comely appearance. The last mentioned class of females, I take it for granted, have been but lately caught, and still retain strong traits of their original savage propensities.

The most flagrant and inexcusable fault, however, which I find in these lovely savages, is the shameless and abandoned exposure of their persons. Wilt thou not suspect me of exaggeration when I affirm-wilt thou not blush for them, most discreet Mussulman, when I declare to thee, that they are so lost to all sense of modesty as to expose the whole of their faces, from their forehead to the chin, and they even go abroad with their hands uncovered! Monstrous indelicacy!

But what I am going to disclose will, doubtless, appear to thee still more incredible. Though I cannot forbear paying a tribute of admiration to the beautiful faces of these infidels, yet I must give it as my firm opinion that their persons are preposterously unseemly. In vain did I look around me, on my first landing, for those divine forms of redundant proportions which answer to the true standard of Eastern beauty. Not a single fat fair one could I behold among the multitudes that thronged the streets; the females that passed in review before me, tripping sportively along, resembled a procession of shadows return

ing to their graves at the crowing of the cock.

This meagreness I first ascribed to their excessive volubility; for I have seen it somewhere advanced by a learned doctor, that the sex were endowed with a peculiar activity of tongue, in order that they might practice talking, as a healthful exercise necessary to their confined and sedentary mode of life. This exercise, it was natural to suppose, would be carried to great excess in a logocracy. "Too true," thought I; "they have converted, what was undoubtedly meant as a beneficent gift into a noxious habit that steals the flesh from their bones and the rose from their cheeks-they absolutely talk themselves thin!" Judge, then, of my surprise when I was assured, not long since, that this meagreness was considered the perfection of personal beauty, and that many a lady starved herself, with all the obstinate perserverance of a pious dervise-into a fine figure! Nay, more," said my informer, they will often sacrifice their healths in this eager pursuit of skeleton beauty, and drink vinegar, eat pickles, and smoke tobacco to keep themselves within the scanty outlines of the fashions." Faugh! Allah preserve me from such beauties, who contaminate their pure blood with the noxious recipes-who impiously

sacrifice the best gifts of Heaven, to a preposterous and mistaken vanity! Ere long I shall not be surprised to see them scarring their faces like the negroes of Congo, flattening their noses in imitation of the Hottentots, or, like the barbarians of Ab-al Timar, distorting their lips and ears out of all natural dimensions. Since I received this information, I cannot contemplate a fine figure without thinking of a vinegar cruet; nor look at a dashing belle without fancying her a pot of pickled cucumbers! What a difference, my friend, between these shades and the plump beauties of Tripoli -what a contrast between an infidel fair one and my favorite wife, Fatima, whom I bought by the hundred weight, and had trundled home in a wheelbarrow !

I am promised

But enough for the present. a faithful account of the arcana of a lady's toilette-a complete initiation into the arts, mysteries, spells, and potions-in short, the whole chemical process by which she reduces herself down to the most fashionable standard of insignificance; together with specimens of the strait-waistcoats, the lacings, the bandages, and the various ingenious instruments with which she puts nature to the rack, and tortures herself into a proper figure to be admired.

Farewell, thou sweetest of slave-drivers!

The echoes that repeat to a lover's ear the song of his mistress are not more soothing than tidings from those we love. Let thy answer to my letters be speedy; and never, I pray thee, for a moment, cease to watch over the prosperity of my house and the welfare of my beloved wives. Let them want for nothing, my friend ; but feed them plentifully on honey, boiled rice, and water-gruel; so that when I return to the blessed land of my fathers, if that can ever be, I may find them improved in size and loveliness, and sleek as the graceful elephants that range the green valley of Abimar.

Ever thine,

MUSTAPHA.

No. XIX.—Thursday, December

Η

31, 1807.

FROM MY ELBOW-CHAIR.

AVING returned to town, and once more formally taken possession of my elbow-chair, it behooves me to dis

card the rural feelings, and the rural sentiments, in which I have for some time past indulged, and devote myself more exclusively to the edification of the town. As I feel at this moment a chivalric spark of gallantry playing around my heart, and one of those dulcet emotions of cordiality which an old bachelor will sometimes entertain toward the divine sex, I am determined to gratify the sentiment for once, and devote this number exclusively to the ladies. I would not, however, have our fair readers imagine that we wish to flatter ourselves into their good graces. Devoutly as we adore them !-and what true cavalier does not?-and heartily as we desire