their regimentals, of clergymen in their cassocks, black cloaks, and broad-brimmed hats, not unlike those of the coalmen in London,--and of gentlemen wrapped up in their capas, or in some uniform, without which a well-born Spaniard is almost ashamed to shew himself. The ladies' walking-dress is susceptible of little variety. Nothing short of the house being on fire would oblige a Spanish woman to step out of doors without a black petticoat, called Basquina or Saya, and a broad black veil, hanging from the head over the shoulders, and crossed on the breast like a shawl, which they call Mantilla. The mantilla is, generally, of silk trimmed round with broad lace. In summer-evenings some white mantillas are seen; but no lady would wear them in the morning, and much less venture into a church in such a profane dress. A shewy fan is indispensable, in all seasons, both in and out of doors. An Andalusian woman might as well want her tongue as her fan. The fan, besides, has this advantage over the natural organ of speech-that it conveys thought to a greater distance. A dear friend at the farthest end of the public walk, is greeted and cheered up by a quick, tremulous motion of the fan, accompanied with several significant nods. An object of indifference is dismissed with a slow, formal inclination of the fan, which makes his blood run cold. The fan, now, screens the titter and whisper; now condenses a smile into the dark sparkling eyes, which take their aim just above it. A gentle tap of the fan commands the attention of the careless; a waving motion calls the distant. A certain twirl between the fingers betrays doubt or anxiety--a quick closing and displaying the folds, indicates eagerness or joy. In perfect combination with the expressive features of my countrywomen, the fan is a magic wand, whose power is more easily felt than described. What is mere beauty, compared with the fascinating power arising from extreme sensibility? Such as are alive to those invisible charms, will hardly find a plain face among the young women of Andalusia. Their features may not, at first view, please the eye; but they seem to improve every day till they grow beautiful. Without the advantages of education, without even external accomplishments, the vivacity of their fancy sheds a perpetual glow over their conversation; and the warmth of their heart gives the interest of affection to their most indifferent actions. But Nature, like a too fond mother, has spoilt them, and Superstition has completed their ruin. While the activity of their minds is allowed to run waste for want of care and instruction, the consciousness of their powers to please impresses them with an early notion that life has but one source of happiness. Were their charms the effect of that cold twinkling flame which flutters round the hearts of most French women, they would be only dangerous to the peace and usefulness of one half of society. But, instead of being the capricious tyrants of men, they are, generally, their victims. Few, very few Spanish women, and none, I will venture to say, among the Andalusians, have it in their power to be coquettes. If it may be said without a solecism, there is more of that vice in our men than our females. The first, leading a life of idleness, and deprived by an ignorant, oppressive, and superstitious government, of every object that can raise and feed an honest ambition, waste their whole youth, and part of their manly age, in trifling with the best feelings of the tender sex, and poisoning, for mere mischief sake, the very springs of domestic happiness. But our's is the most dire and complex disease that ever preyed upon the vitals of human society. With some of the noblest qualities that a people can possess (you will excuse an involuntary burst of national partiality) we are worse than degraded—we are depraved, by that which is intended to cherish and exalt every social virtue. Our corrupters and mortal enemies are religion and government. To set the practical proofs of this bold position in a striking light, is, undoubtedly, beyond my abilities. Yet such, I must say, is the force of the proofs I possess on this melancholy topic, that they nearly overcome my mind with intuitive evidence. Let me, then, take leave of the subject into which my feelings have hurried me, by assuring you, that wherever the slightest aid is afforded to the female mind in this country, it exhibits the most astonishing quickness and capacity; and that, probably, no other nation in the world can present more lovely instances of a glowing and susceptible heart preserving unspotted purity, not from the dread of public opinion, but in spite of its encouragements. I am, &c. L. D. MELODY. Cum animus Eudemi ex corpore excesserit, tum demum domum revertisse videatur. A SAD and lonely wanderer here, From land to land, from year to year; And yet, there is an Home for me. Spirit, that in this breast canst trace Away! there is an Home for me. CICERO, Z. Z. GRIMM'S GHOST. LETTER II. NOTHING is now talked of in London but Miss Wilson, the new singer. If you go out to dinner, and are in the act of descending from the drawing-room to the dining-room, arm in arm with a lady, , you are invariably asked if you have seen Miss Wilson: if you enter a glover's shop in the Strand, notwithstanding the oppression of your elbow in the pit of his stomach, the vender of doe-skin finds breath enough to enquire how you like Miss Wilson: if walking onward to Lincoln's Inn, you endeavour to ascertain from your solicitor the state of the chancery-suit in which you are engaged, the managing clerk asks, how you like Miss Wilson in Mandane: and if, descending into Fleet-street, you desire your shoemaker to make your new pumps rather easier than their predecessors, he doubts whether Miss Wilson's Rosetta be equal to Miss Stephens's. It is proverbial that the London public can only think of one thing at a time. How bold a man, then, was the author of Waverley to produce Kenilworth in the zenith of Miss Wilson's cadenzas! One of the two must go to the wall; which of the two, time only can determine. The western end of Cheapside is a spot which, to a ghost like myself, possesses peculiar claims to consideration. I beg to explain that I neither allude to the trunk-maker's shop at the one corner, nor to that of the vender of patent medicines at the other : the former of whom adroitly equips the traveller on his journey to Paris or Naples, and the latter to "that bourne" from which, thanks to Mercury, I