Upon returning home, I could not help re- speak his native language in a company of flecting with some astonishment, how this very foreigners, where he was sure that none unman, with such a confined education and capa-derstood him; a travelling Hottentot himself city, was yet capable of turning me as he would be silent if acquainted only with the thought proper, and moulding me to his in-language of his country; but a Frenchman clinations! I knew he was only answering his shall talk to you whether you understand his own purposes, even while he attempted to ap- language or not: never troubling his head whepear solicitous about mine; yet, by a voluntary ther you have learned French, still he keeps infatuation, a sort of passion, compounded of up the conversation, fixes his eye full in your vanity and good-nature, I walked into the snare face, and asks a thousand questions, which he with my eyes open, and put myself to future answers himself, for want of a more satisfactory pain in order to give him immediate pleasure. reply. The wisdom of the ignorant somewhat resembles the instinct of animals; it is diffused in but a very narrow sphere, but within that circle it acts with vigour, uniformity, and success. Adieu. LETTER LXVII. FROM THE SAME. FROM my former accounts, you may be apt to faucy the English the most ridiculous peopie under the sun. They are indeed ridiculous; yet every other nation in Europe is equally so; each laughs at each, and the Asiatic at all. I may, upon another occasion, point out what is most strikingly absurd in other countries; I shall at present confine myself only to France. The first national peculiarity a traveller meets upon entering that kingdom, is an odd sort of staring vivacity in every eye, not excepting even the children; the people it seems have got it into their heads, that they have more wit than others, and so stare, in order to look smart. I know not how it happens, but there appears a sickly delicacy in the faces of their finest women. This may have introduced the use of paint, and paint produces wrinkles; so that a fine lady shall look like a hag at twentythree. But as, in some measure, they never appear young, so it may be equally asserted, that they actually think themselves never old; a gentle miss shall prepare for new conquests at sixty, shall hobble a rigadoon when she can scarcely walk out without a crutch; she shall affect the girl, play her fan and her eyes, and talk of sentiments, bleeding hearts, and expiring for love, when actually dying with age. Like a departing philosopher, she attempts to make her last moments the most brilliant of her life. Their civility to strangers is what they are chiefly proud of; and to confess sincerely, their beggars are the very politest beggars I ever knew in other places, a traveller is addressed with a piteous whine, or a sturdy solemnity, but a French beggar shall ask your charity with a very genteel bow, and thank. you for it with a smile and shrug. Another instance of this people's breeding I must not forget. An Englishman would not But their civility to foreigners is not half so great as their admiration of themselves. Every thing that belongs to them and their nation is great, magnificent beyond expression, quite romantic! every garden is a paradise, every hovel a palace, and every woman an angel. They shut their eyes close, throw their mouths wide open, and cry out in a rapture, "Sacre! what beauty! Ó Ciel! what taste! -mort de ma vie ! what grandeur, was ever any people like ourselves? we are the nation of men, and all the rest no better than two-legged barbarians." I fancy the French would make the best cooks in the world if they had but meat; as it is, they can dress you out five different dishes from a nettle-top, seven from a dock-leaf, and twice as many from a frog's haunches; these eat prettily enough when one is a little used to them, are easy of digestion, and seldom overload the stomach with crudities. They seldom dine under seven hot dishes: it is true, indeed, with all this magnificence, they seldom spread a cloth before the guests; but in that I cannot be angry with them, since those who have got no linen on their backs, may very well be excused for wanting it upon their tables. Even religion itself loses its solemnity among them. Upon their roads, at about every five miles' distance, you see an image of the Virgin Mary, dressed up in grim head-clothes, painted cheeks, and an old red petticoat; before her a lamp is often kept burning, at which with the saint's permission, I have frequently lighted my pipe. Instead of the Virgin, you are sometimes presented with a crucifix, at otber times with a wooden Saviour, fitted out in complete garniture, with sponge, spear, nails, pincers, hammer, bees-wax, and vinegar-bottle. Some of those images, I have been told, came down from heaven; if so, in heaven they have but bungling workmen. In passing through their towns, you frequently see the men sitting at the doors knitting stockings, while the care of cultivating the ground and pruning the vines falls to the women. This is, perhaps, the reason why the fair sex are granted some peculiar privileges in this country; particularly, when they can get horses, of riding without a side-saddle. But I begin to think you may find this description pert and dull enough; perhaps it is