Notwithstanding the family likeness perceptible in all those enormous mounds and accumulations of brick and bones, flesh and furniture, men and mortar, beasts and buildings, which constitute a city; and the similarity of habits and appearances, generated by all such multitudinous congregations, there is a sufficient diversity in the appearance of each individual capital when viewed under different circumstances and seasons. Perhaps no place in the world offers so striking a contrast to itself as London in and out of the season. When I speak of London, I put entirely out of view those industrious and useful classes who, living in the terra incognita eastward of the Bar, labour unintermittingly for the gratification of the westward population, and of course present a monotonous activity all the year round: but who that has ever seen Bond-street in all its gaiety and glitter, in its days of clattering hoofs and sparkling equipages, when its centre forms an endless line of moving magnificence, and its gorgeous shops on either side reflect an ever-changing galaxy of belles and exquisites, would recognise the same place in the latter end of September, deserted, silent, spiritless," so dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone," that it makes one "as melancholy as a gib-cat, or a lugged bear," to take the same walk for five minutes, which a few months before would in less space of time have evaporated the densest spleen, and possessed us with all bright, joyous, and spiritual fancies? The ghost-looking house-painters whom one encounters here and there with their poisoned visages; the scaffoldings under which one is so often obliged to pass at the risk of lime in your eyes, and the certainty of it upon your clothes, if you are so fortunate as to escape a brickbat upon the head; the dismantled shops, and the hot, dusty, empty street, as if they were not sufficiently miserable objects in themselves, complete the prostration of our spirits by recalling their past cheerfulness, and so aggravate their present gloom. Innumerable associations connected with Bond-street lift it, in its time of glory, so completely out of its materiality that we never think of it as a mere street, and in the season of its thick throngs we have no time to compare the ideal with the real, by subjecting its buildings to the matter-of-fact judgment of the eye. One might, indeed, lose that useful organ in the process, for those members of the Pococurante society-the porters, reck not if with the sharp angles of their humeral freightage they reduce us all to a Cyclopean community: and, moreover, one's optics are kept in such perpetual activity in catching the salutations of the smiling beauties who whisk by in their vehicles, in nodding to Lord A and Sir Harry B-, or in cutting old General C or any other established bore, that he who should be caught gazing upwards at the houses would infallibly be set down for a rustic star-gazer, if he were not knocked down for a London somnambulist.

Last month, however, in the solitude and vacancy of the footpath, I thought I might safely venture to look upwards and contemplate the street in its architectural character, when, O Heavens! what a bright web of association, what a tissue of Corinthian imaginations. was instantly dissolved and frittered away. It was as if I gazed upon the corpse of one whom I had known in all the bloom and beauty of vitality. An ugly, irregular, desolate, dingy, beggarly, old-fashioned succession of brown.brick tenements, stretched before me, like Fal

staff's ragged regiment, forming a mean and pitiful contrast with the swaggering looks and undue pomposity of the shops. As there was at that moment no delusion of fashion to redeem the inconsistency, I amused myself with calculating how the real features of this celebrated street would affect the novel-reading misses and bonnet-buying spinsters of the country, who from the frequent reference to this scene of action in newspapers and romances have been accustomed to invest it with something of a romantic and magnificent character. To add to my annoyance, it was one of those close, damp, sultry days, expressively termed muggy by the Londoners, and as my lungs panted under the hot moisture of the atmosphere, I echoed the ejaculation of the worthy farmer dying of an asthma-" If once I can get this plaguy breath fairly out of my body I'll take deuced good care it shall never get in again." As I thought of the buoyant and elastic breezes which I ought at that moment to have been enjoying in Gloucestershire, under my favourite clump of aspens, whose ever-fluttering leaves at once shaded me from the sun, and supplied me with the music of a perpetual waterfall, I felt in all its intensity the sentiment of Dante