have recently returned. No; the interest created by the spot in question arises from its being the central point from which many a civic son of the counter diverges toward Piccadilly or Oxford-street, at four o'clock, and at which the same parties meet on the morrow, on their return to the duties of day-book and ledger. Here, at nine o'clock in the morning, may be seen the brisk merchant's clerk, in black neckcloth and blue trowsers, listening, with anxious ear, to a memento from the clock of St. Paul's Cathedral: then snatching out his watch, as though a glance at Time would retard his progress; and afterwards quickening his pace, and trotting toward the Exchange, in defiance of dustmen and chimney-sweeps. Here, at ten o'clock, may be seen the junior partner, clad in white corded breeches and jockey-boots, more intent on avoiding a splash than on gaining time and here, at eleven o'clock, may be seen the bulky senior partner, in black silk breeches and stockings, so evidently fatigued by his length of march, as to give himself full time to bestow a penny upon the old soldier who sweeps the crossing. I have more than once noticed two elderly gentlemen of the last-mentioned description, one of whom, issuing from St. Paul's Church-yard, passes the trunk-maker's at about the same moment in which the other, issuing from Newgate-street, crosses over the way, and reaches the corner of Bow-lane. For several mornings past, the two Peripatetics have cast courtly glances toward each other. Last Wednesday the ice was broken, and the thaw produced the following stream of colloquy. "A warm morning, Sir." -"Very, Sir."-"Have you walked far, Sir ?"-" Yes, Sir, all the way from Grosvenor-place: have you walked far, Sir?"-"Oh yes, Sir, all the way from Baker-street, Portman-square.”—“ You carry on business in the city, I presume, Sir ?"—"I do, Sir, in St. Mary Axe: I presume, Sir, you do the same ?"—" I do, Sir, in Old Bethlem.""It's a long way, Sir, to be trudging twice a day." "Ah, Sir, I have often thought it."-" I take it for granted, Sir, we are both married."-" Yes, Sir, that's pretty clear: my father and grandfather lived in Old Bethlem upwards of fifty years.""And so did mine in St. Mary Axe."-" If the four old gentlemen could pop their heads out of their graves in Bishopsgate church-yard, and see our goings on, what would they call us ?" "A couple of fools."-" So they would, Sir: good morning!" 66 66 I have since noted the two traders making their exit westward, arm in arm, at about four o'clock in the afternoon; and from the stray words that I have been able to catch from them, I guess that they are plotting rebellion against their "ladies and mistresses.” The following ejaculations evidently denote Jerry-ism expanding into Bruin-ism. "I will if you will-And I will if you willIt's all nonsense-She'll make a terrible to-do at first-Back to Bethlem-Auction-Robins-Turn out at Lady-day-I had no business ever to go there-Only laughed at by the great folks. St. Mary Axe much more convenient-Ledger of an evening -Tom's-Glass of brandy and water-Close to one's own house," &c. &c. Fraught with valiant resolutions like the above, I shall be much disappointed if the two traders do not burst from "sinking in the west," and re-occupy their vacant habitations in the city, before the Carbonari have emancipated Naples. Mr. Justice Blackstone, with reference to landed estates in England, informs his readers, that the law abhors a perpetuity. What the municipal law abhors in freeholds, the law of commerce abhors in personals. The deserted mansions of the two merchants in Old Bethlem and St. Mary Axe (of which the upper apartments have been for thirty years left to nie and mine,) exhibit many tokens of faded respectability. In both, the massy brazen knocker, surmounted by a frowning visage carved in the same metal, falls solemnly upon the huge outward door. The two large rooms on the first floor denote an excellent dining-room and drawing-room in days of yore. In both the wainscots are elaborately wrought: the cornices are gilt: the window-frames are broad and substantial: a spacious window-seat of oak spreads invitingly for such persons as are desirous of enrolling themselves among the "stiffnecked generation:" a large stable, out-house, and hay-loft, are cut and carved into half a dozen counting-houses for as many Jew brokers; and the grandfather of either family, inextricably painted in an oak frame over the drawing-room chimney-piece, seems to frown reproof upon his abdicating posterity. That perpetuity of wealth which the Law abhors, the Law is not likely long to see. The citizen of London, who, during the late war, hurried from east to west, "proud as Apollo on his forked hill," is now succeeded by his spurious son Phaeton, who drives a paper car where his progenitor drove a golden one. The result is obvious to all but himself. The " starry monsters that beset his track" require more sagacity and stronger axle-trees than he possesses, to elude. Here a Bank-loan lames his off-leader; there a composition-deed loosens a linch-pin; and here "the great seal of Great Britain" trips up car, horses, and all, and lodges the luckless driver in the Gazette. The London Opera-house, after having been tossed from Marquis to Marquis, like a musical snuff-box, has at length opened under the auspices of Mr. Ebers the Bookseller. Booksellers have, for half a century, been the best patrons of all the Muses, except Euterpe and Terpsichore and now those two rebel ladies have also enlisted under their banners. The Italian opera has been a subject of burlesque, in Britain, from the days of "Nicolini and the Lion," down to those of O'Keefe. Pope, who had a nice ear for numbers, but, I suspect, only an indifferent one for quavers and cadenzas, thus personifies the Italian opera of his time: : When lo! a Harlot form soft sliding by With mincing step, shrill voice, and leering eye, By singing peers upheld on either hand, She tripp'd and laugh'd, too pretty much to stand; Then thus in quaint recitativo spoke. And an epigrammatist of a later period gives us the following definition of that species of amusement: An opera, like a pillory, may be said To nail our ears down, and expose our head. All this, as the colloquialists say, is very well for a joke; but to speak seriously, I see no reason why music should not be made as effective a vehicle for expression as speech. I admit that, inasmuch as music is a sensual pleasure, it can never be a fit vehicle VOL. I. NO. v. 20 |