only ceremonies, have lent their hand to level those barriers and to obliterate those distinctions which-trifling as they may seem-are essential to a monarchy. Lord Chesterfield's reprimand to old Anstis the herald, 'You foolish man, you do not understand your own foolish business,' may with perfect truth be applied to the chamberlains and other ministers of court etiquette in the present day, who do their foolish business so foolishly, as to involve in their own ridicule the highest objects of our respect. One day, the 'Gazette' informs us, that boots may be worn at court-a subsequent announcement requires that gentlemen should come in shoes and stockings,' as if any one could come in shoes without stockings, or as if even those who came in boots did not come in stockings; and finally, to remedy a too liberal interpretation of this latter order, which had been practically exhibited to her Majesty, the Gazette' of last week added to the injunction of wearing shoes and stockings, a further and most necessary amendment, namely, that gentlemen must not go to the Queen's drawing-room, (whatever they may do to his Majesty's levee,) without breeches! There are deep consequences connected with all this laborious trifling, on which we wish we had time to say a few words; but we must restrain ourselves to wishing that—for the short time we are likely to have a court-the graceful, elegant, and distinctive character of what the poet calls the hoop's enchanting round,' and which produced so lively an impression on even the republican and unsophisticated eye of Mr. Rush, might be revived. We may be laughed at for our passion for these old etiquettes, but like Milton, we cannot separate the monarchy from its trappings; the hoop was, it is true, a mere court ceremony,-useless, expensive, inconvenient, as an ordinary dress-but is it not the essence of a ceremony to be all that? If a thing be useful, economical, and convenient, it is for every day wear, ceremonies ought not to be quite à portée de tout le monde: if hoops are abolished for the ladies, why are men obliged to wear bags, and laced coats, and swords-all much more useless-if there can be degrees in inutility -than the prohibited hoops? But it is idle to dwell on such trifles: we observe them merely as tokens and harbingers-the leaves fall before the tree dies!

In mentioning another court ceremony, Mr. Rush falls into an historical error, very strange in any well-informed person-unaccountable in a contemporary statesman :

All were in black,' he says, 'on the 12th March, 1818, for a new court mourning for the late king of Sweden, Charles XIII., who, however, did not die king; Bernadotte, the remnant of Napoleon's royal creations, occupying the Swedish throne.'-p. 118.

Charles XIII. did die on the throne, and on his death, Berna

dotte,

dotte, till then only prince royal, acceded. Mr. Rush confounds, we suppose, Charles with Gustavus, his exiled predecessor.

Our readers will probably have already perceived that Mr. Rush exhibits a good deal of-to call it by the softest namesimplicity. He is prone to wonder-rather credulous-and if he did not, which we think likely, altogether misunderstand his informants, he has often received and recorded as literal truth, statements which could, in fact, have been only irony or persiflage. It is necessary to give a few examples of such blunders, as a warning to our trans-Atlantic brethren, (for so we are always anxious to consider them,) that although our Court was bound to give credit to all Mr. Rush might say on behalf of America, America is not reciprocally bound to believe all that he may tell her about England.

·

Mr. Rush partakes the intellectual hospitality of Holland House, and is much pleased with its venerable architecture, and indulges in recollections of Addison, concerning whom he repeats one or two puerile, and we beg to assure him fictitious, anecdotes. He proceeds to say, that the room in which he dined, had been painted and gilded by an ancestor of Lord Holland's in the reign of Charles I.'—p. 136. The family of Fox is so recent in our peerage, and so eminent in the history of the last century, that it is no great compliment to Lord Holland, and no great proof of Mr. Rush's acquaintance with English politics, to confound Mr. Henry Fox-who, in 1763, purchased Holland House from the collateral successors of the old possessors, and when advanced to the peerage, chose to take his title from this villa-with the heir of the Earls of Holland, so celebrated-so historically and tragically celebrated-in the reign of Charles I. The commonest and lightest reading the peerage and Horace Walpole, if even he did not consult graver authorities-should have guarded him from such a mistake.

In Carlton House

the rooms were historical: as I looked through them I thought of the scenes in Doddington-of the Pelhams-the Bolingbrokes-the Hillsboroughs.'-p. 82.

We know not why the rooms which Mr. Rush saw should have called up these recollections, for not one of them existed at the time he refers to-and as to the 6 scenes in Doddington,' we do not recollect anything in Doddington, to show that Pelham, Bolingbroke, or Hillsborough, were ever present at any " scenes of any kind, even in the Carlton House of their day. Pelham and Lord Hillsborough belonged to the party which the then Prince of Wales opposed: and to the mysterious connexion said to have existed between his Royal Highness and Bolingbroke, Doddington

Doddington makes no allusion that we recollect. We believe that he mentions Bolingbroke's name but once, and that is to say drily, under the date of 12th December, 1751-' this day died Lord Bolingbroke.'

He attends the marriage of Princess Elizabeth :—

'In one room was a table of refreshments-I went to it with Sir Henry Torrens, distinguished by services and wounds-on the table were urns and tea-kettles of fretted gold. Sir Henry recommended me to a glass of what I supposed wine, in a flagon near me, but he called it king's cup, given only at royal weddings.'—p. 151.

We believe Sir Henry Torrens was too well bred to attempt to hoax an American envoy, and we therefore conclude the last absurd assertion could be only the error of Mr. Rush's recollection. Speaking of the law reports in the newspapers, he says,

that

'he understood from a high source, that the newspapers are as much to be relied upon as the books of law reports in which the cases are afterwards published; that, in fact, the newspaper report is apt to be the best, being generally the most full, as well as quite accurate.'p. 199.

