want to know how to behave myself at these parties. I would fain make myself agreeable if I knew how; and I cannot be content to follow the example of the silent starers who surrounded me last night." "Nothing in the world is more simple," said he; "you shall hear the account of my own début, and then judge for yourself. I have endeavoured to explain to you, that in the world of fashion nothing is valued for its own sake. A man is invited out, as I told you before, not for the pleasure that his company affords, but for the credit which his company confers. Acting upon this maxim, I took care to inform myself, on the evening of my first party, what other assemblies were held on the same night; and boldly fixing upon the modish Lady ****'s masquerade, I resolved to have it supposed that I was one of the privileged swarm attendant upon the Queen-bee of fashion. Accordingly all I said to any body was, "How d'ye do, I hope you are very well, Are you going to Lady ****'s to-night ?" The general answer was in the negative, with the addition of a similar enquiry addressed to me: to which I answered,"Perhaps I may drop in by and by." I dare say I uttered the same formulary a hundred times, and upon the capital of this single phrase,-"How d'ye do, I hope you are very well, Are you going to Lady ****'s to-night?" I was immediately set down for one of the most polite, agreeable, witty, well-bred young men about town; I sowed winter-cards, and reaped spring-dinners, and invitations flocked in upon me from all quarters ;-so you see what a queer thing fame is."

Some time after this conversation with ***, I received a card of invitation to a ball and supper at the Argyle Rooms, which displayed a splendid scene of luxury and magnificence. It was impossible not to do homage to the blaze of British beauty that shone forth on all sides; though perhaps I saw nothing that might not have been surpassed at New York, except in some few particulars where the superiority was rather due to the milliner and the dancing-master.

We espied✶✶✶ among the dancers, his cravat fashionably starched, his waist tightly skrewed; in short, the same Lothario gallant and gay as ever. He soon joined our party. "So," said he, "I find in spite of your preaching you cannot keep out of the vortex." Why," said I, "I was persuaded to come, thinking that, as a foreigner, I ought to see one of your best balls, among the rest of your national curiosities." "How lightly you seem to think," said he, "of the honour conferred upon you by the invitation. It is well you are not to settle in London, for you would certainly never get on in the world. Little do think of the pains and patience, the wriggling, and creeping,

you

66

and crawling, that are often used, and used in vain, to gain admission into the number of that self-constituted set who take the lead and give the tone to London society. I really doubt whether it would not require less interest to make you a member of parliament than a member of Almack's. It is not easy even to get a ticket to the Friday French play and ball, which is held weekly at these rooms, though this from its subordinate fashion is sarcastically entitled The Refuge for the Destitute;-nor should you be insensible to the honour conferred upon you to-night. Of the seven hundred people now that you see here, how many do you suppose are asked by the lady in whose house and at whose expense the entertainment is given?" "How many?" said I, surely I don't understand your question. Who else should ask them?" "Let me explain this matter," said he, "and then you will perceive how useful it is to a foreign traveller to have a native interpreter at his elbow, on all occasions, to enable him to penetrate beneath the surface; else he will only see the puppets playing, without any suspicion of the secret strings which really regulate their motions. You have perhaps already discovered that in England few people look straightforward; in the political world some look downwards; but in the fashionable world all look upwards. The great object of the ostensible hostess of the evening, Mrs., has been to rise a step in the scale of society; and to get within the range of that magic circle from which she has hitherto been excluded. To accomplish her purpose, she has given this splendid gala, but she was obliged to delegate the office of issuing invitations to four lady patronesses, who condescendingly undertook to procure the attendance of the haut-ton, and allowing the lady herself, as a mark of special favour, to ask fifty of her own friends, reserved to themselves the absolute disposal of the remaining six hundred and fifty tickets. The lady has so far gained her object, that to-morrow morning all these proud peeresses and titled dandies will leave their cards at her door; and she may be comprehended in their future invitations, but she will certainly lose the good will of her old friends, who cannot but feel offended at their present exclusion; so that, despised by her old associates, and disdained by her new acquaintance, the balance-sheet will not prove much in her favour."

"Well Jonathan," said I to myself, "things are not yet come to this pass in America;" and so wishing *** goodnight, I returned home to moralize upon the vanity of human

nature.

"Il y a à parier que toute idée publique, toute convention reque est une sottise, car elle a convenue au plus grand nombre." CHAMPFORT.

So

THE stoics had a notion, which does not seem very far from the truth, that all persons who have not a controul over their passions are mad; and that every foolish or immoral action is a symptom of insanity. However mortifying this doctrine may prove to certain grave and dictatorial personages, it would puzzle a casuist to draw the line in such a way as to suit all cases. instinctively indeed is the notion inherent in men's minds, that it colours their ordinary discourse, and embodies itself in their popular adages. Hence, it may be concluded, has arisen the practice, so frequent in civilized states, of treating the insane like criminals, and whipping, chaining, and starving them, in order to make them wiser for the future.

