] Here is the servant maid, with her new-purchased finery; and here is her new-fashioned stuffing. But, before she had finished at her garret dressing-table, a ring at the door called her down stairs to receive a letter from the postboy; turning back to go into the house again, the postboy's horse, being hungry, laid hold of the head-dress by way of forage. Never may the fair sex meet with a worse misfortune; but may the ladies, always hereafter, preserve their heads in good order. Amen.

   Horace, in describing a fine woman, makes use of two Latin words, which are,

    simplex munditiis

   . Now these two words cannot be properly translated;

   their best interpretation is that of a young Female Quaker. [

    Takes the head.

   ] Such is the effect of native neatness. Here is no bundle of hair to set her off, no jewels to adorn her, nor artificial complexion. Yet there is a certain odium which satire has dared to charge our English ladies with, which is, plastering the features with whitewash, or rubbing rouge or red upon their faces. [

    Gives the head off.

   ] Women of the town may lay on red, because, like pirates, the dexterity of their profession consists in their engaging under false colours; but, for the delicate, the inculpable part of the sex, to vermilion their faces, seems as if ladies would fish for lovers as men bait for mackerel, by hanging something red upon the hook; or that they imagined men to be of the bull or turkey-cock kind, that would fly at any thing scarlet. [

    Takes the head off.

   ] But such practitioners should remember that their faces are the works of their Creator.—If bad, how dare they mend it? If good, why mend it? Are they ashamed of his work, and proud of their own? If any such there are, let 'em lay by the art, and blush not to appear that which he blushes not to have made them. If any lady should be offended with the lecturer's daring to take such liberties with her sex, by

   way of atonement for that part of my behaviour which may appear culpable, I humbly beg leave to offer a nostrum, or recipe, to preserve the ladies' faces in perpetual bloom, and defend beauty from all assaults of time; and I dare venture to affirm, not all the paints, pomatums, or washes, can be of so much service to make the ladies look lovely as the application of this. [

 Prev. P 28/54 next