that it is difficult to catch the meagre scintillation of wit and genius entrusted to their keeping.

In private society, I have found their manners modelled after the mimickry of the ape, with the familiarity of impudent pretenders, and the consequential air of rank and authority.

I became acquainted with a wry-mouthed buffoon, who owes much of his success to the comical combination of his features, the peculiar cast of his countenance, and sharp accent in delivery, who left the counter for the stage, and after travelling through all the gradations of adversity, finds himself comfortably housed with a better coat than his father ever wore; and in him I discovered the mere property of the parrot, who could no more than chatter what he had been taught.

At once devoid of intellect and manners, he thrusts himself into society, under the arm of a gentleman of the fancy, or sports his person in an upper-benjamin on the coach-box of a peer. Expert as a mimic, he enlivens the table with his drollery; but divest him of his lessons, the country boor is more tolerable, more endurable in conversation, for he so interlards his discourse with business. scraps, that he eternally reminds you of his profession, and fatigues you by quotation. The disappointment I experienced in this player's society, made me wonder at the taste of our young gentry in their association.

I next became acquainted with another of the comic tribe, whose teeth, straggling like tomb-stones in a country church-yard, in a mouth resembling a yawning sepulchre, qualified him for the comic muse, and grafted him in the risible favour of the public. His principal merit consisted in rendering his visu lar deformity more deformed poor fellow! I pitied him; he was as great an idiot off the stage, as he appeared on.

But why should I, at this period of my correspondence, dwell on the various luminaries of our theatres, and point them out individually now, having made up my mind.

to devote a communication to you on each, when it will be my object to conform to candour, and speak of them as they are,

"Nothing extenuate, or set down aught in malice.”

At present I shall content myself with saying, that I have not discovered, either in the private memoir, or the private society of the professors of the drama, qualifications absolutely removing them from the imputations of the old laws in force against them. I do not perceive that they are less licentious now than they were centuries ago; and, although I am much tempted to raise them a few steps higher than the opinion of the ancients, yet I cannot rank them in the circle of our gentry.

I do not think with the old Roman law, that the profession of an actor is infamous, yet I do not think that it deserves a peerage! Among the Greeks, they were considered so infamous, that they were incompetent as witnesses in civil or criminal cases of law; so among the Franks, and in Scotland.

In the latter country, Eugenius IV. obliged them either to get out of the country, or obtain their living by manual labour. Now, although I am disposed to think more favourably of the art, I am not inclined to class it with the bar, the pulpit, or the senate. I cannot allow that they make good brothers-in-law to peers and baronets; nor can I consider them in any other light than the servants of the public-puppets at a shew, machines made to fret and fume for amusement, paid for tears or laughter, according to the ability displayed, and the interest they excite.

When I see these men forgetful of their station, assuming all the airs of consequence, all the importance of rank, followed by their livery-servants, and living in a style of splendour vying with our most wealthy merchants, I cannot but inquire into their pretensions, and detecting the misplaced bounty of a generous people, it will be my object to lay open their lives and actions to

consideration, to the end, whether the old laws, regulating their conduct, or modern custom, which gives them pre-eminence over the trading community, and middling gentry, is best suited to their pursuits. A contrasted compendium of ancient laws and modern customs, relative to actors, shall be the subject of my next.

VERAX.

SKETCHES FROM FASHIONABLE LIFE.

No. I.

LESSONS of morality are not more useful in stimulating a love of virtue, than is the correct portrait of human felicity, and the miseries attendant on it.

It is not the smile upon the cheek, or gaiety of manners, that indexes an easy heart; nor will the vortex of dissipation and mixture with the world, lull to eternal rest that inward remorse which feeds, like a smothering flame, upon the peace, and blights in solitude all the volatilities of liveliness and spirit inspired by association. The point of frailty is tipped with an insinuating poison, which, shunning the light, rages only in obscurity-in hours of gloom; it flies the steams of a court, haunts not the ball room or the rout, but when the steams are over, when the tapers no longer vie with atmospheric light, when the jocund sounds of joy yield to visible fatigue, then comes melancholy suffering upon the flagged spirits, stealing upon the pillow of remorse, fretting new thorns upon the brain, and with a maddening malignancy fevering the pulse, and hurrying away repose.

