would escape the unpleasant sensations re sulting from the sight of such vulgar and indelicate conduct; but when the Master of the house bawls out Mrs

do not pick your nose; every one present is compelled to call up coarse and disgusting images. But enough of this,

Another species of indelicacy, very commonly practised, is the habit of relating things, which, we know, must inevitably give pain, and cannot be of the least service to the persons, whom we thus wound. I am acquainted with an elderly gentleman, who always tells his mother, an old woman on the wrong side of four-score, every unpleasant circumstance, which occurs to him. The consequence of which absurd and injudicious conduct is, that the poor old lady is constantly rendered miserable by her son's infatuated idiocy, which he dignifies by the appellation of filial respect and love.

Not long since, he understood, that one of our popular Satyrists, had lashed him in some periodical essays, now, from time to time, appearing; which, indeed, was not true, and away he hied to tell his unhappy

old mother of it; now the good lady is never guilty of reading any book but her bible, and her son might have been gibbetted by all the Satyrists in the kingdom, and she not one jot the wiser: consequently, she would have escaped an abundance of misery, if the officious dulness, and hebetated perverseness of her son had not first barbed the dart, and then directed it against the peace and comfort of his aged parent. Perhaps, he does not know, but I will now tell him, that his conduct denoteth a timid, cowardly disposition, that flies to an old woman for that help, which she cannot give him; a weak and ignorant mind, that cannot bear up against and support the common evils of life; and a selfish, wicked heart, that cannot rest contented unless it involves others in the same misery and pain, which itself suffers.

4

ESSAY CXXXIII.

ON DELICACY.

A YORKSHIRE Colonel, very well known for his eminence in the accomplishments of dancing, boxing, shooting-flying, strumpetizing, etc. etc. takes especial care to insult all those, whom he considers as very much his inferiors, in rank and fortune, by backing every one of their anecdotes with a palpable and gross lye of his own. That he is an indelicate beast for such conduct we all know; but I do not despise him so much as I do the meanness and servility of those, who will submit to such insolence, merely, for the sake of sitting at the same table with Colonel and his tawdry, trumpery

W

I, once, heard a merchant of the city of York, an elderly, peaceable, inoffensive man, and a man of veracity, relate, that he had seen an elephant's tooth of some wonderful dimensions, I forget exactly what, just now,

but they were much greater than elephant's tusks usually are; no sooner had this merchant finished his anecdote, than, forthwith, our easy and familiar Colonel began to tell as how he once saw an elephant's tooth, which was considerably larger than the Minster at York. The company stared, the merchant blushed, and the Colonel applauded himself mightily for his ingenuity, and amazing talent of wit.

But I must tell this worthy shooter at the long bow, that any other blockhead and blackguard can arrive at the reputation of being a wit, by the same dirty road of coarseness, of vulgarity, of lying, and of indelicacy, as well as himself; and that the company stared, at least, I did, with astonishment at his consummate impudence and brutality; that we considered him as an object of the utmost contempt, and wondered that the merchant did not kick him out of the room; and, lastly, that the honest trader blushed for the Colonel's want of manners, because the Colonel had not grace enough to blush for his own brutal barbarism. Conversation, as it is carried on by most

people, very rarely aboundeth in delicacy. Indeed, I know not how it should, for nearly all the conversation going is supplied by stupid and ignorant people; and delicacy cannot rear her head amidst the din of ignorance, and the gross barbarity of dulness. A noisy, bawling demagogue, who was tried, some few years since, at the Old Bailey, for high treason; and, now, trots about the kingdom, delivering superficial and empty lectures upon elocution, was willing to shew his breeding and refinement, by bedaubing all the unmarried misses, in a provincial town of one of our Northern counties, with the most fulsome and nauseous flattery, that ignorance and impudence combined could desire or dare to cram down the throats of weak, silly, and uneducated girls.

Upon a young woman he fastened, one evening, in a numerous assemblage of human beings; and began to instruct her how to obtain a husband, by giving her precepts, so replete with coarseness and indelicacy, that I shall forbear to pollute my page with the repetitition of them. "I am married already," replied the damsel," and my hus