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their countenances by the brilliancy of your wit dr the point of your satire. And yet, I am told, when emancipated from the frightful presence of man, they can converse with volubility,

And laugh, forgetful of the noon-tide hour.

His presence imposes upon them an awful restraint, freezes the genial current of the soul, and renders them, during his intrusion, mere inanimate spectators of his actions.

As fortune is a matter of little, if any, consideration in Canada, and as parents seldom impose restraints on the inclinations of their children, men and women marry at an early age. A female who has the misfortune to attain her twenty-fifth year without having bowed before the hymeneal altar, is generally considered as having passed the zenith of her glory, and no longer entitled to any marked attentions from the other sex. At this period of life, most Canadian women see themselves surrounded by a numerous family of children; and, to say the truth, the fair sex are so highly prized in every part of America, that an old maid is a rara avis in terris, a delicacy of which few mansions can make their boast. If it had not been for the importation of our English Dictionaries, the very term would scarcely have been known in the Canadas. The high esteem in which females are held in these Provinces, may be easily accounted for: A comfortable maintenance for a family is fairly within the reach of every industrious

man; and a life of lonely celibacy, in a country so thinly inhabited, must not only be attended with innumerable inconveniencies, but with a total deprivation of social intercourse and domestic enjoyment. The consequence is, that every man, when he has attained his twenty-first year, resolves on taking to himself a wife, and thus ridding himself of the cares of the world! The number of male emigrants, who annually arrive in every part of America, on a moderate calculation, is, to that of females, as three are to one. Women are therefore a scarce commodity in the Canadian market; and the scarcity of any article, to use a mercantile phrase, necessarily enhances its value, and sometimes increases the demand. The women in Canada, there fore, though intrinsically at least 75 per cent. below our fair countrywomen, are more highly prized, and much more eagerly sought after. Though seldom exempt from calumny while unmarried, they are said to make good wives to indulgent husbands, who have no objections to allow their neighbours a participation in their affections. Indeed, it is thought rather derogatory from the exalted notions of liberty, which every American, both under a Republic and under a Monarchy, imbibes with his mother's milk, to tie down the affections to any single object. UNIVERSAL LOVE, as well as UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, is, in America, the order of the day; and heaven have mercy on the man who is married, and is not willing to recognize this as sound doctrine! His head and heart will fre

quently ache, and his eyes be often red with weeping. A certain noble Lord once gave it as his opinion, that the ladies of a certain nation appeared to be all virtuous, and yet were all unchaste. Had his Lordship been acquainted with America, he would have known a certain noble colony to which the remark would be much more applicable.

Gentlemen in Canada appear to be much addicted to drinking. Card-playing, and horse-racing, are their principal amusements. In the country parts of the Province, they are in the habit of assembling in parties at the taverns, where they gamble pretty highly, and drink very immoderately, seldom returning home without being completely intoxicated, They are very partial Jamaica spirits, brandy, shrub, and peppermint and do not often use wine or punch. Grog, and the unadulterated aqua vita, are their common drink; and of these they freely partake at all hours of the day and night.

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LETTER XXV.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF UPPER CANADA THE SECOND CLASS IN SOCIETY-THE FEMALES MARRIAGES-COURTSHIP THEIR LOW IDEAS OF CHASTITYAN ANECDOTE-A FEMALE CONVERSATION-OBSEQUIOUSNESS OF HUSBANDS.

IN my preceding letter I brought you acquainted with the manners and customs of the HIGHER CLASS in Canadian Society, and I purpose now to introduce you to a knowledge of those of the LOWER, or what would, in more civilized regions, be called the MIDDLE CLASS. But, in doing this, I feel that I shall require your most charitable consideration, which, under my circumstances,' you will not refuse to extend, and which will completely exonerate me from the very semblance of the charge contained in the often-quoted couplet,

Immodest words admit of no defence,

For want of decency is want of sense.

If I assure you, that this class of Canadians are exceedingly gross in their manners, and generally addicted to low and obscene conversation, I convey to you a vague and inadequate idea of the people. But when I give you a few common examples of their vicious habits and discourse, divested as far as possible of their most offensive

accompaniments,+ I leave you to form a tolerably correct estimate of the state of society from the remainder.

Having thus anticipated the blame of which many well-meaning individuals might, if I had made no apology for the introduction of objectionable phrases, have thought me deserving, I will now proceed to present you with a picture of the

+ The following passage from that polite scholar, Bishop Hurd, would serve perhaps for my exculpation in the minds of many worthy persons, had I related several of the circumstances, to which I here briefly allude, in all their native amplitude of expression. But I prefer an error on the safe and moral side of the question.

After expressing himself in terms of reprobation at “the humour" then prevalent in England, which "had gone far towards unnerving the noblest modern language, and effeminating the public taste," the Bishop adds: "This was not a little forwarded by, what generally makes its appearance at the same time, a kind of feminine curiosity in the choice of words; cautiously avoiding and reprobating all such (which were not seldom the most expressive) as had been profaned by a too vulgar use, or had suf fered the touch of some other accidental taint. This ran us into periphrases and general expression;-the peculiar bane of every polished language. Whereas the rhetorician's judgment here again should direct us: In certain situations all kinds of words are very good, except those which are of an immodest cast. For sometimes it is necessary to use low and vulgar terms: And those words which to polite and cultivated minds appear corrupt and mean, are uttered with the utmost propriety when occasion requires. Which seems borrowed from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I declare that every part of speech, (though it be mean, vulgar, filthy, or containing any other cause of offence,) by which is intended to be denoted any body or action whatever, will claim for itself an appropriate situation in discourse."

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