with a horsewhip in her own park. From England he went to the United States, where he clandestinely married a young and artless girl, in whose family he was hospitably received. This, though a breach of confidence, might yet be palliated; but what can be said of him who misnamed himself in the marriage register, as an artifice to release himself if the marriage should prove unprofitable, and who bartered back his wife to her family for a sum of money and an annuity for life. We will avoid the hazard of giving pain, by not mentioning names, or entering into particulars. His next exploit was at Berlin, where he seduced an unhappy victim, who drowned herself in despair or madness; and last of all, as we have already said, he destroyed himself at Brussels.

The French emigrants in England received and merited commendation for their general conduct; yet, assuredly the purity of English domestic morals must have suffered by contact with the French emigration. All it is true were not Tillys, and few were so bad, but all were brought up in the same school of morals, and the humble but laudable exercise of their acquirements and talents for a livelihood, gave them opportunities within the domestic circle, the more easily abused, that the intercourse of the innocent and young in England is so much more unwatched and free. The contagion, however, could not have extended far, and the time is long gone by.

But another question naturally suggests itself-have English morals gained or lost by the migration of high and low into France, and particularly to the French capital, at and since the peace of 1815? The revolution unquestionably produced an improved morality in France-it generated an educated and independent middle class, between the nobles and the people, unknown before, and it has brought the higher orders under the controul of opinion. Yet we doubt whether the mere bourgeois, as they are called, were improved in morals by the revolution. At that epoch of licence and levelling, the citizens' wives and daughters took up the finery and depravity of the noblesse, as one of the conquests of republican equality. -Before that epoch a bourgeoise who appeared painted or bedizened, would have been hooted by the populace. "Une "femme à pied dans une pareille équipage," says Rousseau, "n'est pas trop en sûreté contre les insultes de la populace.

"Ces insultes sont le cri de la pudeur révoltée, et dans cette occa❝sion, comme en beaucoup d'autres, la brutalité du peuple plus “honnête que la bienséance des gens polis, retient peut-être ici "cent mille femmes dans les bornes de la modestie." No Englishman who observes and compares can resist the impression, that whatever the French nation may be, Paris is an immoral capital. Admitted within the threshold of society, he finds intrigues of gallantry the great staple of conversation, as if they were business of life. An acquaintance with the town discovers to him sensuality reduced to system-governed by a certain conventional decency, and a certain economy of fortune, health, and time. London, it must be admitted, teems with vice and crime,-and the wealthy, who are there so numerous, can be as sumptuously profligate as they please. But in London there is a barrier between the degraded and the honest of the sex. Vice in London presents her face ungauzed -in her deformity-and debauchery is so intemperate and coarse-so prodigal of fortune, health, and character, that it destroys, or degrades, its victim after a short career, or else it becomes revolting after the riotous animal spirits of youth have evaporated. It is a maxim in England, that a reformed rake makes the best husband. We will not answer for its truth; but we assert, that in Paris a rake is never reformed. It is not necessary he should. Vice is there refined and veiled, so as to shock neither the individual himself, nor the world. The reputable and disreputable of the community are separated by no distinct line of demarcation. In London this boundary is universally, if not strictly observed.

There is doubtless in London a greater prevalence of intemperance and orgies. This we think may be in part ascribed to the exclusion of evening visits. In Paris one may make an evening visit unasked, on mere acquaintance. The luxuries and ostentation of eating and drinking, which seem the main object of evening society in London, are there subordinate, or little thought of. But still this restricted English system of evening society, whilst it promotes coarse dissipation abroad, keeps the domestic circle but the more pure at home. The wives and daughters of England cannot return improved from a residence in Paris. There are few circles into which a modest Englishwoman, with merely English

habits, could advantageously be introduced. The women of France mingle with the men in the conversations of the world on an equal footing-Frenchmen, and Frenchwomen, will talk freely of the intrigues of the opera dancers, and discuss chastity and "the senses," like philosophers, without further transgression. An English woman, laying aside her national reserve, and indulging in a new licence, will not know, with the Frenchwoman, how and where to stop.

