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Pray, Buersil," said Edmund, "favour me with your remarks on this amusement; they may be useful to me, and enable me to profit by your experience." "Here they are, Sir, very much at your service," replied his friend, taking some papers out of a drawer. "Read them, Buer"I shall comply," said Buersil, "but I doubt you will find the observations rather crude." "O! let me hear them, and judge for myself."

sil."

Buersil then read the following strictures on an amusement, which has been praised and decried according to the feelings and views of different writers.

HINTS TO MASQUERADERS.

When we first step into life, and mingle with the busy world, inexperience frequently misleads us into the labyrinth of indiscretion; we credulously believe the assertions of knaves, and we are too apt to imitate the foppery of fools, unconscious of error, till observation enables us to form more just conclusions.

In order to prevent the evils arising from credulity and ignorance, in an intercourse with polite society, those inestimable institutions, the boarding schools, for young persons of both sexes, were originally established by patriotic individuals. At those seminaries of affectation, young people gradually acquire a certain degree of

confidence and effrontery, while they are taught to disguise their genuine sentiments, and conceal their emotions, that they may be qualified to associate with the rest of mankind on equal terms.

But in many instances, even the deceptive manners, obtainable at a fashionable school, are found inadequate for the purposes of high life; the rapidity of improvements in every brauch of philosophy, especially the development of the human powers, outrun the attainments of the pupil of elegance; and the revival of the masquerade by enlightened adepts, has, as it were, instantaneously refined the docile tyro, who in the whirlpool of voluptuousness, while the head swims, and the heart dances, becomes vitiated by intuition.

This most elegant amusement, at once supersedes the delay, occasioned by female timidity and modesty; enables the most bashful virgin, while disguised, to shine with all the attractions of a most finished demirep; and empowers the nobleman's, or even the tradesman's daughter, to outshine her more scrupulous country cousin, as far as the noxious but beautiful gas light is superior to the common lamp in resplendence.

At those promiscuous and disorderly assemblages of the curious, the youthful, the vain, the wanton, and the depraved, a licentious privilege

cence.

enables folly to wear the cap and bells with eclat. The laughing votaries of gaiety easily become the victims of vice, and the foul contagion of impure ideas is communicated by the startled ear to the throbbing bosom of indiscreet innoThe friendly mask conceals those vulgar flushings, which give such an appearance of guilt to the unmasked countenance, and the astonished young girl listens to the impassioned compliments and significant inuendoes of the man of gallantry with the silent attention of a curious novice.

A masquerade is indeed the school of elegant initiation in all the mysteries of licentiousness; it unites the seductive attractions of the theatre, the tavern, and the ****.

By the revival of this imperial or paramount amusement, the most timid young lady may soon become an accomplished coquet, while her reputation remains perfectly safe from the insidious attack of the satirist. Even those scholars and men of sense, who have felt their inferiority in superficial acquisitions, while in the presence of polite coxcombs, or pert, but amusing buffoons, may, by the aid of the masquerade, suddenly assume the character of a wit, or man of the world, to the amazement of their most intimate friends.

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In order to facilitate the acquisition of requi

site assurance, the following hints are offered to the consideration of such young persons as are inspired with the laudable ambition of attaining a proficiency in the science of assuming a variety of characters at a masquerade, so as to excel any buffoon on the English stage.

The first and essential requisite of whoever expects to make a notorious figure at a masquerade, is vanity, a qualification in which few young people are deficient, for this amiable self-love seems inherent in most human beings. The next qualification is an inordinate propensity to pleasure, which seems also in some measure inborn. The third, which naturally arises from the two former, is an emulation to excel every competitor. With these preparatory accomplishments, any man of spirit, or woman of fashion, may become an adept in all the artifices of vanity.

During the sanguinary contest with France, the English masquerade languished; but in these piping times of peace," we may expect a revi vification of every species of licentiousness, and of those the fancy ball is proudly pre-eminent, as nobody but persons of high consideration are permitted to share those orgies of voluptuousYet there is something so imposing in the novelty of vice, that we may expect to see this extravagance of the great aped by the little, and may perhaps soon find the columns of the Morn

1

ing Post, adorned with a pompous description of the masquerade given by the political linendraper's wife in ***** Street, or even by Lady Puff, who, whatever enmity they may feel at the politics of statesmen in office, would doubtless be proud to imitate their high-bred dames

in

any kind of fashionable amusement, however questionable in point of propriety or morality.

The universality of the gratifications offered by the masquerade, must ever secure its superiority over all other inventions to vitiate mankind. It presents such a variety of pleasurable objects, and communicates such voluptuous sensations to the mind, that it may be compared to the den of Circe, or the song of the Syrens. Nay, it seems to combine the powers of these enchanters, and may be termed Old Nick's galvanic battery, which not only affects the nerves and muscles of the masquerader, but subdues for the moment all sense of shame, and all ideas of decency. Like the delirium of a fever, it fills the imagination with ten thousand fantastic ideas, till a lucid interval, and a sound sleep restores the votary of Comus to reason. He may then laugh at his own folly and the levity of others, but may think himself fortunate if he escape the snares of wantonness with an uncontaminated heart.

Such, Sir," said Buersil, closing his papers,