164 Evils from a Prize in the Lottery. fit down without a caution, which deprived them of all eafe; and tables which were fcreened, by ftrict laws, from the profane touch of a naked hand. Our difcoveries had now no end. We found that tea was not fo hurtful to the nerves when drank out of a filver tea-pot, and, fome how or other, the milk and the fugar derived certain new qualities, from being contained in vessels of the fame metal. I had faved fome pounds of my best candles from the general fale, as I thought I could ufe my own goods cheaper than if I bought them of a stranger, who would of courfe treat me like a gentleman. But lack-a-day, my wife's lungs were immediately fo affected by the fmell of the tallow, that I was obliged to confign my wares, the work of my own hands, to the ufe of the fervants, and order wax lights in their place. You have now feen me removed from Whitechapel to Palace-yard, my houfe new furnified in a fashionable ftyle, as handfome and as ufeleis as money could purchase. I had hopes I might now be at reft, and enabled to puríue my old plans, and was one night stepping out in fearch of fome friendly public-houfe, where I might fmoke my pipe as ufual, and enjoy the luxury of talking politics, and eating a Welsh rabbit, but no fuch thing could be permitted. What! a man of my ftanding (moak tobacco! Smoaking was a vulgar, beaftly, unfashionable, vile thing. It might do very well for Whitechapel, or the Tower Hamlets, but would not be fuffered in any genteel part of the world. And, as for cheefe, no cheese was fit to be brought to table hut Parmefan, or perhaps a little Cheshire ftewed in claret. Fie, hufband, how could you think of tobacco and Welth rabbits: I am abfolutely afhamed of you: at this rate we might as well have been living at Whitechapel." To do my wife juftice, however, as fhe deprived me of the pleasure of feeing company out of doors, the took care to provide me with a fufficient number of vifitors. There were Mifters and Miftreffes, Masters and Miffes, from all parts of St. Margaret's and St. John's parifles, none of which I had the finalleft previous acquaintance with; but my wife always maintained, that feeing company was the mark of fashionable life, and things had proceeded now too far for me to raise objections. Indeed one day drove another out of my head, and I began to be reconciled to fashionable life. I thought it mighty pleasant to have new furniture too good for ufe, and new acquaintances of no use at all; to drink wines which do not agree with one's stomach, and to eat of dishes which one does not know the use of, We had likewise our card-parties, where my wife and I foon learned all the fashionable games. How we played, I fhall not say, but we difcovered in no long time, that it was not Whitechapel play. My two children, you may fuppofe, did not escape the general metamorphofis; the boy was difpatched to Eton fchool, to be brought up with the children of other people of fortune, but the girl was kept at home to fee life, and a precious life we led. The morning was the most innocent part of it, for we were then faft afleep; and yet, Sir, you cannot think how difficult it was to caft off old cuftoms, for I frequently awoke at fix or feven o'clock, and would have got up, had not my wife reminded me that it was unfashionable, and afked, "What_mustthe fervants think?"-Aye, Sir, and even fhe, with all her new. quality, would fometimes difcover the old leaven of Whitechapel., One night, when a lady faid the believed it would rain, my wife anfwered, perhaps it mought. Another time, on feeing a great man go to the Houte of Lords, although he had with her at that moment one of the first people of fashion in the Broad Sanctuary, the exclaimed, "There's a go!" Pride, however, will have a fall. Grandeur must one day or other expire in the focket. My wife was now feized with a very fange diforder, the nature of which I cannot better explain, than by faying, that the loft the use of both her feet and legs, and could not go out unless in a carriage. This was the more extraordinary, becaufe, when at home, or even on a visit, she never could fit a minute in one place, but was perpetually running up and down. She threw out broad hints, therefore, that a carriage must be had, and a carriage therefore was procured; but mark the confequences, two fervants were added to our former number. To be fure, every body must have a coachman and footman. One business was now, to ufe our homely phrafe," as good as done," and what little the town left, was fully accomplished by a vifit to Brighton, and another to Tunbridge. Here, Sir, is a blank in my history, which I fhall fill up no otherwife than by informing you, that I took the advantage of an Infolvent ac, and by the affiftance of fome friends, who did not defert me when I deserted them, I am once more quietly Perfection of the Chinese Governments quietly fet down in my old fhop, com- Whitechapel High-ftreet, For the Monthly Magazine. 