possible to be determined, as which have most merit, plays written in a dead language, and which we can only read; or such as we every day see acted inimitably, in a tongue familiar to us, and adapted to our common ideas and customs. The only preference that I shall pretend to give to the modern stage over Greece and Rome, relates to the subject of the present letter: I mean the daily progress we make towards nature. This will startle any bigot to Euripides, who perhaps will immediately demand, whether Juliet's nurse be a more natural gossip than Electra's or Medea's. But I did not hint at the representation of either persons or characters. The improvement of nature, which I had in view, alluded to those excellent exhibitions of the animal or inanimate parts of the creation, which are furnished by the worthy philosophers Rich and Garrick; the latter of whom has refined on his competitor; and having perceived that art was become so perfect that it was necessary to mimic it by nature, he has happily introduced a cascade of real water.

"I know there are persons of a systematic turn, who affirm that the audience are not delighted with this beautiful water-fall, from the reality of the element, but merely because they are pleased with the novelty of any thing that is out of its proper place. Thus they tell you that the town is charmed with a genuine cascade upon the stage, and was in raptures last year with one of tin at Vauxhall. But this is certainly prejudice: the world, Mr. Fitz-Adam, though never sated with show, is sick of fiction. I foresee the time approaching, when delusion will not be suffered in any part of the drama: the inimitable Serpent in Orpheus and Eurydice, and the amorous Ostrich in the Sorcerer, shall be replaced by real monsters from Afric. It is well known that the pantomime of the Genii narrowly escaped being

damned, on my lady Maxim's observing very judiciously, that the brick-kiln was horridly executed, and did not smell at all like one.'

"When this entire castigation of improprieties is brought about, the age will do justice to one of the first reformers of the stage, Mr. Cibber, who attempted to introduce a taste for real nature in his Cæsar in Egypt, and treated the audience with real-not swans indeed, for that would have been too bold an attempt in the dawn of truth, but very personable geese. The inventor, like other original geniuses, was treated ill by a barbarous age: yet I can venture to affirm, that a stricter adherence to reality would have saved even those times from being shocked by absurdities, always incidental to fiction. I myself remember, how, much about that æra, the great Senesino, representing Alexander at the siege of Oxydracæ, so far forgot himself in the heat of conquest, as to stick his sword in one of the pasteboard stones of the wall of the town, and bore it in triumph before him as he entered the breach; a puerility so renowned a general could never have committed, if the ramparts had been built, as in this enlightened age they would be, of actual brick and

stone.

"Will you forgive an elderly man, Mr. FitzAdam, if he cannot help recollecting another passage that happened in his youth, and to the same excellent performer? He was stepping into Armida's enchanted bark; but treading short, as he was more attentive to the accompaniment of the orchestra than to the breadth of the shore, he fell prostrate, and lay for some time in great pain, with the edge of a wave running into his side. In the present state of things, the worst that could have happened to him, would have been drowning; a

fate far more becoming Rinaldo, especially in the sight of a British audience!

"If you will allow me to wander a little from the stage, I shall observe that this pursuit of nature is not confined to the theatre, but operates where one should least expect to meet it, in our fashions. The fair part of the creation are shedding all covering of the head, displaying their unveiled charming tresses, and if I may say so, are daily moulting the rest of their clothes. What lovely fall of shoulders, what ivory necks, what snowy breasts in all the pride of nature, are continually divested of art and ornament?

"In gardening, the same love of nature prevails. Clipt hedges, avenues, regular platforms, straight canals have been for some time very properly exploded. There is not a citizen who does not take more pains to torture his acre and half into irregularities, than he formerly would have employed to make it as formal as his cravat. Kent, the friend of nature, was the Calvin of this reformation; but like the other champion of truth, after having routed tinsel and trumpery, with the true zeal of a founder of a sect, he pushed his discipline to the deformity of holiness; not content with banishing symmetry and regularity, he imitated nature even in her blemishes, and planted dead trees and mole-hills, in opposition to parterres and quincunxes.

"The last branch of our fashions into which the close observation of nature has been introduced, is our desserts; a subject I have not room now to treat at large, but which yet demands a few words, and not improperly in this paper, as I see them a little in the light of a pantomime. Jellies, biscuits, sugar-plumbs, and creams have long given way to harlequins, gon. doliers, Turks, Chinese, and shepherdesses of Saxon

china. But these, unconnected, and only seeming to wander among groves of curled paper and silk flowers, were soon discovered to be too insipid and unmeaning. By degrees whole meadows of cattle, of the same brittle materials, spread themselves over the whole table; cottages rose in sugar, and temples in barley-sugar; pigmy Neptunes in cars of cockle-shells, triumphed over oceans of lookingglass, or seas of silver tissue; and at length the whole system of Ovid's metamorphoses succeeded to all the transformations which Chloe and other great professors had introduced into the science of hieroglyphic eating. Confectioners found their trade moulder away, while toymen and china-shops were the only fashionable purveyors of the last stage of polite entertainments. Women of the first quality came home from Chevenix's laden with dolls and babies, not, for their children, but their housekeeper. At last even these puerile puppet-shows are sinking into disuse, and more manly ways of concluding our repasts are established. Gigantic figures succeeded to pigmies. And if the present taste continues, Rysbrack and other neglected statuaries, who might have adorned Grecian saloons, though not Grecian desserts, may come into vogue. It is known that a celebrated confectioner, so the architects of our desserts still humbly call themselves, complained, that after having prepared a middle dish of gods and goddesses, eighteen feet high, his lord would not cause the ceiling of his parlour to be demolished to facilitate their entrée: Imaginez vous, said he, que mi lord n'a pas voulu faire oter le plafond!'

"I shall mention but two instances of glorious magnificence and taste in desserts, in which foreigners have surpassed every thing yet performed in this sumptuous island. The former was a duke of

Wirtemberg, who, so long ago as the year thirty-
four, gave a dessert, in which was a representation
of mount Etna, which vomited out real fire-works
over the heads of the company, during the whole
entertainment. The other was the intendant of
Gascony, who, on the late birth of the duke of
Burgundy, among other magnificent festivities,
treated the noblesse of the province with a dinner
and a dessert, the latter of which concluded with
a representation, by wax figures moving by clock-
work, of the whole labour of the Dauphiness, and
the happy birth of an heir to their monarchy.
“I am, SIR,

"Your humble servant,
"JULIO."

No. 7. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1753.

THERE are certain follies and impertinences, which people of good sense and good nature are every day guilty of, and which are only considered by them as things of course, and of too little consequence for palliation or apology.

Whoever is a frequenter of public assemblies, or joins in a party at cards in private families, will give evidence to the truth of this complaint. I am, for my own part, a lover of the game of Whist, and should oftener be seen in those places where it is played for trifles, if I was not offended at the manners of my friends. How common is it with some people, at the conclusion of every unsuccessful hand of cards, to burst forth into sallies of fretful complaints of their own amazing ill-fortune, and the