without an instructor: but the most common case is, to be capable of learning, and yet to require teaching; and a far greater part of the misery which exists in society arises from ignorance, than either from vice or from incapacity. There are two great sources of unhappiness to those whom fortune and nature seem to have placed above the reach of ordinary miseries. The one is ennui-that stagnation of life and feeling which results from the absence of all motives to exertion; and by Miss Edgeworth is the great modern mis- which the justice of providence has so fully tress in this school of true philosophy; and compensated the partiality of fortune, that it has eclipsed, we think, the fame of all her may be fairly doubted whether, upon the predecessors. By her many excellent tracts whole, the race of beggars is not happier on education, she has conferred a benefit on than the race of lords; and whether those the whole mass of the population; and dis-vulgar wants that are sometimes so importucharged, with exemplary patience as well as nate, are not, in this world, the chief ministers extraordinary judgment, a task which super- of enjoyment. This is a plague that infects ficial spirits may perhaps mistake for an hum-all indolent persons who can live on in the ble and easy one. By her Popular Tales, she has rendered an invaluable service to the middling and lower orders of the people; and by her Novels, and by the volumes before us, has made a great and meritorious effort to promote the happiness and respectability of the higher classes. On a former occasion we believe we hinted to her, that these would probably be the least successful of all her labours; and that it was doubtful whether she could be justified for bestowing so much of her time on the case of a few persons, who scarcely deserved to be cured, and were scarcely capable of being corrected. The The other curse of the happy, has a range foolish and unhappy part of the fashionable more wide and indiscriminate. It, too, torworld, for the most part, "is not fit to bear tures only the comparatively rich and foritself convinced." It is too vain, too busy, tunate; but is most active among the least and too dissipated to listen to, or remember distinguished; and abates in malignity as we any thing that is said to it. Every thing seri- ascend to the lofty regions of pure ennui. ous it repels, by "its dear wit and gay rheto-This is the desire of being fashionable;-the ric" and against every thing poignant, it seeks shelter in the impenetrable armour of its conjunct audacity. "Laugh'd at, it laughs again;—and, stricken hard, Turns to the stroke its adamantine scales. rank in which they were born, without the necessity of working: but, in a free country, it rarely occurs in any great degree of virulence, except among those who are already at the summit of human felicity. Below this, there is room for ambition, and envy, and emulation, and all the feverish movements of aspiring vanity and unresting selfishness, which act as prophylactics against this more dark and deadly distemper. It is the canker which corrodes the full-blown flower of human felicity-the pestilence which smites at the bright hour of noon. restless and insatiable passion to pass for creatures a little more distinguished than we really are with the mortification of frequent failure, and the humiliating consciousness of being perpetually exposed to it. Among those who are secure of "meat, clothes, and fire,” and are thus above the chief physical evils A book, on the other hand, and especially a of existence, we do believe that this is a more witty and popular book, is still a thing of con- prolific source of unhappiness, than guilt, dissequence, to such of the middling classes of ease, or wounded affection; and that more society as are in the habit of reading. They positive misery is created, and more true endispute about it, and think of it; and as they joyment excluded, by the eternal fretting occasionally make themselves ridiculous by and straining of this pitiful ambition, than by copying the manners it displays, so they are all the ravages of passion, the desolations of apt to be impressed with the great lessons it war, or the accidents of mortality. This may may be calculated to teach; and, on the whole, appear a strong statement; but we make it receive it into considerable authority among deliberately, and are deeply convinced of its the regulators of their lives and opinions.-truth. The wretchedness which it produces But a fashionable person has scarcely any leisure to read; and none to think of what he has been reading. It would be a derogation from his dignity to speak of a book in any terms but those of frivolous derision; and a strange desertion of his own superiority, to allow himself to receive, from its perusal, any impressions which could at all affect his conduct or opinions. But though, for these reasons, we continue to think that Miss Edgeworth's fashionable patients will do less credit to her prescriptions than the more numerous classes to whom they might have been directed, we admit that her plan of treatment is in the highest degree judicious, and her conception of the disorder most luminous and precise. may not be so intense; but it is of much longer duration, and spreads over a far wider circle. It is quite dreadful, indeed, to think what a sweep this pest has taken among the comforts of our prosperous population. To be thought fashionable-that is, to be