Strictures on the modern Syftem of Female Education. With a View of the Principles and Conduct prevalent among Women of Rank and Fortune. By Hannah More. 2 Vols. 8v0. ios. Boards. Cadell and Davies. 1799.

THE title of this work will, by a flight alteration, be- come a tolerable index of its contents. We would tranfpofe the words before and after the particle with, and read it thus -A view of the principles and conduct prevalent among women of rank and fortune, with ftrictures on the modern fyftem of female education. The conduct of fashionable life is the great theme of these volumes; and the follies of it are properly attributed to an erroneous fyftem of education. That mode of life is delineated with great judgment; but the ftrictures on education do not difplay much novelty or any remarkable infight into fo important a fubject. We refpect, however, the piety and zeal which fhine in every page, and applaud the author for contrafting the conduct of profeffing Chriftians with that which is required by the purity of the gospel.

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Among fashionable customs which incur reprehenfion, we obferve with pleafure that children's balls, the diffipation of routes, the refort to gaming-tables (kept, as it is fuppofed, by perfons of rank), abfurd affectation, and other follies, are treated with juft cenfure. On these points we wish that we could add weight by our authority to the writer's remarks ; but, unfortunately, the perfons addicted to these habits are too numerous to be affected by the pity of fuch as are not engaged in their vortex, and are too bufily employed in the perpetual round of doing nothing to have a moment's leifure for ferious thinking. To fuch trifling minds it is ufelefs to suggest higher, gratifications, or to talk of the pleafures of friendship, refined converfation, or true religion, to the butterflies of an hour, which can live only in perpetual agitation. This clafs is of little confequence in the general ftate of fociety in the metropolis. The most dignified characters of our nation for talents, integrity, and virtue, are feldom to be seen in fafhionable fociety. The company confifts of the fame individuals who, collected at fome houfes on great occafions, are difperfed through a greater number every evening, talk over the fame topics, meet without friendship, and part to meet again in the fame frivolous routine. When they are wearied with the length of the day, an unmeaning night of liftlefs fociety enables them to drag out their existence to the hour of fleep. Giddy boys and girls of quality-dowagers who have fpent their youth in folly, and fpend their old age chiefly in card-playing-rich traders who wish to acquire a fashionable CRITA REV. VOL, XXVI. May, 1799.

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name-form the bulk of the company which occafions the paragraph in the next day's paper, intimating that fuch a lady's houfe, in which about forty perfons might be entertained with convenience, elegance, and tafte, was crowded with five hundred guests.

On the fubject of gaming at the houses of perfons of fullied character, our authorefs fays with propriety, that

There are not wanting women of distinction, of very correct general conduct, and of no ordinary fenfe and virtue, who, confiding with a high mind on what they too confidently call the integrity of their own hearts; anxious of deferving a good fame on the one hand, by a life free from reproach, yet fecretly too defirous on the other of fecuring a worldly and fafhionable reputation; while their general affociates are perfons of honour, and their general refort places of fafety; yet allow themfelves to be occafionally prefent at the midnight orgies of revelry and gaming, in houfes of no honourable estimation; and thus help to keep up characters, which, without their fuftaining hand, would fink to their juft level of reprobation and contempt. While they are holding out this plank to a drowning reputation, rather, it is to be feared, to show their own ftrength than to affist another's weakness, they value themselves, perhaps, on not partaking of the worst parts of the amufements which may be carrying on; but they fanction them by their prefence; they lend their countenance to corruptions they hould abhor, and their example to the young and inexperienced, who are looking about for fome fuch fanction to justify them in what they were before inclined to do, but were too timid to have done without the protection of fuch unfullied names. Thus thefe refpectable characters, without looking to the general confequences of their indifcretion, are thoughtlessly employed in breaking down, as it were, the broad fence, which should ever separate two very different forts of society, and are becoming a kind of unnatural link between vice and virtue.' Vol. i. P. 50.

The invention of baby-balls is well ridiculed in the following paffage :

"To every thing there is a feason, and a time for every pur pofe under heaven," faid the wife man; but he said it before the invention of baby-balls. This modern device is a fort of triple confpiracy against the innocence, the health, and the happiness of children; thus, by factitious amufements, to rob them of a relishi for the fimple joys, the unbought delights, which naturally belong to their blooming feafon, is like blotting out fpring from the year. To facrifice the true and proper enjoyments of sprightly and happy children, is to make them pay a dear and disproportionate price for their artificial pleafures. They ftep at once from the nurfery to the ball-room; and, by a prepofterous change of habits, are

thinking of dreffing themfelves, at an age when they used to be dreffing their dolls. Inftead of bounding with the unrestrained freedom of wood-nymphs over' hill and dale, their cheeks flushed with health, and their hearts overflowing with happiness, thefe gay little creatures are fhut up all the morning, demurely practifing the pas grave, and tranfacting the ferious bufinefs of acquiring a new step for the evening, with more cost of time and pains than it would have taken them to acquire twenty new ideas.' Vol. i. P.

86.