We assure him he must have misunderstood his high informant; the newspaper reports are always much less full, and often very inaccurate.

He dines at the French ambassador's :

The arrangements were on the model of France; for wines we had Burgundy-Tokay-St. Julian-Sillery Champagne, and others in esteem at such tables.'—p. 291.

Did he fancy Tokay was a French wine? and at what English table did he not meet French wines? He goes on

'The fruit course displayed the mingled fruits of France and England; from the gardens of the former and the hot-houses of the latter. In England, it is only by heat so obtained, that fruit can have its full flavour.'-ib.

Now we will venture to say, that there was not, at this entertainment, on the 30th July, one dish of fruit from a French garden; and that, with perhaps the exception of pines and grapes, the best fruits in a July dessert in England were not derived from the hothouse. He has the honour of meeting his Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex, whom he pronounces to be

' an excellent linguist; to his knowledge of the classics, he adds German, Italian, French, Hebrew, and, it may be, others of which I am not informed.'—p. 124.

This confession of a want of exact information about the unknown tongues' that his Royal Highness may speak, gives force to Mr. Rush's positive testimony as to the others; and yet we doubt very

much

much as to his Royal Highness's skill in Hebrew, which nevertheless Mr. Rush marks in italics, as a circumstance, we presume, on which he had satisfied himself. This reminds us, we are sorry to say, of the foolish twaddler, that we laughed at in our last Number, for asserting that Mrs. Piozzi had, for forty years of her life, read the scriptures in the original Hebrew.

Indeed, the Duke of Sussex seems to have been a stumblingblock to his American admirer, and we should, from the following extract, suspect that he conversed with the envoy in some of those various tongues which his Royal Highness possesses, and which Mr. Rush does not. Both his Royal Highness and Mr. Rush appear to have disapproved of the custom of drawing up treaties and other international communications in French. It is giving, they both thought, that nation a superiority it is not entitled to.

'His Royal Highness would suggest as a remedy, that treaties and other solemn state papers should be drawn up in Latin-this would put modern nations on a par; each would stand on the scholarship of their public men. It was to this effect he spoke. I thought it a natural feeling in an English prince.'—p. 122.

Now, we are satisfied that it was not to this effect he spoke— his Royal Highness, though he may not understand Hebrew, is a remarkably well-informed gentleman, and knows perfectly well, that what Mr. Rush attributes to him as an original suggestion, was the practice of all Europe till a very late period, when, thinking it no longer quite so safe to stand upon the scholarship of their public men,' nations adopted the custom of writing their treaties each in its own language. It seems incredible to us, that the United States should have sent hither, at so important a crisis, a minister so little conversant with diplomatic history, as not to know that, up to a comparatively recent date, all European treaties were written in Latin. Mr. Rush has a suggestion of his own, which is, that English should become the international language, which he supports on true arithmetical principles-alleging that, including the United States, English is vernacular to a greater number than French, and that the foreign commerce of England and the United States exceeds that of the whole world-ergo, English ought to be the diplomatic language of the whole world: Q. E. D. We are ready to admit that it ought-but unfortunately it is not; and although we have met persons of all nations, and particularly Russians, who spoke French almost as natives, we never have met any European foreigners, who could speak or write English sufficiently well to use it as an official medium. Mr. Rush is a fair and honest man, and admits that our common tongue is entitled to be called English-but all his compatriots are not so complaisant. We remember to have heard that when Copenhagen

was

was captured by us in 1807, our army was amused by a sign over the house of a schoolmaster- American taught here!'

It is, however, in a not dissimilar spirit from the Copenhagen schoolmaster, that Mr. Rush quotes, as American, some things which we have hitherto considered as European. He is talking of English dinners-which, considering our morning occupations, he very justly considers as the rallying point of our society:

'They are,' he says, ' seldom large-from twelve to fourteen seem the favourite number. Mr. Jefferson's rule was not fewer than the Graces, nor more than the Muses.'-p. 259.

We confess that we should not have been more surprised, if he had told us that Mr. Jefferson had written the Iliad.

Sometimes he is not quite certain as to our customs-but guesses at them by analogies-when one word of inquiry would have cleared up the doubt. The privilege of the entrée at court is given,' he says very truly, to cabinet ministers-the diplomatic corps-persons in chief employment about the court, and a few others, the privilege being in high esteem; knights of the garter appeared to have it, for I observed the insignia round the knee of several.'-p. 82. But this, we beg leave to inform Mr. Rush, is an instance that the argumentum à particulari ad universale is not good logic. It might be very proper, that knights of the garter should have the entrée, but they have not, unless they belong to the classes before enumerated; and because some cabinet ministers and household officers, who happened to have the blue ribbon, enjoyed the privilege of the entrée, it was erroneous to infer that all knights of the garter had it-particularly when Mr. Rush himself subsequently observed knights of the garter in the crowd of the general levée. All these are very venial and trifling mistakes, and are only worth notice, because an envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary makes them. It is one of the inferior duties, but still a duty of that class of persons, to understand the etiquette of the courts to which they are accredited; or if the minister of a republic should despise, and, to use his own expression, 'pretermit' such matters, we should have nothing to say; but when he chooses to record them he ought to do so correctly.

It may amuse Mr. Burke's countrymen to know that every dinner in England begins with soup followed by fish, but he need not have represented turbot as the only fish ever produced.'— p. 146. It was hardly necessary to tell us, that

Austrian connoisseurs do not prize hock so much on account of its age, as of its original quality.'p. 146.

We suppose even American connoisseurs know that a sour wine is not likely to be made good by keeping,

He