thought more opulent and tasteful, and on a footing of intimacy with a greater number of distinguished persons than they really are, is the great and laborious pursuit of four families out of five, the members of which are ex empted from the necessity of daily industry. In this pursuit, their time, spirits, and talents are wasted; their tempers, soured; their affec tions palsied; and their natural manners and dispositions altogether sophisticated and lost. These are the giant curses of fashionable life, as to be repeatedly on the eve of suicide. He passes over to Ireland, where he receives a temporary relief, from the rebellion-and from falling in love with a lady of high character and accomplishments; but the effect of these stimulants is speedily expended, and he is in danger of falling into a confirmed lethargy, when it is fortunately discovered that he has been changed at nurse! and that, instead of being a peer of boundless fortune, he is the son of a cottager who lives on potatoes. With great magnanimity, he instantly gives up the fortune to the rightful owner, who has been bred a blacksmith, and takes to the study of the law. At the commencement of this arduous career, he fortunately falls in love, for the second time, with the lady entitled, after the death of the blacksmith, to succeed to his former estate. Poverty and love now supply him with irresistible motives for exertion. He rises in his profession; marries the lady of his heart; and in due time returns, an altered man, to the possession of his former affluence. life, and Miss Edgeworth has accordingly which life can be made tolerable to those who dedicated her two best tales to the delinea- have nothing to wish for. Born on the very tion of their symptoms. The history of "Lord pinnacle of human fortune, "he had nothing Glenthorn" is a fine picture of ennui-that of to do but to sit still and enjoy the barrenness "Almeria" an instructive representation of of the prospect." He tries travelling, gaming, the miseries of aspirations after fashion. We gluttony, hunting, pugilism, and coach-driv do not know whether it was a part of the fairing; but is so pressed down with the load of writer's design to represent these maladies as absolutely incurable, without a change of condition; but the fact is, that in spite of the best dispositions and capacities, and the most powerful inducements to action, the hero of ennui makes no advances towards amendment, till he is deprived of his title and estate! and the victim of fashion is left, at the end of the tale, pursuing her weary career, with fading hopes and wasted spirits, but with increased anxiety and perseverance. The moral use of these narratives, therefore, must consist in warning us against the first approaches of evils which can never afterwards be resisted. These are the great twin scourges of the prosperous: But there are other maladies, of no slight malignity, to which they are peculiarly liable. One of these, arising mainly from want of more worthy occupation, is that perpetual use of stratagem and contrivancethat little, artful diplomacy of private life, by which the simplest and most natural transactions are rendered complicated and difficult, and the common business of existence made to depend on the success of plots and counter- Such is the naked outline of a story, more plots. By the incessant practice of this petty rich in character, incident, and reflection, than policy, a habit of duplicity and anxiety is in- any English narrative which we can now call fallibly generated, which is equally fatal to to remembrance:-as rapid and various as integrity and enjoyment. We gradually come the best tales of Voltaire, and as full of prac to look on others with the distrust which we tical good sense and moral pathetic as any of are conscious of deserving; and are insensibly the other tales of Miss Edgeworth. The Irish formed to sentiments of the most unamiable characters are inimitable ;-not the coarse caselfishness and suspicion. It is needless to ricatures of modern playwrights—but drawn say, that all these elaborate artifices are worse with a spirit, a delicacy, and a precision, to than useless to the person who employs them; which we do not know if there be any paraland that the ingenious plotter is almost always lel among national delineations. As these are baffled and exposed by the downright honesty tales of fashionable life, we shall present our of some undesigning competitor. Miss Edge- readers, in the first place, with some traits of worth, in her tale of "Manoeuvring," has given an Irish lady of rank. Lady Geraldine-the a very complete and most entertaining repre- enchantress whose powerful magic almost sentation of "the by-paths and indirect crook'd raised the hero of ennui from his leaden slumways," by which these artful and inefficient bers is represented with such exquisite livelipeople generally make their way to disap-ness and completeness of effect, that the pointment. In the tale, entitled "Madame de reader can scarcely help imagining that he Fleury," she has given some useful examples has formerly been acquainted with the origiof the ways in which the rich may most effectually do good to the poor-an operation which, we really believe, fails more frequently from want of skill than of inclination: And, in "The Dun," she has drawn a touching and most impressive picture of the wretchedness As Lady Geraldine entered, I gave one involunwhich the poor so frequently suffer, from