a single luxury, without being taxed for it? If they eat, their food is taxed; drink, their wines are taxed; are waited upon, their domestics are taxed; ride, their coaches are taxed; look out, their windows are taxed. And all this, besides supporting these very poor, and being called upon for charity in every shape. A man, says an intelligent writer, may have himself and his family nursed, clothed, fed, educated, established, physicked, and buried, for nothing, in England.

Our American feels happy that we are better off. We are so, no thanks to ourselves. Is our system of poor rates and laws any better? We are free to say that they are only less liable to objection than the English, because, owing to the state of our country, their influence is not so much felt. We have started with the same errors. We build palaces for the poor, and invite them to inhabit there; we tax all who are above going into them, to support those who are not above it. Luckily, wages are so high, and population so sparse, that there still remains an inducement for the labourer to keep out of the alms-house, although our wise legislators are giving them every inducement to come in. Public charities, as long as they are confined to those unable to provide for themselves, are all very well; but when they invite persons to come and be fed, and come and be clothed, they take away inducements to labour, promote idleness and crime, and at length transfer the happy pauper from their protecting arms to the jail.

Well, the people of England are become alive to their position. There is no rebellion, said Lord Bacon, like that of the belly. Already has the ball begun to move, which we fear may become the car of Juggernaut to its propellers. Already has dread reform waved her weapons over the wealthy. Yet, while we cannot gainsay that the abuses are many and vast, we fear and tremble for the result. But we digress.

Our American, in consequence of indisposition, is obliged to retire from the city, and pass some time at Islington. He here presents us with a new and well-drawn picture of suburban life, which we must give our readers. It puts us in mind of Geoffrey Crayon.

"In these my rambles over Islington and its pretty neighbourhood, I made some remarks for myself, and was assisted to others by the maturer observation of my friend, concerning the habits and manners of the inhabitants of this region, which excited my curiosity and tended to amuse me. It seems that it is inhabited almost entirely by retired tradespeople; a general phrase, which includes almost every one in this country below the dignity of a gentleman, or man living without occupation on his means, and on the labours of his ancestors. People engaged in business here have a sufficiently general practice, which it were well that we imitated in America, of realising their property the moment they have secured a competence, and, investing it in some safe and con

venient way, so as to yield them a moderate interest, retiring either to the country or to some suburban situation, where they may compass the luxury of a garden-spot, there to pass the evening of their days in tranquillity. In the neighbourhood of Islington there are many pretty and modest villas thus inhabited, and in the town itself frequent ranges of dwellings, called places or terraces, which are constructed on a uniform design, frequently standing back from the road, and having verandas in front, with a common garden laid out for the resort of the inmates. These houses, though mostly unpainted and of a gloomy hue without, gave evidence within of great neatness and comfort. The windows were tastefully curtained, having blinds to obstruct the gaze of passers in the street, or else the same effect more tastefully produced by means of shrubs and flowers, amid which hung the frequent prison-house of lark or canary.

"Some of these retired citizens keep lumbering carriages, covered with heavy armorial bearings. Here there are no equipages with simple ciphers, or without arms of some sort, which are generally largely and glaringly painted, and conspicuous in the inverse ratio of the established dignity of the aspirant. One of the earliest uses that is made of wealth is to pay a handsome fee to a herald, for the contrivance of an elegant coat of arms.

"There is one thing, however, in which they evince more sense than we do; that is, in never setting up a coach until their fortune entitles them to do so. Each graduates his expenses nicely to his means; if they do not justify the extravagance of a pair, he contents himself with an enormous fly, a species of close carriage, drawn by one horse, and of which two horses would stand in awe over our rugged pavements. Others rejoice in the possession of a huge phaeton, capable of containing the entire household, which is drawn by a single family horse, a meekspirited jade, which jogs along with a millhorse perseverance-an air of motiveless and heartless dulness, in happy accordance with the heavy, stupid looks of the group which he drags after him. Here and there antiquated cobs, which in their younger days had carried their impatient masters to the scene of money-making in a twinkling, now crept over the ground calmly, contrasting singularly with the rapid movements of the young traders, the sons probably of the former in many instances, who, starting in life on their own account, seemed to be full of motive, and as greedy to gain time as the others were anxious to consume it.

