frequently to lead both themselves and their readers quite away from the book they were giving an account of. This, to be sure, as Pope said of his own Pastorals, though it is not criticism, is something better; but my modesty will not allow me to attempt it.

As a little poetry is thought necessary in works of this kind, I shall reserve my fifth department for the productions of the Female Muse. In this article I am excessively nice and delicate. My ear is naturally good, and my understanding as yet undebauched. At the same time I must confess, that what we find in the multitude of Miscellanies, which daily come abroad, is poetry highly seasoned and refined; and were I well assured of the sex of the authors, I would not hesitate to admit it into mine.— But as this is doubtful, I shall only propose it as an excellent model to all my correspondents.

My sixth and last department I intend to make the largest, and my endeavours shall not be wanting to make it the most useful. It is wholly to consist of Freethinking. A thousand times have I becn grieved to the soul, to think that that religion which emancipates the human mind from folly and prejudice, that religion which M. de Voltaire justly stiles the mild, the benevolent, the unpersecuting, should in a great measure be confined to the most worthless of the human race, whose lives discredit their prcfession; of whom many, though they have not been persecuted for their opinions, have yet suffered for their crimes. Human laws, ever unmerciful, and I may add unjust, to punish those for their actions, who have deserved rewards for the benevolence and freedom of their thoughts? In the sincerity of my heart, I hope none of the fair-sex will think rashly of my endeavours, since I wish to convert them to a new religion, merely that they may do honour to

it. Lest I should be suspected of vanity, which of all weaknesses I hate the most, I shall say nothing more than that I intend to give to each number an engraving of some woman who has distinguished, or who may distinguish, herself, either by her actions or her writings. I am, SIR,

Your humble servant,

PROJECTOR LITERARIUS.

N° 61. SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 1786.

In treating of the moral duties, which apply to different relations of life, men of humanity and feeling have not forgotten to mention those which are due from Masters to Servants. Nothing indeed can be more natural than the attachment and regard to which the faithful services of our domestics are entitled; the connection grows up, like all the other family-charities in early life, and is only extinguished by those corruptions which blunt the others, by pride, by folly, by dissipation, or by vice.

I hold it indeed as the sure sign of a mind not poised as it ought to be, if it it insensible to the pleasures of home, to the little joys and endearments of a family, to the affection of relations, to the fidelity of domestics. Next to being well with his own conscience, the friendship and attachment of a man's family and dependents seems to me one of the most comfortable circumstances in his lot. His situation with regard to either, forms that sort of bo

Bom comfort or disquiet that sticks close to him at all times and seasons, and which, though he may now and then forget it amidst the bustle of public, or the hurry of active life, will resume its place in his thoughts, and its permanent effects on his happiness, at every pause of ambition or of business.

In situations and with dispositions such as mine, there is perhaps less merit in feeling the benevolent attachment to which I allude, than in those of persons of more bustling lives and more dissipated attentions. To the Lounger, the home which receives him from the indifference of the circles in which he sometimes loiters his time, is naturally felt as a place of comfort and protection-and an elderly man-servant, whom I think I govern quietly and gently, but who perhaps quietly and gently governs me, I naturally regard as a tried and valuable friend. Few people will perhaps perfectly understand the feeling I experience when I knock at my door, after any oc casional absence, and hear the hurried step of Peter on the stairs; when I see the glad face with which he receives me, and the look of honest joy with which he pats Cæsar (a Pomeranian dog who attends me in all my excursions) on the head, as if to mark his kind reception of him too; when he tells me he knew my rap, makes his modest inquiries after my health, opens the door of my room which he has arranged for my reception, places my slippers before the fire, and draws my elbow-chair to its usual stand; I confess I sit down in it with a self-complacency which I am vain enough to think a bad man would be incapable of feeling.

It appears to me a very pernicious mistake, which I have sometimes seen parents guilty of in the education of their children, to encourage and incite in them a haughty and despotic behaviour to their servants; to teach them an early conceit of the differ

ence of their conditions; to accustom them to consider the services of their attendants as perfectly compensated by the wages they receive, and as unworthy of any return of kindness, attention or complacency. Something of this kind must indeed necessarily happen in the great and fluctuating establishments of fashionable life; but I am sorry to see it of late gaining ground in the country of Scotland, where, from particular circumstances, the virtues and fidelity of a great man's household were wont to be conspicuous, and exertions of friendship and magnanimity in the cause of a master used to be cited among the traditional memorabilia of most old families.

When I was last autumn at my friend Colonel Caustic's in the country, I saw there, on a visit to Miss Caustic, a young gentleman and his sister, children of a neighbour of the Colonel's, with whose appearance and manner I was peculiarly pleased.

The history of their parents,' said my friend, is somewhat particular, and I love to tell it, as I do every thing that is to the honour of our nature. Man is so poor a thing taken in the gross, that when I meet with an instance of nobleness in detail, I am fain to rest upon it long, and to recal it often; as, in coming hither over our barren hills, you would look with double delight on a spot of cultivation or of beauty.

The father of those young folks, whose looks you were struck with, was a gentleman of considerable domains and extensive influence on the northern frontier of our country. In his youth he lived, as it was then more the fashion than it is now, at the seat of his ancestors, surrounded with Gothic grandeur, and compassed with feudal followers and dependents, all of whom could trace their connection, at a period more or less remote, with the family of their chief. Every domestic in his house bore the family name,

VOL. XXXVII.

and looked on himself as in a certain degree partaking its dignity and sharing its fortunes. Of these, one was in a particular manner the favourite of his master. Albert Bane (the surname, you know, is generally lost in a name descriptive of the individual) had been his companion from his infancy. Of an age so much more advanced as to enable him to be a sort of tutor to his youthful lord, Albert had early taught him the rural exercises and rural amusements, in which he himself was eminently skilful; he had attended him in the course of his education at home, of his travels abroad, and was still the constant companion of his excursions and the associate of his sports.

On one of those latter occasions, a favourite dog of Albert's, whom he had trained himself, and of whose qualities he was proud, happened to mar the sport which his master had expected, who, irritated at the disappointment, and having his gun ready cocked in his hand, fired at the animal, which, however, in the hurry of resentment, he missed. Albert, to whom Oscar was as a child, remonstrated against the rashness of the deed, in a manner rather too warm for his master, ruffled as he was with accident, and conscious of his being in the wrong, to bear. In his passion he struck his faithful attendant; who suffered the indignity in silence, and retiring, rather in grief than in anger, left his native country. that very night; and when he reached the nearest town, enlisted with a recruiting party of a regiment then on foreign service. It was in the beginning of the war with France which broke out in 1744, rendered remarkable for the rebellion which the policy of the French court excited, in which some of the first families of the Highlands were unfortu¬ nately engaged. Among those who joined the stand, ard of Charles, was the master of Albert,