with these useful instruments, as soon as the town fills. In the mean time I would advise those ladies, who have the least regard for their characters, to reflect that the grandations, as marked on our thermometer, naturally lead to each other; "that the transitions from the lowest to the highest are quick and obvious; and that though it is very easy to advance, it is impossible to recede. Let them therefore, be careful to regulaté their passions in such manner, as that their conduct may be always consistent with decency and honour, and (as Shakespeare says) "not stepping o'er the bounds of modesty." I shall conclude with observing, that these thermometors are designed only for the ladies : for though we imagined at first, that they might serve equally for the men, we have found reason to alter our opinion; since, in the course of several fruitless experiments on our own sex, there has scarce appeared any medium in them between modesty and impudence. W N° 86. THURSDAY, SEPT. 18, 1755. -Viâ sacrâ, sicut meus est mos, Nescio quid meditans nugarum, totus in illis. HOR. I range in quest of knowledge every street, SIR, TO MR. TOWN. IT has been generally imagined, that learning is only to be acquired in the closet, by turning over a great number of pages: for which reason men have been assiduous to heap together a parcel of dusty volumes, and our youth have been sent to study at the universities as if knowledge was shut up in a library, and chained to the shelves together with the folios. This prejudice has made every one overlook the most obvious and ready means of coming at literature; (while as the wise man has remarked) "wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the streets; she crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of the gates: in the city she uttereth her words, and no man regardeth her." Every lane teems with instruction, and every alley is big with erudition: though the ignorant or incurious passer-by shuts his eyes against that universal volume of arts and sciences, which constantly lies open before him in the highways and bye places; like the laws of the Romans, which were hung up in the public streets. You must know, Mr. Town, that I am a very hard student; and have perhaps gleaned more knowledge from my reading, than any of your poring fellows of colleges, though I was never possessed of so much as a horn-book. In the course of my studies I have followed the example of the ancient Peripatetics, who used to study walking; and as I had not the advantage to be brought up a scholar, I have been obliged, like the Lacedæmonian children, to the public for my education. My first relish for letters I got by conning over those elegant monosyllables, which are chalked out upon walls and gates, and which (as pretty books for children are adorned with cuts) are generally enforced and explained by curious hieroglyphics in caricatura. I soon made a further progress in the alphabet by staring up at the large letters upon play-bills, and advertisements for stage coaches and waggons; till at length I was enabled to make out the inscriptions upon signs, bills on empty houses, and the titles on rubric posts. From these I proceeded gradually to higher branches of literature; and my method has since been to visit the philobiblian libraries, and other learned stalls, and the noble collections at Moor-fields; in which choice repositories I have with infinite pleasure and advantage run over the elaborate systems of ancient divines, politicians, and philosophers, which have escaped the fury of pastry-cooks and trunk makers. As for the modern writings of pamphletteers and magazine compilers, I make it my business to take my rounds every morning at the open shops about the Royal Exchange; where I never fail to run through every thing, fresh as it comes out. Thus, for example, I make a shift to squint over the first page of the Connoisseur, as it lies before me, at Mrs. Cooke's ; at the next shop I steal a peep at the middle pages; at another proceed on to the fourth or fifth; and perhaps return again to conclude it at Mrs. Cooke's. By the same means I am myself become a Connoisseur likewise; and you will be surprised when I assure you, that I have a great variety of the finest prints and paintings, and am master of a more curious set of nicknacks, than are to be found in Sir Hans Sloane's collection. For, as I constantly survey the windows of every printshop, and attend every auction, I look upon every curiosity as actually in my possession: and you will agree with me, that while I have the opportunity of seeing them, the real owners cannot have more satisfaction in locking them up in cabinets and mu seums. It is recorded of Democritus, that he transcribed a systems of ethics from the columns of Acicarus in Babylonia. In like manner you will conclude, that the knowledge, which I have thus picked out of the streets, has been very extensive: I have gone through a complete course of physic by perusing the learned treatise of Dr. Rock, and other eminent practitioners, pasted up at the entrance of allies and bye-places: I have learned at every corner, that the scurvy is a I popular disease, that the bloody flux cannot be cured by any of the faculty, except the gentlewoman at the Blue Posts in Haydon yard, that nervous diseases were never so frequent, and that the royal family and most of our nobility are troubled with corns. was completely grounded in politics by stopping at Temple-Bar every morning to read the Gazetteer, which used to be stuck up there to the great emolument of the hackney-coachmen upon their stands. But above all, I have acquired the most sublime notions of religion by listening attentively to the spirited harangues of our most eminent field-preachers and I confess myself highly obliged to the itinerant missionaries of Whitfield, Wesley, and Zinzendorf, who have instructed us in the New Light from empty barrels and joint-tools. Next to these, I have received great improvements from the vociferous retailers of poetry; as I constantly used to thrust myself into the circle gathered round them, and listen to their ditties, till I could carry away both the words and the tune. I have likewise got some notion of the drama by attending the theatres; though my finances were too scanty for me ever to get admittance even among the gods in the upper regions of the twelvepenny gallery. I therefore had recourse to the following practice: I would contrive to hear one act at the outside of one of the pit doors; the next act I took my stand at the other; and as the author generally rises in the middle, I could catch the most tearing parts during the third act in the passage to the two shilling gallery in the fourth act the rants came tolerably loud to my ear at the entrance of the upper gallery; and I very attentively listened to the pathetic, at the conclusion of the play, with the footmen in the lobby. : Endowed with so much learning, you will doubtless be curious to know to what purposes I have turned it. Almost before I could read at all, I got into the service of a very eminent doctor of physic, who employed me in sticking up his bills and slipping them slily into the hands of spindle-shanked young fellows, as they passed by. After this, by closely studying. these elegant compositions, I got together a sufficient set of medical phrases, which (by the help of Bailey's dictionary) enabled me to draw up bills and affidavits for those doctors, who are not so happy as to be able to write or read. I was next promoted to the garret of a printer of bloody murders, where my business was to invent terrible stories, write Yorkshire tragedies, and occasionally to put the ordinary of Newgate's ac-. count of dying speeches into lamentable rhyme. I was afterwards concerned in works, that required a greater fund of erudition, such as bog-house miscellanies, and little books for children: and I was once engaged as the principal compiler of a three-halfpenny magazine. Since that I followed the occupation of an eves-dropper, or collector of news for the daily papers; in which I turned a good penny by hunting after marriages and deaths, and inventing lies for the day. Once indeed, being out of other business, I descended to the mean office of a ballad singer, and hawked my own verses; but not having a good ear for music, and the tone of my voice being rather inclined to whining, I converted my ballads into penitential hymns, and took up the vocation of methodist preacher. In this station I made new converts every day among the old women by my sighs and groans, who in return contributed their half-pence, which I disposed of in charity to myself: but I was at last beat off the field by a journeyman shoe-maker, who fairly out-whined me; and finding myself deserted by my usual audience, I became setter to a Fleet parson. My employment now was to take my stand at the end of Fleet-market, and whenever I saw any gaping |