distinguish by the title of "their mother's own sons;" who have in vain changed the bib and leading-strings for the breeches, and stick as close to their mammas, as a great calf to the side of an old cow. I am intimately acquainted with one of these over-grown babies; who is indeed too big to be dandled in lap, or fed with a pap-spoon, though he is no more weaned from his mother, than if he had not yet quitted the

nursery.

The delicate Billy Suckling is the contempt of the men, the jest of the women, and the darling of his mamma. She doats on him to distraction; and is in perpetual admiration of his wit, and anxiety for his health. The good young gentlemen, for his part, is neither undutiful nor ungrateful: she is the only woman that he does not look on with indifference; and she is his tutoress, his physician, and his nurse. She provides his broth every evening; will not suffer him to look into a book by candle-light, lest he should hurt his eyes; and takes care to have his bed warmed: nay, I have known him sit with his mamma's white handkerchief round his neck through a whole visit, to guard him from the wind of that ugly door, or that terrible chink in the wainscot.

But however familiarly he may behave in his addresses to his mother, and whatever little acts of gallantry may pass between them, no encouragement can prevail on him to treat other women with the same freedom. Being once desired at a ball to dance a minuet, instead of taking out any of the young ladies, he could pitch upon no partner so agreeable, to whom he might offer the compliment of his hand, as his mother; and I remember, when he was once called upon in a large company at a tavern to give a lady in his turn, he plainly shewed who was the sole mistress of his affections, by toasting his mother. The gallant custom of challenging a lady to drink a bumper, by

leaving it to her option whether she will have hob or nob, frequently gives a delicious flavour to the liquor, especially when, as I have known it happen, joining the lips of the glasses has made a prelude to a meeting between the lips of the parties: but he could not be prevailed on to accept a glass of claret from the fairest hand, though a kiss were sure to follow it. I have known him so very nice, as to refuse a glass of sack filled with walnuts, which had been peeled by the snowy fingers of a beautiful young lady; though I have seen him smack his lips after a glass of raisin wine, in which his prudent mother had been dabbling with her snuffy finger, in order to fish out the small particles of cork, which might possibly have choaked him. If a lady drops her fan, he sits without any emotion, and suffers her to stoop for it herself; or if she strikes the tea-cup against the saucer to give notice that it is empty, he pays no regard to the signal, but sees her walk up to the tea-table, without stirring from his chair. He would rather leave the most celebrated beauty, in crossing the street, to the mercy of a drayman, than trust her with his little finger: though at the same time, should his mother be so distressed, he would not scruple to bear as much of her weight as he could stand under, and to redeem her silk stockings from jeopardy, would even expose his

own.

One would imagine, that this extreme coyness and reserve, in which he so remarkably differs from the generality of his own sex, would in another respect as effectually distinguish him from the generality of women: I mean, that being less polite in his address than a footman, we should hardly expect to find him more loquacious than a chambermaid. But this is

really the case: suffer him to take the lead in conversation, and there are certain topics, in which the most prating gossip at a christening would find it difficult to

cope with him. The strength of his constitution is his favourite theme: he is constantly attempting to prove, that he is not susceptible of the least injury from cold; though a hoarseness in his voice, and the continual interruptions of a consumptive cough, give him the lie in his throat at the end of every sentence. The instances, indeed, by which he endeavours to prove his hardiness, unluckily rather tend to convince us of the delicacy of his frame, as they seldom amount to more than his having kicked off the bed-clothes in his sleep, laid aside one of his flannel waistcoats in a hot day, or tried on a new pair of pumps, before they had been sufficiently aired. For the truth of these facts he always appeals to his mamma, who vouches for him with a sigh, and protests that his carelessness would ruin the constitution of a horse.

I am now coming to the most extraordinary part of his character. This pusillanimous creature thinks himself, and would be thought, a buck. The noble fraternity of that order find, that their reputation can be no otherwise maintained, than by prevailing on an Irish chairman now and then to favour them with a broken head, or by conferring the same token of their esteem on the unarmed and defenceless waiters at a tavern. But these feats are by no means suited to the disposition of our hero: and yet he always looks upon his harmless exploits as the bold frolicks of a buck. If he escapes a nervous fever a month, he is quite a buck: if he walks home after it is dark, without his mamma's maid to attend him, he is quite a buck: if he sits up an hour later than his usual time, or drinks a glass or two of wine without water, he calls it a debauch; and because his head does not ache the next morning, he is quite a buck. In short, a woman of the least spirit within the precincts of St. James's would demolish him in a week, should he pretend to keep pace

with her in her irregularities; and yet he is ever dignifying himself with the appellation of a buck.

Now might it not be giving this gentleman a useful hint, Mr. Town, to assure him, that while milk and water is his darling liquor, a bamboo cane his club, and his mother the sole object of his affections, the world will never join in denominating him a buck: that if he fails in this attempt, he is absolutely excluded from every order in society; for whatever his deserts may be, no assembly of antiquated virgins can ever acknowledge him for a sister, nature having as deplorably disqualified him for that rank in the community, as he has disqualified himself for every other: and that, though he never can arrive at the dignity of leading apes in hell, he may possibly be condemned to dangle in that capacity, at the apron-string of an old maid in the next world, for having so abominably re

sembled one in this.

I am, Sir, your humble servant,

W. C.

N° 112. THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 1756.

Aureus axis erat, temo aureus, aurea summæ
Curvatura rotæ, radiorum argenteus ordo:
Per juga chrysolithi, positæque ex ordine gemmæ.

OVID.

Here on a fair one's head-dress sparkling sticks,
Swinging on silver springs, a coach and six:
There on a sprig or slop'd pompon you see
A chariot, sulky, chaise, or vis-à-vis.

IT has for a long time been observable that the ladies heads have run much upon wheels; but of late there has appeared a strange kind of inversion, for the wheels now run upon the ladies heads. As this assertion may probably puzzle many readers, who pay no attention to the rapid and whimsical revolutions of modern taste, it will be necessary to inform them, that instead of a cap, the present mode is for every female of fashion to load her head with some kind of carriage; whether they are made with broad wheels or not, Í cannot determine; however, as they are undoubtedly excluded the Turnpike Act, it is by no means material. Those heads which are not able to bear a coach and six (for vehicles of this sort are very apt to crack the brain) so far act consistently with prudence as to make use of a post-chariot, or a single-horse chaise with a beau perching in the middle.

The curiosity I had of knowing the purport of this invention, and the general name of these machines,