"Several that frequent divine service at St. Paul's, as well as myself, having with great satisfaction observed the good effect which your animadversion had on an excess in performance there;[156] it is requested, that you will take notice of a contrary fault, which is the unconcerned silence and the motionless postures of others who come thither. If this custom prevails, the congregation will resemble an audience at a play-house, or rather a dumb meeting of Quakers. Your censuring such church-mutes in the manner you think fit, may make these dissenters join with us, out of fear lest you should further animadvert upon their non-conformity. According as this succeeds, you shall hear from,
"Sir,
"Your most humble Servant,
"B. B."
"Mr. Bickerstaff,
"I was the other day in company with a gentleman, who, in reciting his own qualifications, concluded every period with these words, 'the best of any man in England.' Thus for example: he kept the best house of any man in England; he understood this, and that, and the other, the best of any man in England. How harsh and ungrateful soever this expression might sound to one of my nation, yet the gentleman was one whom it no ways became me to interrupt; but perhaps a new term put into his by-words (as they call a sentence a man particularly affects) may cure him. I therefore took a resolution to apply to you, who, I dare say, can easily persuade this gentleman (whom I cannot believe an enemy to the Union) to mend his phrase, and be hereafter the wisest of any man in Great Britain. I am,
"Sir,
"Your most humble Servant,
"Scoto-Britannus."
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Whereas Mr. Humphrey Trelooby, wearing his own hair, a pair of buck-skin breeches, a hunting-whip, with a new pair of spurs, has complained to the Censor, that on Thursday last he was defrauded of half-a-crown, under pretence of a duty to the sexton for seeing the Cathedral of St. Paul, London: it is hereby ordered, that none hereafter require above sixpence of any country gentleman under the age of twenty-five for that liberty; and that all which shall be received above the said sum of any person for beholding the inside of that sacred edifice, be forthwith paid to Mr. John Morphew for the use of Mr. Bickerstaff, under pain of further censure on the above-mentioned extortion.