professors of the science, what good can be expected from trusting ourselves with more expert and allowed pickpockets than was ever the unfortunate Barrington.

Our friend cui bono would, on the other side, inform us of many happy and pleasant situations in life, which we pass by and are totally regardless of; he would teach us, that having the ambition not to rise, is the most safe and easy way to contentment; that temperance will bestow the real good, of good health; that the abstinence from luxury and debauchery will preserve the mind; that every thing that is honest and virtuous is pleasant and advantageous; and that the cui bono which charity, truth, and justice bestow, is the great first blessing upon earth-PEACE.

Being engaged in perusing a very curious and novel correspondence which has recently taken place, I was deprived the gratification of attending to the performance of the new historical drama, entitled "The English Fleet;" written, as report says, by Mr. Dibdin. I therefore subjoin a novel species of criticism, offered me by an honest tar, who was there, and who gives his opinion freely and candidly of the represen

"As how you being a friend of Bob Binnacle's, I hope, you see, that you won't be offended with a bit of

a forecastle story, to pass away your watch in the Moon. You must know, that yesterday, being in London to receive some prize money, I steered to Covent-garden, with Sal Saucyface, from Gosport, under my arm, to look in at the play. You never saw anybody so toss'd off as Sal, with a watch by her side as big as one of the compasses in our binnacle a'board the Eggs-and-bacon*, at Spithead. Well, you see, by making several tacks in-shore we, at last, weathered the gallery, and brought up in a good roadsted; at last, the player-men clewed up the mainsail, and begun a great deal of scrimidging, or fighting like Tom Cox's Traverse, up one hatchway and down another, which neither I nor Sal understood any thing about, or indeed, any of their gammon, only one of them, who seemed a bit of a sailor, if he hadn't now and then veered out some ward-room jaw, which we don't know nothing about. There was rather too much sing song for me; but it pleased Sal, and I doesn't mind a bit of a squal now and then, though I had rather hear Tom Midship sing "Why, how now, messmate Jack," than all your uproar singing put together. There was a fine lady too, made a speech as long as the jib sheet, and seemed to spout as well as Mr. Nipcheese, our purser, who I have listened to many a watch down the skylight, when I was quarter-master of the Tartar. Well, Sal wished to splice the main brace, so I stood away for the brandy shop; when a damn'd lubber, who was in everybody's mess, and nobody's watch, (a loblolly boy, I suppose) came to anchor in my birth, along

* A cant name among sailors for the Agamemnon.

side Sal. Dam'ee, I luffed up to him presently, just as he was talking about the companionment to the singing, and I made him cut his cable, and so he went adrift ever so far astern. As for the matter of the plot, they seemed for the world as if they were hustling the corporal, at last, however, the big guns fired, and the English fleet came to anchor, when they cleared the decks presently of all the French swaddies, and so they sung God Save the King, and that's all.

"As I sees all your letter writers stiles you, Mr. Man in the Moon, I thinks proper to do as my nighboars does, and thinks as how I will write to you myself, and as you are a gemman of high degree, not like our little great men on this side of the sky, I takes the liberty to introduce myself to your favour. It was but last knight I defended you mortal strong against a fellow who presumed to say as how that our great stronomers and strologers have made a confounded mistake, and that the mountain of St. Catharine, as they call it, is nothing else but your nose, and that you are a mortal great drinker; and that this said mountain, instead of being covered with brakes and bushes, is covered with carbuncles. You must know, I had a mortal inclination to knock him down then; but, Sir, my wife has been on a visit to a cousin of hers these three weeks, and I have been reserving my un

exercised patience against her return home; but, Sir, when this scoundrel told me that you was put in the moon for stealing sticks on a Sunday, and that for you to make a preachment of morality, was for all the world like a Botany Bay convict coming home to England and opening a public lecture on honesty— It was not a moonlight night, or you would have seen the knock down blow I gave him, and there he lay twisting about his ugly body like an eel in a basket. You must know, Sir, I expects a reward for this, and expects you to tell me, whether you likes the wolunteers, because as how I entered into the rifling corpse at the request of my wife, who likes the green milantary humanform mortally; but she says that i'se a dunce, for being drilled a month, and am not yet returned defective..

"Yours, as you please me,

cc A SHARP SHUTTER."

Y.

Jemmy Sensitive's communication is before the Man in the Moon, and will be duly considered.

An Essay on Epistolary Writing will shortly appear, with specimens for the edification of gentlemen in and out of place.

"I WAS occupied half an hour last night in perusing by the fire side of my chamber your last Number, wherein you define the utility of the motto, Cui bono, in the circumstances of common life; and as you are one of the innumerable race of authors, moralists, or essayists, whose theories are all admirable, and who delight to torment your readers with precepts insupportable, and incongruous with the infirmity of human nature, I shall trouble you with a few genuine observations. According to your sage reasoning, it is just as easy to regulate our conduct in life as it is to set a stop watch, or to wind up an eight-day clock, I shall not be so unhandsome, at present, as to make any reflections on the possibility of personal inconsistencies, even in the sage monitor of the moon himself. It will be enough for me if I can prove to you the absolute imperfections of human nature, and that no author has yet discovered the true patent snafflle, bit, or bridle, by which men can rein effectually their unruly passions and appetites. Now, Sir, experimental philosophy appears to me to be the most certain of any, and to show you how much has been done to make

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