The Sun.
London, England, 1827-12-21 00:00:00

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EVERY NIGHT Bboiti s•-7' t•s7.,a• Nod .; ARK.
Lonatii;' itie 17.
It was Cowper, we believe, the amiable, but
hypochondriacal Cowper, who first broached the
doctrine, that " God made the country, but man
made the town ;" a remark, which, however
true in its literal acceptation, evinces, in its spi-
rit, as much narrowness of mind as we ever re-
member to have met with. We do not say this
from any disrespect to the country, far from
it ; we love its streams, its mountains, and its
peacefulness ; its rosy maidens with their red
arms—which put the author of " Table Talk"
into such extacies—but of which we profess a
rather qualified admiration ; its sunny slopes, its
melody of winds and waters, its rich sparkling
varieties of landscape, its songs of birds
" from morn •to dewy eve ;" more especially
that most inspiring • poetic and magnificent of
God's creatures, a mountain eagle on the wing—.
all these, in their due seasons we admire, but
when put in competition with " the town" and
its countless intellectual advantages—they fade,
we think, into absolute insignificance. The
" country" appeals chiefly to the eye, the
" town" to the mind. The one, though it per-
haps purifies and refines, enfeebles abstracts
and dissipates the imagination; the other con cen7
trates strengthens and brings into immediate
play all that is valuable about it. The one is an
elegant luxury, a welcome but effeminate relax-
ation after the mind has been kept on the stretch
by the other. " The town" alone teaches us
rightly to know ourselves, it inculcates humility
without derogating from self-respect,,:-ruhs - off
the rust engendered by scholarship or seclusion,
enlarges (if its lessons be well applied) the kind::
Tier feelings of nature, and above all enforces
a practical and continuous benevolence, deep-
seated—for it rests on principle, without which
all feeling is contemptible—but far from ro-
mantic or indiscriminate in nature. " The
town" is the only true touch-stone of desert. Every
thing here rises or sinks in due time to its level ;
it is the Ithuriel spear, at whose magic touch all
that is false or affected in character falls off; and
the man himself stands revealed in the nakedness
of his majesty or his meanness. No nobility is
here recognised but that stamped by God him-
self on his creature—the nobility of mind. The
enthusiasm which a condescending aristocrat, or
a provincial prodigy, awakes in their respective
neighbourhoods, is totally unknown to " the
town." We ate here so glutted with aristo-
cracy and intellect, they assume daily such
varied forms and patterns, they are so little of a
novelty—so little of a " black swan," that we
estimate them proportionately, and can even
gaze at the sun (metaphorically as well as
literally) without being blinded by its beams.
The consequence is, that every candidate for
fame is at once taught to know his exact value
with the public, and, undimmed by the mists
in which vanity so often enshrouds an inexperi=
enced intellect, to assert his claims accordingly,
There is nothing so fatal to a man of genius as
the exclusive society of the country. Even in its
more inhabited scenes it is bad ; in its solitudes
it is really intolerable, The same small spirits
cluster together and twinkle in its towns ; and
should a star of greater splendor appear in their
horizon, they do all in their power to dim his
rising lustre ; and when this is vain, " applaud
him to the very echo" immeasurably beyond his
desert. Intellect thus easily acknowledged soon
relaxes its exertions, and having no further point
to gain, is thrown ,back on itself; flies to its vanity
for its daily food, and

Like Cato gives its little Senate laws,
And sits attentive to its own applause,
Emulation is the only spur to genii4a ; and this,
dormant in "the country, 'flourishes to an unlimit-
ed extent iii " the town." To " the town" then,
after all, must merit look for its award—to the
same town which, when the provinces had re-
jected him, adopted Johnson as its own--which
fostered and matured the genius of Burke—
which first discovered the merit of Opie—which
welcomed Garrick, Kemble, and Kean, and will
do the same with every individual who, however
inglorious in birth or deficient in address, has
talent, good conduct, and perseverance to re-
commend him.

It is of this town that the author of the
" Every Night Book" has here ventured to
treat. He has described in spirited language its
various scenes of aniusement, its places of patri-
cian and plebeian resort, and has even introduced
us to its most abandoned scenes of debauchery,
without (no slight praise) exciting one impureidea.
His account of Vauxhall—of the flash houses—
and the smoking Divans, are particularly cha-
racteristic, and may serve as a good guide to
those who are in the habit of frequenting them.
His knowledge of the West End, however, is,
we suspect, rather limited, a sort of " terra
r
pene incognita," the geography of which he does
not very clearly understand, or surely he would
not have contented himself with ; GI .ng us
that Almacks is a place for dancing—the Argyll
Rooms for music—and that both are dull. His
account of the " Cyder Cellar" is still more de-
ficient. This plaee abounds with classical and
convivial associations, and should have been bit
off with proportionate gusto. Here Porsoi
John Ker,mblae acted
criticised
aissed a
butt
raiisneid.
was in the habit of relaxing from the fatigues
ando o
fstuilpyi;e,,hertebe painter, Joh
Euri-
pidesto4opr.v
\ai
Dr, la
the " Shakspeare forgeries" to Capell LofFt -
icottu.rney ; here P
Surely these arr
praised
m
censes deserve a line. Moreover, over, there is no
mention made of a place, now, we suspect, un-
known to the generality,
perhaps even to its next
door neighbour, but once a haunt of "great mark
and likelihood." It •
was in the little back room
of No. 19, Great RUSR—e II
-street, Covent-Garden,
then a book-shop, belonging to the well-known
Toni Davies, that Boswell heard a growl resem-
bling thunder, and on turning round discovered
an animal--never more than half-tamed,---busy
quarrellino.t, with a timid-looking author, which
animal proved, on minute inspection, to be
1)r. Johnson. At this shop that intimacy
commenced, which the biographer has handed
down to all succeeding ages, in his fascinating
and amusingly-conceited life of the great Lexico-
grapher. In this very shop too, Gibbon, on
returning from the Continent, first renounced Catho-
licism, and scrawled on a dirty scrap of paper the
heads of his two first chapters of the Roman History.
But alas! " hol:v are the mighty fallen," this noted Shop
—after having figured for upwards of half a century,
and furnished the inside of the heads of half the Lite-
rati of the day, is now content with furnishing the
outside, and lingers on a private existence as a hatter's
—as such, the author thought, perhaps, that it lay
without the limits of his research; nevertheless, he
should have devoted, at least, a line to its memory.
But our limits warn us to a conclusion ; let it Y.
to say, that" London after Dark," is ahl , lit e
‘ up an sufficd
illustrated in this little volume. Nve •
could give
extracts in corroboration of our
op inion but we
know of no isolated one sufficiently h '• • it
is the pervading spirit of the whole,e aracterisneL..
titular excellence of parts, that
this remark we refer 01 we approve, a with
this readers to tile book itself,