mass of the society of Edinburgh is formed. I mean the winter society of Edinburgh; for, in the summer months— that is from April till Christmas-the town is commonly deserted by all, except those who have ties of real business to connect them with it. Nay, during a considerable portion of that time, it loses, as I am informed, the greater part even of its eminent lawyers, and has quite as green and desolate an appearance, as the fashionable squares in London have about the falling of the leaf. The medley of people, thus brought together for a few months every year to inhabit a few streets in this city, cannot afford to split their forces very minutely, so as to form many different spheres of society, according to their opinions of their relative rank and importance. It is now admitted everywhere, that no party is worth the going to, unless it be a crowded one; now, it is not possible to form a party here that shall be at once select and crowded. The dough and the leaven must go together to make up the loaf, and the wives of lords and lairds, and advocates, and writers, must be contented to club their forces, if they are to produce any thing that deserves the honourable name of a squeeze. Now and then, indeed, a person of the very highest importance, may, by great exertion, succeed in forming one exception to this rule. But the rule is in general a safe one; and the Edinburgh parties are in the main mixed parties. I do not mean that they are mixed in a way that renders them at all disagreeable, even to those who have been accustomed to the style of society in much greater capitals, but that they are mixed in a way of which no example is to be found in the parties of London, or indeed of any European capital, except the Paris of the present time. People visit each other in Edinburgh with all the appearance of cordial familiarity, who, if they lived in London, would imagine their difference of rank to form an impassable barrier against such intercourse. Now, although the effect may not amount to any thing absolutely unpleasant, there is no question that this admission of persons not educated in the true circles, must be seen and felt upon the general aspect of the society of Edinburgh, and that, upon the whole, this society is, in consequence of their admission, less elegant than might otherwise have been expected in the capital of such a country as Scotland. * * * * Your's very affectionately, LETTER XIX. TO THE SAME. P. M. DEAR AUNT, HOWEVER composed and arranged, the routs and balls of this place are, during their season, piled upon each other with quite as much bustle and pomp as those even of London. Every night, some half a dozen ladies are at home, and every thing that is in the wheel of fashion, is carried round, and thrown out in due course at the door of each of them. There is at least one regular ball every evening, and beside this, half of the routs are in their waning hours transformed into carpet-dances, wherein quadrilles are performed in a very penseroso method to the music of the piano-forte. Upon the whole, however, I am inclined to be of opinion, that even those who most assiduously frequent these miscellaneous assemblages are soon sickened, if they durst but confess the truth, of the eternal repetition of the same identical crowd displaying its noise and pressure under so many different roofs. Far be it from me to suspect, that there are not some faces, of which no eye can grow weary; but, in spite of all their loveliness, I am certainly of opinion, that the impression made by the belles of Edinburgh would be more powerful, were it less frequently reiterated. Among the hundred young ladies, whose faces are exhibited in these parties, a very small proportion, of course, can have any claims to that higher kind of beauty, which, like the beauty of painting or sculpture, must be gazed on for months or years before the whole of its charm is understood and felt as it ought to be. To see every evening, for months in succession, the same merely pretty, or merely pleasing faces, is at the best a fatiguing business. One must soon become as familiar with the contour of every cheek, and the sweep of every ringlet, as one is with the beauties or defects of one's own near relatives. And if it be true, that defects in this way come to be less disagreeable, it is no less true, per contra, that beauties come to have less of the natural power of their fascination. The effects of this unceasing flood of gayety, then, are not perhaps so very favourable as might be expected to the great object of all gayeties-the entrapping of the unfortunate lords of the creation. But this is not the worst of the matter. I am really very free from any very puritanical notions, in regard to the pleasures of human life; but I do sincerely, and in honest earnestness doubt, whether any good is gained to the respectable citizens of this town, by having their wives and daughters immersed, for so considerable a portion of the year, in a perpetual round of amusements, so fatiguing to their bodies and their minds, and so destructive, I