suicide, to whom are we paying this highest compliment of imitation ?-To a class, whose standard of excellence is as opposite as possible to that of mind and morals!

And these people have as little reverence for each other as they have for the species at large. Their friendship is but a well-bred hypocrisy, ever at freezing point, and like echo, a sound without a substance: with no taste for the privacy of home, their cold and creeping hearts are just capacious enough to grasp the mysteries of ceremony. Their utmost benevolence consists in the exchange of petty courtesies, in a formal arrangement of the limbs and distortion of the features. Brought together without esteem, they part without regret; and in their coteries of vulgar gaiety, youth can find no companionship, middle age no quiet, and old age no indulgence! They spend their mornings in knocking at the doors of those they hope to find from home; and afterward, pass their evenings among those they had almost rather be blind than see!

Let us attempt to describe the Woman of Fashion. This is a creature furnishing us with

a complex idea-a compound of inconsistencies: she pretends to extreme refinement and delicacy, and she is a pretender; she has very little that is feminine about her. In virtue of her caste, she is bold and masculine in her manners; (for your great lady is nothing without the accomplishment of assurance, and it demands a pretty large fund of impertinence to support what is called a fashionable character); secretly conscious that nothing but show and parade can give her any consequence, from this she will have it at all hazards; but she provokes contempt rather than promotes deference, for there is nothing in this world so paltry as the bustle of the insignificant. With no directors but her passions, and no master but her own will, she makes that will a law,-one, which she takes good care to enforce with all the insolence of wealth.

Intolerabilius nihil est quam fœmina dives;

Nil non permittit sibi, turpe putat nil.'

But absolute as the fashionable female is about her own pleasure, it is ridiculous enough that very often she does not know what her pleasure is; ('Otiosus animus nescit quid volet') for sooner

shall Fashion's fickle self forget to change, than one of its female votaries remain long in the same mind. Every hour brings its whim; they who are idle are always wanting somewhat.

But your fine lady's darling passion is pride: she is, like Beatrice in the play, 'set up and full of humours.' The glory of precedence is her noblest triumph: the spur ever in her side is to graduate one step higher in the exclusive circle; and the passion of striving in this race nearly swallows up every other. Essentially grovelling, she is haughty in that which should teach humility; humble only when 'tis base to be so. Ever insulting to her inferiors, her haughty swelling looks spurn them from her as of another and poorer nature; for, in fact, she values them at no higher rate than though they were savages living at the antarctic pole. She can make no allowance for pride in others, but there is something intelligible in this-it hurts her own:-Those who are not proud are never sensitive. Her conversation is of a piece with her manners; and when she unbends either—which is only when she wants other people, for habitually she closes her mouth as well as her door against the crowd-she is so

a complex idea-a compound of inconsistencies: she pretends to extreme refinement and delicacy, and she is a pretender; she has very little that is feminine about her. In virtue of her caste, she is bold and masculine in her manners; (for your great lady is nothing without the accomplishment of assurance, and it demands a pretty large fund of impertinence to support what is called a fashionable character); secretly conscious that nothing but show and parade can give her any consequence, from this she will have it at all hazards; but she provokes contempt rather than promotes deference, for there is nothing in this world so paltry as the bustle of the insignificant. With no directors but her passions, and no master but her own will, she makes that will a law, one, which she takes good care to enforce with all the insolence of wealth.

'Intolerabilius nihil est quam fœmina dives;

Nil non permittit sibi, turpe putat nil.'

But absolute as the fashionable female is about her own pleasure, it is ridiculous enough that very often she does not know what her pleasure is; (Otiosus animus nescit quid volet') for sooner

shall Fashion's fickle self forget to change, than one of its female votaries remain long in the same mind. Every hour brings its whim; they who are idle are always wanting somewhat.

But your fine lady's darling passion is pride: she is, like Beatrice in the play, 'set up and full of humours.' The glory of precedence is her noblest triumph: the spur ever in her side is to graduate one step higher in the exclusive circle; and the passion of striving in this race nearly swallows up every other. Essentially grovelling, she is haughty in that which should teach humility; humble only when 'tis base to be so. Ever insulting to her inferiors, her haughty swelling looks spurn them from her as of another and poorer nature; for, in fact, she values them at no higher rate than though they were savages living at the antarctic pole. She can make no allowance for pride in others, but there is something intelligible in this-it hurts her own:-Those who are not proud are never sensitive. Her conversation is of a piece with her manners; and when she unbends either-which is only when she wants other people, for habitually she closes her mouth as well as her door against the crowd-she is so