explaining myself to you. I am not affronted at the design your late behaviour discovered you had in your addresses to me; but I impute it to the degeneracy of the age, rather than your particular fault. As I aim at nothing more than being yours, I am willing to be a stranger to your name, your fortune, or any figure which your wife might expect to make in the world, provided my commerce with you is not to be a guilty one. I resign gay dress, the pleasures of visits, equipage, plays, balls, and operas, for that one satisfaction of having you for ever mine. I am willing you shall industriously conceal the only cause of triumph which I can know in this life. I wish only to have it my duty, as well as my inclination, to study your happiness. If this has not the effect this letter seems to aim at, you are to understand that I had a mind to be rid of you, and took the readiest way to pall you with an offer of what you would never desist pursuing while you received ill usage. Be a true man; be my slave while you doubt me, and neglect me when you think I love you. I defy you to find out what is your present circumstance with me; but I know while I can keep this

suspence,

I am your admired

BELINDA.

MADAM,

• IT is a strange state of mind a man is in, when the very imperfections of a woman he loves turn into excellencies and advantages. I do assure you, I am very much afraid of venturing upon you. I now like you in in spite of my reason, and think it an ill circumstance to owe one's happiness to nothing but infatuation. I can see you ogle all the young fellows who look at you, and observe your eye wander after new conquests every. moment you are in a public place; and yet there is

such

such a beauty in all your looks and gestures, that I cannot but admire you in the very act of endeavouring to gain the hearts of others. My condition is the same with that of the lover in the Way of the World. * I have studied your faults so long, that they are become as familiar to me, and I like them as well as I do my own. Look to it, Madam, and consider whether you think this gay behaviour will appear to me as amiable when an husband, as it does now to me a lover. Things are so far advanced, that we must proceed; and I hope you will lay to heart, that it will be becoming in me to appear still your lover, but not in you to be still my mistress. Gaiety in the matrimonial life is graceful in one sex, but exceptionable in the other. As you improve these little hints, you will ascertain the happiness or uneasiness of,

MADAM,

Your most obedient,

Most humble servant,

T. D.'

SIR,

WHEN I sat at the window, and you at the other end of the room by my cousin, I saw you catch me looking at you. Since you have the secret at last, which I am sure you should never have known but by inadvertency, what my eyes said was true. But it is too soon to confirm it with my hand, therefore shall not subscribe my name.'

SIR,

THERE were other gentlemen nearer, and I know no necessity you were under to take up that flippant creature's fan last night; but you shall never touch a stick of mine more, that's pos.

PHILLIS.

TO

This

'BEFORE this can reach the best of husbands, and the fondest lover, those tender names will be no more of concern to me. The indisposition in which you, to obey the dictates of your honour and duty, left me, has increased upon me; and am acquainted by my physicians I cannot live a week longer. At this time my spirits fail me; and it is the ardent love I have for you that carries me beyond my strength, and enables me to tell you, the most painful thing in the prospect of death is, that I must part with you. But let it be a comfort to you, that I have no guilt hangs upon me, no unrepented folly that retards me; but I pass away my last hours in reflection upon the happiness we have lived in together, and in sorrow that it is so soon to have an end. is a frailty which I hope is so far from criminal, that methinks there is a kind of piety in being so unwilling to be separated from a state which is the institution of Heaven, and in which we have lived according to its laws. As we know no more of the next life, but that it will be an happy one to the good, and miserable to the wicked, why may we not please ourselves at least, to alleviate the difficulty of resigning this being, in imagining that we shall have a sense of what passes below, and may possibly be employed in guiding the steps of those with whom we walked with innocence when mortal? Why may not I hope to go on in my usual work, and, though unknown to you, be assistant in all the conflicts of your mind? Give me leave to say to you, O best of men, that I cannot figure to myself a greater happiness than in such an employment. To be present at all the adventures to which human life is exposed, to administer slumber to thy eyelids in the agonies of a fever, to cover thy beloved face in the day of battle, to go with thee a guardian angel incapable of wound or pain, where I have longed

* Col. RIVERS.

longed to attend thee when a weak, a fearful woman: these, my dear, are the thoughts with which I warm my poor languid heart. But, indeed, I am not capable, under my present weakness, of bearing the strong agonies of mind I fall into, when I form to myself the grief you will be in, upon your first hearing of my departure, I will not dwell upon this, because your kind and generous heart will be but the more afflicted, the more the person for whom you lament offers you consolation. My last breath will, if I am myself, expire in a prayer for you. I shall never see thy face again. Farewel for ever.'

T.

No. 205.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1711.

Decipimur specie recti

HOR. ARS. POET. V. 25.

"Deluded by a seeming excellence."

ROSCOMMON.

DESCRIPTION OF A PROCURESS.

WHEN I meet with any vicious character that is not generally known, in order to prevent its doing mischief, I draw it at length, and set it up as a scarecrow; by which means I do not only make an example of the person to whom it belongs, but give warning to all her Majesty's subjects, that they may not suffer by it. Thus, to change the allusion, I have marked out several of the shoals and quicksands of life, and am continually employed in discovering those which are still concealed, in order to keep the ignorant and unwary from running upon them. It is with this intention that I publish the following letter, which brings to light some secrets of this nature.

MR. SPECTATOK,

THERE are none of your speculations which I read over with greater delight, than those which are designed for the improvement of our sex. You have endeavoured to correct our unreasonable fears and superstitions, in your seventh and twelfth papers; our fancy for equipage, in your fifteenth; our love of puppet-shows, in your thirty-first; our notions of beauty, in your thirty-third; our inclination for romances in your thirty-seventh;