their kine, where, while they live in a state little above prostitution, except indeed in name, they satisfy their avaricious views for their young stock. One fashionable apes another, even in his defects. I have heard a healthy brawny fellow, habited in the pink of the mode, declare his envy of a hobbling beau, equally high dressed, because he bore emaciated legs and a mealy visage, expressive of ill health from long dissipation, which threw over his gait a modish languor, exactly squaring with certain bizarre ideas of the most exquisite of fashion's masterpieces. Life, with the man of fashion, evaporates in essences and perfumes. Knowledge, except its outscourings, is the butt of all such, and reason has no place in their vocabulary. Natural impulses must be limited, and never transgress set forms and customary ordinances. Honesty, virtue, or talent, are of no avail in a circle of fashion, if the air of the ton be wanting it is well they have better supporters. Wit might be voted an agreeable accomplishment in a man of fashion from its rarity-we have no George Selwyns now; but in one whom Stultz or Weston had not clothed it would be declared a bore. The mental acquirements of the man of fashion are comprised in the smaller chitchat of the day; politics are above him, even if drawn from the skimmilk of some obscure newspaper-the Koran of fashion's disciples. He is learned in the racing-calendar, knows the state of the betting at Tattersal's; can speak the names of the figurantes at the Opera; makes a good leg; plays whist, only not as well as some maiden ladies; dances a quadrille; knows the slang of the club-rooms; dices with legitimate oaths; frequents the Fives Court for the improvement of his vocabulary; knows a dozen kept women of the town, and can drive a chariot tolerably. His acquirements are all copied; he has nothing original, though he may go farther than others in the beaten track. His tailors are his most benefited auditors, and they as usual scantily en poche. Rough and coarse on the coach-box, when in the drawing-room he is so delicately essenced, he looks as if he might be "brained with his lady's fan"-si il a en. Yet he leads a certain number of admirers even there, like the ignis fatuus of a marsh, into the maze of his own stagnation. Safe under the shelter of fashion's wing, he struts the favourite of the softer sex and the envy of his own-the B-1 of his circle. Walk the fashionable streets at four o'clock in the day, and mark the equipages that rattle along. One stops: the footman descends and thunders at a door-fashion is at work in another form. A morning call is to be made. The visitant mounts to the drawing-room floor; she enters, makes obeisance, and seats herself. Five minutes interchange of the veriest common-place succeeds, and the morning call is concluded. Strong professions of friendship and regard are made while the door of the room is opening, and reiterated invitations to visit, all which are mere moonshine-the parties hate each other! The chariot drives off; the same farce is repeated ten houses farther down the street. The visitor is disappointed. The visited does not choose to be at home, though she really is; a card is left, and the visitor hies to a third mansion, enters the room, and a conversation ensues, which is ever nearly in the same strain, and has the convenience of being easily comprehensible-mere parrot's-talk phrases of rote, full of friendly professions. The visitor again retires, and as the door of the room shuts upon her, Lady V. has just time to tell her "humble companion," that Mrs. is a frump, an odious woman-when a second knock announces a new call; the same scene is acted, and, mayhap, the new comer "is welcomed as the former"--by as friendly professions and as hollow a reality. Thus the butterflies of fashion, like monarchs, have few real friends, though they have the consolation left of reflecting, that they serve each other alike—à fourbe, fourbe et demi, and that all are equally destitute of what none can personify in good earnest. How heart-sickening is all this! how doubly valuable does it make sincerity and real friendship! How "stale, flat, and unprofitable" are these usages to him who reflects on the nobler destinies of man-of what he may be, of what he ought to be! of what he has been! How little, after all, of what is worthy the intellectual man prevails even in this refined age! Let those who are smitten with the frippery and glitter of the haute monde peep behind the thin veil drawn before its deformities, and then desire to be of it with "what appetite they may." Some urge in its defence that all these matters are well understood in modern intercourse; and that, therefore, there is no insincerity. But all cannot be comprehended, or who would thanklessly toil in a sickly pursuit, and "make pale their cheeks" at the midnight orgies of fashion, conscious of its folly? The truth is, that a few to whom it has become necessary from custom, at length see its emptiness; but, having been caught in its orbit, they are retained there in spite of themselves. Who that loved social intercourse and refined conversation, such as the French are famous for, but which our fashionables know little about, could enjoy an English rout?