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damned, on my lady Maxim's observing very judiciously, that the brick-kiln was horridly executed, and did not smell at all like one.'

"When this entire castigation of improprieties is brought about, the age will do justice to one of the first reformers of the stage, Mr. Cibber, who attempted to introduce a taste for real nature in his Cæsar in Egypt, and treated the audience with real-not swans indeed, for that would have been too bold an attempt in the dawn of truth, but very personable geese. The inventor, like other original geniuses, was treated ill by a barbarous age: yet I can venture to affirm, that a stricter adherence to reality would have saved even those times from being shocked by absurdities, always incidental to fiction. I myself remember, how, much about that æra, the great Senesino, representing Alexander at the siege of Oxydracæ, so far forgot himself in the heat of conquest, as to stick his sword in one of the pasteboard stones of the wall of the town, and bore it in triumph before him as he entered the breach; a puerility so renowned a general could never have committed, if the ramparts had been built, as in this enlightened age they would be, of actual brick and

stone.

"Will you forgive an elderly man, Mr. FitzAdam, if he cannot help recollecting another passage that happened in his youth, and to the same excellent performer? He was stepping into Armida's enchanted bark; but treading short, as he was more attentive to the accompaniment of the orchestra than to the breadth of the shore, he fell prostrate, and lay for some time in great pain, with the edge of a wave running into his side. In the present state of things, the worst that could have happened to him, would have been drowning; a

fate far more becoming Rinaldo, especially in the sight of a British audience!

"If you will allow me to wander a little from the stage, I shall observe that this pursuit of nature is not confined to the theatre, but operates where one should least expect to meet it, in our fashions. The fair part of the creation are shedding all covering of the head, displaying their unveiled charming tresses, and if I may say so, are daily moulting the rest of their clothes. What lovely fall of shoulders, what ivory necks, what snowy breasts in all the pride of nature, are continually divested of art and ornament?

"In gardening, the same love of nature prevails. Clipt hedges, avenues, regular platforms, straight canals have been for some time very properly exploded. There is not a citizen who does not take more pains to torture his acre and half into irregularities, than he formerly would have employed to make it as formal as his cravat. Kent, the friend of nature, was the Calvin of this reformation; but like the other champion of truth, after having routed tinsel and trumpery, with the true zeal of a founder of a sect, he pushed his discipline to the deformity of holiness; not content with banishing symmetry and regularity, he imitated nature even in her blemishes, and planted dead trees and mole-hills, in opposition to parterres and quincunxes.

"The last branch of our fashions into which the close observation of nature has been introduced, is our desserts; a subject I have not room now to treat at large, but which yet demands a few words, and not improperly in this paper, as I see them a little in the light of a pantomime. Jellies, biscuits, sugar-plumbs, and creams have long given way to harlequins, gon、 doliers, Turks, Chinese, and shepherdesses of Saxon

china. But these, unconnected, and only seeming to wander among groves of curled paper and silk flowers, were soon discovered to be too insipid and unmeaning. By degrees whole meadows of cattle, of the same brittle materials, spread themselves over the whole table; cottages rose in sugar, and temples in barley-sugar; pigmy Neptunes in cars of cockle-shells, triumphed over oceans of lookingglass, or seas of silver tissue; and at length the whole system of Ovid's metamorphoses succeeded to all the transformations which Chloe and other great professors had introduced into the science of hieroglyphic eating. Confectioners found their trade moulder away, while toymen and china-shops were the only fashionable purveyors of the last stage of polite entertainments. Women of the first quality came home from Chevenix's laden with dolls and babies, not for their children, but their housekeeper. At last even these puerile puppet-shows are sinking into disuse, and more manly ways of concluding our repasts are established. Gigantic figures succeeded to pigmies. And if the present taste continues, Rysbrack and other neglected statuaries, who might have adorned Grecian saloons, though not Grecian desserts, may come into vogue. It is known that a celebrated confectioner, so the architects of our desserts still humbly call themselves, complained, that after having prepared a middle dish of gods and goddesses, eighteen feet high, his lord would not cause the ceiling of his parlour to be demolished to facilitate their entrée: Imaginez vous, said he, que mi lord n'a pas voulu faire oter le plafond!

"I shall mention but two instances of glorious magnificence and taste in desserts, in which foreigners have surpassed every thing yet performed in this sumptuous island. The former was a duke of

Wirtemberg, who, so long ago as the year thirtyfour, gave a dessert, in which was a representation of mount Etna, which vomited out real fire-works over the heads of the company, during the whole entertainment. The other was the intendant of Gascony, who, on the late birth of the duke of Burgundy, among other magnificent festivities, treated the noblesse of the province with a dinner and a dessert, the latter of which concluded with a representation, by wax figures moving by clockwork, of the whole labour of the Dauphiness, and the happy birth of an heir to their monarchy. "I am, SIR,

66

"Your humble servant,

66

JULIO."

No. 7. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1753.

THERE are certain follies and impertinences, which people of good sense and good nature are every day guilty of, and which are only considered by them as things of course, and of too little consequence for palliation or apology.

Whoever is a frequenter of public assemblies, or joins in a party at cards in private families, will give evidence to the truth of this complaint. I am, for my own part, a lover of the game of Whist, and should oftener be seen in those places where it is played for trifles, if I was not offended at the manners of my friends. How common is it with some people, at the conclusion of every unsuccessful hand of cards, to burst forth into sallies of fretful complaints of their own amazing ill-fortune, and the

constant and invariable success of their antagonists! They have such excellent memories as to be able to recount every game they have lost for six months successively, and yet are so extremely forgetful at the same time, as not to recollet a single game that they have won. Or if you put them in mind of any extraordinary success that you have been witness to, they acknowledge it with reluctance, and assure you upon their honours, that in a whole twelvemonth's play, they never rose winners but that

once.

But if these Growlers, a name which I shall always call the men of this class by, would content themselves with giving repeated histories of their own ill-fortune, without making invidious remarks upon the successes of others, the evil would not be so great. Indeed, I am apt to impute it to their fears, that they stop short of the grossest affronts: for I have seen in their faces such rancour and inveteracy, that nothing but a lively apprehension of consequences could have restrained their tongues.

Happy would it be for the ladies if they had the same consequences to apprehend; for, I am sorry to say it, I have met with female-I will not say Growlers the word is too harsh for them; let me call them Fretters, who with the prettiest faces, and the liveliest wit imaginable, have condescended to be the jest and disturbance of the whole company.

In fashionable life, indeed, where every one is acting behind the mask of good breeding, and where nature is never seen to peep out but upon very extraordinary occasions, frequent convulsions of the features, flushings succeeded by paleness, twistings of the body, fits of the fidgets, and complaints of immoderate heat, are the only symptons of ill fortune. But if we travel eastward from St. James's,