magination having fuller play
by irritating curiosity, they might think higher of her beauty than if
the whole of her face had been exposed. The sentiment is beautifully
expressed by Tasso, and it will not be difficult to remember it:--

"Non copre sue bellezze, e non l'espose."

I conclude by a poem, written in my youth, not only because the late Sir
Walter Scott once repeated some of the lines, from memory, to remind me
of it, and has preserved it in "The English Minstrelsy," but also as a
memorial of some fashions which have become extinct in my own days.

STANZAS

ADDRESSED TO LAURA, ENTREATING HER NOT TO PAINT, TO POWDER, OR TO GAME,
BUT TO RETREAT INTO THE COUNTRY.

AH, LAURA! quit the noisy town,
And FASHION'S persecuting reign:
Health wanders on the breezy down,
And Science on the silent plain.

How long from Art's reflected hues
Shalt thou a mimic charm receive?
Believe, my fair! the faithful muse,
They spoil the blush they cannot give.

Must ruthless art, with tortuous steel,
Thy artless locks of gold deface,
In serpent folds their charms conceal,
And spoil, at every touch, a grace.

Too sweet thy youth's enchanting bloom
To waste on midnight's sordid crews:
Let wrinkled age the night consume,
For age has but its hoards to lose.

Sacred to love and sweet repose,
Behold that trellis'd bower is nigh!
That bower the verdant walls enclose,
Safe from pursuing Scandal's eye.

There, as in every lock of gold
Some flower of pleasing hue I weave,
A goddess shall the muse behold,
And many a votive sigh shall heave.

So the rude Tartar's holy rite
A feeble MORTAL once array'd;
Then trembled in that mortal's sight,
And own'd DIVINE the power he MADE.[68]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 66: It consisted of three borders of lace of different depths,
set one above the other, and was called a _Fontange_, from its inventor,
Mademoiselle Font-Ange, a lady of the Court of Louis XIV.]

[Footnote 67: This was written in 1790.]

A SENATE OF JESUITS.

In a book entitled "Interets et Maximes des Princes et des Etats
Souverains, par M. le duc de Rohan; Cologne, 1666," an anecdote is
recorded concerning the Jesuits, which neither Puffendorf nor Vertot has
noticed in his history.

When Sigismond, king of Sweden, was elected king of Poland, he made a
treaty wit