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subject of letters, and with much less trouble, and much more secrecy, propriety, and elegancy, than the old way of writing.

A painter of but moderate skill and fancy may in a very short time have reams of ready painted paper by him to supply the demands of the statesman, the divine, and the lover. And I think it my duty to inform the public, that my good friend Mr. Dodsley, who has long complained of the decay of trade, and who loves, with a prudent regard to his own interest, to encourage every useful invention, is at this time learning to paint with most unwearied diligence and application; and I make no doubt, but that in a very little time he will be able to furnish all sorts of persons with the very best ready made goods of that kind. I warned him indeed against providing any for the two learned professions of the law and physic, which I apprehend would lie upon his hands. One of them being already in possession (to speak in their own style) of a more brachygraphical, cryptographical, and steganographical secret, in writing their warrants; and the other not willingly admitting brevity, in any shape. Otherwise what innumerable skins of parchment, and lines of writing might be saved in a marriage-settlement, for instance, if the first fourteen of fifteen sons, the supposed future issue, lawfully to be begotten of that happy marriage, and upon whom the settlement is successively made, were to be painted every one a size less than the other upon one skin of parchment, instead of being enumerated upon one hundred, according to priority of birth, and seniority of age; and moreover the elder, by a happy pleonasmus, always to take before, and be preferred to the younger! but this useful alteration is more to be wished than expected, for reasons which I do not at present think proper

to mention.

I am sensible that the government may possibly object, that I am suggesting to its enemies a method of carrying on their treasonable correspondences with much more secrecy than formerly. But as my intentions are honest, I should be very sorry to have my loyalty suspected: and when I consider the zeal, and at the same time the the ingenuity of the Jacobites, I am convinced that their letters in this new method will be so charged with groves of oaken boughs, white roses and thistles interwoven, that their meaning will not be obscure, and consequently no danger will arise to the government from this new and excellent invention.

N° 25. THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 1753.

I HAVE the pleasure of informing my fair correspondent, that her petition contained in the following letter is granted. I wish I could as easily restore to her what she has lost. But to a mind like hers, so elevated! so harmonized! time and the consciousness of so much purity of intention will bring relief. It must always afford her matter of the most pleasing reflection, that her soul had no participation with her material part in that particular act which she appears to mention with so tender a regret. But it is not my intention to anticipate her story, by endeavouring to console her. Her letter, I hope, will caution all young ladies of equal virtue with herself against that excess of complaisance, with which they are sometimes too willing to entertain their lovers.

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'I have not the least ill-will to your friend Mr. Dodsley, whom I never saw in my life; but I address myself to your equity and good-nature, for a small share only of your favour and recommendation in that new and valuable branch of trade, to which you have informed the public he is now applying himself, and which I hope you will not think it reasonable that he should monopolize. I mean that admirable short and secret method of communicating one's ideas by ingenious emblems and representations of the pencil, instead of the vulgar and old method of letters by the pen. Give me leave, Sir, to state my case and my qualifications to you: I am sure you will decide with justice.

'I am the daughter of a clergyman, who, having had a very good living, gave me a good education, and left me no fortune. I had naturally a turn to reading and drawing: my father encouraged and assisted me in the one, allowed me a master to instruct me in the other, and I made an uncommon

progress in them both. My heart was tender, and my sentiments were delicate; perhaps too much so for my rank in life. This disposition led me to study chiefly those treasures of sublime honour, spotless virtue, and refined sentiment, the voluminous romances of the last century. Sentiments from which I thank Heaven I have never deviated. From a sympathizing softness of soul, how often have I wept over those affecting distresses! How have I shared the pangs of the chaste and lovely Mariamne upon the death of the tender, the faithful Tiridates! And how has my indignation been excited at the unfaithful and ungenerous historical misrepresentations of the gallant first Brutus, who was undoubtedly the tenderest lover that ever lived! My drawings took

the same elegant turn with my reading. I painted all the most moving and tender stories of charming Ovid's Metamorphoses; not without sometimes mingling my tears with my colours. I presented some fans of my own painting to several ladies in the neighbourhood, who were pleased to commend both the execution and the designs. The latter I always took care should be moving, and at the same time irreproachably pure; and I found means even to represent with unblemished delicacy, the unhappy passion of the unfortunate Pasiphaé. With this turn of mind, this softness of soul, it will be supposed that I loved. I did so, Sir; tenderly and truly I loved. Why should I disown a passion, which, when clarified as mine was from the impure dregs of sensuality, is the noblest and most generous sentiment of the human breast? O! that the false heart of the dear deceiver, whose perfidious vows betrayed mine, had been but as pure!The traitor was quartered with his troop of dragoons in the town where I lived. His person was a happy compound of the manly strength of a hero, and all the softer graces of a lover; and I thought that I discovered in him, at first sight, all the courage and all the tenderness of Oroondates. My figure, which was not bad, it seems pleased him as much. He sought and obtained my acquaintance. Soon by his eyes, and soon after by his words, he declared his passion to me. My blushes, my confusion, and my silence, too plainly spoke mine. Good gods! how tender were his words! how languishingly soft his eyes! with what ardour did he snatch and press my hand! a trifling liberty, which one cannot decently refuse, and for which refusal there is no precedent. Sometimes he addressed me in the moving words of Varanes, sometimes in the tender accents of Castalio, and sometimes in the warmer language of Juba; for

he was a very good scholar. In short, Sir, a month was not past before he pressed for what he called a proof of my passion. I trembled at the very thought, and reproached him with the indelicacy of it. He persisted; and I, in compliance with custom only, hinted previous marriage: he urged love; and I was not vulgar enough to refuse to the man I tenderly loved, the proof he required of my passion. I yielded, it is true; but it was to sentiment, not to desire. A few months gave me reason to suspect that his passion was not quite so pure; and within the year the perfidious wretch convinced me that it had been merely sensual. For upon the removal of his troop to other quarters, he took a cold leave of me, and contented himself with saying, that in the course of quarters he hoped to have the pleasure some time or other of seeing me again. You, Mr. Fitz-Adam, if you have any elegancy of soul, as I dare say you have, can better guess than I can express the agonies I felt, and the tears I shed upon this occasion; but all in vain; vain as the thousand tender letters which I have written to him since, and to which I have received no answer. As all this passed within the course of ten months, I had but one child; which dear pledge of my first and only love, I now maintain at the expense of more than half of what I have to subsist upon myself.

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Having now, as I hope, prepared your compassion, and proved my qualification, I proceed to the prayer of my petition. Which is, that you will be pleased to recommend me to the public, with all that authority, which you have so justly acquired, for a share of this new and beneficial branch of trade. I mean no farther than the just bounds to which the female province may extend. Let Mr. Dodsley engross all the rest, with my best wishes.-Though I say it, I believe nobody has a clearer notion of the

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