patra on the Cydnus. Thus our athletic beaux demonstrate that they might, if they thought proper, be of confiderable use to the community on their return to the metropolis: they could ply as watermen on the Thames, instead of wafting their precious time in ftrutting through the streets.

As to the other amusements of Brighton-the Affembly-room, which is capacious and elegant, is provided for the reception of the young and the gay who wifh to fhare the delights of mufic and dancing. The toy-fhops prefent a variety of trinkets to the eye of the man of fashion and his fair friend; by which the can evince her taste in the selection, and afford him a most favourable opportunity to fhew his gallantry by purchafing whatever the deems worthy of her accept

ance.

The billiard-table alfo difplays its attractions to allure the unwary, who are taken in the toils by artful black-legs.

Indeed Brighton may be confidered as one of the beft places in Europe for the accommodation of any gentleman who is folicitous to be difencumbered of fu perfluous cafh; the modifh price of lodgings, neceffaries, and luxuries-the moderate charges at the livery-ftables -the money paid for boats and boatmen-fubfcrip tions, circulating libraries, and affemblies-afford fo many happy modes of difplaying a dignified contempt of economy, that a young fellow of fpirit may difencumber himself of an iron cheft full of money in a few weeks at Brighton.

Few individuals of the lower claffes venture to intrude into the polifhed circles at this place, though fometimes a Cit appears in mafquerade. The other day I ftumbled upon Jack Wick, the tallow-chandler, in my morning walk along the Stein: "What! my dear fellow !" cried I, are you here? I thought you were bufied behind your counter in Bishopfgate Street;

Street; fo, Mr. Wick, you are come to light at Brighton?" He haftily interrupted me, whifpering," Are you mad, Charles? Don't betray me, you dɗ dog! I'm here incog. and have paffed for a Peer of the new creation." Saying this, he familiarly leaned on my arm as we fauntered down the walk; and, to fhew his tafte, exclaimed, "They have deftroyed all the beauty of this celebrated place by them there houses, which prevents us from feeing the adjacent country."

Affectation of eafy manners, a paffion for intrigue, and a defire to be confpicuous in frivolous amufements, actuate the minds of the fafhionable and idle train who vifit this town. Here the fharper affumes the character of a gentleman; the kept miftrefs affects a Quaker-like fimplicity, in order to allure; or rifes to the extreme of effrontery, and with Amazonian agility mounts her charger

Flies o'er th' unbending grafs, or skims along the main." Meanwhile her favourite Chevalier purfues her, to the no fmall admiration of equestrian heroes and heroines, who daily amble along the fhore.

THE PETITION OF THE COATS.
[From the fame,]

Moft humbly fheweth,

THAT your petitioners have patiently endured innumerable grievances in filence, and without feeking redrefs. That they have fubmitted to all the caprices and whims of fashion without a fingle murmur. They have allowed their collars to be exalted to fuch a height as to render it doubtful whether their wearers had any head; and to be thrown half-way down the back, by way of difcovering the graceful and elegant fall of the thoulders. Their fleeves have been at one

time fufficiently large to admit the arm of a Hercules, and at others scarcely wide enough for a modern beau. They have been fometimes paid for, and often not. They have unrepiningly paffed through the various gradations of a new coat, an old coat, a fhabby coat, and a turn-coat-nay, fo far has their patience carried them, that, for the accommodation of their wearers, they have fuffered themfelves to be beaten moft unmercifully. They have been bafted by tailors, and dufted by lacquies; they have been sliced by sheers, and pricked with needles. Sometimes they have covered a peer-fometimes a poet;-now a judge-then a highwayman; and have been in habits of intimacy with the beft and most profligate characters in the kingdom.-All this have they done; and now-" Quis credat?" (your petitioners have learnt Latin by protecting the back of a schoolmafter) by way of reward for their fervices, an edict has paffed the mouth of Fashion, that they fhall be deprived of half their dimenfions, and the refpectable name of coat dwindle into the infignificant term jacket.

This infult has roufed their indignation; and they therefore entreat your paper to apprize the youths of ton of the inconveniences the change will fubject them to; fuch as getting their jackets trimmed, &c.—that a coat affords fome protection againft a kicking, but a jacket none, and that though they have thought proper to crop their heads, there is no immediate neceffity for docking their tails!

T

AN EXAMINATION OF THE ART OF
SCRATCHING THE HEAD.

[From a Paris Paper.]

HE faculty of thinking is almoft infeparably connected with fcratching the head. It was for this reafon that Champfort faid, "I have no great

opinion

opinion of people with well-dreffed and powdered hair, because they cannot venture to rub their hands round their heads." The thoughts which flow to the brain produce a frequent titillation in the neighbouring region; and therefore the man of reflection must scratcli himfelf often. The blockhead who wishes to pass for a man of wit fcratches himself fill more; and the woman who has fomething to do more important than that of thinking, fcratches very feldom. The manner of fatisfying fo univerfal a want ought to have been an object worthy of attention and emulation among men. But I fee with regret that I muft go back to antiquity, in order to find out the traces of this most fimple and convenient practice. In the free cities, which contained as many rivals as citizens, an attentive obfervation of each other was the great art of life, and the fcience of phyfiognomy formed an entire part of the fudy of public jurifprudence. Barbarians judged of a hero exactly as they found him, but fubtle republicans examined him more clofely, and wifhed to know why they admired him. I have read Tacitus, Machiavel, Comte d'Avaux, and Cardinal de Retz, and I have not found in them any thing that can be compared to the policy of Alcibiades, when he caused the tail of his dog to be cut off, in order to confound the prating idlers of Athens. It is to be prefumed that he was the perfon who invented the mode of fcratching the head with the point of the finger. This elegant exercife was in unifon with the lifping which diftinguished that great and accomplished man.

The practice paffed from Athens to Rome, where it made fuch progrefs, that it became proverbial to defcribe men of delicate research in the following words→→ qui digito fcalpunt uno eaput. I afk pardon of my young fellow-citizens for making ufe of expreffions unknown to them; but Juvenal, from whom I have taken the

paffage,

paffage, was fuch a pedant, that he never knew how to write a word of French.

Licinius Calvus has left us an epigram in which he afked a young man who was feratching with the point of his finger, if he was not looking for a husband. But this was only idle talk on the part of a poet jealous of thofe who were good fcratchers; becaufe he himself was bald, as his name imports.

If there is any fact authenticated in hiftory it is this, that Pompey, who was oftener called the handfome than the great, never ufed more than one finger in fcratching his head. For this he has been done juftice to by the tribune of Claudius, by Seneca the elder, Ammianus Marcellinus, and the Emperor Julian.

Julius Cæfar, another Roman still more illustrious, fignalized himself in a fimilar manner, as we learn from Cicero and Plutarch. It is really worthy of remark, that the empire of the world was then contefted for by two men who were the best scratchers of their age; and for the honour of the gods, I would willingly believe that at Pharfalia they decided in favour of him who had brought the art to the highest degree of perfection.

There can be no doubt but that for the laft ten years we have inherited this fashion from the Greeks and Romans; and all our young heads, rounded after the manner of the ancients, are fo many proofs of the fact. Is it not, therefore, grievous to behold those pretty black heads fcratched with fuch barbarous rufticity? I am ready to faint away, when, in the midst of a faloon, or in the moft elegant company, an Alcibiades or an Antinous opens his hands like two great combs, places them behind his ears, and in that form drives them from the bottom to the top of his head, leaving ten furrows in his hair to bear teftimony to their paffage.

What