N° 105. TUESDAY, MAY 9, 1780.

THE winter, which, like an untaught visitor, had prolonged its stay with us to a very unreasonable length has at last given place to vernal breezes and a more indulgent sky; and many of my readers will now leave the business or amusements of the town, for the purer air and less tumultuous enjoyments of the country. As I have, now and then, ventured some observations on the manners and fashions of the former, I could not forbear, from a friendly concern for those whom the season now calls into the certain errors which

latter, to offer a few remarks on are more generally prevalent in the country. My last paper was intended for the serious perusal of country-gentlemen. I mean, in this, to make a few lighter observations on some little failings, in point of manners, to which I have seen a propensity in country-gentlemen, country-ladies, and in those who, though of the town, for the greatest part of the year, make their appearance, like the cuckoo (I mean no offence by the comparison), when the trees have put on their leaves, and the meadows their verdure.

In the first place, I would beg of those who migrate from the city, not to carry too much of the town with them into the country. I will allow a lady to exhibit the newest-fashioned cut in her ridinghabit, or to astonish a country congregation with the height of her head-dress; and a gentleman, in like manner, to sport, as they term it, a grotesque pattern of a waistcoat, or to set the children agape by the enormous size of his buckles. These are pri

vileges to which gentlemen and ladies may be thought to have entitled themselves by the expense and trouble of a winter's residence in the capital. But there is a provoking, though a civil sort of consequence, such people are apt to assume in conversation, which, I think, goes beyond the just prerogative of township, and is a very unfair encroachment on the natural rights of their friends and relations in the country. They should consider, that though there are certain subjects of ton and fashion, on which they may pronounce ex cathedra, (if I may be allowed so pedantic a phrase,) yet that, even in the country, the senses of hearing, seeing, tasting, and smelling, may be enjoyed to a certain extent; and that a person may like or dislike a new song, a new lutestring, a French dish, or an Italian perfume, though such person has been unfortunate enough to pass last winter at an hundred miles distance from the metropolis.

On the other hand, it is but fair to inform the ladies and gentlemen of the country, that there is a certain deference which ought to be paid, in those matters, to the enlightened judgment of their friends, who are newly arrived from the seat of information and of knowledge. I have heard a lady in the country, when her cousin from Edinburgh had been very obligingly communicating some extraordinary piece of intelligence, or exhibiting some remarkable piece of dress or finery, cut her short, by saying, with all the coolness in the world, 'That is singular enough, but it is nothing to what I heard from Miss B, with whom I have corresponded ever since she went to London; or, This is very pretty, to be sure, but not to be compared to Mrs. C- -'s, which she had sent her in a present from Paris.' This sort of brag-playing in conversation I have sometimes heard carried to a very dis

agreeable length, which would be in a great measure prevented, if people were not to be allowed credit for what they may have heard, or have been told, but to take consequence only from what they have seen. If we town-people are to be thus out-wondered on report, there is an end of all order and subordination in the matter. To borrow another allusion from the game above mentioned, I think it is but reasonable, that the wonders of persons from town should take the same precedence of the wonders of the people in the country, that natural cards do of makers.

But it is sometimes from the opposite feeling, from too high an idea of the importance of their town visitors, that the good people of the country are apt to fall into improprieties. It is wonderful to see the confusion into which the appearance of the new-fashioned carriage of a gentleman just arrived from town throws the family, especially the female part of it, of his rural neighbour. Such a peeping from windows, such a running backwards and forwards of bare-headed boys and girls, to fetch their master from the field, and their mistress from the wash-house! Then after waiting a long while in the parlour, which the chambermaid has had but time to put half in order, comes the old lady with some awkward apology, followed by a scold to the maid for leaving her rubber or hearth-brush in view of the company. By and by appears the master of the house, with another apology, for appearing before ladies in his farmer's dress. After a long series of common inquiries, a frequent pulling out of watches on the part of the visitors, and two or three messages up stairs from the mistress of the family; down come the young ladies with their caps awry, their long pins but half stuck in, their hair powdered in patches, and their aprons stiff from the folds.

Here follows a second course of the same questions and answers, which being closed by an observation of the late hour from the one side, and some strictures on the shortness of town-visits from the other, the company are suffered to depart, who, it is ten to one, laugh all the way home at the good people who were at such pains to make themselves fit, as they thought, to be seen by them. Let these last remember, that there is a style, as it is called, proper to every thing; decency and cleanliness they owe to themselves; an imitation of the fashionable fineries of the town they owe to nobody; most of these, indeed, are quite preposterous in the country: it is only when people get into crowds that they are at liberty to make fools of themselves.

As I have, in the beginning of this paper, desired the city-emigrants not to carry the town into the country, so I must intreat their country friends not to forget that the others have but lately arrived there. Their relish for draining, ditching, hedging, horse-hoeing, liming, and marling, and such other branches of the fine arts as an afternoon's conversation at a gentleman farmer's frequently runs into, has been a good deal blunted by seven months' residence in the region of amusement and dissipation. The like caution will apply to those female orators who occupy the intervals of tea-drinking with dissertations on the cow-house, the dairy, and the poultry-yard.

There are some topics which may be introduced at that season, in which both town and country ladies are qualified to join, though even of them I would recommend a sparing and moderate use; I mean those little lectures on morality, sometimes known by the name of scandal. In these the town ladies, however, have some advantage, as their subjects are often such as may be reckoned fair game,

persons of whom the world has a right to talk, and who seem to act as if they wished to be talked of. These notorious offenders against decency and decorum, of which there are always some instances in great towns, may be compared to certain atrocious criminals, whom the law has ordered to be sent, after execution, to Surgeons' Hall: their characters may be dissected at all tea-tables, without any danger of the crime of defamation. But the beauty of a country town or village is rarely so unguarded in her conduct as to give this licence to the tongues of her neighbours, who are, therefore, generally obliged to resort to the whispering of little private anecdotes and family secrets, which I very much doubt if they be legally entitled to do, at least except in cases of great necessity, as on a rainy Sunday, or where the party consists but of two, who can neither play cribbage, piquet, or backgammon.

Somewhat akin to the lovers of detraction are the offence-takers, a species of people I have observed more common in the country than in populous cities. They are deeply versed in the science of precedency, in the etiquette of paying and returning visits, in the ceremonial of drinking healths, and of acknowledging bows and curtsies. I have been astonished to find the circle of my acquaintance so circumscribed as I have sometimes experienced, when I have happened to take up my head-quarters at a gentleman's, who could only accompany me to the houses of onehalf of the neighbourhood, having contrived to be totally estranged from the other by neglects of himself, affronts to his wife, squabbles about dancing at annual balls, or toasts at country-meetings after the second bottle.

This disease of offence-taking is particularly epidemic in some places every seventh year, or sometimes it returns a little sooner by royal proclamation.