It is this weakness that the flatterer is always fure to attack, knowing the part by which he is moft easily be fet, on the fide of his vanity.

No wonder that he is liberal of his praifes, which coft him nothing, provided he can ferve by it any private advantage.

But adulation, instead of gaining the affections, will rather excite the contempt of the wife and prudent: they will look upon it as an indignity offered to their underftandings, and refent it accordingly.

True merit confifts in our not being conscious of it ourselves. Vanity eclipfes the luftre of our virtues. It is the fure mark, the diftinguishing characteristic of real defert, to be as defirous to fhun applaufe, as affiduous to deferve it.

Vanity is a frailty too incident to human nature; whatever praifes, whatever encomiums are paft upon us, we are apt to think it is no more than the juft tribute of our merit and deferts.

"Praifing, as it is commonly managed, (an eminent writer remarks) is nothing else but a trial of skill upon a man, how many good things we can poffibly fay of him. All the treasuries of oratory are ranfacked -all the fine things that ever were faid are heaped together for his fake; and no matter whether it belongs to them or not, fo that there be but enough of it."

To give honour where honour is due, to give every one the juft tribute of their deferts, may be thought pardonable, as it is confiftent with truth; but there is a nicety to be obferved, so to temper the expreffion and fentiment, as not to offend modefty, nor incur the imputation of Aattery.

Delicacy' requires, that even the

truth fhould fometimes be disguised, and not always appear in its naked, open colours, especially when the perfon is witnefs to his own praifes, or when it is immediately addreft to him.

A difcerning perfon may eafily diftinguish between flattery and diffimulation, truth and fincerity.

The one is varmished over with all . the flowers of rhetoric, all the ornaments of eloquence and falfe colourings that human cunning can invent, or specious artifices put together, like the heathen orator Tertullus, ufing all the dexterity of addrefs, all the enticing words of man's wifdom.

On the other hand, it is the property of truth and fincerity to ftand forth to view, without any ftudied difguifes, unadorned by any fpecious colourings, divefted of all external ornaments, and needs no beauty to fet it off to advantage.

The clergy moft certainly ought to guard not only againft flattery itfelf, but againft every thing that has the moft remote refemblance to it. They, whofe duty it is rightly to "divide the word of truth," ought not to have mens perfons in admiration, or give flattering titles. It is beneath the dignity of the pulpit to defcend to any thing that is adulatory, in the laft degree. Nothing of that kind fhould find admiflion there, where the praifes of God, and him only, is the proper theme.

Happy it is for us, that we have a prince on the throne, who hath fo early expreft his difpleasure against the fycophants that furround it; who is fo well able to diftinguish between that counfel, which is given out of private intereft, and that which a fpirit of patriotifm fuggefts. It is not the perfon who glofes 4 G 2

over

compared with others, was but of middling bulk.

The bark of the trunk is greyish, fmooth, and, as it were, unctuous to the touch: ftripping it off, the infide appears of a green, pricked with red; the thickness is about eight or nine lines. The bark of the younger branches is green and thinly diffeminated with hairs: the wood of the tree is very foft and white.

The leaves are about five inches long and two broad, and pointed at both extremities, pretty thick, of a sprightly green on the upper fide, and pale underneath; and adhering three, five, or feven, but most commonly seven, in the manner of a fan, on a common pedicle, much like thofe of the chefout-tree: they only grow on the young branches, whereon the pedicles are alternately placed. The bloffoms or flowers are in proportion to the tree, not yielding in magnitude to the largest we know of. They form, when ftill in the bud, a globe of about three inches diameter; and when blown, are four inches long and fix broad. After the falling of the petals and the ftamina, the ovarium, as it ripens, becomes an oblong fruit, pointed at both extremities, fifteen or eighteen feet long, and five or fix broad, cloathed with a kind of greenish down, under which is found a ligneous, hard, almoft black rind or peel, and marked with twelve or fourteen furrows, dividing it lengthwife into ribs. This fruit hangs from the tree by a pedicle of about two feet in length, and contains a kind of pulp or whitish fubitance, fpungy, and full of fourth water. The pulp feems to make but one mafs, when the fruit is new; but, in drying, fhrinks and divides of it.

felf into a great number of bodies, with feveral facets, each containing a brown fhining feed, nearly of the figure of a kidney bean, five lines in length, and three in breadth; and the pulp that furrounds them, is eafily reduced into a powder, brought hither from the Levant, and known, for a long time, by the very improper name of Terra Sigillata of Lemnos.

M. Adanfon believes that the Baobab may be naturally claffed with the malvacecus plants that have but one calix. This tree cannot be

tranfplanted neither when it begins to rife, nor when it is ten years old, as its root would almoft infallibly perish. The best plant is that which is from fix months to two years old; branches fometimes take from a flip, but they frequently fail; and the progrefs even of thofe that do is always flower than that of the plant rifing from the feed. Befides the caries that attacks the trunk of the tree when its roots are hurt, it is alfo fubject to another malady, more rare indeed, but not lefs fatal to it. This is a kind of mouldiness that gets into the whole ligneous body, and which without changing the texture of its fibres, foftens it to the degree of its having no more confifience than the ordinary pith of trees; then it becomes incapable of refifting the ordinary blafts of winds, and this monftrous trunk is broke down by the leaft ftorm.

