of the church, to certain officers of the state How witty and how wise must Castor and his underling (Mills) appear to those judicious estimators of atheistical buffoonery! While the mania lasted, Castor was brought before his betters, and acquitted of any intention to ridicule the religion of his country; nay, money was collected for him, as if he had been a public benefactor, and certain senators were not ashamed to appear among his patrons!

The success of Castor prompted Pollux to try his talent at blasphemy. He wrote, published, was imprisoned, tried, and condemned! Hence these brethren in iniquity, however congenial in their sentiments and sympathies, have been very differently treated by a jury of their countrymen. Castor now holds the ascendancy, and continues to shine as a star of the first magnitude among the enlighteners of deism and atheism; while poor Pollux, like the fallen archangel, "his brow with thunder scarred," droops in the obscurity and incarceration, which presents an image of that eternal oblivion, that he seems so desirous should be the portion of all mankind!

SIMPLICITY AND REFINEMENT; OR, MODERN IMPROVEMENTS IN FEMALE EDUCATION: ÍLLUSTRATED IN A DIALOGUE BETWEEN MISS GAYTON AND MISS WOODLEY.

Miss Gayton. I suppose, Matilda, that you pass much of your time in the country, in reading. Miss Woodley. Yes, my dear, I delight in the study of our best authors...

Miss Gayton. Study! what an unfashionable expression. I do not mean study, but amusement. You have, I suppose, a taste for poetry?

Miss Woodley. Yes; I admire good poetry. Miss Gayton. So do I, especially amatory pieces, such as Hammond's Elegies, and. the modern productions of a certain sonnetteer. But you know we must not mention these things in company..

Miss Woodley. I have made it a rule, never to peruse any production in the closet, which I should be ashamed to acknowledge in the drawing-room.

Miss Gayton. What a Gothic being! I protest, Miss Woodley, I'm shocked at your rusticity. You'll require a winter's polishing to qualify you for a participation in the amusements of fashionable company. You must know, my dear, that musty morality is nearly obsolete in high life.

My French governess says, she feels an aversion to those antiquated precepts, which, however proper they may be for the regulation of a nunnery, are unfit for the consideration of people of fashion,

Miss Woodley. I'm afraid that people of fashion have degenerated from the dignified manners of their ancestors.

Miss Gayton. Quite the reverse, my dear, I assure you. We daily improve in all the elegant arts of life. Our milliners provide the raw materials of personal decoration, and we adjust them. Our perfumers collect cosmetics and odorous essences, and we apply them. Our booksellers manufacture repositories of arts, London and Paris fashions, amusing tales of scandal, and pretty poems, and we purchase them for the encouragement of literature and the fine arts. In short, we patronise whatever contributes to personal or social elegance, from the invention of a new movement in dancing, to the philosophic analysis of the component parts of a comet.. You must endeavour to elevate your taste to the altitude of modern refinement.

Miss Woodley. That I shall never attempt. If, to be accomplished, it is requisite to become vitiated, I shall, without repining, cherish my harmless simplicity of manners, and prefer the dictates of nature to the illusions of art.

Miss Gayton. The dictates of nature! O heavens! Matilda, you quite terrify me! Why, girl, if we were to obey the dictates of nature we should throw ourselves into the arms of the first handsome fellow we met. Your simplicity, as you term it, would soon make fine work in the fashionable world. We should hear of ladies running away with their footmen-lords carrying off cookmaids in triumph-and dames of high rank, like Mrs. Gregson, making love to their coachmen. No, Matilda, as Falstaff says, more of that, if you love me."

66 no

Miss Woodley. Well, my lively cousin, since I find I cannot convince you of the advantages of simplicity, I only beg that you will not urge me to adopt your principles of refinement.

Miss Gayton. No, my dear Matilda, no; you are a free-born Englishwoman, and have a right to judge for yourself, but I have no doubt that you will soon become a convert to our delightful system of modern elegance. Pray what's your opinion of Captain W— of the guards? we expect him to spend the evening with us.

Miss Woodley. I only saw the gentleman once at my uncle's, and therefore cannot pretend to judge of his merit or character. He seemed foppish, or what in your new vocabulary is termed a Dandy.

Miss Gayton. Ah! that is perfectly in cha

racter. An officer, without foppery, would be a strange kind of animal. Their dashing manner is quite charming.-I delight to see them look like heroes.

Miss Woodley. And I hope they look like what they are.

Miss Gayton. Who can doubt it, after the trophies they gained at the battle of Waterloo ? But there's young Weston, the West India merchant, a fellow polite enough I grant, but seemingly with a bosom as frigid as the rocks of Nova Zembla.

Miss Woodley. Pray where did you learn these hard names?

Miss Gayton. From my tutor in geography, to be sure; don't you know, my dear, that young ladies are now taught every thing, by the most approved masters ?

Miss Woodley. knowing indeed!

Then they must be very

—a

Miss Gayton. No doubt of it, Matilda. A modern fine lady's head is the circle of the sciences-a terrestrial, or, if you will a celestial sphere of knowledge. I'll engage to find you a boarding school adept in fashionable accomplishments, who knows more than is contained in Rees's cumbrous and voluminous Cyclopedia! But I must defer my dissertation on modern acquirements till another opportunity.