Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

true, indeed, with all this magnificence, they sel- finest manner; one courtesies to the ground, th dom spread a cloth before the guests; but in that I other salutes the audience with a smile; one comes can not be angry with them, since those who have on with modesty which asks, the other with bold got no linen on their backs may very well be ex-ness which extorts, applause; one wears powder, cused for wanting it upon their tables. the other has none; one has the longest waist, but

Even religion itself loses its solemnity among the other appears most easy: all, all is important them. Upon their roads, at about every five miles' and serious; the town as yet perseveres in its neudistance, you see an image of the Virgin Mary, trality; a cause of such moment demands the most dressed up in grim head-clothes, painted cheeks, mature deliberation; they continue to exhibit, and and an old red petticoat; before her a lamp is often it is very possible this contest may continue to kept burning, at which, with the saint's permission, please to the end of the season. I have frequently lighted my pipe. Instead of the But the generals of either army have, as I am Virgin, you are sometimes presented with a cruci- told, several reinforcements to lend occasional asfix, at other times with a wooden Saviour, fitted sistance. If they produce a pair of diamond buckles out in complete garniture, with sponge, spear, at one house, we have a pair of eyebrows that nails, pincers, hammer, bees' wax, and vinegar- can match them at the other. If we outdo them in bottle. Some of those images, I have been told, our attitude, they can overcome us by a shrug; if came down from heaven; if so, in heaven they have we can bring more children on the stage, they can but bungling workmen. bring more guards in red clothes, who strut and

In passing through their towns, you frequently shoulder their swords to the astonishment of every see the men sitting at the doors knitting stockings, spectator. 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 LXXIX.

From the Same.

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, hallooing 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 with a dead march, a funeral procession, a cat-call, 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 trap-doors; when skilled in the proper periods to introduce a wire-walker or a waterfall; when instructed in every actor's peTHE two theatres, which serve to amuse the culiar talent, and capable of adapting his speeches citizens here, are again opened for the winter. to the supposed excellence; when thus instructed, The mimetic troops, different from those of the he knows all that can give a modern audience state, begin their campaign when all the others pleasure. One player shines in an exclamation, quit the field; and, at a time when the Europeans another in a groan, a third in a horror, a fourth in cease to destroy each other in reality, they are en- a start, a fifth in a smile, a sixth faints, and a tertained with mock battles upon the stage. seventh fidgets round the stage with peculiar vi

The dancing master once more shakes his quiver-vacity; that piece, therefore, will succeed best, ing feet; the carpenter prepares his paradise of where each has a proper opportunity of shining; pasteboard; the hero resolves to cover his forehead the actor's business is not so much to adapt himwith brass, and the heroine begins to scour up her self to the poet, as the poet's to adapt himself to the copper tail, preparative to future operations; in actor. short, all are in motion, from the theatrical letter

The great secret, therefore, of tragedy-writing, carrier in yellow clothes, to Alexander the Great at present, is a perfect acquaintance with theatrithat stands on a stool. cal ahs and ohs; a certain number of these, interBoth houses have already commenced hostilities.spersed with gods! tortures! racks! and damnaWar, open war, and no quarter received or given! tion! shall distort every actor almost into convulTwo singing women, like heralds, have begun the sions, and draw tears from every spectator; a proper contest; the whole town is divided on this solemn use of these will infallibly fill the whole house with occasion; one has the finest pipe, the other the applause. But, above all, a whining scene must

must strike most forcibly, I would advise, from severe laws, and those too executed with severity my present knowledge of the audience, the two fa- (as in Japan), is under the most terrible species of vourite players of the town to introduce a scene of tyranny; a royal tyrant is generally dreadful to the this sort in every play. Towards the middle of the great, but numerous penal laws grind every rank last act, I would have them enter with wild looks of people, and chiefly those least able to resist opand outspread arms: there is no necessity for pression, the poor. speaking, they are only to groan at each other, they It is very possible thus for a people to become must vary the tones of exclamation and despair slaves to laws of their own enacting, as the Athethrough the whole theatrical gamut, wring their nians were to those of Draco. "It might first figures into every shape of distress, and when their happen," says the historian, "that men with pecalamities have drawn a proper quantity of tears culiar talents for villany attempted to evade the from the sympathetic spectators, they may go off ordinances already established: their practices, in dumb solemnity at different doors, clasping their therefore, soon brought on a new law levelled hands, or slapping their pocket holes; this, which against them; but the same degree of cunning may be called a tragic pantomime, will answer which had taught the knave to evade the former every purpose of moving the passions as well as statutes, taught him to evade the latter also; he words could have done, and it must save those ex- flew to new shifts, while Justice pursued with new penses which go to reward an author. ordinances; still, however, he kept his proper disAll modern plays that would keep the audience tance, and whenever one crime was judged penal alive, must be conceived in this manner; and, in- by the state, he left committing it, in order to pracdeed, many a modern play is made up on no other tise some unforbidden species of villany. Thus plan. This is the merit that lifts up the heart, like the criminal against whom the threatenings were opium, into a rapture of insensibility, and can dis- denounced always escaped free, while the simple miss the mind from all the fatigue of thinking: this rogue alone felt the rigour of justice. In the mean is the eloquence that shines in many a long-forgot-time, penal laws became numerous; almost every ten scene, which has been reckoned excessively person in the state, unknowingly, at different times fine upon acting; this is the lightning that flashes offended, and was every moment subject to a mano less in the hyperbolical tyrant "who breakfasts licious prosecution." In fact, penal laws, instead on the wind," than in little Norval, "as harm- of preventing crimes, are generally enacted after less as the babe unborn." Adieu.

