out of the society of Jesuits, and is to be well read in the controversies of probable doctrines, mental reservation, and the rights of princes. This learned man is to instruct them in the grammar, syntax, and construing part of Treaty Latin; how to distinguish between the spirit and the letter, and likewise demonstrate how the same form of words may lay an obligation upon any prince in Europe, different from that which it lays upon his most christian majesty. He is likewise to teach them the art of finding flaws, loop-holes, and evasions, in the most solemn compacts, and particularly a great rabbinical secret, revived of late years by the fraternity of Jesuits, namely, that contradictory interpretations of the same article may both of them be true and valid. When our statesmen are sufficiently improved by these several instructors, they are to receive their last polishing from one who is to act among thein as master of the ceremonies. The gentleman is to give them lectures upon the important points of the elbow-chair and the stair-head, to instruct them in the different situations of the right hand, and to furnish them with bows and inclinations of all sizes, measures, and proportions. In short, this professor is to give the society their stiffening, and infuse into their manners that beautiful political starch, which may qualify them for levees, conferences, visits, and make them shine in what vulgar minds are apt to look upon as trifles.

I have not yet heard any further particulars, which are to be observed in this society of unfledged statesmen; but I must confess, had I a son of five and twenty, that should take it into his head at that age to set up for a politician, I think I should go near to disinherit him for a blockhead.

Besides, I should be apprehensive lest the same arts which are to enable him to negotiate between potentates, might a little infect his ordinary behaviour between man and man. There is no question but these young Machiavels, will in a little time turn their college upside down with plots and stratagems, and lay as many schemes to circumvent one another in a frog or a sallad, as they may hereafter put in practice to over-reach a neighbouring prince or state.

We are told that the Spartans, though they punished theft in the young men when it was discovered, looked upon it as honourable if it succeeded. Provided the conveyance was clean and unsuspected, a youth might afterwards boast of it. This, say the historians, was to keep them sharp, and to hinder them from being imposed upon, either in their public or private negotiations. Whether any such relaxations of morality, such little jeux d' esprit, ought not to be allowed in this intended seminary of politicians, I shall leave to the wisdom of their founder.

In the mean time we have fair warning given us by this doughty body of statesmen: and as Sylla saw many Marius's in Cæsar, so I think we may discover many Torcy's in this college of academicians. Whatever we think of ourselves, I am afraid neither our Smyrna nor St. James's will be a match for it. Our coffee-houses are, indeed, very good institutions; but whether or no these our British schools of politics may furnish out as able envoys and secretaries as an academy that is set apart for that purpose, will deserve our serious consideration, especially if we remember that our country is more famous for producing men of integrity than statesmen: and that, on the contrary, French truth and British policy make a

conspicuous figure in nothing; as the Earl of Rochester has very well observed in his admirable poem upon that barren subject.

L.

No. 306. WEDNESDAY, FEB. 20, 1711-12.

"I WRITE this to communicate to you a misfortune which frequently happens, and therefore deserves a consolatory discourse on the subject. I was within this balf year in the possession of as much beauty and as many lovers as any young lady in England. But my admirers have left me, and I cannot complain of their behaviour. I have within that time had the small-pox: and this face, which (according to many amorous epistles which I have by me) was the seat of all that is beautiful in woman, is now disfigured with scars. It goes to the very soul of me to speak what I really think of my face; and though I think I did not overrate my beauty while I had it, it has extremely advanced in its value with me now it is lost. There is one circumstance which makes my case very particular; the ugliest fellow that ever pretended to me, was and is most in my favour, and

he treats me at present the most unreasonably. If you could make him return an obligation which he owes me, in liking a person that is not amiable. -But there is, I fear, no possibility of making passion move by the rules of reason and gratitude. But say what you can to one who has survived herself, and knows not how to act in a new being. My lovers are at the feet of my rivals, my rivals are every day bewailing me, and I cannot enjoy what I am, by reason of the distracting reflection upon what I was. Consider the woman I was did not die of old age, but I was taken off in the prime of youth, and according to the course of nature may have forty years after-life to come. I have nothing of myself left, which I like, but that

I am, SIR,

Your most humble servant,

PARTHENISSA.'

When Lewis of France had lost the battle of Ramilies, the addresses to him at that time were full of his fortitude, and they turned his misfortune to his glory; in that, during his prosperity, he could never have manifested his heroic constancy under distresses, and so the world had lost the most eminent part of his character. Parthenissa's condition gives her the same opportunity: and to resign conquests is a task as difficult in a beauty as an hero. In the very entrance upon this work she must burn all her love-letters; or since she is so candid as not to call her lovers, who follow her no longer, unfaithful, it would be a very good beginning of a new life from that of a beauty, to send them back to those who writ them, with this honest inscription, Articles of a marriage treaty broken off by the small-pox.' I have known but one instance where a matter of

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this kind went on after a like misfortune, where the lady, who was a woman of spirit, writ this billet to her lover:

'SIR,

'If you flattered me before I had this terrible malady, pray come and see me now: but, if you sincerely liked me, stay away, for I am not the same CORINNA.

The lover thought there was something so sprightly in her hehaviour, that he answered:

'MADAM,

'I AM not obliged, since you are not the same woman, to let you know whether I flattered you or not: but I assure you I do not, when I tell you I now like you above all your sex, and hope you will bear what may befal me when we are both one, as well as you do what happens to yourself now you are single; therefore I am ready to take such a spirit for my companion as soon as you please.

AMILCAR.'

If Parthenissa can now possess her own mind, and think as little of her beauty as she ought to have done when she had it, there will be no great diminution of her charms; and if she was formerly affected too much with them, an easy behaviour will more than make up for the loss of them. Take the whole sex together, and you find those who have the strongest possession of men's hearts are not eminent for their beauty. You see it often happen that those who engage