lion beholding her at a distance, immediately gave the deadly sign; at which the poor creature (methinks I see her still) miscarried in a fright before us all.  The lion seemed to be surprised as much as we, and gave her time to make her confession, ’That she was four months gone, by the foreman of her father’s shop, that this was her third big belly;’ and when her friends asked, why she would venture the trial? she said, ’Her nurse assured her, that a lion would never hurt a woman with child.’” Upon this I immediately waked, and could not help wishing, that the deputy-censors of my late institution were endued with the same instinct as these parish-lions were.

[Footnote 1: 
    “Manditque, trahitque
Molle pecus.”
                       Aeneid, ix. 340-341. 
“Devours and tears the peaceful flock.”
                                    [T.S.]]

[Footnote 2:  I.e. 1710-11. [T.S.]]

THE TATLER, NUMB. 298.[1]

Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes, Emollit mores. OVID.[2]

FROM SATURDAY MARCH 3.  TO TUESDAY MARCH 6. 1710.[3]

From my own Apartment in Channel-Row, March 5.

Those inferior duties of life which the French call les petites morales, or the smaller morals, are with us distinguished by the name of good manners,[4] or breeding.  This I look upon, in the general notion of it, to be a sort of artificial good sense, adapted to the meanest capacities, and introduced to make mankind easy in their commerce with each other.  Low and little understandings, without some rules of this kind, would be perpetually wandering into a thousand indecencies and irregularities in behaviour, and in their ordinary conversation fall into the same boisterous familiarities that one observes amongst them, when a debauch has quite taken away the use of their reason.  In other instances, it is odd to consider, that for want of common discretion the very end of good breeding is wholly perverted, and civility, intended to make us easy, is employed in laying chains and fetters upon us, in debarring us of our wishes, and in crossing our most reasonable desires and inclinations.  This abuse reigns chiefly in the country, as I found to my vexation, when I was last there, in a visit I made to a neighbour about two miles from my cousin.  As soon as I entered the parlour, they forced me into the great chair that stood close by a huge fire, and kept me there by force till I was almost stifled.  Then a boy came in great hurry to pull off my boots, which I in vain opposed, urging that I must return soon after dinner.  In the mean time the good lady whispered her eldest daughter, and slipped a key into her hand.  She returned instantly with a beer glass half full of aqua mirabilis and syrup of gillyflowers.  I took as much as I had a mind for; but Madam vowed I should drink it off, (for she