and after the walfe, which is now never forgotten at a Paris ball, had proved that the fteady heads of Niobes were not to be made giddy, the company were led to a fupper furnished with eaftern magnificence, and decorated with attic tafte. After fupper the folding doors of the faloon were thrown open to a garden of confiderable extent, beautifully illuminated with coloured lamps, and its trees bending with lavih clusters of fruits of every feafon, and every climate, formed of ice, while fountains poured forth ftreams of orgeat, lemonade, and liqueurs.

"But while thefe imitators of Greece and Rome are reveiling in Afiatic luxury, you hear them lamenting moft pathetically the fubverfion of the ancient regime; that regime, which would at least have had thus much of justice, that it would have retained thefe perfonages in the anti-chambers of the faloons they now Occupy; to which anti-chambers they would with a counter-revolution moft probably return. One is obliged to offer up an invocation to patience, when condemned to liften to their declamations against that new order of things, to which folely they owe their elevation.

"There is indeed one clafs of perfons, before whofe complaints of the revolution, however bitter, the mind humbles itself in sympathetic forrow. The poor rentier, while he fips his Spartan blackbroth, which he is forced to procure by parting, in fad gradation, with all the relicks of his former fplendour, with watches, rings, furniture, and clothes; he indeed, if he complains, is to be pitied, and if he forbears complaint, is to be revered! But alas, there is fo much of tragical detail in the pages of the great book; a thing which has long fince been called a great

evil, that we must give it at least a whole chapter to itself.

"At prefent I fhall only obferve, that the reign of terror has acted upon this country like fome mighty peftilence, which not only fweeps away devoted millions in its fury, but leaves an obnoxious taint upon every object where it has paffed. The reign of terror has given a fatal wound to the energies of pub. ic fpirit; ordinary minds have mif. taken the execrable abufes of liberty for an effect of the generous principle itfelf: the victims of revolutionary government have lifted up their complaining voice; all the emotions of fympathy, and all the feelings of indignation have been called forth; and the patizans of the ancient regime have left no art unpractifed, no feduction untried, to take advantage of thefe difpofitions in favour of their own sys

tem.

"Thofe who have been too rapidly enriched by the revolution have endeavoured to hide the ob fcurity of their origin, by mimicking the tones of thofe who have titles and honours to regret, till ariftocracy has defcended fo low, that it will foon perhaps be exploded, like any other fashion, when taken up by the vulgar. Many of the fair wives of titled emigrants, or blooming widows of murdered nobles, who have made fuch second marriages, that we might well apoftrophize them in the language of Hamlet:

follies, will at length be ashamed of their aristocracy, when they find how fuccefsfully they are rivalled in thofe fentiments by their milliners and mantua-makers. A writer of a late political pamphlet has given an admirable reafon why our Parifian belles will foon lay afide the tone of eternal lamentations for the overthow of defpotifm. Seven years,' fays he, have already elapfed fince the epocha of the revolution: feven years is a period of fome length in the history of a youthful beauty, and a lady will foon not be able to regret the monarchy under the penalty of i paffing for old.' I believe every perfon who has ftudied the female heart, will agree with this writer, that the republic has a tolerable chance upon this principle of ob taining ere long many fair profelytes. "The fans, fparkling with fpangled fleur de lys, will then be broken; the rings, bearing the infignia of royalty, will be melted down; and the porte-feuilles, and bon-bonnieres, with their fliding-lids, difplaying the forbidden images of regal greatnefs, will no longer be -borne about in a fort of triumphal manner, not from a fentiment of forrow, by thofe who, attendant on their perfons, and bafking in their fmiles, are privileged to difplay more than that general regret for their unhappy deftiny which humanity feels; but from a fenfa. tion of vanity by thofe, who perhaps never breathed the fame atmosphere; never, even at awful diftance, gazed upon the original of thofe pictures which they now affect to cherish as the tender memorials of peculiar favour. Thefe relicks, we may venture to predict, will be offered up in one mighty facrifice at the fhrine of the republic, the moment it is well un

derstood that to be a republican, is to be young.

"Public balls, as well as concerts, were held laft winter at the Theatre Français, which, after hav ing been long hut up, was repaired, embellished, and baptized by the Greek name of the Odeon; and that no jealoufy might exift between the balls and concerts, on account of this claffical nomenclature, the balls immediately received the appellation of thiafes.

