"Well, darling, if such be the case, marry-but choose a very handsome woman for your wife, and very affectionate-that she may take the tenderest care of my little Theophilus. Oh! by our lady, you will meet with more women than you have need of!but be very particular in the choice you make-or, have you yet fixed on any one?"

No, dear mamma, as yet I have no particular one in viewbut I think, as you say, I shall only be embarrassed which to choose. I have a hundred and fifty pounds a year in the funds: I once had more, but have been unlucky in my speculations. However, a hundred and fifty pounds a year is still pretty well; to which, if I add, a person without defects

You will no doubt meet with a wife who will bring you at least five thousand pounds."

"Do you think so?"-"Yes."-"Five thousand pounds-let me see five thousand pounds never produce more than two hundred and fifty pounds a year-but after all, should I meet with a woman suitable to me, I shall not be particular about a few hundred pounds more or less. But, above all, I must have a pretty wife a very pretty wife!"

"You say well, child. Besides, a good looking young fellow like you has a right to be particular. Ah! mauvais sujet!when your intention to marry becomes known in the world, all the papas and mammas will pay court to you; but again let me beg you not to hurry yourself.'

Girardière felt convinced that he should find plenty of matches; for, in truth, husbands being so much rarer than lovers, those who announce the courageous intention to take a wife, are in general greatly courted. Our hero thus found a consolation for his former reverses in his present resolution-" I have not," said he, "been blessed with a superfluity of bonnes fortunes, because luck has been against me; but when I make known my determination to marry, it will be altogether different-all the maids, all the widows, will direct their glances towards me."

Theophilus did not say to himself, "I shall soon be fifty-I am almost bald-my face is wrinkled-my cheeks furrowed-my eyes swollen-I possess neither wit nor accomplishments, but am eaten up with pretension." Bridoison pretends that we utter these things to ourselves; for my part, I think that few of us have the courage to make such confessions.

(To be continued.)

MISCELLANEOUS CRITICISMS.

No. II.

"FAVOURITES OF FASHIONABLE SOCIETY."

BY SCRUTATOR.

WE have here an essay on Fashionable Society, by an individual who knows as much about it as the Marquis of Londonderry knows of Plato or Aristotle. We are not very plainly informed by the author what his aim might have been in launching this avalanche of low abuse and publicola-like vituperation against the "sweetly perfumed exquisites" and languishing beauties of the world of fashion; but it appears to us pretty evident that one (or more) of its members has given offence mortal to his scrutatorial dignity, in some way or other unknown and unknowable. Voltaire recommends an author who selects a subject to discourse upon, that he should, imprimis, know something about it. Most probably, however, Scrutator has never heard of Voltaire, his works having been long ago banished from fashionable circles; and with justice; he was much too great a wag to be palateable to the courtly unlovers of rugged truth in all the nakedness of its severity.

The essay before us, however, may perchance be more popular at Almacks, than the sarcasms of Voltaire; the only peculiarity it can boast of, being its artless innocence and grotesque absurdity. Even the frequenters of Almack's can enjoy a laugh, and we promise them, if they will but take the trouble to peruse the cogent strictures of Mr. Scrutator, on themselves and their follies, that they shall be veritably convulsed with delirious fits of risibility; in cachinnos soluti. Here no pungent wit, no stinging satire, no cutting acrimony, need be dreaded. As though Thersites had borrowed the gown of Socrates, and thus metamorphorsed, were to deal out wisdom by the yard, i. e., Socratic wisdom Thersitized, so our ironical Scrutator, under the assumed garb of a defender of morality, and a censor of the vices of others, indulges his readers, (if such there be), with a copious collection of remarks, most venomously satirical, most cuttingly sarcastic, most bitterly waspish, against the poor unhappy victims who have had the misfortune to expose themselves to the awful severity of his displeasure, the destructive thunder of his ire. Alas! for society! (or at least, for fashionable society)-after this unheard of lashing, how can it longer exist? Almacks will be henceforth

dismembered of its accoutremens de bal, and turned into a chapel, devoted to the aspirations of religious souls. Instead of women arrayed in all the pride of their loveliness, wearing joy as a garment, and brightening the saloon with the soft radiance of their smiles, its walls will for the future witness the humid eye of the devotee, turned up with sickly enthusiasm to its fancied heaven; the soupir ennuyé of the young beauty, forced to attend divine service, (divine rigmarole), wishing the sermon over, and the preacher at the devil; the seared countenance of the hypocrite, who prays and sins, sins and prays, dies, decays, and is forgotten, his soul being of one substance with the clay that composes his body, as vile, as insensible, as rotten! All this, and more than all this, must inevitably take place within the walls of the once brilliant and happy Almacks, in consequence of the awful denunciations which the unmerciful Scrutator has dealt forth against the votaries of fashion, in a style so eloquently incomprehensible, and so glowingly obtuse.

This essay, or satire, or perhaps, more properly speaking, satirical essay, (or essay at satire, *) is written in a tone of mingled severity and jocularity; but singularly enough, when our author wishes to be severe, the effect on the reader is invariably risum movere; and on the other side, when he condescends to be jocular, the effect is, as invariably, lacrymas excire; so that, according to Scrutator's system, the celebrated precept of Horace, should stand thus:

"Ut ridentibus adflent, ita flentibus adrident." Many new discoveries might arise out of this novel application of the converse; divers new readings might be derived of some very ancient and very stupid authors, which would render them even more unintelligible than before; to the great gratification of messieurs the commentators, who fatten on the mystic, and become celebrated by means of obscurity.