"Those, indeed, who had achieved the competence which had been the cherished object of their hopes, seemed fo be far more miserable than those who were in pursuit of it. The retired trader was ever ready to pull up his equally willing steed, which had learned, by long practice, to adapt itself to the habits of its master, to talk with some equally timeridden worthy of trade and the stocks. Others lounged at the corners, or before their doors, speaking in monosyllables or speaking not at all, and gazing with vacant and envious stare upon the passing whirl of the busier population. It was difficult, indeed, to imagine people more evidently at loss and out of tune. The retirement and competence which they had sighed for through the earlier years of a busy life, seemed to have become, by robbing them of their occupation, the source of their misery.

"Perhaps the morning with its freshness of sensations, physical and moral, agreeably ministered to by breakfast, and the newspaper, which circulated from house to house at the cheap rate of a shilling a week, was the season in their existence freest from corroding ennui, and coming nearest to a negative something that might be called happiness.

The long interval to dinner and the joint, though broken by luncheon and a walk, perchance made in unconscious habit to the crowded region of the city, or in bad weather passed in vacant gaze from the window, was yet, doubtless, to them, one of awful duration. Dinner was succeeded by another fatal pause, until the timely tea resisted in good season the growing drowsiness. The rubber of whist, eked out by dummie, if the smallness of the family circle made his assistance indispensable, gave the mercy-stroke to the day, which finished with them as it began, with a war against time, implacably carried on. Such, as far as I could learn or observe for myself, is the daily picture of the life of the

retired citizen of London.

"But perhaps it would be wrong to say that the whole year revolves for them in joyless and unbroken monotony. One should at least except the annual visit to the theatre, to see the king and queen at the play, when is presented the singular spectacle of an immense house, crowded with living masses from pit to gallery, with two people looking at the entertainment, and all the rest looking at them. It is on this occasion, more than any other, that they nourish that sentiment of loyalty which is natural to every English bosom, and which, evincing itself in love and veneration to one individual, is yet, though perhaps unknown to him who feels it, only a concentration of patriotism, an ardent love of country, fixing itself on the man who represents its sovereignty, and who is, as it were, only England itself personified. When an Englishman listens with rapture to that noble anthem,- God save the King,' it is not attachment to a bloated profligate such as George IV., that animates and lifts him to the clouds, but rather the thought of England, with her greatness and her triumphs, which kindles the glow at his heart.

"This is the citizens' jubilee,-this their annual holiday,-purchased by the endurance of a year made up of monotonous days, succeeded by nights yet more monotonous. They would die, as they doubtless often do, of apathy, were it not for the abiding excitement kept alive by the perpetual dread of being robbed and murdered, and the interest derived from their nightly precautions against such a consummation; from bolting and chaining the doors, seeing the window bells set in a condition to sound should a thief attempt to break in and steal, and taking good care that the rattle is in readiness by the bedside, to spring suddenly, if necessary, at the window, and bring the assistance of the watch. Such a life must necessarily produce singular and unbounded eccentricity of character, and would, if studied, furnish the oddest and most varied subjects to the dramatist. It begets, in many cases, disease of both mind and body, inducing every species of hypochondria, and leading to the swallowing of the thousand pills and philtres which are the prevailing taste of the land, until at length the fear of dying drives them to selfslaughter.

