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resources, to partake painfully of what is going forward; but those more immediately in the dark, particularly the unhappy person right behind, give the thing up as hopeless. The bonneted lady intercepts the main part of the scene. Charles Kemble is swallowed up. The wing of an army is made no more of than that of a chicken. Enter a house and grounds:-no matter:-the yawn of the bonnet engulphs them like a lawyer's bag. At the opera, you may get a leg now and then, or the point of a shoe.

Nothing that we can say could remedy an evil of this description. The fashion must change of its own accord. Opposition meanwhile would only make it worse; modes of this kind going upon no principle of reason or convenience, but upon pure will and novelty. Masterless fashion sways us to the mood

Of what it likes or loathes.

Its sole object being to differ with those who are not of it, difference of any sort only convinces it that it is just what it ought to be. When the many take to it, then and then only it alters, disobliging them in its vicissitude, and changing to some equally wilful shape. death is out of the spirit of contradiction.

Its very

There is one thing indeed: Ladies may choose to stop away, who find themselves much worried. They may also suffer from like bonnets, and be perplexed between the wish to be relieved and their disinclination to relieve others. Here and there a goodnatured conscience may take a bonnet with it another time, which shall be removeable. We sat near a lady the other night, who said very prettily, "A bonnet has come in my way, and I have not the face to ask for its removal; for I have been sitting all the while, never thinking of my own." This inclined us to make application to the intercepter; but we desisted, for fear of being refused, not liking to see a woman at a disadvantage.

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A word upon that point,-suggested by what we have heard of refusals given to gentlemen who have been bolder. We are very much for equalizing the principles of right and wrong in both sexes; and in accordance with this notion of ours (which we do not mean to insist upon in this work, but which we conceive to be anything but hostile to womanhood) we will venture to remark, that there may be a want of gallantry in women as well as in men.

Gallantry, in the sense we mean it, and indeed in the only true and good sense, may be defined-the inclination of one sex to oblige the other, in the manner most fitted to imply a delicate consciousness, and a grateful wish to be thought well of. A man actuated with this spirit, and performing the least service for a woman, seems, though with the least possible ostentation, or the least claim in return for shewing it, to evince his gratitude to the whole sex, and to all that he has ever known of them, gentle and lovely. A woman, acting in the same spirit, and on a similar occasion, evinces the like tenderness of respect for the whole circle of manhood; and by the very waiving of an exclusive homage (too often implying her weakness instead of her strength) shews her right to the equal participation of a throne of power and esteem. In love, for instance, there is nothing more touching than the equality to which it brings both parties, and the delight they take in being neither less tender, humble, or grateful, the one than the other. Imagine under these circumstances an adored mistress reversing the usual order of compliment, and kissing in a transport of thankfulness the lover's hand! The case will be still stronger, if she suspect that the love is greater on his side than her own. This is what we should call the height of gallantry in a woman; and assuredly, if the man be worthy of her, and she of him, she will gain everything by it, instead of losing. We put an extreme case; but excess often lets us better into the merits of a question, than a more moderate way of putting it. It includes all the letter, and is sure to lose none of the spirit. From bonnets to the eyes within them, and from the eyes to love, the steps are not great; and so we come back to our fair friends in the pit; and do hereby show them, that when they give sharp answers respecting those enormities to the sex in whose eyes they ought to be fairest, they commit precisely the same mistake which they would be the loudest in exclaiming against, were a man deficient towards them in politeness and gallantry. They take an unhandsome advantage of him. To be ungallant towards a woman, is to use a man's power where it is least becoming, and there is nothing to resist it. To be ungallant towards a man, is to take advantage of the opinions that are held respecting the deference he owes the sex, and do just

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what a woman pleases, let manhood think of it as it may. To settle the rights of this matter, and at the same time to relieve both the sexes from the hitherto unheard-of enormity of ungallant women, we propose, that as a man without gallantry is metaphorically and fearfully pronounced by the other sex to be "no man," so a woman, labouring under a similar deficiency, be hereafter pronounced to be no woman. She must take her place with him in the third sex, or non-sex, lately discovered by a periodical writer, and entitled Nimmen :-Man, Men; Woman, Women; Noman, NimThe case is clear, and the sex vindicated.

men.