the tary glance of curiosity. I saw a tall. finely-shaped unfeeling thoughtlessness which withholds woman, with the commanding air of a person of from them the scanty earnings of their labour. rank: she moved well; not with feminine timidity, Of these tales, "Ennui" is the best and the yet with ease, promptitude, and decision. She had most entertaining-though the leading char- of feature. The only thing that struck me as really fine eyes, and a fine complexion, yet no regularity acter is somewhat caricatured, and the dé-extraordinary, was her indifference when I was in nouement is brought about by a discovery troduced to her. Every body had seemed extremely which shocks by its needless improbability. desirous that I should see her ladyship, and that Lord Glenthorn is bred up, by a false and in-her ladyship should see me; and I was rather surdulgent guardian, as the heir to an immense prised by her unconcerned air. This piqued me. English and Irish estate; and, long before he began to converse with others. Her voice was and fixed my attention. She turned from me, and s of age, exhausts almost all the resources by agreeable, though rather loud: she did not speak nal. Every one, at least we conceive, must have known somebody, the recollection of whom must convince him that the following description is as true nature as it is creditable to art: with the Irish accent; but, when I listened maiously, I detected certain Hibernian inflexionsnothing of the vulgar Irish idiom, but something that was more interrogative, more exclamatory, and perhaps more rhetorical, than the common language of English ladies, accompanied with infinitely more animation of countenance and demonstrative gesture. This appeared to me peculiar and unusual, but not affected. She was uncommonly eloquent; and yet, without action, her words were not sufficiently rapid to express her ideas. Her manner appeared foreign, yet was not quite French. If I had been obliged to decide, I should, however, have pronounced it rather more French than English. To determine which it was, or whether I had ever seen any thing similar, I stood considering her ladyship with more attention than I had ever bestowed on any other woman. The words striking-fascinating-bewitching, occurred to me as I looked at her and heard her speak. I resolved to turn my eyes away, and shut my ears; for I was positively determined not to like her; I dreaded so much the idea of a second Hymen. I retreated to the farthest window, and looked out very soberly upon a dirty fish-pond. "If she had treated me with tolerable civility at first, I never should have thought about her. Highborn and high-bred, she scenied to consider more what she should think of others, than what others thought of her. Frank, candid, and affable, vet opinionated, insolent, and an egotist: her candour and affability appeared the effect of a naturally good temper; her insolence and egotism only that of a spoiled child. She seemed to talk of herself purely to oblige others, as the most interesting possible topic of conversation; for such it had always been to her fond mother, who idolized her ladyship as an only daughter, and the representative of an ancient house. Confident of her talents, conscious of her charms, and secure of her station, Lady Geraldine gave free scope to her high spirits, her fancy, and her turn for ridicule. She looked, spoke, and acted, like a person privileged to think, say, and do, what she pleased. Her raillery, like the raillery of princes, was without fear of retort. She was not ill-natured, yet careless to whom she gave offence, provided she produced amusement; and in this she seldom failed; for, in her conversation, there was much of the raciness of Irish wit, and the oddity of Irish humour. The singularity that struck me most about her ladyship was her indifference to flattery. She certainly preferred frolic. Miss Bland was her humble companion; Miss Tracey her butt. It was one of Lady Geraldine's delights, to humour Miss Tracey's rage for imitating the fashions of fine people. Now you shall see Miss Tracey appear at the ball to-morrow, in every thing that I have sworn to her is fashionable. Nor have I cheated her in a single article: but the tout ensemble I leave to her better judgment; and you shall see her, I trust, a perfect monster, formed of every creature's best: Lady Kilrush's feathers, Mrs. Moore's wig, Mrs. O'Connor's gown, Mrs. Leighton's sleeves, and all the necklaces of all the Miss Ormsbys. She has no taste, no judgment; none at all, poor thing; but she can imitate as well as those Chinese painters, who, in their drawings, give you the flower of one plant stuck on the stalk of another, and garnished with the leaves of a third.'"