Earth Stoppers, and attend'd by many other Sporting Friends, who heartily mourn'd for him.

"Directly after the Corpse, followed his old favourite Horse, (which he alway called his old soul,) thus accoutred -carrying his last Fox's Brush in ye front of his Bridle with his Cap, Whip, Boots, Spurs, and Girdle, across his saddle. The ceremony being over- he (by his own desire) had three clear, rattling view Halloos given him over his grave: and thus ended ye Career of Poor Tom, who liv'd and died an honest Fellow, but, alas! a very wet one.

"I hope you and Family are well, and you" believe me, much yours,

66

Willey, 5th Dec 1796.

"G. FORESTER."

269

CODES OF MANNERS AND ETIQUETTE.

(FROM THE QUARTERLY REVIEW, OCT., 1837.)

1. Nuovo Galateo, di Melchiore Gioja, Autore del Trattato del Merito e delle Recompense. Quarta Edizione Milanese. Milano: 1827.

2. Die Regel von Höflichkeit, &c. Wien: 1832.

3. Code Civil, Manuel Complet de la Politesse, du Ton, des Manières de la Bonne Compagnie, &c. Paris: 1832. 4. L'Art de Briller en Société, ou Manuel de l'Homme du Monde, &c. &c. Par P. C. et A. L. R., Membres de la Société Royale Académique des Sciences, et de plusieurs Sociétés Littéraires. 3me Edition. Paris: 1829. 5. The Laws of Etiquette, or Short Rules and Reflections for Conduct in Society. By a Gentleman. A New Edition. Philadelphia: 1836.

6. Hints on Etiquette and the Usages of Society; with a Glance at Bad Habits. By Aywyos. Eleventh Edition. London: 1837.

7. Instructions in Etiquette, &c. &c. By James Pitt, Professor of Dancing and Fencing. Fourth Edition. London: 1836.

8. The Philosophy of Manner, &c. &c. By AσTELOS. Glasgow: 1837.

9. The Science of Etiquette. By AσTELOS. Twentieth Thousand. Glasgow: 1837.

10. The True Science of Etiquette. By

1836.

Glasgow:

11. The Book of Etiquette; or the Whole Art of Politeness, &c. By a Gentleman. Seventh Edition. London: 1837.

12. Chesterfield Modernized; or the Book of Gentility, and the Why and Because of Polite Society. By a Member of the Beef-steak Club. Sixth Edition. London: 1837.

13. Kidd's Practical Hints on Etiquette, &c. &c. London: 1837.

14. The Book of Fashion. By an Exclusive. New Edition. London: 1837.

15. The Book of Refinement, &c. New Edition. London: 1837.

16. The Pocket-Book of Etiquette and Vade Mecum of the Observances of Society. Liverpool: 1837.

"IN China," says the Abbé de Marcy, "the government has always made it an object to maintain, not only at court and amongst the great, but amongst the people at large, a certain habit of politeness and courtesy. The Chinese have an infinity of books on this subject. One of these treatises contains more than 3000 articles. In it everything is prescribed with the greatest minuteness; the manner of saluting, of paying visits, of making presents, of writing letters, of giving entertainments, &c. These usages have the force of law; no one dares to infringe them. There is a particular tribunal at Pekin, one of whose principal functions is to watch over all these observances."

Judging from the heap of publications on our table, and the numerous editions they are stated (we believe, without much exaggeration) to have gone through, it would seem that the principal European nations, as well as America, are in a fair way to rival China in this peculiar department of letters and legislation; nor can we delay, without a glaring dereliction of duty, to notice a class of productions which are really exercising a widely-spread and by no means beneficial influence on the middle classes of this country. It was a bad sign for these when the manufacture of fashionable novels grew into a trade, and it became worth a publisher's while to offer a woman of title fifty or a hundred pounds for

liberty to prefix her name to a book, compiled with the aid of butlers and lady's-maids in the back recesses of his shop; because the demand for this sort of trash betokened an unworthy and degrading eagerness, on the part of a large part of the community, to learn how lords and ladies ate, drank, dressed, and coquetted, and cull maxims of taste and gentility from the tawdry slipslop, made up of bad English and worse French, which passes current for the conversation of the aristocracy. But it is a still worse sign, and one well meriting the serious attention of the speculative, when these absurdities come to be framed into systems, and whole codes of regulations drawn up by artists, captains in the militia, stock-brokers, and dancing-masters, are "set in a note-book, learned, and conned by rote" by the wives, sons and daughters of half the minor gentry and tradespeople in the land.

The French work, which stands third upon our list, has evidently suggested the best of those that stand after it; and we are not at all surprised to find a mania of the kind originating in a country where society presents one great hotbed of vanity, and the master all-pervading passion is to pass for something greater than you are, or, coûte qui coûte, make people stare and talk about you. Whole scenes of Balzac's novels are occupied with the struggles of some "poor devil author," or artist, to support the appearance of a man of fashion on an income which would scarcely suffice to find an English exquisite in gloves; and a recent writer on France, belonging to the liberal school of politics, relates as an illustration of the national character, that not long since a notary's clerk killed himself avowedly, because, having duly calculated and considered, he did not think it possible for him to be so great a man as Napoleon.

North America is entitled to walk first amongst

the imitators, or rather plagiarists, for a large portion of the Philadelphian code of manners is literally translated from the French. This, again, was natural enough; for a parvenu people bears a strong resemblance to a parvenu individual, and there is not a country in the world where social distinctions are more minute and vexatious, or precedence more rigidly enforced, than the United States, the very keystone of whose institutions is equality.

As for our brethren in the North, we are utterly at a loss to assign a motive for their rivalry; for of all the two-legged animals that Nature in her wisdom has incapacitated by hardness, uncouthness, and a total want of pliability in limb and feature, for the drawing-room, we know none more radically unfit than a canny Scotchman:

"Every point of national character is opposed to the pretensions of this luckless race, when they attempt to take on them a personage which is assumed with so much facility by their brethren of the Isle of Saints. Their pride heads them back at one turn, their poverty at another, their pedantry at at a third, their mauvaise honte at a fourth; and with so many obstacles to make them bolt off the course, it is positively impossible they should win the plate. No, Harry, it is the grave folk in Old England who have to fear a Čaledonian invasion-they will make no conquests in the world of fashion."-St. Ronan's Well, vol. i. p. 336.

So said one who knew them well: yet Glasgow sends forth her copies of "The Science of Etiquette," and "The Philosophy of Manner," by thousands,-without counting a rather invidious commentary on one of them, in which the author states (probably the only authentic statement in the publication) that he and his predecessor having contemporaneously assisted in the domestic arrangements of "The Goat and Compasses," he conceives himself to be equally entitled to authority. At the same time, it is undeniable that there is a great deal of good sense, with many valu