tain persons from Monmouth-street and Long-lane, who by the strength of their arms, and loudness of their throats, draw off the regard of all passengers from your said petitioners; from which violence they are distinguished by the name of 'The Worriers.' "That while your petitioners stand ready to receive passengers with a submissive bow, and repeat with a gentle voice, Ladies, what do you want? pray look in here;' the worriers reach out their hands at pistol-shot, and seize the customers at arms' length.

make several young men in France as wise as himself, and is therefore taken up at present in establishing a nursery of statesmen.

Some private letters add. that there will also be erected a seminary of petticoat politicians, who are to be brought up at the feet of Madame de Maintenon, and to be dispatched into foreign courts upon any emergencies of state: but as the news of this last project has not been yet confirmed, I shall take no further notice of it.

Several of my readers may doubtless remember that upon the conclusion of the last war, which had been carried on so successfully by the enemy, their generals were many of them transformed into ambassadors; but the conduct of those who have com

"And your Petitioners," &c. The petition of the New-exchange, concerning the arts of buying and selling, and particularly valuing goods, by the complexion of the seller, will

be considered on another occasion.-T.

No. 305.] TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1711-12.

Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis
Tempus eget.
VIRG. Æn. ii. 521

These times want other aids.-DRYDEN.

OUR late newspapers being full of the project now on foot in the court of France for establishing a political academy, and I myself having received letters from several virtuosos among my foreign correspondents, which give some light into that affair, I intend to make it the subject of this day's speculation. A general account of this project may be met with in the Daily Courant of last Friday, in the following words, translated from the Gazette of Amsterdam:Paris, February 12. "It is confirmed, that the King has resolved to establish a new academy for politics, of which the Marquis de Torcy, minister and secretary of state, is to be protector. Six academicians are to be chosen, endowed with proper talents, for beginning to form this academy, into which no person is to be admitted under twenty-five years of age: they must likewise have each an estate of two thousand livres a year, either in possession, or to come to them by inheritance. The King will allow to each a pension of a thousand livres. They are likewise to have able masters to teach them the necessary sciences, and to instruct them in all the treaties of peace, alliance, and others, which have been made in several ages past. These members are to meet twice a week at the Louvre. From this seminary are to be chosen secretaries to embassies, who by degrees may advance to higher employments." Cardinal Richelieu's politics made France the terror of Europe. The statesmen who have appeared in that nation of late years have, on the contrary, rendered it either the pity or contempt of its neighbours. The cardinal erected that famous academy which has carried all the parts of polite learning to the greatest height. His chief design in that institution was to divert the men of genius from meddling with politics, a province in which he did not care to have any one else interfere with him. On the contrary, the Marquis de Torcy seems resolved to

little honour and advantage to their great monarch, that he is resolved to trust his affairs no longer in the hands of those military gentlemen.

The regulations of this new academy very much deserve our attention. The students are to have in possession or reversion, an estate of two thousand French livres per annum, which, as the present exchange runs, will amount to at least one hundred and twenty-six pounds English. This, with the royal allowance of a thousand livres, will enable them to find themselves in coffee and snuff; not to mention newspapers, pens and ink, wax and wafers, with the like necessaries for politicians.

A man must be at least five-and-twenty before he can be initiated into the mysteries of this academy, though there is no question but many grave persons of a much more advanced age, who have been constant readers of the Paris Gazette, will be glad to begin the world anew, and enter themselves upon this list of politicians.

The society of these hopeful young gentlemen is to be under the direction of six professors, who, it seems, are to be speculative statesmen, and drawn out of the body of the royal academy. These six wise masters, according to my private letters, are to have the following parts allotted to them.

The first is to instruct the students in state legerdemain; as how to take off the impression of a seal, to split a wafer, to open a letter, to fold it up again, with other the like ingenious feats of dexterity and art. When the students have accomplished themselves in this part of their profession, they are to be delivered into the hands of their second instructor, who is a kind of posture-master.

This artist is to teach them how to nod judiciously, to shrug up their shoulders in a dubious case, to connive with either eye, and, in a word, the whole practice of political grimace.

The third is a sort of language-master, who is to instruct them in a style proper for a minister in his ordinary discourse. And to the end that this college of statesmen may be thoroughly practised in the political style, they are to make use of it in their common conversations, before they are employed either in foreign or domestic affairs. If one of them asks another what o'clock it is, the other is to answer him indirectly, and, if possible, to turn off the question. If he is desired to change a louis d'or, he must beg time to consider of it. If it be inquired of him whether the King is at Versailles or Marly, he must answer in a whisper. If he be asked the news of the last Gazette, or the subject of a proclamation, he is to reply that he has not yet read it; or if he does not care for explaining himself so far, he needs only draw up his brow in wrinkles, or elevate the left shoulder.

The fourth professor is to teach the whole art of political characters and hieroglyphics; and to the end that they may be perfect also in this practice, they are not to send a note to one another (though it be but to borrow a Tacitus or a Machiavel) which is not written in cipher.