LETTER LXXX.

From the Same.

the commission; instead of repressing the growth of ingenious villany, only multiply deceit, by put ting 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.

I HAVE always regarded the spirit of mercy which appears in the Chinese laws with admiration. An order for the execution of a criminal is Penal laws, it must be allowed, secure property carried from court by slow journeys of six miles in a state, but they also diminish personal security a-day, but a pardon is sent down with the most in the same proportion: there is no positive law, rapid dispatch. 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.

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 Similar to this, there is a spirit of mercy breathes possessions; but when, by favour or ignorance, through the laws of England, which some errone- Justice pronounces a wrong verdict, it then attacks ously endeavour to suppress; the laws, however, our lives, since, in such a case, the whole commuseem unwilling to punish the offender, or to fur- nity suffers with the innocent victim: if, therefore, nish the officers of justice with every means of act- in order to secure the effects of one man, I should ing with severity. Those who arrest debtors are make a law which may take away the life of anodenied the use of arms; the nightly watch is per- ther, in such a case, to attain a smaller good, I am mitted to repress the disorders of the drunken guilty of a greater evil; to secure society in the citizens only with clubs; Justice in such a case possession of a bauble, I render a real and valuable seems to hide her terrors, and permits some offend- possession precarious. And indeed the experiers to escape, rather than load any with a punish-ence of every age may serve to vindicate the asserment disproportioned to the crime. tion; no law could be more just than that called Thus it is the glory of an Englishman, that he lesa majestatis, when Rome was governed by emis not only governed by laws, but that these are perors. It was but reasonable, that every conspialso tempered by mercy; a country restrained by racy against the administration should be detected

and punished; yet what terrible slughters succeeded in consequence of its enactment: proscriptions, stranglings, poisonings, in almost every family of distinction; yet all done in a legal way, every criminal had his trial, and lost his life by a majority of witnesses.

LETTER LXXXI.

From the Same.

I HAVE as yet given you but a short and imper. And such will ever be the case, where punish-fect description of the ladies of England. Woman, ments are numerous, and where a weak, vicious, my friend, is a subject not easily understood, even but, above all, where a mercenary magistrate is con- in China; what therefore can be expected from my cerned in their execution: such a man desires to knowledge of the sex, in a country where they are see penal laws increased, since he too frequently universally allowed to be riddles, and I but a stran has it in his power to turn them into instruments ger?"

of extortion; in such hands, the more laws, the To confess a truth, I was afraid to begin the wider means, not of satisfying justice, but of sati-description, lest the sex should undergo some new ating avarice. revolution before it was finished; and my picture

A mercenary magistrate, who is rewarded in should thus become old before it could well be said proportion, not to his integrity, but to the number to have ever been new. To-day they are lifted he convicts, must be a person of the most unblem- upon stilts, to-morrow they lower their heels, and ished character, or he will lean on the side of cruel- raise their heads; their clothes at one time are ty: and when once the work of injustice is begun, bloated out with whalebone; at present they have it is impossible to tell how far it will proceed. It laid their hoops aside, and are become as slim as is said of the hyæna, that, naturally, it is no way mermaids. All, all is in a state of continual flucravenous, but when once it has tasted human flesh, tuation, from the mandarine's wife, who rattles it becomes the most voracious animal of the forest, through the streets in her chariot, to the humble and continues to persecute mankind ever after. A seamstress, who clatters over the pavement in ironcorrupt magistrate may be considered as a human shod pattens. 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.

