be bowled down. For my own part, I never see a child's forehead with a great bump upon it, or swathed up in a black-pudding, lest it should receive one, but I am irresistibly impelled to bewail this pretended reformation, as a most notorious and melancholy defection from our primitive condition.

When the two children brought up to man's estate, apart from all human beings, by the command of a king of Egypt, who imagined that the language which they should speak must necessarily be the original language of the world-when these children, I say, had the honour to be introduced at court, amidst a circle of all the learned, and wise, and noble personages of that celebrated country; history bears her testimony, that they proceeded up the drawing-room, and made their way to the royal presence, upon all four. I am aware that some have thought they threw themselves into that attitude, from the dread and awe inspired into them by the sight of majesty; others, still more refined, have supposed they might have done so, to adapt themselves to the employment of those whom they found assembled in that place, and be prepared either to creep, or to climb, or both, as opportunity offered. But I cannot apprehend, that the course of their education could have qualified them for speculations so abstruse as these; and, therefore, I must take leave to say, I look upon the fact to be good evidence, that such was the attitude proper to

man.

I am still farther confirmed in my opinion, from that strong propensity visible in mankind, to return to it again. The posture, into which we have been

seduced is productive of constant uneasiness. We are in a fidget from morning to night; to relieve us from which, the expense of chairs and sofas is a very considerable tax upon our property; and, after all, we cannot compose ourselves perfectly to rest, but when recumbent upon our beds. That our sole business is with earth, universal practice seems to determine. Why then should we look after any thing else? or why be reproached with O curvæ in terras animæ ? especially when we recollect the fate of the poor astronomer, who, while he was gazing at the stars, fell into a ditch.

It deserves notice, that some of our most distinguished titles of honour are borrowed from our fellow-creatures, the quadrupeds, whose virtues we are ambitious to emulate. An accomplished young gentleman of family, fortune, and fashion, glories in the name, style, and title of a buck. You cannot pay him a greater compliment, than by bestowing on him this appellation; and indeed no one reason in the world can be assigned, why he should walk upon two.

The opinion of a great commercial nation like our own, cannot with more certainty be collected from any circumstance than from the management of the most important article of finance. Now, we find that article entrusted to the care of bulls and bears. And although a bear, which is a quadruped, by a metamorphosis no less sudden and surprising than any in Ovid, be at times transformed into a duck, which is a biped, yet it is observed, that there is a somewhat awkward about him ever after. He moves, indeed, but his motions are not as they should be, and he is from thenceforth said not to

walk, but to waddle. It may be added, that we never hear of a duck commencing dancing-master; whereas captain King informs us," the Kamtchadales are not only obliged to the bears for what ittle advancement they have hitherto made in the sciences or polite arts, as also the use of simples both internal and external; but they acknowledge them likewise for their dancing-masters; the beardance among them being an exact counterpart of every attitude and gesture peculiar to this animal, through its various functions. And this dance is the foundation and groundwork of all their other dances, and what they value themselves most upon."

II could have wished, that one of these Siberian teachers had been present the other day, to have bestowed a lecture upon a friend of mine, who had been instructed to marshal his feet in a tolerably decent way; to move forward by advancing one before the other, and backward by sliding one behind another; in short, he had attained some proficiency in what Dr. South styles, "that whimsical manner of shaking the legs, called dancing;" when, all at once, holding up his hands in an angle of forty-five degrees, with a countenance full of ineffable distress, and a most lamentable accent, he exclaimed to the master, 66 But, sir, what shall I do with these?".

Nor is the complaint of my friend at all singular. For the truth is, (and why should I dissemble it?) that since we have left off to put our arms to their due and proper use of fore-legs, they are ever in the way, and we know not what upon earth to do with them. Some let them dangle, at will,

in a perpendicular line parallel with their sides; some fold them across their bosoms, to look free and easy; some stick them a-kimbo, in defiance; some are continually moving them up and down, and throwing them about, so as to be at variance with their legs, and every other part of their bodies; as was the case with Dr. Johnson, when lord Chesterfield had like to have fallen into a deliquium by looking at him, and could consider the author of the English dictionary in no other light than that of an ill-taught posture-master. Some thrust their hands, as far as they can, into their breeches pockets. This last is a bad habit enough; because they who find nothing in their own pockets, (which, perhaps, pretty generally happens) may be tempted to try what they can find in those of others. While fore-legs were in fashion, the limbs, which are now the cause of so much embarrassment to us, had full employment: it might be said, "Every man his own horse:" and when one considers the present extravagant price of horses, one is induced on this account also to wish that it had still continued to be so.

As I am upon the subject of the reformations made in our persons, I cannot help mentioning a little dab of one, effected in an age so distant, that no system of chronology within my knowledge has marked the æra, much as it deserves to have been marked. The period is altogether unknown, when our nature was first despoiled of an appendage equally useful and ornamental-I mean a tail; for with an eminently learned philosopher of North Britain, I am most firmly persuaded, that it was originally a part of our constitution; and that, in

the eye of superior beings, man, when he lost that, lost much of his dignity. If a conjecture might be indulged upon the subject, (and, alas! what but conjectures can we indulge?) I should be inclined to suppose, that the defalcation, now under consideration, was coæval with the change of posture discussed above, No sooner had man unadvisedly mounted on two, but his tail dropped off; or rather, perhaps, in the confusion occasioned by the change, it hitched in a wrong place, and became suspended from his head. But how very easy would it be, when the books are open, to make a transfer, and restore it to its proper situation? That very respectable person, whom Swift humorously describes, as" lately come to town, and never seen before by any body," has been known, upon some occasions, to have appeared in a tie-wig; which, doubtless, was his full dress, for balls and other public assemblies. But by way of light and airy morning deshabille, no one can doubt of his looking admirably well in a queue.

I am sensible this is a topic which requires to be treated with the utmost caution and delicacy; and, therefore, feeling the ground to tremble under me, I shall not venture to advance farther upon it; but from the disposition prevalent among us to copy the manners of creatures so much our inferiors, I shall conclude by encouraging my readers to hope the time cannot be very far distant, when we shall all have our tails again, and once more go upon all four.

Z.

BISHOP HORNE,