The fashionable mode of informing perfons where they may wafte an idle hour, is thus defcribed:

'Notwithstanding the known fluctuation of manners and the mutability of language, could it be forefeen, when the Apostle Paul exhorted" married women to be keepers at home," that the time would arrive when that very phrafe would be felected to defignate one of the most decided acts of diffipation? Could it be foreseen that when a fine lady fhould send out a notification that on fuch a night the fhall be at home, these two words (befides intimating the rarity of the thing) would prefent to the mind an image the most undomeftic which language can convey? My country readers, who may require to have it explained that these two magnetic words now poffefs the powerful influence of drawing together every thing fine within the sphere of their attraction, may need also to be apprized, that the guests afterwards are not afked what was faid by the company, but whether the crowd was prodigious? The rule for deciding on the merit of a fashionable fociety not being by the taste or the fpirit, but by the fcore and the hundred. The queftion of pleasure, like a parliamentary question, is now carried by numbers. And when two parties modifh, like two parties political, are run one against another on the fame night, the fame kind of mortification attends the leader of a defeated minority, the fame triumph attends the exulting carrier of fuperior numbers, in the one cafe as in the other.' Vol. ii. P. 137.

Many of our readers may not be acquainted with another cuftom in fashionable life, which is here very fairly delineated:

There is, among the more elevated claffes of fociety, a certain fet of perfons who are pleafed exclufively to call themselves, and whom others by a fort of compelled courtesy are pleased to call, the fine world. This finall detachment confider their fituation with respect to the rest of mankind, just as the ancient Grecians did theirs; that is, the Grecians thought there were but two forts of beings, and that all who were not Grecians were barbarians; fo this certain fet, confiders fociety as refolving itself into two distinct claffes, the fine world and the people; to which laft clafs they' turn over all who do not belong to their little coterie, however high

their rank or fortune. Celebrity, in their eftimation, is not beftowed by birth or talents, but by being connected with them. They have laws, immunities, privileges, and almoft a language of their own; they form a kind of diftinct caft, and with a fort of efprit du corps detach themfelves from others, even in general fo. ciety, by an affectation of distance and coldness; and only whisper and fmile in their own little groupes of the initiated; their confines are jealously guarded, and their privileges are incommunicable,? Vol. ii. p. 165.

In all focieties there must be a few to whom the reft filently concede the claim of fuperiority. Among literary men this is given to genius and industry; at the bar, to acuteness and eloquence; in the navy, to conduct and bravery; on the exchange, to wealth and probity. It may therefore be expected that the fashionable world fhould have its elders and directors, and that the perfons dignified with the pre-eminence fhould be fuperior in thofe qualities which diftinguifh the fociety-love of drefs, and love of folly. We may add, that in this groupe will rarely be feen a fingle character adorned with manly virtue or feminine grace.

Romances, by L. D'Ifraeli. Svo. 8s. Boards. Cadell and Davies. 1799.

IN a romance an English reader generally expects enchantment, or at leaft the appearance of enchantment-an old caftle, though it is not abfolutely neceffary that it should belong to a giant and a ghoft, or a deception more incredible than the actual apparition would be. None of these ingredients, however, can be found in the romances of Mr. d'Ifraeli. Love is the theme of all.

A poetical effay on romance begins the volume. Love is tormented by Ennui: he complains to his mother, who fends him a nymph for his cure:

She winds round Love with her intactile arms,
Flies with the child, and as the wills the charms.
She touch'd the morning-dews to diamonds light,
And wove her filver threads from moons of night;
Her feet were powdered o'er, with ftars 'tis faid,
And ftars, in fillet-light, adorn her head.
Two cryftal pearls her crimson mantle bears;
The tint a virgin's bluth, the gems two virgins' tears!
Lo! as the paffes where the fummer-wood
Hangs with it's leafy fcreens, fome fhadowy flood,
Strange mufic founds! each infect voice is there.;
The piping gnat, the pittering grasshopper:

The humming dorr, the cricket's merry glee;
The infect-Handel too, the rich toned bee.
Her flying hand with warm illusion turns

New earths, new heavens, a world where fancy burns ;
Sails, without fhips, a fhadowy fea adown,
Builds, without hands, on clouds, a peopled town;
Her bloodlefs fights, her feafts that know no cost,
Her storms, where often wrecked, the ne'er was loft;
All these and more, as fhift the' inconftant hues,
The little god with infant tremor views,

He shakes his feathers in the wavering flight;
Now fhoots a smile, now drops a tear more light.

'Her arm foft ferpented the clinging boy,
And her eye quivered with a finer joy.
With laughing eyes the awakened urchin flings
Light o'er her dazzling face his trembling wings.
His purple lips her neck of filver prest,
His foft hand rov'd within her fofter breast.
Thy name!-he cries, his humid eyelids fhine-
Thy voice is human, but thine art divine!

She, foftly parting his incumbering wings;
(To fmiling love more lovely fimiles fhe brings)
My name is Fiction; by the Graces taught;
To Love, unquiet Love, by Beauty brought.
She faid, and as fhe spoke, a rofy cloud

Blush'd o'er their forms, and shade, and filence shroud!
Thro' heaven's blue fields that pure carefs is felt,

A thousand colours drop, a thousand odours melt !

O'er the thin cloud celeftial eyes incline,

(They laugh at veils, too beautifully fine!)

His feeling wings with tender tremors move;
His nectared locks his glowing bofom rove.
Their rolling eyes in lambent radiance meet,
With circling arms, and twined voluptuous feet;
Love fighed-Heaven heard! And Jove delighted bowed,
Olympus gaz'd, and shiver'd with the God!
'Twas in that ecftafy, that amorous trance,
That Love on Fiction got the child, Romance.

• From that bleft hour on earth, the beauty glow'd,
And fought with focial man her dear abode;

With all her mother's forcery paints each dream,

With all her father's foul makes love the eternal theme!' P. iii.

The poem abounds with rich lines. We must however obferve. that in this piece, and in the reft of the volume, Mr. d'Ifraeli fhould have left the reader to difcover the