should fear, of much of that quiet and innocent love of home and simple pleasures, in which the true charm of the female character ought to consist, and in which its only true charm does at this moment consist, in the opinion of all men of sense and feeling. It is a very pretty thing, no doubt, to see a young lady dressed with Parisian flowers and Parisian gauzes, and silk slippers and an Indian fan, and the whole &c. of fashionable array: But I question whether this be, after all, the style in which a young man of any understanding sees a young lady with most danger to his peace. It is very well that people in the more quiet walks of life should not be ignorant of what goes on among those that are pleased to style themselves their betters: But, I do think that this is rather too entire and bona fide an initiation into a train of existence, which is, luckily, as inconsistent with the per manet happiness, as it is with the permanent duties, of those who cannot afford all their lives to be mere fine ladies. For myself, after living so quietly in Cardigan, I have been on the whole much pleased with the full and leisurely view I have now had even of this out-skirt of the beau-monde. I do not think matters have undergone any improvement since I last peeped into its precincts. The ladies are undoubtedly by no means so well-dressed as they were a few years ago, before these short waists and enormous tetes of flowers and ringlets were introduced from Paris. There is, perhaps, no one line in the whole of the female form, in which there lies so much gracefulness as in the outline of the back. Now, that was seen as it ought to be a few years ago; but now every woman in Britain looks as if her clothes were hung about her neck by a peg. And then the truly Spartan exposure of the leg, which seems now to be in fashion, is, in my judgment, the most anwise thing in the whole world; for any person can tell well enough from the shape of the foot and ancle, whether the limb be or be not handsome; and what more would the ladies have? Moreover, the fashion has not been allowed to obtain its ascendancy without evident detriment to the interests of the majority; for I have never yet been in any place where there were not more limbs that would gain by being concealed, than by being exposed. But, in truth, even those who have the shape of a Diana, may be assured that they are not, in the main, gainers by attracting too much attention to some of their beauties. I wonder that they do not recollect and profit by the exquisite description of the Bride. in Sir John Suckling's poem of the Wedding: "Her feet beneath her petticoat, Like little mice stole in and out, As for those, who, with bad shapes, make a useless display of their legs, I must own, I have no excuse for their folly. I know well enough, that it is a very difficult thing to form any proper opinion about one's own face; because it is univer sally admitted that faces, which have no regularity of feature, may often be far more charming than those which have, and, of course, those who are sensible enough to perceive, that their heads could not stand the test of sculpture, may be very easily pardoned for believing, that their expressiveness might still render them admirable studies for a painter. But as to limbs-I really am quite at a loss to conceive how any person should labour under the least difficulty in ascertaining, in the most exact way, whether handsomeness may, or may not, be predicated concerning any given pair of legs or arms in existence. Their beauty is entirely that of Form, and by looking over a few books of prints, or a few plasterof-Paris casts, the dullest eye in the world may learn, in the course of a single forenoon, to be almost as good a critic in calves and ancles as Canova himself. Yet nothing can be more evident, than that the great majority of young ladies are most entirely devoid of any ideas concerning the beauty of Form, either in themselves, or in others; they never take the trouble to examine any such matters minutely, but satisfy themselves with judging by the general air and result. In regard to other people, this may do very well; but it is a very bad plan with respect to themselves. Even you, my dear lady Johnes, are a perfect tyro in this branch of knowledge. I remember, only the last time I saw you, you were praising, with all your might, the legs of Colonel B, those flimsy worthless things, that looked as if they were bandaged with linen rollers from the heel to the knee. I beg you would look at the Apollo Belvidere, the Fighting Gladiator, and the Farnese Hercules. There are only three handsome kinds of legs in the world, and in these, you have a specimen of each of the three-I speak of gentlemen. As for your own sex, the Venus is the only true model of female form in existence, and yet such is your culpable ignorance of yourselves, that I devoutly believe she would be pronounced a very clumsy person, were she to come into the Aberystwith ball room. You may say what you will, but I still assert, and I will prove it if you please, by pen and pen |