The Sun.
London, England, 1834-09-05 00:00:00

BOY-MEN AND GIRL-WOMEN.

The girl woman is generally a rather pretty creature,
dressed in something between a frock and a gown, made of
white muslin, with a pink sash round her waist. Her face
has lost the free and unembarrassed expression of child-
hood, without having obtained the self-possession and dig-
nity of woman. The graces of her person are as yet but
half developed ; her shoulders are sharp and angular, and
her arms long and unpleasantly slender. She is too mature
to wear her hair in a crop, and too childish to have it piled
in towers of curls and combs on the top of her head. In-
deed, let her dress be what it may, it appears alike unfit for
the stage through which she has passed, or the one on which
she is about to enter. Her intellectual faculties and con-
versation are in an equally uncertain state ; and the person
who addresses her is sorely puzzled how to hit the right
medium between juvenility and maturity. She has not
made 4' her mind whether she likes Byron or the skipping-
rope best ; but decidedly prefers Mrs. Opie to the author
of Waverley. If you talk of school, you offend her ; and
vet she knows not bow to discourse about anything
01s6—so that all the conversation consists of an abrupt
observation and an embarrassed rejoinder. If she
can be pre7s.iled upon to venture more than six
syllables at a time, ,she has a bad habit of speaking unplea-
sant truths, and afterwaeds looking distressingly conscious,
not knowing whether she had done right or wrong. She
sits on her chair, holding in one hand a white pocket hand-
kerchief, and not a little perplexed what to do with the
other ; with an eternal simper hanging around her mouth,
ready to be aggravated into a laugh upon the most trivial
occasion. If any body tells a joke with a grave face, she
looks grave too ; but is mightily tickled with the hymeneal
allusions and matrimonial witticisms of which the more ma-
ture part of the company are delivered. She does not un-
derstand 'or -appreciate worldly knowledge, yet she has
school learning enough to find you out if you talk foolishly.
In short, she is altogether in an unsettled state, filled with
childish reminiscences and womanly aspirations, and is,
when a man feels grave or low-spirited, one of the most
unendurable annoyances with which lie can well be afflicted.
But if your girl-woman is an undesirable individual, your
boy-man is one of the greatest nuisances in civilized society.
Ther© is something charming about the female sex at al-
most every period of their existence ; and even in town a
verg young lady, though certainly a subject for apprehen-
sion, has some redeeming points ; while in the country,
after a scamper in the fields, or a chase after a bird or
butterfly, with her eyes filled with fire and animation, her
cheeks glowing with health and exercise, her clustering
curls dancing in the wind, and her pretty bonnet hanging
loosely and carelessly on the' back part of her head, she
is a truly beautiful and poetical object. But your boy-
man is a monster wherever you meet with him. In
the country he is an " unlicked cub," a lout, a bump-
kin ; in town, a half-made-up cockscomb, an unfinished
puppy, a thing with nearly all the vices and follies of a
man' without his sense or passions. It is his oath that
rims loudest in the tavern, and his tongue that is most
clamoroint in its demands for strong drink to destroy
his puny constitution, merely because lie thinks it looks
manly. Ho is altogether a foolish and contemptible crea-
ture ;" for even his vicious habits do not afford him plea-
sure. He does not, like the real voluptuary, " roll sin
like a sweet morsel under his tongue ;" but he counterfeits
`mod habits, and will drink and smoke, though bath be un-
plensant to him and make him sick, merely because older
peepl-e‘do so; and this it is which prevents him from ever
becoming what it is the height of his ambition to appear—
a man. Then the swearing of these grown children is per-
fectly disgusting. From a man, borne away by passion, or
frod' an old sailor, to whom it has become a trick of custom
and wlio,, moreover, seems a sort of person privileged to
wish his eyes no good, a few anathemas do not come with
so bad a grace i but to hear these would-be-men repeating
like parrots, all the vulgar oaths that low blackguardism has
invented and perpetrated, merely because they have arrived
at the dignity of shaving, is very nauseous.—Fay's Crayon
Sketches, printed at New 'York.

The new romance, about to be published, from the
pen of the author of " Pelham," " Eugene Aram," &c., is to
be cititied " The Last Days of Pompeii," from inspecting the
ruins of which ancient city Mr. Bulwer is just returned. The
subject 1.9 undoubtedly of the grandest kind, and it is said that
the eminent novelist has bestowed on it some of the finest ef-
forts of his genins. All that excites the imagination—terror,
mystery, passion, the luxury of the ancient world, as it existed
in this chosen retreat of the Romans—are inherent in the
theme ; and by whom could it be better turned to the pur-
poses of romance than by him who has now taken his stand as
the first of living novelists ?
MRS. FITZHERBERT.—This much-respected lady
has abandoned the intention of returning home for the present ;
she has left Paris for Aix-la- Chapelle.
A KENTUCKIA:('S PRAISE OF ToßAcco.—" I
am one of those who don't believe in the happy effects of
either brandy or tobacco," replied Chevillere. 4, Then you
are off the trail for once in your life, stranger, for I take to_
Immo as one of God's mercies to the poor. i
Whether it came
by a regular dispensation of Providence (as our parson used
to 843'), or in a natural way, I can't tell ;
but hang me, if
when I gets a
quid of the real Kentuck twist or Maryland
kite-foot into my mouth, if I ain't as proud a man as the grand
.Turlehimeelf. It drives away the solemncholies, and makes
a fellow feel so good natured and so comfortable; it turns the
skilliugs in his pocket into dollars, and his wrath into fun and
devilry. Let them talk about tobacco as they choose amon;',
the fine gals, and at their theatres, and balls, and cotillions,
and all them sort of things ; but let one of 'em git twenty
n2oe, deep into a Kentuck forest, and then see if a chew of the
atufrain't good for company and comfort."—The Kentuckian
,New ierfr•