What chiefly distinguishes the sex at present is the train. As a lady's quality or fashion was once determined here by the circumference of her hoop, both are now measured by the length of her tail. Women of moderate fortunes are contented with tails moderately long; but ladies of true taste and distinction set no bounds to their ambition in this particular. I am told, the lady mayoress, on days of ceremony, carries one longer than a bellwether of Bantam, whose tail, you know, is trun dled along in a wheelbarrow.

Not into 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 told that his enemies had raised an insurrection in one of the distant provinces,-"Come, then, my friends," said he, "follow me, and I promise you that we shall quickly destroy them." He marched forward, Sun of China, what contradictions do we find in and the rebels submitted upon his approach. All this strange world! not only the people of differ now thought that he would take the most signal ent countries think in opposition to each other; but revenge, but were surprised to see the captives the inhabitants of a single island are often found treated with mildness and humanity. "How!" inconsistent with themselves. Would you believe cries his first minister, "is this the manner in it? this very people, my Fum, who are so fond of which you fulfil your promise? your royal word seeing their women with long tails, at the same was given that your enemies should be destroyed, time dock their horses to the very rump! 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."

This, could it always succeed, were the true method of destroying the enemies of a state; well it were, if rewards and mercy alone could regulate the commonwealth: but since punishments are sometimes necessary, let them at least be rendered terrible, by being executed but seldom; and let Justice lift her sword rather to terrify than revenge. Adieu.

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 seaThis unnecessary consumption may intro

son.

duce poverty here, but then we shall be the richer] for it in China.

LETTER LXXXII.

From the Same.

The man in black, who is a professed enemy to this manner of ornamenting the tail, assures me, there are numberless inconveniences attending it, A DISPUTE has for some time divided the phiand that a lady, dressed up to the fashion, is as much losophers of Europe; it is debated whether arts a cripple as any in Nankin. But his chief indigna- and sciences are more serviceable or prejudicial to tion is leveled at those who dress in this manner, mankind? They who maintain the cause of litewithout a proper fortune to support it. He assures rature, endeavour to prove their usefulness, from me, that he has known some who have a tail though the impossibility of a large number of men subsistthey wanted a petticoat; and others, who, without ing in a small tract of country without them; from any other pretensions, fancied they became ladies, the pleasure which attends the acquisition: and merely from the addition of three superfluous from the influence of knowledge in promoting yards of ragged silk:-"I know a thrifty good practical morality. woman," continues he, "who, thinking herself obliged to carry a train like her betters, never walks the happiness and innocence of those uncultivated 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

They who maintain the opposite opinion, display

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 in a barbarous state, Nay, he ventures to affirm, that a train may preferable to the unnatural subordination of a more often bring a lady into the most critical circum-refined constitution.

rat."

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 torment to the precarious tenant of an Asiatic wild.

stances: "for should a rude fellow," says he, This dispute, which has already given so much "offer to come up to ravish a kiss, and the lady at- employment to speculative indolence, has been tempt to avoid it, in retiring she must necessarily managed with much ardour, and (not to suppress tread upon her train, and thus fall fairly upon her our sentiments) with but little sagacity. They who back; by which means every one knows-her insist that the sciences are useful in refined society clothes may be spoiled." are certainly right, and they who maintain that The ladies here make no scruple to laugh at the barbarous nations are more happy without them smallness of a Chinese slipper, but I fancy our are right also; but when one side, for this reason, wives at China would have a more real cause of attempts to prove them as universally useful to the laughter, could they but see the immoderate length solitary barbarian as to the native of a crowded of a European train. Head of Confucius! to commonwealth; or when the other endeavours to view a human being crippling herself with a great banish them as prejudicial to all society, even from unwieldy tail for our diversion! Backward she can not go, forward she must move but slowly; and if ever she attempts 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 to think that all this confers importance Let me, to prove this, transport the imagination and majesty! to think that a lady acquires addi- for a moment to the midst of a forest in Siberia. tional respect from fifteen yards of trailing taffeta! There we behold the inhabitant, poor indeed, but I can not contain; ha! ha! ha! this is certainly a equally fond of happiness with the most refined remnant of European barbarity; the female Tar- philosopher of China. The earth lies uncultivated tar, dressed in sheep-skins, is in far more conve- and uninhabited for miles around him; his little nient drapery. Their own writers have sometimes family and he the sole and undisputed possessors. inveighed against the absurdity of this fashion, but In such circumstances, nature and reason will inperhaps it has never been ridiculed so well as upon duce him to prefer a hunter's life to that of cultithe Italian theatre, where Pasquariello being en-vating the earth. He will certainly adhere to that gaged to attend on the Countess of Fernambroco, manner of living which is carried on at the smallhaving one of his hands employed in carrying her est expense of labour, and that food which is most muff, and the other her lapdog, he bears her train agreeable to the appetite; he will prefer indolent, majestically along, by sticking it in the waistband though precarious luxury, to a laborious, though permanent competence; and a knowledge of his

cf his breeches. Adieu.

