were by far too sanguine. I must confess, that notwithstanding the high relish I have for the beauties of nature, I have often felt, amidst the most romantic scenes, that languor of spirit which nothing but society can dissipate. Even when occupied with my favourite studies, I have sometimes thought with the bard of Mantua, that the ease and retirement which I courted were rather ignoble. I have suffered an additional disappointment in the ideas I had formed of the characters of the country-people. It is but a treacherous picture, my friend, which the poets give us of their innocence and honest simplicity. I have met with some instances of insincerity, chicane, and even downright knavery, in my short acquaintance with them, that have quite shocked and mortified

me.

Whether I shall ever again enter into the busy world (a small concern in the house, without allowing my name to appear, would perhaps be some amusement) I have not yet determined. Of this, and other matters, we shall talk fully at meeting. Meantime believe me, dear sir, yours,

EUPHANOR.

Euphanor has been, for this month past, in town. I expected to have found him peevish, chagrined, and out of humour with the world. But in this I was disappointed. I have never seen my friend in better health, or higher spirits. I have been with him at several convivial meetings with our old acquaintances, who felt equal satisfaction with himself at what they term his recovery. He has actually resumed a small share in trade, and purposes, for the future, to devote one half of the year to business. His counsel have given him assurance of gaining his law-suit: he expects, in a few months, to return in triumph to

-shire, and has invited all his

friends to be present at a fête champêtre he intends to celebrate, on the restoration of his beloved rivulet to its wonted channel.

The life of Euphanor must be a series of disappointments; but, on the whole, I must consider him as a

HAPPY MAN.

No. 38. SATURDAY, JUNE 5, 1779.

THE following letter I received only yesterday; but as I am particularly interested in every project of ingenious men, I postponed another essay which was ready for publication, and put my printer to considerable inconvenience to get it ready for this day's paper. I was the more solicitous, likewise, to give it a place as soon after my 35th number as possible, in order to show my impartiality. This paper (as the London Gazetteer says) is open to all parties; with this proviso, however, which is exactly the reverse of the terms of admission into the Gazetteer, that my correspondents do not write politics.

SIR,

TO THE AUTHOR OF THE MIRROR.

In a late paper, you showed the necessity of accommodating ourselves to the temper of persons with whom we are particularly connected, by sometimes submitting our own taste, inclination, and opinions, to the taste, inclination, and opinions of those persons. I apprehend, sir, you might have carried your

idea a good deal farther, and have prescribed to us the same receipt for happiness in our intercourse not only with our wives and children, but with our companions, our acquaintance, in short, with all mankind.

In

But, as the disposition to this is not always born with one, and as to form a temper is not so easy as to regulate a behaviour, it is the business of masters in the art of politeness to teach people, at least the better sort of them, to counterfeit as much of this complacency in their deportment as possible. this, indeed, they begin at quite the different end of the matter from you, sir; complacency to husbands, wives, children, and relations, they leave people to teach themselves; but the art of pleasing every body else, as it is a thing of much greater importance, they take proportionably greater pains to instil into their disciples.

I have, for some time past, been employed in reducing this art into a system, and have some thoughts of opening a subscription for a course of lectures on the subject. To qualify myself for the task, I have studied, with unwearied attention, the letters of the immortal Earl of Chesterfield, which I intend to use as my text-book on this occasion, allowing only for the difference which even a few years produce in an art so fluctuating as this. Before I lodge my subscription-paper with the booksellers, I wish to give a specimen of my abilities to the readers of the MIRROR; for which purpose I beg the favour of you to insert in your next number the following substance of a lecture on simulation. Our noble author, indeed, extends his doctrine the length of dissimulation only, from which he distinguishes simulation as something not quite so fair and honest. But, for my part, I have not sufficient nicety of ideas to make the distinction, and would humbly recommend to every person who

wishes to be thoroughly well-bred not to confuse his head with it. Taking, therefore, the shorter word as the more gentlemanlike, I proceed to my subject of

" SIMULATION.

SIMULATION is the great basis of the art which I have the honour to teach. I shall humbly endeavour to treat this branch of my subject, though much less ably, yet more scientifically, than my great master, by reducing it into a form like that adopted by the professors of the other sciences, and even borrowing from them some of the terms by which I mean to illustrate it.

This rule of false (to adopt an algebraical term) I shall divide into two parts; that which regards the external figure of the man or woman; and that which is necessary in the accomplishment of the mind, and its seeming development to others.

Fashion may be termed the regulator of the first, decorum of the latter. But I must take this opportunity of informing my audience, that the signification of words, when applied to persons of condition, is often quite different from that which they are understood to bear in the ordinary standard of language. With such persons (if I may be allowed so bold an expression) it may often be the fashion to be unfashionable, and decorum to act against all propriety; good-breeding may consist in rudeness, and politeness in being very impertinent. This will hold in the passive, as well as in the active of our heart: people of fashion will be pleased with such treatment from people of fashion, the natural feelings in this, as in the other, fine arts, giving way, amongst connoisseurs, to knowledge and taste.

Having made this preliminary observation, I return to my subject of simulation.

It will be found, that appearing what one is not, is, in both divisions of my subject, the criterion of politeness. The man who is rich enough to afford fine clothes is, by this rule of false, intitled to wear very shabby ones; while he who has a narrow fortune is to be dressed in the inverse ratio to his finances. One corollary from this proposition is obvious: he who takes off his suit on credit, and has neither inclination nor ability to pay for it, is to be dressed the most expensively of the three. The same rule holds in houses, dinners, servants, horses, equipages, &c., and is to be followed, as far as the law will allow, even the length of bankruptcy, or, perhaps, a little beyond it.

On the same principle, a simple gentleman, or esquire, must, at all places of public resort, be apparelled like a gentleman or esquire. A baronet may take the liberty of a dirty shirt; a lord need not show any shirt at all, but wear a handkerchief round his neck in its stead; an earl may add to all this a bunch of uncombed hair hanging down his back; and a duke, over and above the privileges abovementioned, is entitled to appear in boots and buckskin breeches.

6

Following the same rule of inversion, the scholar of a provincial dancing-master must bow at coming into and going out of a drawing-room, and that pretty low too. The pupil of Gallini is to push forward with the rough stride of a porter, and make only a slight inclination of his head when he has got into the middle of the room. At going out of it, he is to take no notice of the company at all.

In the externals of the female world, from the great complication of the machine, it is not easy to