tion a letter, which gives me an account of the revival of one of their brethren.

SIR,

December 31.

'I HAVE perused your Tatler of this day 4, and have wept over it with great pleasure; I wish you would be more frequent in your family-pieces. For as I consider you under the notion of a great designer, I think these are not your least valuable performances. I am glad to find you have given over your face-painting for some time, because I think you have employed yourself more in grotesque figures than in beauties; for which reason I would rather see you work upon history-pieces, than on single portraits. Your several draughts of dead men appear to me as pictures of still-life, and have done great good in the place where I live. The esquire of a neighbouring village, who had been a long time in the number of non-entities, is entirely recovered by them. For these several years past there was not an hare in the county that could be at rest for him; and, I think, the greatest exploit he ever boasted of was, that, when he was high sheriff of the county, he hunted a fox so far, that he could not follow him any farther by the laws of the land. All the hours he spent at home were in swelling himself with October, and rehearsing the wonders he did in the field. Upon reading your papers, he has sold his dogs, shook off his dead companions, looked into his estate, got the multiplication table by heart, paid his tithes, and intends to take upon him the office of churchwarden next year. I wish the same success with your other patients, and am, &c.'

4 N° 114.

Ditto, January 9.

WHEN I came home this evening, a very tight middle-aged woman presented to me the following petition:

To the Worshipful Isaac Bickerstaff, esquire, censor of Great Britain. The humble petition of Penelope Prim, widow, Sheweth,

That your petitioner was bred a clear-starcher and sempstress, and for many years worked to the Exchange, and to several aldermen's wives, lawyers' clerks, and merchants' apprentices.

That through the scarcity caused by regrators of bread corn, of which starch is made, and the gentry's immoderate frequenting the operas, the ladies, to save charges, have their heads washed at home, and the beaux put out their linen to common laundresses. So that your petitioner has little or no work at her trade: for want of which, she is reduced to such necessity, that she and her seven fatherless children must inevitably perish, unless relieved by your worship.

That your petitioner is informed, that in contempt of your judgment pronounced on Tuesday the third instant against the new-fashioned petticoat, or old-fashioned fardingal, the ladies design to go on in that dress. And since it is presumed your worship will not suppress them by force, your petitioner humbly desires you would order, that ruffs may be added to the dress; and that she may be heard by her counsel, who has assured your petitioner he has such cogent reasons to offer to your court, that ruffs

S No 116.

and fardingals are inseparable, that he questions not but two-thirds of the greatest beauties about town will have cambric collars on their necks before the end of Easter term next. He further says, that the design of our great grandmothers in this petticoat, was to appear much bigger than the life; for which reason they had false shoulder-blades, like wings, and the ruff above mentioned, to make the upper and lower parts of their bodies appear proportionable; whereas the figure of a woman in the present dress bears, as he calls it, the figure of a cone, which, as he advises, is the same with that of an extinguisher, with a little knob at the upper end, and widening downward, until it ends in a basis of a most enormous circumference.

Your petitioner, therefore, most humbly prays, that you would restore the ruff to the fardingal, which in their nature ought to be as inseparable as the two Hungarian twins o.

And your petitioner shall ever pray.'

I have examined into the allegations of this petition, and find, by several ancient pictures of my

6 Helen and Judith, two united twin-sisters, born at Tzoni in Hungary, Oct. 26, 1701; lived to the age of twenty-one, and died within a few minutes of each other, in a convent at Petersburg, Feb. 23, 1723. The mother, it is said, survived their birth, bore another child afterwards, and was alive when her singular twins were shewn at a house in the Strand, near Charing-Cross, in 1708.See an account of them in the Phil. Transac. vol. 1. part 1, for the year 1757, art. 39. They were well shaped, had beautiful faces, and loved each other tenderly. They could read, write, and sing very prettily; spoke the Hungarian, High and Low Dutch, and French languages, and learnt English when they were in this country.

own predecessors, particularly that of dame Deborah Bickerstaff, my great grandmother, that the ruff and fardingal are made use of as absolutely necessary to preserve the symmetry of the figure; and Mrs. Pyramid Bickerstaff 7, her second sister, is recorded in our family book, with some observations to her disadvantage, as the first female of our house that discovered, to any besides her nurse and her husband, an inch below her chin, or above her instep. This convinces me of the reasonableness of Mrs. Prim's demand; and, therefore, I shall not allow the reviving of any one part of that ancient mode, except the whole is complied with. Mrs. Prim is, therefore, hereby empowered to carry home ruffs to such as she shall see in the above-mentioned petticoats, and require payment on demand.

'Mr. Bickerstaff has under consideration the offer from the corporation of Colchester of four hundred pounds per annum, to be paid quarterly, provided that all his dead persons shall be obliged to wear the baize of that place.

8

STEELE AND ADDISON.

7 The apparent derivation of this lady's name is from the enormous height of her head-dress. There was a time when the ladies erected such pyramids on their heads, that the face was the centre of the body. See Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, &c. vol. i.

8 Alluding to the woollen act, 30 Car. II. cap. 3.

N° 119. THURSDAY, JANUARY 12, 1709-10.

In tenui labor

Slight is the subject.

VIRG. Georg. lib. iv. 6.

DRYDEN.

Sheer-lane, January 11.

I HAVE lately applied myself with much satisfaction to the curious discoveries that have been made by the help of microscopes, as they are related by authors of our own and other nations. There is a great deal of pleasure in prying into this world of wonders, which nature has laid out of sight, and seems industrious to conceal from us. Philosophy had ranged over all the visible creation, and began to want objects for her inquiries, when the present age, by the invention of glasses, opened a new and inexhaustible magazine of rarities, more wonderful and amazing than any of those which astonished our forefathers. I was yesterday amusing myself with speculations of this kind, and reflecting upon the myriads of animals that swim in those little seas of juices that are contained in the several vessels of an human body. While my mind was thus filled with that secret wonder and delight, I could not but look upon myself as in an act of devotion, and am very well pleased with the thought of the great heathen anatomist', who calls his description of the parts of an human body, An Hymn to the Supreme Being. The reading of the day produced in my imagination an agreeable morning's dream, if I

Galen:-De Usu Partium.