But perhaps the most pitiable and lugubrious of all the spectacles encountered at the West end in this season of emigration, are the disconsolate wights who being unable to procure an invitation to the country, and without money to get conveyed thither condemn themselves to a daily imprisonment, and steal forth in the dusk like the lightshunning bat, or the bird of Minerva, or rather, like ghosts of themselves, to haunt the spots which they loved in their days of fashion. A man must have a character to lose before he will thus submit to realise the Heautontimorumenos of Terence; but it is so easy to acquire the reputation of being 66 an idle fellow about town, visiting in all the genteel circles," that few West-endians and Bond-street loungers think themselves exempt from the observances which this state imposes. No condition is more sternly, more inexorably exacted by Fashion, than an absence from London in September, and it must be confessed that the wretches who are unable to comply with this mandate have at least grace enough to feel the full infamy of the stigma that attaches to their delinquency. No pickpocket has a quicker eye for a Bow-street officer, no spendthrift dandy has a keener perception of an approaching bailiff, than these victims of fashion have of an advancing acquaintance, if they are compelled to run the gauntlet of recognition beneath the garish eye of day. Reading him as far off as if he were a telegraph, they prepare all their wiles, doubles, and escapes, sometimes stealing into a shop, or bolting down a street or even a blind alley, or facing right about, so that if the enemy can even swear to their backs, he may not be able to aver that he has seen their faces in London, when its purlieus are under the ban and interdict of Fashion.

With a malicious pleasure I have occasionally amused myself in counteracting all these manœuvres and devices by running down a side street, getting a-head of the game, and encountering him in front when he thought I was far behind; or by managing to run plump up against him at a corner, that I might observe the various degrees of

self-possession and impudence with which the different culprits carried the thing off. Some were overwhelmed with instant shame, gave me a confused nod, and hurried on to avoid all interrogation; but the generality adopted the approved method of conscious guilt by becoming the attacking parties, and starting off into exclamations and surprises. "What, Harry Seven Oaks in London! Credat Judæus Apella !”then the eyes are rubbed, and after an incredulous stare the party continues "It is Harry, by Heaven!-why, my dear fellow, have you forgotten that this is September ?-what would they say were I to mention this at H House, or Lord S-'s, or the Marchioness of D's?" Now it is clear, that a man who attacks you in this way, and even hints at betraying you to your noble friends, cannot himself be in the same predicament. He must be a mere accidental traveller over the forbidden ground; at all events, he wishes you to infer it, but for fear you should not have ingenuity enough to draw that conclusion, he takes care to add, that he is a mere bird of passage, having only arrived that morning from Cheltenham or Harrogate, and intending to set off next day for Dawlish or Sidmouth. Joe Manton, and his fellowgunsmith Egg, have as many charges to endure as their own fowlingpieces, for several of my acquaintance have declared that after writing repeated letters without effect, they had been obliged to run up to London to reclaim their guns, which had been left to be repaired; never failing to add, in a tone of indignant reproach"and you know pheasant shooting begins in ten days!" One friend had thrown himself into the London mail upon learning the dangerous illness of an uncle, from whom he had considerable expectations, and whom he accused of a scandalous want of consideration for falling sick at the time of the County races. Another, who was the indisputable author of some very ingenious charades in rhyme, informed me with a significant look, that a letter from his quiz of a bookseller had compelled him to run up to make certain preliminary arrangements for the publishing season. A third poor fellow, who began to walk rather limpingly as he specified his disaster, was under the necessity of coming all the way from Scarborough to consult Astley Cooper, respecting the old wound he received at Talavera; and a fourth, after frankly stating that he had never left London, declared, that he was so tired of all the bathing-places and the different noblemen's seats of which he had the run, that he was determined, for once and away, to pass an autumn in London, out of fun and novelty, and just to see what the thing was like.

Love of the country is with me a passion which has sprung up as the others subsided; perhaps a certain age is necessary for its full and sufficing fruition, before one can feel assured that if we walk out into the fields, look forth upon the green earth, the blue sky, and the flashing waters, and so put ourselves in communion with Nature and the unseen spirit of the universe, we shall infallibly tranquillize our bosoms, however agitated, by imparting to them the blandness and serenity of the surrounding landscape. If we become less social as we advance in life, we certainly sympathize more with nature, a substitution of which few will find reason to complain. The coxcombs of whom I have been writing had none of this feeling; they loved London rather than the country, yet they hated it so much when it was under the

proscription of fashion that they invented all sorts of ingenious lies to apologize for their presence. Strange inconsistency! that a man should deem it more respectable to be a liar than to be accounted poor; more strange still, that an Englishman who boasts so much of his liberty and resists with so much pertinacity the smallest encroachment upon his free agency, should voluntarily become the slave of the most capricious of all despots-Fashion.

