them shine in what vulgar minds are apt to look upon as trifles. I have not yet heard any further particulars which are to be observed in this society of unfledged statesmen: but I must confess, had I a son of five and twenty, that should take it into his head at that age to set up for a politician, I think I should go near to disinherit him for a blockhead. Besides, I should be apprehensive, lest the same arts which are to enable him to negotiate between potentates might a little infect his ordinary behaviour between man and man. There is no question but these young Machiavels will, in a little time, turn their college up-side down with plots and stratagems, and lay as many schemes to circumvent one another in a frog or a sallad, as they may hereafter put in practice to overreach a neighbouring prince or state. We are told, that the Spartans, though they punished theft in their young men when it was discovered, looked upon it as honourable if it succeeded. Provided the conveyance was clean and unsuspected, a youth might afterwards boast of it. -This, say the historians, was to keep them sharp, and to hinder them from being imposed upon either in their public or private negotiations. Whether any such relaxations of morality, such little jeux d'esprit, ought not to be allowed in this intended seminary of politicians, I shall leave to the wisdom of their founder. In the mean time, we have fair warning given us by this doughty body of statesmen: and as Sylla saw many Mariuses in Cæsar, so I think we may discover many Torcys in this college of Academicians. Whatever we think of ourselves, I am afraid neither our Smyrna nor St. James's will be a match for it. Our coffee-houses are indeed very good institutions; but whether or no these our British schools of politics may furnish out as able envoys and secretaries as an academy that is set apart for that purpose, will deserve our serious consideration, especially if we remember that our country is more famous for producing men of integrity than statesmen; and that, on the contrary, French truth and British policy make a conspicuous figure in NоTHING, as the Earl of Rochester has very well observed in his admirable poem upon that barren subject. L. No. 306. WEDNESDAY, FEB. 20. By Steele. From the Letter-Box. Quæ forma, ut se tibi semper Imputet? Juv. Sat. 6. v. 177 What beauty, or what chastity can bear 'MR. SPECTATOR, DRYDEN. I WRITE this to communicate to you a misfortune which frequently happens, and therefore deserves a consolatory discourse on the subject.— I was within this half year in the possession of as much beauty and as many lovers as any young lady in England. But my admirers have left me and I can not complain of their behaviour. I have within that time had the small-pox; and this face, which, according to many amorous epistles which I have by me, was the seat of all that was beauti ful in woman, is now disfigured with scars. It goes to the very soul of me to speak what I really think of my face; and though I think I did not over-rate my beauty while I had it, it has extreme ly advanced in its value with me now it is lost. There is one circumstance which makes my case very particular; the ugliest fellow that ever pretended to me, was and is most in my favour, and he treats me at present the most unreasonably. If you could make him return an obligation which he owes me, in liking a person that is not amiable; but there is, I fear, no possibility of making passion move by the rules of reason and gratitude. But say what you can to one who has survived herself, and knows not how to act in a new being. My lovers are at the feet of my rivals, my rivals are every day bewailing me, and I can not enjoy what am, by reason of the distracting reflection upon what I was. Consider the woman I was did not die of old age; but I was taken off in the prime of youth, and according to the course of nature may have forty years after life to come. I have nothing of myself left which I like, but that I am, Sir, Your most humble servant,' When Louis of France had lost the battle of Ramilies, the addresses to him at that time were full of his fortitude, and they turned his misfortune to his glory; in that, during his prosperity, he could never have manifested his heroic constancy under distresses, and so the world had lost the most eminent part of his character. Parthenissa's condition gives her the same opportunity; and to resign conquests is a task as difficult in a beauty as a hero. In the very entrance upon this work she must burn all her love-letters; or, since she is so candid as not to call her lovers; who follow her no longer, unfaithful, it would be a very good beginning of a new life from that of a beauty, to send them back to those who writ them, with this honest inscription, Articles of a marriage-treaty broken off by the small-pox. I have known but one instance where a matter of this kind went on after a like misfortune; where the lady, who was a woman of spirit, writ this billet to her lover: SIR, 'If you flattered me before I had this terrible malady, pray come and see me now: but if you sincerely liked me, stay away: for I am not the same. 'CORINNA.' The lover thought there was something so sprightly in her behaviour, that he answered, 'MADAM, 'I am not obliged, since you are not the same woman, to let you know whether I flattered you or not, but I assure you I do not, when I tell you I now like you above all your sex, and hope you will bear what may befall me when we are both one, as well as you do what happens to yourself now you are single; therefore I am ready to take such a spirit for my companion as soon as you please. 'AMILCAR.' If Parthenissa can now possess her own mind, and think as little of her beauty as she ought to have done when she had it, there will be no great diminution of her charms; and if she was formerly affected too much with them, an easy behaviour will more than make up for the loss of them, Take the whole sex together, and you find those who have the strongest possession of men's hearts are not eminent for their beauty: you see it often happens, that those who engage men to the greatest violence, are such as those who are strangers to them would take to be remarkably defective for that end. The fondest lover I know, said to me one day in a crowd of women at an entertainment of music, You have often heard me talk of my beloved; that woman there, continued he smiling when he had fixed my eye, is her very picture. The lady he showed me was by much the least remarkable for beauty of any in the whole assembly; but having my curiosity extremely raised, I could not keep my eyes off her. Her eyes at last met mine, and with a sudden surprise she looked round her to see who near her was remarkably handsome that I was gazing at. This little act explained the secret: she did not understand herself for the object of love, and therefore she was so. The lover is a very honest plain man; and what charmed him was, a person that goes along with him in the cares and joys of life, not taken up with herself, but sincerely attentive, with a ready and cheerful mind, to accompany him in either. |