As little reason can I yet find to suspect them of stratagems and fraud. When I play at cards, they never take advantage of my mistakes, nor exact from me a rigorous observation of the game. Even Mr. Shuffle, a grave gentleman, who has daughters older than myself, plays with me so negligently, that I am sometimes inclined to believe he loses his money by design, and yet he is so fond of play, that he says, he will one day take me to his house in the country, that we may try by ourselves who can conquer. I have not yet promised him; but when the town grows a little empty, I shall think upon it, for I want some trinkets, like Letitia's, to my watch. I do not doubt my luck, but must study some means of amusing my relations.
For all these distinctions I find myself indebted to that beauty which I was never suffered to hear praised, and of which, therefore, I did not before know the full value. The concealment was certainly an intentional fraud, for my aunts have eyes like other people, and I am every day told, that nothing but blindness can escape the influence of my charms. Their whole account of that world which they pretend to know so well, has been only one fiction entangled with another; and though the modes of life oblige me to continue some appearances of respect, I cannot think that they, who have been so clearly detected in ignorance or imposture, have any right to the esteem, veneration, or obedience of,
Sir, Yours,
BELLARIA.
No. 192. SATURDAY, JANUARY 18, 1752
<gr> Genos ouoedeoen eioes Erwta<.S>>
<gr> Sofih, tropos pate<i?>tai<.S>>
<gr> Monon arguron Blepousin>.
<gr> 'Apoloito pr<w?>tos a<uoetooes
<gr> "O tooen arguron filhsas.
<gr> Dtaoe to<u?>ton ouoec aoedelfooes,
<gr> Dtaoe to<u?>ton ouoe toc<h?>es><.S>
<gr> Polemoi, fonoi dioe auoeton.
<gr> Tooe deoe Ce<i?>ton, ooellumesqa>
<gr> Dtaoe touoeton oi filo<u?>ntes>. ANACREON. <gr> ODAI,
M<s>. 5.
Vain the noblest birth would prove,
Nor worth or wit avail in love;
'Tis gold alone succeeds—by gold
The venal sex is bought and sold.
Accurs'd be he who first of yore
Discover'd the pernicious ore!
This sets a brother's heart on fire,
And arms the son against the sire;
And what, alas! is worse than all,
To this the lover owes his fall. F. LEWIS.
TO THE RAMBLER
SIR,
I AM the son of a gentleman, whose ancestors, for many ages, held the first rank in the country; till at last one of them, too desirous of popularity, set his house open, kept a table covered with continual profusion, and distributed his beef and ale to such as chose rather to live upon the folly of others, than their own labour, with such thoughtless liberality, that he left a third part of his estate mortgaged. His successor, a man of spirit, scorned to impair his dignity by parsimonious retrenchments, or to admit, by a sale of his lands, any participation of the rights of his manour; he therefore made another mortgage to pay the interest of the former, and pleased himself with the reflection, that his son would have the hereditary estate without the diminution of an acre.