smart and satirical than true; and is founded, like most satirical remarks, on a partial and perverted view of facts, which, when fairly considered, should lead to a very opposite conclusion. The Scotch have, for centuries back, distinguished themselves more, and in more departments of ambition, than any other people with a population so limited, and resources so confined. Nor is there any instance, any where, of such a progress in wealth, industry, and refinement, as has been exhibited in Scotland within the last forty years. England itself can boast of nothing like it; except, perhaps, in Lancashire, and parts of Northumberland, which partake of our northern energies; or in London, which is the natural home of all British talent. But it would manifestly be quite absurd to ascribe this vast and general advancement to any spirit of servility or cunning, or to the practice, in short, of any sordid or dishonourable arts whatsoever. Of the thousands on thousands who in that period have enriched themselves and their country by the successful pursuits of agriculture or commerce, how few can ever be named whose prosperity can be pretended to have arisen, even in part, from any base compliances or unworthy means? Or rather, how absurd is it to ascribe any general success in such pursuits to any other cause than that enterprise, talent, and integrity, by which alone it is known it can ever be assured? I have myself no doubt that our singular prosperity is to be attributed to our superior education, and to the more general prevalence among us of a certain pride of birth, which has prevented poverty from extinguishing ambition, and at once excited and facilitated those upward movements which impress upon society at large its most powerful and beneficial impulses. These, I think, are, beyond all question, the true sources, both of the extraordinary progress which has lately distinguished the whole country, and of the success which has attended the efforts of so many individuals of our nation; and it is impossible, surely, to imagine any more pure or honourable. But, at the same time, it is equally impossible to deny, that this spectacle of general advancement and success has led too many among us to look upon a rise in the world as a necessary consequence of being in it,—has made too large a share of our population impatient of remaining where their fathers left them, and impelled those who had not the means of raising themselves by merit and industry, to attempt doing so by less creditable contrivances;-and hence that pushing and cringing spirit, and that unhallowed compound of impudence and servility, with which, we are sorry to say, a much larger proportion of our countrymen may still be reproached than of our brethren of England. If these ignoble failings, however, be more common among us than elsewhere, it is some consolation to know, that it is only because a more generous spirit of ambition and independence is still more common,-and that the general tendency to advancement, which can never be general except where it springs from laudable motives, is so powerful as to impress its character even upon the undeserving, and to drive those who ought not to share in it, into the common career. Hitherto, too, I do not think that this peculiarity has done any great harm, except in exposing our national character to the sarcasms to which I have already alluded. But I am afraid this inordinate desire for advancement has lately been extending itself into quarters where its consequences will be much more pernicious, and where its ill effects will be compensated by no advantages, and admit of no palliation. In short, Sir, though I am aware that I am hazarding your popularity with many of your gallant readers, I must say, that this degrading rage for rising, or being thought to rise in the world, has spread so much among our young women, especially in this city, and other large towns, as to form not only the most prominent ridicule in their description, but also the most offensive blot in their moral character, and the most serious drawback from their amiableness and real enjoyment. In the earlier days of our prosperity, there was no such thing. When our merchants, and farmers, and smaller proprietors, were growing most rapidly rich, the females of their families were remarkable for the simplicity, and even homeliness, of their habits and deportment. They enjoyed their growing wealth and rising importance, perhaps, with some degree of awkwardness, but with a substan- fashionable life to be embodied. I tial and in-felt delight, of which the have heard all this attributed to innorace of modern pretenders can have cent vanity, and defended on account but little conception,-and were at all of the gratification which it is suppos times prepared, from the moderation ed to afford. But nothing, I think, of their wants, and their tranquil and can be more erroneous. To breed up domestic affections, to meet any re- a girl in the lower ranks of life as if verses that might