during the winter; so that there are sometimes three or four on the same night. The company begin to meet at nine or ten o'clock. People of fashion, both males and females, who are invited to them, all go to each; and stay there a longer or shorter time, as may be agreeable. Some are going in as others are coming out; three or four hundred people meet without seeing each other, and speak to one another without waiting for an answer. Card-tables are prepared in the different rooms, and card-playing lasts till one or two o'clock in the morning. In some houses suppers are given; but that is not common. If any French gentleman or lady should come to London, this compliment is paid to them: it is thought to be what they like best; but it must not be imagined that this is the general custom. Being at Paris some years ago, at the prince de Conti's, I met the viscount de Noailles, who had just returned from London, where he had been six weeks. He was giving the company an account of the manner of living at London; and among other things, he said that they supped there, but did not dine. I was a little astonished at this assertion; and took the liberty to tell him that I had been absent from London only six months, and that was not the custom when I came away. He assured me very seriously, that I should find it so when I returned: as if a nation altered its manners in six months. It is thus that we are mistaken, when we form general opinions upon the little we see. Besides this way of meeting, there are, during the winter and spring, dinners of families, and their common friends, who come in turn: these are settled dinners, to which no one goes who is not invited. Thus there is not a city in Europe, where a person is less likely to fall in at the hour of dinner, at a friend's house, than in London. You run the risk of finding that he is gone to dine with a friend; or that he has a select party, and his table is full; or that he is dining alone, and does not choose to be taken unprovided. There are perhaps some exceptions, but I do not know them; besides, exceptions do not make the rule. As for the clubs, every body knows that they are assemblies of men, who elect among themselves the members of their society. They have houses which they pay, to which they can go at any time; and there they read the newspapers, play at cards, and sup. There are clubs for all ranks, and all classes, even for mechanics: the latter content themselves with a private room in a tavern or a coffee-house. In the country towns there is a little more sociability. The shackles of parliament do not exist there, and they assemble more freely; in other respects there is little difference. The life they lead in the country is upon another system. It is there that the English display their luxury, and make their principal expense; it is there that they exercise their hospitality. There are no considerable noblemen or gentlemen, or men of fortune, who have not an estate and a house suitable to their condition: some magnificent and noble, but all good and convenient. There they receive their friends and foreigners willingly. However, they are glad to be previously informed of the time when they are to come: because they themselves might happen to be gone to pay a visit for some days to some of their country friends; or that their house was full; or that they had arranged the plan of their living, which they would not like to change. The manner of living in the country is more or less free, according to the disposition of the master of the house. In general, the company breakfast, dine, and sup together: those who absent themselves form an exception to the rule. At breakfast, parties are made for walking or riding: every one has perfect freedom in this respect. They return to dine; and after dinner, talk or play at cards till supper. The hours are more regular than in town; and as there is no business here, it is in the country that the English may be best seen in their natural disposition. They are not so gloomy as is supposed; on the contrary, an air of gayety prevails in the country, which greatly astonishes those who know the English nation only through the romances written by foreigners that have never set their foot in England. Men of letters do not form a body in London, as they do at Paris: it is not a profession. There is no one house which the literati frequent more than another: they do not know what is meant by a bureau d'esprit. A lady of rank attempted, some years ago, to form one, and to have one day in the week set apart for an assembly of that sort; but it at last became ridicu lous. If the English, who are really learned, were boasters, they might be more proud of not pretending to be so, than of setting up for men of letters. Men of learning, and writers are to be found in all conditions of life, from the peer of the realm to the mechanic: one to please himself, another for his amusement, and a third for his emolument. Those whose objects of study are the same, assist each other, and communicate together; but we do not see, as in other countries, the naturalist, the poet, and the mathematician, meeting to agree to praise each other, without being qualified to appreciate each other's merit. Society does nothing in England for the sick; I mean the bed ridden. In France and Italy, a man goes a hundred miles to be at the bed side of his sick friend. Here, if he is in the house, he quits it. His disorder may be contagious; or the sick man himself wishes to be quiet. Perhaps they are right. I