and pretenfions, and adopt a prouder language. Mr. Powell, the fire-eater, is a fingular genius; and Mendoza has more science than Johnson.I have heard of hieroglyphical buckles; fo that our very shoes will want decyphering, and the Coptic language muft foon make part of the education of our Birmingham buckle-makers. Alphabetical buckles are become common; infomuch that in teaching ourselves to talk with our fingers, we may begin with learning to spell with our toes. Our wigs are made upon principles, which used to be made upon blocks. Our chimneys are cured of smoaking by professors; and a dancing-mafter engages to teach you the Nine Orders of the Graces, and, if you take forty leffons, will throw you in an eleemofynary hornpipe. Our fervants are beginning, as my correfpondent tells me, to read behind our carriages; and the Bond-street Lounger, with his breeches cut by a problem, has as much of the language at least of learning, as any fervitor in black logics at Oxford.

This wide fpirit of accommodation, fo charac teristic of modern learning, has opened ways to

the

the attainment of literary honours that were barred for ages before. There is fcarcely a mind in which nature has not drawn its line of demarcation between the rational and the brute; scarcely a creature, that walks erect and inhales the breeze, but may find some employment in the provinces of literature level to its powers. If you cannot compofe, you may scrape together; if you cannot build fentiment, you may rake anecdote; if you cannot write a poem, you may few together an opera; if you cannot write your name, you may edit a horn-book with historical engravings.

I fhall now take leave of my fubject for the prefent; but as I have not yet half exhausted myself upon it, I shall follow it up through another Paper, in which I fhall defcend more into particulars, and develope, as far as I am able, a few of thofe ambushes and disguifes, which false learning has borrowed from the fophiftry of modern improve ments, for the fake of my modeft countrymen, wherever they are to be found, who facrifice their rights to a race of bold ufurpers. My intention has hitherto been only to fhew that learning has outgrown its strength; and that, unless we call

in to its aid the proper exercise and cultivation, we have reason to fear that its decay will foreftall its maturity.

No 34.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29.

Humans capiti cervicem pi&tor equinam
Fungere fi velit, et varias inducere plumas
Undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum
Definat in pifcem, mulier ferm: fa fuperne,
Spectatum admiffi, rifùm teneatis, amici P

If, to a human head, a painter join
A horfe's neck, or, ideot! would combine
A fordid fish's tail-the lovelier share

Of lovely woman-limbs fought here and there,
Stuck round with feathers all, pick'd where he could-
Would you not laugh, my friends? I know you would.

THE laft time our Society met, it was the fashion of the evening to talk upon my Paper, As each fucceffively gave his opinion as to the fpirit in which fuch a work fhould be conducted, I could obferve how the bias of their particular profeffions and occupations had narrowed the range of their curiofity, and how much I might have

overlooked of what concerns our general nature, had I followed in the felection of my fubjects the any one individual.

counsel of

My excellent old friend, Mr. Allworth, whofe talent of reasoning upon life, independently of his own particular concerns in it, is peculiar to himself, gave me real pleasure by his manner of confidering this fubject. "When I think," said he, “good "Mr. Olive-branch, upon the objects and ufes "of this undertaking of yours, it ftrikes me that "it cannot well cover too extenfive a portion of "that variety which human life affords; while it "maintains in itself a certain confiftency and "order, a certain regularity of construction, and "fubferviency of parts, which will stamp it a whole "when it comes to its completion, place it above "mere collections and magazines, and affign it a "liberal rank among intellectual productions. It "should, methinks," continued he, " be con"ftructed and distributed like the plan of a Roman "villa, with its urbana, its ruftica, and its fructu"aria. Its urbana, laid out in elegant apartments, "fhould admit only drawing-room company and

で

"fashionable topics; its ruftica fhould be dedicated

" to

"to humbler life and homelier characters, and ac"commodated to the ufes of the mechanic, the la"bourer, and the peafant. Into the fructuaria "fhould be thrown fragments of erudition and "ftores of pleasantry, hints, projects, inventions, "specimens, and a rich mifcellany of ready ma"terials. It might not be amifs alfo, if you had

your chenobofcium, or goofe-pen; your nefotro"phium, or place for wild fowl; your fuile, for "fwine; cochleare, for fnails; and theriotrophium,

" for wild beasts. With this stock and establish

ment, you have only to place yourself in the "cenatio, which was ufually at the top of the tower, "whence you may overlook the land that stretches " itself before you, and felect those objects which "intereft you moft in the bufy fcene which pre"fents itself."

I relifhed this idea of my good friend's fo well, that I have been induced to carry it a step or two farther, and, in confequence of a very curious letter I received a few days ago from an intelligent correfpondent in my neighbourhood, on the subject of fign-pofts, have been induced to add to my premifes an apartment for monsters.

σε Τα