of the poor, and depopulate the land. 66 Indeed, I am informed by a Portuguese gentleman of very high rank, who sincerely deplores the wretched state of the peasantry of his country, that the chef part of their miseries is owing not to government, but to these gentry. I know not how to give the reader a just idea of them; by privilege they are gentlemen, in manners clowns; beggars in fortune, monarchs in pride. Too contemptible for the notice of the sovereign; to excite the jealousy of the nobles, they are too weak; but too strong for the peasantry, from whom they axact adoration. They are to be seen in every town, in every village and hamlet, wrapt up to the eyes in capots, brooding over their imaginary importance. The industrious husbandman must not address them but on his knees. His fate, and that of his family, are at their mercy. On the most trivial pretence they cite him to the court of the next camarca, or shire. The wretched farmer, in vain, attempts to justify himself, and after exhausting his resources to fee lawyers, he is sure to be cast at the end of a tedious and vexatious suit. His property is then seized upon, even to his very implements; and if it be not found sufficient to answer all demands, he is doomed to perish in a prison. Many industrious families have been thus annihilated; and others, apprehensive of sharing the same fate, have forsaken their lands, and often the kingdom, to seek protection in the colonies. "Beggars are a formidable class in this country. Several laws have been enacted from time to time, to diminish the number and restrain the licentiousness of this vagrant train, but in vain. They ramble 1798. about, and infest every place, not entreating charity, but demanding it. At night they assemble in hordes at the best mansion they can find, and having taken up their abode in one of the out-offices, they call for whatever they stand in need of, like travellers at an inn; here they claim the privilege of tarrying three days, if agreeable to them. "When a gang of these sturdy fellows meet a decent person on the highway, he must offer them money; and it sometimes happens that the amount of the offering is not left to his own discretion. Saint Anthony assails him on one side, Saint Francis on the other. Having silenced their clamour in behalf of the favourite saints, he is next attacked for the honour of the Virgin Mary; and thus they rob him for the love of God. "In the year 1544, a law was made, tending to decrease the number of beggars with which the kingdom was infested. By one article it was ordained, that the lame should learn the trade of a taylor or shoemaker. That the maimed, for their subsistence, should serve those who would employ them; and that the blind, in consideration of their food and raiment, should devote their time to one of the labours of the forge, blowing the bellows. "W.h respect to diversions, bunting, hawking, and fishing, which were formerly practised, are now very much disused; indeed, there are but few parts, except in the province of Alentejo, wherein the first can be well exercised, on account of the mountainous surface of the country; besides, the want of good cattle is another obstruction; for such is the feebleness of the horses and mules, that they are obliged to employ oxen in drawing all their vehicles of burden. "Hores "Horse-racing is a sport to which they are utter strangers, nor do gentlemen ride abroad for amusement but very seldom; and then a guide must attend them, lest they should lose their way. "People of fashion, and delicate persons, usually travel in litters. And ladies sometimes take short excursions in the country, upon an ass, or a mule. "In passing through the streets, the people in general are fond of riding fast; but in the country they move very deliberately, insomuch that it is not unusual to see even the post-boy sleeping on his mule. "Billiards, cards, and dice, par, ticularly the two last, are the chief amusement of every class. Their only athletic exercise is bull-fighting, and fencing with the 'quarter staff: the latter is confined to the common people; the former has been often described." AMUSEMENTS and MANNERS of the MODERN PARISIANS. [From the First Volume of a TOUR IN SWITZERLAND, &c, by H. M. WILLIAMS.] "I F the morning at Paris is devoted to business, the even ing at least belongs to pleasure: over those hours she holds an undivided empire, but is worshipped at innumerable altars, and hailed by ever-varying rituals. During the last winter the amusements of twenty-four theatres, which were opened every night, were every night succeeded by public and private balls, in such numbers, that there were no less than two thousand ball-rooms inscribed on the registers of the police, which keeps its wakeful vigils over every sort of amusement, in all their gra dations, from the bright blaze of waxen tapers which displays the charms of nymphs dressed à la saupage or à la grec, who grace the splendid ball de Richlieu; to the oily lamp which lights up the seventh story, or the vaulted cellar, where the blind fidler's animating scrape calls the sovereign people to the cotillon of wooden shoes. "These two thousand ball-rooms of the capital afford ample proof that no revolution has taken place in the manners of the French, and that they are still a dancing nation. They have