sably necessary that they disdain to be actuated by common passions and common incentives, that, spurning our "nether sphere," they aspire at something more than human;

Majorque videri,

Nec mortale sonans;"

And indeed to novels and romances may be justly applied, what Dryden so well remarked of the plays of his cotemporaries: "There is not in a thousand of them one man or woman of God's own making."

When, after describing these modern scribblers, you mentioned Xenophon, it reminded me of Gibbons's observations on the work, to which you allude: "The Cyropædia is a pleasing romance, which when carefully studied, discovers in every page the Spartan discipline and the philosophy of Socrates." To seek these, or an equivalent to these, among the rubbish of our romances, would be as vain, as to expect naked sincerity and disinterested honor from the fawning sycophants of despotism, from the abject and mercenary tools of the Emperor of France.

But notwithstanding the contempt, which should be attached to works of this description we acknowledge and lament with you the too

general currency they enjoy; and when you reasonably imagined, that, "every apothecary's apprentice is better acquainted with the inside of a romance, than the composition of a bolus," it appeared to me (so great is my abhorrence of their baneful influence,) that the romance must prove nearly as detrimental to the intellects of a young Galen, as the bolus itself to the intestines of a patient.

I cannot better close my letter than by entreating all those of our fellow-citizens, who are still infatuated with an unhappy regard for the vile prejudicial trash of novelists and romancers, to recur to the essay, which induced these remarks; that whoever "has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms, which such writers raise up before him, may there be cured of his delirious extacies," is the earnest desire of

Your sincere Friend,

MISOLEROS.

As the summer season is fast advancing, and the Windsor terraces are so pleasant and crowded with gentility, perhaps I may feel inclined, during the course of the fine weather, to make an excursion, and visit that resort of the fashionable world. But I have been lately informed by my neighbour Mr. Lutestring, that the Etonians are so much accustomed to ridicule any sober, welldisposed visitors, who happen, from their situation in life, not to possess the most splendid

equipage, or the most numerous retinue of domestics, that I really feel almost afraid of putting my plans into execution, lest I should be liable to receive any insult during my passage through your college. I will detail to you the account of my friend's adventure, and leave it to your judgment to decide whether my fears have not a sufficient foundation.

Mr. Lutestring, his wife and daughter Polly, were, perhaps rather narrowly, but certainly very happily arranged in his new whiskey, while Mr. Zachary Lutestring, my friend's eldest son, followed them on horseback. They were indeed rather unfortunate in the very outset, as the vehicle broke down before they had proceeded many yards, and Zachary by some unlucky chance was deposited in a puddle before they had reached Brentford. But this was only an earnest of what they were to undergo. As they were passing under the windows of a boardinghouse, just at the entrance of your College, one of the young Etonians, observing Mr. Lutestring had exchanged his black hat for a white one, with malicious inclination filled a squirt with ink, and aiming it but too successfully, completely bespattered my friend's hat, and spoiled his wife's new farthingale. Mr. Lutestring was carried by

his feelings rather beyond the bounds of moderation and was opening his mouth (for he's quite a Cicero) to execrate the author of his misfortunes, who immediately, nothing abashed, took aim at him again with a rotten egg, and literally stopped up his distended jaws, just as he was bringing out an oath !!!

My friend, thinking that any lecture upon incivility which he could bestow, would most likely be thrown away upon such dispositions, wiped his hat and his face, (poor man, he was almost choked, what with rage and the egg together) and drove on in bad enough humour as you may suppose. But fate had not done its worst.

When the party had advanced further into the College, the strange appearance, which their various insults or misfortunes had given them, excited universal wonder and admiration, so as to cause a general assemblage of all the young gen-. tlemen. One of those ill-disposed boys, with some of whom every large community must be infested, cunningly suspecting from which side of London these visitors had arrived, immediately set the example by roaring out, " Rou the cit and his pink stockings! Look at his cane! you'll find it marked with the ell,