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our petticoats; as these are set out with whalebone, so are those with wire, to increase and sustain the bunch of fold that hangs down on each side; and the hat, I perceive, is decreased, in just proportion to our head-dresses. We make a regular figure, but I defy your mathematics to give name to the form you appear in. Your architecture is mere gothic, and betrays a worse genius than ours; therefore if you are partial to your own sex, I shall be less than I am now

"Your humble servant."

No. 146. FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 1711.

Nemo vir magnus sine aliquo afflatu divino unquam fuit.

FULL.

No man was ever great without some degree of inspiration.

We know the highest pleasure our minds are capable of enjoying with composure, when we read sublime thoughts communicated to us by men of great genius and eloquence. Such is the entertainment we meet with in the philosophic parts of Cicero's writings. Truth and good sense have there so charming a dress, that they could hardly be more agreeably represented with the addition of poetical fiction, and the power of numbers. This ancient author, and a modern one, have fallen into my hands within these few days; and the impressions they have left upon me have at the present quite spoiled me for a merry fellow. The modern is that admirable writer the author of The Theory of the Earth. The subjects

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"I have great hopes, O my j nitely to my advantage that 1must of necessity be, that o must be the consequence. De l these senses, or convey l sense is to be taken away, han that profound sleep wi we are sometimes buried, ble is it to die! How man fe preferable to such a state eath is but a passage to Ls. ved before us do now inh ier is it to go from those wi o appear before those tha Tinos, Rhadamanthus, A nd to meet men who has -uth? Is this, do you thi ou think it nothing to eus, Homer, and Hesiod any deaths to enjoy the cular delight should I tal

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great prince, who carried such mighty forces against Troy; and argue with Ulysses and Sisyphus upon. difficult points, as I have in conversation here, without being in danger of being condemned. But let not those among you who have pronounced me an innocent man be afraid of death. No harm can arrive at a good man, whether dead or living; his affairs are always under the direction of the gods; nor will I believe the fate which is allotted to me myself this day to have arrived by chance; nor have I aught to say either against my judges or accusers, but that they thought they did me an injury.But I detain you too long, it is time that I retire to death, and you to your affairs of life: which of us has the better, is known to the gods, but to no mortal man."

The divine Socrates is here represented in a figure worthy his great wisdom and philosophy, worthy the greatest mere man that ever breathed. But the modern discourse is written upon a subject no less than the dissolution of nature itself. Oh how glorious is the old age of that great man, who has spent his time in such contemplations as has made this being, what only it should be, an education for heaven! He has, according to the lights of reason and revelation, which seemed to him clearest, traced the steps of Omnipotence. He has with a celestial ambition, as far as it is consistent with humility and devotion, examined the ways of Providence, from the creation to the dissolution of the visible world. How pleasing must have been the speculation, to observe Nature and Providence move together, the physical and moral world march the same pace; to observe paradise and eternal spring the seat of innocence, troubled seasons and angry skies the portion of wickedness and vice. When this admirable author has reviewed all that has past, or is to come, which

tes to the habitable world, and run through the le fate of it, how could a guardian angel, that attended it through all its courses or changes, k more emphatically at the end of his charge, n does our author when he makes, as it were, a eral oration over this globe, looking to the point ère it once stood?

Let us only, if you please, to take leave of this ject, reflect upon this occasion on the vanity and isient glory of this habitable world. How by the e of one element breaking loose upon the rest, the vanities of nature, all the works of art, all labours of men, are reduced to nothing. All that admired and adored before as great and magnint, is obliterated or vanished; and another form face of things, plain, simple, and every where same, overspreads the whole earth. Where are the great empires of the world, and their great perial cities? their pillars, trophies, and monuits of glory? Show me where they stood, read inscription, tell me the victor's name. What reEns, what impressions, what difference or distinca, do you see in this mass of fire? Rome itself, nal Rome, the great city, the empress of the -ld, whose domination and superstition, ancient modern, make a great part of the history of this th, what is become of her now? She laid her ndations deep, and her palaces were strong and ptuous. She glorified herself, and lived deliisly, and said in her heart, I sit a queen, and shall no sorrow :' But her hour is come; she is wiped ay from the face of the earth, and buried in evering oblivion. But it is not cities only, and works men's hands, but the everlasting hills, the mounis and rocks of the earth are melted as wax before sun, and 'their place is no where found.' Here od the Alps, the load of the earth, that covered

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