In this society a young man loses his natural character, which, whatever it might have been originally, is melted down and cast into the one prevailing mould of Fashion; all the strong, native, discriminating qualities of his mind being made to take one shape, one stamp, one superscription! However varied and distinct might have been the materials which nature threw into the crucible, plastic Fashion takes care that they shall all be the same, or at least appear the same, when they come out of the mould. A young man in such an artificial state of society, accustomed to the voluptuous case, refined luxuries, soft accommodations, obsequious attendance, and all the unrestrained indulgencies of a fashionable club, is not to be expected after marriage to take very cordially to a home, unless very extraordinary exertions are made to amuse, to attach, and to interest him: and he is not likely to lend a very helping hand to the happiness of the union, whose most laborious exertions have hitherto been little more than a selfish stratagem to reconcile health with pleasure. Excess of gratification has only served to make him irritable and exacting; it will of course be no part of his project to make sacrifices, he will expect to receive them and what would appear incredible to the Paladins of gallant times, and the Chevaliers Preux of more heroic days, even in the necessary business of establishing himself for life, he sometimes is more disposed to expect attentions than to make advances. Thus the indolent son of fashion, with a thousand fine, but dormant qualities, which a bad tone of manners forbids him to bring into exercise; with real energies which that tone does not allow him to discover, and an unreal apathy which it commands him to feign; with the heart of an hero, perhaps, if called into the field, affects at home the manners of a Sybarite; and he who, with a Roman, or what is more, with a British valour, would leap into the gulph at the call of public duty,

Yet in the soft and piping time of peace,

when fashion has resumed her rights, would murmur if a rose leaf lay double under him.

The clubs above alluded to, as has been said, generate and cherish luxurious habits, from their perfect ease, undress, liberty, and inattentions to the distinctions of rank: they promote a love of play, and in short, every temper VOL. II.

H

and spirit which tends to undomesticate; and what adds to the mischief is, all this is attained at a cheap rate compared with what may be procured at home in the same style.

These indulgencies, and this habit of mind, imply so much gratification of the passions, that a woman can never hope successfully to counteract the evil by supplying at home gratifications in a superior degree, which are of the same kind. If she should attempt this, in a little time she will find that those passions, to which she has trusted for making pleasant the married life of her husband, will crave the still higher pleasures of the club; and while these are pursued, she will be consigned over to solitary evenings at home, or driven back to the old dissipations.

To conquer the passion for club gratifications, a woman must not strive to feed it with sufficient aliment in the same kind in her society, either at home or abroad; she must supplant and overcome it by a passion of a different nature, which Providence has kindly planted within us; I mean by inspiring him with the love of fire-side enjoyments. But to qualify herself for administering these, she must cultivate her understanding, and her heart, and her temper, acquiring at the same time that modicum of accom plishments suited to his taste, which may qualify her for possessing, both for him and for herself, greater varieties of safe recreation.

One great cause of the want of attachment in these modish couples is, that by living in the world at large, they are not driven to depend on each other as the chief source of comfort. Now it is pretty clear, in spite of modern theories, that the very frame and being of societies, wheth. er great or small, public or private, is jointed and glued to gether by dependence. Those attachments which arise from, and are compacted by, a sense of mutual wants, mutual affection, mutual benefit, and mutual obligation, are the cement which secure the union of the family as well as of the state.

Unfortunately, when two young persons of the above description marry, the union is sometimes considered rather as the end than the beginning of an engagement: the attachment of each to the other is rather viewed as an ob. ject already completed, than as one which marriage is to confirm more closely. But the companion for life is not

always chosen from the purest motive; she is selected, perhaps, because she is admired by other men, rather than because she possesses in an eminent degree those peculiar qualities which are likely to constitute the individual happiness of the man who chooses her. Vanity usurps the place of affection; and indolence swallows up the judgment. Not happiness, but some easy substitute for happiness, is pursued; and a choice which may excite envy, rather than produce satisfaction, is adopted as the means of effecting it.

