if they were not strictly watched by the Turks, who are here very numerous, and would be ready to punish any transgression of their ungallant laws with arbitrary fines. But nature and native manners will often baffle the efforts even of tyranny. In all their customs these manly ladies seem to have changed sides with the men. The woman rides astride---the man sits sideways on the horse. Nay, I have been assured that the husband's distinguishing appellation is his wife's family name. The women have town and country houses, in the management of which the husband never dares interfere. Their gardens, their servants, are all their own: and the husband, from every circumstance of his behaviour, appears to be no other than his wife's first domestic, perpetually bound to her service, and slave to her caprice. Hence it is that a tradition obtains in the country, that this island was formerly inhabited by Amazons, a tradition founded however upon no ancient history that I know of. Sappho, indeed, the most renowned female that this island has ever produced, is said to have had manly inclinations, in which, as Lucian tells us, she did but conform with the singular manners of her countrywomen; but I do not find that the mode in which she chose to shew those inclinations is imitated by the present female inhabitants, who seem perfectly content with the dear prerogative of absolute sway, without endeavouring in any other particular to change the course of nature; yet will this circumstance serve to shew that the women of Lesbos had always something peculiar, and even peculiarly masculine, in their manner and propensities. But be this as it may, it is certain that no country whatsoever can afford a more perfect idea of an Amazonian commonwealth, or better serve to render probable those ancient relations which our manners would induce us to esteem incredible, than this island of Metelin. These lordly ladies are, for the most part, very handsome in spite of their dress, which is singular and disadvantageous. Down to the girdle, which, as in the old Grecian garb, is raised far above what we usually call the waist, they wear nothing but a shift of thin and transparent gauze, red, green, or brown, through which every thing is visible, their breasts

only excepted, which they cover with a sort of handkerchief; and this, as we were informed, the Turks have obliged them to wear, while they look upon it as an incumbrance, and as no inconsiderable portion of Turkish tyranny. Long sleeves of the same thin material perfectly shew their arms even to the shoulder. Their principal ornaments are chains of pearl, to which they hang small pieces of gold coin. Their eyes are large and fine, and the nose which we term Grecian usually prevails among them, as it does indeed among the women of all these islands. Their complexions are naturally fine, but they spoil them by paint, of which they make abundant use; and they disfigure their pretty faces by shaving the hinder part of the eye-brow, and replacing it with a strait line of hair, neatly applied with some sort of gum, the brow being thus continued in a strait and narrow line till it joins the hair on each side of their face. They are well made, of the middle size, and, for the most part, plump; but they are distinguished by nothing so much and so universally as by a haughty, disdainful, and supercilious air, with which they seem to look down upon all mankind as creatures of an inferior nature, born for their service, and doomed to be their slaves; neither does this peculiarity of countenance in any degree diminish their natural beauty, but rather adds to it that sort of bewitching attraction, which the French call piquant.

ANECDOTE AND WIT.

No. 8.-GREATNESS OF MIND.

A CORSICAN, the leader of a gang of banditti, who had long been famous for his exploits, was at length taken and committed to the care of a soldier, from whom he contrived to escape. The soldier was tried, and condemned to death. At the place of execution, a man, coming up to the commanding officer, said, "Sir, I am a stranger to you, but you shall soon know who I am; I have heard that one of your soldiers is to die for having suffered a prisoner to escape: he was not at all to blame; besides, the prisoner shall be restored to you.

I cannot bear that

Behold him here---I am the man. an innocent man should be punished for me, and I come to die myself." "No!" cried the French officer, who felt as he ought the sublimity of the action, “thou shalt not die, and the soldier shall be set at liberty. Endeavour to reap the fruits of thy generosity: thou deservest to be henceforth an honest man.

M. ROSE.

M. ROSE was private secretary to Lewis the Fourteenth. He had been in possession of the pen for fifty years, and died at the age of eighty-six or seven, perfect in powers of health and mind; he was likewise president of the chamber of accounts; a rich miser, but full of wit and repartee; well read; with a memory precise and instantaneous; a perfect inventory of every thing relative to court and business.

Gay, free, bold, and often audacious; but respectful and polished to those who kept their distance, or made him keep his own; never out of his place; a limb of the ancient court.

