dependance on their friends now, and hereafter on their professional pursuits, would be kind enough not to make the matter public, but would allow them three months to make up the nine hundred pounds which he had lost. There was no alternative; they must raise the money somehow, or a prosecution in the courts of justice would inevitably ruin them for life. With much difficulty, and at exorbitant interest, for they were neither of them wealthy, they were enabled to return the gentleman's money, with a letter of thanks for his lenient and mild conduct. Twenty-five years after this happened, I heard one of the grinners say, (he was then a very respectable clergyman of the church of England,) that, for ten years, he was miserably straitened, as to circumstances, on account ôf paying the three hundred pounds. He told me this, with tears in his eyes, and heartily execrated his folly for having been concerned in such senseless mischief. His story confirmed me in what I had long thought to be the fact, and I am not now inclined to alter my opinion, "That a propensity to grinning

denoteth a perverted intellect, and a corrupted heart."

ESSAY XVII.

ON GRINNING.

SINCE I wrote my last essay on grinning, there hath come to my knowledge another instance of this horrible malady, which is too flagrant to be passed over in silence. A gentleman about thirty years of age, stout, muscular, and not of an unprepossessing appearance, save that he had the dullest and most leaden eye I ever beheld in a human or any other animated being; who was descended from a good stock, and had once been immersed in the sink of an apothecary's shop, though he soon threw away the gallipot, and broke the mortar, together with the pestle, on his accession to a plentiful landed estate, left him by an aunt, the relict of a noble peer; had an occasion to visit

London, in order to see his sister, who was confined, on account of ill health, in that metropolis. In town he met with an old acquaintance, a pompous, consequential, ignorant, mischievous brewer, an inhabitant of a petty provincial town in the southwestern part of England. With this manufacturer of small beer dined our hero, who is well known by the appellation of count, from his extravagant and eccentric mode of dressing, together with a most absurd and fantastical gait. During dinner, as the count was uttering, with his usual rapidity and abundance, small-talk and other nonsense, a notable device entered the head of the ingenious fabricator of ale, mine host of the mashing tub, "My dear count," quoth he,

you are a stranger in London, and I will introduce you to a very worthy gentleman, a friend of mine, who will treat you with all becoming attention." The count thanked him for his kindness, and agreed himself to carry a letter of introduction from the bottler of beer to the gentleman in question. On the count's arrival, he was shewn into an apartment, and the master of the house,

which was appropriated for the reception of mad people, read the epistle, couched in the following terms:

66 SIR,

"The unfortunate gentleman who presents to you this letter, is an intimate friend of mine, and unhappily afflicted with madness to an extraordinary degree. Although he has his lucid intervals, in which he talks very rationally of coats, and waistcoats, and leather breeches, and spurs, and powdering of hair; yet, at times, he is very violent and outrageous, particularly if coerced and flagellated, which, nevertheless, is the only method yet found of essential service to him. If you will be so good as to attempt his cure, you shall be thankfully paid for your trouble by your obliged, humble servant

66 BRYANT BROADFACE."

These delectable lines were no sooner read, than the worthy maniac-scourger grinned horribly a ghastly smile," as he surveyed the destined victim of his merciless barbarity. After some trifling discourse,

the count was shewn into an upper room, and gently given to understand that he was to have the satisfaction of changing his scarlet hunting garb for a strait waistcoat. The luckless battener on human misery had no sooner conveyed this pleasing information, than the count, among whose failings want of amazing personal strength, and pugilistic courage, were not to be found, entertained his host with such a spirited manual application to that part of the body denominated in vulgar language the bread-basket, that he was immediately prostrated on the floor. Summoned by the noise, rushed into the room two keepers, who seeing their master embracing his mother earth with great devotion, very sagaciously concluded, that the gemman in white leathers, and the bluespotted silk handkerchief round his neck, was as how a little gone by in his wits, and accordingly proceeded to lay violent hands. on him. But the count was no chicken, and no novice in the noble science of bruising, he very speedily sent the servants to bear their master company on the ground, and endeavoured to effect his own escape from