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serve in their intercourse with the people, are not by any means at variance with the assertion; for that external simplicity and affability to inferiors is one of the characteristics of the aristocratic government; all assumption of superiority being carefully avoided when real authority is not in question. Zurich suggests the idea of a municipal aristocracy; Berne of a warlike one: there, we think we see citizens of a town transformed into nobility; here nobles who have made themselves citizens." Vol. i. pp. 213-217.*

But we must now hasten from the Physical wonders of this country to some of the author's Moral observations; and we are tempted to give the first place to his unsparing but dispassionate remarks on the character of modern English travellers. At Geneva, he observes, "English travellers swarm here, as everywhere else; but they do not mix with the society of the country more than they do elsewhere, and seem to like it even less. The people of Geneva, on the other hand, say, Their former friends, the English, are so changed they scarcely know them again. They used to be a plain downright race, in whom a certain degree of sauvagerie (oddity and shyness) only served to set off the advantages of a highly cultivated understanding, of a liberal mind, and generous temper, which characterised them in general. Their young men were often rather wild, but soon reformed, and became like their fathers. Instead of this, we now see (they say) a mixed assemblage, of whom lamentably few possess any of those qualities we were wont to admire in their predecessors. Their former shyness and reserve is changed to disdain and rudeness. If you seek these modern English, they keep aloof, do not mix in conversation, and seem to laugh at you. Their conduct, still more strange and unaccountable in regard to each other, is indicative of contempt or suspicion. Studiously avoiding to exchange a word with their countrymen, one would suppose they expected to find a sharper in every individual of their own nation, not particularly introduced, or at best a person beneath them. Accordingly you cannot vex or displease them more than by inviting other English travellers to meet them, whom they may be compelled afterwards to acknowledge. If they do not find a crowd, they are tired. If you speak of the old English you formerly knew, that was before the Flood! If you talk of books, it is pedantry, and they yawn; of politics, they run wild about Bonaparte! Dancing is the only thing which is sure to please them. At the sound of the fiddle, the think ing nation starts up at once. Their young people are adepts in the art; and take pains to become so, spending half their time with the dancing master You may know the houses where they live by the scraping of the fiddle, and shaking of the floor, which disturbs their neighbours. Few bring letters; and yet they complain they are neglected by the good company, and cheated by innkeepers. The Jatter, accustomed to the Milords Anglais of former times, or at least having heard of them, think they may charge accordingly; but only find des Anglais pour rire, who bargain at the door, before they venture to come in. for the leg of mutton and bottle of wine, on which they mean to dine!'

"Placed as I am between the two parties. I hear young Englishmen repeat, what they have heard in France, that the Genevans are cold, selfish, and interested, and their women des précieuses ridicules, the very milliners and mantua-makers giving them selves airs of modesty and deep reading that there is no opera, nor théâtre des variétés; in short, that Geneva is the dullest place in the world. Some say it is but a bad copy of England, a sham republic; and a scientific, no less than a political, counterfeit.

Many travelling details, and particular descriptions, are here omitted.

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In short, the friends of Genc ia, among var raodern English travellers, are not numerous-though they are select. These last distinguished themselves during the late hard winter by their bounty to the poor-not the poor of Geneva, who were sufficiently assisted by their richer countrymen, but those of Savoy, who were literally starving. If English travellers no longer appear in the same light as formerly, it is because it is not the same class of people who go abroad, but all classes, and not the best of all classes, either. They know this too, and say it themselves; they feel the ridicule of their enormous numbers, and of the absurd conduct of many of them. They are ashamed and provoked; describe it with the most pointed irony, and tell many a humorous story against themselves. Formerly, the travelling class was composed of young men of after leaving the University, went the tour of the good family and fortune, just coming of age, who, Continent under the guidance of a learned tutor, often a very distinguished man, or of men of the same class, at a more advanced age, with their families, who, after many years spent in professional duties at home, came to visit again the countries they had seen in their youth, and the friends they had known there. In those better times, when no Englishman left his country either to seek his fortune, to save money, or to hide himself; when travellers of that nation were all very rich or very learned; of high birth, yet liberal principles: unbounded in their generosity, and with means equal to the inclination, their high standing in the world might well be accounted for; and it is a great pity they should have lost it. Were I an Englishman, I would not set out on my travels until the new fashion were over."-Vol. i. pp. 356-359.

