unknown acquaintances, than to shake them | really form a part of cur national character, off after they had been once allowed to fasten must concur, we think, with the alienation it themselves to repress, in short, the first at- produces in others, speedily to consign it to tempts at familiarity, and repel, by a chilling the tomb of other forgotten affectations. The and somewhat disdainful air, the advances of duties that we owe to strangers that come all, of whom it might any way be suspected casually into our society, certainly are not that they might turn out discreditable or un- very weighty-and a man is no doubt entitled to consult his own ease, and even his indolence, at the hazard of being unpopular among such persons. But, after all, affability and complaisance are still a kind of duties, in their degree; and of all duties, we should really think are those that are repaid, not only with the largest share of gratitude, but with the

fit associates.

This, we have no doubt, is the true history of that awful tone, of gomy indifference and stupid arrogance, which has unfortunately become so striking a characteristic of English manners. At its best, and when most justified by the circumstance of the parties, it has, we must allow, but an ungracious and disoblig-greatest internal satisfaction. All we ask is, ing air: But the extravagant height to which that they, and the pleasure which naturally it is now frequently carried, and the extraor- accompanies their exercise, should not be sa dinary occasions on which it is sometimes dis- crificed to a vain notion of dignity, which the played, deserve all the ridicule and reproba- person assuming it knows all the while to be tion they meet with. We should not quarrel false and hollow-or to a still vainer assumpmuch with a man of family and breeding tion of fashion, which does not impose upon being a little distant and cold to the many one in a thousand; and subjects its unhappy very affable people he may meet with, either victim to the ridicule of his very competitors in his travels, or in places of public resort at in the practice. All studied manners are ashome. But the provoking thing is, to see the sumed, of course, for the sake of the effect same frigid and unsociable manner adopted they are to produce on the beholders: And if in private society, and towards persons of the a man have a particularly favourable opinion highest character, if they happen not to be- of the wisdom and dignity of his physiognolong to the same set, or to be occupied with my, and, at the same time, a perfect con the same pursuits with those fastidious mor- sciousness of the folly and vulgarity of his tals-who, while their dignity forbids them to discourse, there is no denying that such a be affable to men of another club, or women man, when he is fortunate enough to be where of another assembly, yet admit to the fami- he is not known, will do well to keep his own liarity of their most private hours, a whole secret, and sit as silent, and look as repulsive gang of led captains, or led parsons, fiddlers, among strangers as possible. But, under any boxers, or parasitical buffoons. But the most other circumstances, we really cannot admit remarkable extravagance in the modern prac-it to be a reasonable, any more than an amiatice of this repulsive system, is, that the most ble demeanour. To return, however, to M outrageous examples of it are to be met with Simond. among those who have the least occasion for its protection,-persons whose society nobody would think of courting, and who yet receive the slightest and most ordinary civilities,being all that the most courteous would ever dream of offering them, with airs of as vehement disdain as if they were really in danger of having their intimacy taken by storm! Such manners, in such people, are no doubt in the very extreme of absurdity.But it is the mischief of all cheap fashions, that they are immediately pirated by the vulgar; and certainly there is none that can be assumed with so little cost, either of industry or understanding as this. As the whole of it consists in being silent, stupid, and sulky, it is quite level to the meanest capacity-and, we have no doubt, has enabled many to pass for persons of some consideration, who could never have done so on any other terms; or has permitted them at least to think that they were shunning the society of many by whom they would certainly have been shunned.

