pect, as
among the natives of New Zealand. Why rush for subjects for civilisation to
the back woods of America, when thousands may be found, any fine afternoon,
in Regent-street? Why fly to Biddy Salamander and Bulkabra, when the Queen
of Beauty and Count D'Orsay have equally urgent claims on the attention and
sympathies of the civiliser?

On the subject of civilisation, two questions naturally present
themselves--the one, what _is_ civilisation?--the other, have we such a
superabundance of that commodity among us, that we should think about
exporting it? To the former question, the journal especially devoted to the
subject has, to the best of our belief, never condescended a reply;
although, like the celebrated argument on the colour of the chameleon, no
two persons, perhaps, have the same idea of it. In what then, does
civilisation consist, and how is it to be generally promoted? Does it, as
Sir E.L. B---- would doubtlessly assure us, does it lie in a strict
adherence to the last month's fashions; and is it to be propagated
throughout the world only by missionaries from Nugee's, and by the
universal dissemination of curling-tongs and Macassar--patent leather boots
and opera hats--white cambric pocket-handkerchiefs and lavender-water? Or,
does it consist, as the Countess of B---- would endeavour to convince us,
in abstaining from partaking twice of fish, and from eating peas with the
knife? and is it to be made common among mankind only by distributing
silver forks and finger-glasses to barbarians, and printing the Book of
Etiquette for gratuitous circulation among them? Or, is it, as the mild and
humane Judge P---- would prove to us, a necessary result of the Statutes at
Large; and can it be rendered universal only by sending out Jack Ketch as a
missionary--by the introduction of rope-walks in foreign parts, and the
erection of gallows all over the world? Or, is it, as the Archbishop of
Canterbury contests, to be achieved solely by the dissemination of bishops,
and by diffusing among the poor benighted negroes the blessings of sermons,
tithes, and church rates? Christianity, it has, on the other hand, been
asserted, is the only practical system of civilisation; but this is
manifestly the idea of a visionary. For ourselves, we must confess we
incline to the opposite opinion; and think either the bishops or Jack Ketch
(we hardly know which we prefer) by far the more rational means. Indeed,
when we consider the high state