Their fifth professor, it is thought, will be chosen out of the society of Jesuits, and is to be well read in the controversies of probable doctrines, mental reservation, and the rights of princes. This learned man is to instruct them in the grammar, syntax, and construing part of Treaty Latin; how to distinguish between the spirit and the letter, and likewise demonstrate how the same form of words may lay an obligation upon any prince in Europe, different from that which it lays upon his most Christian Majesty. He is likewise to teach them the art of finding flaws, loop-holes, and evasions in the most solemn compacts, and particularly a great rabbinical secret, revived of late years by the fraternity of Jesuits, namely, that contradictory interpretations of the same article may both of them be true and valid.

When our statesmen are sufficiently improved by these several instructors, they are to receive their last polishing from one who is to act among them as master of the ceremonies. This gentleman is to give them lectures upon the important points of the elbowchair and the stair-head, to instruct them in the different situations of the right hand, and to furnish them with bows and inclinations of all sizes, measures, and proportions. In short, this professor is to give the society their stiffening, and infuse into their manners that beautiful political starch, which may qualify them for levees, conferences, visits, and make them shine in what vulgar minds are apt to look upon as trifles.

I have not yet heard any further particulars, which are to be observed in this society of unfledged statesmen; but I must confess, had I a son of five-andtwenty, that should take it into his head at that age to set up for a politician, I think I should go near to disinherit him for a blockhead. Besides, I should be apprehensive lest the same arts which are to enable him to negotiate between potentates, might a little infect his ordinary behaviour between man and There is no question but these young Maehiavels will in a little time turn their college upside down with plots and stratagems, and lay as many schemes to circumvent one another in a frog or a salad, as they may hereafter put in practice to overreach a neighbouring prince or state.

man.

We are told that the Spartans, though they punished theft in the young men when it was discovered, looked upon it as honourable if it succeeded. Provided the conveyance was clean and unsuspected, a youth might afterwards boast of it. This, say the historians, was to keep them sharp, and to hinder them from being imposed upon, either in their public or private negotiations. Whether any such relaxations of morality, such little jeur d'esprit, ought not to be allowed in this intended seminary of politicians, I shall leave to the wisdom of their founder. In the mean time, we have fair warning given us by this doughty body of statesmen; and as Sylla saw many Mariuses in Cæsar, so I think we may discover many Torcys in this college of academicians. Whatever we think of ourselves, I am afraid neither our Smyrna nor St. James's will be a match for it. Our coffee-houses are, indeed, very good institutions; but whether or no these our British schools of politics may furnish out as able envoys and secretaries as an academy that is set apart for that purpose,

will deserve our serious consideration, especially if we remember that our country is more famous for producing men of integrity than statesmen; and that, on the contrary, French truth and British policy make a conspicuous figure in nothing: as the Earl of Rochester has very well observed in his admirable poem upon that barren subject.—L.

No. 306.] WEDNESDAY, FEB. 20, 1711-12.
Quæ forma. ut se tibi semper
Imputet?Juv. Sat. vi. 177.

What beauty, or what chastity, can bear
So great a price, if stately and severe
She still insults ?-DRYDEN.

"MR. SPECTATOR,

"I WRITE this to communicate to you a misfortune which frequently happens, and therefore deserves a consolatory discourse on the subject. I was within this half-year in the possession of as much beauty and as many lovers as any young lady in England. But my admirers have left me, and I cannot complain of their behaviour. I have within that time had the small-pox: and this face, which (according to many amorous epistles which I have by me) was the seat of all that is beautiful in woman, is now disfigured with scars. It goes to the very soul of me to speak what I really think of my face; and though I think I did not over-rate my beauty while I had it, it has extremely advanced in its value with me, now it is lost. There is one circum stance which makes my case very particular; the ugliest fellow that ever pretended to me, was and is most in my favour, and he treats me at present the most unreasonably. If you could make him return an obligation which he owes me, in liking a person that is not amiable.-But there is, I fear, no possibility of making passion move by the rules of reason and gratitude. But say what you can to one who has survived herself, and knows not how to act in a new being. My lovers are at the feet of my rivals, my rivals are every day bewailing me, and I cannot enjoy what I am, by reason of the distracting reflection upon what I was. Consider the woman I was did not die of old age, but I was taken off in the prime of youth, and according to the course of nature may have forty years after-life to come. have nothing of myself left which I like, but that

"I am, Sir, your most humble Servant,
"PARTHENISSA."