They are but short-sighted in their views of human nature, who, merely witnessing the florid appearance and the dimpled cheek, hail them as harbingers of happiness. The landscape of the painter is never mistaken for the country it describes; it is art, and art alone, that covers the canvas with a lovely semblance at once fascinating and admirable; but no one, witnessing its effect, would

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'doubt its production, or that it was other than paint and canvas. Is it not then a singular perverseness of human nature, to will itself blind to any other than the external appearances of an animated picture, merely made up for the day?

We see our west-end streets glitter with rank and beauty -we see the exalted female celebrated for her frailty, and we distinguish her by the elegance of her attire, and the bloom of her check. Care seems unknown to her; she smiles with ineffable sweetness; she chats with a fascinating gaiety, and salutes her hand to recognants with a bewitching vivacity which impresses her spectator with a conviction of her happiness, who sees no further than her carriage-door, and cannot pry into the secrets of her closet.

But do we not behold the cheerfulness which appears to sit upon the check of the humbler frail; she who makes a trade of her charms, and exposes them to market in the public day; who parades in the fashionable haunts; who throws out her seductive lures with bacchanalian lewdness, and invites with luxurious wantonness. In her we behold a broader colouring of happiness; in her, if we probe no further than external feature, we discover a heart at ease, and smiling in cheerfulness; but do we not know her sufferings-do we not know that paint is resorted to, to conceal the ravages of care upon her youthful check; do we not know that intoxicating spirits are resorted to, to drown reflection, and blunt its throes.

Dares the wretched female think who finds herself thrust like an article of sale upon the market, and who is forced to commune with every dissolute being, whose purse is stored by whatever means-dares she stay the raised glass from her lips to reflect upon its poisoned quality, and to think of her wretched way of livelihood: has she parents? dares she think of them ?--No, no; she pours the liquid fire down her throat, to allay the rising anguish; she at once renders the heart-breaking throb and

thread of existence weaker, and shortens her days and griefs together: she flies to wanton pleasure, and scenes of riot, not for gratification, but relief, as the poor fly, attracted by the light, seeks its destruction in the taper's flame. Vice tempts with a bouquet of roses, but presents a bunch of thorns; she insinuates, and compels her votaries to hold up the mask, but 'tis deception all. Armed with a thousand terrors, she lashes the victim she has deluded in hours of solitude, when it is madness to contemplate-misery accursed to reflect.

The subject of our memoir is a lady exalted both in rank and fortune; the wealthy daughter of an Earl, and heiress to a splendid property, derived from her maternal grand-father; she made her entré in the fashionable world at the age of sixteen, and was immediately after her introduction, written down in the matrimonial list opposite to the name of a peer, a few years her elder.

Fashion is governed by her own laws, laws grounded on the fantastic basis of her birth; they regulate the head in matters of taste and imitation, in gaiety and ostentation, but never the heart in essential matters. Lady was too much the star of the day, too much the object of notoriety, to disregard the prevailing opinions, or negative arguments in which she felt no other interest than that of conformance.

Lord —— was agreeable, fashionable, and possessed a handsome estate; she received him as her admirer, because he was pointed out to her as the object on which she was to fix her affections, and before her mind was half made up, either to a change of condition, or the inamorata himself, she consented to receive him at the altar. As the right honourable the Countess of - she for some time moved in the higher circles, envied for her apparent happiness, and the admiration of either scx; a pattern of conjugal fidelity, and estimated for other virtues, which defied the breath of aspersion, or the sneer of scandal; she brought offspring to her Lord, and no