d precipices with great agility, and
evidently unconscious of fear."

W.G.C.

* * * * *

THE SELECTOR,

AND

LITERARY NOTICES OF

_NEW WORKS_

* * * * *

THE GREAT WORLD OF FASHION.

Satire is the pantomime of literature, and harlequin's jacket, his black
vizor, and his eel-like lubricity, are so many harmless satires on the
weak sides of our nature. The pen of the satirist is as effective as the
pencil of the artist; and provided it draw well, cannot fail to prove as
attractive. Indeed, the characters of pantomime, harlequin, columbine,
clown, and pantaloon, make up the best _quarto_ that has ever appeared on
the manners and follies of the times; and they may be turned to as grave
an account as any page of Seneca's Morals, or Cicero's Disputations;
however various the means, the end, or object, is the same, and all is
rounded with a sleep.

"The Great World," in the language of satire, is the "glass of fashion
and the mould of form." Its geography and history are as perpetually
changing as the modes of St. James's, or the features of one of its
toasted beauties; and what is written of it to-day may be dry, and its
time be out of joint, before it has escaped the murky precincts of the
printing-house. It is subtlety itself, and we know not "whence it cometh,
and whither it goeth." Its philosophy is concentric, for this Great World
consists of thousands of little worlds, _usque ad infinitum_, and we do
well if we become not giddy with looking on the wheels of its
vicissitudes.

We know not whom we have to thank for the pamphlet of sixty
pages--entitled "A Geographical and Historical Account of the Great
World"--now before us. It bears the imprint of "Ridgway, Piccadilly," so
that it is published at the gate of the very region it describes--like
the accounts of _Pere la Chaise_, sold at its _concierge_. Annexed is a
Map of the Great World--but the author has not "attempted to lay down the
longitude; the only measurements hitherto made being confined to the
west of the meridian of St. James's Strait." Then the author tells us of
the atomic hypothesis of the formation of the Great World. "These rules,
for the performance of what appears to be an atomic quadrille, are
furnished by Sir H. Davy, elected by the Great World, master of the
ceremonies for the preservation of order, and prescribing rules for the
regulation of the Universe." "The su