-they might go, but they would quit it in disgust. Yet there Fashion revels: "joyless and unendeared," it is true; but not the less glittering her sphere on that account to her disciples-not the less attractive to those whose notion of the highest human pleasure is to exhibit their gaily gilded trim Quick glancing to the sun. For The rout is the carnival of fashionable life, and is adapted to the meanest capacity in its ceremonies. It is a well-dressed mob, with much of a mob's practice in elbowing, shuffling, cramming, whispering, and idle confabulation. Yet how important is a rout! weeks the house of the receiver is in a course of preparation for it. Carpenters, painters, confectioners, chandlers, upholsterers, and heaven knows who, are placed in requisition. The newspapers are solicited to emblazon the fame of the donor, and raise the expectation of the guests to the loftiest pitch of excitement-" On Thursday next the Hon. Mrs. Ogle will entertain a large party of the first rank and distinction at her house in Sackville-street; all the beauty and fashion of the metropolis are invited." Those roguish newspapers, how they deal in byperbole!-all!-all the beauty and fashion of a city containing a million of souls is to be huddled into three rooms, the largest only forty feet by eighteen, the others scarcely half the size! The important day arrives; at ten at night Mrs. Ogle's house resembles Coventgarden Theatre at a royal bespeak. The Duke of Dunderhead's carriage-pole fractures Lady Betty Leatherhead's coach-pannel—the footmen curse each other most unchristianly-linkboys move about like banditti in the mud and smoke, with the light of their torches reflected on their haggard visages, in breechless expectation of a penny fee-ladies, at other times all timidity, dash in their carriages amid the hubbub, undismayed at the uproar, and with tumultuous bosoms hasten to the crowded scene, from the windows of which brilliant lights are displayed and sounds of music descend-within all is confusion, uproar,' delightful squeezing,' as the ladies have it, crowd, suffocation. Strangers are introduced to the lady of the mansion, who have not elbow-room to bow to her-the guests, unknown to each other, stare around, in hope of meeting an acquaintance to break the tedium of their peopled solitude-many a sweet damsel's "silver-tinselled feet" are rudely crushed by intruding toes, and many a lovely countenance obscured by the intervention of an unwieldy peeress's huge bulk, or the still more appalling convexities of a Dutch nabobess glittering with Eastern plunder. A circulation of guests is kept up: some, after remaining a half-hour, go away to a second display of the same kind at Lady Twirlabout's or Lord Doodle's; and others arrive who have already been both at her ladyship's and his lordship's parties. At length not one half remain, and a confined corner may be found about one in the morning to commence quadrilling—ennuyants still retire, and the number of "twinkling feet" increases. The dance is kept alive until the fifth or sixth hour, though it did not commence until after three hours' standing, jostling, and fatigue, had well nigh exhausted the powers of the more tender portion of the visitants. About six o'clock the remnant of company retire from sultry rooms to their cold carriages and the morning air, beauty's eternal foe, to doze on their feverish couches till an hour or two after the meridian of day. This is a rout, the maximum of enjoyment!-the elysium of the gaythe revel of fashion! Haply, for the first time, some lovely girl of eighteen from the healthful country-some cynosure of neighbouring eyes" at her father's mansion, has visited London, and in the slang term "come out" at this very entertainment-fresh in colour as the morning rose, having eyes that lighten with mild and modest radiance, a form like Psyche's, all animation, tempered by refined manners---a heart and disposition sincere, confiding, truth itself-hither she has come, to be initiated into a way of life that must reverse all her better habitudes. From this evening the languor of fashionable existence, slowly at first, but not the less sure, will begin to steal over her frame. Her vermeil beauty of cheek will fade into pallor, her limbs will lose their firmness and become flaccid, her simplicity and candour of manners will be exchanged for coquetry and art, every unsophisticated charm will be no more. In a season or two she will be the pale, artificial, languid victim of town dissipation. If the heat of apartments not a tenth part large enough for the company that enters them to breathe freely in, the want of accustomed sleep, the warmth of a London bed in certain seasons of the year, the rising not with the lark but the owl, wear not out life itself, still the countenance, it will too soon be said, is charming now no more; the bloom is fled, The lilies languid, and the roses dead. 66 Numerous are the victims offered upon the altar of Fashion-the Moloch of Britain, the devourer of her children. Consumption, in the Metro polis, at present snatches more victims than at any former period; and its prey are, for the most part, the young, the beautiful, and the gay! When late hours are proved to be so prejudicial to health, and we have so much time in the day for enjoyment, the evil might be remedied were it not that Fashion, like Comus, pertinaciously exclaims :-"What have we with day to do!" But, alas! one might as well Send our precepts to the Leviathan To come on