and hedges; he liked to take a gallop with them now and then ; it was as fair for one as the other; and as for the foxes he could not think why they should be persecuted: a few chickens killed now and then was the most harm they could do; in fact, they were not half so pernicious as those trumpery hares. A good many pretty surprising feats of horsemanship were related, which Sir Charles suffered to go on for some time, in order to obtain a more noble victory; and then, with one leap, properly attested and witnessed by the Captain, to use the words of the poet,

"High o'erleap'd all bound,"

This wonderful flight (for I can call it nothing less) over so many feet of hedge and water, like all the worthy Baronet's actions of the same sort, of which he gave us a list afterwards, not unworthy of Munchausen, took place in Leicestershire, where, if we may believe him and his man, he keeps his stud and has a hunting seat. He has been asked frequently by the gentlemen here, and was on the present occasion, to take a day's sport with them; they have offered to mount and equip him, -but he has always evaded it in some way or other, which renders his veracity in these accounts rather suspected.

I wondered that politics had been so long delayed, and now they burst forth with wonderful violence. The pending Trial of the Queen, the conduct of the Ministers, and fifty other hackneyed topics, upon which Wentworth and you have argued so frequently, gave rise to a debate, if not quite as clever, at least as furious, as any that ever took place within the Parliament walls. The master of the house, dreadfully frightened, out of his anxiety to prevent any quarrel, increased the tumult, by always giving, like Lozell, his assent to the last opinion that was delivered. I never before understood so plainly

the grand advantage of Rule VIII. in our Club. Wentworth would have been a valuable acquisition to the Whig side, which consisted of Sir Charles, the M. P., who, I suppose, thought himself bound to show off, and another gentleman; but this trio fully made up for the deficiency of their numbers and their arguments by their indefatigable tongues. At last our terrified host proposed an adjournment to the ladies, as the only way of effecting a truce between the contending parties. This I was heartily glad of, for nothing was said that you do not know as well as if you had been present; besides you may judge that we had sat pretty late.

The drawing-room was now furnished with a variety of card-tables; and tea, coffee, and cakes flew about unceasingly. Burton told me that he looked forward with much pleasure to a pool at commerce. Rowley, I verily believe, would have had no objection to a good supper when the cards were finished; and I was in some hopes of raising a quadrille, and had fixed upon my partner, though I won't tell you her name. In case of the failure of that scheme, I proposed a second conference with the clergyman. However, Mr. Seymour was afraid of being enlisted in some rubbers of long whist, so, under pretence of his distance, he ordered his carriage, and cut short Rowley's supper, Burton's commerce, and my quadrilles. I shook my nomenclator by the hand, made some respectful bows, and, as I went home, talked over the adventures of the evening.

Burton has evidently collected a great deal for his Essay on the Main Chance.

If you ever get as far as this, you will thank me for sitting up half the night to write this long epistle. Compliments to the Knave and the rest of you.

Yours, &c.

F. GOLIGHTLY,

P. S. Make excuses for our non-attendance at the next Meeting. I shall certainly, when I come to Eton, send an "Etonian" down here to surprise them.

To Peregrine Courtenay, Esq. President of the King of Clubs, Editor of "the Etonian," &c.

WE intend, with the permission of Mr. John Smith, to present our readers with a few observations upon Hair-dressing. Before we enter upon this topic, which we shall certainly treat capitally, we must assure the respectable individual above alluded to, that it is our intention in no respect to assume to ourselves the shears which he has so long and so successfully wielded. We should be sorry to encroach upon the privileges, or to step into the shoes of so respectable a member of the community. We have a real veneration for his pointed scissars, and his no less pointed narratives, although our ears are occasionally outraged by both, since the first deal occasionally in the Tmesis, and the latter more frequently in the Hyperbole. Long may he continue in the undisturbed possession of those rights which he so deservedly enjoys; long may he continue to restore its youthful polish to the whiskered lip, and to prune with tonsoric scythe the luxuriance of our capillary ex

crescences.

The last paragraph is from the pen of Allen Le Blanc. We must pull him down from his high horse, and re

mount our ambling hobby. As we observed, it is not our intention to provoke any competition or comparison with Mr. J. Smith in the science of Hair-dressing. We shall treat of a branch of the profession totally distinct from that which is exercised by the worthy tortor, or distortor of curls. We propose to discuss Hair-dressing as a test of character, and to show how you may guess at the contents of the inside of the head, by an inspection of the cultivation of the outside of it.

The difficulty we experience in reading the hearts of men is a trite subject of declamation. We find some men celebrated for their discrimination of character, while others are in the same proportion blamed for their want of it. The country Maiden has no means of looking into the intentions of her Adorer until she has been unfeelingly deserted; and the Town Pigeon has no means of scrutinizing the honour of his Greek until he has been bit for a thousand. These are lamentable, and, alas! frequent cases. The prescriptions of the regular philosophers have had but little effect in the prevention of them. The idea of Horace, "torquere mero quem perspexisse laborant," has but little influence, since the illiterate, who are most frequently in want of assistance, have seldom the cash requisite to procure the necessary merum. Allow us then to recommend our nos

trum.

Think of the trouble we shall save if our proposal is adopted! We doubt not but it might be carried into execution to so great an extent that one might find a sharp genius in a sharp comb, and trace the intricacies of a distorted imagination through the intricacies of a distorted curl. Perfumes and manners might be studied together, and a cavendish and a character might be scrutinized by one and the same glance.

Do not be alarmed at the importance we attach to a head of hair;-Homer would never have attributed to one of his warriors the perpetual epithet of Yellow

haired, if he had not seen in the expression something more than a mere external ornament; nor would Pope have

66

Weigh'd the men's wits against the ladies' hair,"

if he had not discerned on the heads of his Belles something worthy of so exalted a comparison. The attention which is paid by certain of our companions to this part of the outward man, will with them be a sufficient excuse for the weight which we attach to the subject.

We might go back to the ages of antiquity, and traverse distant countries, in order to prove how constantly the manners of nations are designated by their Hairdressing. We will omit, however, this superfluous voyage, concluding that our schoolfellows need not to be informed of the varieties of the ornaments for the poll, in which the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman character evinced itself. We shall find sufficient illustration of our position in the Annals of English Manners. In the days of our ancestors the flowered wig was the decoration of the gentlemen; and the hair, raised by cushions, stiffened with powder, and fastened with wires, formed the most becoming insignia of the lady. The behaviour of both sexes was the counterpart of their occipital distinctions; among the gentlemen the formal gallantry of those days was denoted by a no less formal peruke, and among the ladies the lover was prepared to expect a stiffness of decorum by the warning he received from so rigid a stiffness of tête. In our days the case is altered-altered, we think, for the better; unshackled politeness and innocent gaiety have by degrees succeeded to haughty repulsiveness and affected condescension; and, in the same proportion, the wig of one sex, and the tower of the other, have been gradually superseded by fashions less appalling and more becoming. The harmless freedom, which is the prevailing characteristic of the manners of