At Schaffhausen, again, he observes,

"There were other admirers here besides ourselves; some English, and more Germans, who furnished us with an opportunity of comparing the difference of national manners. The former, divided into groups, carefully avoiding any communication with each other still more than with the foreigners. never exchanged a word, and scarcely a look, with any but the legitimate interlocutors of their own set; women adhering more particularly to the rule-from native reserve and timidity, full as much as from pride or from extreme good breeding. Some of the ladies here might be Scotch; at least they wore the national colours, and we overheard them drawing comparisons between what we had under our eyes and Coralyn; giving justly enough, the preference to the Clyde; but, at any rate, they behaved à

Anglaise. The German ladies, on the contrary, contrived to lier conversation in indifferent French. With genuine simplicity, wholly unconscious of forwardness, although it might undoubtedly have been so qualified in England, they begged of my friend to let them hear a few words in English, just to know the sound, to which they were strangers. It we are to judge of the respective merits of these opposite manners, by the impression they leave. I think the question is already decided by the English against themselves. Yet, at the same time that they blame and deride their own proud reserve, and would depart from it if they well knew how, but a few have the courage to venture:-and I really believe they are the best bred, who thus allow themselves to be good-humoured and vulgar."

Vol. i. pp. 94, 95.

We have not much to say in defence of our countrymen-but what may be said truly, ought not to be suppressed. That our travellers are now generally of a lower rank than formerly, and that not very many of them are fitted, either by their wealth or breeding, to uphold the character of the noble and honourable persons who once almost monopolised the advantages of foreign travel, is of course

implied in the fact of their having become vastly more numerous, without supposing any actual degeneracy in the nation itself. At a very popular point of M. Simond's journey, it appeared from a register which he consulted, that the proportion of travellers from different countries, was twenty-eight English to four Prussians, two Dutch, five French, one Italian, and three Americans.That some of this great crowd of emigrants might not be suitable associates for some others, may easily be conjectured-and that the better sort may not have been very willing to fraternise with those who did least honour to their common country, could scarcely be imputed to them as a fault. But these considerations, we fear, will go but a little way to explain the phenomenon; or to account for the "Morgue Aristocratique," as Bonaparte called it, of the English gentry-the sort of sulky and contemptuous reserve with which, both at home and abroad, almost all who have any pretensions to bon ton seem to think it necessary to defend those pretensions. The thing has undoubtedly been carried, of late years, to an excess that is both ludicrous and offensive-and is, in its own nature, unquestionably a blemish and a misfortune: But it does not arise, we are persuaded, from any thing intrinsically haughty or dull in our temperament-but is a natural consequence, and, it must be admitted, a considerable drawback from two very proud peculiarities in our condition-the freedom of our constitution, and the rapid progress of wealth and intelligence in the body of the nation.

after this period, confined to the hildren of the gentry; and a certain parade in equipage and dress, which could not be easily assumed but by the opulent, nor naturally carried but by those who had been long accustomed to it, threw additional difficulties in the way of those who wished to push themselves forward in society, and rendered any other bulwarks unnecessary for the protection of the sanctuary of fashion.

From the time of Sir Robert Walpole, however, the communication between the higher and the lower orders became far more open and easy. Commercial wealth and enterprise were prodigiously extended - literature and intelligence spread with unprecedented rapidity among the body of the people; and the increased intercourse between the different parts of the country, naturally produced a greater mixture of the different classes of the people. This was followed by a general relaxation in those costly external observances, by which persons of condition had till then been distinguished. Ladies laid aside their hoops, trains, and elaborate head-dresses; and gentlemen their swords, periwigs, and embroidery ;—and at the same time that it thus. became quite practicable for an attorney's clerk or a mercer's apprentice to assume the exterior of a nobleman, it happened also, both that many persons of that condition had the education that fitted them for a higher rank— and that several had actually won their way to it by talents and activity, which had not formerly been looked for in that quarter.Their success was well merited undoubtedly, In most of the other countries of Europe, and honourable both to themselves and their if a man was not born in high and polished country; but its occasional occurrence, even society, he had scarcely any other means of more than the discontinuance of aristocratical gaining admission to it-and honour and dig- forms or the popular spirit of the Government, nity, it was supposed, belonged, by inheri- tended strongly to encourage the pretensions tance, to a very limited class of the people. of others, who had little qualification for sucWithin that circle, therefore, there could be no cess, beyond an eager desire to obtain it.— derogation-and, from without it, there could So many persons now raised themselves by be no intrusion. But, in this country, persons their own exertions, that every one thought of every condition have been long entitled to himself entitled to rise; and very few proaspire to every situation—and, from the nature portionally were contented to remain in the of our political constitution, any one who had rank to which they were born; and as vanity individual influence, by talent, wealth, or ac- is a still more active principle than ambition, tivity, became at once of consequence in the the effects of this aspiring spirit were more community, and was classed as the open rival conspicuously seen in the invasion which it or necessary auxiliary of those who had the prompted on the prerogatives of polite society, strongest hereditary claims to importance. than in its more serious occupations; and a But though the circle of Society was in this herd of uncomfortable and unsuitable comway at all times larger than in the Conti-panions beset all the approaches to good comnental nations, and embraced more persons pany, and seemed determined to force all its of dissimilar training and habits, it does not barriers. appear to have given a tone of repulsion to the manners of those who affected the superiority, till a period comparatively remote. In the days of the Tudors and Stuarts there was a wide pale of separation between the landed Aristocracy and the rest of the population; and accordingly, down at least to the end of Charles the Second's reign, there seems to have been none of this dull and frozen arrogance in the habits of good company. The true reason of this, however, was, that though the competition was constitutionally open, good education was, in fact, till