We trust, therefore, that this fashion of mock stateliness and sullen reserve will soon pass away. The extreme facility with which it may be copied by the lowest and dullest of mankind, the caricatures which are daily exhibited of it in every disgusting variety and the restraints it must impose upon the good nature and sociality which, after all, do

If he is somewhat severe upon our national character, it must be confessed that he deals still harder measure to his own countrymen. There is one passage in which he distinctly states that no man in France now pretends to any principle, either personal or political. What follows is less atrocious, and probably nearer the truth. It is the sequel of an enco mium on the domestic and studious occupa tions of the well-informed society of Zurich.

would tempt few strangers, and in France particu "Probably a mode of life so entirely domestic larly, it would appear quite intolerable. Yet I doubt whether these contemners of domestic dulness are not generally the dullest of the two. Walking occasionally the whole length of the interior Boulerally observed on my return, at the interval of vards of Paris, on a summer evening, I have geneseveral hours, the very same figures sitting just where I had left them; mostly isolated middle-aged men, established for the evening on three chairs, one for the elbow, another for the extended leg. third for the centre of gravity; with vacant looks and a muddy complexion, appearing discontented with themselves and others, and profoundly tired. A fauteuil in a salon, for the passive hearer of the talk of others, is still worse. I take it, than the three chairs on the Boulevard. The theatre, seen again and again, can have no great charm; nor is it every one who has money to spare for the one, or free ac of people are driven to the Boulevard as a last recess to the other; therefore, an immense number

source. As to home. it is no resource at all. No

one thinks of the possibility of employing his time.

thero, ether by himself or with his family. And he result, upon the whole, is, that I do not believe there is a country in the world where you see so many long faces, care-worn and cross, as among the very people who are deemed, and believe themselves, the merriest in the world. A man of rank and talent, who has spent many years in the Cri. men, who employed himself diligently and usefully when there, and who naturally loves a country where he has done much good, praising it to a friend, has been heard to remark, as the main objection to a residence otherwise delightful- Mais-for in the deadly encounter of all the passions, of on est obligé de s'aller coucher tous les soirs à sept neures, parcequ'en Crimée on ne sait pas où aller passer la soirée! This remark excites no surprise at Paris. Every one there feels that there can be no alternative, some place, not home, to spend your evenings in, or to bed at seven o'clock! It puts one in mind of the gentleman who hesitated about marrying a lady whose company he liked very much, for,' as he observed, where could I then go to pass my evenings?'"-Vol. i. pp. 404, 405. The following, though not a cordial, is at least a candid testimony to the substantial benefits of the Revolution:

"Rousseau, from his garret, governed an em. pire-that of the mind; the founder of a new reli. gion in politics, and to his enthusiastic followers a prophet-He said, and they believed! The disciples of Voltaire might be more numerous, but they were bound to him by far weaker ties. Those of Rousseau made the French Revolution, and perished for it; while Voltaire's, miscalculating its chances, perished by it. Both, perhaps, deserved their fate; but the former certainly acted the noblet part, and went to battle with the best weapons too, the most opposite principles and irreconcilable prejudices, cold-hearted wit is of little avail. Heroes and martyrs do not care for epigrams; and he must have enthusiasm who pretends to lead the enthu siastic or cope with them. Une intime persuasion, Rousseau has somewhere said, m'a toujours tenu lieu d'éloquence! And well it might; for the first requisite to command belief is to believe yourself. Nor is it easy to impose on mankind in this respect. There is no eloquence, no ascendancy over the minds of others, without this intimate persuasion in ical persuasion, lasting but as long as the occasion; yourself. Rousseau's might only be a sort of poetyet it was thus powerful, only because it was true, though but for a quarter of an hour perhaps, in the heart of this inspired writer.