Their

But we must guard ourselves against being misunderstood. Englishmen in France, deceived by the frank and familiar tone of French women, have sometimes formed notions and made representations of their general conduct, alike vulgar and unfounded. No women, we believe, of any country, know better when and how to make themselves respected. conjugal infidelities are not more frequent than elsewhere, and the fault (we assert it in all seriousness) should be charged upon their husbands. Every Frenchman affects gallantry, makes a declaration to every woman he meets, sets the example of seduction to his neighbour, and of levity to his wife, and has little right to complain. We again disclaim imputing to Frenchwomen infidelity as wives-We judge them, on the contrary, tender, generous, and devoted. But the man who possesses the hand of a Frenchwoman without her heart, or who having gained her heart no longer prizes it, is, we think, somewhat exposed to what they pleasantly term the common lot.

425

ARTICLE II.

A Journey from India to England, &c., in the Year 1817. By Lieutenant-Colonel JOHNSON, C.B., 2 vols. London: 1818.

Personal Narrative of a Journey from India to England, &c., &c., in the year 1824. By Captain the Hon. GEORGE KEPPEL, 2 vols. London: 1827.

Travels from India to England, &c., in the years 1825-6. By JAMES EDWARD ALEXANDER, Esq., 2 vols. London: 1827.

Narrative of a Journey into Persia, &c., in the year 1817. By Captain MORETZ VON KOTZEBUE, translated from the German, Svo. London: 1819.

Fifteen Months Pilgrimage through untrodden Tracts of Khuzistan and Persia, &c., &c., in the years 1831 and 1832. By J. H. STOCQUELER, Esq., 8vo., 2 vols. London: 1832.

Ir Persia and the Persians are not as well known to the home-keeping portion of the English people as France and the French, Italy and the Italians, or Holland and the Dutch; if the road from Bushire to Tehran, and from Ispahan to Tabreez, be not as familiar to us as that from London to York, or from York to Edinburgh, it is not, one might suppose, for lack of routes, and journals, and notes, and pilgrimages, to describe them; for, not only are there many travellers of an earlier æra, who give excellent accounts of the country as it was in their day, but there are abundance of voyagers of our own time, who have obligingly favoured the public with the result of their observations on their respective routes, as witness the goodly list of names at the head of this article; yet, notwithstanding all these means of information, it is singular how little is actually known to the great mass of the well informed British public, regarding the country and people in question; for we verily believe, that were the situation of Tehran, or Mushed, or Tabreez, or Hamadan, or any of the principal cities or districts of Persia, or were any characteristic of its people, to become a question in any company of a dozen or twenty persons, there would not, unless it were by mere

accident, be found two, probably not one out of the whole number, qualified to inform the rest, or even to state in what country the said city or district was to be found.

To what are we to attribute this ignorance, this utter want of sympathy with, or curiosity regarding, a country so interesting in its localities, so prominently important to the British nation in every point of view, geographical, political, and commercial, and so fast rising in consequence? How comes it that a land so celebrated, so associated with our boyish recollections as the proper soil of wonders and adventures, and with those of our youth as the classic ground of so many and momentous historical events, of such surprising revolutions, should still, to the great intelligent majority of these realms, remain an unknown region-a nation whose condition or destinies create less interest in the people of England, than those of the natives of Timbuctoo, of Bornou or Caffraria, or of the skin-clad savages of North America?

Assuredly we English are, in some respects, a singularly capricious and inconsistent people; slaves of fashion and of impulse, rather than judicious followers of reason and sound principle. What but fashion and caprice is it that directs so large a share of national talent and wealth to the exploration of regions, and the determination of points of at least questionable practical utility, while so much remains to be done that would redound equally to the true interests and honour of the nation, and to the general improvement of a large portion of the human race?

We might without much trouble produce many sufficient instances of the national inconsistency in this respect; but having already expressed our own feelings regarding it, and exposed it to the attention of the public in a late article*, we shall not again expatiate on the subject, but proceed to consider what, besides the effects of fashion and caprice, may be the causes of this strange indifference to Asiatic, and more particularly to Persian subjects.

The interest likely to be excited by Persia, and Asiatic subjects in general, in the minds of the great majority of Europeans, is, for the most part, that arising from their

* Article 8, No. II.