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Continental life - who do the honours of the occasion; honours strictly graduated by the guests' "credit," and varying with the vacillating fortune of the "Exchange."

Go where you will, and nobody will confess to like these mobs; for mobs they are. Every one will tell you that the whole thing is a bore, a nuisance-that the rooms are crowded with rabble-that the air is stifling, the scene a beargarden, and the supper-room a row in a fair; and yet none of these "plaintiffs" will not be found engaged in the next "suit" that comes off-still bored, suffocated, famished, and disgusted, but still there.

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If a man were in the discharge of some duty as a citizen-if it were a case of philanthropy-if the occasion were one where his presence gave support and his counsel gave courage, all this would be intelligible; but here is a vast concourse, from which any but the very highest might absent himself without remark; a heaving mass of all sorts and conditions of men, which none need frequent against his will, and yet here we find him day after day, year after year, swearing, sweltering, and declaring that, short of a penal settlement, he knows nothing like a rout." The aggregated force of this discontent a discontent that pervades every salon and every boudoirmust surely swell the sense of dreariness, which is the appropriate spirit of these meetings. You go to be bored, and you are never disappointed. There can be no society; there can be no conversation in such places. The onward movement of the dull current gives time for only a word or two; and if you would escape being flat, your only resource is to be illnatured. An epigrammatic impertinence on your neighbour's wig or his wife's turban, is all that is left you, unless you may have reached the buffet, and can sneer at your host's sherry.

Is it not strange to think that this amorphous gathering of oppressed spirits and jaded minds has in it all that a great city contains of beauty, wit, eloquence, and fancy; that here are the most engaging women and the pleasantest men, but so saturated with dulness that they are sick of themselves and of each other? Is it over-dilution with stupid people does this? Do the dreary dogs so impregnate the air with their dulness that the smart fellows are asphyxiated? Or is it some strange magnetism by which matter gets the mastery over mind, and the Dundrearies are enabled to swamp the men of intellect.

I confess myself unable to answer this question. Not that of late I have turned attention to the topic, for how the world wears in respect to its great gatherings I only know at second hand. I am told that they are pretty much what I remember them, and the tidings suggest no ambition to corroborate them.

The tendency of society is unquestionably more in the channel of these assemblages than in favour of smaller gatherings and more intimate reunions. As we travel, so do we associate. The train is the type of the salon. The taste of the day is to know every one-to be familiar with very few. There is certainly a degree of breadth and freedom gained by this practice; but at what a loss of happy geniality and pleasant humour!

That when the world grew richer it should grow stupider does not surprise me. There is a weight and importance about great wealth that would sink the lightest, gayest spirit that ever floated in life's ocean. What brilliancy of fancy ever enabled a man to soar above his scrip and his share-list? All the millionaires I have ever met were men of deep depression; and in their tone of gloom and despondency they have often satisfied me with a condition which, whatever

its causes for anxiety, has had none on the score of plethora!

It is not a very grateful admission, but I am afraid it is a true one, that prosperity favours dulness, and that as we grow in riches we grow in stupidity. A certain amount of wealth is a necessary adjunct to society. Nay, the world of pleasure is not the worse for having an occasional Croesus in its circle, whom nobody asks to be witty, but only to be hospitable-but this once attained, the converse of the world needs no more; and when Florence was the most brilliant capital of Europe, there were not three large fortunes in its society; and to go back farther, to Dresden in its days of wit and splendour, the festivities were sustained by men of moderate means, but of immense personal

resources.

Courts have a right to be dull. They could not be dignified if it were otherwise. A witty Polonius might destroy a monarchy. Embassies, too, are dreary; they represent the sovereign, and they are necessarily slow. Besides this, we in England have a happy choice in the men we select; we take them as they take the heavy fathers in comedy for their gravity of aspect, their ponderous presence, and their splendid mediocrity.

When we do chance upon a man whose social agreeability and brilliant gifts raise him above his fellows, and make him sought after and admired, we begin to suspect him to be un-English, and make him retire on a pension.

Now, in America, these monster receptions are all in keeping. Everything there-trees, rivers, oysters, and hotels-is Brobdignag. Five hundred sit down of a morning to scrambled eggs, corn-bread, and chicken fixings, as a small select party, and a bar with two hundred gentlemen" liquoring-up is a mere knot; but we are not so gregariously given, nor do we see anything to imitate in the

VOL XCIX.-NO. DCIII.

White House and its Presidential levees.

I am not surprised that the minister or the envoy likes to include a thousand people, and make one night serve to receive all his acquaintances in a city. Like an election candidate entertaining his constituents, he is glad to have got them all in the one draw of his net. What I really wonder at is that there are people who take these invitations as courtesies, and who respond to them by going.

