to fashionable balls and the many to fashionable novels;—that smitest even Genius as well as Folly, making the favourites of the former boast an acquaintance they have not with the Graces of a mushroom Peerage, rather than the knowledge they have of the Muses of an eternal Helicon!—thou that leavest in the great ocean of our manners no dry spot for the foot of Independence;—that pallest on the jaded eye with a moving and girdling panorama of daubed vilenesses, and fritterest away the souls of free-born Britons into a powder smaller than the angels which dance in myriads on a pin's point. Spirit! divine Spirit! carriest thou not beneath the mantle of frivolity a mighty and sharp sword, and by turning into contempt, while thou affectest to display, 'the solemn plausibilities of the world,'[1] hastenest thou not to the great family of man the epoch of redemption? Whether, O Spirit! thou callest thyself Fashion, or Ton, or Ambition, or Vanity, or Cringing, or Cant, or any title equally lofty and sublime—would, that from thy
- ↑ Burke.
