with honour, but I have as often refused them; as well knowing, that familiarity and marriage will make him, on some ill-natured occasion, call all I said in the arbour a theatrical action.  Besides that, I glory in contemning a man who had thoughts to my dishonour.  And if this method were the imitation of the whole sex, innocence would be the only dress of beauty; and all affectation by any other arts to please the eyes of men, would be banished to the stews for ever.  The conquest of passion gives ten times more happiness than we can reap from the gratification of it; and she that has got over such a one as mine, will stand among beaux and pretty fellows, with as much safety as in a summer’s day among grasshoppers and butterflies.

P.S.—­I have ten millions of things more against men, if I ever get the pen again.

St. James’s Coffee-house, June 24.

Our last advices from the Hague, dated the 28th instant, say, that on the 25th a squadron of Dutch men-of-war sailed out of the Texel to join Admiral Baker at Spithead.  The 26th was observed as a day of fasting and humiliation, to implore a blessing on the arms of the Allies this ensuing campaign.  Letters from Dresden are very particular in the account of the gallantry and magnificence in which that Court has appeared since the arrival of the King of Denmark.  No day has passed in which public shows have not been exhibited for his entertainment and diversion:  the last of that kind which is mentioned is a carousal, wherein many of the youth of the first quality, dressed in the most splendid manner, ran for the prize.  His Danish Majesty condescended to the same; but having observed that there was a design laid to throw it in his way, passed by without attempting to gain it.  The Court of Dresden was preparing to accompany his Danish Majesty to Potsdam, where the expectation of an interview of three kings had drawn together such multitudes of people, that many persons of distinction will be obliged to lie in tents as long as those Courts continue in that place.

[Footnote 335:  See No. 31.]

[Footnote 336:  See Sallust, “Bell.  Catal.” chap. 21.  The person here referred to as Sempronia is said to be the same as the Madam d’Epingle elsewhere alluded to.]

No. 34. [STEELE.

By ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Esq.

From Saturday, June 25, to Tuesday, June 28, 1709.

* * * * *

White’s Chocolate-house, June 25.

Having taken upon me to cure all the distempers which proceed from affections of the mind, I have laboured since I first kept this public stage, to do all the good I could possibly, and have perfected many cures at my own lodging; carefully avoiding the common method of mountebanks, to do their most eminent operations in sight of the people; but must be so just to my patients as to declare, they have testified under their hands their sense of my poor abilities, and the