out of time, fortune, and happiness; repaying them with the consolation of being ridiculed by the wise, endangering health, and wasting means; a kind of remuneration rather paradoxical, but most graciously received. Semblance and shade are among her attributes. It is of more importance for her worshippers to appear happy, than to be so. She makes Folly originator and conductor of ceremonies, all based on the rickety foundation of vain show; each routine of which must be passively adhered to, until the fickle goddess shakes her kaleidoscope again, and then, O Jupiter! what a bustle-not the Simon Pure variety bustle-but such a scampering to obey the mandate of the tyrant-It could not be eclipsed by ten score of rats, should ferret, weasel, and puss, all pounce upon them at once. The least murmuring or halting on the part of a recusant, is punished with instant excommunication, and the ridicule of the fashionable community. If she requires oblations from the four quarters of the globe, they must be had, if wealth, health, and happiness are the price. If she fancies comparative nakedness for winter, or five thicknesses of woollen for dog days she speaks, and it is done. If she orders the purple current of life, and the organs of respiration to be retarded by steel, whalebone, buckram, drill, and cords, it is done. Disease laughs, and death grins at the folly of the goddess, and the zeal of the worshippers. If she orders a bag full of notions on the hips, a Chinese shoe on the foot, a short cut, a trail, a hoop, or balloon sleeve, or no sleeve, for a dress; and a grain fan bonnet, or fool's cap for the head, she is obsequiously obeyed by the exquisitely fashionable ladies, and lauded by their beaux. If she orders her male subjects to

produce a crop of corns on their feet with tight boots, contract their muscles with straps at both ends, and their chests with steel springs, and hemp cords suitable for a hangman, and to play all the monkey shines of a coxcomb, with chains dangling, rattan flourishing, and soaplocks streaming in the breeze, they are quite as tractable and docile as the feminine exquisites.

Fashion taxes without reason, and collects without mercy. She first infatuates the court and aristocracy, and then ridicules the poor if they do not follow in the wake, although they die in the ditch. This was exemplified in the reign of Richard III., who was humpbacked. Monkey-like, his court, at the dictum of fashion, all mounted a bustle on their backs, and as this was not an expensive adjunct, the whole nation became hump backed-emphatically a crooked generation— from the peasant to the king, all were humped.

When looking at the frivolity of fashion, I often think of the boy, who traced the fashions from the country to Philadelphia; from thence to New York; thence to Boston; thence to Paris, and from thence to the devil; when he exclaimed, "I thought they came from him, for they make folks look just like a picture of him in one of my books."

If this tyrannical huzzy would be content with seducing the rich from the path of common sense, only for a short time, and would leave them something for old age, when she can no longer receive their adulation, she might have some claims to generosity; but no, she not only often strips them as clear from feathers as a turkey on a spit, but searches the cellar and the garret -the cottage and the hovel, for victims. She takes fools by storm, the wise by deception and bribery, and

makes the Mordecais and Daniels tremble at the gong-sound of trumpet-tongued ridicule. Not only the vain and giddy, the thoughtless and rattlebrained, dance attendance upon her, but many a statesman and philosopher, moralist and Christian, more or less from all classes, pay tythes, at least, into the treasury of this transatlantic, Americanized, aristocratic, brazen-faced goddess; who is constantly importing the trappings and extravagances of European courts, to smother republican simplicity. Fashion is the foster mother of vanity, the offal of pride, and has nursed her pet, until it is as fat as a sea turtle, is quite as wicked to bite, and harder to kill; but, unlike that inhabitant of the herring pond, instead of keeping in a shell, it is mounted on a shell, adorned with every flummery that the old fickle minded, ever changing, never tiring, ignis fatuus nurse can invent, intruding into all the avenues of life, scattering misery far and wide-faithless, fearless, uncompromising, and tyrannical. Reader, if you love freedom more than slavery, liberty more than thraldom, happiness more than misery, competence more than poverty; never bow your knee to the goddess FASHION.

FIRES.

By referring to history, we find the GREAT FIRES of our country scarcely deserve the name, either on land or water, in the amount of property destroyed, or in the destruction of human life.

In the years 982, 1087, 1132, and 1136, nearly the whole of the city of London was destroyed by fire. On the 10th of July, 1212, the London bridge was burnt,

and two thousand persons perished. On the 2d of September, 1666, a fire commenced near the monument, and continued four days and nights, spreading over four hundred and thirty-six acres of ground, four hundred streets, and consuming one hundred and thirteen thousand houses, and eighty-six churches. In 1676, this city was again threatened, for a time, with a similar fire, six hundred houses being destroyed before the flames were arrested. The next large fire in London, occurred July 22 and 23, 1794, when near seven hundred houses were destroyed, including an East India warehouse, in which were thirty-five thousand bags of saltpetre, but history says nothing of its "explosion."

On the 21st of March, 1824, a dreadful fire occurred at Cario, Egypt, when six thousand persons lost their lives by the explosion of the magazine-gunpowder, not saltpetre! In January, 1823, a great fire occurred in Canton, which consumed fifteen thousand houses, and occasioned the loss of five hundred lives.

On the 4th of September, 1778, a fire occurred in Constantinople, which consumed two thousand houses. On the 22d of October, 1782, another occurred in the same city, which consumed forty thousand dwellings and fifty mosques. In July of the next year, seven hundred houses were burnt. August 5, 1784, another fire occurred there, which destroyed ten thousand houses. During the year 1791, at different fires, thirty thousand houses were destroyed in that ill-fated city. On the 2d of August, 1816, this city lost twelve hundred and five houses and three thousand shops. In 1818-20, several thousand more houses were destroyed. In February, 1813, a great fire occurred

there, destroying twelve thousand houses, four hundred boats, and four hundred lives.

On the 21st of June, 1821, Paramaribo, the chief city of the Dutch colonies in South America, was almost entirely destroyed by fire-damage estimated at twenty millions of guilders. On the 26th of August, 1780, St. Petersburgh, in Russia, sustained great damage by fire; and on the 28th of November, of the same year, eleven thousand houses were destroyed by fire, communicated by lightning. On the 7th of June, 1796, another fire occurred there, destroying a large magazine of naval stores, and one hundred vessels.

Moscow, in Russia, founded, in 1147, was fired by the Tartars, in 1383, and almost entirely consumed. It was rebuilt, and, in 1571, again laid in ashes by the Tartars. It was again rebuilt, and, in 1611, destroyed by the Poles. From that time, this city enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity up to the 14th of September, 1812, when Bonaparte entered it with his victorious army. It was then fired by the Russians, and continued burning for several days, destroying more than three quarters of the city proper, then twenty miles in circumference, compelling the French army to retreat from the flames, causing the ruin of the army and the downfall of Bonaparte. Thirty thousand sick and wounded perished in the flames.

At Brest, in France, on the 4th of December, 1776, the marine hospital was consumed, with a large number of sick persons, and fifty galley slaves.

On the 14th of February, 1807, the British ship Ajax was consumed off Tenedos, an island in the Grecian Archipelago, when three hundred and fifty men perished.