tail, though they wanted a petticoat, and others, who, without any other pretensions, fancied they became ladies merely from the addition of three superfluous yards of ragged silk; I know a thrifty good woman, continues he, who thinking herself obliged to carry a train like her betters, never walks from home without the uneasy apprehensions of wearing it out too soon; every excursion she makes gives her new anxiety, and her train is every bit as importunate, and wounds her peace as much, as the bladder we sometimes see tied to the tail of a cat.

Nay, he ventures to affirm, that a train may often bring a lady into the most critical circumstances; for should a rude fellow, says he, offer to come up to ravish a kiss, and the lady attempt to avoid it, in retiring she must necessarily tread upon her train, and thus fall fairly upon her back, by which means every one knows,-her cloaths may be spoiled.

The ladies here make no scruple to laugh at the smallness of a Chinese slipper, but I fancy our wives at China, would have a more real cause of laughter, could they but see the immoderate length of an European train. Head of Confucius! to view a human being crippling herself with a great unwieldy tail for our diversion; backward she cannot go, forward she must move but slowly, and if ever she attempts to turn round, it must be in a circle not smaller than that described by the wheeling crocodile, when it would face an assailant. And yet to think that all this confers importance and majesty! to think that a lady acquires additional respect from fifteen yards of trailing taffety! I cannot contain; ha, ha, ha; this is certainly a remnant of European barbarity; the female Tartar, dressed in sheep-skins, is in far more convenient drapery. Their own writers have sometimes inveighed against the absurdity of this fashion, but perhaps it has never been ridiculed so

VOL. III.

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well as upon the Italian theatre, where Pasquareilo being engaged to attend on the countess of Fernambroco, having one of his hands employed in carrying her muff, and the other her lap-dog, he bears her train majestically along by sticking it in the waistband of his breeches. Adieu.

LETTER LXXXI.

FROM THE SAME.

A DISPUTE has for some time divided the philosophers of Europe; it is debated, whether arts and sciences are more serviceable or prejudicial to mankind. They, who maintain the cause of literature, endeavour to prove their usefulness from the impossibility of a large number of men subsisting in a small tract of country without them; from the pleasure which attends the acquisition; and from the influence of knowledge in promoting practical morality.

They who maintain the opposite opinion, display the happiness and innocence of those uncultivated nations who live without learning; urge the numerous vices which are to be found only in polished society, enlarge upon the oppression, the cruelty and the blood which must necessarily be shed, in order to cement civil society, and insist upon the happy equality of conditions in a barbarous state, preferable to the unnatural subordination of a more refined constitution.

This dispute, which has already given so much employment to speculative indolence, has been managed with much ardour, and (not to suppress our sentiments)

sentiments) with but little sagacity. They who insist that the sciences are useful in refined society, are certainly right, and they who maintain that barbarous nations are more happy without them, are right also; but when one side for this reason attempts to prove them as universally useful to the solitary barbarian, as to the native of a crowded commonwealth; or when the other endeavours to banish them as prejudicial to all society, even from populous states as well as from the inhabitants of the wilderness, they are both wrong; since that knowledge which makes the happiness of a refined European, would be a torment to the precarious tenant of an Asiatic wild.

Let me, to prove this, transport the imagination for a moment to the midst of a forest in Siberia. There we behold the inhabitant, poor indeed, but equally fond of happiness with the most refined philosopher of China. The earth lies uncultivated and uninhabited for miles around him; his little family and he the sole and undisputed possessors. In such circumstances Nature and reason will induce him to prefer a hunter's life to that of cultivating the earth. He will certainly adhere to that manner of living which is carried on at the smallest expence of labour, and that food which is most agreeable to the appetite; he will prefer indolent though precarious luxury to a laborious though permanent competence, and a knowledge of his own happiness will determine him to persevere in native barbarity.

In like manner his happiness will incline him to bind himself by no law; laws are made in order to secure present property, but he is possessed of no property which he is afraid to lose, and desires no more than will be sufficient to sustain him; to enter into compacts with others, would be undergoing a voluntary obligation without the expectance of any reward. He and his countrymen are tenants, not

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ane nexhaustible forest; the inthe sons of one by no means minishes 92 - 1 299 1A VIS ALTSing from equal assidy in anoneed of laws therefore to repress

:

were there can be no mischief attending s gratifications.

.: Siberian will, in like manner, find only entirely useless in directing his disgusting even in speculation. In piation our curiosity must be first exappearances of things, before our reason the fatigue of investigating the causes. nose appearances are produced by experi

by minute enquiry; some arise from a -ge of foreign climates, and others from an udy of our own. But there are few obmparison which present themselves to the t of a barbarous country; the game he the transient cottage he builds, make up jects of his concern, his curiosity therebe proportionably less; and if that is di, the reasoning faculty will be diminished

A sensual enjoyment adds wings to curiosity. ster few objects with ardent attention, but

ch have some connection with our wishes, asures, or our necessities. A desire of enjoy... interests our passions in the pursuit, points object of investigation, and Reason then where sense has led the way. An init the number of our enjoyments therefore produces an increase of scientific reet in countries where almost every enjoyting, Reason there seems destitute of its perer, and speculation is the business of it becomes its own reward.

The

The barbarous Siberian is too wise, therefore to exhaust his time in quest of knowledge, which neither curiosity prompts, nor pleasure impels him to pursue. When told of the exact admeasurement of a degree upon the equator at Quito, he feels no pleasure in the account; when informed that such a discovery tends to promote navigation and commerce, he finds himself no way interested in either. A discovery which some have pursued at the hazard of their lives, affects him with neither astonishment nor pleasure. He is satisfied with thoroughly understanding the few objects which contribute to his own felicity, he knows the properest places where to lay the snare for the sable, and discerns the value of furs with more than European sagacity. More extended knowledge would only serve to render him unhappy, it might lend a ray to shew him the misery of his situation, but could not guide him in his efforts to avoid it. Ignorance is the happiness of the poor.

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The misery of a being endowed with sentiments above its capacity of fruition, is most admirably described in one of the fables of Locman the Indian moralist. "An elephant that had been peculiarly "serviceable in fighting the battles of Wistnow, "was ordered by the god to wish for whatever he thought proper, and the desire should be at"tended with immediate gratification. The elephant thanked his benefactor on bended knees, " and desired to be endowed with the reason and "the faculties of a man. Wistnow was sorry to "hear the foolish request, and endeavoured to "dissuade him from his misplaced ambition; but finding it to no purpose, gave him at last such a "portion of wisdom as could correct even the Zendavesta of Zoroaster. The reasoning elephant "went away rejoicing in his new acquisition, and

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though