unjustified and unwarranted by the customs of their own country. The "A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn ; More wise, more learned, more just, more every thing." The lady of a civic or any other knight takes deserved precedence of the lady of an untitled banker; Mrs. Banker looks with an eye of coldness on a merchant's spouse; the merchant's "bale of goods" stares the female adjunct of a wholesale dealer out of countenance; the mistress of the vendor in gross is horrified at the touch of a debit en detail and I remember a party standing up to dance, being long detained while the superiority of an attorney's dame to the lady of a stockbroker should be proved secundum artem. Latitat made it, however, a bear account, the fieri facias overcame omnium. The interpleader rendered stock a lame duck; and Sir Robert Chester himself would have been at fault in the perspicuity and discrimination in which the respective ranks (Heaven help us!) of all parties were finally adjudged. Your matrons with grown-up daughters are particularly formidable sticklers for etiquette. Lord Byron never had a greater distaste for them than I have, and their manoeuvring renders the representation of Miss Edgworth mean in comparison. "Visitors! cards! new arrivals," I heard such a lady say, as she returned into her drawing-room from her walk lately. "Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Smith, of Smith Cottage, Hammersmith! really never heard of them before. Cannot be too careful, my loves," addressing her daughters," since our friend Mrs. ran away, leaving her debts unpaid. Would not be surprised if they were no better than retired tradespeople. Positively shall decline visiting them." "Better not be too hasty, dear Mamma," said the elder of the two young ladies. "I have sent Susan already to the inn where they lodge; and their maid says, Mr. Smith already talks of purchasing a ehar à bane; that they dine at fire, never sooner; and that they generally have fish and game at their dinner; and Lady said, they were both too dear for her, you know, dear Mamma." "Char à banc!-fish and game!-five o'clock !-certainly that speaks respectability; but, tell me, love, have they any family? daughters, you know! that is the essential point! we must cut them out decidedly, if they have." "Only themselves, dear Mamma: and, Susan takes snuff out of a gold box." says, Mr. Smith Really! Then I think we must return their calls, my loves; but, what is he, or has he been, did Susan say?" "The maid told her, Mamma, that he was a merchant," said the younger girl." "Merchant! Humph-rather equivocal that. All know what merchant means abroad; I hope all will turn out right there." "But then, Mamma," said the senior Miss, who evidently was fond of company, while her sister sported sentimentality, "Mr. Smith has a beautifully beautiful engine-turned watch "And only cyphers on the seals!" sharply interrupted her Sentiment; "and uses red-cotton pocket-handkerchiefs; and goes to bed at nine every night." "Vulgar, undoubtedly," observed Mamma, with evident signs of distaste. "I think, dears, we had better adhere to our first resolution." "But then, Mamma, my sister has not told you that they came post from Paris; and even Lady Charlotte D* * * (who is just now making so much noise in London) always goes by Emery's voiture; then, their maid says they were once visited by the Duke of, bloodroyal ! mamma; and then that Mr. S. is a great friend of the actor." "The Dukeis not so much to the purpose, love; but the tragedian is quite another thing; really think we had better patronize them, loves; so, if you will get your bonnets, we will see how the land lies. But, dearest Mary," she observed to the Smith-favouring daughter, "do not let out, as you did the other day, at Major Entweezle's, that your papa is a solicitor; not that I wish you to tell an untruth-God forbid! but there is no necessity for the thing. We are esteemed a famille distinguée; remember, I am third cousin removed to a Baronet: and, were you not requested to open the ball, the other night, in the absence of Miss Jerkin, the daughter of Sir Jeffrey Jerkin?" "I do not like the red cotton mouchoir, nevertheless, I must say," grumbled Sentiment. Did not Sir "Mere bizarrerie, my dear! No answering for taste. Thomas (when he was alive), drive into town, as he passed here, ride a donkey ? in a black woollen night-cap? Does not Lady Does not Major -- wear thick shoes and worsted stockings ? Do not the Duke and Duchess of Hamilton address themselves to the humblest