As to fashions, nothing can alter those but the setters of them. They have a short life or a long one, according as it suits the 'makers to startle us with a variety, or save themselves observation of a defect. Hence fashions set by young or handsome people are fugitive, and such are, for the most part, those that bring custom to the milliner. If we keep watch on an older one, we shall generally trace it, unless of general convenience, to some pertinacity on the part of old people. Even fashions of popular convenience, as the trowsers that have so long taken place of smallclothes, continue very often on the strength of some general defect, to which they are useful. The old are glad to retain them, and so be confounded with the young; and among the latter, there are more limbs perhaps, to which loose clothing is acceptable, than tight. More legs and knees, we suspect, rejoice in those cloaks, than would be proud of themselves in a shoe and stocking. The male fashions of the last twenty years, we think we can trace to a particular source. If it be objected, that the French partook of them, and that our modes have generally come from that country, we suspect that the old court in France had more to do with them, than Napoleon's, which was confessedly masculine and military. The old French in this country, and the old noblesse in the other, wore bibs and trowsers, when the Emperor went in a plain stock * and delighted to show his good leg. For this period, if for this only, we are of opinion that whether the male fashions did or did not originate in France, other circumstances have conspired to retain them in both countries, for which the revolutionary government cannot account. It is true, Mr Hazlitt informs us in his

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"Life of Napoleon," that during the Consulate, all the countries. were watching the head of the state to know whether mankind were to wear their own hair or powder; and that Bonaparte luckily settled the matter by deciding in favour of nature and cleanliness. But here the revolutionary authority stopped: nor in this instance did it begin: for it is understood, that it was the plain head of Dr Franklin, when he was ambassador at Paris, that first amused, and afterwards interested, the giddy polls of his new acquaintances; who went and did likewise. Luckily, this was a fashion that suited all ages, and on that account it has survived. But the bibs, and the trowsers, and the huge neckcloths, whence come they? How is it, at least, that they have been so long retained? Observe that polished old gentleman, who bows so well, and is conversing with the most agreeable of physicians. He made a great impression in his youth, and was naturally loth to give it up. On a sudden, he finds his throat not so juvenile as he could wish it. Up goes his stock, and enlarges. He rests both his cheeks upon it, the chin settling comfortably upon a bend in the middle, as becomes its delicacy. By and bye, he thinks the cheeks themselves do not present as good an aspect as with so young a heart might in reason be expected; and forth issue the points of his shirt-collar, and give them an investiture at once cherishing and spirited. Thirdly, he suspects his waist to have played him a trick of good living, and surpassed the bounds of youth and elegance before he was well aware of it. Therefore, to keep it seemingly, if not actually within limits, forth he sends a frill in the first instance, and a padded set of lapels afterwards. He happens to look on the hand that does all this, and discerns with a sigh that it is not quite the same hand to look at, which the handsomest women have been transported to kiss; though for that matter they will kiss. it still, and be transported too. The wrist-band looks forth, and says, Shall I help to cover it?" and it is allowed to do so, being a gentlemanly finish, and impossible to the mechanical. But finally the legs they were among the handsomest in the world; and how did they not dance! What conquests did they not achieve in the times of hoop-petticoats and toupees! And long afterwards, were not Apollo and Hercules in them together, to the delight of

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dowagers? And shall the gods be treated with disrespect when the heaviness of change comes upon them? No. Round comes the kindly trowserian veil (as Dyer of 'The Fleece' would have had it); the legs retreat, like other conquerors, into retirement; and only the lustre of their glory remains, such as Bonaparte might have envied.

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RAIN OUT OF A CLEAR SKY.

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In a work De Varia Historia,' written after the manner of Ælian by Leonico Tomeo, an elegant scholar of the fifteenth century, we meet with the following pretty story. When Phalantus led his colony out of Sparta into the south of Italy, he consulted the oracle of Apollo, and was informed that he should know the region he was to inhabit, by the fall of a plentiful shower out of a clear sky. Full of doubt and anxiety at this answer, and unable to meet with any one who could interpret it for him, he took his departure, arrived in Italy, but could succeed in occupying no region,-in capturing no city. This made him fall to considering the oracle more particularly; upon which he came to the conclusion, that he had undertaken a foolish project, and that the gods meant to tell him so; for that a sky should be clear, and yet the rain out of it plentiful, now seemed to him a manifest impossibility.

Tired out with the anxious thoughts arising from this conclusion, he laid his head in the lap of his wife, who had come with him, and took such a draught of sleep as the fatigue of sorrow is indulged with, like other toil. His wife loved him; and as he lay thus tenderly in her lap, she kept looking upon his face; till thinking of the disappointments he had met with, and the perils he had still to undergo, she began to weep bitterly, so that the tears fell plentifully upon him, and awoke him. He looked up, and seeing those showers out of her eyes, hailed at last the oracle with joy, for his wife's name was Æthra, which signifies a clear sky;" and thus he knew that he had arrived at the region where he was to settle. The next night he took Tarentum, which was the greatest city of those parts; and he and his posterity reigned in that quarter of Italy, as you may see in Virgil.

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