other name," when Faust says positively that he has none at all. The conclusion of the soliloquy is thus travestied :

"And it is more the feeling!
The name concealing,
Or half revealing,

Like a thin smoke upon the shore
The bright blue deep beyond."

Mr. Syme has had the inconceivably bad taste to checker the fine prose of the cathedral scene with some indifferent rhymes:

"Ah Gretta! what a difference,

Since when, in your innocence,

You sought this altar,

And lisped your prayers

Out of the little old

And well-worn psalter,
Half a child at play,
Half with God!-Gretta,
Can your head stand it?
Does your heart bleed
For your misdeed?
And do you pray?

Pray for your mother's soul, that has

been sent

By you unto its long, long punishment!"

Lord F. Egerton's false delicacy is also imitated; for we find Mr. Syme translating, like his lordship, Nachbarin, euer fläschen (neighbour, your smelling-bottle), by "neighbour, help!" To the best of our recollection there was a rather ridiculous correspondence upon this point in the Examiner,—it having been contended by Mr. Taylor, of Norwich, and other sagacious critics, that the young lady was actually calling for a dram-bottle. We should not think the worse of her on that account, much less seek to hide the truth from a discerning English public by a mistranslation. At the same time, we do not suspect Mr. Syme of being endowed with a keen sense of the ridiculous, for we find am verderben sich lezt, in the prose scene, translated "fattens on destruction."

Margaret's exclamation, after directing her infant to be placed on her right breast, mistaken by Lord F. Egerton

and Mr. Blackie, is also mistaken by Mr. Syme. He has

"No one else shall lie beside me." This shews an ignorance of the language, as well as a want of perception. Wird could not here mean shall.

We trust we have now said enough to justify our opinion, that Mr. Syme has failed in the attempt to convey an adequate conception of Faust. He is certainly an elegant versifier, but appears to be utterly incapable of intensity and force.

We have devoted more space to these translations than, strictly speaking, they are worth, with the view of exposing, along with their blunders, the blunders of what we must term by courtesy our contemporaries of the press. The Metropolitan vouches boldly for the spirit and fidelity of both of them,- avowing at the same time、a preference for prose. It is quite clear, not only from the criticisms, but from the verses inserted in that magazine, that the conductor has no taste for poetry, and no perception either of poetical beauties or defects. He has no ear either for rhythm or rhyme. Tait praises Mr. Syme in the highest terms; and our friend Jerdan, of the Literary Gazette, thus announces his opinion of Mr. Blackie ::-"We might cavil at single words, but upon the whole we feel ourselves bound to say, that he is to Goethe even more than Pope was to Homer; for he is accurate as well as poetical. Our extracts must justify our decision." The extracts, in our opinion, proved just the contrary; for one of them consisted of Faust's soliloquy in the cavern, evidently a bad copy of Mr. Hayward's version, and another consisted of an execrable extract from the prison scene. This is the more inexcusable, since the book really does contain a few passable passages, as the curse (p. 64), and the Intermezzo, which is spiritedly executed, and might even have induced us to mitigate our sentence, had any thing else of merit presented itself.

I HAVE always entertained a sort of predilection for fashion. Whether this has arisen from any civility I may, individually, have experienced from the fashionable world, or from the amusement which its doings have occasionally afforded me, I know no more than a philosopher. Certain it is, however, that there are few things so truly diverting as the constant striving of little persons, from peers to pawnbrokers, to exalt themselves into notoriety by the aid of little things, to which a great and fictitious importance is attempted to be attached. But fashion has lately taken a direction injurious to the robust, honest, and manly feelings once peculiar to Britons, so that war, even to the pen, must be waged against its power. Aware of the enemy's strength, I have, in imitation of Peter the Great, when he was about to destroy the Strelitz, and of Sultan Mahmoud when preparing to annihilate the Janisaries, been long and silently arranging my plan of operation. I have toiled late and early; I have danced, dined, made love, and feasted, in order to watch the motions of the foe. I have travelled from Naples to John O'Groat's for the purpose of reconnoitering the weak points of the enemy's position ; for though fashion itself may not perhaps have crossed the Moray firthsome, indeed, say that it has never crossed even the Tweed-its influence extends from one extremity of the land to the other; as noxious vapours infect the air far beyond the boundaries of the marsh from which they arise. Thus prepared, I now sound my warrion, as signal for the skirmishers to advance. Where, when, and how, the principal onset of battle will be made, I keep, like a prudent general, to myself.

