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peasant, here and there, rode silently along; but there was nothing like frolic, or humour, or happiness. The Viscomte pointed out to me some well-known characters in the carriages which passed; among others, in his sky-blue chariot, Viscount d'A-, the romancewriter, who has described in Ipsiboé, the heroine of his last work, a better masquerade figure than the whole Carnival could produce. "Chargée de plumes, de fourrures, de fleurs, de pierreries, et de gaze, enveloppée d'un mantel à triple collet, et sa robe bordée d'images." Such was the favourite costume of "la douce fille des eaux dormantes." I, in my turn, told my companion the names of a few of my countrymen; but I saw none who combined notoriety with the ludicrous, except the celebrated Squire Hold'emtight, who, mounted on the dicky of a calèche, covered with a huge box-coat, whipped along a pair of pitiful hacks, and (puffing his red and bloated checks against the wind) gave occasion to a group near me to holloa out" Voilà! Voilà le bœuf gras!"—and I certainly never saw a finer specimen of John Bullism.

While the file of carriages was thus dragging, like a wounded snake or an alexandrine, "its slow length along," and every face seemed the index of a melancholy or a dissatisfied mind, the sound of martial music struck upon my ear, and presently several regiments of infantry in full order of march, moved along the Boulevards from the direction of the Tuileries, where they had been just passed in review, preparatory to their departure for Spain. A train of artillery followed-the heavy rolling of the guns over the pavement mixing with the clash of the military bands, bringing to the mind a rush of awful combinations touching the tremendous probabilities in which these troops were going to be the actors. There they were, mingled with the fantastic fooleries of the crowd-the motley crew of masks and mockeries-heavy hearts and dreary apprehensions. I gazed at the scene with a sarcastic smile and an involuntary shudder; and exclaimed as we turned down the Rue de la Paix (Napoleon's triumphal pillar staring me in the face), "No, no, there is no step between the sublime and the ridiculous !" T. T.

SELECT SOCIETY,

With Observations on the Modern Art of Mtach-making.

Dulce sodalitium!

Connubio jungam stabili, propriumque dicabo.

IF society be the end and object of civilization, it must be confessed that we English of the 19th century are in a very barbarous condition. Never was an intercourse with the world clogged with so many impediments as at the present moment; never did good company cost so much pains to arrive at, and never did it afford so little in return. God be with the good times, when the sole capacity required to figure among men was that of a two-gallon cask, and when we were sure to get on with the females at the expense of a little "evil-speaking, lying, and slandering." Then, alas! any body was company for every body; and the first lord of the land did not think shame, faute de mieux, to

take up with the conversation of his butler, or his game-keeper, over a tankard; while the young ladies, faute de tout, danced "Bobbing Joan," with the rest of the domestics, in the servants' hall. But nowa-days folks are grown so confoundedly precise,-or, to use their own words, so select, forsooth, in their society, that a man requires fresh qualifications for every house he enters. The rigour of the Vienna aristocracy of the first class is not more unbending to the bourgeoisie, nor more uncompromising in a quartering, than our pretenders to selection, in their several degrees. A stranger might as well attempt to "work his way" into a Freemason's lodge without the sign, as one of the profane to find favour in the eyes of a coterie without its specific qualification. That the supreme bon ton of the supreme bon genre should be a little particular is but right, seeing the number and pertinacity of the intruders. Almack's has nothing of the "facilis descensus Averni," nor should it. On the contrary, to get out of Newgate or the Fleet is less difficult than to get in to the rooms in King-street; and this I take to be a merciful dispensation of "their Selectnesses" the Committee; since none but those bred to the trade are capable of standing the quietude of extremely refined manners, which is just one degree less than that of the tomb. But high rank and bon ton do not stand alone in this pretension. We have it running through all the classes and predicaments of society, from the Four-in-hand Club to Mrs. Hourglass's tea and tracts," the amateur concert at the Jew's Harp, near Whitechapel, and our friend's blue stocking association in Houndsditch. Even the footmen of the House of Lords, we are told, keep clear of the borough-mongers and country puts of the lower house.

This selection is bore enough for those who have (to use a French phrase "germain to the matter") found their assiette in society; but to him who is not yet placed, it is a source of bitter disappointment. Shortly after leaving the University, on my arrival in London, I was asked to dine at the house of one of our country neighbours, who, havig been nominated M. P. had moved to town. This struck me as an eligible opening for making my way in good company, and I accepted the invitation with eagerness. Upon entering the drawing-room, I soon found that I was the only person not of "the house." Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Mons. Say, would have been mere fourth-form boys to this quintessential selection of the "collective wisdom." The conversation was wholly "of the shop ;" but, though I do sometimes read the papers, I was very soon completely nonplused, and at once made up my mind to bound my ambition to acquiring the reputation of a good

listener.

