ENGLAND AND HER CRITICS. 513 



drunk than in the former ; and, by way of illustrating the noble 

 Count's invective on the point of hospitality in England, we expressly 

 say that, where one man in his metropolis dines, by invitation, at his 

 neighbour's cost, there are at least five hundred in that respective 

 state in London. In what society did Count Achilles so unfortunately 

 light, that politics (for such, we apprehend, he means by the indefinite 

 expression of " propos cymques") became the subject of engrossing 

 interest? where did he find these heavy guests and drunken dogs? 

 He surely must have cultivated the protection of some parish-officer, 

 who took him, as a Roman umbra, to the vestry feasts. And even 

 there, the sense of decency is far too prevalent to sanction the ferocity 

 of blows ; though, true it is, that in the streets, where impudence is 

 sometimes ignorantly offered to a female, the style of castigation is as 

 summary as the offence is flagrant ; and a coxcomb may be laid upon 

 his mother earth with the velocity of lightning, if he violates the laws 

 of manliness and manners. The sarcastic Count, we apprehend, has 

 never witnessed such disgraceful scenes in any common coffee-house 

 in London ; but, if the censorious patrician has taken his daily meal in 

 some of those inferior eating-houses much frequented by the poorer 

 sort of French, and where the intricacies of arithmetic diurnally pro- 

 duce some paltry squabbles on the subject of a sol, he may have seen 

 as much, or more, contention in a week, than any decent native of 

 the capital would witness in a twelvemonth. No, no ; my Lord de 

 Jouffroy, our humble meals, if silent, are decorous ; though we have 

 not yet attained so much of that refined abandonment to ease, that we 

 see the members of a company employing knives and forks for tooth- 

 picks, or the purpose of a nail-brush ; or, perchance, some elegant 

 example of the softer sex expectorating to the distance of a dozen feet, 

 good measurement, and lodging the pulmonic missive on the sanded 

 floor in the likeness of a mighty star-fish. 



The Count Achilles next proceeds to the encomium of indolence, 

 the repose of Eden, and the punishment of revolted man, which he 

 pithily exhibits in its concrete form, in the condition of the artisans , 

 of Manchester and of the miners of the various pits of England. He 

 informs us that his ancestors, employed by graver cares than manu- 

 factures, devolved upon their slaves the works which the present free, 

 but humble. Englishman performs, at the risk of his existence, in 

 making caps and stockings for the valets of the French. We shall 

 not take the fruitless trouble of discussing with his lordship the merits 

 and demerits of our manufacturing or mining systems ; but, we ask, 

 is any other person than the Count so grossly stultified as to imagine 

 that it signifies one jot to an artificer to whom his labours are eventu- 

 ally useful? The censorious versifier may settle with his country- 

 men his flattering astonishment that English mechanics condescend to 

 labour for the French community ; though, generally speaking, there 

 are few indeed, among the lower orders of his country who have soul 

 enough and, what is more important still, the money to procure an 

 article of genuine British manufacture. As far as our Homeric re- 

 collections serve us, the namesake of my Lord de Jouffroy was no 

 small c( Count" in the heroic ages ; and, certainly, the name, in modern 

 illustration, is but little shorn of its original pretension. " Nos valets !" 

 M. M. No. 95. 3 U 



