"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 a 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 hobnails of farmers stumping about them; every room is a pig-stye, and the Chinese paper in the drawing-room 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 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 sour 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.' 6 66 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 very well acquainted in town, we must not be seen to speak to each other here, because her lord is in the opposition. Poor Thomas got a sad drubbing at her house, when I innocently sent him, at my first coming into the country, with a 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 bone-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 boardingschool, was not 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 ribbon-shop. Lettice and I have been busy all this week in making up knots and favours; and yesterday no milliner's prentice could work harder than I did, in tying them on to the sweaty hats of country bumpkins. And is it not very hard upon me? I must not even dress as I please; but am obliged to wear blue, though you know it does not suit my complexion, and makes me look as horrid as the witches in Macbeth. He “But what is worse than all, Sir John tells me, the election expenses have run so high, that he must shorten my allowance of pin-money. talks of turning off half his servants; nay, he has even hinted to me, that I shall not come to town all the winter. Barbarous creature!-But if he dare serve me so, he shall positively lose his election next time, I will raise such a spirit of opposition in all the wives and daughters in the county against him. "I am your affectionate friend," &c. This lady's case is, indeed, very much to be pitied but as Sir John has had the good luck to gain his point after a strong opposition, he will doubtless be sensible of the great share his lady had in his success. For my own part, when I consider the vast influence which the fair sex must naturally have over my fellow countrymen, I cannot help looking on their interesting themselves in these matters as a very serious affair. What success must a fine lady meet with on her canvass! No gentleman, to be sure, could be so rude or so cruel as to refuse such a pretty beggar any thing she could ask; and an honest country farmer, who could withstand any other arguments, might be coaxed and wheedled, or bribed with a smile, into voting against his conscience. Many instances have been found, during the late elections, of husbands who have been forced to poll as their wives would have them; and I know a young fellow who was brought over to give a vote against his inclination by his sweetheart, who refused to receive his addresses if he did not change his party. It may not perhaps be too bold an assertion, that half the members in the present parliament owe their seats to the direct or indirect influence of the other sex. It would therefore be higly proper for the legislature to provide against this evil for the future; and I hope, before the next general election, to see among the votes the following resolution: RESOLVED, That it is a high infringement of the liberties and privileges of the Commons of Great Britain, for any peeress, or any other lady, to concern themselves in the election of members to serve for the Commons in Parliament. T No. 21. THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 1754. -Studeo, bullatis ut mihi nugis PERS. SAT. v, 19. A tale in sounding phrase I strive to tell, TQUASSOUW, the son of Kqvussomo, was Konquer or chief captain over the sixteen nations of Caffraria. He was descended from N'oh and Hingn'oh, who dropped from the moon; and his power extended over all the Kraals of the Hottentots. This prince was remarkable for his prowess and activity: his speed was like the torrent, that rushes down the precipice; and he would overtake the wild ass in her flight: his arrows brought down the eagle from the clouds; the lion fell before him, and his lance drank the blood of the rhinoceros. He fathomed the waters of the deep, and buffeted the billows in the tempest: he drew the rock-fish from their lurking-holes, and rifled the beds of coral. Trained from his infancy in the exercise of war, to wield the hassagaye with dexterity, and break the wild bulls to battle, he was a stranger to the soft dalliance of love; and beheld with indifference the thick-lipped damsels of Gongeman, and the flatnosed beauties of Hauteniqua. As Tquassouw was one day giving instructions for spreading toils for the elk, and digging pitfalls for the elephant, he received information, that a tiger, prowling for prey, was committing ravages on |