vious application to the hand communicates itself instantly, by the force and velocity of attraction, to the ear, and agreeably prepares that part to receive and admit of titillation. I must say too, that I have known this practised with success upon very considerable persons of both sexes.

Having thus demonstrated, by many instances, that the ear is the most material part in the whole mechanism of our structure, and that it is both the seat and source of honour, power, pleasure, and pain, I cannot conclude without an earnest exhortation to all my country folks, of whatsoever rank or sex, to take the utmost care of their ears. Guard your ears, O ye princes, for your power is lodged in your ears. Guard your ears, ye nobles, for your honour lies in your ears. Guard your ears, ye fair, if you would guard your virtue. And guard your ears, all my fellow subjects, if you would guard your liberties and properties.

EYES AND EYE GLASSES.

Having in a former paper set forth the valuable privileges and prerogatives of the ear,* I should be much wanting to another material part of our composition, if I did not do justice to the eyes, and show the influence they either have, or ought to have, in Great Britain.

* See "Ear-tickling."

While the eyes of my countrymen were in a great measure the part that directed, the whole people saw for themselves; seeing was called believing, and was a sense so much trusted to, that the eyes of the body and those of the mind were, in speaking, indifferently made use of for one another. But I am

sorry to say that the case is now greatly altered: and I observe with concern an epidemical blindness, or, at least, a general weakness and distrust of the eyes scattered over this whole kingdom, from which we may justly apprehend the worst consequences.

This observation must have, no doubt, oc-: Ucurred to all who frequent public places, ed whom, instead of seeing so many eyes employFed, as usual, either in looking at one another, or in viewing attentively the object that brings them there, we find modestly delegating their faculty to glasses of all sorts and sizes to see for them. I remarked this more particularly at an opera I was at, the beginning of this winter, where Polypheme was almost the only person in the house that had two eyes; the rest had but one apiece, and that a glass one

As I cannot account for this general decay of our optics from any natural cause, not having observed any alteration in our climate or manner of living considerable enough to have brought so suddenly upon us this universal short-sightedness, I cannot but entertain some suspicions that their pretended helps to the sight are

rather deceptions of it, and the inventions of wicked and designing persons, to represent objects in that light, shape, size, and number, in which it is their inclination or interest to have them beheld. I shall communicate to the public the grounds of my suspicion.

The honest plain spectacles and reading glasses were formerly the refuge of aged and decayed eyes; they accompanied gray hairs, and, in some measure, shared their respect: they magnified the object a little, but still they represented it in its true light and figure. Whereas now the variety of refinements upon this first useful invention have persuaded the youngest, the strongest, and the finest eyes in the world out of their faculty, and convinced them, that, for the true discerning of objects, they must have recourse to some of these media; ; nay, into such disrepute is the natural sight now fallen, that we may observe, while one eye is employed in the glass, the other is carefully covered with the hand, or painfully shut, not without shocking distortions of the

countenance.

It is very well known, that there are not above three or four eminent operators for these portable or pocket eyes, and that they engross that whole business. Now, as these persons are neither of them people of quality, who are always above such infamous and dirty motives, it is not unreasonable to suppose that they may be liable to a pecuniary influence; nor,

consequently, is it improbable that an adminis tration should think it worth its while, even at a large expense, to secure those few that are to see for the whole bulk of the nation. This surely deserves our attention.

It is most certain, that great numbers of people already see objects in a very different light from what they were ever seen before, by the naked and undeluded eye, which can only be ascribed to the misrepresentations of some of these artific f which I shud

enumerate the different k to my knowledge.

that have some

The looking-glass, which for many ages was the minister and counsellor of the fair sex, has now greatly extended its jurisdiction: every body knows that that glass is backed with quicksilver, to hinder it from being diaphanous; so that it stops the beholder, and presents him again to himself. Here his views centre all in himself, and dear self alone is the object of his contemplations. This kind of glass, I am assured, is now the most common of any, especially among people of distinction, insomuch that nine in ten of the glasses that we daily see levelled at the public are in reality not diaphanous, but agreeably return the looker to himself, while his attention seems to be employed upon others.

The reflecting telescope has of late gained ground considerably, not only among the ladies, who chiefly view one another through that

medium, but has even found its way into the cabinets of princes; in both which cases, it suggests reflections to those, who before were not apt to make many.

The microscope, or magnifying glass, is an engine of dangerous consequence, though much in vogue: it swells the minutest object to a most monstrous size, heightens the deformity, and even deforms the beauties of nature. When the finest hair appears like a tree, and the finest pore like an abyss, what disagreeable representations may it exhibit, and what fatal mistakes may it mutually occasion between the two sexes! Nature has formed all objects for that point of view in which they appear to the native eye; their perfection lessens in proportion as they leave out that point, and many a Venus would cease to appear one, even to her lover, were she, by the help of a microscope, to be viewed in the ambient cloud of her perspiration. I bar Mrs. Osborne returning my microscope upon me, since I leave her in quiet possession of the spectacles, and even of the reading glasses, if she can make use of them.

There is another kind of glass now in great use, which is the oblique glass, whose tube, levelled in a straight line at one object, receives another in at the side, so that the beholder seems to be looking at one person, while anoth er entirely engrosses his attention. This is a notorious engine of treachery and deceit; and yet, they say, it is for the most part made use