We think we have now stated the true causes of this phenomenon--but, at all events, the fact we believe to be incontrovertible, that within the last fifty years there has been an incredible increase of forwardness and solid impudence among the half-bred and halfeducated classes of this country-and that there was consequently some apology for the assumption of more distant and forbidding manners towards strangers, on the part of those who were already satisfied with the extent of their society. It was evidently easier and more prudent to reject the overtures of

unknown acquaintances, than to shake them off after they had been once allowed to fasten themselves to repress, in short, the first attempts at familiarity, and repel, by a chilling and somewhat disdainful air, the advances of all, of whom it might any way be suspected that they might turn out discreditable or un

fit associates.

really form a part of our national character, must concur, we think, with the alienation it produces in others, speedily to consign it to the tomb of other forgotten affectations. The duties that we owe to strangers that come casually into our society, certainly are not very weighty-and a man is no doubt entitled to consult his own ease, and even his indoThis, we have no doubt, is the true history lence, at the hazard of being unpopular among of that awful tone, of gloomy indifference such persons. But, after all, affability and and stupid arrogance, which has unfortunately complaisance are still a kind of duties, in their become so striking a characteristic of English degree; and of all duties, we should really manners. At its best, and when most justified think are those that are repaid, not only with by the circumstance of the parties, it has, we the largest share of gratitude, but with the must allow, but an ungracious and disoblig- greatest internal satisfaction. All we ask is, ing air: But the extravagant height to which that they, and the pleasure which naturally it is now frequently carried, and the extraor- accompanies their exercise, should not be sadinary occasions on which it is sometimes dis- crificed to a vain notion of dignity, which the played, deserve all the ridicule and reproba- person assuming it knows all the while to be tion they meet with. We should not quarrel false and hollow-or to a still vainer assumpmuch with a man of family and breeding tion of fashion, which does not impose upon being a little distant and cold to the many one in a thousand; and subjects its unhappy very affable people he may meet with, either victim to the ridicule of his very competitors in his travels, or in places of public resort at in the practice. All studied manners are ashome. But the provoking thing is, to see the sumed, of course, for the sake of the effect same frigid and unsociable manner adopted they are to produce on the beholders: And if in private society, and towards persons of the a man have a particularly favourable opinion highest character, if they happen not to be- of the wisdom and dignity of his physiognolong to the same set, or to be occupied with my, and, at the same time, a perfect conthe same pursuits with those fastidious mor- sciousness of the folly and vulgarity of his tals-who, while their dignity forbids them to discourse, there is no denying that such a be affable to men of another club, or women man, when he is fortunate enough to be where of another assembly, yet admit to the fami- he is not known, will do well to keep his own liarity of their most private hours, a whole secret, and sit as silent, and look as repulsive gang of led captains, or led parsons, fiddlers, among strangers as possible. But, under any boxers, or parasitical buffoons. But the most other circumstances, we really cannot admit remarkable extravagance in the modern prac-it to be a reasonable, any more than an amiatice of this repulsive system, is, that the most outrageous examples of it are to be met with among those who have the least occasion for its protection,-persons whose society nobody would think of courting, and who yet receive the slightest and most ordinary civilities, being all that the most courteous would ever dream of offering them, with airs of as vehement disdain as if they were really in danger of having their intimacy taken by storm! Such manners, in such people, are no doubt in the very extreme of absurdity.But it is the mischief of all cheap fashions, that they are immediately pirated by the vulgar; and certainly there is none that can be assumed with so little cost, either of industry or understanding as this. As the whole of it consists in being silent, stupid, and sulky, it is quite level to the meanest capacity-and, we have no doubt, has enabled many to pass for persons of some consideration, who could never have done so on any other terms; or has permitted them at least to think that they were shunning the society of many by whom they would certainly have been shunned.

