The minuets were finished at thirty-five minutes paft ten, and the country-dances immediately followed : Owing to the extreme heat of the evening, there were only two countrydances, which were concluded five minutes before eleven o'clock, when their majefties, having taken leave of the circle, retired, and the company instantly broke up. On SENSIBILITY. True tenderness or compaffion is one of the most honourable diftinctions To the EDITOR of the LADY's of human nature. He who cannot feel as a man when an object prefents itfelt naturally formed to affect the human heart, difplays a difpofition not only odious, but fuch as may lead him to actual and premeditated cruelty. But while I honour the reality, I muit defpife the affectation. And there is reafen to fufpect that much of the fenfibility of which we hear and read is affected, because it seems to operate partially and oftentatiously. It feems to difplay itfelf chiefly in gallantry, and in fuch acts of pity as are likely to be known, celebrated and admired in the realms of fashion. If any lady, or lady like gentleman can find at a watering place a diftrefs fimilar to any thing in fome fashionable novel, it is furprising with what pathos it will be defcribed, and with what affiduity relieved; but if a diftrefs equally afflicting occurs in the obfcure village where the man fion-houfe ftands, no notice is taken of it, or no more than a regard to common decency requires. The reafon feems to be a fear that the cafe is fo obfcure that the fenfibility which alleviates it will never reach the ears of thefe who tread the paths of fashionable folly. And if a grofs paflion operating in a corrupted heart prompts to an unlawful amour, it is often obeyed by the parties with little fhame, and with a great deal of complacency and felf-congratulation on their being poffeffed of fuch a fenfibility, which irrefiftibly tempts them to fay "Curfe on all laws but those which love has made ." Bad paffions, and bad actions, the confequence of them, have always been common, and will continue to be fo in the prefent condition of human nature: but to boast of them as doing honour to the heart, under the name of lively and delicate fenfibility, is peculiar to the fashionable of the prefent age. True fenfibility, equally remote from weakness and affectation, will feel the fentiments of devotion with no lefs vivacity than thofe of love. It will, I believe, be oftener warmed with an attachment to virtue than to vice. It will be delicate and referved, rather than forward, noisy, and oftentatious. But has the fenfibility which is affumed at public places, or by the flaves of fashion, any of thefe characteristics? Is it not, on the contrary, rather inclined to libertinifm in religious principle, very far from fcrupulous in moral conduct, bold, bufy, and conceited? It has, indeed, every appearance of vanity; and if there were not dan ger of confounding it with real fenfibility, the honour of our nature,-it ought to be univerfally exploded with ridicule. That fenfibility alone, which produces piety to God and benevolence to man, has the indifputable mark of a genuine excellence. Vice and vanity will produce the other fort, which has every fign of a counterfeit, and,-like the bafe coin, which, in the hands of the interested, is taught to emulate gold,-ought, if poffible, to be cried down by public authority. It too often paffes cur. rent in the world, not withou great injury to fociety for honour paid to falfe virtue, robs the true of its just right, and contributes, by lef fening the rewards of truth, to dif courage its appearance. A. Cr A DIALOGUE between MERCURY and a modern FINE LADY. I Mrs. Mcdifb. INDEED, Mr. Mercury, I cannot have the pleasure of waiting upon you now; I am engaged, ablolutely engaged. Mercury. I know you have an amiable affectionate hufband and feveral fine children; but you need not be told, that neither conjugal attachments, maternal affections, nor even the care of a kingdom's welfare or a nation's glory, can excufe a perfon who has received a fummons to the realms of death. If the grim meffenger were not as peremptory as unwelcome, Charon would not get a paffenger (except now and then an hypochondriacal Englishman) once in a century. You must be content to leave your husband and family, and pafs the Styx. Mrs. Modifh. I did not mean to infit on any engagement with my husband and children; I never thought thought myself engaged to them. I befides, I was ambitious to be I had no engagements but fuch as were common to women of my rank. Look on my chimney-piece; and you will fee I was engaged to