an hour had elapsed before I could make out, that it was impossible to understand the meaning of the oracular gibberish they uttered. The most frequent word in their mouths was "Law."

Part of these people were employed by the Assistant to blind "Obedience," and the Conductor, by throwing dust into their eyes; and part to fill up the chasms in the Plain with their books. The Plain being thus smoothed for the Vehicle, it ran, for some time, with wonderful ease upon it; but Obedience soon after recovering his sight, the books instantly vanished, the Plain became rougher than ever, and, before the Vehicle could regain the road, the Conductor, with his Assistant, were shaken out of their seats, and dashed to pieces down the precipice.

After one or two disasters of this description, it was found to be so dangerous to drive the Vehicle on the Plain, that all other Assistants studiously confined it to the road, and contented themselves with exercising their ingenuity to improve it, not by cutting away those parts that were cumbersome and ugly, but by adding gilt and plaister to hide them, and by hanging on it a quantity of fine and almost imperceptible wheels, which, instead of aiding, only grated against, and obstructed the others, and colored formerly the problem that had puzzled me of its irregular progress in its track.

During this period, the Plain, by degrees, recovered its verdure, until it became as beautiful as when I first beheld it.

"But you would like," said the little man to me, " to have a bet"ter view of the two bodies of people in the Vehicle?"

Throwing my eyes towards the middle body, I saw every one fast asleep; but, in the larger body, there was such a confusion, that it quite distracted me. I saw some hugging and some beating blacks

some eating what I took to be sand, but which the little man assured me, upon his honor, was East India Sugar--some reading out of bibles and other holy books, and preaching forbearance, and yet flying into outrageous passion, if contradicted-they resembled invisible ink, as their characters were not discovered to be black, until they were heated. I saw one kissing donkeys, dogs, pigs, and other beasts-another covered all over with what I conceived were hieroglyphics, but which I afterwards found were calculations-I saw some with rolls of paper. ten miles long, with pictures of cart-whips and slaves, and with millions of names upon them in the same hand-writing---I saw a number of blythe, merry, chubby-faced fellows, who, the little man said, were called Ins, fighting with vehement, angry, tempestuous fellows. Aye," cried the little man joyfully, "I was one of those---there vir"tue sits, and patriotism, and honor, and disinterestedness, and contempt of money, and

As the little man was proceeding in his speech, I heard an universal clatter around me, and looking towards the Wall, I observed "Army," which had long drooped from inactivity, pricking up its ears, and betraying several tokens of anxiety to jump upon the territory beyond. The little man, too, of a sudden, began to caper in the air, and expressing in his face as much joy as it could contain, hallo'd "Peninsula," so loudly, that the noise awoke me.

What in the name of Phaeton is this vehicle rolling quickly along St. James's Street-its shapeless leathern hood made after the model of one of Dr. Birkbeck's cures for a smoking chimney, intended to turn, like a well-trained husband, its deaf ear to the storm--so humble in its construction as almost to perform the office of scavenger by sweeping the street, looking like a sledge, or a baker's barrow? Who inhabits this shell? Which of the Linnean vermiculi is shrouded in the interior of this univalvular locomotive conch-this Long Acre nautilus? Why it is positively nothing after all but a cabriolet. See, it pulls up with a sudden full-stop check; the boy groom hastily dismounts from his lodgment, where he might with truth have complained, like the gentle bird of old which found no rest for the sole of its foot. The inhabitant creeps out, like a duckling from its shell, or like a seed from its pod, or like the bright flash of the eye of an Albanian beauty from the recesses of her dark hood! What is the creature like? Very much like a man of five feet ten high; plainly clad in a blue frock coat, a black silk neckcloth, dark colored, somewhat close fitting trowsers, tightly confined under the foot, nothing extraordinary or extreme, simple-nothing for description, nothing in the exterior even for L. E. L. to fall in love with. But mark the proud glance of his eye, the manly independence of his step, his air, and manner-What is he? a Man of Fashion.