wish neither to praise nor to blame; I only mention the fact. I have perhaps dwelt too much upon this subject: but I have thought that if these memoirs should one day become public, they would be as much read upon the continent as in England; and the state of society in this country being so different from others, and arising from its constitution, every one must be pleased with me for giving him a just and clear idea of it. I have carried the subject the further, because I never saw a traveller who did not complain of the difficulties he found in getting into company in London. I have said that it arose from the public business: I will add, that the spirit of party, which ordinarily prevails with more or less violence in company, and even creeps into families, produces obstacles which are fatal to the harmony of society, and which destroy all its charms. Happily for myself, my condition and situation excused me from forming political opinions; and if I possessed them, I should be fully sensible that it was not proper for me to avow them openly in conversation. In consequence of this reserve, I have always had the good fortune to have friends among all parties; and however difficult it has sometimes been to maintain it, I think I have so far succeeded, as never to have forfeited the good-will of any one; except in the instance already mentioned, for which, I will venture to say, I never gave sufficient cause. DEATH OF WIELAND, THE GERMAN POET. CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND, deceased at Weimar, the night of the twentieth and twenty-first of January, 1813, had seen three generations, during which, from the time of Gottsched to our present poetical period, he has contributed to give the greatest lustre to our literature. He had celebrated on the fifth of September last, not far from Jena, at the country seat of his ancient friend, madam Greesbach, the widow of the counsellor, the eightieth anniversary of his birth, to the great satisfaction and amidst the felicitations of all his friends at Weimar and Jena. The memory of this event has been preserved in a medal by Facius of Weimar, upon which the profile of our Anacreon is much better represented than upon a former one executed in 1783, by Abramson, at Berlin. Wieland afterwards returned to Wiemar, where he continued, with the ardour of youth, his favourite occupation, the translation of Cicero's letters, and was adding a sixth volume to that beautiful work, of which the fifth part had appeared in the course of 1812. He began to write early in the morning, and, as if he foresaw that the sand of time had but a few moments in reserve for him, he did not love to be interrupted in the employment. He had not altered in the least his ordinary mode of life; he appeared occasionally at spectacles, and frequently visited circles of friends. No person could have less concern about his health, until suddenly a slight change in his regimen, in the use of wine, to which he was accustomed, was followed by a kind of parellydis, attended with spasms, resembling, in their effects, those of the apoplexy. He was at times delirious, with lucid intervals, between which sparks of his poetic genius were still apparent. The hall of the ducal palace in which his remains were exposed to view, is the same where, five years since, were placed those of the dutchess Amelia, whom he had so often sung under the name of Olympia Wieland had for a long time expressed a desire that his grave should be placed by the side of his wife's, who was buried in 1799, in a rural spot which he owned at Ormanstadt, about a mile from Wiemar, between that city and Auerstadt, where was also interred a little daughter of his ancient friend Sophie de la Roche. His wish is as sacred as a law to his family. It is to Or. manstadt that the German youth will go to pay a tribute of regret to the poet of the graces, and the minstrel of Oberon. SELECTED POETRY. MR. ROGERS, who began his poetical career many years since as the author of the Pleasures of Memory, has recently publish. ed a collection of his works, containing, among other new pieces, "Fragments of a poem, called The Voyage of Columbus." When we recollect the nature of the subject, the acknowledged genius of the author, the labour and time which we understand he has devoted to this production-and particularly the anticipation of its singular merits, which preceded its appearance-we confess that we have been much disappointed in its general style and character. The stale device of giving to the poem the appearance of a translation from an ancient Spanish manuscript, the disjointed and loose texture of its fragments, and the almost puerile conceit of omitting, as if it were lost, one entire canto, detract most unnecessarily from the unity, and weaken the interest of the whole poem. Yet there are passages wrought with much elegance and taste, and many melodious lines, which recall the tender warbling of Mr. Rogers's early muse. The first canto is a very favourable specimen: Night-Columbus on the Atlantic-the variation of the compass, Say who first pass'd the portals of the west, On the dread confines of an unknown world; Sung ere his coming-and by Heav'n design'd To lift the veil that cover'd half mankind! "Twas night. The moon, o'er the wide wave, disclos'd The poem opens on Friday, the 14th of September, 1492; and it is remarkable that the writer, who represents himself as having sailed with Columbus, never deviates from the track of the old chroniclers, but to discover from behind the |