class of people with as much politeness as if they spoke to one of us? No! no! there is nothing in that, I assure you; but we will be prudent, loves." "Oh! I forgot to tell you, dear Mamma," said the Smith-favouring damsel, "that Susan says they have a thousand a-year!" "You strange creature! why did you not tell me that at first? That settles the business. Mr. Smith may be what he may. Tell Susan to run to the butcher's, the grocer's, the confectioner's, and the library; and take care to let the tradesmen know that the Smiths are people of high fashion and good family. It will soon spread. It is but kindly and friendly towards them; it is doing as we would be done by, loves; and, thank God! I have no low envy or jealousy in my disposition." "No, dearest Mamma, that all the world knows!" sighed AntiSmith. 66 'But, did she do what I told her yesterday? To go about and re port that those F.'s were nobody, and hint they should not be trusted. We must keep them down. Refusing to accept my invitation to tea, indeed! Not even returning my visit; and daring to be proud with a small income. Oh! I will be revenged." "Dearest Mamma! be calm! You are quite flushed," exclaimed Society and Sentiment, in the same breath. "Rank! what do I care for rank? Family! what have we to do with family? Talent! what concern have we with that? People who dine at two; keep no equipage;-dress plainly ;-pay by the week: and then to give themselves such airs ;-it is really shocking, insufferable. Oh if I could, if I could but—” Rushing from the room, followed by the young ladies, I was left to muse upon society as instituted abroad; and, examining my pocketbook, felt happy, as I counted my circular bills, that Herries and Farquhar had kindly provided for my gentility, and that I was more respectable by near two hundred pounds than I had previously calculated upon. From somewhat of reserve in my habits and manners, I had found that, unacountably to myself, I had been shunned of late by my fair country women particularly; and as no man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre, I resolved to inquire of mine what could be the reason, that I might repair my fault (should such exist), and regain the favour previously evinced towards me. "It has been observed, Sir," he replied, "that you have recently substituted shoes and gaiters for boots; exchanged your Leghorn hat for a casquet; refused to be present at the last pic-nic; and absolutely shirked the ball. Pardon me, Sir! but, as my honour is much concerned, I was on the point of giving you notice."—" Indeed!" The hint was not lost upon me; I hired a cabriolet for a couple of days, went to church in spurs and mustachios, actually invited some of my fair friends to an excursion on the lake, and instead of being regarded as a viper, was beneficially denominated a desirable. TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. D. O. Sir,-If you do not think the following infra dig. perhaps you will give it a corner. Elegy to the Memory of Miss Emily Kay, (Cousin to Miss Ellen Gee of Kew,) who lately died at Ewell, and was buried in Essex. D. T. Fabula narratur. SAD nymphs of UL, U have much to cry for, Sweet MLE K U never more shall C! O SX maids! come hither, and VU, With tearful I this MT LEG. Without XS she did XL alway- When her Piano-40 she did press, Such heavenly sounds did MN8, that she, Her XLNC in an XTC. Her hair was soft as silk, not YRE, L 8 she was, and prattling like A J. The grave should soon MUU, cold as clay, While taking T at Q with LN G, Her clothes caught fire-no I again shall C O, LN G! in vain you set at 0 GR and reproach for suffering her 2 B Sweet MLE K into SX they bore, Taking good care her monument to Y10, And as her tomb was much 2 low B 4, They lately brought fresh bricks the walls to I 10. FOLLY. "Fools are the daily work Of Nature, her vocation. If she form A man, she loses by it, 'tis too expensive; "Twould make ten fools."-Dryden's Edipus. "Agamemnon is a fool, Achilles is a fool, Thersites is a fool, and, as aforesaid, Patroclus is a fool."-Shakspeare. 