so, yet, in general, it is the manner in which the French usually describe foreigners; and it is but just to force a part of that ridicule back upon them, which they attempt to lavish on others. Adieu. LETTER LXXVIII. FROM THE SAME. THE two theatres which serve to amuse the citizens here, are again opened for the winter. The mimetic troops, different from those of the state, begin their campaign when all the others quit the field; and, at a time when the Europeans cease to destroy each other in reality, they are entertained with mock battles upon the stage. with a dead march, a funeral procession, a catcall, a jig, or a tempest. There is, perhaps, nothing more easy than to write properly for the English theatre; I am amazed that none are apprenticed to the trade. The author, when well acquainted with the value of thunder and lightning, when versed in all the mystery of scene.shifting and trapdoors; when skilled in the proper periods to introduce a wire-walker or a waterfall; when instructed in every actor's peculiar talent, and capable of adapting his speeches to the supposed excellence; when thus instructed, he knows all that can give a modern audience pleasure. One player shines in an exclamation, another in a groan, a third in a horror, a fourth in a start, a fifth in a smile, a sixth faints, and a seventh fidgets round the stage with peculiar vivacity; that piece, therefore, will succeed best, where each has a proper opportunity of shining; the actor's business is not so much to adapt himself to the poet, as the poet's to adapt himself to the actor. The dancing-master once more shakes his quivering feet; the carpenter prepares his paradise of pasteboard; the hero resolves to cover his forehead with brass, and the heroine begins to scour up her copper tail, preparative to future operations; in short, all are in motion, The great secret, therefore, of tragedy-writfrom the theatrical letter-carrier in yellowing, at present, is a perfect acquaintance with clothes, to Alexander the Great that stands on theatrical ahs and ohs; a certain number of a stool. these, interspersed with gods! tortures! racks! and damnation! shall distort every actor almost into convulsions, and draw tears from every spectator, a proper use of these will infallibly fill the whole house with applause. But, above all, a whining scene must strike more forcibly. I would advise, from my present knowledge of the audience, the two favourite players of the town to introduce a scene of this sort in every play. Towards the middle of the last act, I would have them enter with wild looks and outspread arms: there is no necessity for speaking, they are only to groan at each other: they must vary the tones of exclamation and despair through the whole theatrical gamut, wring their figures into every shape of distress, and when their calamities have drawn a proper quantity of tears from the sympathetic spectators, they may go off in dumb solemnity at different doors, clasping their hands, or slapping their pocket-holes; this, which may be called a tragic pantomime, will answer every purpose of moving the passions as well as words could have done, and it must save those expenses which go to reward an author. Both houses have already commenced hostilities. War, open war, and no quarter received or given! Two singing women, like heralds, have begun the contest; the whole town is divided on this solemn occasion; one has the finest pipe, the other the finest manner; one courtesies to the ground, the other salutes the audience with a smile; one comes on with modesty which asks, the other with boldness which extorts applause; one wears powder, the other has none; one has the longest waist, but the other appears most easy: all, all is important and serious; the town as yet perseveres in its neutrality; a cause of such moment demands the most mature deliberation; they continue to exhibit, and it is very possible this contest may continue to please to the end of the season. But the generals of either army have, as I am told, several reinforcements to lend occasional assistance. If they produce a pair of diamond buckles at one house, we have a pair of eyebrows that can match them at the other. If we outdo them in our attitude, they can overcome us by a shrug; if we can bring more children on the stage, they can bring more guards in red clothes, who strut and shoulder their swords to the astonishment of every spectator. They tell me here, that people frequent the theatre in order to be instructed, as well as amused. I smile to hear the assertion. If I ever go to one of their playhouses, what with trumpets, ballooing behind the stage, and bawling upon it, I am quite dizzy before the performance is over. If I enter the house with any sentiments in my head, I am sure to have none going away, the whole mind being filled All modern plays that would keep the audience alive, must be conceived in this manner; and, indeed, many a modern play is made up on no other plan. This is the merit that lifts up the heart, like opium, into a rapture of insensibility, and can dismiss the mind from all the fatigue of thinking; this is the eloquence that shines in many a long-forgotten scene, which has been reckoned excessively fine upon acting; this the lightning that flashes no less in the hyperbolical tyrant "who breakfasts on the wind," than in