nay, he will say she gave the Woman he speaks to, the Preference in a Particular for which she her self is admired.  The pleasantest Confusion imaginable is made through the whole Town by my Friends indirect Offices; you shall have a Visit returned after half a Years Absence, and mutual Railing at each other every Day of that Time.  They meet with a thousand Lamentations for so long a Separation, each Party naming herself for the greater Delinquent, if the other can possibly be so good as to forgive her, which she has no Reason in the World, but from the Knowledge of her Goodness, to hope for.  Very often a whole Train of Railers of each Side tire their Horses in setting Matters right which they have said during the War between the Parties; and a whole Circle of Acquaintance are put into a thousand pleasing Passions and Sentiments, instead of the Pangs of Anger, Envy, Detraction, and Malice.

The worst Evil I ever observed this Man’s Falsehood occasion, has been that he turned Detraction into Flattery.  He is well skilled in the Manners of the World, and by over-looking what Men really are, he grounds his Artifices upon what they have a Mind to be.  Upon this Foundation, if two distant Friends are brought together, and the Cement seems to be weak, he never rests till he finds new Appearances to take off all Remains of Ill-will, and that by new Misunderstandings they are thoroughly reconciled.

  To the SPECTATOR.

  Devonshire, Nov. 14, 1711.

  SIR,

There arrived in this Neighbourhood two Days ago one of your gay Gentlemen of the Town, who being attended at his Entry with a Servant of his own, besides a Countryman he had taken up for a Guide, excited the Curiosity of the Village to learn whence and what he might be.  The Countryman (to whom they applied as most easy of Access) knew little more than that the Gentleman came from London to travel and see Fashions, and was, as he heard say, a Free-thinker:  What Religion that might be, he could not tell; and for his own Part, if they had not told him the Man was a Free-thinker, he should have guessed, by his way of talking, he was little better than a Heathen; excepting only that he had been a good Gentleman to him, and made him drunk twice in one Day, over and above what they had bargained for.

I do not look upon the Simplicity of this, and several odd Inquiries with which I shall not trouble you to be wondered at, much less can I think that our Youths of fine Wit, and enlarged Understandings, have any Reason to laugh.  There is no Necessity that every Squire in Great Britain should know what the Word Free-thinker stands for; but it were much to be wished, that they who value themselves upon that conceited Title were a little better instructed in what it ought to stand for; and that they would not perswade themselves a Man is really and truly a Free-thinker in any tolerable Sense, meerly by virtue