fallibility of the prince, and give a perfect credence to all he says, a perfect plaudit to all he does. If any thing in such a body could be fixed and stable, it might be expected that their privileges would for ever be sacred, nor ever be surrendered to any fashion. But we have seen even these cheerfully abandoned by them, when the will of the prince or of his minister demanded the sacrifice. In the times of their fathers, while other opinions were in repute, it cost the monarch his life only to attempt the liberty of some of that jealous body; but now, that more pliant and condescending principles are in vogue, not only the prince in person, but his secretary, may seize, imprison, and ransack the papers of a member of parliament, without giving the least alarm to that once jealous and formidable body. A court of justice indeed, which has not yet adopted the same fashionable rule of action, shall condemn the act of the minister, and release the prisoner; but the more courtly house applauds the deed, and deliberately

votes, that it has no privilege, no liberty of person or of papers, whenever the eye of the minister shall glance suspicion at any of them.

To close the evidence, let the female sex pass in hasty review, in whom it would be strange if any principle but fashion were necessary to account for that peculiar ease and accommodation of sentiment and manners, which accompany this elegant part of the creation. Surely, if any passion be natural to the sex, that of setting off their beauty to the best advantage must be allowed to be so: but to follow the mode of dress is more powerful even than this, however the beauty and elegance of their persons be sacrificed thereto. This some will ingenuously confess, though the major part do not seem to be sensible that any sacrifice is made to it; but appear to find all their ideas of beauty in the dress of the day, whatever it be; and do from their hearts be lieve, that now a head as high as the Monu ment, and now as squat as the shaved crown

of

of a friar; the hair to day waving in ringlets, and regularly playing on their shoulders, to morrow gathered up under their cap behind, and spreading down over their eyes before in the Tyburn fashion, like the natural locks of the ploughboy: again, the frizzing it out like the back of a porcupine, and plastering it over with a paste of hogslard and flour, are equally advantageous to their persons, and equally beautiful.-And why not? Why may it not be in this, as in the more important subject of morals? That there is really no truth, no standard of propriety; but that the ro nahov of person, as well as of mind, is merely what the fashion and mode of the day prescribe. Some cynics, who have more pleasure to bask in their tub, and thence rail at the imitative world, than to shine at the court of Alexander, may speak with horrour of this devastation of their natural charms, and represent them as villanously ugly in all their shifting modes of decoration:--but the amiable creatures themselves discover

no such apprehensions; they believe them, selves, in every varied form, to be as attractive and engaging as their mother Eve in the simplicity of naked beauty, And the politer and more compliant part of the male sex adopt the same sentiments: they find their notions of beauty to be equally gratified in every dress in which their charmers appear. That the fair one, fragrant like the Hottentot with the grease of the beast which he has devoured, is as much the object of his desires and his embraces, as the clean simple damsel of the woods and fields.

But it is not only in dress that the power of fashion is predominant; it equally dictates in manners and in morals. Some, who affect severity and restraint in all their precepts to the sex, have pretended that a certain diffidence and modest reserve are their natural and most engaging ornament. Why, so it may, as long as such a fashion of female excellence prevails; for we contend not that a delicate apprehensive modesty does not equally become them with the opposite

quality ;

quality; but that each derives its proper obligation and merit from the fashionable repute which it bears. Modesty has had its day, and

How unpolite I am in stum

bling at a mere word! Away with this unfashionable weakness! I will adhere to my system, and boldly declare the truth.—I say impudence bids fair to have her turn. If modesty were at all natural to the sex, it is in the higher and lower classes, who, from very opposite causes, are rendered equally independent and free, that we must look for the unrestrained operations of nature.

But

these two classes equally agree in finding nothing intrinsically amiable in a timid diffidence and modest reserve. And however reluctant the dames of middle rank, may be to quit the fashionable manners, which their sober mothers have transmitted to them, it must only be referred to the power of habit, and some remaining idea of repute in a different mode. But there requires not the aid of prophecy to foretell, that the gallanter fashion of their superiors will gradually give