same prudence and the same energy that we now look with comfort and good hope. Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the people by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties-by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment-by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the state. Let the Government do this: the People will assuredly do the rest.

SPIRIT OF SOCIETY IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE.*

The French and the English can no longer be accused of that mutual contempt which furnishes the preliminary ground of remark to the writer. of the agreeable work before us. After a jealousy of eight hundred years, we have begun to conquer our prejudices and recant our opinions; and we are now contented to glean from the customs and manners of our neighbours benefits somewhat more important than the innovations in caps, or the improvements in cookery, which formed pretty nearly the limits of that portion of our forefathers, ambition which was devoted to the imitation of our "hereditary foes." Late events have put the finishing stroke to popular prejudice; and we have now, of two extremes, rather to guard against the desire blindly to copy, than the resolution zealously to contemn. Those national sentiments, "grave, with a bright disdain," of Monsieur and soupe maigre, which give so patriotic a character to the British Theatre, never more will awaken a sympathising gallery to "the loud collision of applauding hands." But the character of the people, and the spirit of society, in the two countries are still, in many respects, remarkably different. When a French mob are excited, they clamour for glory-when an English mob are inclined to be riotous, they are thirsty for beer. At a contested election, the feelings of the working classes must necessarily be strongly excited. The harangues to their understandings-the addresses to their interests-the artifices for their affections-the congregating together-the conference-the discussion -the dispute the spirit of party,-these, if any emotions, might well be supposed to call forth the man from himself, to excite, to their inmost depth, his generous as well as angry sympathies, and warming him from all selfish considerations, to hurry him into even a blind and rash devotion for the cause he adopts, and a disdain, which no lure can soften, for that which he opposes. And so, indeed, to the uninitiated spectator it may appear; but how generally is that noisy ardour the result of a purchase-how many, in such a time and in such scenes, will grow inebriate on the hospitality of one, with the intention of voting for another-how large the number of those to whom you speak of retrenchment and reform, who remain unmoved till the bribe is hinted, and the vote, callous to the principles, is suborned by the purse! When, in the late general election, a patriotic adventurer was engaged in attempting to open (as the phrase is) a close borough, one of his most strenuous supporters declaiming on the vileness of the few privileged

A comparative View of the Social Life of England and France, from the Restoration of Charles the Second to the French Revolution. By the Editor of Madame du Deffand's Letters. Octavo. London, 1828.-Vol. lii. page 374. January, 1831.

voters in receiving thirty pounds each for their votes, added, with the air of a man of delicate conscience," But if you open the borough, sir, we will do it for five!"

But leaving, for the present, the graver discussions connected with the effects of our civil institutions, it is our intention to make a few observations on that Spirit of Society which is formed among the higher classes, and imitated among those possessing less aristocratical distinction.

The great distinction of fashion in France, as it was-and in England, as it is we consider to be this. In the former country the natural advantages were affected, in the latter we covet the acquired. There the aspirants to fashion pretended to wit-here they pretend to wealth. In this country, from causes sufficiently obvious, social reputation has long been measured by the extent of a rent-roll; respectability has been another word for money; and the point on which competitors have been the most anxious to vie with each other has been that exact point in which personal merit can have the least possible weight in the competition. The ambition of the French gallant, if devoted to a frivolous object, was at least more calculated to impress society with a graceful and gay tone than the inactive and unrelieved ostentation of the English pretender. And those circles to which a bon mot was the passport could scarcely fail to be more agreeable than circles in which, to be the most courted, it is sufficient to be the first-born. A Frenchman had, at least, one intellectual incentive to his social ambition;-to obtain access to the most fashionable, was to obtain access to the most pleasant, the most witty circles in his capital. But to enjoy the most difficult society of London is to partake of the inspidity of a decorated and silent crowd, of the mere sensual gratification of a costly dinner.

To give acerbity to the tone of our fashion-while it is far from increasing its refinement-there is a sort of negative opposition made by the titled aristocrats to that order, from which it must be allowed the majority have sprung themselves. Descended, for the most part, from the unpedigreed rich, they affect to preserve from that class, circles exclusive and impassable. Fashion to their heaven is like the lotus to Mahomet's; it is at once the ornament and the barrier. To the opulent, who command power, they pretend, while worshipping opulence, to deny ton: a generation passes, and the proscribed class have become the exclusive. Si le financier manque son coup, les courtisans disent de lui,-c'est un bourgeois, un homme de rien, un malôtru: s'il réussit, ils lui demandent sa fille.' This mock contest, in which riches ultimately triumph, encourages the rich to a field in which they are ridiculous till they conquer; and makes the one race servile, that the race succeeding may earn the privilege to be insolent. If the merchant or the banker has the sense to prefer the station in which he respectable, to attempting success in one that destroys his real eminence, while it apes a shadowy distinction, his wife, his daughters, his son in the Guards, are not often so wise. If one class of the great remain aloof, another class are sought, partly to defy, and partly to decoy;-and ruinous entertainments are givennot for the sake of pleasure, but with a prospective yearning to the columns of the Morning Post. They do not relieve dulness, but they render it pompous; and instead of suffering wealth to be the commander of enjoyment, they render it the slave to a vanity, that, of all the species of that unquiet.

