manners of the young men of Basil, by excluding all forms of deference and politeness, as well as all means of improvement. With respect to these things, there is indeed nothing peculiar to the clubs of Basil, since from Brookes', composed of the honourable members of the British parliament, to these tabagies filled with the senators of the laudable Helvetic body, a man who has long frequented such meetings, becomes entirely unfit for all other society; he soon thinks it a hardship to pass an evening elsewhere, and terms all other company constraint, because it wants the ease of a tavern, where tumult is mistaken for gaiety, and familiarity for friendship. But while in other places the taste for clubs is confined to a few persons, Basil is a town of clubbists, containing no less than twelve smoking societies, each composed of about sixty members, who meet every afternoon at an early hour, drink tea amidst the exhilarating fumes of tobacco, discuss the political situation, but far more indefatigably, the cominercial affairs of the town, calculate the gains and losses of the day, form new schemes of acquiring wealth ; and separate at the hour of supper, before they have said one word on any subject of taste, or literature.

The ladies of Basil, abandoned by the men, have recourse to clubs also, and sometimes twenty ladies assemble together, without one man being of the party; although, to such as present themselves, admittance, far from being refused, is even gratefully accorded; and sometimes a stranger, taking advantage of the posture of affairs at Basil, which leads a coterie of young handsome women to consider his company as a favour, pays his homage to the ladies, while clouds of other incense are rising in every quarter of the town, from the tabagies where their absent husbands are convened.

The female societies of Basil are formed from infaney of children of the same age, and of the same class; and during their childhood, the equality of years is so strictly observed in the societies, that sisters, whose ages differ three or four years, have their several coteries in

the same house.-There is something soothing in the idea of these infant associations; it seems forming another barrier for our helpless sex, against the future tempest of the world; and no doubt, many a fair member of those young societies, when assailed by those storms of misfortune, which often beat with the most pitiless fury against hearts that can least resist their violence, recalls with tender regret the social circle of her childhood; and perhaps finds, in the sympathy of some female companion, to whom she is endeared by the charm of those early recollections, a source of conIsolation and relief. The young unmarried women, and the dowagers, have all their distinct circles, sometimes increased by an admission of sisters in-law, who become part of the family, and sometimes by the introduction of accidental acquaintance.

They assemble by invitation successively at each other's houses, usually at three in the afternoon; an hour which, though morning with respect to dinner and all the busy occupations of life at London and Paris, finds the day far advanced at Basil; where dinner is served, when it is noon by the clocks of that city, which, for several centuries past, have kept the vanguard of time, and for some reason, forgotten in the lapse of ages, probably because not worth being remembered, strike twelve in defiance of common sense and convenience, when the solar shadow points eleven.

The ladies present themselves at their coteries with their work-bags upon their arms, and work and conversation begin together; the latter turns, as in other uninstructed minds, upon the every-day's gossip of ordinary life. When the domestic detail of household anecdote and the tattle of town scandal fail, they hasten to cards what other resourse is left? Time cannot be filled up, as it often is in mixed societies, by the flutter of coquetry and the arts of affectation on one side, and by the offices of gallantry or the stare of libertinism on the other.

"Where none admire, 'tis useless to excel;

Where none are beaux, 'tis vain to be a belle."

At those assemblies the place of honour is at the window, to which, in every house at Basil, convex mirrors are fixed, and give a view of all that is passing in the streets to a considerable distance. These mirrors, consulted every moment by the ladies of Basil, not to view themselves, but their neighbours, would have furnished Thomson, had he lived in that city, with another image in his Castle of Indolence, of the means of murdering time.

Tea is brought at four in the afternoon, accompanied by a handsome collation, consisting of pastry, fruits, creams, and sweetmeats, and often of ham, and other cold meats. This substantial kind of refreshment is not found unacceptable after a very copious dinner, and with the perspective of a solid supper; the Swiss in general being possessed of a most powerful appetite, perhaps arising from the keenness of their mountain air. A dull game of commerce drags on the lingering hours till eight in the evening, when the ladies separate, after a profusion of compliments, which they have not yet relinquished for the French mode of gliding out of the room.

