He was going on, when Sir ANDREW FREEPORT took him up short, and told him, That the Papers he hinted at had done great Good in the City, and that all their Wives and Daughters were the better for them:  And further added, That the whole City thought themselves very much obliged to me for declaring my generous Intentions to scourge Vice and Folly as they appear in a Multitude, without condescending to be a Publisher of particular Intrigues and Cuckoldoms.  In short, says Sir ANDREW, if you avoid that foolish beaten Road of falling upon Aldermen and Citizens, and employ your Pen upon the Vanity and Luxury of Courts, your Paper must needs be of general Use.

Upon this my Friend the TEMPLAR told Sir ANDREW, That he wondered to hear a Man of his Sense talk after that Manner; that the City had always been the Province for Satyr; and that the Wits of King Charles’s Time jested upon nothing else during his whole Reign.  He then shewed, by the Examples of Horace, Juvenal, Boileau, and the best Writers of every Age, that the Follies of the Stage and Court had never been accounted too sacred for Ridicule, how great so-ever the Persons might be that patronized them.  But after all, says he, I think your Raillery has made too great an Excursion, in attacking several Persons of the Inns of Court; and I do not believe you can shew me any Precedent for your Behaviour in that Particular.

My good Friend Sir ROGER DE COVERL[E]Y, who had said nothing all this while, began his Speech with a Pish! and told us.  That he wondered to see so many Men of Sense so very serious upon Fooleries.  Let our good Friend, says he, attack every one that deserves it:  I would only advise you, Mr. SPECTATOR, applying himself to me, to take Care how you meddle with Country Squires:  They are the Ornaments of the English Nation; Men of good Heads and sound Bodies! and let me tell you, some of them take it ill of you that you mention Fox-hunters with so little Respect.

Captain SENTRY spoke very sparingly on this Occasion.  What he said was only to commend my Prudence in not touching upon the Army, and advised me to continue to act discreetly in that Point.

By this Time I found every subject of my Speculations was taken away from me by one or other of the Club; and began to think my self in the Condition of the good Man that had one Wife who took a Dislike to his grey Hairs, and another to his black, till by their picking out what each of them had an Aversion to, they left his Head altogether bald and naked.

While I was thus musing with my self, my worthy Friend the Clergy-man, who, very luckily for me, was at the Club that Night, undertook my Cause.  He told us, That he wondered any Order of Persons should think themselves too considerable to be advis’d:  That it was not Quality, but Innocence which exempted Men from Reproof; That Vice and Folly ought to be attacked where-ever they could be met with, and especially