house.”  Both smiled; for by-the bye, there’s no carrying a metaphor too far, when a lady’s charms are spoken of.  Somebody, I think, has called a fine woman dancing, a brandished torch of beauty.[340] These rivals moved with such an agreeable freedom, that you would believe their gesture was the necessary effect of the music, and not the product of skill and practice.  Now Clidamira came on with a crowd of graces, and demanded my judgment with so sweet an air—­and she had no sooner carried it, but Damia made her utterly forgot by a gentle sinking, and a rigadoon step.[341] The contest held a full half-hour; and I protest, I saw no manner of difference in their perfections, till they came up together, and expected my sentence.  “Look ye, ladies,” said I, “I see no difference in the least in your performance; but you Clidamira seem to be so well satisfied that I shall determine for you, that I must give it to Damia, who stands with so much diffidence and fear, after showing an equal merit to what she pretends to.  Therefore, Clidamira, you are a ‘pretty’; but, Damia, you are a ‘very pretty’ lady.  For,” said I, “beauty loses its force, if not accompanied with modesty.  She that has a humble opinion of herself, will have everybody’s applause, because she does not expect it; while the vain creature loses approbation through too great a sense of deserving it.”

From my own Apartment, June 27.

Being of a very spare and hective constitution, I am forced to make frequent journeys of a mile or two for fresh air; and indeed by this last, which was no further than the village of Chelsea, I am farther convinced of the necessity of travelling to know the world.  For as it is usual with young voyagers, as soon as they land upon a shore, to begin their accounts of the nature of the people, their soil, their government, their inclinations, and their passions, so really I fancied I could give you an immediate description of this village, from the Five Fields,[342] where the robbers lie in wait, to the coffee-house where the literati sit in council.  A great ancestor of ours by the mother’s side, Mr. Justice Overdo (whose history is written by Ben Jonson),[343] met with more enormities by walking incog. than he was capable of correcting; and found great mortifications in observing also persons of eminence, whom he before knew nothing of.  Thus it fared with me, even in a place so near the town as this.  When I came into the coffee-house,[344] I had not time to salute the company, before my eye was diverted by ten thousand gimcracks round the room and on the ceiling.  When my first astonishment was over, comes to me a sage of a thin and meagre countenance; which aspect made me doubt, whether reading or fretting had made it so philosophic:  but I very soon perceived him to be of that sect which the ancients call Gingivistae,[345] in our language, tooth-drawers.  I immediately had a respect for the man; for these practical philosophers