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men to the greatest violence, are such as those. who are strangers to them would take to be remarkable defective for that end. The fondest lover I know, said to me one day in a crowd of women at an entertainment of music. You have often heard me talk of my beloved: that woman there,' continued he, smiling, when he had fixed my eye, is her very picture.' The lady he shewed me was by much the least remarkable for beauty of any in the whole assembly; but having my curiosity extremely raised, I could not keep my eyes off of her. Her eyes at last met mine, and with a sudden surprise she looked round her to see who near her was remarkably handsome that I was gazing at. This little act explained the secret. She did not understand herself for the object of love, and therefore she was so. The lover is a very honest plain man; and what charmed him was a person that goes along with him in the cares and joys of life, not taken up with herself, but sincerely attentive, with a ready and cheerful mind, to accompany him in either.

I can tell Parthenissa for her comfort, that the beauties, generally speaking, are the most impertinent and disagreeable of women. An apparent desire of admiration, a reflection upon their own merit, and a precise behaviour in their general conduct, are almost inseparable accidents in beauties. All you obtain of them, is granted to importunity and solicitation for what did not deserve so much of your time, and you recover from the possession of it, as out of a dream.

You are ashamed of the vagaries of fancy which so strangely misled you, and your admiration of a beauty, merely as such, is inconsistent with a tolerable reflection upon yourself. The cheerful

good-humoured creatures, into whose heads it never entered that they could make any man unhappy, are the persons formed for making men happy. There is Miss Liddy can dance a jig, raise paste, write a good hand, keep an account, give a reasonable answer, and do as she is bid; while her eldest sister, Madam Martha, is out of humour, has the spleen, learns by reports of people of higher quality new ways of being uneasy and displeased. And this happens for no reason in the world, but that poor Liddy knows she has no such thing as a certain negligence that is so becoming; that there is not I know not what in her air; and that if she talks like a fool, there is no one will say, 'Well! I know not what it is but every thing pleases when she speaks it.'

Ask any of the husbands of your great beauties, and they will tell you that they hate their wives nine hours of every day they pass together. There is such a particularity for ever affected by them, that they are encumbered with their charms in all they say or do. They pray at public devotions as they are beauties. They converse on ordinary occasions as they are beauties. Ask Belinda what it is o'clock, and she is at a stand whether so great a beauty should answer you. In a word, I think, instead of offering to administer consolation to Parthenissa, I should congratulate her metamorphosis; and however she thinks she was not the least insolent in the prosperity of her charms, she was enough so to find she may make herself a much more agreeable creature in her present adversity. The endeavour to please is highly promoted by a consciousness that the approbation of the person you would be agreeable to, is a favour you do not deserve; for in this case assurance of success is the most

certain way to dissappointment.

Good-nature

will always supply the absence of beauty, but beauty cannot long supply the absence of good

nature.

MADAM,

POSTCRIPT.

February 18.

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I HAVE yours of this day, wherein you twice bid me not disoblige you, but you must explain yourself farther, before I know what to do. Your most obedient servant,

T.

THE SPECTATOR.'

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No. 307. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1711-12.

-Versate diu, quid ferre recusent,

Quid valeant humeri

HOR. Ars Poet. ver. 39.

-Often try what weight you can support,
And what your shoulders are too weak to bear.

ROSCOMMON.

I AM SO well pleased with the following letter, that I am in hopes it will not be a disagreeable present to the public.

SIR,

'THOUGH I believe none of your readers more admire your agreeable manner of working up trifles than myself, yet as your speculations are now swelling into volumes, and will in all probability pass down to future ages, methinks I would have no single subject in them, wherein the general good of mankind is concerned, left unfinished.

I have a long time expected with great impatience that you would enlarge upon the ordinary mistakes which are committed in the education of our children. I the more easily flattered myself that you would one time or other resume this consideration, because you tell us that your 168th paper was only composed of a few broken hints; but finding myself hitherto disappointed, I have ventured to send you my own thoughts on this subject.

I remember Pericles, in his famous oration at the funeral of those Athenian young men who perished in the Samian expedition, has a thought very much celebrated by several ancient critics, namely, that the loss which the commonwealth suffered by the destruction of its youth, was like the loss which the year would suffer by the destruction of the spring. The prejudice which the public sustains from a wrong education of children, is an evil of the same nature, as it in a manner starves posterity, and defrauds our country of those persons, who, with due care, might make an eminent figure in their respective posts of life.

I have seen a book written by Juan Huartes, a Spanish physician, entitled Examen de Ingenios, wherein he lays it down as one of his first positions, that nothing but nature can qualify á man for learning; and that without a proper temperament for the particular art or science which he studies, his utmost pains and application, assisted by the ablest masters, will be to no purpose.

He illustrates this by the example of Tully's son Marcus.

Cicero, in order to accomplish his son in that sort of learning which he designed him for, sent him to Athens, the most celebrated academy at

that time in the world, and where a vast concourse, out of the most polite nations, could not but furnish the young gentleman with a multitude of great examples and accidents that might insensibly have instructed him in his designed studies. He placed him under the care of Cratippus, who was one of the greatest philosophers of the age, and as if all the books which were at that time written had not been sufficient for his use, he composed others on purpose for him: notwithstanding all this, history informs us that Marcus proved a mere blockhead, and that nature (who it seems was even with the son for her prodigality to the father) rendered him incapable of improving by all the rules of eloquence, the precepts of philosophy, his own endeavours, and the most refined conversation in Athens. This author therefore proposes, that there should be certain triers or examiners appointed by the state, to inspect the genius of every particular boy, and to allot him the part that is most suitable to his natural talents.

'Plato in one of his dialogues tells us that Socrates, who was the son of a midwife, used to say, that as his mother, though she was very skilful in her profession, could not deliver a woman unless she was first with child, so neither could he himself raise knowledge out of a mind, where nature had not planted it.

'Accordingly, the method this philosopher took, of instructing his scholars by several interrogatories or questions, was only helping the birth, and bringing their own thoughts to light.

6

The Spanish doctor above-mentioned, as his speculations grew more refined, asserts that every kind of wit has a particular science corresponding to it, and in which alone it can be truly ex

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