causes.

own happiness will determine him to persevere in contribute to his own felicity; he knows the pronative barbarity. perest places where to lay the snare for the sable, In like manner, his happiness will incline him and discerns the value of furs with more than Euto bind himself by no law: laws are made in order ropean sagacity. More extended knowledge would to secure present property; but he is possessed of only serve to render him unhappy; it might lend no property which he is afraid to lose, and desires a ray to show him the misery of his situation, but no more than will be sufficient to sustain him; to could not guide him in his efforts to avoid it. Ignoenter into compacts with others, would be under- rance is the happiness of the poor. going a voluntary obligation without the expect- The misery of a being endowed with sentiments ance of any reward. He and his countrymen are above its capacity of fruition, is most admirably tenants, not rivals, in the same inexhaustible for- described in one of the fables of Locman, the Inest; the increased possessions of one by no means dian moralist. "An elephant that had been pediminishes the expectations arising from equal as- culiarly serviceable in fighting the battles of Wistsiduity in another; there is no need of laws, there-now, was ordered by the god to wish for whatever fore, to repress ambition, where there can be no he thought proper, and the desire should be attendmischief attending its most boundless gratification. ed with immediate gratification. The elephant Our solitary Siberian will, in like manner, find thanked his benefactor on bended knees, and dethe, sciences not only entirely useless in directing sired to be endowed with the reason and faculties his practice, but disgusting even in speculation. of a man. Wistnow was sorry to hear the foolish In every contemplation, our curiosity must be first request, and endeavoured to dissuade him from his excited by the appearances of things, before our misplaced ambition; but finding it to no purpose, reason undergoes the fatigue of investigating the gave him at last such a portion of wisdom as could Some of those appearances are produced correct even the Zendavesta of Zoroaster. The by experiment, others by minute inquiry; some reasoning elephant went away rejoicing in his new arise from a knowledge of foreign climates, and acquisition; and though his body still retained its others from an intimate study of our own. But ancient form, he found his appetites and passions there are few objects in comparison which present entirely altered. He first considered, that it would themselves to the inhabitant of a barbarous coun- not only be more comfortable, but also more betry: the game he hunts, or the transient cottage coming, to wear clothes; but, unhappily he had no he builds, make up the chief objects of his concern; method of making them himself, nor had he the his curiosity, therefore, must be proportionably less; use of speech to demand them from others; and and if that is diminished, the reasoning faculty will this was the first time he felt real anxiety. He be diminished in proportion. soon perceived how much more elegantly men were Besides, sensual enjoyment adds wings to curi- fed than he, therefore he began to loathe his usual osity. We consider few objects with ardent atten- food, and longed for those delicacies which adorn tion, but those which have some connexion with the tables of princes; but here again he found it our wishes, our pleasures, or our necessities. A impossible to be satisfied, for though he could easily desire of enjoyment first interests our passions in obtain flesh, yet he found it impossible to dress it the pursuit, points out the object of investigation, in any degree of perfection. In short, every pleaand reason then comments where sense has led the sure that contributed to the felicity of mankind, way. An increase in the number of our enjoy- served only to render him more miserable, as he ments, therefore, necessarily produces an increase found himself utterly deprived of the power of enof scientific research: but in countries where joyment. In this manner he led a repining, disalmost every enjoyment is wanting, reason there contented life, detesting himself, and displeased seems destitute of its great inspirer, and specula- with his ill-judged ambition; till at last his benetion is the business of fools when it becomes its factor, Wistnow, taking compassion on his forlorn own reward. situation, restored him to the ignorance and the The barbarous Siberian is too wise, therefore, happiness which he was originally formed to ento exhaust his time in quest of knowledge, which joy."

neither curiosity prompts, nor pleasure impels him No, my friend, to attempt to introduce the sciento pursue. When told of the exact admeasure- ces into a nation of wandering barbarians, is only ment of a degree upon the equator of Quito, he to render them more miserable than even nature feels no pleasure in the account; when informed designed they should be. A life of simplicity is that such a discovery tends to promote navigation best fitted to a state of solitude.

and commerce, he finds himself no way interested The great lawgiver of Russia attempted to im in either. A discovery, which some have pursued prove the desolate inhabitants of Siberia, by sendat the hazard of their lives, affects him with neither ing among them some of the politest men of Euastonishment nor pleasure. He is satisfied with rope. The consequence has shown, that the counthoroughly understanding the few objects which try was as yet unfit to receive them: they languish

« ПредишнаНапред »