* Les Caractères de La Bruyère.

passion, is the most susceptible to pain. Circles there are in London, in which to be admitted is to be pleased and to admire; but those circles are composed of persons above the fashion or aloof from it. Of those where that tawdry deity presides, would it be extravagant to say that existence is a course of strife, subserviency, hypocrisy, meanness, ingratitude, insolence, and mortification; and that to judge of the motives which urge to such a life, we have only to imagine the wish to be every where in the pursuit of nothings? Fashion in this country is also distinguished from her sister in France, by our want of social enthusiasm for genius. It showed, not the power of appreciating his talents, but a capacity for admiring the more exalted order of talents (which we will take leave to say is far from a ridiculous trait in the national character), that the silent and inelegant Hume was yet in high request in the brilliant coteries of Paris. In England, the enthusiasm is for distinction of a more sounding kind. Were a great author to arrive in London, he might certainly be neglected; but a petty prince could not fail of being eagerly courted. A man of that species of genius which amuses-not exalts-might indeed create a momentary sensation. The oracle of science -the discoverer of truth, might be occasionally asked to the soirees of some noble Mæcenas; but every drawing-room, for one season at least, would be thrown open to the new actress, or the imported musician. Such is the natural order of things in our wealthy aristocracy, among whom there can be as little sympathy with those who instruct, as there must be gratitude to those who entertain, till the entertainment has become the prey of satiety, and the hobbyhorse of the new season replaces the rattle of the last.

Here, we cannot but feel the necessity of subjecting our gallantry to our reason, and enquiring how far the indifference to what is great, and the passion for what is frivolous, may be occasioned by the present tone of that influence which women necessarily exercise in this country, as in all modern civilized communities. Whoever is disposed to give accurate attention to the constitution of fashion (which fashion in the higher classes, is, in other words, the spirit of society), must at once perceive how largely that fashion is formed, and how absolutely it is governed, by the gentler sex. Our fashion may indeed be considered the aggregate of the opinions of our women. In order to account for the tone that fashion receives, we have but to inquire into the education bestowed upon women. Have we, then, instilled into them those public principles (as well as private accomplishments, which are calculated to ennoble opinion, and to furnish their own peculiar inducements of reward to a solid and lofty merit in the opposite sex? Our women are divided into classes-the domestic and the dissipated. The latter employ their lives in the pettiest intrigues, or, at best, in a round of vanities that usurp the name of amusements. Women of the highest rank alone take much immediate share in politics; and that share, it must be confessed brings any thing but advantage to the state. No one will assert that these soft aspirants have any ardour for the public-any sympathy with measures that are pure and unselfish. No one will deny that they are the first to laugh at principles, which it is but justice to say, the educat ionwe have given them precludes them from comprehending,-and to excite the parental emotions of the husband, by reminding him that the advancement of his sons requires interest with the Minister. The domestic class of women are not now, we suspect, so numerous as they have been estimated by speculators on our national character. We grant their merits at once; and we inquire if the essence of these merits be not made to consist in the very

refraining from an attempt to influence public opinion,-in the very ignorance of all virtues connected with the community ;-if we shall not be told that the proper sphere of woman is private life, and the proper limit to her virtues, the private affections. Now, were it true that women did not influence public opinion, we should be silent on the subject, and subscribe to all those charming commonplaces on retiring modesty and household attractions that we have so long been accustomed to read and hear. But we hold that feminine influence, however secret, is unavoidably great; and owing to this lauded ignorance of public matters, we hold it also to be unavoidably corrupt. It is clear that women of the class we speak of, attaching an implied blame to the exercise of the reasoning faculty, are necessarily the reservoir of unexamined opinions and established prejudices,—that those opinions and prejudices colour the education they give to their children, and the advice they bestow upon their husbands. We allow them to be the soothing companion and the tender nurse- -(these are admirable merits -these are all their own)-but, in an hour of wavering between principle and interest, on which side would their interest lie ?—would they inculcate the shame of a pension, or the glory of a sacrifice to the public interest? On the contrary, how often has the worldly tenderness of the mother been the secret cause of the tarnished character and venal vote of the husband; or, to come to a pettier source of emotion, how often has a wound, or an artificial pampering, to some feminine vanity, led to the renunciation of one party advocating honest measures, or to the adherence to another subsisting upon courtly intrigues! In more limited circles, how vast that influence in forming the national character, which you would deny because it is secret! -how evident a proof of the influence of those whose minds you will not enlarge, in that living which exceeds means,-so pre-eminently Englishso wretched in its consequences-so paltry in its object! Who shall say that the whole comfortless, senseless, heartless system of ostentation which pervades society has no cause-not in women, if you like—but in the education we give them?