I

When Louis of France had lost the battle of Ramilies, the addresses to him at that time were full of his fortitude, and they turned his misfortune to his glory; in that, during his prosperity, he could never have manifested his heroic constancy under distresses, and so the world had lost the most eminent part of his character. Parthenissa's condition gives her the same opportunity: and to resign conquests is a task as difficult in a beauty as a hero. In the very entrance upon this work she must burn all her love-letters; or since she is so candid as not to call her lovers, who follow ber no longer, unfaithful, it would be a very good leginning of a new life from that of a beauty, to end them back to those who writ them, with this honest inscription, "Articles of a marriage treaty broken off by the smallpox." I have known but one instance where a matter of this kind went on after a like misfortune, where the lady, who was a woman of spirit, writ this billet to her lover :

"I have seen a book written by Juan Huartes, a Spanish physician, entitled Examen de Ingenios, wherein he lays it down as one of his first positions, that nothing but nature can qualify a man for learning; and that without a proper temperament for the particular art or science which he studies, his utmost pains and application, assisted by the ablest masters, will be to no purpose.

"He illustrates this by the example of Tully's son Marcus.

"Cicero, in order to accomplish his son in that sort of learning which he designed him for, sent him to Athens, the most celebrated academy at that time in the world, and where a vast concourse, out of the most polite nations, could not but furnish the young gentleman with a multitude of great examples and accidents that might insensibly have instructed him in his designed studies. He placed him under the care of Cratippus, who was one of the greatest philosophers of the age, and as if all the books which were at that time written had not been sufficient for his use, he composed others on purpose for him notwithstanding all this, history informs us that Marcus proved a mere blockhead, and that nature (who, it seems, was even with the son for her prodigality to the father) rendered him incapable of improving by all the rules of eloquence, the precepts of philosophy, his own endeavours, and the most refined conversation in Athens. This author therefore proposes, that there should be certain triers or examiners appointed by the state, to inspect the genius of every particular boy, and to allot him the part that is most suitable to his natural talents.

:

"Plato in one of his dialogues tells us, that Socrates, who was the son of a midwife, used to say, that as his mother, though she was very skilful in her profession, could not deliver a woman unless she was first with child, so neither could he himself raise knowledge out of a mind where nature had not planted it.

Accordingly, the method this philosopher took, of instructing his scholars by several interrogatories or questions, was only helping the birth, and bringing their own thoughts to light.

"The Spanish doctor above mentioned, as his speculations grew more refined, asserts that every kind of wit has a particular science corresponding to it, and in which alone it can be truly excellent. As to those geniuses, which may seem to have an equal aptitude for several things, he regards them as so many unfinished pieces of nature wrought off

.in haste.

"There are indeed but very few to whom nature has been so unkind, that they are not capable of shining in some science or other. There is a certain bias towards knowledge in every mind, which may be strengthened and improved by proper applications.

"The story of Clavius is very well known. He was entered in a college of Jesuits, and after having

Christopher Clavius, á geometrician and astronomer, author of five volumes in folio, who died at Rome in 1612, aged 75

How different from this manner of education is that which prevails in our own country! where nothing is more usual than to see forty or fifty boys of several ages, tempers, and inclinations, ranged together in the same class, employed upon the same authors, and enjoined the same tasks! Whatever their natural genius may be, they are all to be made poets, historians, and orators alike. They are all obliged to have the same capacity, to bring in the same tale of verse, and to furnish out the same portion of prose. Every boy is bound to have as good a memory as the captain of the form. To be brief, instead of adapting studies to the particular genius of a youth, we expect from the young man, that he should adapt his genius to his studies. This, I must confess, is not so much to be imputed to the instructor as to the parent, who will never be brought to believe, that his son is not capable of performing as much as his neighbour's, and that he may not make him whatever he has a mind to.

"If the present age is more laudable than those which have gone before it in any single particular, it is in that generous care which several well-disposed persons have taken in the education of poor children: and as in these charity-schools there is no place left for the overweening fondness of a parent, the directors of them would make them beneficial to the public, if they considered the precept which I have been thus long inculcating. They might easily, by well examining the parts of those under their inspection, make a just distribution of them into proper classes and divisions, and allot to them this or that particular study, as their genius qualifies them for professions, trades, handicrafts, or service, by sea or land.

"How is this kind of regulation wanting in the three great professions!

"Dr. South, complaining of persons who took upon them holy orders, though altogether unqualified for the sacred function, says somewhere, that many a man runs his head against a pulpit, who might have done his country excellent service at the plough-tail.

"In like manner many a lawyer, who makes but an indifferent figure at the bar, might have made a very elegant waterman, and have shined at the Temple stairs, though he can get no business in the house.

"I have known a corn-cutter, who with a right education would have been an excellent physician. "To descend lower, are not our streets filled with sagacious draymen, and politicians in liveries? We have several tailors of six foot high, and meet with many a broad pair of shoulders that are thrown away upon a barber, when perhaps at the same time we see a pigmy porter reeling under a burden, who might have managed a needle with much dexterity, or have snapped his fingers with great ease to himself, and advantage to the public.

"The Spartans, though they acted with the spirit which I am here speaking of, carried it much fur. ther than what I propose. Among them it was not