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REVENGE OF A SPANISH LADY. (No. 611).

I SHALL present my readers with a memorable instance of revenge, taken by a Spanish lady upon a guilty lover, which may serve to show what violent effects are wrought by the most tender passion, when soured into hatred; and may deter the young and unwary from unlawful love. The story, however romantic it may appear, I have heard affirmed for a truth.

Not many years ago an English gentleman, who in a rencounter by night in the streets of Madrid had the misfortune to kill his man, fled into a church-porch for sanctuary. Leaning against the door, he was surprised to find it open, and a glimmering light in the church. He had the courage to advance towards the light; but was terribly startled at the sight of a woman in white, who ascended from a grave with a bloody knife in her hand. The phantom marched up to him, and asked him what he did there. He told her the truth, without reserve, believing that he had met a ghost; upon which, she spoke to him in the following manner: Stranger, thou art in my power: I am a murderer as thou art. Know then, that I am a nun of a noble family. A base perjured man undid me, and boasted of it. I soon had him dispatched; but not content with the murder, I have bribed the sexton to let me enter his grave, and have now plucked out his false heart from his body; and thus I use a traitor's heart." At these words she tore it in pieces, and trampled it under her feet.

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A GENEALOGICAL TREE. (No. 612).

WERE the genealogy of every family preserved, there would probably be no man valued or despised on account of his birth. There is scarce a beggar in the streets, who would not find himself lineally descended from some great man; nor any one of the highest title, who would not

discover several base and indigent persons among his ancestors. It would be a pleasant entertainment to see one pedigree of men appear together, under the same characters they bore when they acted their respective parts among the living. Suppose therefore a gentleman, full of his illustrious family, should, in the same manner as Virgil makes Æneas look over his descendants, see the whole line of his progenitors pass in a review before his eyes, with how many varying passions would he behold shepherds and soldiers, statesmen and artificers, princes and beggars, walk in the procession of five thousand years! How would his heart sink or flutter at the several sports of fortune in a scene so diversified with rags and purple, handicraft tools and sceptres, ensigns of dignity and emblems of disgrace! and how would his fears and apprehensions, his transports and mortifications, succeed one another, as the line of his genealogy appeared bright or obscure!

In most of the pedigrees hung up in old mansion houses, you are sure to find the first in the catalogue a great statesman, or a soldier with an honourable commission. The honest artificer that begot him, and all his frugal ancestors before him, are torn off from the top of the register; and you are not left to imagine that the noble founder of the family ever had a father. Were we to trace many boasted lines further backward, we should lose them in a mob of tradesmen, or a crowd of rustics, without hope of seeing them emerge again: not unlike the old Appian way, which, after having run many miles in length, loses itself in a bog.

I lately made a visit to an old country gentleman, who is very far gone in this sort of family madness. I found him in his study perusing an old register of his family, which he had just then discovered, as it was branched out in the form of a tree, upon a skin of parchment. Having the honour to have some of his blood in my veins, he permitted me to cast my eye over the boughs of this venerable plant; and asked my advice in the reforming of some of the superfluous branches.

We passed slightly over three or four of our immediate forefathers, whom we knew by tradition, but were

soon

stopped by an alderman of London, who, I perceived, made my kinsman's heart go pit-a-pat. His confusion increased, when he found the alderman's father to be a grazier; but he recovered his fright upon seeing justice of the quorum at the end of his titles. Things went on pretty well as we threw our eyes occasionally over the tree, when unfortunately he perceived a merchant-tailor perched on a bough, who was said greatly to have increased the estate; he was just going to cut him off if he had not seen gent. after the name of his son; who was recorded to have mortgaged one of the manors his honest father had purchased. A weaver, who was burnt for his religion in the reign of Queen Mary, was pruned away without mercy; as was likewise a yeoman, who died of a fall from his own cart. But great was our triumph in one of the blood who was beheaded for high treason; which nevertheless was not a little allayed by another of our ancestors who was hanged for stealing sheep. The expectations of my good cousin were wonderfully raised by a match into the family of a knight; but, unfortunately for. us, this branch proved barren: on the other hand, Margery the milk-maid being twined round a bough, it flourished out into so many shoots, and bent with so much fruit, that the old gentleman was quite out of countenance. To comfort me under this disgrace, he singled out a branch ten times more fruitful than the other, which, he told me, he valued more than any in the tree, and bade me be of good comfort. This enormous bough was a graft out of a Welsh heiress, with so many Ap's upon it that it might have made a little grove by itself. From the trunk of the pedigree, which was chiefly composed of labourers and shepherds, arose a huge sprout of farmers: this was branched out into yeomen, and ended in a sheriff of the county, who was knighted for his good service to the crown in bringing up an address. Several of the names that seemed to disparage the family, being looked upon as mistakes, were lopped off as rotten or withered; as, on the contrary, no small number appearing without any titles, my cousin, to supply the defects of the manuscript, added Esq. at the end of each of them.