His pen, his fidelity and discretion, had kept him in intimacy with the king, and made him privy to affairs which sometimes remained unknown even to the minister.

It is not possible to make a king speak with greater dignity, or more general propriety, than in the letters which Rose dispatched on an infinite variety of subjects in his master's name, all which the king signed himself, for their hands were not distinguishable.

Rose had a fine estate and a house near Chantilly, and often resided there. The Prince of Condé wanted to buy it, and, on the secretary's refusal, resolved to put him out of humour with it. For this purpose, he ordered some hundred foxes, old and young, to be flung over his park walls---the havock made by this midnight colony may easily be imagined.

Rose, highly enraged, went to the king in his cabinet, and resolutely demanded leave to ask him a downright question. "What is it?" said the king, "What is it!" answered Rose with an enflamed face; "What is it! I beg you will tell me if we have two kings in France?"

"What do you mean!" said the king, reddening and surprised. "What do I mean?" answered Rose; "what I mean is, that if the Prince of Condé is king like you, we must cry and bend our necks,---if he be only a prince of the blood, I demand justice of you;" and then he related the fact. The king obliged the prince to remove the whole nest of foxes from first to last, at his own expence, and to repair all the damage they had done, and to remain on good terms with Rose.

Rose had married his daughter to M. Portail, counsellor, and afterwards first president of parliament. The husband was continually complaining to the father, of his daughter's bad humour. "You are in the right," answered Rose, "she is impertinent, and if I hear any more of her, I shall disinherit her." After this the husband held his tongue.

AN OUTLAWED MONARCH.

A MERCHANT, says Selden in his Table Talk, had recovered costs against the King of Spain in a suit, which, because he could not get, he was advised to have him outlawed for not appearing, and so he was. As soon as Gondomar (the Spanish Ambassador) heard that, he presently sent the money, by reason, if his master had been outlawed, he could not have the benefit of the law, which would have been very prejudicial, there being then many suits depending betwixt the King of Spain and our English merchants.

SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH.

"AMONGST the torrent of abuse poured out on your grace," said Lady Sunderland to her one day, "your worst enemies have never called you a faithless wife." "It was no great merit," said old Sarah, first duchess of Marlborough, as she was turning over the papers afterwards sent to Mallet for her husband's history: "it was no great merit; for I had the handsomest, the most accomplished, and bravest man in Europe for my husband." "Yet you don't pretend to say he was without faults," replied Lady Sunderland.---“ By no

means; I knew them better than he did himself, or even than I do my own! He came back one day, from my poor misled mistress, Queen Anne, I believe when he resigned his commission, and said he had told her, that he thanked God, with all his faults, neither avarice nor ambition could be laid to his charge." Such was the sensible answer of old Sarah; to which she added, "I was not in a laughing humour; but, at my Lord's words, I almost bit through my tongue, to prevent my smiling in his face."

A WELL-EARNED PENSION.

TO an odd stratagem of a female of Chester, of the name of Elizabeth Edmunds, was owing the entire safety of the Protestants of Ireland, in the reign of Queen Mary. Dr. Cole, a commissioner from the Queen, on his way to that country, stopped one night at Chester. The mayor, in his official capacity, waited on him, and he unguardedly spoke of the murderous business in which he was engaged, and took out his commission in the presence of the hostess, who had a brother, a protestant, in Dublin. When the mayor went away, the doctor politely attended him down stairs, and Mrs. Edwards, in the mean time, took the commission from the box, and substituted for it a pack of cards, with the knave of clubs placed uppermost. The doctor, on his return, put up the box; and, on his arrival at Dublin, presented it in form at the castle to the lord deputy and privy council. His lordship opened it, and the whole assembly, as well as the commissioner himself, were in the utmost astonishment at its contents. He assured them that it had contained a commission, but why it was not there then, and how the cards came in its place, he was as ignorant as they. Disappointed and chagrined, he returned to the English court for a fresh commission, which he obtained; but, before he could again arrive in Ireland, the Queen died. Her successor, Queen Elizabeth, rewarded the woman for this meritorious act, with a pension of forty pounds a year for life.