The pair, not matched but joined, set out separately with their independent and individual pursuits; whether it made a part of their original plan or not, that they should be indispensably necessary to each other's comfort, the sense of this necessity, probably not very strong at first, rather diminishes than increases by time; they live so much in the world, and so little together, that to stand well with their own set continues the favourite project of each; while to stand well with each other is considered as an underpart of the plot in the drama of life. Whereas, did they start in the conjugal race with the fixed idea that they were to look to each other for their chief worldly happiness, not only principle, but prudence, and even selfishness, would convince them of the necessity of sedulously cultivating each other's esteem and affection as the grand means of promoting that happiness. But vanity, and the desire of flattery and applause, still continue to operate. Even after the husband is brought to feel a perfect indifference for his wife, he still likes to see her decorated in a style which may serve to justify his choice. He encourages her to set off her person, not so much for his own gratification, as that his self-love may be flattered, by her continuing to attract the admiration of those whose opinion is the standard by which he measures his fame, and which fame is to stand him in the stead of happiness. Thus is she necessarily exposed to the two-fold temptation of being at once neglected by her husband, and exhibited as an object of attraction to other men. If she escape this complicated danger, she will be indebted for her preservation, not to his prudence, but to her own principles.

In some of these modish marriages, instead of the decorous neatness, the pleasant intercourse, and the mutual warmth of communication of the once social dinner; the

late and uninteresting meal is commonly hurried over by the languid and slovenly pair, that the one may have time to his dress for his club, and the other for her party. And in these cold, abstracted tétes-á-têtes, they often take as little pains to entertain each other, as if the one was precisely the only human being in the world in whose eyes, the other did not feel it necessary to appear agreeable.

But if these young and perhaps really amiable persons could struggle against the imperious tyranny of fashion, and contrive to pass a little time together, so as to get acquainted with cach other; and if each would live in the lively and conscientious exercise of those talents and attractions which they sometimes know how to produce on occasions not quite so justifiable; they would, I am persuaded, often find out each other to be very agreeable people. And both of them, delighted and delighting, receiv ing and bestowing happiness, would no longer be driven to the necessity of perpetually flying from home as from the only scene which offers no possible materials for pleas.

ure.

It may seem a contradiction to have asserted, that beings of all ages, tempers, and talents, should, with such unremitting industry, follow up any way of life, if they did not find some enjoyment in it; yet I appeal to the bosoms of these incessant hunters in the chase of pleasure, whether they are really happy. No. In the full tide and torrent of diversion, in the full blaze of gaiety,

The heart distrusting asks if this be joy? |

But there is an anxious restlessness excited by the pursuit, which, if not interesting, is bustling. There is the dread, and partly the discredit, of being suspected of having one hour unmortgaged, not only to successive, but contending engagements; this it is, and not the pleasure of the engagement itself, which is the object. There is an agita. tion in the arrangements which imposes itself on the vacant heart for happiness. There is a tumult kept up in the spirits, which is a busy though treacherous substitute for comfort. The multiplicity of solicitations sooths vanity. The very regret that they cannot be all accepted has its charms; for dignity is flattered because refusal implies importance, and pre-engagement intimates celebrity. Then there is the joy of being invited when others are neglected;

the triumph of showing one's less modish friend, that one is going where she cannot come; and the feigned regret at being obliged to go, assumed before her who is half wild at being obliged to stay away. These are some of the supplemental shifts for happiness with which vanity contrives to feed her hungry followers; too eager to be

nice.

In the succession of open houses, in which pleasure is to be started and pursued on any given night, the actual place is never taken in the account of enjoyment: the scene of which is always supposed to lie in any place where her votaries happen not to be. Pleasure has no present tense: but in the house which her pursuers have just quitted, and in the house to which they are just hastening, a stranger might conclude the slippery goddess had really fixed her throne, and that her worshippers considered the existing scene, which they seemed compelled to suffer, but from which they were eager to escape, as really detaining them from some positive joy to which they were flying in the next crowd; till, if he met them there, he would find the component parts of each precisely the same. He would hear the same stated phrases interrupted, not answered, by the same stated replies; the unfinished sentence "driven adverse to the winds" by pressing multitudes; the same warm regret mutually exchanged by two friends (who had been expressly denied to each other all the winter) that they had not met before; the same soft and smiling sorrow at being torn away from each other now; the same anxiety to renew the meeting, with perhaps the same secret resolution to avoid it. He would hear described, with the same pathetic earnestness, the difficulties of getting into this house, and the dangers of getting out of the last! the perilous retreat of former nights, effected amidst the shock of chariots and the clang of contending coachmen! a retreat indeed effected with a skill and peril little inferior to that of the ten thousand, and detailed with far juster triumph; for that which happened only once in a life to the Grecian Hero, occurs to these British heroines every night. There is one point of resemblance, indeed, between them, in which the comparison fails; for the Commander, with a mauvaise honte at which a true female veteran would blush, is remarkable for never naming himself.