ith that there are airy beings, who are
employed in the care and attendance of men, as nurses are to infants,
till they come to an age in which they can act of themselves. These
beings are usually called amongst men, guardian angels; and, Mr.
Bickerstaff, I am to acquaint you, that I am to be yours for some time
to come; it being our orders to vary our stations, and sometimes to have
one patient under our protection, and sometimes another, with a power of
assuming what shape we please, to ensnare our wards into their own good.
I have of late been upon such hard duty, and know you have so much work
for me, that I think fit to appear to you face to face, to desire you
would give me as little occasion for vigilance as you can." "Sir," said
I, "it will be a great instruction to me in my behaviour, if you please
to give me some account of your late employments, and what hardships or
satisfactions you have had in them, that I may govern myself
accordingly." He answered: "To give you an example of the drudgery we go
through, I will entertain you only with my three last stations: I was on
the 1st of April last, put to mortify a great beauty, with whom I was a
week; from her I went to a common swearer, and have been last with a
gamester. When I first came to my lady, I found my great work was to
guard well her eyes and ears; but her flatterers were so numerous, and
the house, after the modern way, so full of looking-glasses, that I
seldom had her safe but in her sleep. Whenever we went abroad, we were
surrounded by an army of enemies: when a well-made man appeared, he was
sure to have a side-glance of observation: if a disagreeable fellow, he
had a full face, out of mere inclination to conquests. But at the close
of the evening, on the sixth of the last month, my ward was sitting on a
couch, reading Ovid's 'Epistles'; and as she came to this line of Helen
to Paris,

_She half consents who silently denies;_[191]

entered Philander,[192] who is the most skilful of all men in an address
to women. He is arrived at the perfection of that art which gains them,
which is, to talk like a very miserable man, but look like a very happy
one. I saw Dictinna blush at his entrance, which gave me the alarm; but
he immediately said something so agreeable on her being at study, and
the novelty of finding a lady employed in so grave a manner, that he on
a sudden became very familiarly a man of no consequence; and in an
instant laid all her su