Well, then, who can this be ambling an old English thorough-bred horse along the Champs Elysees? His method of equitation ultramilitary; his legs inflexible, something like a pair of tailors' shears across a goose handle; his gay colored coat, small and shapeless, a

mere tailor's remnant; his party-colored waistcoats in endless folds of radiance, like skeins of pattern silks, a mantua-maker's Iris around his neck; his apology for a hat, looking as though he had plotted economy in his purchase by buying one two sizes less than a fit; his hair like a worn-out birch besom in advance of each of his ears, and then his impassable forest of whiskers, sufficient to raise the envy of every speculative chair-stuffer in Paris. Who is he? Why he is a French Man of Fashion.

Can this being claim any kindred or alliance in nature with the two former? is he to be ranked by natural historians in the same order in nature? You may see him on the bleak barren coast of Winter Harbor in about 75 degrees north latitude; his broad and flat countenance, high cheek bones, small and deep-sunk eyes, short pug nose, large mouth, thick lips, coarse black and straight hair, his greasy tawny brown skin, are the envy and admiration of his tribe. His jacket descending as low as the hip joint, is made of the white dog or wolf skin, the fur inside next his body; his dress breeches are distinguished from the vulgar by being of the finest bear fur, the hair side outward. Then look at his seal skin canoe, full two feet longer than any other, far or near; the handles of the paddles marvellously inlaid with bone, his knife made from the tusks of a mighty walrus he has slain, carved and ornamented. But observe his carriage, his dancing, the loudness and majesty of his voice, the style in which he handles his fishing spear. What is he? An Esquimaux Man of Fashion.

Nature, how general, how immutable are thy laws! how little subject to change are the great principles upon which the human mind in every state and stage is affected, is moved to joy and sorrow! All these men of fashion are actuated by one feeling, uniformly the same in its origin, uniformly the same in its results. The results--what are they? Admiration, and an ardent desire to imitate. We shall presently see the reasons of this universal effect produced from such apparently dissimilar causes; but look to the positive consequences of this pervading, evanescent, untangible influence called Fashion. In London or Paris, here is a man has gained, no matter how, the station of a leader, he is in the van of the prevailing mode; nay, he is himself the former and framer of that mode. Thousands stand aloof in reverential awe, behold his present form of existence, watch the last changes effected in his dress, his equipage, his furniture, his colloquial idioms. Go to any public place of resort, and if sufficient time from the last change be afforded, you will see a thousand coats squared by the same pattern as his. Like the children in Cruikshank's picture of Philoprogenitiveness, you may all swear to the father by a main feature, their legitimacy is proved beyond controversy by the length of the nose!

Have these blind followers grasped the object of their painful pursuit? are they now settled as men of fashion by the figure of their skirts? Pshaw---Lord Velvet and Beau Broadcloth had their skirts a full inch shorter last Sunday in the Park. The former length is

VOL. II.

3 s

now a solecism, a barbarity, an offence to taste, a scandal to the shears. No, this is the characteristic, the very essence of the idol : we call to it fervently as Macbeth did to the unembodied dagger, "Come, let me clutch thee;" we call in vain! Let the time come when there can exist ten thousand men of fashion (in the close application of the word) in England, and the face of nature must be changed, the constitution of man himself broken and revolutionized.

The results of fashion being the same in all forms of society, and under every modification of appearance, so are the individuals who may properly be said to control that influence. They are alike in their feelings in relation to others. A man of fashion in Pall Mall or Melville Island, is in constant contradiction, not only to all society, but to himself. He despises his fellow worms, because they are unlike him, while he is in anxious and unceasing activity to prevent such a degrading approximation. He possesses the power of keeping in the van, and heaps contumely on those whom he does not permit to approach; like the vanity of the fore-wheel of a carriage boasting that the posterior one never overtakes it. He treats those who are not successful rivals with contempt; and those who are, with hatred. Neither does he own any greater degree of kindness for those who are his equals, even though at such a distance that he need not entertain any fear of obstruction in the range of his own particular influence. He is not content to occupy his own orbit, but despises those who move in any other. Only suppose placed by any concurrence of circumstances in one apartment, a Bond Street, a Place du Carousel, and a North Pole Man of Fashion. Think of the cold contempt, and the silent but proud disdain, of the two first, and the loud screech of unbridled laughter from the polished and dexterous seal catcher, the glory of his tribe! A genuine votary of fashion in one latitude or other, must of necessity be an antisocial man, although it is only in society he can obtain the object of his earnest desire, the delight of his soul. Strange paradox.

