As you are not an English-woman, you may wish to have an explanation of the word rout in its figurative sense, if I may be allowed

the expression.

The real signification of reut you know is hurry, bustle, noise, tustelt, uproar, or a search after something; also, a mob, riot, or public disturbance. These explications of the term may with strict propriety be equally applied as a true description of this modern entertainment, peculiar to our nation.

The invitation to it is made without trouble. On a visiting ticket, under the superscription of the lady's name, she desires her waiting-woman, or if she cannot write, commands her to order the valet or the footman to write down these few words, "At home on Monday evening the 25th of April," or any other day she may happen to be disengaged; which she sees from her long list of invitations for a month to come.

Simple and careless enough this manner of asking.-

You must know that all polite forms are quite out; that is to say, they are aukward, discover extreme ignorance of high life, and are unfashionable.

The modern modes are freed from all the vulgar shackles of ceremony and what was once termed propriety. Its present acceptation is totally different from what it was originally. We English must have a new dictionary, amongst other novel improvements, in which a number of words must be transposed to give their present meaning, and some terms must be entirely expunged, as useless, since the things and ideas, of which their respective terms stood as figures, are quite laid aside.

But I must return from this digression to my rout.

. It is an assemblage of people of almost every description, and nearly all classes, huddled together promiscuously, without order; which is another thing absolutely out of date.-Near a cold door, which stands open all the evening for the ingress and egress of the numerous visitors, and the admission of the keen wintry wind, there stands a Counters. Next to her ladyship stands the proud lady of a city knight; who was once a grocer, and it is said he married a waiting woman--but that's no matter: people in this kingdom neither regard profession nor ancestry. Sir John Plumb is wealthy; that entitles him to come into the best company-and his lady's jewels make a splendid figure in it. My lady is indeed very brilliant tonight. Next to her a respectable matron and two beautiful daughters stand quite unheeded by the company. They were asked by the lady of the house because she could not well avoid it; but she does not pay any attention to her old friend or the charming girls her daughters. They are handsome, it must be confessed; but too modestly diffident to make any effect in public: their dress is becoming enough to be sure; but it was not made at the most fashionable miiliner's: in fact they could not afford it without running up a long bill, which like many others must have remained unpaid; they have lost their father, who was in the road to fortune, and was the benefactor of the master of the house; where they now are received as a prodigious favour, although they are in all points (fortune ex

cepted)

cepted) superior to its owners. In fine, the genteel matron and her lovely daughters have been in better circumstances-they are not rich-who will wonder they stand unnoticed! Next to those charming girls, there sits a young female, round whom all the men flock. Yes-she has a fortune of fifty thousand pounds. Her father made treble that sum during the last war. He was a Scotchman, without a sixpence; but was fortunate enough to be related to the then minister in the hundredth degree of consanguinity, and therefore had the good luck to be appointed commissary to the troops.

Here stands a woman of family, dressed very plain. There a woman of no family, dressed very expensively. But who is that. giving herself innumerable airs?-Nobody-I mean she is only the wife of an apothecary, whom every one employs in his own proper capacity, and as surgeon and physician also, because he is the fashion. -He must be a man of uncommon abilities ?-That does not follow as a natural consequence in this country, although it will be a just conclusion to draw every where but in England.

Here are a number of ladies indeed! But there are very tlemen to be seen-Pray where are they?- God knows.

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There is one who seems to be a man of great consequence by his deportment: and he is in close conference with the Countess; of whom he appears to be a favoured admirer.-He is a nobleman certainly. Perhaps he may become one-at present he is only a banker. -There is a person however whom one cannot possibly mistake: he must be some very common personage from his appearance, as he wears a coachman's wig unpowdered-That is a man of quality! It is the Duke of ... We must whisper his grace's title out of respect for a noble peer of the realm.

All this is strange!

Nothing can be so in London.