165 There is no mystery. The plain caufe is, that the government of China is founded on the model of that of heaven, in which there is no church and state, no property government. Pray explain the emperor : He indeed is no deity, except in power. He may be a tyrant; but a country, containing three hundred millions of fouls, is fo wide, that his tyranny is comparatively fmall, and felt only by a few rich people round him, a few ambitious men, who chufe to trample the flippery ice of fortune. Setting the emperor afide, I fay the government of China refembles the pe-petual ariftocracy of heaven, in that radical point, that it is regulated by MIND only. It is a mere LITERARY government, in which the skilful, (a perpetual and in- I HAVE been lately occupied with the defeafible law of nature) conduct and perufal of the recent accounts of China, by Sir GEORGE STAUNTON, and Mr. ANDERSON. The first is too verbofe; but both are interefting. Some confiderations naturally arife, of high importance to human fociety. I do not find that I have difcovered from either works, the ftate of property in China; though no topic can be more interefting. Are the eftates large, or fmall? Is the inheritance firm and fecure? Thefe are queftions not answered. We only know that there is no hereditary nobility-and that large eftates, if fuch exift, can bestow no fort of influence, or political power. There is no church and ftate: there is no property governmentYet I have heard of fome diftant countrics, not far from Terra Incognita, in which it is faid, that church and ftate maft ftand or fall together; nay, the clergy gravely toast, CHURCH and state, while the French were content with a lefs prepofterous order of words, l'Etat et l'Eglife. In the fame countries, it is faid, that property is the natural and juft foundation of power; and that a man will ferve his country in proportion to the stake he has in its welfare. Good heavens! what fools thefe Chinefe are! Their government is a government without church and 1 ftate, a government in which property is a political cypher-fuch a government cannot stand a dozen years. It has stood five thousand years: and has feen all the eminent empires and republics rife and fall. What is the cause of this unaccountable mystery? guide the ignorant. Their fchools and colleges, instead of pedantic clergy, are dedicated to inftru& ripening fools into eloquent fenators, or youth in the united practical fciences of in exact proportion to his merit and morals and politics. A man is promoted knowledge. The examinations are public: and no influence is, or can be used. There is a rabbinical fable of a rebellion in heaven. It is impoffible. Pure incorporeal minds muft feel their own gradations. Even on earth, the men of deft; because they are most conscious of greatest genius are always the most mothe abilities of others, and of their own defects. An angel must fee, by one glance of intuition, whether he be inferior or fuperior, in the grand progreffive scale of existence. to be, a province alloted only to TRIED In China, government is as it ought SKILL. to his learning and juftice, from a small A man proceeds, in proportion office to a greater. A Chinefe will laugh fhare in government to a raw college stuat the idea of alloting even the meanett dent, or a templar. duration of the Chinese empire, its uniI repeat, therefore, that the amazing verfal cultivation, ftupendous population, its inhabitants, its contempt of foolish unexampled profperity and happiness of wars, &c. in fhort, every thing the *No foreign conquest has ever affected the internal government of China, becaufe it is founded on MIND, is regular as the univerfal laws of morality, immutable as truth, eternal as fincere. exa& 166 Mrs. Webber on Mrs. Langhans's Monument. exact reverfe of all other ftates, ancient and modern,-all, all, arife from one fimple caufe: Its government is the exact reverse of most others, because it is the province of men of letters; because it is the facred prerogative MIND czy while most others are abandoned to court intrigues, to the wickedness and ignorance of men of rank and property -to tygers, fometimes called warriors, Sometimes styled heroes--idiot favourites bereditary ftupidity-the yellow fever of corruption-brutal force and terror-and the worst of all plagues, perverse, ignorant, profligate minifters, who in China would be burned, if they afpired to the lowest rank of Mandarins. 