compassed with a kind of horny substance, cut into a thousand little faces or mirrors, which were imper. ceptible to the naked eye, insomuch that the soul, if there had been any here, must have been always taken up in contemplating her own beanties.

We observed a large antrum or cavity in the sinciput, that was filled with ribbons, lace, and embroidery, wrought together in a most curious piece of network, the parts of which were likewise imperceptible to the naked eye. Another of these antrums or cavities was stuffed with invisible billet-doux, love-letters, pricked dances, and other trumpery of the same nature. In another we found a kind of powder, which set the whole company a sneezing, and by the scent discover=ed itself to be right Spanish. The several other cells were stored with commodities of the same kind, of which it would be tedious to give the reader an exact inventory.

There was a large cavity on eash side of the head, which I must not omit. That on the right side was filled with fictions, flatteries, and falsehoods, vows, promises, and protestations; that on the left with oaths and imprecations. There issued out a duct from each of these cells, which ran into the root of the tongue, where both joined together, and passed forward in one common duct to the tip of it. We discovered several little roads or canals running from the ear into the brain, and took particular care to trace them out through their several passages. One of them extended itself to a bundle of sonnets and little musical instruments. Others ended in several bladders, which were filled either with wind or froth. But the large canal entered into a great cavity of the skull, from whence there went another canal into the tongue. This great cavity was filled with a kind of spongy substance, which the French anatomists call galimatias, and the English nonsense.

The skins of the forehead were extremely tough and thick, and what very much surprised us, had not in

them any single blood-vessel that we were able to dis. cover, either with or without our glasses; from whence we concluded, that the party when alive must have been entirely deprived of the faculty of blushing.

The os cribriforme was exceedingly stuffed, and in some places damaged with snuff. We could not bat take notice in particular of that small muscle which is not often discovered in dissections, and draws the nose upwards, when it expresses the contempt which the owner of it has, upon seeing any thing he does not like, or hearing any thing he does not understand. I need not tell my learned reader, this is that muscle which performs the motion so often mentioned by the Latin poets, when they talk of a man's cocking his nose, or playing the rhinoceros.

We did not find any thing very remarkable in the eye, saving only, that the musculi amatorii, or as we may translate it into English, the ogling muscles, were very much worn and decayed with use; whereas on the contrary, the elevator, or the muscle which turns the eye towards Heaven, did not appear to have been used at all.

I have only mentioned in this dissection such new discoveries as we were able to make, and have not taken any notice of those parts which are to be met with in common heads. As for the skull, the face, and indeed the whole outward shape and figure of the head, we could not discover any difference from what we observe in the heads of other men. We were informed, that the person to whom this head belonged, had passed for a man above five and thirty years; during which time he eat and drank like other people, dressed well, talked loud, laughed frequently, and on particular occasions had acquitted himself tolerably at a ball or an assembly; to which one of the company added, that a certain knot of ladies took him for a wit. He was cut off in the flower of his age by the blow of a paring-shovel, having been sur.

prised by an eminent citizen, as he was tendering some civilities to his wife.

When we had thoroughly examined this head with all its apartments, and its several kinds of furniture, we put up the brain, such as it was, into its proper place, and laid it aside under a broad piece of scarlet cloth, in order to be prepared, and kept in a great repository of dissections; our operator telling us that the preparation would not be so difficult as that of another brain, for that be had observed several of the little pipes and tubes which ran through the brain were already filled with a kind of mercurial substance, which we looked upon to be true quicksilver.

L.

IDLENESS.

Libertas; quæ sera tamen resperit inertem.

VIRG.

Freedom, which came at length, tho' slow to come.
DRYDEN.

IDLENESS is so general a distemper, that I cannot but imagine a speculation on this subject will be of universal use. There is hardly any one person without some allay of it; and thousands besides myself spend more time in an idle uncertainty which to begin first of two affairs, than would have been sufficient to have ended them both. The occasion of this seems to be the want of some necessary employment, to put the spirits in motion, and awaken them out of their lethargy. If I had less leisure, I should have more; for I should then find my time distinguished into portions, some for business, and others for the indulging of pleasures: but now one face of indolence overspreads the whole, and I have no land-mark to direct myself by. Were one's time a little straitened by business, like water inclosed in its banks, it would have some

determined course; but unless it be put into some channel it has no current, but becomes a deluge without either use or motion.

When Scanderbeg prince of Epirus was dead, the Turks, who had but too often felt the force of his arm in the battles he had won from them, imagined that by wearing a piece of his bones near their heart, they should be animated with a vigour and force like to that which inspired him when living. As I am like to be but of little use whilst I live, I am resolved to do what good I can after my decease; and have accordingly ordered my bones to be disposed of in this manner for the good of my countrymen, who are troubled with too exorbitant a degree of fire. All fox-hunters upon wearing me, would in a short time be brought to endure their beds in a morning, and perhaps even quit them with regret at ten: instead of hurrying away to tease a poor animal, and run away from their own thoughts, a chair or a chariot would be thought the most desirable means of performing a remove from one place to another. I should be a cure for the unnatural desire of John Trott for dancing, and a specific to lessen the inclination Mrs. Fidget has to motion, and cause her always to give her approbation to the present place she is in. In fine, no Egyptian mummy was ever half so useful in physic, as I should be to these feverish constitutions, to repress the violent sallies of youth, and give each action its proper weight and repose.

I can stifle any violent inclination, and oppose a torrent of anger, or the solicitations of revenge, with suc

cess.

But indolence is a stream which flows slowly on, but yet undermines the foundation of every virtue. A vice of a more lively nature were a more desirable tyrant than this rust of the mind, which gives a tincture of its nature to every action of one's life. It were as little hazard to be lost in a storm, as to lie thus perpetually becalmed: and it is to no purpose to have within one the seeds of a thousand good quali

ties, if we want the vigour and resolution necessary for the exerting them. Death brings all persons back to an equality; and this image of it, this slumber of the mind, leaves no difference between the greatest genius and the meanest understanding: a faculty of doing things remarkably praiseworthy thus concealed, is of no more use to the owner, than a heap of gold to the man who dares not use it.

To-morrow is still the fatal time when all is to be rectified to-morrow comes, it goes, and still I please myself with the shadow, whilst I lose the reality; unmindful that the present time alone is ours, the future is yet unborn, and the past is dead, and can only live (as parents in their children) in the actions it has produced.

The time we live ought not to be computed by the number of years, but by the use that has been made of it: thus it is not the extent of ground, but the yearly rent which gives the value to the estate. Wretched and thoughtless creatures, in the only place where covetousness were a virtue we turn prodigals! nothing lies upon our hands with such uneasiness, nor has there been so many devices for any one thing, as to make it slide away imperceptibly and to no purpose. A shilling shall be hoarded up with care, whilst that which is above the price of an estate, is flung away with disregard and contempt. There is nothing now-a-days so much avoided, as a solicitous improvement of every part of time; 'tis a report must be shunned as one tenders the name of a wit and a fine genius, and as one fears the dreadful character of a laborious plodder: but notwithstanding this, the greatest wits any age has produced thought far otherwise: for who can think either Socrates or Demosthenes lost any reputation, by their continual pains both in overcoming the defects and improving the gifts of nature. All are acquainted with the labour and assiduity with which Tully acquired his eloquence. Seneca in his