the elegant ices and sherbet of ours, your people drink beers and spirituous liquors; and we see filthy pots and mugs handed about in decent society!" (The women stared, and I observed, I will answer you by-and-by.) "Un moment. Where is your Palais Royal? Where your reunions for play, or other amusement in which the fair sex (taking off his hat) mingle and form the principal charm ?” (This was special pleading.) Now with us the ladies are admitted into every circle, from the coffee-house and restaurateur's to the highest. On Sunday again, the town is in mourning until the evening, when every body is drunk, in and out of the streets, and the methodistist's chapel (so he pronounced it) seems to be the principal amusement. Lastly, where are your bals-champêtres, your Sunday and festival entertainments, your dances of every description, from the most magnificent down to the simple but not less pleasurable ball of the handicraft and private soldier? Where that superlative taste for dress which our ladies evince; that air du plaisir, that talent for society, that facility of becoming acquainted? Your women are beautiful, but they disfigure themselves by their manner of putting on their clothes, and by that look which you call shy, as if they were afraid of every body, especially strangers; and which is a companion to the sulky of the other sex, which never lifts a hat to a female unless she be of his own rank, and who passes by the lady serving in a shop or at a tavern, as if she were a bull-dog," (loud applause.) "Such is London, and the reason is this; the men are so given to drink, that politics, gaming, commerce, pleasure, and science, must all be discussed over the ponch; the women are banished after dinner ; and your nation is so proud as to copy from no other nation in the world!" "Bravo!" exclaimed his brother black-coat. "Un moment," said I, in my turn; " that London is huge and vast, and almost interminable for one whose pocket confines him to foot exercise, I will allow; but I must be permitted to disagree with you respecting its darkness, its dulness, and its insalubrity. The court-end of the town, the whole extensive west quarter of the city, its many suburbs and outlets, its squares (very many indeed), are all open, airy, and healthful. As for the national countenance, I shall leave it to stand for itself, only observing that, when your countrymen have met mine, in or out of the field, they had a very different report to make to what you have honored us with." He smiled, but it was not mirth-the women looked surprised. "The ale-houses I have never frequented, nor sat on their benches; and the timidity of our females, which you censure, added to education, forbids them to mingle in public-house circles, of however high a degree those haunts may be. I studied chymistry merely for my amusement, and I have not as yet made an analysis of the component ingredients of porter. With respect to the journey from Whitechapel to the parks, you must pre-suppose that a person lives there, before he takes such a stretch; and I may with equal propriety imagine that you must have tenanted some of the narrowest and most miserable streets about the margin of the Thames and Tower-hill to have been so obnubilated with the gloom and busy faces which you painted in such strong colours. The scenery of Hyde Park is certainly very diversified, and in our cold climate we are obliged to pluck our laurels and rare plants amongst strangers, as war and commerce may direct us. (The women looked grave.) Lord Wellington (you say) is a brave man ; I will leave him with you as such, to stand alone without the statue, or its shield; the mortar may speak for itself when occasion requires, and whenever that may be, I fear not that its report will be unfavorable to our national character. Carlton House is not worthy of its illustrious proprietor, yet I cannot hold it so cheaply as you do; you have evidently not seen its interior, therefore I cannot dispute the point with one who is but half informed on the subject. The other palaces are antiquated, but they are little used; and we have stately Windsor, Hampton Court, and other royal houses, as a relief and off-set to them. You must have sadly omitted to frequent the genteel quarters of the town-to have shut your eyes upon Chesterfield House, Devonshire House, Lansdowne House, and to many other splendid hotels betwixt courtyards and gardens. The beef-take I very seldom take, and I have as often drunk of the juice of France in England as in France itself; but when it has