the town with a shower of coloured bills, descriptive of the extraordinary excellence and cheapness of his wares; each bill measuring half a dozen feet square, and, to make them more conspicuous, will plaster them on the very chimney-tops, or, what appears a very favourable situation, the summit of the gable of a house destroyed by fire, or any other calamity calculated to attract a mob.

The struggle which takes place for subsistence, in London, is particularly observable in the minute classification of trades, and in the inventive faculty and activity of individuals in the lower ranks. Money is put in circulation through the meanest channels. Nothing is to be had for nothing. You can hardly ask a question without paying for an answer. The paltriest service which can be rendered, is a subject of exaction. The shutting of a coach-door will cost you twopence; some needy wretch, always rising up, as if by magic, out of the street, to do you this kind turn. An amusing instance of this excess of refinement in the division of labour, is found in the men who sweep the crossing places from the end of one street to another. These crossings are a sort of hereditary property to certain individuals. A man, having a good deal the air of a mendicant, stands with his broom, and keeps the passage clean; for exercising which public duty, the hat is touched, and a hint as to payment muttered, which, in many cases, meets with attention, for there is quite a number of good souls who never miss paying him for his trouble.

EXERCISE CXXVI.

FRENCH POLITENESS.

[Translated from Saint-Simon.]

THE first president of the Parliament of Paris, D'Harlay, was a man whose character will well repay the study. SaintSimon, who hated him, — and he was generally both feared and hated, has touched off his minutest peculiarities with a felicity inspired by warm admiration of his talents, and the deepest contempt of his character. The high office held by D'Harlay brought him repeatedly into contact with the king, and more especially with the aristocracy, with whom it was

then the prevailing custom to solicit their own cause before the tribunal over which D'Harlay presided.

"D'Harlay was a spare little man, but full of vigour and energy, with a lozenge-shaped face, a large aquiline nose, and vulture eyes, that seemed ready to eat every thing up, and to pierce the very walls. His dress was more ecclesiastical than legal; for he carried every thing that was formal to an extreme. He was always full-dressed, his gait stooping, his speech slow, studied and distinct, his pronunciation of the old school, his words and phrases the same: the whole manner was made up, constrained, and affected; an air of hypocrisy infected all his actions; his manner was hollow and cynical; his reverences were to the ground; and, as he walked along, his dress rustled against the walls with a pretence of humility. His manner was always profoundly respectful, under which was clearly enough to be seen a spirit of insolent audacity; and though his expressions were measured and guarded, pride of some sort was sure to peep out, and as much contempt and sarcasm as he dared to show.

"His conversation was usually made up of sententious sayings and maxims: always dry and laconic; he was never at ease himself, and no one with him. He had a great fund of sense, great penetration, a vast knowledge of mankind, more especially of that class of persons with whom he dealt: he was well acquainted with literature, extremely learned in jurisprudence, and more especially in international law. His reading was general, his memory extraordinary; and though he studied a deliberate preciseness of manner, his quickness of repartee was surprising, and never failed him. In all the intricacies of practice, he was superior to the most dexterous practitioners. He had rendered himself so completely the master of the parliament, that not a single member stood before him, but with the trembling humility of a pupil: he ruled all connected with it, with the most absolute tyranny; turning and using them as he listed, and often without their perceiving it; and when they did, they were obliged to submit. He never suffered the slightest approach to familiarity, on the part of any person: even in his own family as much ceremony was kept up as between the most perfect strangers. At table, the conversation turned upon the most common-place subjects; and though resident in the same house, his son never called upon him without sending a message; when he entered, his father rose to meet him with hat in hand, ordered a chair to be brought, and took leave of him in the same

manner.

"D'Harlay was celebrated for his dexterity in his form of bowing out.' The instant he wished to get rid of any person, he began bowing him out from door to door, with so much affected humility, and at the same time with such determined perseverance, that it was equally impossible either to be offended or to resist. After he had uttered one of the cruel bons mots, for which he was remarkable, and many of which are preserved, he would instantly commence his 'reverences,' and not end until his antagonist was fairly driven from the field. He carried this formal mode of politeness to such an excess, that he generally saw his victims into their coach, and the door shut upon them.

"On one occasion, the Duc de Rohan, leaving him in great dudgeon at the manner in which he had been treated in an audience, as he was descending the stairs indulged in all sorts of abuse of the first president to his intendant, who accompanied him; when suddenly turning round, they found D'Harlay close behind them, bowing them out in the most reverential style possible. The duke, quite confused, begged and prayed, and was quite shocked that he should give himself the trouble to see him out. 'O sir,' said D'Harlay, 'it is impossible to quit you, say such charming things:' and in fact he did not leave him till he had seen him off in his carriage.