--

We trust, therefore, that this fashion of mock stateliness and sullen reserve will soon pass away. The extreme facility with which it may be copied by the lowest and dullest of mankind, the caricatures which are daily exhibited of it in every disgusting variety, and the restraints it must impose upon the good nature and sociality which, after all, do

ble demeanour. To return, however, to M. Simond.

If he is somewhat severe upon our national character, it must be confessed that he deals still harder measure to his own countrymen. There is one passage in which he distinctly states that no man in France now pretends to any principle, either personal or political. What follows is less atrocious,—and probably nearer the truth. It is the sequel of an encomium on the domestic and studious occupations of the well-informed society of Zurich.

would tempt few strangers, and in France particu
"Probably a mode of life so entirely domestic
larly, it would appear quite intolerable. Yet I doubt
whether these contemners of domestic dulness are
not generally the dullest of the two. Walking oc-
casionally the whole length of the interior Boule-
vards of Paris, on a summer evening, I have gene-
several hours, the very same figures sitting just
rally observed on my return, at the interval of
where I had left them; mostly isolated middle-aged
men, established for the evening on three chairs,
one for the elbow, another for the extended leg, 1
third for the centre of gravity; with vacant looks
and a muddy complexion, appearing discontented
A fauteuil in a salon, for the passive hearer of the
with themselves and others, and profoundly tired.
talk of others, is still worse. I take it, than the three
chairs on the Boulevard. The theatre, seen again
and again, can have no great charm; nor is it every
one who has money to spare for the one, or free ac
cess to the other; therefore, an immense number

of people are driven to the Boulevard as a last re-
source. As to home, it is no resource at all. No
one thinks of the possibility of employing his time,

there, either by himself or with his family. And the result, upon the whole, is, that I do not believe there is a country in the world where you see so many long faces, care-worn and cross, as among the very people who are deemed, and believe themselves, the merriest in the world. A man of rank and talent, who has spent many years in the Crimea, who employed himself diligently and usefully when there, and who naturally loves a country where he has done much good, praising it to a friend, has been heard to remark, as the main objection to a residence otherwise delightful- Mais-for in the deadly encounter of all the passions, of on est obligé de s'aller coucher tous les soirs à sept heures, parcequ'en Crimée on ne sait pas où aller passer la soirée!' This remark excites no surprise at Paris. Every one there feels that there can be no alternative, some place, not home, to spend your evenings in, or to bed at seven o'clock! It puts one in mind of the gentleman who hesitated about marrying a lady whose company he liked very much, for,' as he observed, where could I then go to pass my evenings?' "-Vol. i. pp. 404, 405.

The following, though not a cordial, is at least a candid testimony to the substantial benefits of the Revolution:

"Rousseau, from his garret, governed an empire-that of the mind; the founder of a new religion in politics, and to his enthusiastic followers a prophet-He said, and they believed! The disciples of Voltaire might be more numerous, but they were bound to him by far weaker ties. Those of Rousseau made the French Revolution, and perished for it; while Voltaire's, miscalculating its chances, perished by it. Both, perhaps, deserved their fate; but the former certainly acted the nobler part, and went to battle with the best weapons too, the most opposite principles and irreconcilable prejudices, cold-hearted wit is of little avail. Heroes and martyrs do not care for epigrams; and he must have enthusiasm who pretends to lead the enthusiastic or cope with them. Une intime persuasion, Rousseau has somewhere said, m'a toujours tenu lieu d'éloquence! And well it might; for the first requisite to command belief is to believe yourself. Nor is it easy to impose on mankind in this respect. There is no eloquence, no ascendancy over the yourself. Rousseau's might only be a sort of poetminds of others, without this intimate persuasion in ical persuasion, lasting but as long as the occasion; yet it was thus powerful, only because it was true, though but for a quarter of an hour perhaps, in the heart of this inspired writer.