-i. 130-139. This favourite character is afterwards exhibited in a great variety of dramatic contrasts. For example: "Lord Craiglethorpe was, as Miss Tracey had described him, very stiff, cold, and high. His manners were in the extreme of English reserve; and his ill-bred show of contempt for the Irish was sufficient provocation and justification of Lady Geraldine's ridicule. He was much in awe of his fair and witty cousin and she could easily put him out of countenance, for he was, in his way, extremely bashful. Once, when he was out of the room, Lady Geraldine exclaimed, 'That cousin Craiglethorpe of mine is scarcely an agreeable man: The awkwardness of mauvaise-hont might be pitied and pardoned, even in a nobleman,' continued her ladyship, if it really proceeded from humility; but here, when I know it is connected with secret and inordinate arrogance, 'tis past all endurance. As the Frenchman said of the Englishman, for whom even his politeness could not find another compliment, "Il faut avouer que ce Monsieur a un grand talent pour le silence ;-he holds his tongue till people actually believe that he has somothing to say-a mistake they could never fall into if he would but speak. It is not timidity; it is all pride. I would pardon his dulness, and even his ignorance; for one, as you say, might be the fault of his nature, and the other of his education: but his self-sufficiency is his own fault; and that I will not, and cannot pardon. Somebody says, that nature may make a fool, but a coxcomb is always of his own making. Now, my cousin (as he is my cousin, I may say what I please of him,)-my cousin Craiglethorpe is a solemn coxcomb, who thinks, because his vanity is not talkative and sociable, that it's not vanity. What a mistake!' "-i. 146-148. These other traits of her character are given, on different occasions, by Lord Glenthorn:and intent solely upon her own amusement; but "At first I had thought her merely superficial, soon found that she had a taste for literature beyond what could have been expected in one who lived so dissipated a life; a depth of reflection that seemed inconsistent with the rapidity with which she thought; and, above all, a degree of generous indignation against meanness and vice, which seemed incompatible with the selfish character of a fine lady; and which appeared quite incomprehensible to the imitating tribe of her fashionable companions." i. 174. little arts, and petty stratagems, to attract attention. Lady Geraldine was superior to manœuvring She would not stoop, even to conquer. From gentlemen she seemed to expect attention as her right, as the right of her sex; not to beg, or accept of it as a favour: if it were not paid, she deemed the genFar from being tleman degraded, not herself. mortified by any preference shown to other ladies, her countenance betrayed only a sarcastic sort of difference and look of haughty absence. I saw that pity for the bad taste of the men, or an absolute inshe beheld with disdain the paltry competitions of the young ladies her companions: as her companions, indeed, she hardly seemed to consider them; she tolerated their foibles, forgave their envy, and never exerted any superiority, except to show her contempt of vice and meanness."-i. 198, 199. This may suffice as a specimen of the high life of the piece; which is more original and characteristic than that of Belinda-and altogether as lively and natural. For the low life, we do not know if we could extract a more felicitous specimen than the following description of the equipage in which Lord Glenthorn's English and French servant were compelled to follow their master in Ireland. "From the inn yard came a hackney chaise, in a most deplorably crazy state; the body mounted up to a prodigious height, on unbending springs, nodding forwards, one door swinging open, three blinds up, because they could not be let down, the perch tied in two places, the iron of the wheels half off, half loose, wooden pegs for linch-pins, and ropes for harness. The horses were worthy of the harness; wretched little dog-tired creatures, that looked as if they had been driven to the last gasp, and as if they had never been rubbed down in their lives; their bones starting through their skin; one lame, the other blind; one with a raw back. the "Ah! didn't I compass him cleverly then? Oh the villain. to be browbating me! I'm too cute for him yet. See, there, now, he's come too; and I'll be his bail he'll go asy enough wid me. Ogh! he has a fine spirit of his own; but it's I that can match him. "Twould be a poor case if a man like me couldn't match a horse any way, let alone a mare, which this is, or it never would be so vi. cious.'"-i. 68, 69. The most delectable personage, however, in the whole tale, is the ancient Irish nurse Ellinor. The devoted affection, infantine simplicity, and strange pathetic eloquence of this half-savage, kind-hearted creature, afford Miss Edgeworth occasion for many most original and characteristic representations. We shall scarcely prepossess our English readers in her favour, by giving the description of her cottage. other with a galled breast; one with his neck poking down over his collar, and the other with his head dragged forward by a bit of a broken bridle, held at arms' length by a man dressed like a mad beggar, in half a hat, and half a wig, both awry in opposite directions; a long tattered coat, tied round his waist by a hay-rope; the jagged rents in the skirts of this coat showing his bare legs, marbled of many colours; while something like stockings hung loose about his ankles. The noises he made, by way of threatening or encouraging his steeds, I pretend not to describe. In an indignant voice I called to the landlord I hope these are not the horses-I hope this is not the chaise, intended for my servants.' The innkeeper, and the pauper who was preparing to officiate as postilion, both in the same instant exclaimed-Sorrow better chaise in the County !' Sorrow!' said I-what do you mean by sorrow?' That there's no better, plase your honour, can be seen. We have two more to be sure-but one has no top, and the other no bottom. Any way, there's no better can be seen than this same.' And these horses!' cried I-'why this "It was a wretched looking, low, mud-walled horse is so lame he can hardly stand.' 