2. To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. SIR, IT has often been the misfortune of the writers of travels to deceive their rea ders, by magnifying, in the livelines of their imagination, the objects they defcribe; or to be themfelves deceived by the idle tales of the Ciceroni in Italy, and in other countries by thofe of the valets de place who generally accompany them. I have lately met with two inftances of the errors into which the travellers were led by the univerfal love of mankind for the wonderful. Give me leave, Sir, to correct them in your interefting Magazine. Pretending to know more than is commonly known in England about the hif tory of the fo juftly famous Mrs. Langhans's monument, at Hindelbank, near Berne, Dr. SMITH* attributes its origin to fome revengeful feelings in fr. Nabi, the fculptor, who thought himflf difgraced by the painting and gilding the family of D'E----, had cauled to be daubed over the superb maufeleum he had erected to one of their relations in the fame church. The learned Dr. will, I hope, give credit to a native of Berne, and niece of Mrs. Langhans, when the afferts, that he knows, and has written even more than what is commonly known in Switzerland, and in the family of this lady. The anecdote with which he has amufed his readers is as fabulous, though not fo much fentimental, as that of MAYERT. He has feigned that the ftatuary, while he was occupied in erecting a fuperb mo * Vol. iii. p. 176. Tour on the Continent in 1786 and 1787," &c. +"Tableau Hiftorique, Politique et Philo fophique de la Shiffe," p. 22, lettre xx. de Berne. nument to vanity in a country village, became paffionately enamoured of the curate's wife, a beautiful woman in the prime of life, and that, a deeply concerned witnefs of her untimely death, he thought of immortalizing at once, his tenderness and her deplorable fate. Permit me, Sir, to contradict those two stories, equally founded on truth. Mrs. Langhans was truly beautiful, and of the molt amiable difpofition; but the tender fympathy for the grief of an inconfolable husband, the unanimous prayers of a flock by whom the curate and his wife were fincerely beloved, and who rewarded the labours of the artift, determined, alone, Mr. Nabl, a Pruffian sculp tor, to exert his great talents on this › mournful occafion. The love of truth, and the tender care for the facred memory of a relation, much esteemed and re-. fpected, prompt me to defire you to infert this letter in your Magazine. I will not attempt a description of this monument, fo often given in many Englifh books of travels, and known by a fine French print, and an English one after it; both, it must be confefled, give a very inadequate idea of it. If, then, fome amateurs of arts, after the reading of this letter, and of the various accounts of travellers, would wish to fee, its ori ginal model, made by the statuary himfelf, which is in my poffeffion, I would very willingly gratify their curiofity. I am, Sir, your humble fervant, No. 8, Mount-freet, Berkley-fquare,... To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. SIR, B. fpecting what is meant by the G. in anfwer to N.'s question re "communion of faints," has, after a view of the fubject. This article of the proteftant divine, given only a partial ancient creed, referred by the tradition of the church to the apostles themselves, the catholic religion: it does not merely comprizes one of the leading dogmata of from Archbishop Secker, "that commuexprefs, according to B. G.'s quotation nion of benevolence, kind offices, inftruc- tion, and edification, which should be among all good chriftians;" but as a point of the orthodox creed, acknowledged by the fathers of the church, further implies, that the faithful on earth communicate, or are in communion with the angels, and faints in heaven. It has indeed been the general belief of Chriftians from Communion of Saints.....The Enquirer, No. XV. from the time of the apoftles, that there is immediately within the divine prefence, befides the hofts of angels, a fociety, or community of patriarchs, prophets, martyrs, and other holy perfons, who, in their state of glory, ftill fympathize with the faithful below, under their manifold trials; affifting, and comforting them in various ways, or prefenting their prayers, and interceding for them with the divine majetty. The communion of faints, and also the nature of the intercourse which fubfifts between the faints of the triumphant, heavenly church, and members of the fuffering church, or purgatory, and thofe of the church militant on earth, is explained, and at the fame time enforced as an indifpenfable article of belief, by the following decree of the council of Trent. "The holy fynod commands all bishops, and all others who have the charge and care of teaching, diligently to inftruct the faithful: first, concerning the interceffion and invocation of faints; and concerning the honouring of reliques; and the lawful ufe of images, according to the practice of the catholic and apoftolic church, received from the primitive ages of Chriftianity, and according to the confent of the holy fathers, and the decrees of the holy councils; teaching them that the faints now reigning, together with Christ, do offer their prayers to God for men; that it is good and profitable to invoke them with humble fupplication, and to fly to their prayers, aid, and affiftance, for the obtaining the benefits of God, through his fon Jefus Chrift, our Lord, who is our only Redeemer and Saviour." Whoever, therefore, in repeating the creed, feriously profeffes his faith in the "communion of faints,” must believe not only the above statement refpecting it, but likewife pledges his belief in the preceding article, the holy catholic church;" by which is understood, in the opinion of good Chriftians, founded on the authority of ancient divines †, "the fociety of the faithful, who are united by the profeffion of the fame faith, and by a participation in the fame facraments, under the authority of legitimate paftors, whose visible head is the pope, bishop of * Revelations, chap. 4. 