LAWS AND REGULATIONS.

1st. The peculiar jurisdiction of the British Council of Ladies shall be understood to extend over England, Scotland, Ireland, and all other parts of the British empire; but every member shall pledge herself, on admission, to exert her utmost efforts for the diffusion of its influence over the whole female community throughout the world.

2d.-As the said Council will be a grave and dignified board of superintendence over the general concerns of womankind, every member shall pledge herself, on admission, to observe due order and decorum in the assembly.

3d.-Every member shall take an oath, on admission, that she has no sinister view of obtaining private information in this place, for the purpose of repeating it elsewhere.

4th. No lady shall be allowed to become a member, who has committed a faux pas: or if any lady, after having become a member, shall be guilty of culpable indiscretion, she shall be expelled forthwith, and declared for ever incapable of sitting in this assembly.

5th. Such lady, however, shall be entitled to a solemn and impartial trial; and shall have full liberty to plead in her own defence.

6th. In all such unfortunate occurrences, the sentence and grounds of the sentence shall be made public by way of warning and example to all future delinquents.

7th.-Among the ladies, in Council assembled, all emulation in dress, all petty rivalships and jealousies are hereby prohibited. No member shall appear in such expensive and brilliant costume, as may tend to excite the bad and envious passions of the rest; or draw off their attention from the immediate subject of deliberation; under certain pains and penalties, to be hereafter specified, suitable to the nature and degree of the offence.

8th. In all delicate cases, referred to the Council of Ladies, either for examination or arbitration, the most inviolable secresy shall be maintained:-whoever offends against this law, shall suffer the severest punishment which the Council can inflict; she shall have a gag put upon her mouth, and be condemned to perpetual silence during the sittings of the said Council.

9th. No lady shall speak of her conquests, or shew her love-letters, without special permission.

10th. No lady shall be obliged to tell her age on admission to the Council: but if any lady volunteers the information, and represents herself above ten years younger than she is, she shall be expelled; and the real date of her birth, as found in the parish register, shall be published.

11th. No member shall be allowed to speak for more than three hours at a time; or faster than the rest of the Council can understand.

12th. In any regular debate, no coughing, or scraping of feet, or sneezing, or other signs of impatience, shall be permitted: and whatever lady shall be detected in such indecorous behaviour shall be herself prohibited from speaking during the whole evening.

13th. In any regular debate, all idle interruption shall be reckoned a breach of order: and no lady shall commence her harangue, until the last speaker has finished.

14th. All personalities shall be strictly forbidden: but when disputes run high, and the Lady President has lost her authority in the confusion, the assembly shall be immediately adjourned; or, if it continues sitting, its proceedings shall be null and void.

15th. When several ladies rise at the same moment, the Lady President shall decide who is to be heard first.

16th.-Be it however enacted, that, as a matter of courtesy, the priority of expressing her opinions shall be granted to any new member.

17th. Any lady shall receive a reprimand from the Lady President, who evinces her dislike of what another has said by a disdainful toss of the head, or other dumb shew of dissatisfaction.

18th. In any desultory conversation, not more than three ladies shall be allowed to speak at once.

19th. No lady shall hum a tune, while another is speaking.

20th.-It being here impossible to specify the whole catalogue of delinquencies and their appropriate punishments, much must be left to the decision of the Council, which shall be the supreme judge of all offences against itself, as

they occur, if it shall appear that no adequate penalty has been provided.

21st.-All questions shall be decided by a majority of votes; and the Lady President shall have a casting vote upon an equal division.

22d. The preceding rule shall apply only to matters of legislation in judicial cases, when the votes are equal, the person under trial shall be acquitted.

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23d. All questions, coming within the province of the Council of Ladies, shall originate with that body; but none of its resolutions shall pass into a law without having gone through the Council of Ten.

24th.-A committee of the Council of Ladies shall sit weekly but a general assembly of the female parliament shall be held only once a month, unless summoned upon some extraordinary occasion.

25th.-Applications for admission, and all other communications whatsoever, must be addressed to the Council of Ladies, under cover to the Secretary of the Council of Ten.

COMPARATIVE VIEW OF LIFE AND HAPPINESS IN EUROPE AND IN THE EAST.

BY THE TRAVELLER, No. 2.