'Oh, plase cabin. At one end it was propped by a buttress of your honour, tho' he can't stand, he'll go fast loose stones, upon which stood a goat reared on his enough. He has a great deal of the rogue in him, hind legs, to browse on the grass that grew on the plase your honour. He's always that way at first housetop. A dunghill was before the only window, setting out.' And that wretched animal with the at the other end of the house, and close to the door galled breast! He's all the better for it, when was a puddle of the dirtiest of dirty water, in which once he warms; it's he that will go with the speed ducks were dabbling. At my approach, there came of light, plase your honour. Sure, is not he Knocke- out of the cabin a pig, a calf, a lamb, a kid, and two croghery? and didn't I give fifteen guineas for him, geese, all with their legs tied; followed by cocks, barring the luckpenny, at the fair of Knockecrog- hens, chickens, a dog, a cat, a kitten, a beggarhery, and he rising four year old at the same time?' man, a beggar-woman, with a pipe in her mouth; Then seizing his whip and reins in one hand. children innumerable, and a stout girl, with a pitchhe clawed up his stockings with the other so with fork in her hand; altogether more than I, looking one easy step he got into his place, and seated him- down upon the roof as I sat on horseback, and self, coachman-like, upon a well-worn bar of wood, measuring the superficies with my eye, could have that served as a coach-box. Throw me the loan possibly supposed the mansion capable of containing. of a trusty, Bartly, for a cushion,' said he. AI asked if Ellinor O'Donoghoe was at home; but frieze coat was thrown up over the horse's heads. the dog barked, the geese cackled, the turkeys Paddy caught it. Where are you, Hosey!' cried gobbled, and the beggars begged with one accord, he to a lad in charge of the leaders. Sure I'm so loudly, that there was no chance of my being only rowling a wisp of straw on my leg,' replied heard. When the girl had at last succeeded in apHosey. Throw me up,' added this paragon of peasing them all with her pitchfork, she answered, postilions, turning to one of the crowd of idle by- that Ellinor O'Donoghoe was at home, but that she standers. 'Arrah, push me up, can't ye?'-A was out with the potatoes; and she ran to fetch her, man took hold of his knee, and threw him upon the after calling to the boys, who was within in the room horse. He was in his seat in a trice. Then cling-smoking, to come out to his honour. As soon as ing by the mane of his horse, he scrambled for the bridle which was under the other horse's feet, reached it, and, well satisfied with himself, looked round at Paddy, who looked back to the chaisedoor at my angry servants, secure in the last event of things. In vain the Englishman, in monotonous anger, and the Frenchman in every note of the gamut, abused Paddy. Necessity and wit were on Paddy's side. He parried all that was said against his chaise, his horses, himself, and his country, with invincible comic dexterity; till at last, both his adversaries, dumb-founded, clambered into the vehicle, where they were instantly shut up in straw and darkness. Paddy, in a triumphant tone, called to my postilions, bidding them get on, and not be stopping the way any longer.'"-i. 64, 65. By and by the wheel horse stopped short, and began to kick furiously. "Never fear,' reiterated Paddy. I'll engage I'll be up wid him. Now for it, Knockecroghery! Oh the rogue, he thinks he has me at a nonplush; but I'll show him the differ.' All they had crouched under the door, and were able to stand upright, they welcomed me with a very good grace, and were proud to see me in the kingdom. I asked if they were all Ellinor's sons. entirely,' was the first answer. Not one but one,' was the second answer. The third made the other two intelligible. Plase your Honour, we are all her sons-in-law, except myself, who am her lawful son.' Then you are my foster brother?' No, plase your Honour, it's not me, but my brother, and he's not in it. Not in it? No, plase your Honour; becaase he's in the forge up above. Sure he's the blacksmith, my lard. And what are you?' I'm Ody, plase your honour;' the short for Owen," &c.-i. 94-96. It is impossible, however, for us to select any thing that could give our readers even a vague idea of the interest, both serious and comic, that is produced by this original char acter, without quoting more of the story than we can now make room for. We cannot "After this brag of war, Paddy whipped, Knock-leave it, however, without making our acecroghery kicked, and Paddy, seemingly unconscious of danger, sat within reach of the kicking horse, twitching up first one of his legs, then the other, and shifting as the animal aimed his hoofs, escaping every time as it were by miracle. mixture of temerity and presence of mind, which With a made us alternately look upon him as a madman and a hero, he gloried in the danger, secure of success, and of the sympathy of the spectators. knowledgments to Miss Edgeworth for the handsome way in which she has treated our country, and for the judgment as well as liberality she has shown in the character of and reserved agent of her hero. There is inMr. Macleod, the proud, sagacious, friendly, finite merit and powers of observation even in her short sketch of his exterior. "He was a hard-featured, strong built, perpendicular man, with a remarkable quietness of deportment: he spoke with deliberate distinctness, in an accent slightly Scotch; and, in speaking, he made use of no gesticulation, but held himself surprisingly still. No part of him but his eyes, moved; and they had an expression of slow, but determined good sense. He was sparing of his words; but the few that he used said much, and went directly to the point."