that will not forsake a friend, nor the meekness that can forgive a foe. "Justice," "Humility," and so forth, are words indeed in the dictionary, and which serve well enough to adorn a sermon, to figure in the pages of an Addison, or schoolboy's declamation,—but that is all. Learning is pedantry, morality preaching, and fame, glory, patriotism, mere topics of sneer or slander. They have rendered Virtue, what the poets long since called it, a name-while poor Propriety is voted entirely obsolete. As for those rude ill-bred dictators, Piety and the Laws, they are regarded only as troublesome interruptions to their pleasures. Yet this is the "society" which calls itself good!

Nor do they confine themselves to a neglect of morals and religion. Not having the colour of virtue themselves, they strive to render it contemptible; they acquire a love for that distinction in vice which they are unwilling, or unable, to attain in goodness. Scarcely could a stranger, observing the modes and sentiments of fashionable life, persuade himself that this was a country professing Christianity. The "great" (as they are abusively called) are not

only immoral-they are lovers of immorality. Religion is among them so ridiculous, that they seem in a conspiracy to make those, who do profess and practice it, ashamed in their presence, as if to be religious was indulging a bent that dishonoured the mind.

Such are the persons we would turn aside to smite-to censure-and put to shame!

§ 5. And this same fashion, poisonous as it is, essentially vicious as it is, is altogether ridiculous too. The law of folly, as well as the bane of wisdom, it has right prescriptive to be absurd.

Can the grave and respectable refrain from a contemptuous smile, when they see a thousand monstrous things doing around them in the world, which have no other conceivable foundation than the whim of the hour? Truly the modern disciple of Democritus must find ample employment for the risible faculty, when he looks upon all the toys and tinselries of this farce of Fashion-when he watches the capricious and shifting gales that govern its tides. And could each of us look with philosophic eye at the empty forms and pageantries of these airlings-at their vapid

amusement—at their almost childish intellect— and, more than all, their fantastic garb—we assuredly could neither envy nor respect these silliest of all mortals.

"Who are these,

That look not like the inhabitants of the earth,
And yet are on it?"

§ 6. Neither can "these strange flies-these fashion-mongers"-lay claim to any true elegance. Here we enter at once the camp of the enemy, and attack them on their own supposed vantage-ground, "Our Aristocracy," says Mr. Bulwer in his work on the English, "does not even preserve elegance to ton, and, with all the affectation, fosters none of the graces of a court."

As far as Taste is concerned in the doings of fashionable life, it is absolutely depraved. Can we for a moment apply such a term to the whimsical vagaries of Fashion,—and to the inveterate following of a rule of life which varies every day (14)? However it shed its divine views in high places, 'tis in our eyes no sacred cloud, but a fog-fed exhalation; it is a real vapour, assuming for ever a new shape and a new colour; reducing, by its density, grace and de

formity, youth and age, genius and folly, all into one outward seeming, and the same degrading level.

Especially in Dress, a most important article of fashionable existence-is there not displayed an obliquity of taste scarcely to be conceived, and fairly frighting reason from her propriety? Can even the harlequin liveries in which their menials are clad, of every form and complexion, --can these be thought for a moment in taste? We have more to say on the topic of dress hereafter, but taste, on this head, must needs be beside the question, where all statures and complexions are doomed in common to an uniformity, which, though it live but a moon's age, will be succeeded by some other. Would it were possible they could agree as well-though it were but for a time, in the calmness of their passions! -Will scandal and envy ever be out of fashion, think you?-will kind feeling and benevolence ever become matters of taste in the drawingrooms of the privileged?

Within the mansions of fashionable life are to be occasionally seen the productions of art * Vide chap. vi. sect. 4.

or genius for even the Arts sometimes sacrifice to fashion: yet this is no absolute proof of any chaste appreciation in their owners of what is excellent: Taste is of the mind. The phenomenon of which we speak, is often to be resolved into a very different principle, which is ostentation or display; and this, not from an inherent admiration of the possessor for the thing displayed, nor from any expectation that it may contribute at all to the gratification and comfort of the spectator: the real motive is altogether of a different kind, viz. to excite an awe of their wealth, and a personal deference, springing from the admiration of what it can command; nay, sometimes may be detected the lurking wish to produce, in the minds of others, a discontent with their own circumstances. This is ostentation with its most unsocial motives!

As a class, people of fashion have in reality none of the fondness they pretend for their varied splendour-their villas, their equipages, furniture, liveries, appurtenances of the table, and so forth. Whether there be any admixture of taste in all this, let any one judge, by observing the conduct and sentiments of such as are con