racter is suffered on such ground. But of all the amateurs of hair-powder, surely none ever exceeded Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, the well known general in the German war. It had been observed particularly by the English officers, that their general was never seen at any time but with a tremendously powdered pate. The duke of Marlborough, a descendant of the great duke bearing that name, then a young man serving in Brunswick's army, was determined to see how far this rage for head whitening was carried by the prince: he therefore, at two o'clock one morning, went in apparently a vehement hurry to the general's tent, as if to communicate some important news; he was kept waiting a while, and when admitted, saw Ferdinand sitting up in bed, in his shirt, but with a head wonderfully powdered. Perhaps not all the declamation in the world, not all the enumeration of the great and renowned namesof antiquity, and of modern times, who never suffered their heads to be so disgraced, will avail so much towards putting an end to this filthy mode, as the relating how it

first originated. About a century and a half since, (remember, I do not pretend precisely to fix the date, lest some laborious and indefatigable antiquary may discover that it was a day sooner or an hour later,) two ballad singing women appeared in the streets of Paris with their heads powdered; this device answered their end, it collected a great crowd 'round them, and they sold their canticles. It so happened that the English ambassador's lady, passing by at the time, saw and admired the heads of these song-bawlers; she procured flour and hog's lard, and on her return exhibited a powdered pate in the streets of London; but had nearly paid dear for her folly, for the mob began to hiss and to pelt, and were proceeding to duck her in the kennel, unless she had taken refuge in a neighbouring house. However, the court soon adopted the fashion, and it thereupon became, in no long time, pretty general, insomuch that on Sundays especially were to be seen, with heads becurled, befrizzled, bepowdered, and begreased, princes, and courtiers, and nobles, and gentry, and tailors, and bar

bers, and cooks, and postillions, and fiddlers, and apothecaries, and highwaymen, and lawyers, and men-milliners, and stage-players, and all the gang of those who found it more easy and delectable to furnish the exterior than the internal part of their skulls.

ESSAY XXXIV.

CONCLUDING ESSAY.

In this concluding essay of my first volume

I think it incumbent on me to declare what I intend to do in my succeeding lucubrations, and what my intentions were in publishing these papers. If it shall please God to prolong my life, now arrived at a very advanced period, I mean to offer to the public the remainder of my young friend's narrative, which he continued to very nearly the moment of his departure from this world, a few weeks before he had completed his twenty-third year. His papers, which are

yet to be ushered into the world, contain, inf my opinion, matters much more interesting than any hitherto touched upon; inasmuch as his mind grew stronger and more enlarged, his investigations of, and observations on, characteristic traits and distinctions, were more numerous and more accurate. Add to this, he has made some very judicious and original remarks on the systems of medicine as they are studied and taught in London and in Edinburgh, in both which places he attend ed as a pupil in every department of the heal ing art. As for myself, I have, in the course of a long and chequered life, been in the habit of committing my thoughts, on a variety of subjects, to writing: from these I shall select what appear to me to be the least repre hensible, for the perusal of my readers. The chief of these will be the continuation of Literature vindicated, and of the Parallelism of modern manners with those of Rome, as they are to be found described in some of the first satires of Juvenal; some very ge neral remarks on the present mode of edu cation prevailing in Great Britain; and a

very rapid review of the female sex, from the earliest ages down to the present day,

Before I close this Essay, may I be allowed to ask, Why Lord Bacon's works and Milton's prose writings are not reprinted, though I know that many intellectual men are calling aloud for them every day? Indeed, I cannot, as an Englishman feeling for the honour of my country, but lament that we are denied the gratification of possessing a new edition of those invaluable authors, every page, and every line, and every syllable of whose writings is calculated to enlarge the mind, to purify the heart, to fortify the soul, and lift up man to that eminence of hardiness, and of intellectuality, and of virtue, which alone can enable him to stem the torrent of adversity, and to remain unseduced, unsoftened, and untainted by the syren song, the alluring blandishment, and the contagious poison of prosperity, before whose balmy breath and luscious gale so oft are dissolved, and melt away, the dictates of humanity, the admonitions of conscience, and the duties of religion. Surely, in after