stage-coach, may perhaps be healthful for the constitution of the body, yet it is apt to cause such a dizziness in young empty heads, as too often lasts their lifetime. Earl of Hardwicke.

THE LAMENTATION OF CHARLOTTE WEALTHY.

MR. SPECTATOR,

I AM a young woman of nineteen, the only daughter of very wealthy parents, and have my whole life been used with a tenderness, which, in regard to my education, did me no great service. I have perhaps an uncommon desire for knowledge of what is suitable to my sex and quality; but as far as I can remember, the whole dispute about me has been whether such a thing was proper for the child to do, or not? Or whether such and such a food was the more wholesome for the young lady to eat? This was ill for my shape, that for my complexion, and the other for my eyes. I am not extravagant when I tell you, I do not know that I have trod upon the very earth ever since I was ten years old: a coach or chair I am obliged to for all my motions from one place to another ever since I can remember. All who had to do with instructing me, have ever been bringing stories of the notable things I have said, and the womanly manner of my behaving myself upon such and such an occasion. This has been my state, till I came towards years of womanhood; ever since I grew towards the age of fifteen, I have been abused after another manner. Now, forsooth, I am so killing, none can safely speak to me. Our house is frequented by

men of sense, and I love to ask questions when I fall into such conversation; but I am cut short with something or other about my bright eyes. Pray, sir, be pleased to take the part of us beauties and fortunes into your own consideration, and do not let us be flattered out of our senses. I have got an hussey of a maid, who is most craftily given to this ill quality. I was first diverted with a certain absurdity the creature was guilty of in every thing she said: she is a country-girl, and in the dialect of the shire she was born in, would tell me every body reckoned her lady had the purest red and white in the world: then she would tell me, I was most like one Sisley Dobson in their town, who made the miller make away with himself, and walk afterwards in the cornfields where they used to meet. With all this, the cunning hussey can lay letters in my way, and put a billet in my gloves, and then stand to it she knows nothing of the matter. I do not know, from my birth to this day, that I have been ever treated by any one as I ought; and if it were not for a few books which I delight in, I should be at this hour a novice to all common sense. Would it not be worth your while to lay down rules in this case, and tell people that we fair ones expect honest plain answers as well as other people? Why must I, good sir, because I have a good air, a fine complexion, and am in the bloom of my years, be misled in all my actions, and have the notions of good and ill confounded in my mind, for no other offence but because I have the advantages of beauty and fortune? Indeed, sir, what with the silly homage that is paid to us by the sort of people I have above spoken of, and the

utter negligence which others have for us, the conversation of us young women of condition, is no other than what must expose us to ignorance and vanity, if not vice. All this is humbly submitted to your spectatorial wisdom, by

Sir, your humble servant,

CHARLOTTE WEALTHY.

Steele.

A LADY'S DISTRESSES BY A PARLIAMENTARY
ELECTION.

DEAR LADY CHARLOTTE,

I HAVE been plagued, pestered, teased, to death, and hurried out of my wits, ever since I have been in this odious country. O my dear, how I long to be in town again! Pope and the poets may talk what they will of their purling streams, shady groves, and flowery meads, but I had rather live all my days among the cheesemongers' shops in Thames-street, than pass such another spring in this filthy country. Would you believe it? I have scarce touched a card since I have been here: and then there has been such ado with us about election matters, that I am ready to die with the vapours; such a rout with their hissing and hallooing, my head is ready to split into a thousand pieces. If my sir John must be in parliament, why cannot he do as your lord does, and be content with a borough, where he might come in without all this trouble, and take his seat in the house, though he has never been within an hundred miles of the place.

Our house, my dear, has been a perfect inn, ever since we came down; and I have been obliged to trudge about as much as a fat landlady. Our doors are open to every dirty fellow in the country, that is worth forty shillings a year. All my best floors are spoiled by the hob-nails of farmers stumping about them; every room is a pig-sty, and the Chinese paper in the drawingroom stinks so abominably of punch and tobacco, that it would strike you down to come into it. If you knew what I have suffered, you would think I had the constitution of a washerwoman to go through it. We never sit down to table without a dozen or more of boisterous two-legged creatures, as rude as bears; and I have nothing to do but to heap up their plates, and to drink to each of their healths. What is worse than all, one of the beasts got tipsy, and nothing would serve him but he must kiss me, which I was forced to submit to for fear of losing his vote and interest. Would you think

it, dear Charlotte?--Do not laugh at me.—— I stood godmother in person to a huge lubberly boy at a country farmer's, and they almost poisoned me with their hodge-podge they called caudle, made of our ale and brown sugar. All this and more I have been obliged to comply with, that the country fellows might not say my lady is proud and above them.

Besides, there is not a woman creature within twenty miles of the place, that is fit company for my housekeeper; and yet I must be intimate with them all. Lady B**** indeed is very near us; but though we are well acquainted in town, we must not be seen to speak to each other here, be

cause her lord is in the opposition. Poor Thomas got a sad drubbing at her house, when I innocently sent him at any first coming into the country with 'How d'ye' to her ladyship. The greatest female acquaintance I have here, are Mrs. Mayoress, a tailor's wife, and Mrs. Alderman Gascoigne, who sells pins and needles on one side of the shop, while her husband works at his pestle and mortar on the other.

These ordinary wretches are constant attendants on my tea-table; I am obliged to take them and their brats out an airing in my coach every evening; and am afterwards often doomed to sit down to whist and swabbers, or one and thirty bon-ace for farthings. Mrs. Mayoress is a very violent party-woman; and she has two pug-dogs, one of which she calls sir John, and the other colonel, in compliment you must know to my husband and his brother candidate.

We had a ball the other day; and I opened it with sir Humphrey Chase, who danced in his boots, and hobbled along for all the world like the dancing bears, which I have seen in the streets at London. A terrible mistake happened about precedence, which I fear will lose sir John a good many votes: an attorney's wife was very angry, that her daughter, a little pert chit just come from the boarding-school, was now called out to dance before Miss Norton, the brewer's daughter, when every body knew (she said) that her girl was a gentlewoman bred and born.

I wish, my dear, you were to see my dressingroom; you would think it was a ribbond-shop. Lettice and I have been busy all this week in