little Norval, "as harmless as the babe unborn." Adieu. S LETTER LXXIX. FROM THE SAME. ing it upon new shifts and expedients of practising with impunity. Such laws, therefore, resemble the guards which are sometimes imposed upon tributary princes, apparently indeed to secure them from danger, but in reality to confirm their captivity. Penal laws, it must be allowed, secure pro I HAVE always regarded the spirit of mercy which appears in the Chinese laws with ad-perty in a state, but they also diminish personmiration. An order for the execution of a criminal is carried from court by slow journeys of six miles a day, but a pardon is sent down with the most rapid despatch. If five sons of the same father be guilty of the same offence, one of them is forgiven in order to continue the family, and comfort his aged parents in their decline. Similar to this, there is a spirit of mercy breathes through the laws of England, which some erroneously endeavour to suppress; the laws, however, seem unwilling to punish the offender, or to furnish the officers of justice with every means of acting with severity. Those who arrest debtors are denied the use of arms; the nightly watch is permitted to repress the disorders of the drunken citizens only with clubs: Justice in such a case seems to hide her terrors, and permits some offenders to escape, rather than load any with a punishment disproportioned to the crime. Thus it is the glory of an Englishman, that he is not only governed by laws, but that these are also tempered by mercy; a country restrained by severe laws, and those too executed with severity (as in Japan), is under the most terrible species of tyranny; a royal tyrant is generally dreadful to the great, but numerous penal laws grind every rank of people, and chiefly those least able to resist oppression, the poor. It is very possible thus for a people to become slaves to laws of their own enacting, as the Athenians were to those of Draco. "It might first happen," says the historian, "that men with peculiar talents for villany attempted to evade the ordinances already established; their practices, therefore, soon brought on a new law levelled against them; but the same degree of cunning which had taught the knave to evade the former statutes, taught him to evade the latter also; he flew to new shifts, while Justice pursued with new ordinances; still, however, he kept his proper distance, and whenever one crime was judged penal by the state, he left committing it, in order to practise some unforbidden species of villany. Thus the criminal against whom the threatenings were denounced always escaped free, while the simple rogue alone felt the rigour of justice. In the mean time, penal laws became numerous; almost every person in the state, unknowingly, at different times offended, and was every moment subject to a malicious prosecution. In fact, penal laws instead of preventing crimes, are generally enacted after the commission; instead of repressing the growth of ingenious villany, only multiply deceit, by put al security in the same proportion: there is no positive law, how equitable soever, that may not be sometimes capable of injustice. When a law, enacted to make theft punishable with death, happens to be equitably executed, it can at best only guard our possessions; but when, by favour or ignorance, justice pronounces a wrong verdict, it then attacks our lives, since, in such a case, the whole community suffers with the innocent victim: if, therefore, in order to secure the effects of one man, I should make a law which may take away the life of another, in such a case, to attain a smaller good, I am guilty of a greater evil; to secure society in the possession of a bawble, I render a real and valuable possession precarious. And indeed the experience of every age may serve to vindicate the assertion: no law could be more just than that called lesæ majestatis, when Rome was governed by emperors. It was but reasonable, that every conspiracy against the administration should be detected and punished; yet what terrible slaughters succeeded in consequence of its enactment, proscriptions, stranglings, poisonings, in almost every family of distinction; yet all done in a legal way, every criminal bad his trial, and lost his life by a majority of witnesses. And such will ever be the case, where punishments are numerous, and where a weak, vicious, but above all, where a mercenary magistrate is concerned in their execution: such a man desires to see penal laws increased, since he too frequently has it in his power to turn them into instruments of extortion; in such hands the more laws, the wider means, not of satisfying justice, but of satiating avarice. A mercenary magistrate, who is rewarded in proportion not to his integrity, but to the number he convicts, must be a person of the most unblemished character, or he will lean on the side of cruelty; and when once the work of injustice is begun, it is impossible to tell how far it will proceed. It is said of the byæna, that naturally it is no way ravenous, but when once it has tasted human flesh, it becomes the most voracious animal of the forest, and continues to persecute mankind ever after. A corrupt magistrate may be considered as a human hyæna; he begins, perhaps, by a private snap, he goes on to a morsel among friends, he proceeds