VOL, X. NO. LV.

The people of Britain boast, with some right, of their freedom and love of independence; and yet they bow to the tyranny of fashion with a ready subserviency far surpassing, in abject submission, the blind obedience paid by slaves to eastern satraps. This sort of voluntary homage would be nothing more than ridiculous, if circumstances had not by degrees contrived to make it imperative, and thus given to the giddy Goddess of Fashion a power that, owing to her ladyship's total want of heart, head, judgment, and feeling, has become in the highest degree dangerous and pernicious.

When governments fall into error and commit blunders, as will sometimes happen with the best, the remedy is, thanks to the language of diplomacy and of debate, sufficiently easy, though not always cheap or creditable. If we vote that black shall be white one day, we can vote that white is to be black on the next. If we neglected to send five sail of the line to the assistance of the Turks in 1828 and 1832, we may perhaps atone for it by sending twenty sail of the line, with 30,000 men, to their aid in 1836; and so on. Very different is the case, however, when the far more despotic government of fashion falls into error: then no opposition is tolerated, and no appeal allowed. The truth is therefore never heard; for as all wish to be thought not only zealous votaries but active members of the executive, views and opinions, derogatory alike to the honour and happiness of the entire community, may be disseminated by this public WhemGericht with as much rapidity as the fashion of a flounce or the cut of a coat. The mischief is, that the effect of vicious opinions cannot be recalled with as much facility as an act of parliament can be amended. You may easily

Н

break down the dike that protects your property from the fury of the mountain stream; but when the torrent is once let in, you may never be able to repair the damage it has occasioned, or to replace the vigorous, healthy, and fruit-bearing soil that may have been swept away.

And what, after all, is this spirit, essence, or mania, called fashion? Is it any thing better than a false varnish, sought after, or applied, in order to raise persons, stuffs, or trinkets, to some fictitious value exceeding their real intrinsic worth? Was it ever thought necessary to make a guinea fashionable, in order to make it acceptable? Fashion at one time attempted to make a king unfashionable; but no one ever voted the king's coin vulgar or de mauvais ton. Fashion is a house of refuge for the poor in mind and thought; who, wanting taste, tact, courage, and character, are forced to take shelter under some fashionable folly or fantasy, in order to conceal the feebleness that prevents them from standing on their own ground. Fashion never introduced any thing really great, noble, or ornamental. Not a single monument has ever been raised to a departed fashion; nor has a single elegy been written on one of the family, though hundreds are constantly descending to the tomb of all the Capulets, while hundreds of bardlings are hunting town, hill, and plain, for elegiac subjects wherewith to drown the world in tears. And as to dress, "Don't you know, my dear Lady Jane, that your beautiful ball costume of last night will appear just as ridiculous a few years hence as the costume of Marie de' Medici appeared to you a few years ago, when you first beheld her majesty figuring in Rubens' pictures?" In the reign of Louis XI. exquisites wore false corporations of mighty circumference, as they now wear stays. We laugh at the former, and why not at the latter also?

Shall we be told that fashion has tended to polish and refine manners, and to spread far and wide the elegant courtesy of deportment for which all persons of good breeding are distinguished? Much the reverse. Good

manners result from knowledge, good sense, good feeling, and the habit of good society whereas fashion cares not a straw for sense, feeling, or learning; and only lays down a rule of

:

manners which the initiated must acquire and act up to, and which prescribes at present a stiff, vapid, blasé kind of hauteur, totally inconsistent with healthy, sanguine, and elastic feeling, but which is easily acquired by all those who are destitute of the very qualities from which elegant and refined manners can alone spring. The exertions of fashion have always been directed towards the extinction of whatever is elevating in our nature. All generous enthusiasm, all chivalrous sentiments, were unfashionable. Even cheerfulness, good-humour, and hilarity, were banished from polite society, in order that the dignity of fashionable persons might not be compromised by sympathising, either in joy or in woe, with the pleasures or sorrows of ordinary mortals. This is by far the worst part of fashionable training; because its effects are to destroy or relax all the finer fibres of the heart-those that should receive

and respond to the impressions produced by whatever is great, beautiful, or noble. It tends, for the same reason, to dry up the sources of imagination, which, when pure, bright, and sparkling, lead us to build fabrics of beauty, and temples of virtue and of happiness, even on the slenderest foundations. But fashion smiles at this. Shun, therefore, with scorn all those who, from nature or practice, are already perfect in their training; pity those who are in progress; and never mistake the fantastic fooleries of the silver fork school for any thing but a feeble attempt to conceal real shallowness of heart or mind under an affected hauteur of exterior deportment.