8 In every corner of the room we behold a profusion of glossy ringlets falling in studied carelessness over grey hairs and wrinkled fronts. The diamond's blaze attracting admiration where the beamless eye could never catch a single glance from the fortune-hunter; whose hacknied adulation pays incense to the shrine of wealth with mercenary and fulsome compliments. All around we see the glare of rouge on pallid checks, emulating in vain the glow of health and bloom of youthful modesty, on faces which have long since ceased to blush either with youth or bashfulness.

C Such are our modern belles !

Our beaux, if such they can be called, even more unnatural and disguised, affect a thousand fopperies both in dress and manners, equally assumed for the occasion of public display.

And now pray who is that runaing about the room so busily. like a bar-maid, or the hostess of an inn? She is the mistress of the house-she can't say more than a few hurried words to each of her guests. This, however, is not distressing to either of the parties; for it is a thousand to one if they could muster three rational sentences to say to each other. One half of the company are almost strangers to her; for the other half she cares not a farthing, nor do they care more for their entertainer. I am wrong however in bestow

ing

ing this epithet on the lady of the house, to whom it cannot apply in any sense. She has opened her apartments to receive company; but it is entertained at the footman's expence, or rather its own expence; for the visitor's card-money goes to defray the cost of the cards, and perhaps the wax lights and cakes, et cetera, come from the same fund through the medium of the mistress's purse, or, more commonly, out of the attendant's pocket; into which he amasses, when the company have retired, the rich gleanings of each cardtable: where the cards are doubly and trebly paid by every set of players who have cut-in throughout the evening.'

Here a

In such assemblies as I have just described, cards usurp the place of conversation; from which all rationality is banished. crowd, who cannot get even the accommodatiou of a temporary seat, squeeze past each other in dull rotation from room to room; and, having completed the scrutinizing stare over each other's dress and person, repair to a succession of similar scenes till some favourite air at the end of the opera or the ballet calls them to the theatre, where the buz and bustle of the coffee-room concludes the pleasures and amusements of the night.'

The subject is pursued to a length to which we cannot follow it, and the reign of Fashion is well described. The accomplished Swiss fair thus comments on her friend's pictures of London follies:

In your picture of the English, I cannot recognize a people universally famed for solidity and depth of understanding. I have ever considered the Britons as the profoundest reasoners, the most elegant and judicious authors, the ablest statesmen, and the bravest warriors in the world. From what strange inconsistency in human nature can it proceed, that a nation so wise in the aggregate, should be so ridiculous individually?

Every person in society ought to consider that they form a part of a community, and that they become responsible to that community for each action, however apparently indifferent, which, nevertheless, must tend to influence as well as to characterize national

manners.

From your description of the absurdities of the metropolis, I perceive the necessity of superior and leading characters, who will boldly dare to stem the torrent of fashion, when it threatens to overwhelm and destroy good sense and propriety. Sound judgment and inviolate truth should be the standard of actions and opinions.

Fine examples amongst a people as imitative as the English, would have infinite power to annihilate the present prevailing follies. -And it should be the object of those in eminent situations, and public stations, to set a pattern of the strictest propriety and virtue for the imitation of their fellow citizens and countrymen.'

The character of a British naval officer, introduced in this work, has in some points an evident resemblance to that of the Hero of the Nile, and in others an equally obvious dissimilitude. Which did the author design to predominate?

ART.

ART. V. A Tour through several of the Midland and Western Departments of France, in the Months of June, July, August, and September 1802. With Remarks on the Manners, Customs, and Agriculture of the Country. By the Rev. W. Hughes. Illus trated by Engravings. 8vo. pp. 238. 6s. Boards. Ostell. 1803.