To more than three-fourths of the company the host is unknown; and as for the hostess, she sweeps by her guests as she would by the strangers in the foyer of the opera. They are there de droit - that is, they have had a foreign-office letter, or somebody of a rank like their own has presented them, or they have left their cards so often and so persistently that they have at last been invited; and if they like the honour it is their affair, not mine.

The headache after a debauch is the vendetta that morality insists upon, but the next mornings after these routs are perhaps the only true compensations of that much-neglected, pushed-about, and ill-used class of people for all their agonies of the night before. They like to recall the fine people whom they know by name, to chronicle their looks, their dress, their chance words, if by an accident they have heard them. The importance conferred by being supposed to be in a certain "set" reconciles vast numbers of people to the indignities they suffer when in it. I remember once seeing a very humble supplication addressed to an ambassadress for a ticket for one of her balls, the writer pledging herself not to make use of the privilege, but only profit by the display of the card on her chimneypiece. Snobbery can scarcely go much further than this!

It is the rigid discipline of class in England-that strict observance which limits a man to associate

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with his own exact equals in fortune, station, and pursuits-that turns the heads of our people when they come abroad. Like the cheap rum in Jamaica making the newcomers drunkards, the cheap nobility of the Continent intoxicates the freshly-arrived Bull, and makes him fancy that he has got a private entrance and a latch-key into the high society of Europe. The overgrown receptions I have spoken of fill the measure of his bliss, and to find himself in the room with grand cordons and crosses is something little short of ecstasy.

ceptions I delight in my Banker himself. As I seldom go to a theatre, he recompenses me for the loss. He is the most dramatic of men-his bustle, his importance, his bursting self-conceit, his mingled mysteriousness and dash, his splendid familiarity with millions, and his accurate appreciation of sixpences. What an air of well-todo surrounds him! You think him purse-proud, but you recant at once and actually deem him humble, for what could not one so rich and so affluent do if he but liked it? I have retired from an audience of a king unimpressed with his greatness, but I can aver I have never left my Banker's presence without feeling that there must be more in money than mere value-that there must be some subtle essence of power in its touch, that it must impart to those who deal in it some magnetism of greatness-else how should I stand in such awe of that 'Priest of the Exchequer," and wait so reverentially for his benediction on my bill?

Now, the awe and deference inspired by a great house impresses these visitors sufficiently to render them very quiet, very unobtrusive, and very inoffensive at "the Minister's;" but see them at the Banker's, where they come to take their "seat and the oaths," as it were-where they enter by right of their circular notes or their letter from Drummond's." 66 There they come out in their strongest colours-loud in talk, free of criticism, and candid in reprobation. Are these gatherings society? Is there aught to be learned from these mobs other than a dread of one's species?

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I do not want to close the doors to such assemblages-I seek not to limit the happiness of those who like these meetings. There are fortunately in life diversities of taste enough to make the world wide enough for us all; but I do insist that these things be not palmed off upon me as society. I will not take these greenbacks for gold.

If I do not like my Banker's re

I have but one grudge against him. So long as he lives there will be monster parties. While he survives, dinners of five-and-thirty, and evening parties of eight hundred, will continue to be given; and in both one and the other the usages of society are so imitated as to have the unpleasant effect one experiences on witnessing at the Adelphi the travesty of Ristori by Paul Bedford.

I'd rather pay a little more for "commission and escape the "company."

MEMOIRS OF THE CONFEDERATE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE, BY HEROS VON BORCKE, CHIEF OF STAFF TO GENERAL J. E. B. STUART.

PART V.

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THE EXPEDITION INTO PENNSYLVANIA-LIFE AT THE BOWER" DURING GENERAL STUART'S ABSENCE-THE GENERAL'S OWN REPORT OF THE EXPEDITION.

THE day came, the 9th of October, and with its earliest streakings of light the bustle of preparation for departure. Arms were cleaned, horses were saddled, and orderlies were busy. About eight o'clock the bugle sounded to horse, and soon afterwards I, and the rest of my comrades who had been left with me behind, saw, with great depression of spirits, the long column disappear behind the distant hills.

We determined, however, with a soldier's philosophy, to accept the situation, and to forget our disappointment by indulging, as much as was compatible with the performance of duty, in rides, drives, shooting, and social visiting at "The Bower." So I resumed my field-sports with very great success, except in respect of the turkeys, often accompanied by Brien, who was an excellent shot.