"Mr. M, son of the friend of Rousseau, to whom he left his manuscripts, and especially his Confessions, to be published after his death, had fair copy written by himself, in a small hand like the goodness to show them to me. I observed a print, very neat and correct; not a blot or an erasure to be seen. The most curious of these papers, however, were several sketch-books, or memoranda half filled, where the same hand is no longer discernible; but the same genius, and the same wayward temper and perverse intellect, in every fugitive thought which is there put down. Rousseau's composition, like Montesquieu's, was laborious and slow; his ideas flowed rapidly, but were not readily brought into proper order; they did not appear to have come in consequence of a previous plan; but the plan itself, formed afterwards, came in aid of the ideas, and served as a sort of frame for them, servient. Very possibly some of the fundamental instead of being a system to which they were subopinions he defended so earnestly, and for which his disciples would willingly have suffered martyrthought, caught as it flew, was entered in his comdom, were originally adopted because a bright monplace book.

"The clamorous, restless, and bustling manners of the common people of Aix their antiquated and ragged dress, their diminutive stature and ill-favoured countenances, strongly recalled to my mind the population of France, such as I remembered it formerly; for a considerable change has certainly taken place, in all such respects, between the years 1789 and 1815. The people of France are decidedly less noisy, and graver; better dressed, and cleaner. All this may be accounted for; but handsomer is not so readily understood, à priori. It seems as if the hardships of war, having successively carried off all the weakly, those who survived have regenerated the species. The people have undoubtedly gained much by the Revolution on the score of property, and a little as to political institutions. They certainly seem conscious of some advantage attained, and to be proud of it-not properly civil liberty, which is little understood, and not properly estimated, but a certain coarse equality, asserted in small things, although not thought of in the essentials of society. This new-born equality is touchy, as if it felt yet insecure; and thence a de. gree of rudeness in the common intercourse with The lower class, and, more or less, all classes, very different from the old proverbial French politeness. This, though in itself not agreeable, is, however, a good sign. Pride is a step in moral improvement, from a very low state. These opinions, I am well insight into his taste in composition. You find aware, will not pass in France without animadver-him perpetually retrenching epithets-reducing his sion, as it is not to be expected the same judgment will be formed of things under different circum

very

stances. If my critics, however, will only go three or four thousand miles off, and stay away a quarter of a century, I dare say we shall agree better when we compare notes on their return.

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Vol. i. pp. 333, 334.

The way in which M. Simond speaks of Rousseau, affords a striking example of that struggle between enthusiasm and severityromance and cool reason, which we noticed in the beginning as characteristic of the whole work. He talks, on the whole, with contempt, and even bitterness, of his character: But he follows his footsteps, and the vestiges and memorials even of his fictitious personages, with a spirit of devout observance-visits Clareus, and pauses at Meillerie-rows in a burning day to his island in the lake of Bienne-expatiates on the beauty of his retreat at the Charmettes-and even stops to explore his temporary abode at Moitier Travers. The following passages are remarkable:

44

These loose notes of Rousseau afford a curious

thoughts to their simplest expression-giving words
a peculiar energy, by the new application of their
original meaning-going back to the naïveté of old
language; and, in the artificial process of simplici-
y, carefully effacing the trace of each laborious
footstep as he advanced; each idea, each image,
coming out, at last, as if cast entire at a single
throw, original, energetic, and clear. Although
Mr. M- had promised to Rousseau that he would
publish his Confessions as they were, yet he took
upon himself to suppress a passage explaining cer-
tain circumstances of his abjurations at Anneci, af-
fording a curious, but frightfully disgusting, picture
Mr. M-
of monkish manners at that time. It is a pity that
- did not break his word in regard to some
few more passages of that most admirable and most
vile of all the productions of genius."