indeed of late fully demonstrated to the world that they are capable of greater things; and that when the energies of their souls are called forth, they can fol low Buonaparte across the bridge of Lodi; but when their minds return to their natural position, every barrack has a room appropriated for dancing, and the heroes of Arcole, as well as the muscadins of Paris. All knit hands, and beat the ground "The fetes of the court, it is asserted by the few persons remaining in France, by whom they were frequented, were but tawdry splendour compared with the classical elegance which prevails at the fetes of our republican contractors. As a specimen of these private balls, I shall trace a short sketch of a dance lately given by one of the furnishers of stores for fleets and armies, in his spacious hotel, where all the furniture, furniture, in compliance with the present fashion at Paris, is antique; where all that is not Greek is Roman; where stately silken beds, massy sofas, worked tapestry, and gilt ornaments, are thrown aside as rude Gothic magnificence, and every couch resembles that of Pericles, every chair those of Cicero; where every wall is finished in arabesque, like the baths of Titus, and every table, upheld by Castors and Polluxes, is covered with Athenian busts and Etruscan vases; where that modern piece of furniture a clock is concealed beneath the classic bar of Phoebus, and the dancing hours; and every chimneyiron is supported by a sphinx, or a griffin. The dress of his female visitors was in perfect harmony with the furniture of his hotel; for although the Parisian ladies are not suspected of any obstinate attachment to Grecian modes of government, they are most rigid partisans of Grecian modes of dress, adorned like the contemporaries of Aspasia -the loose light drapery, the naked arm, the bare bosom, the sandaled feet, the circling zone, the golden chains, the twisting tresses, all display the most inflexible conformity to the laws of republican costume. The most fashionable hair-dresser of Paris, in order to accommodate himself to the classical taste of his fair customers, is provided with a variety of antique busts as models; and when he waits on a lady, enquires if she chooses to be drest that day à la Cleopatre, la Dianne, or la Psyche? Sometimes the changeful nymph is a vestal, sometimes a Venus; but the last rage has been the Niobé: of late fat and lean, gay and grave, old and young, have been all à la Niobé; and the many-curled periwig, thrown aside by the fashionable class, now decorates the heads of petty shop-keepers. "The fair Grecians being determined not to injure the contour of fine forms by superfluous incumbrances, no fashionable lady at Paris wears any pockets, and the inconvenience of being without is obviated by sticking her fan in her belt, sliding in a flat purse of mo. rocco leather, only large enough to contain a few louis, at the side of her neck, and giving her snuff-box and her pocket-handkerchief to the care of the gentleman who attends her, and to whom she applies for them whenever she has occasion. "For a short time during the winter, in defiance of frost and snow, the costume of a few reigning belles was not à la grec, but à la sauvage. To be dressed à la sauvage, was to have all that part of the frame which was not left uncovered clad in a light drapery of flesh colour. The boddice under which no linen was worn (shifts being an article of dress long since rejected at Paris, both by the Greeks and the savages), the boddice was made of knitted silk, clinging exactly to the shape, which is perfectly displayed; the petticoat was on one side twisted up by a light festoon; and the feet, which were either bare or covered with a silk stocking of flesh colour, so woven as to draw upon the toes like a glove upon the fingers, were decorated with diamonds. These gentle savages, however, found themselves so rudely treated when ever they appeared, by the sovereign multitude, that at length the fashions of Otaheite were thrown aside, and Greece remains the standing order of the day. "But to return to the contractor, and his ball-After several hours had past in dancing cotillons, which the young women of Paris perform with a degree of perfection-a light nymphish grace unseen elsewhereF 2 and evil, that we must give it at least a whole chapter to itself. "At present I shall only observe, that the reign of terror has acted upon this country like some mighty pestilence, which not only sweeps away devoted millions in its fury, but leaves an obnoxious taint upon every object where it has passed.. The reign of terror has given a fatal wound to the energies of pub and after the walse, which is now never forgotten at a Paris ball, had proved that the steady heads of Niobes were not to be made giddy, the company were led to a supper furnished with eastern magnificence, and decorated with attic taste. Af ter supper the folding doors of the saloon were thrown open to a garden of considerable extent, beautifully illuminated with coloured lamps, and its trees bending with lic spirit; ordinary minds have mislavish clusters of fruits of every season, and every climate, formed of ice, while fountains poured forth streams of orgeat, lemonade, and liqueurs. taken the execrable abuses of liberty for an affect of the generous principle itself: the