their leader. In common cases he would be called an absolute dolt, a most unadulterated fool; but being the son of a king, he must only be designated as 66 a weak prince.' I saw him once at the annual miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, where, by the by, we heretics are always welcome, on the supposition that it is impossible to resist the conviction of our senses. By the way, too, it is one of the most clumsy and palpable impositions I ever saw; but at the conclusion, the archbishop always gravely cautions his hearers against the illusions of superstition! On this occasion, the blood being rather longer than usual in liquefying, as the archbishop's hands were a little cold, the assembled multitude began to threaten the saint with a pelting. But the prince! I shall never forget the stupid stare which preceded, and the still more stupid astonishment which succeeded the miracle. I thought his great leaden eyes would have darted forth like two bullets. That such a man should be selected to lead a revolution! why, he is hardly fit for a king. But I am rambling from my subject.

I would be running against the whole current of human nature, not to take it for granted that the nobility and gentry, who make such liberal allowances for the vices of their princes, will not be inclined to shelter themselves under this rule of relaxation. I am almost afraid, indeed, that this kind allowance for the vices of others is, one half of the time, nothing more than the expectation of a quid pro quo on their part. The nobility and higher orders, like the princes of the blood, are likewise obliged to marry for the good of their families; to increase their wealth, or extend their influence by means of powerful connexions. Nothing is more natural than that these also should claim an exemption from the ordinary rules which

govern common people, who are so insignificant that they can marry for pure love. That they make full use of this exemption is proved by the records of Doctors Commons, and a great many instances that are only whispered in fashionable circles. I have heard enough of these to stain almost half the peerage with suspicion of illegitimacy. But I do not know that these stories are true; nor in fact, do I believe one half of them; for the present race of young nobility bear ample testimony to the legitimacy of their descent, by their frivolity and extravagance.

It is indeed impossible to conceive the capricious, unheard of extravagance of the rich, which actually seems to keep pace with the increasing miseries of the poor. Every where, except among a very few of the old-fashioned nobility and gentry, I see the most wasteful follies, the most unbounded love, nay, passion, for expensive pageantry and valgar ostentation. If a lady of fashion give a party, nothing will satisfy her, unless fruits equally tasteless and expensive are served up with a profusion equally senseless and absurd; and she would be miserable for life, if the number and the cost of each were not advertised in all the fashionable newspapers. The particulars of her dress, the quantity of diamonds, and the net value of the lady as she stood in her shoes, must also be published, in the style of a vender of quack-medicines, while every thing, which real good breeding and well constituted gentility would avoid and despise, is said and done, to make her equals envy, her inferiors despair, and the hungry multitude become more fully aware of their misery by comparison. It often makes me smile even in the bitterness of my feelings, to hear the lady of the gala simpering out, "Two guineas a-piece," when asked the price of such peaches as the pigs run away from in New-England.

Some of them are so impenetrable, that a young lady actually, as it is said, distorted her lower jaw in attempting to make an impression upon one of these hardened sinners. In strict justice to the peach I must say, however, that there was a difference of opinion on the subject, it being held by some, that the mishap was owing to a desperate fit of yawning, such as is common at an English party of pleasure. I am inclined to this last theory, having twice come within an ace of a similar catastrophe at a party, where there were several literary phenomena, and the peaches cost two guineas apiece.

This extravagance is held by the adepts in political economy to be a great national blessing. If, for instance, Madame Catalani receive a few thousand guineas for singing "God shave the king," as she always pronounces it, at galas and concerts, it is all for the good of the people of England, because she goes and spends the money in France or Italy, or invests it in the English funds, where the people have the pleasure of paying the interest. The great sums in fact, thus squandered away by the extravagance of the court and nobility, never return to the tenantry, from whom they are originally derived. That portion which does return is so long in coming, that poverty too often gets the start of it. But the greatest part goes to foreigners, without circulating at all among the community. Flatterers, dancers, singers, pimps—and a thousand useless, or worse than useless, people, share the spoil of prodigality, and carry the greatest part out of the country. It is only those immediately about the court, or who can gain the patronage of some court sycophant, that partake of this expenditure, or receive any benefit from it, either directly or indirectly. England at this moment, and most especially London, exhibits a strik

ing proof, how little the boundless prodigality of a court and nobility can contribute to the real comfort of the community at large. There is more extravagance and more misery in London, than in any other city of the world.

In every country, which has been settled long enough to exhibit the invariable course of all earthly communities from rudeness to order, from order to refinement, from refinement to luxury, and from luxury to ruin, it has always happened, that the example has been first set among the higher orders. To them we may trace elegance and refinement, and from them is derived that example of profligate, luxurious sensuality, which corrupts the lower orders, and at length ends in the downfall of states and empires. When therefore the Quarterly Review, and the other stern advocates of despotism, talk of the ignorance, corruption, and wickedness of the lower orders, instead of deriving all this from Paine's works, Cobbett's tracts, and Carlile's and Hone's pamphlets, they should tell the honest truth, that it is the example of the king, the clergy, and nobility, that has descended to a people, already fitted by their poverty to adopt the worst models. To a people prepared by education and example, precept and habit, to look up to princes and nobles; the fashion which is set them by these is more powerful and efficacious, than the best moral codes, and the most orthodox exhortations, enforced by abundance of societies for the bettering of mankind. There is hardly a man in England, but what is acquainted with the character of the king and princes at least. When therefore he is exhorted by a society, of which one of these royal sinners is the president or patron, it is much more likely he should recollect the example of the patron, than the exhortations and precepts of the society. It is not indeed very likely, that a poor person will imitate a

king in the dignity or splendour of his vices. But the king's bad example will, in all probability, weaken bis respect for virtue itself, and produce an aptitude for the vices within his own sphere of temptation. Kings are not near so far off as they used to be. The people, at least those of Europe and this country, have their eyes upon their monarchs, who also begin to approximate themselves a little nearer the level of human nature. Their vices and their virtues, therefore, become more direct objects of affection or dislike, imitation or abhorrence; and are likely to exercise a more powerful influence on both manners and morals. Among the bigoted barbarians of the middle ages, neither the vices of a king or his priesthood were objects of much consequence to the people, except as they affected their temporal concerns, because both were contemplated with a stupid reverence, which fettered the judgment, and overawed the imagination. They did not apply the same rules, nor did they estimate their conduct by the standard they used in estimating their own. But the period is approaching, or rather has already arrived, when kings must pay homage to their people, at least by observing those outward rules of decorum and virtue, without which an ordinary man cannot be respected, and a monarch will no longer be permitted to reign. It was in these virtues and talents that the office of king originated, and it is only by meriting the dignity, in like manner, that it can endure beyond a certain period of human patience and human ignorance, unless, indeed, as too often happens, the people sink in the scale with their king. I do not think it is refining too much, to state, as one of the causes of petty crime in this country, the mode in which so many of these cases are presented to the public in the newspapers. Almost every one of these has a column, and sometimes