-i. 82. culcate. To some readers they may seem to want the fairy colouring of high fancy and romantic tenderness; and it is very true that they are not poetical love tales, any more than they are anecdotes of scandal. We have great respect for the admirers of Rousseau and Petrarca; and we have no doubt that Miss Edgeworth has great respect for them;—but the world, both high and low, which she is But we must now take an abrupt and reluct- labouring to mend, have no sympathy with ant leave of Miss Edgeworth. Thinking as this respect. They laugh at these things, and we do, that her writings are, beyond all com- do not understand them; and therefore, the parison, the most useful of any that have come solid sense which she presses perhaps rather before us since the commencement of our too closely upon them, though it admits of reeritical career, it would be a point of conscience lief from wit and direct pathos, really could with us to give them all the notoriety that they not be combined with the more luxuriant orcan derive from our recommendation, even ifnaments of an ardent and tender imagination. their execution were in some measure liable We say this merely to obviate the only objec to objection. In our opinion, however, they tion which we think can be made to the exeare as entertaining as they are instructive; cution of these stories; and to justify our and the genius, and wit, and imagination they decided opinion, that they are actually as display, are at least as remarkable as the just-perfect as it was possible to make them with ness of the sentiments they so powerfully in- safety to the great object of the author. (July, 1812.) Tales of Fashionable Life. By Miss EDGEWORTH, Author of "Practical Education," "Belinda," "Castle Rackrent," &c. 3 vols. 12mo. pp. 1450. Johnson. London: 1812. and away from real gratification, as powerfully as mere ignorance or passion. It is to the correction of those erroneous theories that Miss Edgeworth has applied herself in that series of moral fictions, the last portion of which has recently come to our hands; and in which, we think, she has combined more solid instruction with more universal entertainment, and given more practical lessons of wisdom, with less tediousness and less pretension, than any other writer with whom we are acquainted. THE writings of Miss Edgeworth exhibit so singular an union of sober sense and inexhaustible invention-so minute a knowledge of all that distinguishes manners, or touches on happiness in every condition of human fortune--and so just an estimate both of the real sources of enjoyment, and of the illusions by which they are obstructed, that it cannot be thought wonderful that we should separate her from the ordinary manufacturers of novels, and speak of her Tales as works of more serious importance than much of the true history and solemn philosophy that come daily under When we reviewed the first part of these our inspection. The great business of life, Tales which are devoted to the delineation and the object of all arts and acquisitions, is of fashionable life, we ventured to express a undoubtedly to be happy; and though our doubt, whether the author was justifiable for success in this grand endeavour depends, in expending so large a quantity of her moral some degree, upon external circumstances, medicines on so small a body of patients—— over which we have no control, and still more and upon patients too whom she had every on temper and dispositions, which can only be reason to fear would turn out incurable. Upcontrolled by gradual and systematic exertion, on reflection, however, we are now inclined a very great deal depends also upon creeds to recall this sentiment. The vices and illuand opinions, which may be effectually and sions of fashionable life are, for the most part, even suddenly rectified, by a few hints from merely the vices and illusions of human nature authority that cannot be questioned, or a few illustrations so fair and striking, as neither to be misapplied nor neglected. We are all, no doubt, formed, in a great degree, by the circumstances in which we are placed, and the beings by whom we are surrounded; but still we have all theories of happiness-notions of ambition, and opinions as to the summum bonum of our own-more or less developed, and more or less original, according to our situation and character-but influencing our conduct and feelings at every moment of our lives, and leading us on to disappointment, presented sometimes in their most conspicuous, and almost always in only their most seductive form ;-and even where they are not merely fostered and embellished, but actually generated only in that exalted region, it is very well known that they "drop upon the place beneath," and are speedily propagated and diffused into the world below. To expose them, therefore, in this their original and proudest sphere, is not only to purify the stream at its source, but to counteract their pernicious influence precisely where it is most formidable and extensive. To point out |