"Mr. M, son of the friend of Rousseau, to

The clamorous, restless, and bustling manners of the common people of Aix. their antiquated and ragged dress, their diminutive stature and ill-favoured countenances, strongly recalled to my mind the whom he left his manuscripts, and especially his population of France, such as I remembered it Confessions, to be published after his death, had formerly; for a considerable change has certainly the goodness to show them to me. I observed a taken place, in all such respects, between the years fair copy written by himself, in a small hand like 1789 and 1815. The people of France are decidedly print, very neat and correct; not a blot or an eraless noisy, and graver; better dressed, and cleaner. sure to be seen. The most curious of these papers, All this may be accounted for; but handsomer is however, were several sketch-books, or memoranda not so readily understood, à priori. It seems as if half filled, where the same hand is no longer disthe hardships of war, having successively carried cernible; but the same genius, and the same wayoff all the weakly, those who survived have regen- tive thought which is there put down. Rousseau's ward temper and perverse intellect, in every fugierated the species. The people have undoubtedly gained much by the Revolution on the score of composition, like Montesquieu's, was laborious and property, and a little as to political institutions. slow; his ideas flowed rapidly, but were not readily They certainly seem conscious of some advantage brought into proper order; they did not appear to attained, and to be proud of it-not properly civil have come in consequence of a previous plan; but liberty, which is little understood, and not properly the ideas, and served as a sort of frame for them, the plan itself, formed afterwards, came in aid of estimated, but a certain coarse equality, asserted in instead of being a system to which they were sub. small things, although not thought of in the essentials of society. This new-born equality is very servient. Very possibly some of the fundamental touchy, as if it felt yet insecure; and thence a de opinions he defended so earnestly, and for which gree of rudeness in the common intercourse with his disciples would willingly have suffered martyrthe lower class, and, more or less, all classes, very thought, caught as it flew, was entered in his com dom, were originally adopted because a bright different from the old proverbial French politeness. This, though in itself not agrecable, is, however, a monplace book. good sign. Pride is a step in moral improvement, from a very low state. These opinions, I am well aware, will not pass in France without animadversion, as it is not to be expected the same judgment will be formed of things under different circumstances. If my critics, however, will only go three or four thousand miles off, and stay away a quarter of a century, I dare say we shall agree better when we compare notes on their return."

Vol. i. pp. 333, 334. The way in whicn M. Simond speaks of Rousseau, affords a striking example of that struggle between enthusiasm and severity romance and cool reason, which we noticed in the beginning as characteristic of the whole work. He talks, on the whole, with contempt, and even bitterness, of his character: But he follows his footsteps, and the vestiges and memorials even of his fictitious personages, with a spirit of devout observance-visits Clareus, and pauses at Meillerie-rows in a burning day to his island in the lake of Bienne-expatiates on the beauty of his retreat at the Charmettes-and even stops to explore his temporary abode at Moitier Travers. The following passages are remarkable:

These loose notes of Rousseau afford a curious insight into his taste in composition. You find him perpetually retrenching epithets-reducing his thoughts to their simplest expression-giving words a peculiar energy, by the new application of their original meaning-going back to the naïveté of old language; and, in the artificial process of simplicity, carefully effacing the trace of each laborious footstep as he advanced; each idea, each image, coming out, at last, as if cast entire at a single throw, original, energetic, and clear. Although Mr. M- had promised to Rousseau that he would publish his Confessions as they were, yet he took upon himself to suppress a passage explaining certain circumstances of his abjurations at Anneci, affording a curious, but frightfully disgusting, picture of monkish manners at that time. It is a pity that Mr. M did not break his word in regard to some few more passages of that most admirable and most vile of all the productions of genius."

Vol. i. pp. 564-566. The following notices of Madame de Staël are emphatic and original :—

I had seen Madame de Staël a child; and I saw

her again on her deathbed. The intermediate years

were spent in another hemisphere, as far as possible from the scenes in which she lived. Mixing again, not many months since. with a world in which I am

void of affec.ation and rick, she made so fair and ec irresistible an appeal to your own sense of her worth, that what would have been laughable in any ons else, was almost respectable in her. That ambi tion of eloquence, so conspicuous in her writings, was much less observable in her conversation; there was more abandon in what she said than in what she wrote; while speaking, the spontaneous inspiration was no labour, but all pleasure. Con

a stranger, and feel that I must remain so, I just saw this celebrated woman; and heard, as it were, her iast words, as I had read her works before, uninfluenced by any local bias. Perhaps, the impressions of a man thus dropped from another world into this may be deemed something like those of posterity. Madame de Staël lived for conversation: She was not happy out of a large circle, and a French circle, where she could be heard in her own language to the best advantage. Her extravagant ad-scious of extraordinary powers, she gave herse if up miration of the society of Paris was neither more nor less than genuine admiration of herself. It was the best mirror she could get—and that was all. Ambitious of all sorts of notoriety, she would have given the world to have been born noble and a beauty. Yet there was in this excessive vanity so much honesty and frankness, it was so entirely

to the present enjoyment of the good things, and the deep things, flowing in a full stream from her well-stored mind and luxuriant fancy. The inspi ration was pleasure-the pleasure was inspiration: and without precisely intending it, she was, every evening of her life, in a circle of company, the very Corinne she had depicted."-Vol. i. pp. 283-256.