But the moft fingular fpecies of amufement which the last winter produced, were fubfcription-balls, entitled des bals à la victime. Such, and fo powerful was the rage for pleasure, that a certain number of its votaries, who, during the tyranny of Robefpiere, had loft their nearest relations on the fcaffold, inftituted; not days of fuch folemn, fad commemoration, as is dear to the fuperftition of tendernefs, when, in melancholy proceffion, clad in fable, and wreathed with cyprefs, they might have knelt, a mourning multitude, around the fpot where the multilated bodies of their murdered parents had been thrown by the excutioner; and bathed the fod with those bitter tears which filial affection, or agonized love, fhed over the broken ties of na ture, or of patlion-no! the commemorative rites which thefe mourners offered to the manes of their maffacred relations, were feftive balls! To these strange, unhallowed ofgies, no one could be admitted who had not loft a father, a mother, a husband, a wife, a brother, or a fifter, on the guillotine; but any perfon with a cate of their execution in his pocket-book, not only obtained` admiffion, but might dance as long, and as merrily as heart could with. Had Holbein been prefent at fuch F 3 a fpec

certifi

a fpectacle, no doubt he would have enriched his death-dance with new images, and led forward each gay nymph by an attendant headlefs fpectre. The indignant cry of public opinion, however, was at length heard above the mufic of the walfe and the cotillon; and the bal à la victime exifts no longer to bear its powerful teftimony to a depravation, not merely of manners, but of the heart.

"If in the winter, conformably to our Grecian ideas at Paris, concert-rooms became Odeons, and the Niobés and the Titus's danced in a thiafe, fummer can boast of more than equal honours; fince then we never tread but on attic ground, and never fuffer ourselves to be pleafed but when pleasure presents herfelf with a claffical appellation. Witnefs ye gardens of Tivoli, ye bowers of Idalia, ye winding walks of Elysium, ye grottos of Venus, ye vales of Tempe, ye groves of Theffaly! witnefs with what fond alacrity the lovers of antiquity fly in multitudes to your enchanting receffes, where the arching trees are hung with innumerable lamps of varying colours, where the ear is exhilerated with the founds of mufic, and the eyeischeared with the movements of the dance; and where every evening the hour of ten ferves as a general fignal, at which the whole city of Paris feems one vaft theatre for the difplay of fireworks. A ftranger who fhould enter this city at night by the bridge of Neuilly, might fuppofe that he had reached this fcene of great events at fome important epocha, which had occafioned a general rejoicing. On his right he would difcern the lights of Bagatelle, beaming through the Bois de Boulogne, and would pafs clofe to the brilliant entrance of Idalia; on his left he would be dazzled by the

illuminations of the Elyfium; while, as he advanced, he would difcern, above every quarter of the town, the tall fky-rockets darting their vivid flafh, and would hear in all directions the light explofions of enchanted palaces, with bright arcades and fairy columns;

The crackling flames appear on high, And driving sparkles dance along the sky.'

" Bagatelle alone, the once gay retreat of the comte d'Artois, is fuffered, by our Grecian amateurs, to retain its old appellation in favour of the regal images which it brings to memory. What food for the ramblings of the mind along the paths of history, when it contrafts the light French modern graces of Bagatelle, with the maffy, Gothic gloom of Holyroodhoufe! It may be obferved, that the perfons who are for ever lamenting the fubverfion of the ancient regime, are not prevented by their regrets from giving all the encouragement in their power to those who convert one palace after another into fcenes of public amufement; and that they eagerly purchafe for half a crown, the privilege of treading gaily every evening with the plebeian multitude, thofe magnificent gardens and fumptuous hotels, of which the poffeffors have, for the most part, as in former profcriptions, paid for their beautiful retreats at Alba, with their lives. But while thefe lovers of defpotifm forget their regrets in their pleasures, the philofophic mind wanders often in mufing mood along thefe festive haunts, where the most fingular combinations crowd upon reflection; and, amidit the glowing enthufiafm of liberty, mourns thofe partial evils that have clouded its

brightnefs,

"THE

THE progrefs of language marks the progrefs of the human mind. They proceed together with equal step from the rudeness of barbarifm toward that ftate beyond which improvement cannot go, in which language exhibits the highest polish of elegance and accuracy, and the mind exerts all its faculties in their full force. So true is this, that there can fcarcely be found any period in the history of any people when the ftate of their language did not accurately correfpond with the state of their polity and manners, and when a fagacious obferver might not have afcertained, with tolerable exactnefs, the excellence and refinement of thefe from the qualities of their literary productions. Hence the inveftigations of the philologift become ufeful as they furnish important aids to the refearches of the hiftorian, and the fpeculations of the moralift.

"To this general rule there is, however, one exception. Long before the manners of the Greeks had reached that refinement, or their polity had been matured to that

perfection which constitute a nation highly civilifed, their language had become copious, energetic and correct. In the compofitions of Homer we find, perhaps, as much ftrength, harmony, and expreffion, as in thofe of any fubfequent Greek writer; and yet unqueftionably, in Homer's day, Greece had made no very confiderable approaches towards excellence in the arts, skill in government, or refinement in manners.

"But if in Greece we find an exception to the rule which marks on the fcale of language the improvement of the national mind, in modern Europe we meet abundant illuftration of its truth. Here, it will be found, that until fettled government, founded on permanent fyftem, fucceeded the Auctuations of defpotifm or anarchy, and, inftead of the ferocious and whimfical manners of the middle ages, introduced the milder and more rational habits of modern times, until, in a word, the light of philofophy fhone in our horizon, and fcattered the thick darkness which hung around the human intellect,

the