Vol. i. pp 564-566. The following notices of Madame de Staël are emphatic and original:

"I had seen Madame de Staël a child; and I sav I The intermediate years her again on her deathbed were spent in another hemisphere, as far as possible from the scenes in which she lived. Mixing again, not many months since, with a world in which I am

a stranger, and feel that I must remain so, I just saw this celebrated woman; and heard, as it were, her Last words, as I had read her works before, uninfluenced by any local bias. Perhaps, the impressions of a man thus dropped from another world into this may be deemed something like those of posterity. Madame de Staël lived for conversation: She was not happy out of a large circle, and a French circle, where she could be heard in her own language to the best advantage. Her extravagant admiration of the society of Paris was neither more nor less than genuine admiration of herself. It was the best mirror she could get and that was all. Ambitious of all sorts of notoriety, she would have given the world to have been born noble and a beauty. Yet there was in this excessive vanity so much honesty and frankness, it was so entirely

void of affectation and trick, she made so fair and so irresistible an appeal to your own sense of her worth, that what would have been laughable in any one else, was almost respectable in her. That ambition of eloquence, so conspicuous in her writings, was much less observable in her conversation; there was more abandon in what she said than in what she wrote; while speaking, the spontaneous inspiration was no labour, but all pleasure. Conscious of extraordinary powers, she gave herself up to the present enjoyment of the good things, and the deep things, flowing in a full stream from her well-stored mind and luxuriant fancy. The inspiration was pleasure-the pleasure was inspiration; and without precisely intending it, she was, every evening of her life, in a circle of company, the very Corinne she had depicted."-Vol. i. pp. 283-286.

(November, 1812.)

Rejected Addresses; or the New Theatrum Poetarum. 12mo. pp. 126. London: 1812.*

AFTER all the learning, wrangling and solemn exhortation of our preceding pages, we think we may venture to treat our readers with a little morsel of town-made gaiety, without any great derogation from our established character for seriousness and contempt of trifles. We are aware, indeed, that there is no way by which we could so certainly ingratiate ourselves with our provincial readers, as by dealing largely in such articles; and we can assure them, that if we have not hitherto indulged them very often in this manner, it is only because we have not often met with any thing nearly so good as the little volume before us. We have seen nothing comparable to it indeed since the publication of the poetry of the Antijacobin; and though it wants the high seasoning of politics and personality, which no doubt contributed much to the currency of that celebrated collection, we are not sure that it does not exhibit, on the whole, a still more exquisite talent of imitation, with powers of poetical composition that are scarcely inferior.

We must not forget, however, to inform our country readers, that these "Rejected Addresses" are merely a series of Imitations of the style and manner of the most celebrated living writers who are here supposed to have

I have been so much struck, on lately looking back to this paper, with the very extraordinary merit and felicity of the Imitations on which it is employed, that I cannot resist the temptation of giving them a chance of delighting a new generation of admirers, by including some part of them in this publication. I take them, indeed, to be the very best imitations) and often of difficult originals) that ever were made: and, considering their great extent and variety, to indicate a talent to which I do not know where to look for a parallel. Some few of them descend to the level of parodies: But by far the greater part are of a much higher description. They ought, I suppose, to have come under the head of Poetry,-but "Miscellaneous" is broad enough to cover any thing.-Some of the less striking citations are now omitted. The authors, I believe, have been long known to have been the late Messrs. Smith.

tried their hands at an address to be spoken at the opening of the New Theatre in Drury Lane-in the hope, we presume, of obtaining the twenty-pound prize which the munificent managers are said to have held out to the successful candidate. The names of the imaginary competitors, whose works are now offered to the public, are only indicated by their initials; and there are one or two which we really do not know how to fill up. By far the greater part, however, are such as cannot possibly be mistaken; and no reader of Scott, Crabbe, Southey, Wordsworth, Lewis, Moore, or Spencer, could require the aid, even of their initials, to recognise them in their portraits. Coleridge, Coleman, and Lord Byron, are not quite such striking likenesses. Of Dr. Busby's and Mr. Fitzgerald's, we do not hold ourselves qualified to judge-not professing to be deeply read in the works of these originals.

There is no talent so universally entertaining as that of mimicry-even when it is confined to the lively imitation of the air and manner-the voice, gait, and external deportment of ordinary individuals. Nor is this to be ascribed entirely to our wicked love of ridicule; for, though we must not assign a very high intellectual rank to an art which is said to have attained to perfection among the savages of New Holland, some admiration is undoubtedly due to the capacity of nice ob servation which it implies; and some gratification may be innocently derived from the sudden perception which it excites of peculiarities previously unobserved. It rises in interest, however, and in dignity, when it succeeds in expressing, not merely the visible and external characteristics of its objects, but those also of their taste, their genius, and temper. A vulgar mimic repeats a man's cant-phrases and known stories, with an exact imitation of his voice, look, and gestures: But he is an artist of a far higher description, who can make stories or reasonings in his manner and represent the features and movements of his mind, as well as the accidents of his body.

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