be voted without the pale of fashion? The most reprehensible and undisguised bad conduct is tolerated, if the practiser is à la mode; the most disagreeable persons, fêtés, and the most stupid, recherchés, if once the seal of fashion be placed on their passports.

Fashion reigns omnipotent in London. Its stamp can give currency to the basest metal, and buoyancy to the heaviest dulness. Men of bad reputation, and women without any, can, by the power of Fashion, be kept afloat in the society it patronises; and persons of high birth and station, with unsullied names, may be rejected, if this chameleon deity looks coldly on them.

The favourites of Fashion are, indeed, a motley crew. Beauty, virtue, wit, or goodness, are rarely numbered among them; but, en revanche, the vicious, the dull, the frivolous, and the impudent, abound. Lady So-and-so is cited, in the clubs and coteries, as furnishing as much cause of complaint to her admirers, individually, as to her husband. Her acquaintances in general, and her friends in particular, do not attempt to deny the justice of the accusation; but Lady So-and-so is a fashionable woman, and, consequently, is received partout. Lord Soand-so, or Mr. So-and-so, is said to have ruined many men, and more women; he is suspected of a dexterity at play, and skill in calculation, that would not disgrace the most adroit professors of slight-of-hand; but Lord So-" and-so, or Mr. So-and-so, is a man of fashion, and, as such, has the entrée wherever fashion is worshipped.

Even to inanimate objects extends the insidious and omnipotent influence of this moral upas-tree. Time and space are alike controlled by it; and the very drives and walks have not only their local and actual, but their intermittent and recurrent fashion. Sunday after Sunday (but only on this magical day) crowds of our sex may be seen toiling to the Zoological Gardens, to exhibit at once their gay clothes, flirtations, and the proofs of their addiction to the study of natural history, in their accompanying and extensive train of biped animals; who, though

far more ridiculous, are infinitely less amusing than those in the surrounding cages.

Ask them why they frequent this place, Sabbath after Sabbath, having long since exhausted their naïve observations on the monkeys, and they will tell you that "every one comes-there is such a crowd;" and that on this day alone the mob-their synonyme for people-cannot get in; and, therefore, they select it. In my simplicity, I ventured to comment on the absurdity of excluding the reputable and intelligent mechanics, and their wives and daughters, from the garden, the only day their avocations allowed them a few hours for recreation.

66

I was answered by, Fancy how dreadful it would be for us to have such people nez-a-nez avec nous at every turn! Oh, it would be insupportable !"

"I cannot fancy," resumed I," that there could be any thing at all insupportable in it; au contraire, the seeing new and agreeable faces, and witnessing the enjoyment of those who have fewer sources of pleasure than we possess, would be more animated than encountering the vapid countenances that people have been yawning at every night during the season; and who look as weary at beholding us, as we are at looking at them." It has been said by one of their most remarkable poetsone, too, of their own rank-that the English fashiona bles are as tired as they are tiresome: but this fact, like the secrets of free-masonry, is attempted to be concealed, lest new votaries should be deterred from entering the lethargic circle.

We live in a state of feverish excitement here, which, after having once submitted to for a while, becomes as necessary as opium to its habitual consumers. Fêtes, balls, soirées, dinners, déjeûners, follow in quick succession, always attended by the same faces, and the individuals nearly always attired in the same dresses; for my country women are not remarkable for the fraicheur of their toilets. To be seen every where, or, at least, in those places where people of fashion congregate,

seems to be an indispensable duty with the English, and to avow the ennui they experience, is apparently equally essential.

"What a crowd!"

"How very oppressive the heat is!" "Are you going to Lady Leslie's ?" "How dull this soirée is !"

These are the phrases one hears murmured around, night after night; yet the persons who utter them would be au désespoir were they not present in the very scenes they condemn. Not that they do not experience the ennui of which they complain; but that they fear their absence might be attributed to the want of an invitation, a calamity which would be considered tantamount to a loss of caste.

