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a spectacle, no doubt he would have enriched his death-dance with new images, and led forward each gay nymph by an attendant headless spectre. The indignant cry of public opinion, however, was at length heard above the music of the walse and the cotillon; and the bal à la victime exists no longer to bear its powerful testimony to a depravation, not merely of manners, but of the heart.

"If, in the winter, conformably. to our Grecian ideas at Paris, con-. cert-rooms became Odeons, and the Niobés and the Titus's danced in a thiase, summer can hoast of more than equal honours; since then we never tread but on attick ground, and never suffer ourselves to be pleased but when pleasure presents herself with a classical appellation. Witness, ye gardens of Tivoli, ye bowers of Idalia, ye winding walks of Elysium, ye grottos of Venus, ve vales of Tempe, ye groves of Thessaly! witness with what fond alacrity the lovers of antiquity-fly in multitudes to your enchanting ecesses, where the arching trees are hung with innumerable lamps of varying colours, where the ear is exhilarated with the sounds of music, and the eye is charged with the movements of the dance; and where every evening the hour of ten serves as a general signal, at which the whole city of Paris seems one vast theatre for the display of fire-works. A stranger who should enter this city at night by the bridge of Neuilly, might suppose that he had reached this scene of great events at some important epocha, which had occa sioned a general rejoicing. On his right he would discern the lights of Bagatelle, beaming through the Bois de Boulogne, and would pass close to the brilliant entrance of Idalia; on his left he would be dazzled by the

illuminations of the Elysium; while, as he advanced, he would discern, above every quarter of the town, the tall sky-rockets darting their vivid flash, and would hear in all directions the light explosions of enchanted palaces, with bright arcades and fairy columns ;

The crackling flames appear on high, And driving sparkles dance along the 'sky.'

"Bagatelle alone, the onee gay retreat of the comte d'Artois, is suffered, by our Grecian amateurs, to retain its old appellation in favour of the regal images which it brings to memory. What food for the ramblings of the mind along the paths of history, when it contrasts the light French modern graces of Bagatelle, with the massy, Gothic gloom of Holyroodhouse! It may be observed, that the persons who are for ever lamenting the subversion of the ancient regime, are not prevented by their regrets from giving all the encouragement in their power to those who convert one palace after another into scenes of public amusement; and that they eagerly purchase for half a crown, the privi lege of treading gaily every evening with the plebeian multitude, those magnificent gardens and sumptuous hotels, of which the possessors have, for the most part, as in former proscriptions, paid for their beautiful retreats at Alba, with their lives. But while these lovers of despotism forget their regrets in their pleasures, the philosophic mind wanders often in musing mood along these festive haunts, where the most singular combinations crowd upon reflection; and, amidst the glowing enthusiasm of hberty, mourns those partial evils that have clouded its

brightness

brightness, and abhors those cruel abuses that have sullied its cause! When the multiplied engagements of the evening do not offer leisure for an excursion to Tivoli, or a trip to Idalia, the gay world at least find sufficient time in the interval between the play and the petit souper, to lounge for half an hour at one of the fashionable glaciers. A glacier is a sort of coffee house, established in the fine hotels mous wants of their customers."

of emigrants, splendidly illuminated, open to persons of both sexes, and where you pay for your admission by eating ices, for which there is now so extraordinary a demand in Paris, that if the following winter should prove mild, the ice-purveyors will perhaps be forced to send to the department of Mont Blanc, in order to furnish themselves with means of supplying the enor

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CLASSICAL AND POLITE CRITICISM.

On the VARIATIONS of ENGLISH PROSE, from the REVOLUTION to the present TIME, by THOMAS WALLACE, A.B. and M.R.I.A.

[From the Sixth Volume of the TRANSACTIONS of the ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY.]

HE progress of language

perfection which constitute a nation

become copious, energetic and correct. In the compositions of Homer we find, perpaps, as much strength, harmony, and expression, as in those of any subsequent Greek writer; and yet unquestionably, in Homer's day, Greece had made no very considerable approaches towards excellence in the arts, skill in government, or refinement in manners.

human mind. They proceed to gether with equal step from the rudeness of barbarism toward that state beyond which improvement cannot go, in which language exhibits the highest polish of elegance and accuracy, and the mind exerts all its faculties in their full force. So true is this, that there cau scarcely be found any period in the history of any people when the state of their language did not accurate-"But if in Greece we find an ly correspond with the state of their exception to the rule which marks polity and manners, and when a on the scale of language the imsagacious observer might not have provement of the national mind, ascertained, with tolerable exact in modern Europe we meet abunness, the excellence and refinement dant illustration of its truth. Here, of these from the qualities of their is it will be found, that until settled terary productions. Hence the in- government, founded on permsvestigations of the philologist be- nent system, succeeded the fluctuacome useful as they furnish import- tions of despotism or anarchy, and, ant aids to the researches of the his instead of the ferocious and whimtorian, and the speculations of the sical manners of the middle ages, moralist. introduced the milder and more rational habits of modern times, until, in a word, the light of philosophy shone in our horizon, and scattered the thick darkness which hung around the human intellect,

