blessings, and should have that honour paid them whilst they are yet living, which will not fail to crown their memory when dead.

I always rejoice when I see a tribunal filled with a man of an upright and inflexible temper, who, in the execution of his country's laws, can overcome all private fear, resentment, solicitation, and even pity itself. Whatever passion enters into a sentence or decision, so far will there be in it a tincture of injustice. In short, justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is therefore always represented as blind, that we may suppose her thoughts are wholly intent on the equity of a cause, without being diverted or prejudiced by objects foreign to it.

I shall conclude this paper with a Persian story which is very suitable to my present subject. It will not a little please the reader, if he has the same taste of it which I myself have.

As one of the sultans lay encamped on the plains of Avala, a certain great man of the army entered by force into a peasant's house, and finding his wife very handsome, turned the good man out of his dwelling, and went to bed to her. The peasant complained the next morning to the sultan, and desired redress; but was not able to point out the criminal. The emperor, who was very much incensed at the injury done to the poor man, told him that probably the offender might give his wife another visit, and if he did, commanded him immediately to repair to his tent and acquaint him with it. Accordingly, within two or three days, the officer entered again the peasant's house, and turned the owner out of doors; who thereupon applied himself to the imperial tent, as he was ordered. The sultan went in person, with his guards, to the poor man's house, where he arrived about midnight. As the attendants carried each of them a flambeau in their hands, the sultan, after having ordered all the lights to be put out, gave the word to enter the house, find out the criminal, and put him to death. This was immediately executed, and the corpse laid out upon the floor by the emperor's command. He then bid every one light his flambeau, and stand about the dead body. The sultan approaching it looked upon the face, and immediately fell upon his knees in prayer. Upon his rising up he ordered the peasant to set before him whatever food he had in the

house. The peasant brought out a great deal of coarse fare, of which the emperor eat very heartily. The peasant seeing him in good humour, presumed to ask of him, why he had ordered the flambeaux to be put out before he had commanded the adulterer should be slain? Why, upon their being lighted again, he looked upon the face of the dead body, and fell down by it in prayer? and why, after this, he had ordered meat to be set before him, of which he now eat so heartily? The sultan, being willing to gratify the curiosity of his host, answered him in this manner. "Upon hearing the greatness of the offence which had been committed by one of the army, I had reason to think it might have been one of my own sons, for who else would have been so audacious and presuming? I gave orders, therefore, for the lights to be extinguished, that I might not be led astray, by partiality or compassion, from doing justice on the criminal. Upon the lighting of the flambeaux a second time, I looked upon the face of the dead person, and, to my unspeakable joy, found that it was not my son. It was for this reason that I immediately fell upon my knees, and gave thanks to God. As for my eating heartily of the food you have set before me, you will cease to wonder at it, when you know that the great anxiety of mind I have been in, upon this occasion, since the first complaints you brought me, has hindered my eating anything from that time till this very moment."

No. 100. MONDAY, JULY 6.

Hoc vos præcipuè, niveæ, decet, hoc ubi vidi,
Osculo ferre humero, quà patet, usque libet. OVID.

THERE is a certain female ornament, by some called a tucker, and by others the neck-piece, being a slip of fine linen or muslin that used to run in a small kind of ruffle round the uppermost verge of the women's stays, and by that means covered a great part of the shoulders and bosom. Having thus given a definition, or rather description, of the tucker, I must take notice, that our ladies have of late thrown aside this fig-leaf, and exposed, in its primitive nakedness, that gentle swelling of the breast, which it was used

to conceal. What their design by it is, they themselves best know.

I observed this as I was sitting the other day by a famous she visitant at my Lady Lizard's, when accidentally, as I was looking upon her face, letting my sight fall into her bosom, I was surprised with beauties which I never before discovered, and do not know where my eye would have run, if I had not immediately checked it. The lady herself could not forbear blushing, when she observed, by my looks, that she had made her neck too beautiful and glaring an object, even for a man of my character and gravity. I could scarce forbear making use of my hand to cover so unseemly a sight.

If we survey the pictures of our great-grandmothers in Queen Elizabeth's time, we see them clothed down to the very wrists, and up to the very chin. The hands and face were the only samples they gave of their beautiful persons. The following age of females made larger discoveries of their complexion. They first of all tucked up their garments to the elbow, and notwithstanding the tenderness of the sex, were content, for the information of mankind, to expose their arms to the coldness of the air and injuries of the weather. This artifice hath succeeded to their wishes, and betrayed many to their arms, who might have escaped them, had they been still concealed.