fallen to my lot to take a glass of port or sherry, I have done it without losing my temper, or being heated and feverish. (The orator looked irascible.) The liquors you mention are only drunk amongst the rabble in our theatres, and I have perceived in your's some small beer circulating; but, as we only observe these things aloft, I should consider either as unworthy of notice. A PalaisRoyal in London would be what it is in Paris-a focus of vice, the haunt of gamesters and prostitutes, and we have not the armed police and general system of spies to keep them in check, which you possess in France. Your not understanding English ought to have made you backward in criticising our dramatical entertainments: we have them of all kinds, from the Italian opera to Sadler's Wells: their variety is great, no expense is spared to make them attractive, and we have every thing that music and dancing, the most costly scenery, tragedy, comedy, broad mirth, the equestrian, the gymnastic, the pantomimic, the bur lesque, nay, even the aquatic, can produce. Our theatres are very many in number-in all quarters of the town: we have a Vauxhall for Tivoli tea-gardens; every square is the promenade of its inhabitants, and we have other nearly public walks, such as the Temple Gardens and Gray's Inn, which might be more frequented. 66 Sunday we consider as a day of devotion and sober cheerfulness; yet even on that day our brilliant assemblage of carriages in Hyde Park beats your Longchamp; and we have many private parties in high life: lastly, the shy and the sulky, the distant and uncivil, belong not to our higher classes, and until you are well acquainted with them, I advise you not to finish your Panorama of London." "Here are the Tuileries!" was all the answer made; we parted distantly, and I perceived that I had lost the good opinion of the brunettes. Not so, I hope, with the candid reader of 'THE HERMIT ABROAD.' And here we close our notice of our ingenious friend's sketches: we have had so many proofs of his agreeable talent and his industry, that we say to him, with as much confidence as pleasure, 'Au revoir, M. L'Hermite.' 384 WORKS IN PREPARATION. Burchell's Travels in Africa, vol. 2. Lockhart's Pilgrim's Tale, a poem. Mackenzie's Five Thousand Receipts, in all the Useful and Domestic Arts. Hibbert's Philosophy of Apparitions. History of the Conquest of England by the Normans, its Causes and Consequences. Howard's Joseph and his Brethren, a Scriptural drama. Blaquiere's Origin and Progress of the Greek Revolution. Clara Chester, a poem, by the Author of Rome, and the Vale of Chamouni. A New Dictionary of Quotations. Dibdin's Sea Songs, engraved from the Original Copies, with a Memoir of his Life and Writings. Frederick Morland, a novel, in 3 vols. Pennington's Former Scenes Renewed, or Notes, Classical and Historical, taken in France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Flanders, and Holland, from 1818 to 1821. Peter Schlemihl, a German Story, with plates by George Cruikshank. The Spaewife, by the Author of the Annals of the Parish, &c. Sweepings of my Study. Secret History of the Court of Louis XIV. and of the Regency, from the Correspondence of the Duchess of Orleans. Sheppard's Thoughts preparative to Private Devotion. The Bachelor's Wife. Points of Misery, with engravings by Robert Cruikshank. WORKS LATELY PUBLISHED. Britton's Graphic and Literary Illustrations of Fonthill Abbey, medium 4to. 21s. imperial 4to. 21. 2s. Picturesque Tour through the Oberland, imperial 8vo. 28s. Don Juan de las Sierras, 3 vols. 12mo. 16s. 6d. Daniel's Meteorological Essays, 8vo. 16s. Warner's Manuscript Sermons, Fourth Series, 8vo. 15s. Hartley's Prayers and Meditations, 8vo. 2s. 6d. Dramas from the Novels and Romances of Waverley, &c. 12mo. 5s. 6d. Bramsen's Remarks on the North of Spain, 8vo. 6s. 6d. Evans's Political Institutions of Europe (vol. 1, part 1, France), 8vo. 9s. Letters to Marianne, by W. Coombe, Esq. Author of Dr. Syntax, 12mo. 3s. 6d. Herveiana, or Sketches of the Life, &c. of the Rev. James Hervey, 2 vols. 12mo. 7s. 6d. Brookshaw's Horticultural Repository, 2 vols. royal 8vo. 61. 10s. Butler's Charge to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Derby, 1823, 4to. 3s. 6d. Cottle on the Plymouth Antinomians, 12mo. 2s. 6d. Bayfield's Treatise on Cupping, 12mo. 5s. Craig's Refutation on Popery, 2 vols. 8vo. 16s. Cottle's Dartmoor, and other Poems, foolscap 8vo. 5s. The East India Military Calendar, containing the Services of General and Field Officers of the Indian Army, 4to. 21. 10s. |