Sauntering down the street something out of spirits at this discomfiture, I was attracted by the lights in my aunt Lady Mary Mildew's drawing-room; and arriving at the door just as Mr.the bookseller was "bundling out" a coach-load of literary lions for her ladyship's inspection, I determined to step in and see "what was going on." I had not been long in the room, when my aunt introduced me to a good-looking but rather prim young lady, as newly arrived from Cambridge. Being a tolerably good French and Italian scholar, and having a bowing acquaintance with our best English writers, I thought I should nd myself pretty much au fait to the young lady's indigo; and I en

tered the list with some spirit, in the determination to make good my claim to a place among the blues, and to set myself off to advantage. But here again I was utterly thrown out: I could not tell my fair questioner whether Lady Iodina Crucible was "intellectuel," I had omitted to attend Mr. Sapphic's lecture at the Institution, I mistook the author of the Fall of Jerusalem for the American Addison, I was two novels behind hand with the "Great Unknown," Sydney Sm-th passed without returning my bow, and I totally failed in naming the authors of the two "crack" articles of the current Quarterly. Need I add that I was, after five minutes effort at conversation, deserted by my companion, whose contemptuous dejection of countenance, as she whispered her next neighbour, and glanced her eye hastily at my person, convinced me that I was already black-balled, at least by this member of Lady Mary's squad of Selects.

Hurrying down stairs, with the speed of a detected pickpocket, I stumbled upon Tom Headlong, of Jesus, the 'Squire's nephew of Headlong Hall; who found much favour in my sight by voting my aunt a quiz, and her party the blue devils; and on this account he had the less difficulty in carrying me to the club, of which I had just been elected a member. There, I thought, I should at least be welcome; for my credit is good, and my money as acceptable as another's. But all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Notwithstanding that Newmarket is within fourteen miles of Cambridge, my ignorance of the technicalities of a horse-race was sufficient to exclude me from the conversation of the night, which ran almost exclusively upon Epsom. My ominous silence on this interesting topic boded me no good. Then I could not name the odds at some point of the game, when asked; I mistook the round in which Gas had his "lights doused;" was totally out about his opponent's head being "in chancery." In short, I shewed myself up as a complete Spooney, fell out of the conversation, and was left to eat my supper in silence with what appetite I might.

The next disappointment I encountered was at the house of a maiden relation, whom I had not seen for some years. The memory of her good-natured and unpretending simplicity, of her moderate endowments, and still more moderate acquirements, assured me that I might make myself" quite at home" with her. On arriving at her house I found a formidable circle of Quaker-looking ladies, in the midst of which stood a spruce and punctiliously dressed gentleman in black, who somehow or other brought to my mind a certain necessary personage in a sabbath of witches. My entrance interrupted the reading of some book, and as my fair relation came forward to greet me, I could not but observe that though her reception was friendly, it was more measured and subdued than childish recollections induced me to expect. After the customary enquiries after absent friends, &c. the conversation seemed to lapse into a train of ideas inspired by the now suspended " readings." Its subject seemed to me religious, but it was so wrapped up in something between technical jargon and cant, as to be nearly unintelligible; and I sunk by degrees into a reverie, in which my unfitness for society, and very imperfect education, formed a prominent and a painful part.

Mortified by such repeated failures I began to lower my expectations, and to look no higher than the forming one amongst those cyphers which

swell the sum total of a "squeeze," fill up door-ways and staircases, and obstruct the king's highway by their attendant carriages. But, “non cuivis homini," it is not every one's lot to enter at once even this numerous corps. In order to be asked every where, one must be seen every where, and known to every body; and there are those who after spending a fortune in ices and wax-lights, are, at the end of a twenty years struggle, only just creeping on. To be distinguished in this "genre," and to carry the place by a coup de main, is morally impossible; because where nothing is expected, where no qualification is required, there is no advantage-ground afforded for attracting the attention of an "admiring public."