Patriotism is a word devoid of meaning in fashionable vocabulary. The want of that noble sentiment is concealed under a pretended freedom from national prejudices, and a liberal feeling towards foreigners. And justly so, indeed; for, making an exception only in favour of the Germans, there is a narrowness in most foreign minds that is exceedingly congenial to littleminded people. That disgusting person, Prince Pückler Muskaw, was, on the strength of his foreign rank and title, a favourite in the world of fashion, till some quarrel with one of the clubs drove him from the country; when the publication of his book (addressed to a lady!), by placing the author in his true light, shewed at once that the courted favourite of the beau monde was

as destitute of taste and delicacy of feeling as of the sentiments that should be inseparable from the character of a gentleman (1).

This mention of foreigners brings me easily to the consideration of foreign manners. But, before entering upon the subject, it may be as well that I should say something of the writer of this article; as I hold with the Spectator, that there is nothing which so much helps the reader to a just understanding of the work before him as a perfect acquaintance with the author himself. Steele, in one of the papers of the Guardian, says that a man must have visited foreign countries, and have seen both courts and camps, before he can divest himself of national prejudices. It is, therefore, right that the reader should know the grounds on which I claim implicit submission to the doctrines I am about to propound. In truth, then, I am a perfect anti-liberal, a regular ultra John Bull : the stubborn prejudices belonging to that character have, in fact, grown upon me exactly in proportion as my knowledge of foreign nations has increased. I believe that one Englishman can with ease beat two Frenchmen any day of the week, because I have seen something of the kind done in spite of modern tactics, which, partaking of the liberal spirit of fashion, attempt to reduce all men to the same level, the level of drilled mediocrity. I believe that we are still-with all our faults, follies, and imperfections, and notwithstanding the rapid progress of crime and demoralisation, so fearfully urged on by the presumptuous pedantry of the schoolmaster and the mischievous ignorance of fashion—a better, braver, wiser, and more enlightened people than any now existing on the face of the earth; better, at least, than any I have seen-and I have seen many, under circumstances of all others the most favourable to observation. I have rested in the wigwam of the Indian, and have bivouacked on the plains of the Peninsula. I have been quartered in Portuguese hovels, Spanish palaces, and in the best houses of the Chaussée d'Antin. I have seen the moment which Byron could only describe,

"When shriek'd the timid and stood still the brave;

And some leap'd overboard with dreadful yell,

As eager to anticipate their grave."

I have sported a toe in a country dance, waltz, mazourka, bolero, and galopade. I have worn a locket containing one ringlet of hair, which I have pressed to my lips at the very moment when the thunder-cloud of battle was bursting over us. I have done many things I would willingly forget-many that I would rather know than tell. But there are two things of which my conscience fully and fairly acquits me: I never made love to maid or mistress under false colours, and I never made so consummate an idiot of myself as to dance a quadrille. And now that you know who and what I am, you must not, most courteous reader, think me illiberal if I express opinions at variance with those which you happen to entertain. I may be wrong-it is the lot of mortality; but I can have no cause of personal quarrel with foreign manners or fashions. Were I to abuse the Horse Guards in good set phrases, as I intend to do one of these days, you might ascribe my indignation to the disappointment I have experienced in regard to promotion. But I cannot lay this to the charge of foreign nations, as I never heard that either Louis Philippe, who received me very politely when I was last presented, or the autocrat of all the Russias, with whom I have shaken hands many a time, ever applied to the commander-in-chief to have my promotion stopped.

I consider the great admiration of foreign manners and fashions, now so much in vogue, as one of the worst signs of the times. The elegant and unaffected politeness of the ladies and gentlemen of England is, or was-I must sometimes confound the past and the present-as superior to the wretched mannerism of the highest society in France and Italy, as is the highly polished diamond of the first water to the mere painted glass bauble. The first resulted from a delicacy and refinement of feeling, utterly unknown abroad from education, as well as from our peculiar institutions. The latter was, on the contrary, the mere result of imitation and instruction: the cause and consequence of which are alike evident. We live under institutions that, by the constant collision of parties, and of individuals striving for public favour, naturally call forth the highest intellectual powers; and expose all whose rank, station, or talents, make them in any way leaders