Here the old man cut me short, and bade me make an end of my discourse, “for thou art,” said he, “a man of much wonder, and small experience, and delivered over to the spirit of folly and blindness. Thou hast thy eyes in thy head, and yet not brain enough to know either why they were given thee, or how to use them. Understand then that the office of the eye is to see, but ’tis the privilege of the soul to distinguish and choose, whereas you either do the contrary, or else nothing, which is worse. He that trusts his eyes, exposes his mind to a thousand torments and confusions: he shall take clouds for mountains, straight for crooked, one colour for another, by reason of an undue distance, or an indisposed medium. We are not able sometimes to say which way a river runs, till we throw in a twig or straw to find out the current. And what will you say now, if this prodigious beauty, your new mistress, prove as gross a cheat and imposture as any of the rest? She went to bed last night as ugly as a witch; and yet this morning she comes forth in your opinion as glorious as an angel. The truth of it is, she hires all by the day; and if you did but see this puppet taken to pieces, you would find her little else but paint and plaister. To begin her anatomy at the head. You must know that the hair she wears is borrowed of a tire-woman, for her own was blown off by an unlucky wind from the coast of Naples. Or if she has any left, she keeps it private, as a memorial of her antiquity. She is beholden to the pencil for her eyebrows and complexion. And upon the whole matter, she is but an old picture refreshed. But the wonder is, to see a picture, with life and motion; unless perchance she has got the necromancer’s receipt that made himself young again in his glass bottle. For all that you see of her that’s good, comes from distilled waters, essences, powders, and the like; and to see the washing of her face would fright the devil. She abounds in pomanders, sweet waters, Spanish pockets, perfumed drawers; and all little enough to qualify the poisonous whiffs she sends from her toes and arm-pits, which would otherwise out-stink ten thousand pole-cats. She cannot choose but kiss well, for her lips are perpetually bathed in oil and grease. And he that embraces her, shall find the better half of her the tailor’s, and only a stuffing of cotton and canvas, to supply the defects of her body. When she goes to bed, she puts off one half of her person with her shoes. What do ye think of your adored beauty now? or have your eyes betrayed ye? Well, well; confess your error and mend it; and know that (without more descant upon this woman) ’tis the design and glory of most of the sex to lead silly men captive. Nay take the best of them, and what with the trouble of getting them and the difficulty of pleasing them, he that comes off best will find himself a loser at the foot of the account. I could