As a last resource, I determined to advance myself by the merits of my dancing-master, to ride into society on a "demiqueue de chat," and to wind myself round the hearts of my friends by a "chaine Angloise." But this also is not to be done at will; for it requires much patience and more intrigue to get enlisted into a set, or to be received in morning practising-parties. As, however, I am an eldest son, and the family estate is unembarrassed, my probation, in this particular, was considerably shortened. The sort of society to which I was thus introduced was not altogether "le bon genre." It was made up, for the most part, of what are called "respectable families;" i. e. families whose easy circumstances, Heaven knows how acquired, prevent their ranking absolutely as nobody, without very distinctly proving that they are any body:-East India baronets, military and civic knights, the small fry of country gentlemen, (who spend a year's revenue in a two months' visit to London or to some fashionable watering-place, living all the rest of the year in their lair at Clodpole-hall, as Cobbett would call it) together with those successful mercantile families and speculators, who, according to the same authority, are elbowing the said country gentlemen out of their estates. Though pleasure and dissipation are the objects of some of these personages in mixing with the world, and seem to be so with all, yet, the fonde of the society consists of a class who unite business with amusement; or rather, under the guise of pleasure, carry on an unremitting effort to strike a great stroke in life. These are the mothers who have marriageable daughters to dispose of, and whose views upon the persons of bachelors are any thing but disinterested.

Being myself, as I have already hinted, one of those enviable young men who have "every qualification for making the married state happy," I was eagerly seized on as a proper victim of this systematic conspiracy of mothers to get off their daughters; and I soon got a pretty near insight into the whole affair. Very few houses indeed are opened to a regular ball, or even to "an early dance," in which there is not a daughter or a niece to be disposed of. The money lavished on gaudy decorations, soups, wild fowl, ices, and champaign, is therefore merely put out at usance, to be returned in a good settlement; insomuch that, the more apparently wanton the profusion, the closer may be deemed the calculation seeming hospitality being nothing on earth but a well-baited trap.

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On these occasions every body is asked for something; Lords, Baronets, &c. for their titles: dragoons for their regimentals: frightful old women in blue gowns and silver tissue turbans, for their sons and

heirs; handsome married women to draw the men; ugly girls as foils; and pretty girls because the ball cannot go on without them. Some are invited to make up a card-table for the rich dowager mother of an heir at law some because they have an air of fashion, or write "Albany" on their card. Every thing, in short, is measured, to the minutest particular that can proceed or retard the great event, which is the mainspring of the whole.

Although it is a part of good policy in a hawking mamma, to fly her girls generally at all young fellows or old fellows of decent fortune, yet she has, for the most part, some individual in view, who is more particularly the object of pursuit: and it is truly astonishing how uniformly that favoured individual finds himself, in spite of himself, in contact with the "young lady" who has him in chase. Tall, thin, pale girls are my aversion; yet for two months I was nightly haunted by such a spectre, who forced me to ask her to dance by "meeting my eye in an early hour of the debate," by planting herself assiduously at my side, and engaging me in a series of innocent questions at the first preparatory scrape of the violins. Somehow or other I was always obliged, too, to hand her down to supper, and consequently to sit beside her at the table. From this persecution I fortunately escaped by a lucky équivoque, which seemed to hint that I was engaged to a girl in the country, whose estate joins ours; and the next evening, I had the happiness to see the stately galley bear down on another prize.

It is a curious, but a melancholy sight, to behold the long rows of overdressed girls, many of them, I hope, unconscious of the purpose for which they are thus launched on society,-with their fidgety, anxious mothers, settling from time to time their hair and dress, nodding disapprobation, or smiling encouragement (as the puppet contradicts or favours the purpose in hand by her carriage and demeanour) and having no eyes, no ears but for the one object of painful solicitude. Still more melancholy is it to witness the last struggles of an unfortunate "abandonata," whose tenth season is passing in vain, with "nobody coming to marry her, nobody coming to woo-oo-oo-!" I hope the reader can whistle the tune for that last desponding morosyllable)—while each Causeless giggle, intended to display a dimple, bears evidence of another accident in the "human face divine," which I forbear to name; and a profusion of finery eclipses charms, that it is no longer prudence to expose to the broad glare of lamps and wax-lights.

When a gudgeon is observed to rise freely to the bait, he is asked to dinner, and engaged on riding-parties in the mornings. A luncheon also is regularly set out as a rallying-point for young men, whose appetites are often more ductile than their passions. Hearts are thus ensnared through the medium of cold tongue and bread and butter, and a sure love-potion is Madeira and soda-water. When all else fails, the good old lady herself hints very plainly her reasonable expectations, and strives hard to carry an hesitating swain by a barefaced innuendo.

As I have my own reasons for not giving into these schemes, and prefer taking a wife (when I shall take one) from purer sources, I have ever been more annoyed than flattered by such distinctions. And this probably has made me feel the more keenly the general ill-effects on society arising from these maternal intrigues, in which the married and the poor go for nothing. If one, belonging to either of these classes, en

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