About the same time, the ladies considering that the neck was a very modest part in a human body, they freed it from those yokes, I mean those monstrous linen ruffs, in which the simplicity of their grandmothers had enclosed it. In proportion as the age refined, the dress still sunk lower, so that when we now say a woman has a handsome neck, we reckon into it many of the adjacent parts. The disuse of the tucker has still enlarged it, insomuch that the neck of a fine woman at present takes in almost half the body.

Since the female neck thus grows upon us, and the ladies seem disposed to discover themselves to us more and more, I would fain have them tell us once for all, how far they intend to go, and whether they have yet determined among themselves where to make a stop.

For my own part, their necks, as they call them, are no more than busts of alabaster in my eye. I can look upon The yielding marble of a snowy breast,

with as much coldness as this line of Mr. Waller represents in the object itself. But my fair readers ought to consider, that all their beholders are not Nestors. Every man is not sufficiently qualified with age and philosophy, to be an indifferent spectator of such allurements. The eyes of young men are curious and penetrating, their imaginations of a roving nature, and their passions under no discipline or restraint. I am in pain for a woman of rank, when I see her thus exposing herself to the regards of every impudent staring fellow. How can she expect that her quality can defend her, when she gives such provocation? I could not but observe, last winter, that upon the disuse of the neck-piece (the ladies will pardon me if it is not the fashionable term of the art) the whole tribe of oglers gave their eyes a new determination, and stared the fair sex in the neck rather than in the face. To prevent these saucy familiar glances, I would entreat my gentle readers to sew on their tuckers again, to retrieve the modesty of their characters, and not to imitate the nakedness, but the innocence of their mother Eve.

What most troubles and indeed surprises me in this particular, I have observed,1 that the leaders in this fashion were most of them married women. What their design can be in making themselves bare, I cannot possibly imagine. Nobody exposes wares that are appropriated. When the bird is taken, the snare ought to be removed. It was a remarkable circumstance in the institution of the severe Lycurgus. As that great lawgiver knew that the wealth and strength of a republic consisted in the multitude of citizens, he did all he could to encourage marriage: in order to it, he prescribed a certain loose dress for the Spartan maids, in which there were several artificial rents and openings, that, upon putting themselves in motion, discovered several limbs of the body to the beholders. Such were the baits and temptations made use of, by that wise lawgiver, to incline the young men of his age to marriage. But when the maid was once sped, she was not suffered to tantalize the

1 What most troubles, &c.—I have observed.] Imperfectly expressed, for-What most troubles, &c., is this, viz. I have observed. This negli gent way of speaking was affected by the author, to intimate his concern in entering on this part of his subject, as if he hardly durst speak out, or, as if the portentous object so occupied him, that he was not at liberty to mind his expression.

male part of the commonwealth: her garments were closed up, and stitched together with the greatest care imaginable. The shape of her limbs, and complexion of her body, had gained their ends, and were ever after to be concealed from the notice of the public.

I shall conclude this discourse of the tucker with a moral, which I have taught upon all occasions; and shall still continue to inculcate into my female readers; namely, that nothing bestows so much beauty on a woman as modesty. This is a maxim laid down by Ovid himself, the greatest master in the art of love. He observes upon it, that Venus pleases most when she appears (semi-reducta) in a figure withdrawing herself from the eye of the beholder. It is very probable he had in his thoughts the statue which we see in the Venus de Medicis, where she is represented in such a shy, retiring posture, and covers her bosom with one of her hands. In short, modesty gives the maid greater beauty than even the bloom of youth, it bestows on the wife the dignity of a matron, and reinstates the widow in her virginity.

No. 101. TUESDAY, JULY 7.

Tros Tyriusve mihi nullo discrimine habetur. VIRG.

THIS being the great day of thanksgiving for the peace, I shall present my reader with a couple of letters that are the fruits of it. They are written by a gentleman who has taken this opportunity to see France, and has given his friends in England a general account of what he has there met with, in several epistles. Those which follow were put into my hands with liberty to make them public, and I question not but my reader will think himself obliged to me for so doing.

"SIR,

Since I had the happiness to see you last, I have encountered as many misfortunes as a knight-errant. I had a fall into the water at Calais, and since that several bruises upon land, lame post-horses by day, and hard beds at night, with many other dismal adventures.