as a cloak; and he who has a design on your purse, your life, or your country, will assume all the appearance of cordial friendship and unpolluted honour. It is well known, that the graces, the agreeable qualities, as they are called, and the appearance of the most amiable virtues, have been possessed in perfection by men who finished their lives with ignominy as victims of the law.

Indeed, this common honesty, as it is named, is far less common than our pride is willing to suppose; but if it could be introduced into all the employments of life, the golden age would be restored.

Happy state! but, alas, it is imaginary! It might, however, I am convinced, in some degree be realized, if due care were taken in education to render the least tendency to deceit disgraceful and obnoxious to punishment; and every ingenuous, open, honest action honourable; for honour is the nurse of the virtues, as well as of the arts. Instead of which, the writings of some modern instructors tend immediately to recommend every species of deceit at that early age, when a little evil sown in the bosom by the tutor, cannot fail to take root, and grow to a stupendous magnitude.

Early and late, by night and by day, in season and out of season, as the Scripture strongly expresses it, I would inculcate in the breast of young men the just remark of the moral poet, that an honest man is the noblest work of God.

ON THE INFLUENCE OF FASHION.

THEY who are exempted by their elevated condition from the confinement of commercial and professional life, involve themselves in voluntary slavery by engaging in the service of the tyrant, Fashion. They are compelled to abstain from actions in themselves pleasing and innocent, however strong their inclination to them, because the caprice of some distinguished character has prohibited them by his example. Like the dullest of animals, they are driven round the same circle, from which once to deviate would subject them to an appellation of all others the most formidable. To be called profligate, extravagant, intemperate, or even wicked, might be tolerated with patience; but who could bear to live with the epithet of ungenteel?

People of fashion, once admitted to this honourable title, form a little world of their own, and learn to look down upon all others as beings of a subordinate nature. It is, then, a natural question, In what does this superiority consist? It arises not from learning; for the most illiterate claim it, and are indulged in the claim: it arises not from virtue; for the most vicious are not excluded. Wealth, beauty, birth, and elegance, are not the only qualifications for it; because many enjoy it who have no just pretension to either, and many are denied it who possess them all. It seems to be a combination of numbers under two or three leaders in

high life, who agree to imitate each other, and to maintain, by the majority of voices and the effrontery of pride, that all they do is proper, and all they say is sensible; that their dress is becoming, their manners polite, their houses tasteful, their furniture, their carriages, all that appertains to them, the models and standards of real beauty. Those who come not within the pale of their jurisdiction they condemn, with papal authority, to perpetual insignificance. They stigmatize them, in the aggregate, as people whom nobody knows, as the scum of the earth, as born only to minister to their pride, and to supply the wants of their luxury.

Groundless as are the pretensions of this confederacy, no pains are avoided to become an adopted member. For this, the stripling squanders his patrimony, and destroys his constitution. For this, the virgin bloom of innocence and beauty is withered at the vigils of the cardtable. For this, the loss of integrity, and public infamy, are willingly incurred; and it is agreed by many, that it were better to go out of the world, than to live in it and be unfashionable.

If this distinction be really valuable, and if the happiness or misery of life depend upon obtaining or losing it, then are the thousands who walk the private paths of life objects of the sincerest pity. Some consolation must be devised for the greater part of the community, who have never breathed the atmosphere of

fashion, nor embarrassed their fortunes, nor ruined their health, in pursuit of this glorious elevation. Perhaps on an impartial review it will appear, that these are really possessed of that happiness which vanity would arrogate to itself, and yet only seems to obtain.

The middle ranks of mankind are the most virtuous, the best accomplished, and the most capable of enjoying the pleasures and advantages which fall to the lot of human nature. It is not the least of these, that they are free from the necessity of attending to those formalities which engross the attention and waste the time of the higher classes, without any adequate return of solid satisfaction. Horace, who was far less illustrious by his birth and station than by his elegance of manners, was wont to congratulate himself, that he could ride on a little mule to the remotest town in Italy without ridicule or molestation; while his patrons could hardly move a step but with the unwieldy pomp of an equipage and retinue. The single article of dress, which, when splendid, requires the labour and attention of many hours, becomes a wretched task to those who wish to employ their time with honour, with improvement, with pleasure, and the possibility of a satisfactory retrospection.

Visits of form, of which every one complains, yet to which every one in some measure submits, are absolutely necessary to keep up the union of the fashionable confederacy. The more numerous, the more honourable. To be per

mitted to spend five minutes, or to leave a card at the houses of half the inhabitants of the politer streets, is a felicity which compensates all the trouble of attendance and tedious preparation. To behold a train of coaches crowding to their door, to hear the fulminations of a skilful footman, are joys of which the inhabitants of a rural retreat have little conception, but which delightfully affect the fine feelings of those who are made of purer clay, and honoured with the name of fashionable.

From this severe persecution the man who aspires not at such honours is happily free. He visits his friend and neighbour because he feels friendly sentiments for him, and is received with cordiality. The intervals of company he can devote to study, and to the pursuit of business and amusement; for his communications with his friends require not the long, tedious, preparatory trouble of fashionable formality. In the unreserved pleasures of conversation, he looks with reciprocal pity on formal visitors of the squares in the metropolis, nor envies those who knock at a hundred doors in an evening, and who possess the glorious privilege of sitting half an hour in the company of those who must speak, and look, and move by rule without

reason.

The effects of fashion constitute, in the moral world, very wonderful phenomena. Fashion can transform deformity to beauty, and beauty to deformity. When we view the dresses in a picture-gallery, we are tempted to ridicule the