things; for which accession of opinion and service, I will pay one shilling per meeting (supper and malt included).

"One important stipulation must be, that I shall talk of myself and my productions ad libitum, and that the most devoted attention will be paid to everything I may advance.

Snubbs, sneers, jeers, or fleers not to be indulged in on any account; no sly winks, or laughing in the sleeve, if my personal comparisons be strong. Though I were to class myself in eloquence with Socrates, in knowledge a Bacon, in courage equal to a Spartan leader, and swear my virtues are purer than were Agricola's, the inference must be gravely endorsed at the peril of a forfeit. No prediction is to be contradicted, no caprice denied.

"When a member has found a more profitable mode of spending his time, a week's notice will be required; when he can retire by bestowing a mighty compliment on the 'Prime Minister' and treating the remaining members with a pot of half-and-half each.

"John Tobin and Halleck never to be quoted, for reason of certain opinions they have irreverently expressed in certain poems, which by no means meet my approbation.

"Notice. I enclose the above hasty circular to

of

Will he consent to become a member at the above specified terms, bearing in mind the stipulated conditions? An immediate answer will oblige."

Now to whom should these circulars be addressed? He overturned his card-basket, and ransacked his memory. Finally, he could muster twelve idle, intelligent, careless people, nine of whom would be glad to pick up a trifle provided there was no labour to be accomplished. He folded the dozen, and directed them; in due time replies were returned, and exactly nine of the twelve accepted the overtures. It was an easy way of earning the fractional part of a pound, to say nothing of a

moderate supper, an amusing display of egotism, and the tolerant sacrifice of an evening's sentiment.

Coningsby Calcutt is therefore happy. He holds his levees as often as his purse permits, and rattles away to pensioned sycophants at one shilling per head. He declares it the cheapest and most certain method of commanding attention; for no one is so rash as to blight any fair flower of speech he may have the hardihood to create. Paid attention is better than free neglect, in his opinion, though Coningsby's vanity is evidently on its last legs.

285

AMERICAN WATERING PLACES.

WATERING-PLACES in the United States-like birds-differ somewhat in species. If an aristocracy is observable, it will be found in the summer lounges, where the patricians seem to brush up their sense of republican hauteur, though they may lay it aside on again entering metropolitan brick-and-mortar. Why a trip into the green avenues of nature should invoke a latent or artificial dignity-as the case may be-we are denied the knowledge; though certain it is that foliage and folly in this respect seem to go hand-in-hand. We have known very industrious, kind-hearted, innocent men at home to "change in a single night"-like Byron's Prisoner of Chillon—to mere human lumps of starch, with a ponderousness of self-complacency truly alarming. They squinted over their cravats, and contracted their optics, till, poor things, they seemed lamenting a perspective ophthalmic operation, and fretted secretly in consequence.

Like the British railway-carriage, we must divide the watering-places of America into three classes-first, second, and third. The first class includes a variety of mineral springs, rusty maisons, leafy alcoves, and sequestered mountain retreats, in various states remarkable only for being extremely out of the way, and consequently never popular with the million. This delightful fact is seized upon by the soi-disant aristocracy, who, tickled out of their wits to think they have found spots where the vulgar creatures" never go, box up their kids, and whistle their spaniels off to perhaps the most isolated, cheerless dens that could well be imagined. This is the violent, purse-proud

class, who, with a genealogical notion tainting their minds that they descend from some blundering old swag-bellied baron, or perhaps, when abroad, were entertained at dinner by a civil English nobleman, take it into their heads to make laughingstocks of themselves by a perpetual exclusiveness; the only good coming from which is, that general society is but little distressed by their tyrannical assumptions. The most poignant trouble this class seem to have is to find people as good as themselves with whom to associate; and their whole life is expended in one protracted regret that nature does not grow suddenly fastidious, and bring into the world only such supremely delightful people as the bleared approval of their taste may endorse.

The second class come under the head of what is called in NewYork the "cod-fish aristocracy," or butterflies of Japonicadom. These infest during the summer months such places as Saratoga, Newport, Sharon Springs, Niagara, Lake George, and the White Mountains. Without the absurd superciliousness of the classe première, they have their idiosyncracies of dignity, and peculiar ideas of life, all of which they bring into full play the moment they leave home. The heads of such families are most generally harmless old gentlemen, who, after a long life of servitude to the desk, have realized fortunes by speculations in the staples of commerce, or been favoured by the blind goddess in the department of Consols and Three-per-Cents. But though their nasals may be very high in the air, the second-classers are not positively enclosed in a magic circle. There is still a hiatus which can be entered; and once within the limits, fair treatment can at least be looked for without apprehension of disappointment. Here, too, we find match-making mammas with their daughters, manœuvring chaperons, young gentlemen of leisure just from an Italian tour, mousing bachelors of moderate incomes, in white cravats and brown wigs, superannuated fops, fast young men of reputed property, promising middle-aged lawyers, divines of flowered and budding reputation, and in short, all the elements

of what in reality form the better class of the various cities of the Union. Here and there may be observed an author who has made a hit, a newspaper correspondent of a fashionable gazette, and once in a great while a second-rate star in the dramatic hemisphere, who, having for half-a-dozen years continued to get his name in large letters on the bills, has clustered a few dollars, and started forth with his eminence as a passport, in the hope that society will honour it with a visée.

The third-class watering-places are the few days' enjoyment of men about town, shopmen, storekeepers, the odds-and-ends, the anybodies and nobodies of society-people who have just time to take a "little run" and back, as if they were in pursuit of a creditor, and anxious to hurry home with some intelligence either good or otherwise. The very best of this order, and almost escaping the classification, were it not for its proximity to two important Atlantic cities, and the extreme cheapness of the conveyance, superinduced through enterprising rivalry by unmitigated steamboat companies, is Cape May. The very bottom of the list would be, perhaps, Coney Island, near metropolitan New-York, which is during a short season of two months as grotesque a spot as could well be conceived in any part of the world. This latter place is one sought for a piece of reckless fun-where toilettes are neglected, shirt-collars worn or not, just as the individual may choose, and where, seemingly, everybody is determined to be gay or frivolous, rakish or violent, just as the whim may strike him. There are no upper or lower strata here. The "one-person-as-good-as-another" doctrine is enforced to the letter, and airs are punished with the same promptitude that the knout is brought into Russian requisition when the Czar feels himself piqued. Here there must be no cloudy ideas of superiority, or creakiness of tread; it offends the hail-fellows well met, and these are perilous people to excite. Their very gaiety is danger here; and hence it follows that a certain jaunty looseness of equality is the reigning characteristic which every comer must, and is usually willing to fall in with.