n
and penetrate the mysteries of Cytherea. And now, gentle reader, be ye
of the hardy sex, who dare the glories of the healthful chase and haunt
the peopled stream of gay delight--or of that lovely race, from
which alone man's earthly joys arise, the soft-skinned conquerors of
hearts--be ye prudes or stoics, chaste as virgin gold, or cold as alpine
snow--confess that I have strictly kept my promise here, nor strayed
aside in all my wanderings among the daughters of pleasure, to give
pain to worthy bosoms or offend the ear of nicest modesty. Pity for
the unfortunate, and respect for the feelings of the relatives of
the vicious and the dissolute, has prevented the insertion of many
anecdotes, with which Crony illustrated his sketches of character.
Enough, it is presumed, has been done to show vice in all its native
deformity, without wounding the ear by one immoral or indelicate
expression. For the unhappy fair ones who form the principal portraits,
it should be remembered they have been selected from those only who are
notorious, as belles of the first order, stars of fashion, and if not
something indebted to fortune they would have escaped enrolment here.
When beauty and poverty are allied, it must too often fall a victim to
the eager eye of roving lust; for, even to the titled ~55~~profligate,
beauty, when arrayed in a simple garb of spotless chastity, seems

"----Fairer she
In innocence and homespun vestments spread,
Than if cerulean sapphires at her ears
Shone pendent, or a precious diamond cross
Heaved gently on her panting bosom white.

But let the frail remember, that the allurements of wealth and the
blandishments of equipage fall off with possession and satiety; to the
force of novelty succeeds the baseness of desertion. For a short time,
the fallen one is fed like the silk-worm upon the fragrant mulberry
leaf, and when she has spun her yellow web of silken attraction, sinks
into decay, a common chrysalis, shakes her trembling and emaciated wings
in hopeless agony, and then flutters and droops, till death steps in
and relieves her from an accumulation of miseries, ere yet the transient
summer of youth has passed over her devoted head.

Bernard Blackmantle.

[Illustration: page055]

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LAUGHTER;

OR, MR PUNCH IN ALL HIS GLORY.

Thoughts on the Philosophy of Laughter--Bernard Blackmantle
in Search of a Wife--First Visit to t