befall them, not on- she belonged to the highest,-to ocly with patience, but with cheerful- cupy one, whose portion will not proness. Now, however, when the cur- vide her with necessaries, with music rent of general prosperity has been instead of needle-work, and quadrille somewhat slackened, a very different steps instead of house-keeping, might, tone prevails in all gay neighbour- perhaps, be an innocent vanity, if all hoods and places of large population. the evil consisted in the time lost and The daughters of tradesmen and shop- the money thrown away. But nobody keepers, and of small clerks and attor- who has either thought of the pronies, are all so alarmingly fine and ac- bable, or opened his eyes on the accomplished, and so eager for notice and tual, consequences, can for a moment distinction, that a quiet gentleman, if imagine that this is the whole evil. by any accident they come in his way, They who are exclusively conversant is quite at a loss what to do with them, with vanities must needs be vain; and finds them infinitely more into- and they who have no view to any lerable than the most untaught rustic thing but amusement, will infallibly of his acquaintance. In looking into acquire a disgust for duties, and an imthe families of the lower and middling patience of privations, even though aorders, one scarcely sees any where a musements should lose the power to remnant of those kind, quiet, content- amuse. But the consequences are much ed, cheerful, and dutiful creatures, more practical. The poor girl is first who used to cheer the leisure of indus- made unamiable, then ridiculous, and, trious parents, and embellish with no by a natural consequence, unhappy; mean though unpretending graces, nor is it very difficult to trace the the cherished privacy of an humble and steps of this climax, The possesdomestic life,-who used to enjoy with sion of accomplishments, or the supan innocent rapture the few simple posed possession, leads inevitably to amusements in which they allowed a desire for their display; and the themselves to participate, and return- mere habit of being occupied with ed, even from that moderate dissipa- what is understood to occupy the tion, with a fresh conviction that their rich and great, makes poor people happiness, as well as their duty, lay think a great deal more of riches and in the even tenor of an unambitious greatness than is good either for their existence-in their homes, in short, respectability or their comfort. The and in those home-bred affections, of consequence accordingly is, that our which it is the nurse and the sanc- dancing and singing misses must, if tuary. possible, get into the society in which these are the main occupations. Their birth, their connections, their fortune, and habits, all concur to exclude and to disqualify them; and so they quarrel and grow dissatisfied with all these inseparable attributes of their condi tion. They become ashamed of their fathers and mothers,-of their uncles and aunts, of the professions they follow, and the streets where they dwell, and where they hope it may not be discovered that they themselves dwell also. They heartlessly desert their school friends, and cut their humbler cousins and early and affec tionate companions; and repulse the first favourites of their bosoms who have not yet adopted the same hopes and pre This race of young women, I am sorry to say, seems now to be pretty nearly extinct, at least in our city population; and, for my part, I cannot say that that by which it has been succeeded is either so interesting or so respectable. I speak now of families with incomes of from L. 200 to L.500 a-year; in most of which you will now find, at any hour of the day, the daughters dressed in the most expensive manner, and practising their drawing, dancing, or music, instead of any other occupation;-talking of public entertainments, and retailing at the twentieth and fiftieth hand, the insipid and often licentious anecdotes in which they suppose the interest of tensions. Having thus discarded all natural affection, and all reasonable grounds of preference or esteem, they seek out some distant relation or silly pa troness who moves in a higher circle, and by every art of adulation and fawn ing, endeavour to win their way into her society;-in the course of which they not only meet with continual slights and rebuffs, but are constantly exposed to direct insults and mortifications, that could never have befallen them in their natural state of existence. If they should in part succeed, -for they are never naturalized in good company, they soon find that the manuers of polished society are not to be acquired merely by standing in its assemblies, and they come out more awkward, impudent, and uncomfortable than they went in: And thus the poor things have their affections chilled, their natural and suitable connections estranged, their reasonable hopes and prospects cut off, and their homes made hateful; that they may be laughed at by those they ape, hated by those