and bound by the duties of my profession, to catch at such matters, and being ever disposed and willing to derive moral instruction from public events, I was not very much surprized when I first discovered that the late worthy Alderman designed to bring into view, if not practice, those excellent principles of integrity and industry which had governed his own conduct during his very long, active, and useful life. We Projectors are enabled to penetrate through obscurities much sooner than any other class of men, except, perhaps, news-writers and conjurors; and, therefore, from the first glance of the printed scheme, I foresaw that something more would happen than the publick expected, and that, in this lottery at least, there would be "wheels within wheels." I even went so far as to assure some confidential friends that

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they little knew what their tickets would produce;" and I am sorry to add that they heard me with an air of obstinate incredulity.

But this was no discouragement; for time has ratified my conjectures. It now appears that the venerable magistrate just mentioned had, during the latter weeks of his life, been arranging the blank prizes, as some have called them, in such a judicious manner, that their effect upon the publick in general has been

either moral or satirical; and by this means he has conferred great obligations on the present generation, whether they be willing to allow them or not. Dame Fortune, likewise, catching a hint, or rather imbibing the spirit of the worthy Alderman, has disposed of these guineasworths of prints with an attention rather to the wants than the wishes of her votaries, which they well know is not her usual practice. I do not, therefore, wonder at being told in every company I visit, that some purchasers have got prints which have afforded a broad hint, and that others have been so strikingly depicted in their prizes as to be either very much ashamed or very much offended.

The complaints and reports, indeed, which I have heard on this subject, are so numerous and various in kind and degree, that I might fill my whole paper with them, and yet not exhaust my information. But a few specimens may suffice to shew the waggish disposition of the wheel, or rather the very accurate knowledge which the Projector of the scheme had of what the publick wanted for instruction and reproof. What, indeed, but an intelligent acquaintance with the characteristicks of the age could have suggested a plan by which so many young gentlemen about town have got the print

of "The Prodigal Son?" With equal attention to the sources of evil, the mothers of several of these hopeful youths have become possessed of "The Card-players." And these two prints, with a propriety so minute as even to extend to place as well as person, have fallen to the lot principally of the inhabitants of St. George's and St. James's parishes, although a few, I am sorry to say it, have been conveyed into the City. The last, however, were indifferent impressions, and mere copies of the former; and, therefore, to make up the stipulated value, à fine " Prospect of the King's Bench Prison"

was added.

But while these have been dispersed among the publick with so much liberality, I find that the “Cardinal Virtues" have been very scanty in the same proportion; and I could have wished that "Faith, Hope, and Charity," had been more extensively diffused, especially among controversial writers. I yet more heartily could have wished that fewer families of the middling class had been enabled to display impressions, equal to proofs, of "Modern Midnight Conversation," and "Marriage Alamode."

I may next remark, that some purchasers of tickets are highly gratified by their acquisitions, and therefore I am uncharitable enough to sus

pect that they did not much stand in need of what they have got. The mothers of some large families, and the governesses of some young ladies' boarding-schools, have been enabled to boast of a very elegant set of "Virgins,” and

Angels," and "Venus's ;" and yet this might be forgiven, as pictures of prejudice, if, as companions, these engravings had not been accompanied by "Adonis's," and scenes of “ Pyramus and Thisbe," "Romeo and Juliet in the garden," "The Power of Beauty," and other hints and suggestions which appear to me to be wholly superfluous. In a very gay family in the West end of the town I observed Collett's four prints of "Courtship-The ElopementThe Honeymoon-and Discordant Matrimony," which seem equally unnecessary, but might have been as proper to decorate the rooms of a Proctor in the Commons as "Views in Calcutta" would be to ornament the saloon of an East India director.

It must, however, be remarked, that in some of these prizes there is a sort of waggish propriety of allotment, which it is not easy to be offended with. Some of the gentlemen, for example, who lately negotiated a loan with the Minister, have got prints of "The Wise Men of the East," executed in the dotted manner; and

a well-known member of parliament has been seen to chuckle over his prize of the "Ratcatcher." "The Ruins of Rome" are said to have fallen to the lot of the agent of a distinguished personage in France; and the fine print of "Dividing the Booty" is thought to have fallen into the same hands. I was better pleased, however, with the brag of an honest inn-keeper, who said he had got "The Traveller's Repose; and, perhaps, "The Good Samaritan" and "Raising the Widow's Son" could not have been better allotted than to two principal agents in a certain humane society. Nor must I omit the characteristic propriety which adjudged Tintoret's "Blind leading the Blind” to certain modern philosophers, as it throws great light on them and their disciples in the pursuit of perfectibility. Two or three ladies of quality, likewise, whose nerves used to be very much disturbed by the lectures and hints of the late Lord Kenyon, have been again remarkably agitated and fluttered by their money returning in the shape of "Circes," and Cleopatras," and "Messalinas ;" and their husbands have been equally disturbed by receiving "Bacchanalians," and "Timons." They could scarcely have been more alarmed had it been possible to send them "Views of Mortgages" and

"