grogs, is the Church Establishment. "The
Anglican religion seems to have been invented
expressly for the English aristocracy. Among
its professors the fate of the Jew, the Irishman,
and the beggar, inspires no pity. The Romans
were not more insensible to the tortures of
the gladiators in the circus. The priest will
pronounce from his pulpit an emphatic
discourse on charity; but for the thousands of
unfortunates who die every day in the horrors
of misery and abandonment, they have not one
tear, not an emotion of the heart. The
Anglican minister is essentially the priest of the
rich and the lettered. He is a rhetorician of
sufficient attainments, who occupies himself
in polishing his phrases, and rounding his
periods, and cares for little beyond. His duty
is to deliver in the temple a discourse,
prepared with a certain amount of talent, on a
fixed day and hour. After that he returns
home, dines in the midst of his family, and
discovers that everything happens for the
best in a country where the taxes upon
the poor amount to more than a hundred
millions."

In contrast with the luxury and extravgance
of the Church, M. Texier gives full
licence to his fancy in describing the condition
of those miserable people who earn enough
money to pay a hundred millions a year to
the State. But we are tired of foreigners'
descriptions of what may not be seen in Field
Lane and Seven Dials; where the starving
population, it seems, are driven by tyranny to
get their living—not only as beggars and
robbers, but assassins. One amiable unfortunate
told M. Texier that he was a native of
"poor and Catholic Ireland;" upon which we
are treated to the important fact, that if M.
Texier were to live for a thousand years (a
consummation which would evidently be of
great advantage to French literature), he
would never forget the impression produced
by those words!

As to the upper classes in general—a bloated
and rapacious aristocracy—" not less blasé
than the Roman society under the Caesars,"
they think of nothing but enjoying
themselves. "It is necessary for the English, in
order to feel a certain emotion, to behold
persons in peril. Tigers, hyænas, and lions
at one time were the rage, but when it
was perceived that Carter and Van Amburgh
did not run any danger, they were forsaken.
The young girl who was devoured three years
ago, in the presence of the public at Astley's,
by a tiger, had an immense success. For
fifteen, days nothing else was talked about in
society and the clubs. Everybody envied
those who had been so favoured as to assist
at this extraordinary representation. To hear
the bones of a poor girl crunched between the
teeth of a wild beast—what a fine opportunity
to be envied! I am certain that the time is
not very distant when the spectacle of a
combat between men and animals will be
necessary for this enervated aristocracy. I
hear even now, of a society of capitalists
being formed for the purpose of building a
vast circus at which men will contend against
bears."

Let us follow M. Texier through a more
favourable phase of aristocratic life. He
goes to the opera, and states with some
magnanimity that the interiors, neither of the
Italiens or the Grand Opéra at Paris, can give
an idea of that of Her Majesty's Theatre.
"The English aristocracy is represented on
six ranges of boxes. Diamonds and all the
precious stones of the Indies sparkle on the
necks, in the hair, and on the fingers of these
noble ladies. These beautiful swans of Great
Britain display, with a complaisance
altogether peculiar to London, their superb
forms; and the lace, of a brownish tone, serves
to heighten still more the splendour of their
white shoulders, which proceed vaporously
from a cloud of points d' Angleterre. O
daughters of Albion! the most illustrious
of your modern poets—Lord Byron—has
calumniated you! The English ladies, in
ball dress (and they are nearly always in ball
dress), are the women whose beauty we can
most surely appreciate at the first view. In
spite of the rules laid down by cant, they are
so incompletely clad, that if they were to
disembarrass themselves of their bracelets of
gold and their necklaces of pearls and
diamonds, nothing would remain to hide
them from the public gaze, but the veil of
their long ash-coloured hair."

In matters of fact the most easily ascertainable,
this gentleman arrives at similar
wonderful results. He informs his readers that,
during the Exhibition, in London, "the
smallest of single apartments could not be
obtained for less than ten shillings a day;
and for two rooms a sovereign!"

M. Texier is very happy to be able to
assure his countrymen that "the devil does
not lose his rights in English society, and that
what they call British reserve can be carried
to a certain point of hypocrisy." He adds
"In London, the people never see the day,
and are so occupied, that they have no time
to be aware that they exist. After dinner,
the tradesmen, the gentlemen, and those who
belong to the nobility, go to the theatre,
The representation terminated, they rush off
to their clubs, where they drink and smoke.
After this there is the Finish, an ignoble
public-house, or sumptuous tavern, so called,
because it is to these that they go to finish
the night.

"The Finishes hold the same relation to
English habits as the estaminet to those of the
Germans, or the café to those of the French.
. . . It is not until nearly one o'clock in
the morning that the habitués begin to arrive.
Several of these gin-palaces (the author
favours us with the English name) are the
daily rendezvous of the élite of the aristocracy.
These young lords, who at an earlier hour
are always stiff and solemn, replying by a