HAVING said much more than was intended on the character of Orientals, I shall now proceed to offer a few remarks on their manners an examination quite subordinate to the other in our general inquiry into their happiness; as manners are certainly much influenced by character, and have been supposed to be entirely dependent on it-the infallible signs by which it manifests or betrays itself. Corresponding, then, with the indolent gravity of the Oriental, we observe a calm expression of countenance, and a serious and dignified deportment-his movements are slow and graceful; generally natural and never affected-in his reception of a stranger or in different person, he testifies no emotion, because he feels no pleasure-his politeness is without adulation, and his

friendship precedes his professions-he feels no necessity of exerting himself to entertain his visitor; he is never gratuitously complimentary, nor ever thinks it his duty to overwhelm you with nonsense, in order to keep up conversation; a ready interchange of vapid jests, and lively puerilities is not gaiety, he thinks, because silence is not dulness ;-it is irksome, it is ridiculous to affect a violent interest on subjects when you can feel none and excite none. Silence is more manly, and less stupid, than such laborious and ineffectual hypocrisy.

It would seem from this description, which is not at all overcharged, that the unelastic and inflexible personages to whom it relates, had forgotten that the same nature which, to distinguish us from our brother brutes, "gave us tears," gave us, at the same time, a compensatory prerogative in laughter. This is not, however, quite the case: they possess, in common with ourselves, that invaluable privilegeits exercise is accompanied by the same musical sounds, the same amiable contortions of body and countenance—the only difference is in the manner in which they avail themselves of it. It has been well remarked, that a people must have attained a considerable rank in civilisation before they can acquire any taste for ridicule. The Turks themselves, the most civilized of Orientals, have not yet reached that point.— Laughter is, therefore, never among them the means of expressing any species of admiration - to laugh frequently is a mark of contemptible levity, and to laugh at is to offer an unpardonable insult. When, therefore, a Turk feels disposed to indulge in that undignified amusement, he sends for his meddah or buffoon; as a noble Roman would formerly have ordered his parasite, or an English monarch his fool. The age of high burlesque is anterior, in every country, to that of refined and delicate ridicule.

Dancing is the earliest and the favourite amusement of all savages, and is continued, in some shape or other, in every stage of civilisation-the Turks have banished the unmanly exercise to their priests and their harlots. Ask a Turk, in an European ball-room, why he does not dance-"Why should I dance," (he will reply) "when there are so many who are dancing for my amusement?" However this pre

judice, arising from arrogance engrafted on indolence, is, I believe, exclusively Turkish: all other Orientals condescend, like ourselves, to extract pleasure even from the laborious frivolity of the dance.

The grave and stationary Mussulman is not whirled, as we are, round the orbit of fashion: he does not walk, or eat, or dress after the whim of another. An Arab may always be seen in his hereditary cloak, and there has been little variation in the make of Turkish trowsers, from the days of Mahomet II. to the days of the magnanimous Mahmoud. But we must not, therefore, flatter ourselves that the glories of puppyism are exclusively our own-the genius of foppery has also expanded his wings in the east, and makes amends by splendour and gaudiness, for his want of mutability. The affectation of effeminacy is indeed rare in a land of warriors, but the blustering coxcomb is not an uncommon animalsome too, the richness of whose plumage would excite no small envy among the peacocks of the west end. But I had forgotten that our question is that of happiness; and I confess myself unable to decide how far a numerical superiority in dandies will give either side the advantage in this inquiry: but as an eminent moralist has thought it not degrading to speculate on the happiness of an oyster, it is not improbable that the enjoyments of a fop may furnish materials for the meditation of some future philosopher.

The respect for old age, which has ever been an Oriental virtue, still is more general in the east than among ourselves; and the cause or consequence of this is, that old men are more generally respectable. When the spirit of conversation does not consist in mere sprightliness and vivacity, attention is secured by seriousness rather than by levity; and it is therefore, that increasing years, by conferring additional gravity, bring with them an increase of respectability. There is no temptation for the grey-bearded patriarch to affect the frivolity of youth, when frivolity, even in youth, is con. sidered unmanly and contemptible; he is therefore contented, by the support of his natural character, to merit the veneration of the young, and the young acquire the habit of venerating a character, which is never sullied by vice or folly.