"To this general rule there is, however, one exception. Long before the manners of the Greeks bad reached that refinement, or their polity had been matured to that

the.

the language of every people in Europe corresponded in coarseness and confusion with their modes of life and of thinking. Of this England herself is perhaps the most striking instance. With a constitution which vibrated long between opposite extremes before it finally settled in the middle point where liberty as well as truth is found, the moral character of her people was vague and changeful. Agitated long by civil contests, and depressed by the barbarous and deteriorating principles of the feudal policy, the human mind could not, and in fact did not, until a very late period, emerge from that deep grossness into which by those causes it had been sunk. The language of England during those times corresponded with her circumstances. Rude and anomalous, at once superfluous and deficient, it was equally a stranger to precision and to grace: fixed by no standard, though it abounded in words, it was yet, because those words were vaguely used, incapable of expressing with accuracy any nice complication of thought. While men were unac customed to think with precision on moral topics, the whole class of moral terms must have been of changeful and indeterminate meaning; and while these topics were not the frequent subjects of living speech or written discourses, those few but important words which are used, not to designate things, but to exhibit the various positions of the mind in thinking, to shew the relation which it means to establish between two propositions, or the different parts of the same proposition, must have been awkwardly and often improperly used. Such a state of language could have existed only where taste was yet unknown, and the powers

of the human mind yet uncultivated.

"Two causes contributed to raise the English language from this degraded state. First, the Reformation, which, by obtruding on the attention moral subjects of the most momentous concern, made it in some measure necessary for men to think with more precision and closeness : secondly, the subsequent disputes between the crown and people on the limits of prerogative and popular right, which continued from the time of Elizabeth to the revolution, and which corroborated into habit that mode of closer and more abstract thinking which the Reformation had introduced. According to the theory we have adopted, this change should have induced an improvement in style: it did so; the English language rose rapidly from the low state in which it stood in the beginning of the reign of Henry the Eighth, until, at the accession of William the Third, it had acquired a distinguished degree of excellence. This excellence, however, was but comparative, and.appears rather when we consider its former defects, than its subsequent improvements; for, from the time of the revolution to the present day, a numerous succession of fine writers have laboured with success to add to its elegance, copiousness and strength. What they have done, and how far they have raised the English language above its former humble level, will be best known by considering the variations of style which, within that period, it has undergone.

"In order to give a history of these variations, it is not necessary to engage in a dissertation on the style of every author of character who has written within the period which we consider; nor indeed

would

would such a work be practicable within the limits of a short essay; it will answer the end at which we aim, to point out the general characteristics which have successively distinguished the style of English prose within that time, without engaging in a minute description of the peculiarities of individual writers, except those by whom remark able variations have been intro duced, and whose distinguished excellence has procured for those variations a general adoption. Even this task, however, though less laborious and less prolix than the other, is not without its difficulty. Between the coarse homeliness of Burnet and the elaborate polish of Gibbon; between the loose and uneven composition of Tillotson, in which the ray of genius is so often obscured by the medium through which it passes, and the close precision of Johnson, through which the bright idea shines with steady lustre (if, indeed, it does not from the expression itself derive much of that hustre), the difference is great indeed, and to perceive it requires but little exertion of critical discerument. But other writers have varied essentially the style of English prose, between whose respective merits the difference is neither so great nor so obvious: here lies the difficulty. The difference of opposite colours, is easily seen, and not difficult to be described; but of the variety of mixing tints which lie between the two extremes, to mark with accuracy the points of transition; to catch the almost evanescent distinctions between collateral shades, and exhibit them with truth and steadiness to the eye, is a work for which talents less common are necessary.

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had been greatly improved, it was notwithstanding very far from being faultless. Scarcely any single epithet, indeed, can be found to describe its errors. It was loose, negligent, capricious, and inaccurate: the periods were long and complicated; their parts clumsily connected; circumstances which were necessary to be introduced into a sentence were generally placed injudiciously; and in many instances clauses were appended which should have been formed into distinct sentences. Even of those writers who ranked highest for composition, the greater number abounded in synonimes, a sure mark, not merely of negligent composition, but of loose and inaccurate habits of thought. In the selection of words they were either negligent or unskilful, for, in a multitude of instances, of two words which seemed to court choice, they chose that which, by verging on burlesque, tended to degrade the subject, rather than that which would have suited its dignity. In metaphor they were copious; but their metaphors partook of the general character of their composition: they were often ill selected and frequently ill managed. Even when chance or choice produced a good figure, it was spun out through so many minute circumstances, that judgment was disgusted and attention fatigued. Hence in those writers may be found pages filled with materials, which, under the management of correct taste, might have been raised to sublimity or polished to elegance, but which, in their hands, degenerate into quaintness and puerility. The rules for regulating the use of metaphor they frequently inverted, and instead of recurring to the metaphoric expression when the

literal

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