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The times are bad, the weather hazy,

Good lack-a-daify!

Poor men can't wear a powder'd jazey,

Good lack-a-daily!

The poor are ftarv'd, the rich are lazy,

Good lack-a-daify!

When will prosperity and peace come back? No man can tell, good lack, good lack! [Telegraph.]

CRAMBO.

LOTTERY PROPHETS.
-Corniger Hammon

Et dudum taciti rupere filentiæ Delphi.

SIR,

CLAUDEAN.

AS this is the feafon of infurance, in which fortunes

are promised to the bold and the confident, I wish to be fatisfied, if any of your readers can inform me on what foundation it is fafeft to rely for fuccefs, and which of the various modes of difcovering a lucky number has been found moft profitable by thofe who have adopted it. I am ignorant whether the vifions of the day be entitled to more refpect than the dreams of the night; whether it be better, in the pursuits of chance, to be watchful, or to flumber; and though I have seen something of the effects of each state, I am yet unable to balance their advantages or difadvantages.

Among those who are awake to their intereft, my footman, Thomas, deferved the foremoft rank, No action in life, which comprehended a figure in it, was indifferent to him; but his ruin was decided by the crofs pofition of a knife and fork on the plate of a ma thematician. Nothing could be more obvious than that the Roman numeral X was here intended to be represented: and thus diftinguished by the communication of the fates, he expended fo much of his own and of my property on the Pythagorean number 10, that, like Pythagoras himself, he was forced to run away from home. His fucceffor faw wealth revealed Ff

to

to him in two parallel filver fpoons, which he interpreted, according to the Arabic table of cyphers, to fignify No. II; but the oracle failed, and he found, in the profecution of his golden views, that my spoons could be more ufefully employed than merely as types and fymbols. The reverend Curate of our parish preached a fermon on the following Sunday, in which he inveighed against the danger of this epidemic diftemper and if his fermon wrought little, he had no reafon to complain that his text was unobferved; for it was carefully noted down by my fervants, and my cook infured the number of the chapter, my house-maid that of the verfe. Nor is their ill fuccefs mentioned in the neighbourhood, without fome reflection on the Parfon for his ignorance, or his malignity, in thus misleading thofe who placed confidence in him.

In the house oppofite to my own, the night is the time of fairy inftruction. No one there lies down to fleep who does not hope to be difturbed by dreams and calculations-repofe is not there the object of going to bed. Their walls are chalked with illegible characters, which it is the labour of the day to decypher ; yet I do not hear that they have been more lucky than their lefs laborious competitors, who work only in the day-time. A dream fometimes mifcarries, because the dreamer lay on his left fide; fometimes because he had negligently turned on his back. It is fometimes without effect, because the figures cannot be read; and at other times it is mifinterpreted from their doubtful pofition.

There is a third clafs of insurers, who, neither trusting to the delufions of the day, nor the night, woo a particular number by long attachment, and unfhaken conftancy. Thus 8 is preferred by fome, because it is the fmalleft cube, and 9 by others for its myftic properties. The folly of thefe perfons, if not innocent in its confequences to them, is at least venial from authority. The quincunx of Brown has furnished the world with motives for admiring No. 5; and Macro

bius waftes the time of his reader in monftrous commendations of No. 7. But left I inay But left I may mislead your readers into partiality for this number, let me observe that one of the reafons why Macrobius is enraptured with it, is, because it is compofed of 1 with 6, and 2 with 5, and 3 with 4, each of which numbers, fays the learned author, is perfect in itself, and has its particular merits.

I am well aware of the difficulty of deciding between fuch contrary fyftems; but I doubt not that fome of your correfpondents will furnifh me with a motive of preference; and as I live in a village, where all can prophefy on this obftrufe fubject, I am unwilling to appear lefs learned, or lefs confident than my neighbours.

[True Briton.]

B. A.

LETTER FROM DR. FRANKLIN TO MADAME B**. WRITTEN AT FASSEY, NEAR PARIS..