they outshine, and deservedly despised both by those they court and those whom they affect to disdain. The most common and the most dangerous compromise is, the formation of a third or fourth rate circle of imitative dissipation; in which the usages of high life are parodied in a style at once ludicrous and lamentable;-where the miserable jokes and discarded slang of a former season are repeated with vulgar additions,-where last year's tunes are screamed to distempered pianos, and horrible quadrilles mis-performed to more horrible music; and where, though every thing is at least as vulgar as in the days of their fathers, there is no vestige of heartiness, simplicity, nature, or content. The vanities and follies of the rich and great have at least the apology of being suitable to their condition and native to their place; and, while they interfere but little with duties which they can afford to perform by deputy, they neither hurt their fortune nor expose them to derision, nor separate them from their kindred, nor alienate them from their natural and proper associates. When they are imitated by the poor, however, they have all those tremendous consequences; and render that state of life, and that class of society, which used to be on the whole both the most happy and the most respectable, at once wretched and contemptible. I am afraid you may think me rather more serious and severe than the subject requires. But I am quite in earnest in thinking, that the style of education and amusement, or occupation rather, to which the daughters of our middling families are now very generally abandoned, is a greater source of actual unhappiness and degradation,-of domestic discomfort, and hourly repining,-than most of the vices and calamities that are commonly lamented with more tragic emphasis. Dissipation is but a poor employment at the best; and it is of some consequence, I think, that its range should not be extended; but dissipation, deprived of its elegance, of its ease, of its light-heartedness and security, and distinguished only by the neglect of all private duties, the degrading jealousies, intrigues, and submissions, the coldness of heart, the indelicacy and embarrassments that invariably attend its transmission to humbler life, is a nuisance and a vice of the first magnitude; and calls for all the castigation which the moralist and the censor can inflict. Nobody could be more averse than I am to establishing any insolent or aristocratical distinctions between the higher and lower classes of our population. But it is of no little importance that the middling class should not be altogether annihilated,-a consummation to which I conceive the system of manners of which I have been speaking is fast hastening. Every one who is above the lowest, now insists upon assimilating at all points, especially in the manner in which he breeds up his children, with the highest; and, though they are far enough from acknowledging the equality, yet all the appropriate and discriminating virtues and felicitics of the former are lost in the attempt. There is, beyond all question, much more dignity in maintaining our own place with propriety, than in courting perpetual repulses in endeavouring to push into that of another; and it is more like servants than persons of liberal condition, to be talking continually of their superiors in rank and fortune, and busying themselves about the affairs of persons who never condescend to think of them, and with whom they have, in reality, no personal relation. To the Tune of "The Old Courtier and the New." [We had scarcely put the preceding article to the press, when we received from a correspondent the following song, written not "Sixty" but forty "years since." It may be amusing to our readers to compare the would-be fine ladies of the present day as they are painted, we trust, somewhat satirically in the above letter,-with the ladies at different periods of former times. We hope, on the comparison of the whole, that we shall not be under the necessity of saying with Horace, Damnosa quid non imminuit dies? WITH an old song made by an old ancient pate, Of old ancient customs long since out of date; Of ancient times when women did not scold or prate, For the ladies, Heaven mend 'em, are grown very impudent of late, Unlike the ladies of old times, With an old fashion for ladies to stay abroad at school, At least long enough to learn not to play the fool, With an old governess who had absolute dominion and rule, And look'd as grave and demure as an old swan in a pool, Like the ladies of old times, &c. With an old sampler whereon was work'd the Lord's prayer, And the ten commandments done in small space with neatness and care, And mark'd in one corner with a lock of the lady's own hair, And many little stags and hounds taking the air, Like the ladies of old times, &c. With a healthy complexion and colour unfaded, Which needed not a calash or umbrella to shade it, -But the ladies of our days are not so inclin'd, As by the ensuing ditty