burst into immoderate laughter at the awkward motions by which I expressed my misery, and my ridiculous attempt to run away from that which I could not but carry with me. They hooted after me till I was out of their sight: however, fear, pain, and confusion, still urging me forward with involuntary speed, I ran with such force between two pales that were not far enough asunder to admit my clog, that I left it with the remainder of my tail behind me. I then found myself in a farm yard; and fearing that I should be worried by the mastiff which I saw at a distance, I continued my flight; but some peasants who were at work in a neighbouring barn, perceiving that I ran without being pursued, that my eyes were inflamed, and that my mouth was covered with foam, imagined that I was mad, and knocked out my brains with a flail.

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Soon after I had quitted this maimed and persecuted carcass, I found myself under the wings of a bullfinch with three others that were just hatched. I now rejoiced in the hope of soaring beyond the reach of human barbarity, and becoming like my mother a denizen of the sky: but my mother, before I was perfectly fledged, was surprised in her nest by a schoolboy, who grasped her so hard, to prevent her escape, that she soon after died: he then took the nest with all that it contained, which he deposited in a basket, where I presently lost my three companions in misfortune, by change of food and unskilful management. I survived; and soon after I could feed myself, I was taken by my tyrant's mother when she went to pay her rent, as a present to her landlord's daughter, a young lady who was extremely beautiful, and in the eighteenth year of her age.

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My captivity now began to lose its terrors; I no longer dreaded the rude gripe of a boisterous

VOL. I.

D

urchin, whose fondness was scarce less dangerous than his resentment; who, in the zeal of his attachment to a new plaything, might neglect me till I perished with hunger; or who might wring off my neck, because he had some other use for the halfpenny which should procure me food: the confinement of a cage became habitual: I was placed near a pleasant window; I was constantly fed by one of the finest hands in the world; and I imagined, that I could suffer no misery under the patronage of smiles and graces.

"Such was my situation, when a young lady from London made an afternoon's visit to my mistress: she took an opportunity to caress me among her other favourites, which were a parrot, a monkey, and a lapdog; she chirped, and holding out her finger to me, I hopped upon it; she stroked me, put my head to her cheek, and to show my sensibility of her favours I began to sing: as soon as my song was over, she turned to my mistress, and told her, that the dear little creature might be made absolutely the sweetest bird in the world, only by putting out its eyes, and confining it in a less cage: to this horrid proposal my fair keeper agreed, upon being again assured that my song would be very greatly improved; and the next day performed herself the operation, as she had been directed, with the end of a hot knitting-needle. My condition was now more easily to be conceived than expressed: but I did not long suffer the mournful solitude of perpetual darkness; for a cat came one night into the room undiscovered, dragged me through the wires of the cage, and devoured me.

"I was not displeased to find myself once more at large; delivered from blindness and captivity, and still able to sport upon the breeze in the form of a cockchafer. But I had scarce entered this new

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scene of existence, when a gentleman, in whose garden I was feasting on one of the leaves of a cherrytree, caught me, and turning to his son, a boy who had just been put into his first breeches, Here, Tommy,' says he, is a bird for you.' The boy received me with a grin of horrid delight, and as he had been taught, immediately impaled me alive upon a corking pin, to which a piece of thread was fastened, and I was doomed to make my young master sport, by fluttering about in the agonies of death; and when I was quite exhausted, and could, no longer use my wings, he was bid to tread upon me, for that I was now good for nothing; a command with which he mercifully complied, and in a moment crushed me to atoms with his foot.

"From a cockchafer I transmigrated into an earthworm, and found myself at the bottom of a farmer's dunghill. Under this change of circumstances I comforted myself by considering, that if I did not now mount upon the wind, and transport myself from place to place with a swiftness almost equal to thought, yet I was not likely either to please or to offend mankind, both of which were equally fatal; and I hoped to spend my life in peace, by escaping the notice of the most cruel of all creatures.

But I did not long enjoy the comfort of these reflections. I was one morning disturbed by an unusual noise, and perceived the ground about me to shake. I immediately worked my way upward to discover the cause; and the moment I appeared above the surface, I was eagerly snatched up by a man who had stuck a dungfork into the ground, and moved it backward and forward to produce the effect that had now happened. I was put into a broken pan with many other associates in misfortune, and soon after disposed of to one of those

gentle swains who delight in angling. This person carried us the next morning to the brink of a river, where I presently saw him take out one of my companions, and whistling a tune, pass a barbed hook through the whole length of his body, entering it at the head and bringing it out at the tail. The wretched animal writhed itself on the bloody hook, in torture which cannot be conceived by man, nor felt by any creature that is not vital in every part. In this condition he was suspended in the water as a bait for fish, till he was, together with the hook on which he hung, swallowed by an eel. While I was beholding this dreadful spectacle, I made many reflections on the great inequality between the pleasure of catching the prey, and the anguish inflicted on the bait. But these reflections were presently after lost, in the same agonies of which I had been a spectator.

"You will not have room in this paper to relate all that I suffered from the thoughtless barbarity of mankind, in a cock, a lobster, and a pig: let it suffice to say, that I suffered the same kind of death with those who are broken upon the wheel, I was roasted alive before a slow fire, and was scourged to death with small cords, to gratify the wanton appetite of luxury, or contribute to the merriment of a rabble."

Thus far I had written as amanuensis to an invisible dictator; when my dream still continuing, I felt something tickle my wrist, and turning my eye from the paper to see what it was, I discovered a flea, which I immediately caught and killed, by putting it into the candle. At the same instant the Hea vanished, and a young lady of exquisite beauty stood before me. Thoughtless wretch," said she, "thou hast again changed the state of my existence, and exposed me to still greater calamities than

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any that I have yet suffered. As a flea I was thy monitor, and as a flea I might have escaped thy cruelty if I had not intended thy instruction. But now to be concealed is impossible, and it is therefore impossible to be safe. The eyes of desire are upon me, and to betray me to infamy and guilt will be the toil of perseverance and the study of reason. But though man is still my enemy, though he assails me with more violence and persists with more obstinacy, I have yet less power of resistance; there is a rebel in my own bosom who will labour to give me up, whose influence is perpetual, and perpetual influence is not easily surmounted. Publish, however, what I have communicated; if any man shall be reclaimed from a criminal inattention to the felicity of inferior beings, and restrained from inflicting pain by considering the effect of his actions, I have not suffered in vain. But as I am now exposed not only to accidental and casual evils, as I am not only in danger from the frolics of levity, but from the designs of cunning; to atone for the injury which thou hast done me, let the Adventurer warn the sex of every wile that is practised for their destruction; and deter men from the attempt, by displaying the aggravated guilt and shameless disingenuity of assuming an appearance of the most ardent and tender affection, only to overwhelm with unutterable distress the beauty whom love has made credulous, and innocence keeps unacquainted with suspicion."

While I listened to this address, my heart throbbed with impatience; and the effort that I made to reply, awaked me.