“The music, and the wine, The garlands, the rose odours, and the flowers, The sparkling eyes, and flashing ornaments, The white arms, and the raven hair—the braids And bracelets—swan-like bosoms, and the necklace, An India in itself, yet dazzling not the eye Like what it circled. All the delusions of the gaudy scene, Its false and true enchantments—all which Swam before the giddy eyes.” “Well, these affairs of honor certainly are imperious, and no doubt ought to take precedence of every thing else. My object in calling was chiefly to give him a description of the Countess of ———'s rout on Saturday last, in Berkeley-square, where I intimated I should be, when I last fell in with him. 'Oh CiÉlo Empireo.' I'm enchanted yet, positively enchanted! I ought to have Petrarch's pen to describe such a scene and such dresses. Then should a robe of Tulle vie with that of Laura at the church door—that dress of 'Vert parsemÉe de violets.' But softly, let us begin with the beginning, BÉlier mon ami. What a galaxy of all the stars of fashion! It was a paradise of loveliness, fit for Mahomet. All the beauties of the Georgian Æra were present. Those real graces, their Graces of A——— and R——— were among the number. Thanks to the magical operation of the Schneider, who makes or mars a man. “The coup d'oil of the scene was charming. CÉtoit un vrai dÉlice—that atmosphere of light, of fragrance, and of music—gratifying all the senses at once. Oh! what bosoms, arms, and necks were thronging round me! Phidias, had he attempted to copy them, would have forgotten his work to gaze and admire. Description fails in picturing the tout ensemble,—the dazzling chandeliers blazing like constellations—the richly draperied meubles—the magnificent dresses—and then so many eyes, like stars glittering round one; like 'Heaven,' as Ossian says, ?beaming with all its fires.' “In the midst of my admiration, I was accosted by Caustic, and expressed my surprise at finding him in such a scene—'A rout,' he replied, 'is just one of those singular incoherences which supply me with laughter for a month. Was there ever such a tissue of inconsistencies assembled as in these pleasure hunts? On stepping from your carriage, you run the gauntlet through two lines of quizzing spectators, who make great eyes, as the French term it, at you, and some of whom look as if they took a fancy to your knee buckles. A double row of gaudy footmen receive you in the blazing hall, and make your name echo up the stairs, as you ascend, in a voice of thunder. Your tÊte s'exalte, and when you expect to be ushered into the Temple of Fame, you find yourself embedded (pardon the metaphor) in a parterre of female beauty.' “And so you would rather have your ribs beat in, than your name left out. But look round you, in God's name! what is the whole scene but & fashionable mob met together to tread on each other's heels and tear each other's dresses? Positively, you cannot approach the mistress of the mansion to pay those common courtesies which politeness in all other cases exacts. And how so many delicate young creatures can bear a heat, pressure and fatigue, which would try the constitution of a porter, is incroyable. Talk of levelling! This 'is the chosen seat of ÉgalitÉ.' All distinctions of age, grace, rank, accomplishment, and wit, are lost in the midst of a constantly accumulating crowd. What nerves but those of pride and vanity, can bear the heat, the blaze of light, the buzz of voices above, and the roar of announcements from below?” “While Caustic was speaking, his reasoning received a curious and apposite illustration. Three or four ladies near us began fainting, or affected to faint, and hartshorn and gentlemen's arms were in general requisition. Notwithstanding his acerbity, Caustic, like a preux chevalier, pressed forward to offer his aid where the pressure was most oppressive, and where the fainting ladies were dropping by dozens, like ripe fruit in autumn. As for myself, I was just in time to receive in my arms a beautiful girl who was on the point of sinking, and, being provided with hartshorn, my assistance was so effectual, with the aid of a neighbouring window, that I had the satisfaction of restoring her in a few minutes to her friends, who did all they could, by crowding round her with ill-timed condolements, to prevent her recovery. By this time the rest of the ladies took warning from these little misadventures to retire. Caustic, in his sardonic way, would insist upon it, that they retired to avoid that exposure of defects in beauty, which the first ray of morning produces. I took my congÉ among the rest, and found the hubbub which attended my entrance, increased to a tenfold degree of violence at my exit; for the uproar of calling 'My Lord This's carriage,' and 'My Lady That's chair,' was nothing in comparison to the noise produced The party could not feel otherwise than amused by Gayfield's description of the rout; and the conversation taking a turn on similar subjects, Sparkle, ever ambitious of displaying his talent for descriptive humour, gave the following sketch of a fashionable dinner party:— “I went with Colonel A———, by invitation, to dine with Lord F., in Portman Square. Lord F. is a complete gentleman; and, though sadly inconvenienced by the gout, received me with that frank, cordial, and well-bred ease which always characterizes the better class of the English nobility. The company consisted of two or three men of political eminence; Lord Wetherwool, a great agriculturist; Viscount Flash, an amateur of the Fancy; Lord Skimcream, an ex-amateur director of a winter theatre; Lord Flute, an amateur director of the Opera, whose family motto, by a lucky coincidence, is 'Opera non Verba.' There were, moreover, Mr. Highsole, a great tragedian, and my friend Tom Sapphic, the dandy poet; one of those bores, the 'Lions' of the season. He had just brought out a new tragedy, called the 'Bedlamite in Buff,' under the auspices of Lord Skimcream; and it had been received, as the play-bills announced, with 'unprecedented, overwhelming, and