As there is not, nor can be, any real community of feeling between coeval men of fashion, so neither is any posthumous respect shown to those in whose steps they follow. All authority is denied, even to those who could tell us as country epitaphs do," I was once "what you are now." Fashion despises the sacred tie of ancestry. Every man of fashion is as much bound to ridicule and neglect the external glory of the past century, as of the past year. Like a young eagle just out of the nest and fresh on the wing, he owns no parentage, acknowledges no kindred, the beauty of his plumage and bravery of his strength is his own, his present fancy his only guide. There is something in this fact awfully depressing. Eminent as you may be, the idol of the day, the unapproachable director of change, your time will surely come when you will be treated as an outcast, a nothing---yes: last out your time, let tailors and friseurs do their office ---hold the reins until the palsied, withering hand reluctantly dismisses them---be a man of fashion until three score and ten if you please, yet the next generation will hold you in contempt as relatively

barbarous; you will, if remembered at all, be the hissing and the scorn of your successors. Nay, not only those who succeed you in empire, but the nation at large, positively the mob, will cast their scurril gibes upon you as a by-gone dandy, a model of depraved taste, a sample of the past---an antique!

How must it move to melancholy, when a man of fashion, in all the pride and conscious dignity of being the very dictator, the Cæsar of the empire of taste, attends our national theatres! when he witnesses the dress and manners of the past age brought upon the stage for comic effect, and looked upon, even by the galleries, with as much levity as a mountebank's party-colored coat, regarded as the wanton mimicry of caricature. There is enough, one would think, in such a moral spectacle to moderate the most unassuaged passion for fashionable fame. Ah! look upon that beau of a century past. Look at his powdered and essenced wig, his fringed neck-cloth, his lace, his ruffles, and embroidered satin, his polished cane! Was ever such a man the envy of admiring crowds, the very apex, the top stone of fashionable life? Impossible. His first entrance is now greeted with a derisive smile, even from the present race of men of fashion, the inheritors of his glory. Heavens! who can believe him ever to have been a fashionable man, a man holding the same relative chieftainship as Brummell once held, and as H- now holds? Is

it true that he was all this? Yes: then ye Brummells, ye H- -S, ye P―s, look upon him as the prototype of what you will one day become. Draw, for once, some moral from the scene. Consider that "the fashion of this world passeth away." Yes: you, at no distant day, perhaps, will certainly become what he is now, the subject of ribald jests, of profane scorn; yea, of mob contempt and jocularity!

Surely a very little share of philosophical reflection should serve to repress the vain glory of modern fashion. The representation of antiquated finery would cease to move us to smiles of contempt, if we did but pause to consider. But who would ever laugh if they did consider? Hobbes tells us that laughter is produced in all cases by the idea of our own present superiority being forced upon our attention. It is, for this reason, that refined wit, yielding a very different kind of mental emotion, is not productive of much laughter. The laugh of a man of fashion, however, is originated precisely by this despicable vanity, this presumptuous self-conceit. He hears of the manners of the past, he witnesses the just delineation of other times, or of other countries; his soul, trammelled by habit, takes in only one mean view of the whole, he contrasts his own assumed superiority, and glee and merriment are the sentiments of his mind. He decides that every circumstance which differs from himself and his own practices, as it yields no agreeable association to his mind, must be immeasurably inferior, must of necessity be gross and unideal. All the while the truth existing that there is no kind of inherent superiority of one form of dress, one style of furniture, one system of external manners, over another. The dress and manners of the court and