We are far from wishing that women, of what rank soever, should intermeddle with party politics, or covet the feverish notoriety of state intrigues, any more than we wish they should possess the universal genius ascribed to Lady Anne Clifford by Dr. Donne, and be able to argue on all subjects "from predestination to slea silk." We are far from desiring them to neglect one domestic duty, or one household tie; but we say-for women as for men-there is no sound or true morality, where there is no knowledge of -no devotion to-public virtue. In the education women receive, we would enlarge their ideas to the comprehension of political integrity; and in the variety of events with which life tries the honesty of men, we would leave to those principles we have inculcated-unpolluted as they would be by the close contagion of party-undisturbed by the heat and riot of actionthat calm influence, which would then scarcely fail to be as felicitous and just as we deem it now not unoften unhappy and dishonouring. But of all the inducements to female artifice and ambition, our peculiar custom of selling our daughters to the best advantage is the most universal. We are a match-making nation. The system in France, and formerly existent in this country, of betrothing children, had at least with us one good effect among many bad. If unfriendly to chastity in France, it does not appear to have produced so pernicious an effect in England; but while it did not impair the endearments of domestic life, it rendered women less profession

ally hollow and designing at that period of life when love ceases to encourage deceit; it did not absorb their acutest faculties in a game in which there is no less hypocrisy requisite than in the amours of a Dorimont, or a Belinda -but without the excuse of the affections. While this custom increases the insincerity of our social life, it is obvious that it must react also on its dulness; for wealth and rank being the objects sought, are the objects courted; and thus, another reason is given for crowding our circles with important stolidity, and weeding them of persons poor enough to be agreeable-and because agreeable-dangerous and unwelcome.

Would we wish, then, the influence of women to be less? We will evade the insidious question.-We wish it to be differently directed. By contracting their minds, we weaken ourselves; by cramping their morality, we ruin our own; as we ennoble their motives, society will rise to a loftier tone-and even Fashion herself may be made to reward glory as well as frivolity. Nay, we shall not even be astonished if it ultimately encourages, with some portion of celebrity and enthusiasm, the man who has refused a bribe, or conferred some great benefit on his country, as well as the idol of Crockford's or the heir to a dukedom.

It is somewhat remarkable, that that power of ridicule so generally cultivated as a science in France has scarcely exercised over the tone of feeling in that country so repressing an influence as it has among ourselves. It never destroyed in the French the love of theatrical effect; and even in the prevalence of those heartless manners formed under the old régime, it never deterred them from avowing romantic feeling, if uttered in courtly language. Nay, it was never quite out of fashion to affect a gallant sentiment or a generous emotion; and the lofty verse of Corneille was echoed with enthusiasm by the courtiers of a Bourbon, and the friends of a Pompadour. But here, a certain measured and cold demeanour has been too often coupled with the disposition to sneer not only at expressions that are exaggerated, but at sentiments that are noble. Profligacy in action surprises, shocks, less than the profession of exalted motives, uttered in conversation, when. as a witty orator observed, "the reporters are shut out, and there is no occasion to humbug.' We confess that we think it a bad sign when lofty notions are readily condemned as bombast, and when a nation not much addicted to levity, or even liveliness, is, above all others, inclined to ridicule the bias to magnify and exalt. A shoeblack of twelve years old, plying his trade by the Champs Elysées, was struck by a shoeblack four years younger. He was about to return the blow-an old fruitwoman arrested his arm, exclaiming "Have you then no greatness of soul?" Nothing could be more bombastic than the reproof. Granted. But who shall say how far such bombast influenced the magnanimity of the labouring classes in that late event, which was no less a revolution in France, than the triumph of the human species? Exaggeration of sentiment can rarely, as a national trait, be dangerous. With men of sense it unavoidably settles into greatness of mind; but moral debasement,-a sneer for what is high, a disbelief of what is good, is the very worst symptom a people can display.

The influence which it is the natural province of the Drama to exert towards the exalting the standard of sentiment and opinion is not, at this time, it will readily be allowed, very efficacious in counterbalancing the worldly and vulgar tendency to degrade. Tragedy sleeps side by side with the Epic: and the loftier shapes of Comedy have dwindled into Farce, that most dwarfish imp of all the varieties of dramatic humour. The stage seem