There are, we must allow, some astounding verities in the course of the work, examples of which may profit those who do not object to pick up a diamond though it be placed on a dunghill -(like the careful fellow in the Satyricon of Petronius

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Qui paratus fuit quadrantem↓ de stercore mordicus tollere.") Let us take one of them:

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Society, as it at present exists, (nice distinction!) is composed of various classes, each differing from the other, and each possessing, more or less, unnumbered ‡ peculiarities of character; and wearing features of a particular nature.

* Which is a decided failure.-Printer's Devil.

+ Quadrantem however, meaning something like a halfpenny, is a bad substitute for a diamond: yet, perchance, the diamonds of Scrutator are hardly of more value.

+ "More or less, unnumbered," might be objected to by a severe grammarian; indeed scrutatorially speaking, if the peculiarities be unnumbered, how can they be more or less?—or if more or less, how can they be unnumbered? -Printer's Devil.

VOL. I.

M

Sublime sapience! unheard of research! unexampled erudition! ingenious device for covering foolscap-(for we presume Scrutator deals out his voluminous denunciations on foolscap-if not under one.)

After this pompous truism, (inceptis gravibus), we are informed that society is not society-and that, consequently, when Mr. Scrutator speaks of society, we are to understand that he alludes to any thing but society. This is after the ridentibus adflent system, which we have alluded to already. It reminds us of the philosopher we read of in the "Genialium Dierum," of Alexander ab Alexandro, (according to the best of our memory,) who lived in a cave apart from mankind, asserting that the truth of every thing was the precise opposite of what our senses delivered to us. He had many disciples, to whom he taught what he called the language of the senses-i. e. the comprehension of every thing by opposites. When his pupils returned again to the countries from whence they came, finding that, according to their system, they were not able to live among their fellow-men, they resolved to establish a colony in a distant island, in the South Seas, which they imagined to be desolate, but soon found out their mistake; for, in less than three days after their arrival, they were all destroyed by a species of baboon which infested the island, and which apparently had not studied the system of "opposites." The philosopher however lived to a vast age, no less than four hundred and ninety-six years, the greater part of which he devoted to the composition of a book to be entitled xaí, which signifies "and," wherein he maintains that there is no knowledge but ignorance, and that deformity is the only beauty. From him Albohalus, Avicenna, and other Arabian philosophers, derived their idea, that God and the Devil are one. His book was at the close of his life of such huge dimensions, that four camels could scarcely carry it: nevertheless the philosopher was seen one morning at sunrise, walking, with his volume on his head, towards the sea, into which he cast himself with his book, and was never heard of afterwards. So that the world has lost the result of his labours, though the fishes in those parts must be unusually learned.* This philosopher's name was volos, which signifies "spurious,"--so that, perhaps, he was not himself-indeed, according to his own system he could not so have been-we must not therefore believe all we hear of him, even though we possess so erudite a voucher for its authenticity as Master Alexander ab Alexandro.-But we digress.

Scrutator's manner of writing is decidedly more original than comprehensible. We cannot but admire the profundity of ob

* Being asked his reason for giving the name Xí to his book, he answered that it was the conjunction by which this world and the next were connected; and that by his work alone could immortality be known.

servation, the fox-like sagacity, that has laid before us this as it were, complete dissection of fashionable society and its votaries -the result of a few short years' personal observation of men and manners, from a youth on whose shoulders, we are given to understand, Time has not yet placed the burthen of one-andtwenty summers!! How early must this vigorous mind have commenced its search after truth!-at what a really dove-like age!-say, par exemple, sixteen-poor youth, his beardless wisdom, his velvet-like philosophy, must have been rudely shocked by the infinity of vices, absurdities, and follies, that in his peregrinations round the fashionable circles, it must have been his misfortune to fall foul of! "How often," he dolefully remarks,

are the sweetly perfumed exquisites of the present generation courted, and fondled by that class of persons called Fashionable Society; while the plain and unadorned man of sense is sneered at and ridiculed, insulted, and, finally, EXORCISED!!"

Poor Scrutator! with all his "plain and unadorned sense," to be "sneered at, ridiculed, and, finally, exorcised!!" This is really too bad of "that class of persons called les fashionables.” Hear him again—

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were

Why, in some of our circles, it would be almost profaning the air of the drawing room to speak of the deep productions of Locke, or the rich poetry of Dante. And you would be styled a "Recluse Student," you to touch upon some branch of Philosophy, or introduce an observation on the character of some natural phenonemon."

In the first place, we assert that this is wholly devoid of truth; and in the second, we beg leave to confess, that were we, by accident, to encounter Scrutator in some "fashionable circle," and he, with the enthusiasm of a "Recluse Student," were to attack us with any of his deep observations on the productions of Locke, or sagacious remarks on some natural phenomenon, we should be inclined to vote him an intolerable bore, and should most heartily wish him, with all his learning, at Jericho. Every thing in its place-sed nunc non erat his locus. Locke is for the study, not for the drawing room; and the senseless arguments of idiots and fools can do little either to elucidate his writings, or increase his fame. Heaven preserve us from a commentary on Locke, by our friend Scrutator! The former, though necessarily verbose, is, perhaps, the clearest and most comprehensive writer that ever adorned literature; while the latter is so consummate an ass, as to write a pamphlet about a subject of which he is as profoundly ignorant as a child unborn. We should much doubt whether our author ever read a line of Locke or Dante in his life we are almost sure that he never explained a natural phenomenon; and we are positively certain that he never entered a fashionable circle.

"The man who can best adjust his cravat; the lady who can best place her pearls upon her brow; and the individuals who can, with most show of splendour, promenade round a saloon, and oftenest glance at their own forms in the mirrors which surround them; these, I assert,