But in eating, after Nature is once satisfied, ditional morsel brings stupidity and distemh it, and as one of their own poets ex.t,

e soul subsides, and wickedly inclines

› seem but mortal, e'en in sound divines.

ne suppose, after such a meal as this I have escribing, while all the company are sitting argic silence round the table, grunting under of soup, pig, pork, and bacon; let me sup. say, some hungry beggar with looks of peeping through one of the windows, and ddressing the assembly: Prithee, pluck those is from your chins; after Nature is satisfied all you eat extraordinary is my property, and I it as mine. It was given you in order to reme, and not to oppress yourselves. How can comfort or instruct others who can scarcely feel own existence, except from the unsavoury returns n ill-digested meal. But though neither you nor cushions you sit upon will hear me, yet the world irds the excesses of its teachers with a prying eye, notes their conduct with double severity. I know other answer any one of the company could make such an expostulation but this: Friend, you talk f our losing a character, and being disliked by the world; well, and supposing all this to be true, what then! who cares for the world? We'll preach for the world, and the world shall pay us for preaching, whether we like each other or

not."

LETTER

66

"courage to rescue an unhappy woman from approaching ruin, and our detested tyrant, you may "depend upon my future gratitude." I bowed to the ground, and she left me, filled with rapture and astonishment. Night brought me no rest, nor could the ensuing morning calm the anxieties of my mind. I projected a thousand methods for her delivery: but each, when strictly examined, appeared impracticable; in this uncertainty the evening again arrived, and I placed myself on my former station in hopes of a repeated visit. After some short expectation, the bright perfection again appeared; I bowed, as before, to the ground; when raising me up she observed, that the time was not to be spent in useless ceremony; she observed that the day following was appointed for the celebration of her nuptials, and that something was to be done that very night for our mutual deliverance. I offered with the utmost humility to pursue whatever scheme she should direct; upon which she proposed that instant to scale the garden wall, adding that she had prevailed upon a female slave, who was now waiting at the appointed place, to assist her with a ladder.

Pursuant to this information I led her trembling to the place appointed; but instead of the slave we expected to see, Mostadad himself was there awaiting our arrival; the wretch in whom we confided, it seems, had betrayed our design to her master, and he now saw the most convincing proofs of her information. He was just going to draw his sabre, when a principle of avarice repressed his fury, and he resolved, after a severe chastisement, to dispose of me to another master, in the mean time ordered me to be confined in the strictest manner, and the next day to receive an hundred blows on the soles of my feet.

When

ing, and been refined into delicacy of sentiment, from the daughters of the East, whose education is only formed to improve the person, and make them more tempting objects of prostitution!

Adieu.

LETTER LIX.

FROM THE SAME.

WHEN sufficiently refreshed after the fatigues of our precipitate flight, my curiosity, which had been restrained by the appearance of immediate danger, now began to revive: I longed to know by what distressful accidents my fair fugitive became a captive, and could not avoid testifying a surprize how so much beauty could be involved in the calamities from whence she had been so lately rescued.

Talk not of personal charmis, cried she with emotion, since to them I owe every misfortune: look round on the numberless beauties of the country where we are; and see how Nature has poured its charms upon every face, and yet by this profusion Heaven would seem to shew how little it regards such a blessing, since the gift is lavished upon a nation of prostitutes.

I perceive you desire to know my story, and your curiosity is not so great as my impatience to gratify it: I find a pleasure in telling past misfortunes to any, but when my deliverer is pleased with the relation, my pleasure is prompted by duty.

I was