victims of revolutionary government have lifted up their complaining voice; all the "But while these imitators of Greece emotions of sympathy, and all the and Rome are revelling in Asiatic feelings of indignation have been luxury, you hear them lamenting called forth; and the partisans of most pathetically the subversion of the ancient regime have left no art the ancient regime; that regime, unpractised, no seduction untried, which would at least have had thus to take advantage of these dismuch of justice, that it would have positions in favour of their own retained these personages in the an- system. ti-chambers of the saloons they now "Those who have been too raoccupy; to which anti-chambers pidly enriched by the revolution they would with a counter-revolu- have endeavoured to hide the ob tion, most probably return. One is obliged to offer up an invocation to patience, when condemned to listen to their declamations against that new order of things, to which solely they owe their elevation. "There is indeed one class of persons, before whose complaints of the revolution, however bitter, the mind humbles itself in sympathetic sorrow. The poor rentier, while he sips his Spartan blackbroth, which he is forced to procure by parting, in sad gradation, with all the relicks of his former splendour, with watches, rings, furniture, and clothes: he indeed, if he complains, is to be pitied, and if he forbears complaint, is to be revered! But alas, there is so much of tragical detail in the pages of the great book; a thing which bas long since been called a great scurity of their origin, by mimicking the tones of those who have titles and honours to regret, till aristocracy has descended so low, that it will soon perhaps be exploded, like any other fashion, when taken up by the vulgar. Many of the fair wives of titled emigrants, or blooming widows of murdered nobles, who have made such second marriages, that we might well apostrophize them in the language of Hamlet: follies, will at length be ashamed of their aristocracy, when they find how successfully they are rivalled in those sentiments by their milliners and mantua-makers. A writer. of a late political pamphlet has given an admirable reason why our Parisian belles will soon lay aside the tone of eternal lamentations for the overthrow of despotism. Seven years,' says he, have already elapsed since the epocha of the revolution: : seven years is a period of some length in the history ⚫ of a youthful beauty; and a lady ⚫ will soon not be able to regret the monarchy, under the penalty of passing for old.' I believe every person who has studied the female heart, will agree with this writer, that the republic has a tolerable chance upon this principle of obtaining ere long many fair proselytes. "The fans, sparkling with spangled fleur de lys, will then be broken; the rings, bearing the insignia of royalty, will be melted down; and the porte-feuilles, and bon-bonnieres, with their sliding-lids, displaying the forbidden images of regal greatness, will no longer be borne about in a sort of triumphal manner, not from a sentiment of sorrow, by those who, attendant on their persons, and basking in their smiles, are privileged to display more than that general regret for their unhappy destiny which humanity feels; but from a sensation of vanity by those, who perhaps never breathed the same atmosphere; never, even at awful distance, gazed upon the original of those pictures which they now affect to cherish as the tender memorials of peculiar favour. These relicks, we may venture to predict, will be offered up in one mighty sacrifice at the shrine of the republic, the moment it is well un derstood that to be a republican, is to be young. "Public balls, as well as concerts, were held last winter at the Théâtre Français, which, after having been long shut up, was repaired, embellished, and baptized by the Greek name of the Odeon; and that no jealousy might exist between the balls and concerts, on account of this classical nomenclature, the balls immediately received the appellation of thiases. "But the most singular species of amusement which the last winter produced, were subscription-balls, entitled des bals à la victime. Such, and so powerful was the rage for pleasure, that a certain number of its votaries, who, during the tyranny of Robespiere, had lost their nearest relations on the scaffold, instituted, not days of such solemn, sad commemoration, as is dear to the superstition of tenderness, when, in melancholy procession, clad in sable, and wreathed with cypress, they might have knelt, a mourning multitude, around the spot where the mutilated bodies of their murdered parents had been thrown by the excutioner; and bathed the sod with. those bitter tears which filial affection, or agonized love, shed over the broken ties of nature, or of passion - no! — the commemorative rites which these mourners offered to the manes of their massacred relations, were festive balls! To these strange, unhallowed orgies, no one could be admitted who had not lost a father, a mother, a husband, a wife, a brother, or a sister, on the guillotine; but any person with a certificate of their execution in his pocketbook, not only obtained admission, but might dance as long, and as merrily as heart could wish. Had Holbein been present at suchy a spece F 3 |