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. 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! For weeks the house of the receiver is in a course of preparation for it. Carpenters, painters, confectioners, chandlers, upholsterers, and hea-, ven 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 hyperbole !-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 At 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 unwieldly 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. 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. 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 eyil 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 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! 1. 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. Gall 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 something in it: the plainest proposition is put in so doubtful and cau tious a manner, you conceive the writer must see a great deal farther into the subject than you do. You mistrust your ears and eyes, and are in a fair way to resign the use of your understanding. It is a fine style of mystifying. Again, it is the practice with the German school, and in particular with Dr. Spurzheim, to run counter to common sense and the best authenticated opinions. They must always be more knowing than every body else, and treat the wisdom of the ancients, and the wisdom of the moderns, much in the same supercilious way. It has been taken for granted generally that people see with their eyes; and therefore it is stated in the above passage as a discovery of the author, "imparted in dreadful secrecy," that sleep-walkers always see with their eyes open. The meaning of which is, that we are not to give too implicit or unqualified an assent to the principle, at which modern philosophers have arrived with some pains and difficulty, that we acquire our ideas of external objects through the senses. The transcendental sophists wish to back out of that, as too conclusive and well-defined a position. They would be glad to throw the whole of what has been done on this question into confusion again, in order to begin de novo, like children who construct houses with cards, and when the pack is built up, shuffle them all together on the table again. These intellectual Sysiphuses are always rolling the stone of knowledge up a hill, for the perverse pleasure of rolling it down again. Having gone as far as they can in the direction of reason and good sense, rather than seem passive or the slaves of any opinion, they turn back with a wonderful look of sagacity to all sorts of exploded prejudices and absurdity. It is a pity that we cannot let well done alone, and that, after labouring for centuries to remove ignorance, we set our faces with the most wilful officiousness against the stability of knowledge. The Physiognomical System of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim is full of this sort of disgusting cant. We are still only to believe in all unbelief—in what they tell us. The less credulous we are of other things, the more faith we shall have in reserve for them: by exhausting our stock of scepticism and caution on such obvious matters of fact as that people always see with their eyes open, we shall be prepared to swallow their crude and extravagant theories whole, and not be astonished at "the phenomenon, that persons sometimes reason better asleep than awake!" I have alluded to this passage because I myself am (or used some time ago to be) a sleep-walker; and know how the thing is. In this sort of disturbed, unsound sleep, the eyes are not closed, and are attracted by the light. I used to get up and go towards the window, and make violent efforts to throw it open. The air in some measure revived me, or I might have tried to fling myself out. I saw objects indistinctly, the houses, for instance, facing me on the opposite side of the street; but still it was some time before I could recognise them or recollect where I was: that is, I was still asleep, and the dimness of my senses (as far as it prevailed) was occasioned by the greater numbness of my memory. This phenomenon is not astonishing, unless we choose in all such cases to put the cart before the horse. For in fact, it is the mind that sleeps, and the senses (so to speak) only follow the example. The mind dozes, and the eyelids close in consequence: we do not go to sleep, because we shut our eyes. I can, however, speak to the fact of the eyes being open, when their sense is shut; or rather, |