ern climate, a region of cold and darkness, at the head of a numerous band of desperate savages, suddenly invaded the country. No force was found sufficient to oppose those who had been driven forward by famine; the fury of hunger and rapine was irresistible; the princesses fled with the utmost precipitation, and the barbarians, who regarded every thing with malignity by which they were excelled, razed the palace so completely, that scarce a vestige appeared; and obliterated all traces of the royal influence whereever they were discovered.

The princesses directed their course westward; and, after having long wandered from place to place, and passed through great varieties of fortune, they at last took refuge in a small island, which was governed by a prince whose consort was their half-sister, being the daughter of their father, though by another wife. The prince received them with peculiar marks of distinction, and appointed a great officer, one of the principal lords of his court, to superintend the measures that were immediately taken for their accommodation. Two sumptuous palaces were soon prepared for their residence, and their household was immediately settled. They were frequently visited by the king; the queen often declared that she considered them as being more particularly under her patronage; they quickly became extremely popular, and were scarce less happy there, than upon their favourite hill. As they greatly excelled in all the arts of conversation, as their eloquence could always command the passions, and their knowledge improve the understanding, every one was solicitous to be admitted to their presence; and that they might gratify a people, among whom they had received so many favours, they resolved to have a certain number of public days, on which every one should be admitted without scruple.

But that all their conveniences and splendor might be procured, though at a great expense, yet without

imposing a general tax or burthening the public, it was contrived that the servants of the princesses should be paid by their vails; and, that the reward of their labour might not depend wholly upon caprice, it was ordered, that those who attended the princesses only on public days, and did not pretend to have a right to visit by their intimacy or station, should receive a ticket, for which they should pay a certain fee to the porter.

There is in this island a certain person, said to be descended from a race of giants that were its original inhabitants, who has such power and influence, though he has often been suspected to be mad, that the king himself treats him with great deference. In the height of his phrenzy, he has boasted that his voice is the voice of God, and that all the sovereign princes in the world are his vicegerents. Of this person every one stands in awe; the queen is his principal favourite; and for her sake he is well affected to the king, whom he has often defended, when every other power would have been ineffectual. He has a natural son, who possesses all his ill qualities, but of his virtues is wholly destitute; he assumes the name, the deportment, and the style of his father, whose fondness has encouraged him to commit many enormities, from which he would have been otherwise deterred.

This person, of whom every body is afraid, not only because his own power is very great, but because to repress his insolence might give offence to his father, comes frequently to the palaces of the princesses, and makes no scruple to purchase a ticket with the customary fee: but he is subject to fits of sudden and outrageous frenzy; in which he pretends that the servants of the princesses become his own, by receiving his fee for admittance to their presence; and he treats them with the cruel insolence of a capricious tyrant, and introduces the wildest tumult and confusion. The rest of the company are terrified and disappointed; he

perceives it, and compels them to depart: nay, he has sometimes offered violence to the ladies themselves; he has, either by menaces or by bribery, gained some of their servants over to his own interest; and, to gratify an unaccountable humour, he has prevailed upon them to admit a kind of necromancer, with whose feats he is greatly delighted, into the public room, where innumerable effects of his art are exhibited: and it is said, that by the same influence, one of the palaces has been made a receptacle for wild beasts; and that all the gambols of folly have been played in a place that was intended for the asylum of beauty and wit, and for the school not only of wisdom but of virtue.

With the author of this confusion the Adventurer is requested to engage: and if his zeal and abilities are equal to his boast, he is expected immediately to declare himself the champion of the princesses, by publishing his defiance to the following effect:

"That the princesses alone have a right to the palaces, which have been allotted to them by the munificence of the sovereign of the island; that their servants are accountable only to them, to the sovereign, or to the lord whom he has appointed to superintend the household; that every man is at liberty to be absent, who thinks the entertainment not worthy of his attendance, or the fee for his admittance too exorbitant; but that no man has a right to disturb, to terrify, or to disappoint an assembly, which is supposed to be in the immediate presence of the sovereign, to whom they owe allegiance: and I challenge to single combat whoever shall affirm the contrary.

"I am, Sir,
"Yours, &c."

Flavilla, a lady who sometimes honours me with a visit, was present when I received this letter. Flavilla, though she has all the sprightliness of a coquette, has

been a great reader, and is not behind those who discovered a political satire under the Rape of a Lock, in resolving a riddle, or penetrating an allegory. I put the letter into her hand, and threw myself back in my easy-chair with an air of importance; "There," says I, "read that; and see what rank I hold in the estimation even of those by whom my province is mistaken."

I fixed my eyes upon her, and waited with impatience till she had read it. But, how was I disappointed to hear her cry out, "Good Sir, your province and your importance are mistaken by none but yourself. Could not your sagacity discover this letter to be an allegory?" Pray, Madam, said I, will you be pleased to communicate to me what you imagine to be the hidden meaning which that allegory envelopes? "La," says she, you are so dull to-day! Why, are not the Comic and the Tragic Muse the daughters of Jupiter? and did they not, with the rest of the Muses, their sisters, reside on Parnassus, a lofty hill that was watered by the Castalian spring? Were they not there visited by Apollo, the patron of all science, and in particular of poetry and music? Did they not fly westward at the approach of barbarians, who, though they left behind the glooms of the inhospitable north, yet brought with them the Cimmerian darkness of ignorance,' and scarce left any traces of science in the countries through which they passed? Did not the lovely fugitives find refuge in Britain?"....But, pray, Madam, said I, shaking my right foot, which hung over my left knee, will you condescend to tell me who is the consort of the king who afforded them protection? My letter says, she was half-sister to the ladies whom you suppose to be two of the muses. "Who," replied Flavilla pertly, "but Liberty: is not Liberty the perpetual consort of the kings of Britain? and will any dispute that Liberty is derived from Jove, the Parent of Good?" Go on, Madam, said I. "The great

officer," said she, "is the lord chamberlain; the palaces are the theatres, which by royal authority are appropriated to the use of tragedy and comedy; their attendants, the players, are, indeed the servants of the king, and are paid by the stated fees for admittance into the house. The public is the most potent and venerable body upon earth; and the town, its illegitimate offspring, is insolent, capricious, and cruel: the town is perpetually insulting the players as its servants; though as servants to the town, the law considers them as enemies to society; and it is as servants to the king only, that they are permitted to exhibit public entertainments. It is to humour the town that the necromancer harlequin has associated with tumblers and savages, to profane the place, which, under proper regulation, would indeed be the school of wisdom and virtue. Every one present at a theatrical performance is supposed to be in the royal presence; or at least the players are under his more immediate protection: as every man has a right in common with others to the dramatic entertainment of the evening, when he has purchased an admittance to the house, it follows that no man has a right to monopolize or to destroy it. An empty house is by the players deemed the most dreadful sign of popular disapprobation; and when the public are displeased with the entertainment that is offered them, to neglect it will be the most effectual means to procure a better; and as a full or a thin house will indubitably express the sentiment of a majority, the complaints of a faction should be wholly disregarded."

Flavilla, as she concluded this speech, in which she began to grow very warm, cast her eyes upon me, and expected my reply. But as I continued to gaze with great gravity at the fire, and remained silent, she gave me a smart stroke with her fan, accompanied with this interrogation; " You sullen mouster, why don't you speak? Do you hear me? publish the letter, with my