The days of beauty are as the days of greatnefs, and fo long all the world are your adorers. I am one of those unambitious people, who will love you forty years hence when your eyes begin to twinkle in a retirement, and without the vanity which every one now will take to be thought Your, &c. LETTER X. THE more I examine my own mind, the more romantic I find myself. Methinks it is a noble spirit of contradiction to Fate and Fortune, not to give up thofe that are fnatched from us; but to follow them the more, the farther they are remov'd from the sense of it. Sure, Flattery never travelled fo far as three thousand miles; it is now only for Truth, which overtakes all things, to reach you at this diftance. 'Tis a generous piece of Popery, that purfues even those who are to be eternally abfent, into another world; whether you think it right or wrong, you'll own the very extravagance a fort of piety. I can't be fatisfied with ftrowing flowers over you, and barely honouring you as a thing loft: but must confider you as a glorious tho' remote being, and be sending addreffes addresses after you. You have carried away so much of me, that what remains is daily languishing and dying over my acquaintance here, and, I believe, in three or four months more I fhall think Aurat Bazara as good a place as Covent Garden. You may imagine this is raillery, but I am really fo far gone as to take pleafure in reveries of this kind. Let them fay I am romantic, fo is every one faid to be, that either admires a fine thing or does one. On my confcience, as the world goes, 'tis hardly worth any body's while to do one for the honour of it: Glory, the only pay of generous actions, is now as ill paid as other just debts; and neither Mrs. Macfarland for immolating her lover, not you, for conftancy to your lord, must ever hope to be compared to Lucretia or Portia. I write this in fome anger; for having, fince you went, frequented those people moft, who feemed most in your favour, I heard nothing that concerned you talked of fo often, as that you went away in a black full-bottom'd wig; which I did but affert to be a bob, and was anfwered, Love is blind. I am perfuaded your wig had never fuffered this criticism, but on the score of your head, and the two eyes that are in it. At Conftantinople. Pray Pray when you write to me, talk of yourself, there is nothing I fo much defire to hear of: talk a great deal of yourself; that she who I always thought talked beft, may speak upon the beft fubject. The fhrines and reliques you tell me of, no way engage my curiofity; I had ten times rather go on pilgrimage to fee one such face as yours, than both St. John Baptift's heads. I wish (fince you are grown fo covetous of golden things) you had not only all the fine ftatues you talk of, but even the golden image which Nebuchadnezzar fet up, provided you. were to travel no farther than you could carry it. The court of Vienna is very edifying. The ladies, with respect to their husbands, seem to understand that text literally, that commands to bear one another's burthens: but, I fancy, many a man there is like Iffachar, an ass between two burthens. I fhall look upon you no more as a Christian, when you pafs from that charitable court to the land of jealousy. I expect to hear an exact account how, and at what places, you leave one of the thirty-nine articles after another, as you approach to the lands of infidelity. Pray how far are you got already? amidst the pomp of a high mass, and the ravishing trills of a Sunday opera, what did you think of the doctrine and discipline of the church of England? had you from your heart a reverence for Stern hold hold and Hopkins? How did your Chriftian virtues hold out in fo long a voyage? you have, it seems (without paffing the bounds of Chriftendom) out-travelled the fin of fornication: in à little time you'll look upon fome others with more patience, than the ladies here are capable of. I reckon, you'll time it fo well as to make your religion last to the verge of Christendom, that you may discharge your Chaplain (as humanity requires) in a place where he may find fome business. I doubt not but I fhall be told (when I come to follow you through those countries) in how pretty a manner you accommodated yourself to the customs of the true Muflemen. They will tell me at what town you practifed to fit on the Sopha, at what village you learned to fold a Turbant, where you was bathed and anointed, and where you parted with you parted with your black full-bottom. How happy must it be for a gay young woman, to live in a country where it is a part of religious worship to be giddy-headed? I fhall hear at Belgrade how the good Bashaw received you with tears of joy, how he was charmed with your agreeable manner of pronouncing the words Allah and Muhamed; and how earneftly you joined with him in exhorting your friend to embrace that religion. But I think his objection was a juft one, that it was attended with fome circumstances under which he could not properly represent his Britannic Majesty. Lastly, I shall hear how, the first night you lay at Pera, you had a vifion of Mahomet's Paradife; and happily awaked without a foul, from which blessed moment the beautiful body was left at full liberty to perform all the agreeable functions it was made for. I fee I have done in this letter as I often have done in your company, talk'd myself into a good humour, when I begun in an ill one; the pleasure of addreffing to you makes me run on, and 'tis in your own power to shorten this letter as much as you please, by giving over when you please; fo I'll make it no longer by apologies. LETTER XI. OU have asked me news a hundred times You at the first word you spoke to me, which some would interpret as if you expected nothing better from my lips and truly 'tis not a fign two lovers are together, when they can be fo impertinent as to enquire what the world does? All I mean by this is, that either you or I are not in love with the other: I leave you to guess which of the two is that ftupid and infenfible creature, |