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stately. It would now be reckoned ridiculously stiff and formal. Whatever it was, it had certainly the effect of making them more respected.

A fine woman, like other fine things in nature, has her proper points of view, from which she may be seen to most advantage.

To fix this point requires great judgment, and an intimate knowledge of the human heart. By the present mode of female manners, the ladies seem to expect that they shall regain their ascendancy over us by the fullest display of their personal charms, by being always in our eye at public places, by conversing with us with the same unreserved freedom we do with one another; in short, by resembling us as nearly as they possibly can. But a little time and experience will show the folly of their expectation and conduct.

The power of a fine woman over the hearts of men of the finest parts, is even beyond what she conceives. They are sensible of the pleasing illusion, but they cannot, nor do they wish to dissolve it. But if she is determined to dispel the charm, it certainly is in her power. She may, soon reduce the angel to a very ordinary girl.

There is a native dignity and ingenuous modesty to be expected in your sex, which is your natural protection from the familiarities of men and which you should feel previous to the reflection, that it is your interest to keep yourselves sacred from all personal freedom. The many nameless charms and endearments of beauty should be reserved to bless the happy man to whom you give your hearts. The sentiment, that a woman may allow all innocent freedoms, provided her virtue is secure, is both grossly indelicate and dangerous, and has proved fatal to many of your sex.

Let me now recommend to your attention, that elegance, which is not so much a quality of itself, as the high polish of every other. It is what dif fuses an ineffable grace over every look, every motion, every sentence you utter. It gives that charm to beauty, without which it generally fails to please. It is partly a personal quality, in which respect it is the gift of nature: but I speak of it principally as a quality of the mind. In a word, it is the perfection of taste in life and manners; every virtue and every excellence, in their most graceful and proper forms.

You may perhaps think I want to throw every spark of nature out of your composition, and to make you entirely artificial. Far from it, I wish you to possess the most perfect simplicity of heart and manners. I think you may possess dignity without pride, affability without meanness, and simple elegance without affectation. Milton had my idea, when he says of Eve,

Grace was in all her steps, heav'n in her eye:
In every gesture dignity and love.

THE PASSION FOR GAMING IN LADIES,

Ridiculed in a Letter from a Chinese Philosopher, to his friend in the East.

BY GOLDSMITH.

THE ladies here are by no means such ardent gamesters as the women of Asia. In this respect I must do the English justice; for I love to praise where applause is justly merited. Nothing is more common in China, than to see two women

of fashion continue gaming till one has won all the other's clothes, and stript her quite naked; the winner thus marching off in a double suit of finery, and the loser shrinking behind in the primitive simplicity of nature.

No doubt you remember when Shang, our maiden aunt, played with a sharper. First her money went; then her trinkets were produced; her clothes followed, piece by piece, soon after; when she had thus played herself quite naked, being a woman of spirit, and willing to pursue her own, she staked her teeth; fortune was against her even here, and her teeth followed her clothes; at last she played for hor left eye, and, oh! hard fate, this too she lost; however, she had the consolation of biting the sharper, for he never perceived that it was made of glass till it became his own.

How happy, my friend, are the English ladies, who never rise to such an inordinance of passion! Though the sex here are naturally fond of games of chance and are taught to manage games of skill from their infancy, yet they never pursue ill fortune with such amazing intrepidity. Indeed I may entirely acquit them of ever playing-I mean of playing for their eyes or their teeth.

It is true they often stake their fortune, their beauty, health and reputations at a gaming-table. It even sometimes happens that they play their husbands into a jail; yet still they preserve a decorum unknown to our wives and daughters of China. I have been present at a rout in this country, where a woman of fashion, after losing her money, has sat writhing in all the agonies of bad luck; and yet, after all, never once attempted to strip a single petticoat, or cover the board, as her last stake, with her head-clothes.

However, though I praise their moderation at play, I must not conceal their assiduity. In China, our women, except upon some great days, are never permitted to finger a dice-box; but here, every day seems to be a festival; and night itself, which gives others rest, only serves to increase the female gamester's industry. I have been told of an old lady in the country, who being given over by the physicians, played with the curate of her parish to pass the time away: having won all his money, she next proposed playing for her funeral charges, the proposal was accepted; but unfortunately, the lady expired just as she had taken in her game.

There are some passions, which, though differently pursued, are attended with equal consequences in every country: here they game with more perseverance, there with greater fury; here they strip their families, there they strip themselves naked. A lady in China who indulges a passion for gaming, often becomes a drunkard; and by flourishing a dice-box in one hand, she generally comes to brandish a dram cup in the other. Far be it from me to say there are any who drink drams in England; but it is natural to suppose, that when a lady has lost every thing but her honour, she will be apt to toss that into the bargain; and, grown insensible to nicer feelings, behave like the Spaniard, who, when all his money was gone, endeavoured to borrow more, by offering to pawn his whiskers.

FROM MUSTAPHA DUB-A-DUB KELI KHAN.

To Asem Hacchem, principal slave-driver to his highness the bashaw of Tripoli.

[The works of education in common use, are made up of selections from trans-atlantic writers, Young persons being accustomed to regard English literature as exclusively deserving their applause and imitation, acquire a disrelish and disrespect for the productions of our own country. This disrespect results so much from early prejudice, that elementary compilers should exert themselves to vindicate their national character. We are conscious that flowers of genius have been born (but "born to blush unseen") in the American republic, which needed only the fostering Mecænas', to display their beauties, and force them into public view. It is not enough that men write; excellence, in any shape, must be thrust into immortality, or that excellence is forgotten. We acknowledge that the distinguished authors from whom we select the following, cannot complain of popular neglect. The satires of the CoCKLOFT FAMILY have circulated every where, and at one time the little volumes of SALMAGUNDI were thought an indispensable part of the tea-table furniture of every fashionable house in America. But this kind of celebrity is most perishable. The works of Launcelot Langstaff, and his noble brothers, have been too much regarded as mere amusing trifles, while they are adorned by all the graces of style and sentiment. The editor of the Lady's Preceptor wishes to convince youth, that American productions exist, which they may admire and imitate. He wishes also to adduce the works of LANGSTAFF and Co.

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