6, 7. 20, &c. Compare, "St. Cyprian de Mortalit." "Ambros. de Vidus." Auguftin de Civitate, lib. xx. cap. 9." † St. Bernard. ep. 113." "Cyprian. Lib. de Unitat. Eccles." «5 Augustin. Lib. de Verá Reng, caf. 5 and 7." &c. &c. MONTHLY MAG. XXIX, 167 Rome, fucceffor of St. Peter, vicar of Your correfpondent N. in propofing THE ENQUIRER, No. XV. THE gentleman with whom, though greatly my fuperior in fortune, I have long been in habits of an easy intimacy. He rofe in the world by honourable in duftry; and married, rather late in life, a lady to whom he had been long attached, and in whom centered the wealth of feveral expiring families. Their earnest with for children was not immediately gratified. At length they were made happy by a fon, who, from the moment he was born, engroffed all their care and attention. My friend received me in his library, where I found him bufied in turning over books of education, of which he had collected all that were worthy notice, from Xenophon to Locke, and from Locke to Catharine Macauley. As he knows I have been engaged in the bufinefs of inftruction, he did me the honour to confult me on the fubject of his refearches, hoping, he faid, that, out of all the fyftems before him, we fhould be able to form a plan equally complete and com prehenfive; it being the determination of both himself and his lady to chufe the beft that could be had, and to fpare neither pains nor expence in making their child all that was great and good. I gave him my thoughts with the utmost freedom, and after I returned home, threw upon paper the observations which had occurred to me. The first thing to be confidered, with respect to education, is the object of it. This appears to me to have been generally mifunderstood. Education, in its largeit fenie, is a thing of great fcope and extent. It includes the whole procels by which a human being is formed to be what he is, in habits, principles, and cultivation of every kind. But of this a very small part is in the power even of the parent * Articles of the Church of England, 22. N himself; 168 The Enquirer, No. XV, What is Education? your fon: his taftes will be formed by your prefent situation, and in no degree by your former one. But I take great care, you will fay, to counteract these tendencies, and to bring him up in hardy and fimple manners. I know their value, and am refolved that he fhall acquire no other. Yes, you make him hardy; that is to fay, you take a country-house in a good air, and make him run, well clothed and carefully attended, for, it may be, an hour in a clear frofty winter's day upon your gravelled terrace; or perhaps you take the puny fhivering infant from his warm bed, and dip him in an icy cold bath, and you think you have done great matters. And fo you have; you have done all you can. But you were fuffered to run abroad half the day on a bleak. heath, in weather fit and unfit, wading barefoot through dirty ponds, fometimes lofing your way benighted, scrambling over hedges, climbing trees, in perils every hour both of life and limb. Your life was of very little confequence to any one; even your parents, encumbered with a numerous family, had little time to indulge the foftnesses of affection, or the folicitude of anxiety; and to every one elfe it was of no confequence at all. It is not poffible for you, it would not even be right for you, in your prefent fituation, to pay no more attention to your child than was paid to you. In thefe mimic experiments of education, there is always fomething which diftinguishes them from reality; fome weak part left unfortified, for the arrows of misfortune to find their way into. Achilles was a young nobleman, dios Achillous, and therefore, though he had Chiron for his tutor, there was one foot left undipped. You may throw by Rouffeau; your parents practiced without having read it; and you may read, but imperious circumstances forbid you the practice of it. You are fentible of the advantages of fimplicity of diet, and you make a point of reftricting that of your child to the plaineft food, for you are refolved that he shall not be nice. But this plain food is of the choice quality, prepared by your own cook; his fruit is ripened from your walls; his cloth, his glaffes, all the accompaniments of the table, are fuch as are only met with in families et opulence; the very fervants who attend him are neat, well drefed, and have a certain air of fathion. You may call this fimplicity, but I thy he will be nice, for it is a kind of simplicity which only wealth can attain to, and which will fubject him to |