While, however, avowing that their amusements only excite ennui, they need not affect to be ennuyant, for that quality seems to be inherent in their natures. Yet they are vain of the supposed superiority which they imagine their assumption of fastidiousness of taste implies; mistaking for refinement that morbid state of mental inanity which proceeds from excessive luxury and idleness. The English fashionables are the only people who unshrinkingly display their mental diseases, though they carefully conceal their physical ones. I refer again to that epidemic malady, ennui, under which all of a certain class ostentatiously suffer. They seem not to be aware that it proceeds from weak intellects, incapable of rational occupation, or innocent amusement.

A fine lady or gentleman here acknowledges, without embarrassment, that she or he is "ennuyé to death," or "bored to extinction;" two favourite phrases, which those who have the misfortune to listen to them might with truth repeat.

The exclusive circle is at war with genius and talent, though their vanity often induces them to draw to their dull routs and prosy dinners, those who are considered to possess either of these attributes in an eminent degree.

They think it looks well" (another favourite phrase) to sée among the aristocratic names that are every day announced in the newspapers, as having partaken of their ostentatious hospitalities, those that form the aristocracy of genius; for they imagine themselves modern Mæcenases, who patronise poets and philosophers, from the association with whom they expect to derive distinction. For gentle dulness they have a peculiar predilectionfrom sympathy, I suppose; a fellow-feeling being said to make men wondrous kind.

A few of the houses with the most pretensions to literary taste have their tame poets and petits littérateurs, who run about as docile, and more parasitical, than lapdogs; and, like them, are equally well-fed, ay, and certainly equally spoiled. The dull plaisanteries, thricetold anecdotes, and résumés of the scandal of each week, served up réchauffées by these pigmies of literature, are received most graciously by their patrons, who agree in opinion with the French writer,—

"Nul n'aura de l'esprit

Hors nous et nos amis."

You will think, chère Delphine, that my picture of fashionable life is too highly coloured, but, believe me, it is not so; and, to convince you of this, I send you an extract from a sensible article, in an influential publication that appears here once a quarter; by which you will perceive that this class of society is by no means composed of the élite of the aristocracy of the country.

66 We allude to the self-elected leaders of what is called the fashionable world and their followers,-a set of weak, trifling, and often profligate people, by no means eminent for birth, wealth, or personal accomplishment, who, by dint of mere assumption, and by persuading a few men and women of real influence and high station to co-operate with them, have contrived to acquire a formidable description of influence in society, which seldom offers

an effective resistance to a well-organized system of exclusiveness. A few pretty women, not in the highest ank of the nobility, met at Devonshire House, to practise quadrilles, then recently imported from the Continent. The establishment of a subscription-ball was suggested, to which none but the very élite were to be admissible; the subscription to be low, with the view of checking the obtrusive vulgarity of wealth. The fancy took; and when it transpired that the patronesses had actually refused a most estimable English duchess, all London became mad to be admitted; exclusion was universally regarded as a positive loss of caste; and no arts of solicitation were left untried to avert so terrible a catastrophe. The wives and daughters of the oldest provincial gentry, with pedigrees traced up to the Heptarchy, have been seen humbling themselves, by the lowest arts of degradation, to soften the obdurate autocratesses; and we fear it is no exaggeration to say, that more than one parvenu has been known to barter his vote in parliament, and more than one parvenue her honour, for a ball-ticket. The prestige has greatly abated, and the institution is now tottering to its fall; but its origin is worth recording, as a ludicrous phenomenon in the progress of society."Quarterly Review, for September, 1836.

We have in England, however, innumerable members of the aristocracy as exempt from the follies that stain the votaries of fashion, as they are unambitious of mingling with them. For the knowledge of their existence, I have to thank a discussion into which, a few days ago, I inadvertently fell, with Lord Nottingham; and which has enlightened me on some subjects on which I had formed erroneous conclusions. I observed, à-propos to some tale of scandal repeated by Lord Charles Fitzhardinge, that for one example of bad conduct in France, I heard, at least, ten cited here.

"Yes, cited," replied Lord Nottingham; "but what does this prove, Miss Montressor? Why, not that there