to a meal in public, from a meal he advances to a surfeit, and at last sucks blood like a vampyre. Not in such hands should the administration of justice be intrusted, but to those who know how to reward as well as to punish. It was a fine saying of Nangfu the emperor, who being Sun of China, what contradictions do we find in this strange world! not only the people of different countries think in opposition to each other, but the inhabitants of a single island are often found inconsistent with them told that his enemies had raised an insurrection | ther of Bantam, whose tail, you know, is trunin one of the distant provinces,-" Come then, dled along in a wheel-barrow. my friends," said he, "follow me, and I promise you that we shall quickly destroy them.' He marched forward, and the rebels submitted upon his approach. All now thought that he would take the most signal revenge, but were surprised to see the captives treated with mild-selves. Would you believe it? this very people, ness and humanity. "How!" cries his first minister, "is this the manner in which you fulfil your promise? your royal word was given that your enemies should be destroyed, and behold you have pardoned all, and even caressed some!"" I promised," replied the emperor with a generous air, "to destroy my enemies; I have fulfilled my word, for see, they are enemies no longer,-I have made friends of them." I HAVE as yet given you but a short and imperfect description of the ladies of England. Woman, my friend, is a subject not easily understood, even in China; what therefore can be expected from my knowledge of the sex, in a country where they are universally allowed to be riddles, and I but a stranger? To confess a truth, I was afraid to begin the description, lest the sex should undergo some new revolution before it was finished: and my picture should thus become old before it could well be said to have ever been new. To-day they are lifted upon stilts, to-morrow they lower their heels, and raise their heads; their clothes at one time are bloated out with whale bone; at present they have laid their hoops aside, and are become as slim as mermaids. All, all is in a state of continual fluctuation, from the mandarine's wife who rattles through the streets in her chariot, to the humble sempstress who clatters over the pavement in iron shod pattens. my Fum, who are so fond of seeing their women with long tails, at the same time dock their horses to the very rump! But you may easily guess that I am no ways displeased with a fashion which tends to increase a demand for the commodities of the East, and is so very beneficial to the country in which I was born. Nothing can be better calculated to increase the price of silk than the present manner of dressing. A lady's train is not bought but at some expense, and after it has swept the public walks for a very few evenings, is fit to be worn no longer; more silk must be bought in order to repair the breach, and some ladies of peculiar economy are thus found to patch up their tails eight or ten times in a season. This unnecessary consumption may introduce poverty here, but then we shall be the richer for it in China. The man in black, who is a professed enemy to this manner of ornamenting the tail, assures me, there are numberless inconveniences attend. ing it, and that a lády dressed up to the fashion is as much a cripple as any in Nankin. But his chief indignation is levelled at those who dress in this manner, without a proper fortune to support it. He assures me, that he has known some who would have a tail though they wanted a petticoat; and others, who without any other pretensions, fancied they became ladies, merely from the addition of three superfluous yards of ragged silk :—“ I know a thrifty good woman," continues he, "who thinking herself obliged to carry a train like her betters, never walks from home without the uneasy apprehensions of wearing it out too soon: every excursion she makes, gives her new anxiety; and her train is every bit as importunate, and wounds her peace as much, as the bladder we sometimes see tied to the tail of a cat." : Nay, he ventures to affirm, that a train may often bring a lady into the most critical circumstances: for should a rude fellow," says he, " offer to come up to ravish a kiss, and the lady attempt to avoid it, in retiring she must necessarily tread upon her train, and thus fall fairly upon her back; by which means every one knows-her clothes may be spoiled." What chiefly distinguishes the sex at present is the train. As a lady's quality or fashion The ladies here make no scruple to laugh was once determined here by the circumfer- at the smallness of a Chinese slipper, but I ence of her hoop, both are now measured by fancy our wives at China would have a more the length of her tail. Women of moderate real cause of laughter, could they but see the imfortunes are contented with tails moderately moderate length of a European train. Head long; but ladies of true taste and distinction of Confucius! to view a human being cripset no bounds to their ambition in this part-pling herself with a great unwieldy tail for our cular. I am told the lady mayoress on days of diversion! Backward she cannot go, forward. ceremony, carries one longer than a bell we- she must move but slowly; and if ever she at temps to turn round, it