electrifying applause.' Of course I concluded that it would live two nights, and accounted for the dignified hauteur of my friend Tom's bow, as he caught my eye, by taking into consideration the above-named unprecedented success. There was also present the universal genius, Dr. Project, to whom I once introduced you. He is a great chymist, and a still greater gourmand; moreover, a musician; has a hand in the leading reviews; a share in the most prominent of the daily papers. “Little was said till the wine and desert were introduced; and then the conversation, as might naturally be expected from the elements of which the party was composed, split itself into several subdivisions. As I sat “'They are all in the right,' returned he, '(excuse the paradox,) because they are all in the wrong. There is a rottenness in the whole theatrical system, which, unless it terminate, like manure thrown at the root of trees, in some new fructification of genius, will end by rendering the national theatres national nuisances. With reference to the interests of literature, they are a complete hoax. To please the manager, the object which the writer must have in view, he must not paint nature or portray character, but write up, as the cant phrase is, to the particular forte of Mr. So and So, or Miss Such-a-one. The consequence is, that the public get only one species of fare, and that is pork, varied indeed, as broiled, baked, roasted, and boiled; but still pork, nothing but pork.' “'There you are falling into an error,' returned the colonel, interrupting me; 'it is the fashion to introduce actors at the tables of our great men; but, in my opinion, it is a 'custom more honored in the breach than the observance.' I have known several good actors on the stage, very indifferent actors in society, and large characters in the play-bills, as well as loud thunders from the gods, may be earned by very stupid, very vulgar, and very ill-bred companions. The same may be said of poets. We are poor creatures at best, and the giant of a reviewer very often cuts but a very sorry figure when left to the ricketty stilts of his own unsupported judgment in a drawing-room. You are tolerably familiar with our political parties; but you are yet to be acquainted with our literary squads, which are the most bigotted, selfish, exclusive, arrogant, little knots of little people it is possible to conceive.' “By the time that Colonel A———had ended his short initiation into these various arcana, the company broke up; the doctor to give a lecture on egg-shells at the Committee of Taste; Lord Flute to visit the Opera; Lord Skimcream to the Green Boom; Lord Flash to 'Fives Court,' to see a set-to by candle-light; the exquisites to Bouge et Noir or Almack's; and Lord Wetherwool to vote on an agricultural question, without understanding a syllable of its merits. “Nevertheless,” I soliloquized as I rode home, “his Lordship will be surprised and gratified, I dare say, to find himself a perfect Demosthenes in the newspaper reports of to-morrow morning. Hems, coughs, stammerings, blowing of the nose, and ten-minute lapses of memory, all vanish in passing through the sieves and bolters of a report. What magicians the reporters are! What talents, what powers of language they profusely and gratuitously bestow! Somnus protect me from hearing any but some half dozen orators in both houses! The reader, who peruses the report, has only the flour of the orator's efforts provided for him. But Lord help the unfortunate patient in the gallery, who, hopeless of getting through the dense mass which occupy the seats round him, is condemned to sit with an ?aching head,' and be well nigh choaked with the husks and the bran.” “In order to give some shade and variety to this sketch of society in the west, we will now, if agreeable, travel eastward as far as the entrance to the City, where I will introduce you, in fancy, to what must (at least to our friend Tallyho) afford both novelty and surprise. “Some time ago, and before I was quite so well versed in the knowledge of Life in London as at present, through the medium of one of the 'young men of genius about town,' I became a member of a new philosophical society called the Socratics, held at a certain house near Temple Bar. Having been plucked by several kind friends, till I resembled the 'man of Diogenes,' I concluded that here, at least, my pockets might be tolerably safe from the diving of a friendly hand. Philosophers, I was told by my friend the introducer, had souls above money; their thoughts were too sublime and contemplative for such worldly-minded concerns. I should have a great deal of instruction for little or nothing; I had only to pay my two guineas per annum, and the business was done; the gate of science was open, and nothing farther was requisite than to push forward and imitate Socrates. But how strangely do our anticipations mislead our sober judgments! ?Jove breaks the tallest stilts of human trust, And levels those who use them with the dust.' “The proprietor of the institution was rather courtier-like in making promises, which the managers of course considered as much too common-place and mechanical to be kept. It professed to exclude politics and religion from the touch of its scientific paws; in other words, from its discussions; but, alas! ?It kept the word of promise to the ear And broke it to the hope.' To match this saint, there was another, As busy and perverse a brother. “This was the treasurer of the Socratics, Thomas Carney Littlego, Esq. and a treasure of a treasurer he was. This gentleman was a pupil of Esculapius, and united in his own person the various departments of dentist, apothecary, and surgeon. It is presumed that he found the employment of drawing the eye teeth of Philosophical Tyros more profitable, and bleeding the young Socratics more advantageous, than physicking his patients. In his lectures he advocated the system of research, and admired deduction; and this I, among many others, had reason, at last, to know. It was very odd, but so