66 WHY is it that all the world are so bitter against fools? They are the great staple of the creation, and they are the work of God, as well as better men." Of the mass of mankind, the larger part are fools all over; and the rest differ only in having their folly variegated by an occasional vein of wisdom, hardly more than sufficient for preventing themselves from burning their fingers; and this, too, is often of that bastard sort which is more appropriately designated by the name of cunning. Even the wisest of mankind pay their due tribute to Nemesis, and exhibit occasional touches of folly, which set the duller souls staring by its exaggerated absurdity. Happy, indeed, is it for them that this is the case; for, without some such protecting infirmity, they would be put out of all relation to their fellow-creatures. The faultless monsters would be as much displaced in society, as a frog in a bottle of carbonic acid, or Liston in a Quakers' meeting. Folly is the rule of Nature, and wisdom but the exception; and to complain of it is to "complain you are a man." The outcry against folly is a mere rebellion against Heaven. It shows an utter want of self-knowledge, or a contemptible affectation. In one word, it is no better than sheer cant, and ought, like all other cant, to be put down by general acclamation. Providence makes nothing in vain; and the bare fact of this multiplicity of fools should lead, by the shortest route, to a conviction that they are a very useful, and therefore a very respectable class of personages. Those, however, who are deeply versed in the philosophy of human life, will make no difficulty in acknowledging (sub rosa, be it understood) that the whole scheme of Nature is based on the folly of mankind; and that two grains more of commonsense in the composition of the animal would have ruined the entire concern, and have rendered the physical organization of the species unfitted for the world it was destined to inhabit. The whole state and condition of civilized society, at least, is built upon the single relation of folly to dupery; and unless one were mad enough to desire, with Jean Jacques, a return to simple savagery, one must look with complacency upon this sine qua non of the social system. The exclusive end of all government is but a sort of game law to keep fools (under the pretext of protecting them from the inroads of unlicensed knaves) in a preserve for the battus of the regular sportsmen. A community of sheer rogues would destroy itself, like two millstones moving without the intervention of a material to be ground. A nation of fools would be devoured by their neighbours; but a society compounded of the two, with a proper intermixture of those who are, in their own persons, an happy mixture of both, is admirably qualified for the maintainance of "social order, and the relations of civilized life." Folly is therefore the ultimate cause of all that is brilliant and elevated in social polity. Without fools, we should have neither kings, nor bishops, nor judges, nor generals, nor police magistrates, nor constables ; or, at least, if such things existed, they would be constituted so differently from those which at present bear the name, that they would no longer be worthy of it. They would be stripped of all the sublime and beautiful in which they now rejoice; and the polished Corinthian capital would be divested of the better part of its gilding and ornament. There would be no sinecures, no pensions, no reversionary grants, no proconsular colonies, and no close boroughs to claim them; nothing, in short, to distinguish men from the beasts of the field! This is the very touchstone of political science; and yet men go on abusing the blockheads and dolts, as if they were a superfluity in nature, and a let and an hindrance to the public at large. But the matter does not stop here. Banish folly from the intellectual complex, and the major part even of the honester callings must cease and be abandoned. The world would become little better than one vast tub of Diogenes, and its population would be as unaccommodated and as idle as the people of Ireland. If the simple desire of fencing out the inclemency of the elements alone presided over the choice of our habiliments, and nothing were granted to folly and ostentation, what would become of the tailor, and of the milliner and mantua-maker? It is folly and vanity that render these trades a means of genteel livelihood to so many worthy citizens; and without them the Stultzes and the Herbots would pine in the same hopeless obscurity as the vilest country botch. How little of the twenty yards of silk which my wife assures me is indispensable to the building of a decent evening dress, belong to wisdom and propriety; and how much is dedicated, under the names of gigots, rolans a dent, ruches, and furbelos, to the service of folly! How little of the stupendous and complicated piece of architecture, called a bonnet, depends upon the capacity of the head which bears it. The helmet of the Castle of Otranto |