the play on Mondays, balls on Tuesdays, the opera on Saturdays, and to card affemblies the rest of the week, for two months to come; and it would be the rudeft thing in the world not to keep my appointments. If you will ftay for me till the fummer fea fon, I will wait on you with all my heart. Perhaps the Eyfian fields may be less deteftable than the country in our world. Pray have you a fine Vauxhall and Ranelagh? I think I fhould not diflike drinking the Lethe waters when you have a full feafon. Mercury. Surely you could not like to drink the waters of oblivion, who have made pleafure the bufines, end, and aim of your life! It is good to drown cares: but who would wash away the remembrance of a life of gaiety and pleature? Mrs Modih. Diverfion was in deed the business of my life; but as to pleasure, I have enjoyed none fince the novelty of my amufements was gone off. Can one be pleafed with feeing the fame thing over and over again? Late hours and fatigues gave me the vapours, fpoiled the natural cheerfulnels of my temper, and even in youth wore away my youthful vivacity. Mercury. If this way of life did not give you pleafure, why did you continue in it? I fuppofe you did not think it was very meritorious.. Mrs. Modifh. I was too much engaged to think at all. So far indeed my manner of life was agreeable enough. My friends always told me diverfions were neceffary, and my doctor affured me difiipation was good for my fpirits; my hulband infifted that it was not; and you know that one loves to oblige one's friends, comply with one's doctor, and contradict one's hulband; and thought du bon ton *. Mercury. Ben ton! What is that, madam? Pray define it. Mrs. Modifh. Oh fir, excufe me; it is one of the privileges of the ban ton never to define nor to be defined. It is the child and parent of jargon. It is-I can never tell you what it is: but I will try to tell you what it is not. In conversation, it is not wit; in manners it is not pliteness; in behaviour it is not addrefs: but it is a little like them all. I can only belong to people of a certain rank, who live in a certain manner, with certain perfons, who have not certain virtues, and who have certain vices, and who inhabit a certain part of the town. Like a place by courtefy, it gets an higher rank than the person can claim; but which thofe who have a legal title to precedency dare not difpute, for fear of being thought not to understand the rules of politenefs. Now, fir, I have told you as much as I know of it, though I have admired and aimed at it all my life. Mercury. Then, madam, you have waited your time, faded your beauty, and destroyed your health, for the laudable purposes of contradicting your husband, and being this icmething and this nothing called the bon ton. Mrs. Modifh. What would you have had me to have done? Mercury. I will follow your mode of instructing. I will tell you what I would not have had you to have done. I would not have had you to have facrificed you time, your reafon, and your duties to faltion and fully. I would not have had you to have neglected your husband's happiness, and your children's edu cation. Du bon ton is a cant phrase in the modern French language for the fafhionable air of converfation and man ners. Mrs. Mrs. Modifh. As to the education of my daughters, I fpared no expenfe: they had a dancing-mafter, mufic-mafter, and drawing-mafter; and a French governefs, to teach them behaviour and the French language. [plied, that was no answer to his question; he defired to know what he had to maintain her with? To which the young lord then answered, he hoped that was no queftion; for his inheritance was as public as his name. The old lord owned his poffeflions to be great, but ftill asked if he had nothing more fecure than land, wherewith to maintain his daughter? The queftion was flrange, but ended in this,—that the father of the young lady gave his pofitive refolve never to marry his daughter, though his heir, and would have two fuch great eftates, but to a man that had a manual trade, by which he might fubfiit, if drove from his country. The young lord was mafter of none at prefent; but, rather than lofe his mistress, he requested only a year's time, in which he promised to acquire one in order to which, he got a basket Mercury. So their religion, fentiments, and manners, were to be learnt from a dancing-matter, mufic-mafter, and a chamber-maid! Perhaps they might prepare them to catch the bon ton. Your daughters must have been fo educated, as to fit them to be wives without conjugal affection, and mothers without maternal care. I am forry for the