I had now also the satisfaction of greeting on his return to headquarter my very dear friend and comrade, Major Norman Fitzhugh, who had been captured, it will be recollected, near Verdiersville in August, and had spent several weeks in a Northern prison. There was much for us to talk over of life and adventure, of success and disaster, joy and sorrow, vicissitudes which had been brought about rapidly in the progress of the war during our separation. Fitzhugh had been pretty roughly handled at the beginning of his captivity, and the private soldiers of the enemy that took him-provoked, probably, by his proud bearing-had ill-treated him in the extreme; but he soon met officers whom he had known

before the war in the regular army, and afterwards fared better.

On the 10th arrived Major Terrell, who had formerly served on General Robertson's staff, and was now under orders to report to General Stuart, and we had again a pleasant little military family at our headquarters.

From General Stuart we heard nothing for several days. There were some idle rumours, originating doubtless with the Yankee pickets, that he had been killed, that his whole command had been dispersed, captured, &c. Though we certainly did not in the least credit this nonsense, we were yet not without a good deal of anxiety as to the result of the expedition; and as I was under the necessity, in any event, of inspecting our line of outposts, I rode on the 12th to Shepherdstown, in the hope of obtaining some more trustworthy information. Here I received the earliest tidings of the General's successful ride through Pennsylvania, the capture of Chambersburg, and his great seizure of horses, and also learned that our daring band of horsemen was already on its rapid return to Virginia. I availed myself of the opportunity while in Shepherdstown of paying my respects to Mrs L., by whom and the other ladies of her household I was welcomed with the utmost kind

ness.

On the morning of the 13th General Stuart arrived again safely at "The Bower," heralding his approach from afar by the single bugler he had with him, whose notes were somewhat oddly mingled with the thrum of Sweeney's banjo.

Our delight in being again together was unspeakable, and was greatly enhanced by the glorious issue of the expedition. Many prisoners had been taken; he had secured large numbers of horses and mules, and he had inflicted great material damage upon the enemy. All my comrades had mounted themselves on fresh horses, and they came back with wonderful accounts of their adventures across the border, what terror and consternation had possessed the burly Dutch farmers of Pennsylvania, and how they groaned in very agony of spirit at seeing their fine horses carried off-an act of war which had been much more rudely performed for months and months, not to mention numberless barbarities, never sanctioned in civilised warfare, by the Federal cavalry in Virginia.

General Stuart gave me a gratifying proof that he had been thinking of me in Pennsylvania, by bringing back with him an excellent bay horse which he had himself selected for my riding.

As I am fortunate enough to have General Stuart's own official report in MS. of this memorable enterprise among my papers, I give it here, in the belief that the reader will be glad to follow our horsemen upon their journey in the words of the dashing raider himself.

HEADQUARTERS, CAVALRY DIVISION,
October 14, 1862.

"To General R. E. LEE, "Through Colonel R. H. Chilton, A.A. General, Army of Northern Virginia.

"Colonel,-I have the honour to report that on the 9th inst., in compliance with instructions from the Commanding General, army of Northern Virginia, I proceeded on an expedition into Pennsylvania with a cavalry force of 1800 men and four pieces of horse-artillery, under command of Brig. Gen. Hampton and Cols. W. H. F. Lee and Jones. This force rendezvoused at Darkesville at 12 o'clock,

and marched thence to the vicinity of Hedgesville, where it camped for the night. At daylight next morning (October 10th) I crossed the Potomac at M'Coy's (between Williamsport and Hancock) with some little opposition, capturing two or three horses of the enemy's pickets. We were told here by the citizens that a large force had camped the night before at Clear Spring, and were supposed to be en route for Cumberland. We proceeded northward until we reached the turnpike leading from Hagerstown to Hancock (known as the National Road). Here a signal station on the mountain and most of the party, with their flags and apparatus, were surprised and captured, and also eight or ten prisoners of war, from whom, as well as from citizens, I learned that the large force alluded to had crossed but an hour ahead of me towards Cumberland, and consisted of six regiments of Ohio troops, and two batteries under General Cox, and were en route, via Cumberland, for the Kanawha. I sent back this intelligence at once to the Commanding General. Striking directly across the National Road, I proceeded in the direction of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, which point was reached about 12 o'clock. I was extremely anxious to reach Hagerstown, where large supplies were stored, but was satisfied from reliable information that the notice the enemy had of my approach, and the proximity of his forces, would enable him to prevent my capturing it.

I therefore turned towards Chambersburg. I did not reach this point till after dark in a rain. I did not deem it safe to defer the attack till morning; nor was it proper to attack a place full of women and children without summoning it first to surrender. I accordingly sent in a flag of truce and found no military or civil authority in the place; but some prominent citizens, who met the officers, were notified that the place would be occupied, and if any resistance were made

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