The real country of the Baobab is Africa, and particularly the western coaft of that part which extends from the Niger to the kingdom of Benin. It is not found in the catalogues of the Afiatic plants, nɔr in thofe of America; yet might be actually in fome of the climates of thofe two parts of the world, which

refem

resemble the part of Africa that produces it; but the tree does not grow there fpontaneously.

The Baobab, as all the other plants of the malvaceous tribe, has an emollient virtue, capable of maintaining in the body an abundant tranfpiration, and of oppofing the too great heat of the blood. The negroes dry its leaves in the fhade, and reduce them into a powder they call lalo, which they mix with their aliments, not for giving them a relifh, for the lalo has fcarce any tafte, but for obtaining the just mentioned effect. M. Adanfon himself experienced the fame virtue ; and the decoction of these leaves preferved him and a French officer, who confined himself to this regimen, from the heat of urine and hot fevers which ufually attack foreigners at Senegal during the month of September, and which raged ftill more furiously in 1751, than they had for several years paft. The fresh or newly gathered fruit of this tree is not lefs ufeful than its leaves; its pulp is eaten, which is fubacid and agreeable enough; and in mixing its juice with water and a little fugar, a liquor is made, attended with the best effects in all hot affections, and in putrid or peftilential fevers; laftly, when the fruit is fpoiled, the negroes make an excellent foap of it, by burning it, and mixing its ahes with the oil of the palm tree that begins to grow rancid.

The negroes make ftill a very fingular use of this monftrous tree. We have faid that it was fubject to a caries, which often hollows its trunk; they enlarge thofe cavities, and make a fort of chambers, where they hang the dead bodies of those they are not willing to grant the honours of burial to; thofe bodies dry

there perfectly, and become real mummies, without any other preparation. The greateft number of the bodies fo dried is of the Guiriots: these people may be compared to the ancient bards and jugglers, fo famous among our ancestors. They are poets and muficians, and have a kind of inspection over feafts and dances. Their number is al ways pretty confiderable at the courts of the negro kings, whom they divert and flatter to an extravagant degree in their poetical compofitions. This kind of fuperiority of talents makes them dreaded by the negroes during their life; they attribute it to fomething fupernatu ral: but, instead of making, as the ancient Greeks, their poets the children of the gods, they regard them, on the contrary, as forcerers, and minifters of the devil, and believe in that quality they fhould draw down malediction on the earth, or even on the waters which might receive their bodies; it is therefore that they hide and dry them in the hollow trunks of the Baobab.

Homer relates, that Ulyffes had made for himself at Ithaca, a compleat bedstead of the trunk of an olive tree, fupported on its roots, about which he had afterwards built a chamber. If this prince had in the precinct of his palace a Baobab tree, he might have extended the fingularity ftill farther, and procured himself a chamber and all its furniture cut in the fame piece of wood.

The Baobab was never defcribed properly, either as to leaves, fruit, or flowers, before M. Adanfon; and as Senegal is now one of our poffeffions on the coaft of Africa, the produce of this tree may in a great measure become an important object of our commerce.

JOUR

GENTLEMEN,

THE

A DREAM.

HE fixth book of the Eneid has always been a favourite with me, for the noble fentiments of morality and the inimitable ftrain of poetry which run thro' it. I frequently read it with the moft tranf porting pleasure, and after finishing it, I cannot but look down very much upon the degenerate flate of poetry among the moderns: for the ftrong nervous thought and natural expreflion, they have fubftituted pretty conceit, quaint phrafes, turns, ftrokes, and I know not what, tending to a general depravity of tafte among us. Filled with thefe thoughts, I lately retired to reft, when queen Mab immediately appeared to me, and from the mixture of ideas fluctuating in my mind, the dreffed up the following fcene to my imagination.

I thought the commanded me to fet out on a journey through the head of a modern writer, which I inftantly agreed to, and the goddess accordingly took me in her chariot. In a fhort time we arrived at the apartment; where the bard fat, fick lied over with the pale caft of thought. At mfirft approach to wards the intellecte al regions, a terrible effluvium, "proceeding," as Shakespear has it," from the heat oppreffed brain," ftruck my fenfes; but I was foon diverted from that uneafy station by a perfonage who offered to be my guide: from a confcious fimper, a careless difpofition of his perfon, and the tenor of his difcourfe, I knew him to be Vanity, and accepted the compliment. Our

way was through a thick fkull, of which we at once took poffeffion, and plunged into the abyss.

At our firft entrance a confufed noife affailed our ears, and we were inftantly befet by a number of phantoms placed round the portal. The god Somnus lay ftretched at full length, diffufing round him vapours and infenfibility; a group of wild dreams and reveries hovered over him, and below flowed the ri ver of Animal Spirits, dull, flow, and lazy. and lazy. Numbers were gathered round the banks, begging a paffage into this gloomy world; but the Charon of the place, a torpid decrepid fellow, known there by the name of Perception, gave a few of them a tardy admittance, and to the greater part he was entirely deaf. Among thofe whom he rejected, I perceived a train, which I took for the Nine Mufes, but was informed they never had attempted to pafs that way; and, upon a nearer view, 1 found they were the amiable band of moral virtues, who feemed to be extremely dejected at meeting with a repulfe from any human being. They gave me to understand, that it is now become fashionable to difcard them every where, at which I expreffed my uneafinefs, begged a more intimate acquaintance with them, and advanced towards the boatman, Perception, who with the help of his fpectacles at length defcried me, and received me into his care.

The river had a great many turnings and windings (for ductile dullnefs