Dr. Butler, bishop of Durham, once asked Dean Tucker whether he did not think it possible that whole communities of men might be seized with a fit of madness. This is so possible, or rather so much matter of fact, that the question should rather have been started whether communities are not always insane; and do not pass incessantly in something like a cycle through all the different phases of mental malady of which the individual is susceptible. As far as recorded history extends, the lucid intervals of civilized societies have been " few and far between," and generally of a very questionable character. The Spartans were manifest madmen; the insatiable ambition and lust of dominion of the Romans are decisive symptoms of insanity. The Crusaders were furious lunatics. The Cromwellians were religious mad; the people in Charles the Second's day were mad with debauchery; the Jacobites were political madmen; the South-sea speculators were avariciously mad; the last generation was revolution mad, and we are legitimate mad. In all ages and in all climes, there has not been wanting, in every nation, from forty thousand to four hundred thousand madmen ready to be shot, or run through the body, or sunk in the sea, or blown up into the air, for the mere amusement of the spectators, and the gain of about a dozen or so of other madmen, whose hallucination is the lust of mismanaging public affairs.

This wholesale species of lunacy is not, however, the subject of present consideration. There is so much more to be got by flattering the "mentis gratissimus error" of the day, and helping nations forward in the prosecution of their insane desires, than in checking or contradicting them, that this branch of inquiry is not worth investigation. In this respect great communities

VOL. II. NO. VII.

"n'entendent pas raillerie;" and whoever presumes to be wiser or better than the rest, is sure to be himself treated as a madman, shunned, persecuted, shut up, chained, or fixed in the pillory perhaps, and may think himself very well off if he is not placed under a regimen which terminates on the scaffold.

Neither is it much to the purpose to dwell upon certain insane trains of ideas, which, for a while epidemic, continue, notwithstanding all curative efforts, to infect the reasoning faculty of individuals for a long series of ages. Such are alchemy, witchcraft, judicial astrology, and the like. It may, however, be worth while to notice an insane notion, very operative in life, and the source of much misery, namely, the unreasonable belief in the existence of a metaphysical personage called “luck,” a being of such surprising attributes as to reverse the order of nature, and to make things certain, that, if not impossible, are barely within the sphere of possibility. Madmen, under the influence of this insane impression, abound round the gamingtables at Paris; where they are seen eagerly staking their money, under the notion that this ens of their imagination will counteract the pull of the table, and disarm the banker of the odds. which the law of the game gives him over the punters. If the lottery were not one of the props of the throne and the altar, and so highly esteemed by the first moralists of the day, we might instance the English madmen who play half-crowns against shillings, and pit their luck against the 19,999 chances which stand between them and the great prize.

Having said thus much, en passant, of epidemic insanity, return we now to those sporadic cases which more properly belong to our subject. And in the first place one cannot but be struck at the apparent contradiction of our laws; which, distinguishing between madman and madman, take from the lunatic the management of his estate, although his mania may be that of accumulation; while they suffer another, whom they consider as a fool, to continue the master of his property, notwithstanding his daily waste of his means in the gratification of the most insane and disorderly propensities. Seneca notices the same absurdity in the Roman code. "Insanire omnes stultos diximus : nec tamen omnes curamus elleboro; his ipsis quos vocamus insanos, et suffragium et jurisdictionem committimus.

There is something remarkably selfish in this disposition of our legislators, who thus shrink from the trouble and expense of country mad-houses and chanceries upon a scale adequate to this class of patients; and because the unfortunates don't bite or do mischief, (being, as it is usually expressed, "nobody's enemy but their own") suffer them to go at large in society and ruin their health and fortune, for the exclusive benefit of quackdoctors and usurers.

This oversight of the law appears the more singular, when we reflect on the great care which it has taken of the interests of another species of madmen, called in the technical jargon of legal science infants. If two persons of this description are mad enough to marry without consent of parents, no matter how suitable the match, or how long they may continue to live together, the interests of their children's children are sacrificed, to protect the parents from themselves. This notion is so exquisitely absurd, so injurious to society, and so unjust in practice, that we cannot but conclude the pertinacity with which it has gotten possession of certain brains is a decisive proof of their being touched. Madness has been divided into erroneous sensitive impressions and erroneous notions concerning the properties of things. Upon either of these counts it would be no difficult process to convict a vast number of one's acquaintance of insanity, who are by a gross abuse left at large to the misguidance of their several hallucinations. Among the most common of these cases take the following:

Biddy is affected with such an impression of her own personal charms, that during twenty years she has treated the whole sex with an excessive disdain, and has actually refused two unexceptionable matches, which might have made her happy through life. The disease, as is usually the case, has gained ground by its continuance, and is now so rooted, that no admonitions of her toilet-glass can effect any change in her dress or pretensions: the symptoms, however, are so far altered, that the cold and haughty disdain of her younger life is now dropped for a certain anxious, fluttering, fidgety restlessness, when in mixed company, that renders her very troublesome to her neighbours. Biddy never was pretty; and now her perceptions of herself have become totally at variance with sound discretion, and produce an incongruity in all she says or does. Among the most striking overt acts of her insanity are noticeable, a smile, which continues to shew her teeth, notwithstanding the total disappearance of that lustre and whiteness that once rendered them rather agreeable; a pair of low-cut stays, exhibiting --- nothing; short petticoats, shewing--- too much; a turned-up hat with a plume, cherry-coloured ribbons; and an insuperably craving desire to waltz. How say you, gentlemen of the jury?---guilty or not guilty?

A nobleman who, from respect, cannot be named, is grievously afflicted with an insane impression that he has a good voice, and the absurd notion that he has a taste for music. In all other respects this worthy individual is rational and consistent. He has, nevertheless, injured his fortune by entertaining foreigners, has sung and played himself into Coventry, and has broken up three musical charities, by singing louder than the professional performers hired to bring a congregation.