perception of a more refined and extensive nature ver: to him as inconceivable, as to us those are which will one day be adapted to perceive those things which eze bath not feen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to corceive. And it would be just as roafonable in him to conclude, that the lofs of those three fenfes could not possibly be succeeded by any new inlets of perception; as in a modern free-thinker to imagine there can be no state of life and preception without the senses he enjoys as present. Let us farther suppose the fame person's eyes, at their first opening, to be ftruck with a great variety of the most gay and pleasing objects, and his ears with a melodious concert of vocal and instrumental mufic. Be-holding him amazed, ravished, transported; and you. have some distant representation, fome faint and glimmering idea of the ecstatic state of the foul in that article in which the emerges from this sepulchre of flesh into life and immortality.

SIR,

As

GUARDIAN, Vol. I. No. 27.

S foon as you have set up your Unicorn, there is no question but the ladies will make him push very furiously at the men; for which reason I think it is good to be before-hand with them, and make the lion roar aloud at female irregularities. Among these, I wonder how their gaming has fo long escaped your notice. You who converse with the fober family of the Lizards, are perhaps a stranger to these viragoes; but what would you fay, should you fee the sparkler shaking her elbow for a whole night together, and thumping the table with a dice-box? Or how would you like to hear the good widow-lady herself returning to her house at midnight, and alarming the whole street with a most enormous rap, after having fat up till that time at crimp or ombre? Sir, I am the hufband of one of those female gamesters, and a great loVOL. II...

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fer by it it both in my rest and m my pocket. As my wife reads your papers, one upon this fubject might be of use both to her, and Your humble Servant."

I should ill deferve the name of Guardian, did I not caution all my fair wards against a practice which, when it runs to excess, is the most shameful, but one, that the female world can fall into. The ill confequences of it are more than can be contained in this paper. However, that I may proceed in method, I shall confider them, first, as they relate to the mind. Secondly, as they relate to the body.

Could we look into the mind of a female gamester, we should fee it full of nothing but trumps and mattadores. Her flumbers are haunted with kings, queens, and knaves. The day lies heavy upon her till playfeason returns, when for half a dozen hours together, all her faculties are employed in shuffling, cutting, dealing, and forting out a pack of cards, and no ideas to be discovered in a foul which calls itself rational, excepting little square figures of painted and spotted paper. Was the understanding, that divine part in our composition, given for fuch a use? Is it thus that we improve the greatest talent human nature is endowed with? What would a fuperior being think, were he shewn this intellectual faculty in a female gamefter, and at the fame time told that it was by this she was distinguished from brutes, and allied to angels?

Whenour women thus fill their imagination with pipes and counters, I cannot wonder at the story I have lately heard of a new born child that was marked with the five of clubs.

Their passions suffer no less by this practice than their understandings and imaginations. What hope and fear, joy and anger, forrow and difcontent break out all at once in a fair affembly upon so noble an occafion as that of turning up a card? Who can confider without a recret indignation that all those affections of the mind which should be confecrated to their children, husbands and parents, are thus vilely prostituted and thrown away upon a hand at loo? For my own part, I cannot but be grieved when I see a fine woman fretting and bleeding inwardly from fuch trivial motives: When I behold the face of an angel agitated and difcomposed by the heat of a fury.

Our minds are of fuch a make that they naturally give themselves up to every diversion which they are much accustomed to, and we always find that play,when followed with affiduity, engroffes the whole woman. She quickly grows uneasy in her own family, takes but little pleasure in all the domestic innocent endearments of life, and grows more fond of pam than of her husband. My friend Theophraftus, the best of husbands and of fathers, has often complained to me, with tears in his eyes, of the late hours he is forced to keep if he would enjoy his wife's conversation. When the returns to me with joy in her face, it does not arife, says he, from the fight of her husband, but from the good luck the had at cards. On the contrary, fays he, if she has been a lofer, I am doubly a fufferer by it. She comes home out of humour, is angry with every body, difpleased with all I can do or say, and in reality for no other reafon but because she has been throwing away my estate. What charming bed-fellows and companions for life are men likely to meet with, who chuse their wives out of such women of vogue and fashion? What a race of worthies, what patriots, what heroes must we expect from mothers of this make?