A

CONSIDERABLE degree of monotony has prevailed in the recent accounts of France, from their having been, for the most part, confined to descriptions of the capital: but the present tourist varies the scene of observation, by taking us into the Departments, and tracing the effects of the revolution on the inhabitants of the country. His circuit, indeed, is not very extensive; nor was much time occupied in noticing foreign customs, manners, and practices of agriculture; yet Mr. Hughes appears to have made a good use of every opportunity for observation; and the reader will be induced, by the specimen before us, to wish that he had taken a wider range, and that his remarks had extended to more of the provinces of France. Should any of Mr. Hughes's sketches be not altogether accurate, we are persuaded that it has been his endeavour to make them set for he seems not to wish to represent that country either worse or better than he found it. He disguises not his feelings and sentiments, but openly expresses his pains and his pleasures, his admiration and disgust, his opinions respecting politics and opinions respecting religion.

If we were induced, on perusing the title of this book, to regard the writer as a clergyman of our established church, we were soon undeceived: the complexion of his creed proves him. to be a dissenter; and the style of his remarks evinces that he is a perfect mannerist: but the general tenor of his observations will leave an impression in favour of his integrity, candour, and humanity. The work bears every mark of having been composed in great haste, displaying many negligencies and inaccuracies; though we cannot be severe on this head, because the author modestly speaks of it as neither more nor less than a series of memorandums and reflections penned sometimes on the road and sometimes at the inns upon it.' By being penned on the road, he cannot mean as he was proceeding in the French vehicles; since, from his account of them and of their rough motion, it must have been utterly impossible to have used either pen or pencil while stationed in them.

An apology is made by Mr. H. for not having transcribed his journal, in order to render it more correct in point of style, by informing us that he had no idea of appearing before the public in propria persona; that his highest ambition was merely to gratify the curiosity of his friends, by inserting his adventures and reREV. MAY, 1803.

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marks in the pages of a monthly publication; that it was the recommendation of the editors which induced him to bring them forwards in their present form; and that, though he has yielded to their advice, it has not made him vain, for he contemplates his book as an ephemeral production, which has received as much finishing as it merits. The creature of a day will live but a day, trick it out as gaily as you will-wishing only to inform and amuse an affectionate and much loved circle, facts alone will be demanded of him. If those facts, unartificially detailed, interest their feelings, and with pleasure fill up an idle hour, he is acquitted-if others read them with approbation, he is more than paid.'

On June 15, 1802, Mr. Hughes went on board the Lark packet, bound from Brighton to Dieppe; and, being a young sailor, he recounts the particulars of the voyage. In due time he is landed on the French coast, when a contrast is drawn between the aspect of comfort displayed in an English port and that of misery which is so prominent in a French one. After having surveyed Dieppe, the tout ensemble of which is said to be wretchedness in the extreme, Mr. H. proceeded to Rouen, Lisieux, Caen, Falaise, Argentan, Sées, Alençon, Beaumont, Mans, Sablé, Laval, La Flêche, Angers, Tours, Blois, Orleans, Estampes, Paris, and returned from the last mentioned city via Calais to England. Thus it appears that he visited ten departments westward of that in which Paris is situated; and whatever occurred, blame-worthy or praise-worthy, it found a place in his journal. So greatly disgusted is he by the want of cleanliness generally observable in the country which he explored, that he conceives filth to be the Frenchman's proper element.'* In his account of Rouen, he takes notice of the fluid pestilence which flows adown the middle of the streets;' and he is not less sparing of his remarks on the dirtyness of Paris in this respect. The French, we hope, will profit by such admonitions: but to our countrymen, lessons on neatnesss and decorum are not necessary.

Mr. Hughes is no friend to manufactures. At Rouen, he intimates his disapprobation of their effects: but at Lisieux, hethus boldly declares it:

At Liseux, (Lisieux) the country begins to assume an aspect hitherto rare in France. The fields are enclosed; the farms are well wooded, and the pasture prevails over the arable; but the town itself is the very counterpart of Rouen. Like it, it is ill-disposed, ill-built, and stinks most abominably. There are here many considerable fabı e

The scrubbing brush is a luxury, (he says,) which has not yet found its way into France; nor the sweet music of mops and buckets.”

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