lege of idleness is attained, but has not brought with it the blessing of tranquillity. I am, yours, &c. T.

MERCATOR.'

N° 103. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1753.

Aut cupimus?

Quid enim ratione timemus,

Juv.

How void of reason are our hopes and fears!-DRYDEN. In those remote times when, by the intervention of fairies, men received good and evil, which succeeding generations could expect only from natural causes, Soliman, a mighty prince, reigned over a thousand provinces in the distant regions of the East. It is recorded of Soliman, that he had no favourite; but among the principal nobles of his court was Omaraddin.

Omaraddin had two daughters, Almerine and Shelimah. At the birth of Almerine, the fairy Elfarina had presided; and in compliance with the importunate and reiterated request of the parents, had endowed her with every natural excellence both of body and mind, and decreed that she should be sought in marriage by a sovereign prince.'

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When the wife of Omaraddin was pregnant with Shelimah, the fairy Elfarina was again invoked; at which Farimina, another power of the aerial kingdom, was offended. Farimina was inexorable and cruel; the number of her votaries, therefore, was few. Elfarina was placable and benevolent; and fairies of this character were observed to be superior in power, whether because it is the nature of vice to defeat its own purpose, or whether the calm

and equal tenor of a virtuous mind prevents those mistakes, which are committed in the tumult and precipitation of outrageous malevolence. But Farimina, from whatever cause, resolved that her influence should not be wanting; she, therefore, as far as she was able, precluded the influence of Elfarina, by first pronouncing the incantation which determined the fortune of the infant, whom she discovered by divination to be a girl. Farimina, that the innocent object of her malice might be despised by others, and perpetually employed in tormenting herself, decreed, that her person should be rendered hideous by every species of deformity, and that all her wishes should spontaneously produce an opposite effect.'

The parents dreaded the birth of the infant under this malediction, with which Elfarina had acquainted them, and which she could not reverse. The moment they beheld it, they were solicitous only to conceal it from the world; they considered the complicated deformity of unhappy Shelimah, as some reproach to themselves; and as they could not hope to change her appearance, they did not find themselves interested in her felicity. They made no request to Elfarina, that she would by any intellectual endowment alleviate miseries which they should not participate, but seemed content that a being so hideous should suffer perpetual disappointment; and, indeed, they concurred to injure an infant which they could not behold with complacency, by sending her with only one attendant to a remote castle which stood on the confines of a wood.

Elfarina, however, did not thus forsake innocence in distress; but to counterbalance the evils of obscurity, neglect, and ugliness, she decreed, that, to the taste of Shelimah the coarsest food should be the most exquisite dainty; that the rags which co

vered her, should in her estimation be equal to cloth of gold; that she should prize a palace less than a cottage; and that in these circumstances love should be a stranger to her breast.' To prevent the vexation which would arise from the continual disappointment of her wishes, appeared at first to be more difficult; but this was at length perfectly effected by endowing her with content.

While Shelimah was immured in a remote castle, neglected and forgotten, every city in the dominions of Soliman contributed to decorate the person or cultivate the mind of Almerine. The house of her father was the resort of all who excelled in learning of whatever class; and as the wit of Almerine was equal to her beauty, her knowledge was soon equal to her wit.

Thus accomplished, she became the object of universal admiration; every heart throbbed at her approach, every tongue was silent when she spoke; at the glance of her eye every cheek was covered with blushes of diffidence or desire, and at her command every foot became swift as that of the roe. But Almerine, whom ambition was thus jealous to obey, who was reverenced by hoary wisdom, and beloved by youthful beauty, was perhaps the most wretched of her sex. Perpetual adulation had made her haughty and fierce; her penetration and delicacy rendered almost every object offensive; she was disgusted with imperfections which others could not discover; her breast was corroded by detestation, when others were softened by pity; she lost the sweetness of sleep by the want of exercise, and the relish of food by continual luxury: but her life became yet more wretched, by her sensibility of that passion, on which the happiness of life is believed chiefly to depend.

Nourassin, the physician of Soliman, was of no

ble birth, and celebrated for his skill through all the East. He had just attained the meridian of life; his person was graceful, and his manner soft and insinuating. Among many others by whom Almerine had been taught to investigate nature, Nourassin had acquainted her with the qualities of trees and herbs. Of him she learned, how an innumerable progeny are contained in the parent plant; how they expand and quicken by degrees; how from the same soil each imbibes a different juice, which rising from the root hardens into branches above, swells into leaves, and flowers, and fruits, infinitely various in colour, and taste, and smell: of power to repel diseases, or precipitate the stroke of death.

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Whether by the caprice which is common to violent passions, or whether by some potion which Nourassin found means to administer to his scholar, is not known; but of Nourassin she became enamoured to the most romantic excess. The pleasure with which she before reflected on the decree of the fairy, that she should be sought in marriage by a sovereign prince,' was now at an end. It was the custom of the nobles to present their daughters to the king, when they entered their eighteenth year; an event which Almerine had often anticipated with impatience and hope, but now wished to prevent with solicitude and terror. The period, urged forward, like every thing future, with silent and irresistible rapidity, at length arrived. The curiosity of Soliman had been raised, as well by accidental encomiums, as by the artifices of Omaraddin, who now hasted to gratify it with the utmost anxiety and perturbation he discovered the confusion of his daughter, and imagined that it was produced, like his own, by the uncertainty and importance of an event, which would be determined before the day should be passed. He endeavoured to give her a

N° 103. peaceful confidence in the promise of the fairy, which he wanted himself; and perceived, with regret, that her distress rather increased than diminished: this incident, however, as he had no suspicion of the cause, only rendered him more impatient of delay; and Almerine, covered with ornaments by which art and nature were exhausted, was, however reluctant, introduced to the king.

Soliman was now in his thirtieth year. He had sat ten years upon the throne, and for the steadiness of his virtue had been surnamed the Just. He had hitherto considered the gratification of appetite as a low enjoyment, allotted to weakness and obscurity; and the exercise of heroic virtue, as the superior felicity of eminence and power. He had as yet taken no wife; nor had he immured in his palace a multitude of unhappy beauties, in whom desire had no choice, and affection no object, to be successively forsaken after unresisted violation, and at last sink into the grave without having answered any nobler purpose, than sometimes to have gratified the caprice of a tyrant, whom they saw at no other season, and whose presence could raise no passion more remote from detestation than fear.

Such was Soliman; who, having gazed some moments upon Almerine with silent admiration, rose up, and turning to the princes who stood round him, To-morrow,' said he, I will grant the request which you have so often repeated, and place a beauty upon my throne, by whom I may transmit my dominion to posterity: to-morrow, the daughter of Omaraddin shall be my wife.'

The joy with which Omaraddin heard this declaration, was abated by the effect it produced upon Almerine who, after some ineffectual struggles with the passions which agitated her mind, threw herself into the arms of her women, and burst into

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