I come in the next place to consider the ill confequences which gaming has on the bodies of our female adventurers. It is so ordered that almost every thing which corrupts the foul decays the body. The beauties of the face and mind are generally destroyed by the fame means. This confideration should have a particular weight with the female world, who were designed to please the eye and attract the regards of the other half of the species. Now there is nothing that wears out a fine face like the vigils of the cardtable, and those cutting passions which naturally attend them. Hollow eyes, haggard locks, and pale complexions, are the natural indications of a female gamefter. Her morning fleeps are not able to repair her midnight watchings.. I have known a woman carried off half dead from baffette, and have been many a time grieved to fee a person of quality gliding by me in her chair at two o'clock in the morning, and looking like a spectre amidst a glare of flambeaux: In short, I never knew a thorough-paced female gamefter hold her beauty two winters together.

But there is still another cafe in which the body is more endangered than in the former. All play debts must be paid in specie, or by an equivalent. The man who plays beyond his income pawns his estate; the woman must find out fomething else to mortgage when her pin-money is gone: The husband has his lands to dispose of, the wife her perfon. Now when the female body is once dipp'd, if the creditor be very importunate, I leave my reader to confider the conse-.. quences. GUARDIAN, Vol. II. No. 120.

A

GENTLEMAN.

Gentleman has writ to me out of the country a very civil letter, and faid things which I fupprefs with great violence to my vanity. There are many terms in my narratives which he complains want explaining; and has therefore defired, that for the benefit of my country readers, I would lethimknow what I mean by a gentleman, a pretty fellow, a toast, a coquette, a critic, a wit, and all other appellations of those now in the gayer world, who are in poffeffion of these characters; together with an account of those who unfortunately pretend to them. I shall begin with him we usually call a gentleman, or a man of conversation.

It is generally thought that warmth of imagination, quick relish of pleasure, and a manner of becoming it, are the most essential qualities for forming this fort of man. But any one who is much in company, will observe, that the height of good breeding is shewn rather in never giving offence, than in doing obliging

things. Thus he who never shocks you, though he is seldom entertaining, is more likely to keep your favour, than he who often entertains, and fometimes displeases you. The most necessary talent therefore in a man of conversation, which is what we ordinarily intend by a fine gentleman, is a good judgment. He who has this in perfection, is master of his companion, without letting him fee it; and has the fame advantages over men of any other qualifications whatfoever, as one who can see would have over a blind man of ten times his strength.

This is what makes Sophronius the darling of all who converse with him, and the most powerful with his acquaintance of any man in town. By the light of this faculty he acts with great ease, and freedom among the men of pleafure, and acquits himself with fkill and dispatch among the men of bufinefs. All which he performs with such success, that, with as much difcretion in life as any man ever had, he neither is, nor appears cunning. But if he does a good office, as he ever does it with readiness and alacrity, fo he denies what he does not care to engage in, with a manner that convinces you, that you ought not to have asked it. His judgment is fo good and unerring, and accompanied with fo cheerful a spirit, that his conversation is a continual feast, at which he helps fome, and is helped by others, in fuch a manner, that the equality of fociety is perfectly kept up, and every man obliges as much as he is obliged: For it is the greatest and justest skill in a man of fuperior understanding, to know how to be on a level with his companions. This sweet disposition runs through all the actions of Sophronius, and makes his company defired by women, without being envied by men. Sophronius would be as just as he is, if there were no law, and would be as difcreet as he is, if there was no such thing as calumny.

In imitation of this agreeable being, is made that animal we call a pretty fellow; who being just able to find out, that what makes Sophronius acceptable, is a natural behaviour, in order to the fame reputation, makes his own an artificial one. Jack Dimple is his