Sometimes their liege-lords, the clubbists, make a sacrifice of one dear evening of smoke and stockjobbing, to the women; on these gala occasions, the cardparty concludes with a supper, sufficiently luxurious, but which might be more amusing; and as the law forbids any carriages to roll through the streets after eleven, the company usually separates at that hour.

Fathers and mothers of families, who have children married, fix one day of the week, which they call leur jour de famille, when all their offspring assemble at their house at dinner, sometimes to the fourth, fifth, and even sixth generation; for the women marry very young, and not long since there were not less than six ladies in Basil, whose grand-children were grand mothThere is something respectable, and even affecting, in these patriarchal meetings; they seem a means of drawing closer those ties of consanguinity, which are the best refuge against human ills; in which the

ers.

purest affections of the heart mingle themselves with the wants and weakness of our nature; guiding with watchful tenderness the wanderings of youth, and supporting, with unwearied care, the feebleness of age.

The public amusements of Basil were suspended by the magistrates, we were told, on account of the public calamities; the chief of which was the dearness of provisions: an evil the more easily to be borne, as the town was then reaping an abundant harvest of gold from the calamities of other countries. Once a week, indeed, the dulness of a card assembly was permitted to replace that of the coteries; and an occasional concert harmonised the soul; but dancing was a diversion too light for the times, and even a set of dancing-dogs, offending against the statute, were formally expelled by Chasse-coquin, probably, in consequence of the general order of the commission of six, instituted at that period, for clearing the town of unprofitable strangers. MISS WILLIAMS.

SECT. CXII.

OF LAVATER-MONS. LA HARPE.

WE staid long enough at Zurich to visit its first literary ornament, Lavater. It being known that he is willing to receive strangers, no traveller of any lettered curiosity passes through the town, without paying him the homage of a visit.

He received us in his library, which was hung thick with portraits and engravings, of which he has a considerable collection, forming a complete study of the ever varying expression of the human face divine. Somc very wise men, who admit of no scope to that faculty of the mind, called imagination, and are forever bringing every theory to the square and the compass, consider his system of physiognomy as the fantastic vision of an heated brain; but though it may be difficult, it is surely ingenious and interesting to attempt reducing to rules a science which seems to be founded in nature. It is surely curious to analyse what it is so easy to

feel, the charm of that expression, which is the emanation of moral qualities; that undefinable grace, which is not beauty, but something inore; without which, its enchantments lose their power of fascination, and which can shed an animated glow, a spark of divinity, over the features of deformity:

"Mind, mind alone, bear witness earth and heaven,
"The living fountain in itself contains

"Of beauteous and sublime."

Lavater is a venerable looking old man, with a sharp long face, high features, and a wrinkled brow; he is tall, thin, and interesting in his figure; when serious, he has the look of melancholy, almost of inquietude; but when he smiles, his countenance becomes lighted up with an expression of sweetness and intelligence. There is a simple eloquence in his conversation, an effusion of the heart, extremely attractive: he speaks French with some difficulty, and whenever he is at a loss for an expression, has recourse to German, which I in vain beged a Swiss gentleman, who was of our party, to translate for me he told me, that for the most part, the German words Lavater employed, were compound epithets of his own framing, which had peculiar energy as he used them, but which would be quite vapid and spiritless in translation.

The great rule of moral conduct, Lavater said, in his opinion, was, next to God, to respect time. Time he considered as the most valuable of human treasures, and any waste of it, as in the highest degree immoral. He rises every morning at the hour of five; and though it would be agreeable to him to breakfast immediately after rising, he makes it an invariable rule to earn that repast by some previous labour; so that if, by accident, the rest of the day is spent to no useful purpose, some portion of it may, at least, be secured beyond the interruptions of chance.

Lavater gave us a most pleasing account of morals, in Zurich. He had been a preacher of the gospel, he said, in that town thirty years; and so incapable were the citizens of any species of corruption, that he should have