If any one would instruct mankind in the art of preserving health and attaining longevity, without having occasion to submit to the numerous rules laid down by physicians for the regulation of their conduct in regard to these points, let him teach them the secret of habituating themselves to every thing. Custom permits those who place themselves under her protection to live as they please, and bestows health and long life at the cheapest rate. She marches in triumph over the tables inscribed with the laws of physicians, and shows her votaries that they may enjoy health, while pursuing a way of life, which, according to Hippocrates, must speedily and infallibly precipitate them into the grave. Custom, nevertheless, operates agreeably to the principles of medicine, and serves rather to confirm than to invali date them, as will be manifest to every one who forms correct notions on the subject.

Habit, or custom, for I shall use these terms indiscriminately, is not a property of mere mechanical machines. A watch, for instance, cannot be accustomed to any thing: animal machines alone are susceptible of this quality. These machines are moved by the senses and by perceptions and herein consists the whole secret of habit. Sense, which resides in the nerves, when communicated to the brain, produces in the soul perceptions or feelings; and both this sensibility of the nerves and these perceptions of the soul cause movements in the machine that are sometimes voluntary, and at others of a different nature. Metaphysicians assert, that perceptions frequently repeated in the soul, gradually become more and more faint, and at length so weak that it is much the same as if they never took place. Often-repeated sensations which the soul feels strongly at first, cease in time to produce any impression upon it; and in this case we say that we are accustomed to such sensations. But though the perceptions of the soul cease to make that impression on the brain which once occasioned the movements that accompany the perceptions, still the sensibility of the nerves alone, without the co-operation of perceptions, is capable of effecting the same movements, agreeably to the laws of sense. In this case, sense alone, without any consciousness and perception of the soul, after it has been very frequently produced in the nerves, gives rise to actions and movements,-which at first never took place without consciousness and without perceptions in the soul. We then say, that we are accustomed to certain actions, to certain movements, that they have become mechanical to us. The nerves themselves may, by fre

quently-repeated impressions, gradually lose their sensibility, and then we are not only accustomed to the sensations, because such a nerve has ceased to communicate perceptions to the soul; but the actions and movements of the machine, which used to accompany the perceptions and the sensibility excited in this nerve, also cease to take place, because the moving power, sense, is annihilated in the nerve. Thus we are enabled by habit to endure more, and are secured from the effects of certain sensations, which used infallibly to attend those sensations. We thus escape the troubles and dangers, which many sensations would bring in their train, if we were not accustomed to them. Whoever is capable of reflecting a little, will easily be able to deduce the numerous examples of the power of habit recorded in the sequel from these principles, which I shall not do, because it is not my intention to treat the reader with speculations, but with practical remarks on habit, that each may thence learn to determine the application of this animal property to his own particular case.

It is common to use the expression, that a person is accustomed to something, in an improper signification. Of a person, who by degrees learns to see distinctly in the dark, we say, he is accustomed to darkness, while in fact it is only his soul that feels more acutely and discriminates more precisely. As the muscles of the body become stronger by frequent exercise, and capable of moving greater loads; we say of persons who have thus increased their strength, that they are accustomed to hard labour, whereas they have only acquired vigour in a physical manner, as a magnet by degrees becomes capable of supporting a heavier object, and as a young tree that is bent will raise a greater weight the stronger it becomes by its growth. Thus, too, it is the practice to say of the movements which we learn to perform with greater celerity, that we have acquired it by habit, though the real state of the case is, that machines employed in the constant repetition of the same movements, become more supple and pliant, and in time overcome many little obstacles; for it is well known that a machine composed of many wheels goes much more easily and smoothly when it has been worked for some time, than it did at first. This mode of expression, how erroneous soever, we are now compelled to adopt ; and as in the sequel of this paper, I shall include all these cases among customs, I would merely remark for the information of my speculative readers, that they must not seek to account for these customs, improperly so called, according to the laws of sense, but on physical principles.

It will now be easy to perceive how far the instances of the power of habit are from invalidating the general doctrines of medicine. Physicians warn every one against exposure of the chest, and threaten those who disregard their admonitions with catarrhs and inflammatory fevers. Such, indeed, are the consequences of that degree of cold which prevents the circulation of the juices and causes obstructions. Nevertheless, a female with open bosom shall brave a cold sufficient to freeze twenty young men, without sustaining any injury. Is this any refutation of us? By no means. The principle remains true, that cold occasions obstructions, catarrhs, and inflammations. But the degree of cold which produces these results in thousands, has not the same power over the lady, because the nerves of her bosom are