must be in a circle not smaller than that described by the wheeling crocodile, when it would face an assailant. And yet think that all this confers importance and majesty to think that a lady acquires additional respect from fifteen yards of trailing taffeta! I cannot contain! ha! ha! ha! this is certainly a remnant of European barbarity; the female Tartar, dressed in sheep skins, is in far more convenient drapery. Their own writers have sometimes inveighed against the absurdity of this fashion, but perhaps it has never been ridiculed so well as upon the Italian theatre, where Pasquariello being engaged to attend on the Countess of Fernambroco, having one of his hands employed in carrying her muff, and the other her lapdog, he bears her train majestically along, by sticking it in the waistband of his breeches. Adieu. LETTER LXXXI. FROM THE SAME. A DISPUTE has for some time divided the philosophers of Europe; it is debated whether arts and sciences are more serviceable or prejudicial to mankind? They who maintain the cause of literature, endeavour to prove their usefulness, from the impossibility of a large number of men subsisting in a small tract of country without them; from the pleasure which attends the acquisition; and from the influence of knowledge in promoting practical morality. torment to the precarious tenant of an Aṣiatic wild. Let me, to prove this, transport the imagination for a moment to the midst of a forest in Siberia. There we behold the inhabitant, poor, indeed, but equally fond of happiness with the most refined philosopher of China. The earth lies uncultivated and uninhabited for miles around him; his little family and he the sole and undisputed possessors. In such circumstances, nature and reason will induce him to prefer a hunter's life to that of cultivating the earth. He will certainly adhere to that manner of living which is carried on at the smallest expense of labour, and that food which is most agreeable to the appetite; he will prefer indolent though precarious luxury, to a laborious, though permanent competence; and a knowledge of his own happiness will determine him to persevere in native barbarity. În like manner, his happiness will incline him to bind himself by no law laws are made in order to secure present property: but he is possessed of no property which he is afraid to lose, and desires no more than will be sufficient to sustain him; to enter into compacts with others, would be undergoing voluntary obligation without the expectance of any reward. He and his countrymen are tenants, not rivals, in the same inexhaustible forest; the increased possessions of one by no means diminishes the expectations arising from equal assiduity in another; there is no need of laws, therefore to repress ambition, where there can be no mischief attending its most boundless gratification. Our solitary Siberian will, in like manner, find the sciences not only entirely useless in directing his practice, but disgusting even in speculation. In every contemplation, our curiosity must be first excited by the appearañces of things, before our reason undergoes the fatigue of investigating the causes. Some of those appearances are produced by experiment, others by minute inquiry; some arise from a knowledge of foreign climates, and They who maintain the opposite opinion, display the happiness and innocence of those uncultivated nations who live without learning; urge the numerous vices which are to be found only in polished society; enlarge upon the oppression, the cruelty, and the blood which must necessarily be shed, in order to cement civil society; and insist upon the happy equality of conditions of a barbarous state, preferable to the unnatural subordina-others from an intimate study of our own. tion of a more refined constitution. This dispute, which has already given so much employment to speculative indolence, has been managed with much ardour, and (not to suppress our sentiments) with but little sagacity. They who insist that the sciences are useful in refined society, are certainly right, and they who maintain that barbarous nations are more happy without them, are right also; but when on one side, for this reason, attempts to prove them as universally useful to the solitary barbarian as to the native of a crowded commonwealth; or when the other endeavours to banish them as prejudicial to all society, even from populous states, as well as from the inhabitants of the wilderness, they are both wrong; since that knowledge which makes the happiness of a refined European, would be a But there are few objects in comparison which present themselves to the inhabitant of a barbarous country: the game he hunts, or the transient cottage he builds, make up the chief objects of his concern; his curiosity, therefore, must be proportionably less; and if that is diminished, the reasoning faculty will be diminished in proportion. Besides, sensual enjoyment adds wings to curiosity. We consider few objects with ardent attention, but those which have some connexion with our wishes, our pleasures, or our necessities. A desire of enjoyment first interests our passions in the pursuit, points out the object of investigation, and reason then comments where sense has led the way. An increase in the number of our enjoyments, therefore, necessarily produces an increase of |