YOU perhaps recollect, Madam, when we lately

You

fpent fo happy a day in the delightful gardens of Moulin Joli, with the amiable fociety who refided there, that I ftopped in one of the walks, and permitted the company to pafs on without me.

We had been shewn an infinite number of dead flies of the ephemeron fpecies, the fucceffive generations of which, it is faid, are born and die in the fame day.

I happened to perceive, on a leaf, a living family engaged in converfation. You know, Madam, I underftand the language spoken by every species of animals inferior to our own; and the very clofe application I give to the study of them, is perhaps the best excufe I can offer for the little proficiency I have made in your charming language.

Curiofity led me to liften to the converfation of these little creatures; but, from the vivacity peculiar to their nation, three or four of them spoke at once, and I could fcarcely learn any thing from their difcourfe. I under

food,

ftood, however, from fome broken fentences which I caught now and then, that they were warmly difputing about the merit of two foreign musicians, a drone and a gnat; and that they appeared to fpend their time in these debates with as little concern for the brevity of life, as if they had been fure of living for a whole month. "Happy people!" faid I to myfelf, "you certainly live under a wife, equitable, and moderate government; fince no public grievances call forth your complaints, and your only fource of difpute is the perfection or imperfection of foreign mufic."

I left them foon after, in order to obferve an aged ephemeron with grey hairs, who, perched folitary on a leaf, was talking to himself. His foliloquy will, I believe, amufe that amiable friend to whom I am indebted for the most agreeable of my recreations, the charms of animated converfation, and the divine harmony of mufical execution.

"It was the opinion, "faid he, " of the learned philofophers of our race, who lived and flourished before us, that this vaft world itself could not fubfift more than eighteen hours; and that opinion to me appears to have fome foundation, fince, by the motion of the great luminary that gives life to the whole nation, and which in my time has, in a perceptible manner, declined confiderably towards the ocean that bounds the earth, it muft neceffarily terminate its courfe at that period, be extinguished in the waters that furround us, and deliver up the world to cold and darkness, the infallible forerunners of death and univerfal deftruction. I have lived feven hours in these eighteen; it is a great age, amounting to no less than four hundred and twenty minutes. How few of us live fo long!

"I have feen whole generations fpring up, flourish and disappear. My prefent friends are the children and grand-children of the friends of my youth, who, alas! are no more, and whom I muft foon follow; for, in the ordinary courfe of nature, I cannot expect, though

in good health, to live more than feven or eight minutes longer.

fa

"What avail at prefent all my labours, all my tigues, to accumulate a provifion of fweet dew, which I fhall not live long enough to confume? What avail the political difcuffion in which I am engaged for the fervice of my countrymen, the inhabitants of this bufh; or my philofophical enquiries, devoted to the welfare of the fpecies in general? In politics, what are laws without manners?

"A course of minutes will render the prefent generation as corrupt as the ancient inhabitants of other bushes, and, of confequence, as unhappy. And in philofophy, how flow is our progrefs! Alas! art is long, and life is fhort! My friends would confole me wit the name which, they fay, I fhall leave behind me. They tell me I have lived long enough for glory and for nature. But what is fame to an ephemeron that will be no longer in existence? What will history become, when, at the eighteenth hour, the world itfelf. will be drawn to a clofe, and be no longer any thing, but a heap of ruins.

"For myself, after having made fo many bufy re-fearches, the only real bleffings that remain to me, are, the fatisfaction of having spent my life with the view of being useful, and with pleafing converfation in a mall number of good lady ephemeras, and now and then the captivating fmiles of Madame B***, and the fweet founds of her forte piano."

THE THREE CURSES.

:

HREE Curfes, in three diff'rent ages born,.

TH

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Have held our Nation up to public fcorn :

First War-bafe Civil War-in one great flood,,
Delug'd the Nation with its native blood.
Next Superftition came, with holy air,
Bedeck'd with relics, and pretending pray'r

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