"It has often been said that a great city is a great solitude. Of none is this so entirely true as of London; for the dread of intercourse, and the fear of contamination, must act either upwards or downwards in the case of every one, where the grades and classes are as numerous as the individuals, each of whom comes armed to the conflict with his separate and peculiar pretensions. The evils that result from this life of isolation, are unbounded. It must not only be productive of much misery, but of vice also. The young women, returning from the boarding-school with such lessons of virtue as they may have learned there, pass their time in a corroding solitude, the prey of that ill-nature which developes itself in families that are strangers to the checks of social intercourse and observation. Meantime they continue their daily walks to

the nearest circulating library, and come home charged with novels and romances, which, instead of strengthening and giving a healthy tone to the mind, fill it with artificial notions and preposterous views of life, which there is no real observation of the world to disprove and counteract, thus delivering it up to false and fanciful day-dreams and unreal reveries. With little opportunity, in the well-nigh total absence of social intercourse, of forming a virtuous and well-judged attachment, they must be content, in general, to take such husbands as Providence may send them; and without the enlightening and guiding advantage of public opinion, which in society assigns to each pretender his proper position, must be content to choose at hazard, with the obvious risk of falling into the hands of adventurers and sharpers.

"Of all the various classes of people in England, these retired citizens are they who would gain most by emigration to America. Any of those who live obscurely and humbly in Islington, might lead a life of elegance and luxury on the noble banks of the Hudson. There, in a healthful climate, strangers to all noxious exhalations, and in the presence of whatever is beautiful or grand in natural scenery, one of these men might, for the sum of five thousand pounds, become possessor of an estate of three or four hundred acres, capable, by tolerable cultivation, of rendering an interest of six or eight per cent. upon the purchasemoney."

Our traveller does not extend his observation to the country of England, if we except a few remarks in the course of his ride to Brighton. This we regret. Of all the nations of the world, England is pre-eminent in the charms of her country life. In every phase of it, from baronial castles down to cottages, it is perfect of its kind. The strong wish of the people is, to be able to reside in the country; and all that art and luxury have or can devise for, its embellishment, has been put into operation. "If there be any thing," says our writer, "that I covet for my countrymen, it is the sweetly rural tastes of the children of this land." "It is, therefore, that I wish to see cherished among us, tastes calculated to develope virtues so essentially republican. And if I were now to seek for generous and honourable feelings in my country, it would not be among the crowds who congregate in cities about gilded liberty-caps, to shout their anathemas against the sovereignty of the people, but rather among our honest and native-born yeomanry, at once the cultivators and proprietors of the soil, who constitute the best safeguard of the sacred rights of property, and of American liberty." This conclusion is of a very clap-trap order. We do not see exactly why one of the above mentioned city crowd, who happened to own a house or a mortgage, should not be as anxious to protect his property, as if he was a cultivator of the soil. Interest, we take it, is the main-spring of human actions, and the great conservative principle, and not rural tastes and country air.

After a visit to the Pavilion, and seeing a hurdle-race at Brighton, ennui drives our "American" back to London, in

time for the Christmas festival. He goes to the two great the atres on Christmas eve, and in both places finds the audience most disgusting. Let no Mrs. Trollope, hereafter, talk against ours:"In the places of inferior price, the occupants were sitting in their shirt-sleeves, their coats hanging down before the boxes, and sometimes falling; bottles were passing from mouth to mouth, while immediately below me, sat two ruffians with their sweethearts, who, in addition to their bottle of gin, had a glass to drink it from, either because their tastes were more scrupulous, or because they had an eye to the just distribution of their 'lush.' One of them, who had but half a nose, kept his arms about the neck of his greasy partner, and indulged in open dalliance, in which, indeed, he was' supported by the example of many others, in the face of the audience." The shocking debaucheries of the season are forcibly depicted, and a strong comparison drawn between them and the celebration of a similar festival witnessed at Mahon.

Did our limits permit, we would gladly give some extracts from the American's description of Westminster Abbey, the Poet's Corner, and the "den of a great publishing lion," in London. But for these, and many equally interesting passages, we must refer our readers to the book itself.

A sudden call to become bearer of despatches to Spain, causes our "American" to leave England abruptly, though apparently nothing loth.

In a postscript, he states that he returned some months subsequently to the period to which this work relates, and traveled with far greater gratification than on his first visit. We regret that the causes he mentions should have deterred him from the publication of these subsequent observations, which he might have so far generalised, we think, as to have avoided the stigma of exposing the privacy of families, or infringing the laws of propriety. He states, en passant, his intention of giving to the public a work on Ireland, to the appearance of which we look forward with interest.