in a small parcel; if not only the grand outline of the dress, but all its enchanting folds and openings, are exhibited on a figure so prepossessingly elegant that it may be doubted whether London itself can produce such living models? — exhibiting, too, not only the dress in all its killing elegance, but those very movements of the hand and arm, those assassinating motions of the head, that murderous peep of the shoe-peak, and destructive twirl of the fan, which have sent so many despairing lovers to their long homes? If such things can be carried in this manner over all the kingdom, at less expence than the coach-hire of a single lounge from the Strand to Piccadilly; if the only motive for visiting the metropolis shall thus be made to cease; if there remains no other inducement to leave the country, than because the town may happen to be more convenient for one's parents, or some other such matter-of-fact reason; we may have just ground for dreading a very serious falling-off in the revenues of London. What will become of the fashionable hotels, the genteel lodging-houses, and the gay promenades, when such perspective views are sent to the West of England as shall convince them, that things worth seeing are not always worth going to see! As to the loss incurred, by the decrease of country visitors, to the opera, the theatres, the pastrycooks, and the trinket-shops, I shall leave that to be estimated by the persons concerned. Certain it is, that very serious consequences may be expected to all classes in the Metropolis, when its attractions are thus spread over cities, towns, and villages, where Nature only has hitherto presided, and whose inhabitants have been known actually to live in want, and to die in ignorance of the elegancies of our Repositories, our Belles Assemblées, and our Mirrors of Fashion. If, however, on the other hand, any means can be contrived to compensate to the Metropolis for this miserable state of desertion; if persons from the country can be prevailed upon to visit it for any other reason than to fill their trunks with finery at the first hand; or if any motive can be discovered more strong than a box at the Opera, a ticket for a Rout, or a promenade in the Park; if they can be prevailed upon to favour London from any other pride than to be able to say that they have been there, and have injured their health by untimely hours, and their reputation by improper associations; if all or any part of this compensation can be achieved; the new scheme of making fashions travel with such rapidity as to become almost contemporaneous throughout the whole kingdom, ought not only to be encouraged, but may be extended yet farther. At present we have begun with samples of velvets and silks; from that the transition to caps and bonnets cannot be very difficult; and as articles of household furniture are now most particularly under the dominion of fashion, contrivances may be fallen upon by which persons living at a distance will be preserved from the danger of sitting on a chair that is unfashionable, or sleeping in a bed that has been perhaps a whole month out of vogue. Painting, we know, can represent just what we please; and whether we please to furnish our houses in the Greek, the Gothic, the French, or the Italian manner, I know no utensil of which an artist may not convey a very edifying notion. But I shall not dwell more particularly on this subject, as I am informed that such an extension of the moveables of fashion is actually in contemplation, and some eminent artists are now employed on the attitudes of a party at whist, sketches of the genteelest modes of fainting inside view of an Opera-box, with the newest loll over the front-perspective of the crossings in Bond-street, illustrated by ancles of various sizes and other customs and habits, which formerly could not be contemplated without the trouble, if it ever was a trouble, of a visit to the Metropolis. It is plain from these circumstances that we live in a Projecting age; and as the business I have had the honour of carrying on is of a somewhat different sort, it would be very wrong in me to entertain any jealousy. The world is wide enough for us all; and I cannot perceive that there will be any dangerous interference between us. My readers have been long acquainted with the articles I deal in, and are in possession of my sample-book; in which, if they should perceive neither kerseymeres nor cambrics, they may occasionally hit upon an article which will suit their taste, without being quite so perishable as the Grecian mantle, or the Merino cap. THE PROJECTOR. No 91. "Sordidus et dives, populi contemnere voces HOR. January 1809. QUACKERY, which for many years has been confined to medical pretenders, seems now to be practised by pretenders of every other description. Whether this be owing to the suc cess which has attended the cure of diseases by Quacks, or that their mode of address is the best calculated to set off the merits of any kind of pretender, I shall not inquire: but whoever reads the newspapers must be convinced that the venders of pills and drops have of late been robbed of their eloquent addresses, their fine imagery, and their flowers of rhetorick, by numerous tribe of quack-dealers who profess to dispose of articles of a very different kind. But as, in imitating the antient fraternity of medical practitioners, these new pretenders seem a little deficient in that quality which, of all others, enables them to make an impression on the public mind; I have ventured, in this |