taken up on those pretty ornaments they wore upon their heads. I am informed that this fashion spreads daily, insomuch that the whig and tory ladies begin already to hang out different colours, and to shew their principles in their head-dress. Nay, if I may believe my friend Will Honeycomb, there is a certain old coquette of his acquaintance who intends to appear very suddenly in a rainbow hood, like the Iris in Dryden's Virgil, not questioning but that among such a variety of colours she shall have a charm for every heart. My friend Will, who very much values himself upon his great insight into gallantry, tells me, that he can already guess at the humour a lady is in by her hood, as the courtiers of Morocco know the disposition of their present emperor by the colour of the dress he puts on. When Melesinda wraps her head in flame colour, her heart is set upon execution. When she covers it with purple, I would not, says he, advise her lover to approach her: but if she appears in white, it is peace, and he may hand her out of the box with safety. Will informs me, likewise, that these hoods may be used as signals. Why else, says he, does Cornelia always put on a black hood when her husband gone into the country? is Such are my friend Honeycomb's dreams of gallantry. For my own part, I impute this diversity of colours in the hoods to the diversity of complexion in the faces of my pretty countrywomen. Ovid in his Art of Love has given some precepts as to this particular, though I find they are different from those which prevail among the moderns. He recommends a red striped silk to the pale complexion, white to the brown, and dark to the fair. On the contrary, my friend Will, who pretends to be a greater master in this art than Ovid, tells me, that the palest features look the most agreeable in white sarcenet; that a face which is overflushed appears to advantage in the deepest scarlet, and that the darkest complexion is not a little alleviated by a black hood. In short, he is for losing the colour of the face in that of the hood, as a fire burns dimly, and a candle goes half out in the light of the sun. This, says he, your Ovid himself has hinted, where he treats of these matters, when he tells us that the blue-water nymphs are dressed in sky-coloured garments; and that Aurora, who always appears in the light of the rising sun, is robed in saffron. Whether these his observations are justly grounded I cannot tell but I have often known him, as we have stood together behind the ladies, praise or dispraise the complexion of a face which he never saw, from observing the colour of her hood, and has been very seldom out in these his guesses. As I have nothing more at heart than the honour and improvement of the fair sex, I cannot conclude this paper without an exhortation to the British ladies, that they would excel the women of all other nations as much in virtue and good sense, as they do in beauty, which they may certainly do, if they will be as industrious to cultivate their minds, as they are to adorn their bodies: in the meanwhile I shall recommend to their most serious consideration the saying of an old Greek poet, Γυναικὶ κόσμο ὁ τρόπο, κ' ἐ χρυσία. C No. CCLXVI. FRIDAY, JANUARY 4. Id vero est, quod ego mihi puto palmarium, TER. EUN. I look upon it as my master-piece, that I have found out how a young fellow may know the disposition and behaviour of harlots, and by early knowing come to detest them. NO vice or wickedness which people fall into from indulgence to desires which are natural to all, ought to place them below the compassion of the virtuous part of the world; which, indeed, often makes me a little apt to suspect the sincerity of their virtue, who are too warmly provoked at other people's personal sins. The unlawful commerce of the sexes is of all other the hardest to avoid; and yet there is no one which you shall hear the rigider part of womankind speak of with so little mercy. It is very certain, that a modest woman cannot abhor the breach of chastity too much; but pray let her hate it for herself, and only pity it in others. Will Honeycomb calls these over-offended ladies, the outrageously virtuous. I do not design to fall upon failures in general, with relation to the gift of chastity, but at present only enter upon that large field, and begin with the consideration of poor and public whores. The other evening, passing along near Covent Garden, I was jogged on the elbow as I turned into the piazza, on the right hand coming out of James-street, by a young slim girl of about seventeen, who with a pert air asked me if I was for a pint of wine. I do not know but I should have indulged my curiosity in having some chat with her, but that I am informed the man of the Bumper knows me; and it would : have made a story for him not very agreeable to some part of my writings, though I have in others so frequently said, that I am wholly unconcerned in any scene I am in, but merely as a spectator. This impediment being in my way, we stood under one of the arches by twilight; and there I could observe as exact features as I had ever seen, the most agreeable shape, the finest neck and bosom, in a word, the whole person of a woman exquisitely beautiful. She affected to allure me with a forced wantonness in her look and air: but I saw it checked with hunger and cold her eyes were wan and eager, her dress thin and tawdry, her mien genteel and childish. This strange figure gave me much anguish of heart, and to avoid being seen with her I went away, but could not forbear giving her a crown. The poor thing sighed, curtsied, and with a blessing expressed with the utmost vehemence, turned from me. This creature is what they call "newly come upon the town," but who, I suppose, falling into cruel hands, was left in the first month from her dishonour, and exposed to pass through the hands and discipline of one of those hags of hell whom we call bawds. But lest I should grow too suddenly grave on this subject, and be myself outrageously good, I shall turn to a scene in one of Fletcher's plays, where this character is drawn, and the economy of whoredom most admirably described. The passage I would point to is in the third scene of the second act of the Humorous Lieutenant. Leucippe, who is agent for the king's lust, and bawds at the same time for the whole court, is very pleasantly introduced, reading her minutes as a person of business, with two maids, her undersecretaries, taking instructions at a table before her. Her women, both those under her present tutelage, and those which she is laying wait for, are alphabetically set down in her book; and she is looking over the letter C, in a muttering voice, as if between soliloquy and speaking out, she says, Her maidenhead will yield me, let me see now: "Cloe, the daughter of a country gentleman; "Sings most enticingly; these helps consider'd, "Her maidenhead will amount to some three hundred, "To buy him a hunting nag". These creatures are very well instructed in the circumstances and manners of all who are any way related to the fair one whom they have a design upon. As Cloe is to be purchased with three hundred and fifty crowns, and the father taken off with a pad; the merchant's wife next to her, who abounds in plenty, is not to have downright money, but the mercenary part of her mind is engaged with a present of plate and a little ambition. She is made to understand that it is a man of quality who dies for her. The examination of a young girl for business, and the crying down her value for being a slight thing, together with every other circumstance in the scene, are inimitably excellent, and have the true spirit of comedy; though it were to be wished the author had added a circumstance which should make Leucippe's baseness more odious. It must not be thought a digression from my intended speculation, to talk of bawds in a discourse upon wenches; for a woman of the town is not thoroughly and properly such, without having gone through the education of one of these houses. the compassionate case of very many is, that they are taken into such hands without any the least sus But |