you shall quickly find, Like the ladies of modern times, Who talk a great deal of nonsense, and think it very pat, Which is call'd by the young gallants very agreeable chat; But if question'd in their catechism look very flat, And declare, with an air of surprise, we know nothing of that, Like the ladies of modern times, &c. With a new fashion of going to school to learn outlandish dances, Balancé, rigadoon, pas grave, and other prances, With a new governess who writes plays and romances, Legendary tales, epitaphs, and such idle fancies, Like the ladies of modern times, &c. With a new muslin gown never work'd on for more than a minute, With a wonder that we ever had the courage to begin it, With a new purse declared very pretty by all who have seen it, Tho' perhaps when 'tis finished there is nothing to put in it, Like the ladies of modern times, &c. With the best French rouge and pearl pow der for the face, With a tête de mouton, poudre d'Artois, and pomade de grasse, With new flashy gowns, and soufflé gauze to look like lace, Balloon hats, cork rumps, and cestuses to keep every thing in its place, Like the ladies of modern times, &c. With new scribble scrabble letters full of sentiment and stuff, Of which read two lines and you've read enough, My dearest creature, I have got the sweetest muff, Apropo there is an old fashion now reviv'd-Tis Queen Elizabeth's ruff, Like the ladies of modern times, &c. With a new custom of staying up all night at quadrille, And coming down stairs next day in dishabille, No wonder the ladies now a days look so very ill, And that they have fainting fits and hysterics whenever they will, Like the ladies of modern times, &c. "But, thank the stars for them, such as they are, and we all may be very glad, "To take what we can get, since no better's to be had, «For the life of woman haters, tho' sensible, is sad, "Nor is he to be envied who never went mad After the ladies of modern times, REMARKS ON THE AUTUMNAL EXCURSION, OR SKETCHES IN TEVIOTDALE; WITH OTHER POEMS. BY THOMAS PRINGLE. Edinburgh, 1819. HORACE's men, Gods, and columns, have, we suspect, a mortal antipathy to a small foolscap octavo volume of poesy, wire-wove, and hot-pressed, proceeding from an author without a name, or a name which nobody knows. As for men, they never open it,--the Gods have decreed that it should rank next to a nonentity, and it remains accordingly for months together scarcely visible on the shelves of the bibliopolists, till it is swept away to make room for some new, and probably equally successful candidate for immortality. These mighty arbiters of the fates of authors think themselves entitled to determine, without any closer inspection, that none but mediocres poetae can possibly appear in such a mediocrity of dimension;-the tiny tomes are, from their very birth, predestined to perdition Quos dulcis vitæ exsortes, et ab ubere raptos Abstulit atra dies, et funere mersit acerbo. We are far from being inclined to dispute the Rhadamanthine justice of this decree. There can be no doubt, among other advantages, that it saves an immensity of trouble to critics; nor can the irritabile genus themselves be well offended that no notice should be taken of what can with difficulty be seen. We do not, however, go quite into the supposition that there is an absolute physical impossibility that poetry, and good poetry too, may exist under so meagre a measurement, and such nameless pretensions. We even recollect that no less considerable a poem than the Pleasures of Hope first appeared in this diminutive and unaccredited form; and we would rather advise our readers, when they have nothing better to do, to take the trouble of examining into these little fairy favours when they come in their way, were it for the mere curiosity of discovering what they may contain; and if they do not often find in them brilliant effusions of genius, we can assure them that they may yet frequently light upon very pleasing compositions. There can be no hesitation, for instance, in giving, at least, this charac ter to the poetry before us. It does not, perhaps, possess many indications of those loftier endowments of imagination, invention, or passion, which form the immortalizing ingredients of poetry. But there is in it, we think, a very singular delicacy of taste and sentiment, the more remarkable, as it is evidently quite simple and unstudied. The longest poem in the volume is an Epistle to a Friend, written, as it appears, from the mere impulse of sensibility, and without the slightest view to publication. Yet there is an elegance and finish throughout which the greatest labour could scarcely have improved; there is a feeling true to nature, and to the associations of scenery and of home, that is always delightful when it seems to flow from the heart; and which strikes, at times, from the living form of creation a character of beauty, which the highest poetical powers have not always been able to reach. A poem of this kind may, perhaps, be in a great measure a lucky |