afide, and Greece remains the standing order of the day. But to return to the contractor, and his ball-after feveral hours had paffed in dancing cotillions, which the young women of Paris perform with a degree of perfectiona light nymphishg race unfeen elsewhereand after the walfe, which is now never forgotten at a Paris ball, had proved that the steady heads of Niobes were not to be made giddy, the company were led to a fupper, furnished with Eastern magnificence, and decorated with attic taste. After fupper the folding doors of the faloon were thrown open to a garden of confiderable extent, beautifully illuminated with coloured lamps, and its trees bending with lavish clusters of fruits of every feason, and every climate, formed of ice, while fountains poured forth ftreams of orgeat, lemonade, and liqueurs. But But while thefe imitators of Greece and Rome are revelling in Afiatic Luxury, you hear them lamenting most pathetically the fubverfion of the ancient regime; that regime, which would at least have had thus much of justice, that it would have retained these personages in the anti-chambers of the faloons they now occupy to which antichambers they would, with a counter-revolution, most probably return. One is obliged to offer up an invocation to patience, when condemned to liften to their declamations against that new order of things to which folely they owe their elevation. Y There is indeed one clafs of perfons, bcfore whofe complaints of the revolution, however bitter, the mind humbles itself in fympathetic forrow. The poor rentier, while he fips his Spartan black-broth, which he is forced to procure by parting, in fad gradation, with all the relicks of his former VOL. I. Ꭰ former fplendor, with watches, rings, furniture, and clothes: he indeed, if he complains, is to be pitied, and if he forbears. complaint, is to be revered! But alas, there is fo much of tragical detail in the pages of the great book; a thing which has long fince been called a great evil, that we must give it at least a whole chapter to itself. At prefent I fhall only obferve, that the reign of terror has acted upon this country like fome mighty peftilence, which not only fweeps away devoted millions in its fury, but leaves an obnoxious taint upon every object where it has paffed. The reign of terror has given a fatal wound to the energies of public fpirit; ordinary minds have mistaken the execrable abuses of liberty for an effect of the generous principle itfelf: the victims of revolutionary government have lifted up their complaining voice; all the emotions of sympathy, and all the feel ings of indignation have been called forth; and the partizans of the ancient regime have left no art unpractised, no seduction untried, to take advantage of thefe difpofitions in favour of their own system. Those who have been too rapidly enriched by the revolution have endeavoured to hide the obfcurity of their origin, by mimicking the tones of those who have titles and honors to regret, till aristocracy has descended fo low, that it will foon perhaps be exploded, like any other fashion, when taken up by the vulgar. Many of the fair wives of titled emigrants, or blooming widows of murdered nobles, have made fuch fecond marriages, that we well might apoftrophise them in the language of Hamlet: "Such an act "That blurs the grace and blush of modefty, "Makes marriage vows "As falfe as Dicer's oaths." These very ladies, who have taught their new-made liege-lords to ape their counterrevolutionary follies, will at length be ashamed of their ariftocracy, when they find how fuccessfully they are rivalled in those sentiments by their milliners and mantua-makers. A writer of a late political pamphlet has given an admirable reafon why our Parifian belles will foon lay aside the tone of eternal lamentations for the overthrow of defpotism. "Seven years," fays he, "have already elapfed fince the epocha of the revolution: feven years is a period of fome length in the history of a youthful beauty, and a lady will foon not be able to regret the monarchy, under the penalty of paffing for old." I believe every perfon who has ftudied the female heart, will agree with this writer, that the republic has a tolerable chance, upon this principle, of obtaining ere long many fair pro felytes. The |