a dim speck, hardly perceivable in the map of the universe? It is observed by a very judicious writer, that if the sun himself, which enlightens that part of the creation, was extinguished, and all the host of planetary worlds, which move about him, were annihilated, they would not be missed by an eye that can take in the whole compass of nature, any more than a grain of sand upon the sea-shore. The bulk of which they consist, and the space which they occupy, is so exceedingly little in comparison of the whole, that their loss would leave scarce a blank in the immensity of God's works. If then, not our globe only, but this whole system, be so very diminutive, what is a kingdom or a country? What are a few lordships, or the so much admired patrimonies of those who are styled wealthy? When I measure them with my own little pittance, they swell into proud and bloated dimensions: but when I take the universe for my standard, how scanty is their size, how contemptible their figure! they shrink into pompous nothings. Spectator.

$89. The Character of Toby Bumper.

It is one of the greatest advantages of education, that it encourages an ingenuous spirit, and cultivates a liberal disposition. We do not wonder that a lad who has never been sent to school, and whose faculties have been suffered to rust at the hall-house, should form too close an intimacy with his best friends, the groom and the game-keeper; but it would amaze us to see a boy well educated cherish this ill-placed pride, of being, as it is called, the head of the company. A person of this humble ambition will be very well content to pay the reckoning, for the honour of being distinguished by the title of the gentleman,' while he is unwilling to associate with men of fashion, lest they should be his superiors in rank or fortune; or with men of parts, lest they should exceed him in abilities. Sometimes indeed it happens that a person of genius and learning will

stoop to receive incense of mean and illiterate flatterers in a porter-house and cidercellar; and I remember to have heard of a poet, who was once caught in a brothel, in the very fact of reading his verses to the good old mother, and a circle of her daughters.

There are some few, who have been led into low company, merely from an af affectation of humour, and from a desire of seeing the droller scenes of life, have descended to associate with the meanest of the mob, and picked their cronies from lanes and alleys. The most striking instance I know of this low passion for drollery, is Toby Bumper, a young fellow of family and fortune, and not without talents, who has taken more than ordinary pains to degrade himself; and is now almost become as low a character, as any of those whom he has chosen for his companions. Toby will drink purl in a morning, smoke his pipe in a nightcellar, dive for a dinner, or eat black puddings at Bartholomew-fair, for the humour of the thing. He has also studied, and practises, all the plebeian arts and exercises, under the best masters; and has disgraced himself with every impolite accomplishment. He has had many a set-to with Buckhorse; and has now and then the honour of receiving a fall from the great Broughton himself. Nobody is better known among the hackney-coachmen, as a brother-whip; at the noble game of prison-bars, he is a match even for the natives of Essex and Cheshire; and he is frequently engaged at the Artillery ground with Faulkner and Dingate at cricket; and is himself esteemed as good a bat as either of the Bennets. Another of Toby's favourite amusements is, to attend the executions at Tyburn; and it once happened that one of his familiar intimates was unfortunately brought thither; when Toby carried his regard to his deceased friend so far, as to get himself knocked down in endea vouring to rescue the body from the surgeons.

As Toby affects to mimic, in every particular, the art and manner of the vulgar, he never fails to enrich his conversation with their emphatic oaths and expressive dialect, which recommends him as a man of excellent humour and high fun, among the Choice Spirits at Comus's Court, or at the meeting of the Sons of sound Sense and Satisfaction. He is also particularly famous for singing those cant songs,

drawn up in the barbarous dialect of sharpers and pick-pockets; the humour of which he often heightens, by screwing up his mouth, and rolling about a large quid of tobacco between his jaws. These and other like accomplishments frequently promote him to the chair in these facetious societies.

Toby' has indulged the same notions of humour, even in his amours; and is wellknown to every street-walker from Cheapside to Charing-cross. This has given several shocks to his constitution, and often involved him in unlucky scrapes. He has been frequently bruised, beaten, and kicked, by the bullies of Wapping and Fleet-ditch; and was once soundly drubbed by a soldier for engaging with his trull. The last time I saw him he was laid up with two black eyes, and a broken pate, which he got in a midnight skirmish, about a mistress, in a nightcellar. Connoisseur.

§ 90. Causes of National Characters.

The vulgar are very apt to carry all national characters to extremes; and having once established it as a principle, that any people are knavish, or cowardly, or ignorant, they will admit of no exception, but comprehend every individual under the same character. Men of sense condemn these undistinguishing judgments; though at the same time they allow, that each nation has a peculiar set of manners, and that some particular qualities are more frequently to be met with among one people than among their neighbours. The common people in Switzerland have surely more probity than those of the same rank in Ireland; and every prudent man will, from that circumstance alone, make a difference in the trust which he reposes in each. We have reason to expect greater wit and gaiety in a Frenchman than in a Spaniard, though Cervantes was born in Spain. An Englishman will naturally be thought to have more wit than a Dane, though Tycho Brahe was a native of Denmark.

Different reasons are assigned for these national characters, while some account for them from moral, and others from physical causes. By moral causes I mean all circumstances which are fitted to work on the mind, as motives or reasons, and which render a peculiar set of manners habitual to us. Of this kind are the nature of the government, the revolutions of public affairs, the plenty or penury in