it was, that some two or three hundred per annum, subscribed by the members of the society, vanished into the worthy treasurer's pocket, as it were a Moskoestron, and then disappeared for ever. “Another of the Socratics was called Epictetus Moonshine, Esquire. This gentleman was a tall spider-like man, with lantern jaws, hatchet face, and a mouth—the chief characteristic of which was, that it made a diagonal line from the bottom of the face to the eyebrow. He was a great speculator, and had taken it into his head, that beyond the blue mountains in New South Wales, was the real El Dorado. But as he possessed, according to the usual phrase, more wit than money, and no one will discount a check from the aforesaid wit on change, the zeal of Epictetus Moonshine, some time after the breaking up of the Socratic institution for benefitting the human race, so much got the better of self-love, that he committed several petty larcenies in hopes of being transported thither; but whether his courage or his luck failed him, certain it is that he never reached the proper degree of criminality, and only succeeded in visiting by turns the various penitentiaries in London and its vicinity. ?A heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' And now I am on the subject of stoicism, permit me to shew you a picture which I have just chalked out, wherein I prove that there is no such thing as pain in the world. That all which we now feel is imagination; that the idea of body is deception. I have had it printed, —written in fourteen languages, and presented to all the sovereigns of Europe, with a new code of laws annexed to it. I'll bring it in a minute, if you'll excuse me.' So saying, the pupil of Zeno disappeared, wrapping his blanket round him; but other speculations of 'matters high' no doubt attracted him from the remembrance of his promise, (just as he forgot to pay some score pounds he borrowed of me) for the visitor saw no more of him. “The mention of El Dorado brings to my recollection another member, Mr. Goosequill, who came to town with half-a-crown in his pocket, and his tragedy called the 'Mines of Peru,' by which he of course expected to make his fortune. For five years he danced attendance on the manager, in order to hear tidings of its being 'cast,' and four more in trying to get it back again. During the process he was groaned, laughed, whistled, and nearly kicked out of the secretary's room, who swore (which he well might do, considering the exhausted treasury of the concern) that he knew nothing about nor ever heard of the 'Mines of Peru.' At last Mr. Goosequill, being shewn into the manager's kitchen, to wait till he was at leisure, had the singular pleasure of seeing two acts of the 'Mines of Peru,' daintily fastened round a savory capon on the spit, to preserve it from the scorching influence of the fire. “This was foul treatment, I observed, as he concluded his tale, and I ventured to ask how he had subsisted in the meanwhile? 'Why,' said he, 'I first made an agreement with a printer of ballads, in Seven Dials, who finding my inclinations led to poetry, expressed his satisfaction, telling me that one of his poets had lost his senses, and was confined in Bedlam; and another was become dozed with “But to return to the catastrophe of the Socratics: “By the time that the philosophical experiments in 'diving without hydraulics' had cleaned me entirely out, it was suggested that any thing in the shape of a loan would be desirable; they were not nice—not they; a pair of globes; a set of catoptric instruments; an electrical apparatus; a few antique busts; or a collection of books for the library;—any old rum, as Jack.'said, would do; and all and every of the before-mentioned loans would be most punctually taken care of. And truly enough they were, for the lender was never destined to cast an eye on any portion of the loan again. I was, indeed, so fortunate as to catch a glimpse of my globes and instruments at a pawnbroker's, and the fragments of my library at sundry book-stalls. It was now high time to cut the connection, for the Socratics were rapidly withdrawing. The association, for want of the true golden astringent, like a dumpling without its suet, or a cheap baker's quartern loaf without its ?doctor,' (i.e. alum), was falling to pieces. The worthy treasurer had retired, seizing on such articles as were most within reach; and when I called upon him with my resignation, I had the pleasure of seeing my own busts handsomely lining the walls of the toothdrawer's passage. I waited on the Socratics for the Bums they had been so polite as to borrow.—One, to shew that he had profited by studying Socrates, threatened to accuse me and the society of a plot to overturn the government, if a syllable more on so low a subject as money was mentioned. Another told me that he was just going on a visit to Abbot's Park for three months, and should be glad to see me when he came back. A third, an unwashed artificer,' was so kind as to inform me that “The drop-curtain being thus let down on the last act of the farce, there was no alternative between being queerly plundered, or instantly laying a horse-whip over the hungry philosophers. To sue them reminded me of the proverb—'Sue a beggar,' &c. To crack a baculine joke over their sconces would involve an expense which the worthy philosophers were not worth. I had done an imprudent thing in joining the 'march of mind,' and all that I could do was to brush the dust from my coat and the mud from my shoes: 'he that touches pitch,' says Solomon, 'shall he not be denied thereby?' Mr. Treasurer, therefore, remained in quiet possession of the busts—the book-stall displayed the properly appreciated volumes—and the Socratic borrowers took all the care in the world of 'value received.'” Thus the day, which it was intended to have been spent in amusements out of doors, was passed in animated and amusing conversation over the hospitable and convivial board, and a fresh zest was added to wit and humour by the exhilarating influence of the rosy god. |