shore as by the deductions of sober sense change a particle of the mode! Ere I conclude, I must mention the present fashion of numerous dinnerparties. What Babel confusion reigns over them! The ancients understood such things better, and built theatres for the crowd, but kept their houses open to their friends, who, they well knew, could be but few in number really worthy the name. Never less than the Graces, nor more than the Muses,' was their established rule. They loved social intercourse, and preferred seeing friends every day to feasting a mob once a-year. We cannot afford a plate or two for our friends daily, because we must give large dinner-parties at such and such times; and thus we starve our friendship to fatten our ostentation-" Out upon such half-faced fellowship!" Defend me from dinners in the fashion and routs à la mode! Give me the dance, merry from the heart-the conviviality of health and reason-the communion of grace and simplicity in pleasure-interest instead of indifference-sparkling wit instead of frivolity-innocent mirth of the heart in place of that which is faint and sickly on the lip Give me a look, give me a face, That strike mine eyes, but not mine heart. But every thing fashionable is constrained and servile: to be an adept, as Richelieu told Corneille, one must possess un esprit de suite, for Fashion takes her tone from the titled ones of the earth; your courtiers are always slaves of the mode; and in fashion the example of the greatest "bestrides the earth like a Colossus." I might trace fashion in a thousand other shapes-in operas, at watering-places, through town and country; but I will only briefly notice it in one more. The natural desire of the fairer part of creation is to please the other sex, and this accounts for the extreme love of fashion among women. What less than life would it cost a lady of the ton, to be obliged to dress for the remainder of her days like a quaker? The worship of the goddess of "many colours" is, however, more venial in woman than in man. From the earliest time ocean has been dived into, deserts crossed, mines ransacked, invention tortured, and art only not quite exhausted, to minister to her wants and changes, A female twelve months behind the mode, would be considered as outlandish` as a mermaid. A man, if he be a gentleman, may wear a one-year-old coat and pass well enough in society; but a lady, in a dress completely out, would be scorned and shunned, ridiculed and slandered. The ladies formerly had a doll imported monthly from Paris, when that city led the fashion. This waxen beauty was the sylph that gave her aid— To change a flounce, or add a furbelow, on the garments of all England's daughters :-it was Fashion's graven image. The attachment of the fair to fashion, to operas, and **** But I must hold my pen-I see a lovely face approaching my writing-table-it already frowns upon me for beginning my last paragraph-it asks me upbraidingly how I can presume to censure its idol, and flutters past me repeating Poor moralist! and what art thou! * Thy joys no glittering female meets, and archly concludes, with mortifying emphasis in an old man's ear, We frolic while 'tis May! I. TABLE TALK.-NO. VI. Dreaming.. DR. SPURZHEIM, in treating of the Physiology of the Brain, has the following curious passage: "The state of somnambulism equally proves the plurality of the organs. This is a state of incomplete sleep, wherein several organs are watching. It is known that the brain acts upon the external world by means of voluntary motion, of the voice, and of the five external senses. Now, if in sleeping some organs be active, dreams take place; if the action of the brain be propagated to the muscles, there follow motions; if the action of the brain be propagated to the vocal organs, the sleeping person speaks. Indeed, it is known that sleeping persons dream and speak; others dream, speak, hear, and answer; others still dream, rise, do various things, and walk. This latter state is called somnambulism, that is, the state of walking during sleep. Now, as the ear can hear, so the eyes. may see, while the other organs sleep; and there are facts quite positive which prove that several persons in the state of somnambulism have seen, but always with open eyes. There are also convulsive fits, in which the patients see without hearing, and vice versa. Some somnambulists do things of which they are not capable in a state of watching; and dreaming persons reason sometimes better than they do when awake. This phenomenon is not astonishing," &c.-Physiognomical System of Drs. Gull and Spurzheim, p. 217. There is here a very singular mixing up of the flattest truisms with the most gratuitous assumptions; so that the one being told with great gravity, and the other delivered with the most familiar air, one is puzzled in a cursory perusal to distinguish which is which. This is an art of stultifying the reader, like that of the juggler, who shows you some plain matter-of-fact experiment just as he is going to play off his capital trick. The mind is, by this alternation of style, thrown off its guard; and between wondering first at the absurdity, and then at the superficiality of the work, becomes almost a convert to it. A thing exceedingly questionable is stated so roundly, you think there must be omething in it: the plainest proposition is put in so doubtful and cau |