This tree so pruned, dressed, and cultivated, was, within

a few days, transplanted into a large sheet of vellum, and placed in the great hall, where it attracts the veneration of his tenants every Sunday morning, while they wait until his worship is ready to go to church; wondering that a man, who had so many fathers before him, should not be made a knight, or at least a justice of the peace.

ON CLEANLINESS. (No. 631).

I HAD occasion to go a few miles out of town, some days since, in a stage-coach, where I had for my fellow-travellers a dirty beau, and a pretty young Quaker woman. Having no inclination to talk much at that time, I placed myself backward, with a design to survey them and pick a Speculation out of my two companions. Their different figures were sufficient of themselves to draw my attention. The gentleman was dressed in a suit the ground whereof had been black, as I perceived from some few spaces that had escaped the powder, which was incorporated with the greatest part of his coat: his periwig, which cost no small sum,* was after so slovenly a manner cast over his shoulders that it seemed not to have been combed since the year 1712 his linen, which was not much concealed, was daubed with plain Spanish from the chin to the lowest button; and the diamond upon his finger (which naturally dreaded the water) put me in mind how it sparkled amidst the rubbish of the mine where it was first discovered. On the other hand, the pretty Quaker appeared in all the elegance of cleanliness. Not a speck was to be found upon her. A clear, clean oval face, just edged about with little thin plaits of the purest cambric, received great advantages from the shade of her black hood; as did the whiteness of her arms from that sober-coloured stuff in which she had clothed herself. The plainness of her dress was very well suited to the simplicity of her phrases; all which put together, though they could

* Duumvir's fair wig cost forty guineas.

not give me a great opinion of her religion, they did of her innocence.

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This adventure occasioned my throwing together a few hints upon cleanliness," which I shall consider as one of the half-virtues, as Aristotle calls them, and shall recommend it under the three following heads: as it is a mark of politeness; as it produces love; and as it bears analogy to purity of mind.

First, It is a mark of politeness. It is universally agreed upon, that no one unadorned with this virtue can go into company without giving a manifest offence. The easier or higher any one's fortune is, this duty rises proportionably. The different nations of the world are as much distinguished by their cleanliness as by their arts and sciences. The more any country is civilised, the more they consult this part of politeness. We need but compare our ideas of a female Hottentot and an English beauty to be satisfied of the truth of what hath been advanced.

In the next place, cleanliness may be said to be the foster-mother of love. Beauty, indeed, most commonly produces that passion in the mind, but cleanliness preserves it. An indifferent face and person, kept in perpetual neatness, hath won many a heart from a pretty slattern. Age itself is not unamiable, while it is preserved clean and unsullied like a piece of metal constantly kept smooth and bright, we look on it with more pleasure than on a new vessel that is cankered with rust.

I might observe further, that as cleanliness renders us agreeable to others, so it makes us easy to ourselves; that it is an excellent preservative of health; and that several vices, destructive both to mind and body, are inconsistent with the habit of it. But these reflections I shall leave to the leisure of my readers, and shall observe in the third place, that it bears a great analogy with purity of mind, and naturally inspires refined sentiments and passions.

We find from experience, that through the prevalence of custom, the most vicious actions lose their horror, by being made familiar to us. On the contrary, those who live in the neighbourhood of good examples, fly from the first appear

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