of "our littleness" are those connected
with the proceedings of what is called the
fashionable world. There seems reason to
apprehend brain-softening in this large portion
of the community. The littleness of the
changes they are continually making in their
code of laws is so microscopic, that to pay due
attention to them must be seriously injurious
to the mental health. Their sumptuary and
other laws are all of a hair-breadth nature,
which it must be extremely wearing to study
continually. It is not only the case, as every
one has observed, that "Society" is
constantly altering the site on which it takes its
exercise from one alley of the national
playground to another. It goes further than this,
and directs at what particular inch of ground
you are to turn, and marks out a rubicon beyond
which it is ruin to pass. I am told by
trustworthy agents whom I employ, that similar
microscopic changes are continually making in
the costume worn by this same "Society," so
that a gentleman will be obliged to have a new
coat when he does not want one, because the
garment he prized enormously a month ago has
become obsolete, owing to a sudden rise or fall
in buttons; or because some individual whom
"Society" looks up to, has chosen to have his
coat-tails cut "all round about" like the poor old
woman in the nursery rhyme. Minute alterations,
too, I am informed, take place in the
colour of "Society's" gloves; at one time they
must be lavender, at another pale drab, and at
another straw-coloured. Ladies, too, I am given
to understand, are also much addicted to these
small alterations in their manners and customs.
They will not only change the place where they
disport themselves, but the hour, and even the
hat under which they shelter themselves. And
in this last particular they are even above all
consideration of vanity, any young lady—"in
Society"—being ready at a moment's notice to
lay aside a hat which is becoming to her, and
assume one hideously unbecoming, if Society's
bidding urge that course as imperative. Nay,
there would appear to be even more remarkable
changes yet to which these docile
creatures are ready to submit; and it has reached
me from a special source that of late it has
become the custom to change not only the
objects by which a fair creature's face is
surrounded but the face itself, which it has
become fashionable to tint to the popular shade
of the instant. Having had my attention directed
to this matter, I felt called upon to investigate
it myself, and I must acknowledge that it
appeared to me that there was unquestionably a
remarkable uniformity of complexion among
many ladies, and also that the shade was one i
had never observed in nature—some ladies, who
had probably rather lost their "eye for colour,"
wearing faces of a pale mauve colour, and some
having gone to work at lips, eyebrows, and so
forth, to such purpose that it was plain they looked
upon their countenances underneath, as a kind of
rough sketch or rudimentary outline and substructure,
on which to build, according to their own
fancy and genius. Nor is this all. Among both
ladies and gentlemen in "Society" there exist
phrases and modes of speech which are as liable to
alteration as the length of a coat-tail or the colour
of a nose. Thus it will happen that on a certain
day and at a certain hour the edict goes forth that
in acknowledgment of all services whatsoever the
word "Thanks" shall be used; and that when
such services are to be rejected the form of
speech shall be, "No. Thanks." Prom the
moment of the issue of this command, no one
"in Society" is ever heard to say "Thank you,"
and that poor miserable old expression of
gratitude is handed over to the vulgar herd whose
coat-tails are of all sorts of ridiculous lengths,
and whose faces are of all sorts of ridiculous
natural colours. I also gather from those
persons in my employment whom I secrete on chairs
in the Park, and in other localities where they
can be on the look-out, that there are certain
phrases in continual use, of a wholly unintelligible
sort, but which Society is bound by its
gentility to repeat on all occasions, possible and
impossible. The first of these is, "Don't you
know," and the second is, "That sort of thing."
These two expressions are dragged in, pushed
in, pulled in, and generally so inhumanly tousled
and knocked about, that it is a marvel they hold
together; one of my informers assures me that a
certain gentleman, who was asked how he and the
party he belonged to were going to Goodwood
Races, was heard to answer, "Going over, don't
you know, in an omnibus, and that sort of thing."

I trust my official exertions will not become
subject to disparagement in consequence of
my frankly owning that I have been hitherto
unable to ascertain who gives these laws, or
how they are promulgated. It may be that there
is some Social Parliament which holds midnight
meetings, at which all such matters are
discussed, and where honourable members inform
the House that a snob has been seen in
stone-coloured gloves, and it is necessary that even
at that late hour the House should resolve
itself into committee, and act on so fearful an
emergency.

There is one very different detail of littleness,
worth a moment's mention in conclusion.

Some years since, it happened that certain
persons, with the idea of catering for the public
amusement, discovered and brought to this
metropolis an unhappy monster, such as, in the
course of the accidents to which Nature is
liable, will from time to time come into being
and remain in the world, a blemish upon fair
creation. The particular monster was some
mixture of a terrible baboon and the lowest
type of savage humanity, a humiliating link
with the brutes, a creature which, though of
the female sex, was bearded like a man, or
like a goat, or what not? They called it Julia
Pastrana.

Now I have not only to record that this thing
while alive was shown among us, and that in a
civilised country it was paraded about and
advertised in order that nobody who was morbidly
disposed might lose a chance, and that there
were found people to respond to the appeal of the
advertisers, but, still worse; when most