"The Duchesse de Ferté, in the same way, as she was descending his staircase, called him an old baboon:' she found he was close behind her, but hoped it had not been heard; for no change in his manner was visible. He put her into her carriage with his usual prostrations. Shortly after her cause came on; and judgment was quickly given in her favour. The duchess ran to the president, and overwhelmed him with her gratitude. He, as usual, plunged into his reverences, and was full of humility and modesty, till he caught an opportunity, when all eyes being upon them, then looking her full in the face, he said, 'Madam, I am delighted that an old baboon can do a favour for an old ape.' The duchess could have killed him on the spot; he, however, recommenced his reverences, and bowed her out of the place, in profound silence, and his eyes upon the ground, until he had seen her into her carriage."

She was a firm believer in the existence of those spiritual beings with which fancy had peopled every hill and dale, and every running stream, in her native wilds. In her day, the shepherd, while tending his flock, had seen, in imagination, that playful race from fairy land, dancing in the dewy dell, beneath the light of the broad harvest moon; the "brownie " was no unfrequent visitor at the cottage of the peasant, as well as in the hall of the lordly proprietor; the shriek of the "water-kelpie" had been heard amid the rising storm; and the deceitful glare of the Will-o'-the-wisp had often allured the unsuspicious and homeless wanderer to an untimely grave.

In after-years, when Margaret Laidlaw became a mother, it was her practice to amuse her children, during the long nights of winter, with animated recitations from the border ballads: these she would deliver in a strain something between a chant and a song; or she would relate tales of fairy land or witchcraft, or might, perhaps, thrill the young hearts of her children, by affecting accounts of the death of some unfortunate shepherd, who had perished amidst the snow, when endeavouring to rescue his flock from the wreath under which they had been buried. But while she thus gave vent to her imagination, she was never forgetful of that which was of still greater importance; we mean the religious instruction of her children: she was in the daily habit of reading passages to them from the sacred volume, and those of a nature which she knew would not only interest, but would also improve, the infant mind.

EXERCISE CXLIII.

LADIES' HEAD-DRESSES, IN 1707. Addison.

THERE is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's headdress. Within my own memory, I have known it rise and fall above thirty degrees. About ten years ago, it shot up to a very great height, insomuch that the female part of our species were much taller than the men.* The women were of such an enormous stature, that we appeared as grasshop

This refers to the commode called by the French fontange,a kind of head-dress worn by the ladies at the beginning of the eighteenth century, which, by means of wire, bore up the hair, and

pers before them: at present the whole sex is in a manner dwarfed and shrunk into a race of beauties that seems almost another species. I remember several ladies, who were once very near seven feet high, that at present want some inches of five. How they came to be thus curtailed I cannot learn. Whether the whole sex be at present under any penance which we know nothing of; or whether they have cast their head-dresses in order to surprise us with something in that kind which shall be entirely new; or whether some of the tallest of the sex, being too cunning for the rest, have contrived this method to make themselves appear sizable, is still a secret though I find most are of opinion, they are at present like trees new lopped and pruned, that will certainly sprout and flourish with greater heads than before.

per

For my own part, as I do not love to be insulted by women who are taller than myself, I admire the sex much more in their present humiliation, which has reduced them to their natural dimensions, than when they had extended their sons and lengthened themselves out into formidable and gigantic figures. I am not for adding to the beautiful edifices of Nature, nor for raising any whimsical superstructure upon her plans: I must therefore repeat it, that I am highly pleased with the "coiffure now in fashion, and think it shows the good sense which at present reigns among the valuable part of the sex.

One may observe, that women, in all ages, have taken more pains than men to adorn the outside of their heads; and, indeed, I very much admire, that those female architects who raise such wonderful structures out of ribands, lace, and wire, have not been recorded for their respective inventions. It is certain there have been as many orders in these kinds of building, as in those which have been made of marble. Sometimes they rise in the shape of a pyramid, sometimes like a tower, and sometimes like a steeple. In Juvenal's time, the building grew by several orders and stories, as he has very humorously described it :—

"With curls on curls they build her head before,

And mount it with a formidable tower:

A giantess she seems; but look behind,
And then she dwindles to the pygmy kind."

the forepart of the cap,

to a

consisting of many folds of fine lace, prodigious height. The transition from this to the opposite extreme was very abrupt and sudden.