(November, 1812.)

Rejected Addresses; or the New Theatrum Poetarum. 12mo. pp. 126. Londen: 1812.*

AFTER all the learning, wrangling and tried their hands at an address to be spoken solemn exhortation of our preceding pages, at the opening of the New Theatre in Drury we think we may venture to treat our readers Lane-in the hope, we presume, of obtaining with a little morsel of town-made gaiety, the twenty-pound prize which the munificent without any great derogation from our estab-managers are said to have held out to the suc lished character for seriousness and contempt cessful candidate. The names of the imagiof trifles. We are aware, indeed, that there 18 no way by which we could so certainly ingratiate ourselves with our provincial readers, as by dealing largely in such articles; and we can assure them, that if we have not hitherto indulged them very often in this manner, it is only because we have not often met with any thing nearly so good as the little volume before us. We have seen nothing comparable to it indeed since the publication of the poetry of the Antijacobin; and though it wants the high seasoning of politics and personality, which no doubt contributed much to the currency of that celebrated collection, we are not sure that it does not exhibit, on the whole, a still more exquisite talent of imitation, with powers of poetical composition that are scarcely inferior.

We must not forget, however, to inform our country readers, that these "Rejected Addresses" are merely a series of Imitations of the style and manner of the most celebrated living writers-who are here supposed to have

* I have been so much struck, on lately looking back to this paper, with the very extraordinary merit and felicity of the Imitations on which it is employed, that I cannot resist the temptation of giving them a chance of delighting a new generaon of admirers, by including some part of them in this publication. I take them, indeed, to be the very best imitations) and often of difficult originals) that ever were made: and, considering their great extent and variety, to indicate a talent to which I do not know where to look for a parallel. Some few of them descend to the level of parodies: But by far the greater part are of a much higher description. They ought, I suppose, to have come under the head of Poetry,-but "Miscellaneous is broad enough to cover any thing.-Some of the less striking citations are now omitted. The auhors, I believe, have been long known to have

been the late Messrs. Smith.

nary competitors, whose works are now offered to the public, are only indicated by their initials; and there are one or two which we really do not know how to fill up. By far the greater part, however, are such as cannot pos sibly be mistaken; and no reader of Scott, Crabbe, Southey, Wordsworth, Lewis. Moore, or Spencer, could require the aid, even of their initials, to recognise them in their portraits. Coleridge, Coleman, and Lord Byron, are not quite such striking likenesses. Of Dr. Busby's and Mr. Fitzgerald's, we do not hold ourselves qualified to judge-not professing to be deeply read in the works of these originals.

There is no talent so universally entertaining as that of mimicry—even when it is confined to the lively imitation of the air and manner-the voice, gait, and external deportment of ordinary individuals. Nor is this to be ascribed entirely to our wicked love of ridicule; for, though we must not assign a very high intellectual rank to an art which is said to have attained to perfection among the savages of New Holland, some admiration is undoubtedly due to the capacity of nice observation which it implies; and some gratiti. cation may be innocently derived from the sudden perception which it excites of peculiarities previously unobserved. It rises in interest, however, and in dignity, when it succeeds in expressing, not merely the visible and external characteristics of its objects, but those also of their taste, their genius, and temper. A vulgar mimic repeats a man's cant-phrases and known stories, with an exact imitation of his voice, look, and gestures: But he is an artist of a far higher description, who can make stories or reasonings in his manner; and represent the features and movements of his mind, as well as the accidents of his body.