fort of life they are commencing, and for that which you have juft concluded. Minos is a four old gentleman, without the leaft fmattering of the bon ton; and I am in a fright for you. The best thing I can advise you is, to do in this world as you did in the other, keep hap-maker, the most ingenious he could pinefs in your view, but never take the road that leads to it. Remain meet with, and, in fix months became matter of his trade of basket making, with far greater improvements than even his teacher himfelf; and as a proof of his ingenuity, and extraordinary proficiency in fo fhort a time, he brought to his young lady a piece of workmanthip of his own performance, being a white twig bafket, which, for many years after, became a general fashion among the ladies, by the name of dreifing baskets, brought hither to England from Germany and Holland. To complete the fingularity of this reation, it happened, fome years after this nobleman's marriage, that he and his father-in-law tharing in the misfortunes of the wars of the Palatinate, were driven naked out of their etates; and in Holland, for fome years, did this young lord maintain both his father in law, and his own family, by making baskets or white twigs, to fuch an unparalle!ed excellency as none could attain : and it is from this young German lord, lord, the Hollanders derive those curiofities, which are still made in the United Provinces, of twig-work. This anecdote is related by Poftlethwayt, in the Introduction to his Dictionary of Trade and Com merce. HUMOURS of an APRIL-FOOL DAY. Paper.) in the family of my grandfather, and by him established, above forty years ago, in a little fhop, where he has found means to acquire a decent fubfiftence. When but a boy, as I have heard my father fay, he was esteemed an oddity by all the neighbourhood, and always had a ftrong propensity to little mifchievous tricks. He would stalk through the church-yard at night, wrapped in a table-cloth; he would hide the (From the Looker-on, a Periodical maid's fhoes, blacken his face to fright the children, and greafe the ftrings of the chaplain's violin. Indeed, my grandfather, though he [OW it has happened that a been a at length obliged to difcard him, for fastening his grand aunt Anna Maria's lappet to the chair, while the fat at dinner, to her utter confufion as foon as the attempted to quit her place. 1 found him in the little apartment behind his fhop, with a large book open before him, in which he seemed to have been writing. On my hinting to him that I thought he on a Sunday than in looking over his accounts, he affured me that I was mistaken; that the book before him contained a little journal of the merriet moments of his life; and fhewed me the back of it, on which was lettered, not unaptly, as will appear from what follows, Day-Book, appropriated, though by no means exclufively, to the exercise of this amufement, and why the first of April was deftined to that purpose, I leave to the investigation of antiquaries; hazarding only one conjecture, that at fome very remote period the worshippers of the goddels Folly, the idlers and witlings of the world, in imitation of other heathens, established this anniver-might be more fuitably employed fary celebration of their deity; and perhaps fome analogy may be traced between the facrifices of the ancients, and the offerings which Folly's votaries continue to heap before her altar on this her high feftival: nay, though the heathen fyftem of theology is long fince abolished, this deity finds her power over the world by no means on the decline: and while Venus is no longer invoked by our belles, while pick-pockets forget their obligations to Mercury, and Neptune is neglected even on his own element, Faily has fplendid temples in every city, priests in every family; and whole hecatombs of human victims (if you allow the expreffion) fwell the honours of her red-letter day. What led me into this train of thought, was an accidental vifit which paid yesterday to an old acquaintance, formerly a domeftic VOL. XXVI. He faid he had been juft bringing up his accounts to the clofe of yefterday; but added, with a fhake of the head, "How unlucky it is, it fhould have happened on a Sunday! -I fhall be below par this year-I believe I may fay without vanity," faid he, fecing me fomewhat at a lofs to understand him, "that there is not a man in the parish who makes fo many fools as myfelt-Why, Sir, I have averaged, for the laft fourteen years, thirty fools per aanum ; and it would have been more, but for that plaguy fore eye which confined me lait fpring-Ah! it was a great |