saved from being murdered by a boy, for whom he had hoarded his money; he having thus nearly fallen a victim to the revolutionary doctrines he had espoused. Two Englishmen, Glyndon and Mervale, are then introduced-the former proving eventually the antagonist to Zanoni in his love for Viola, but continually held in thraldom by the mystical arts of the Neapolitan, to whom are attributed" certain qualities which every body desires for himself, but damns every one else for possessing." This is instanced in a brief sketch of Zanoni influencing the luck at a public gaming-table: a duel ensues between one Cetoxa and a Sicilian, whom the Neapolitan disarms with a look: "he fixed his eye," says the narrator, "stedfastly on the Sicilian; never shall I forget that look! it is impossible to describe it, it froze the blood in my veins. The Sicilian staggered back as if struck. I saw him tremble; he sank on the bench." Zanoni predicts the Sicilian will fall, and prompts Cetoxa to ask him when he is on the ground, "whether he will be buried by the side of his father, in the church of San Gennaro ?" The Sicilian is run through the body, and on the above question being put to him, he uttered a piercing shriek-the blood gushed from his mouth, and he fell dead. "The most strange part of the story is to come. We buried him in the church of San Gennaro. In doing so, we took up his father's coffin; the lid came off in moving it, and the skeleton was visible. In the hollow of the skull, we found a very slender wire of sharp steel: this caused surprise and inquiry. The father, who was rich, and a miser, had died suddenly, and been buried in haste, owing, it was said, to the heat of the weather. Suspicion once awakened, the examination became minute. The old man's servant was questioned, and at last confessed that the son had murdered the sire: the contrivance was ingenious; the wire was so slender, that it pierced to the brain, and drew but one drop of blood, which the grey hairs concealed. The accomplice will be executed." "And Zanoni-did he give evidence? did he account for-""No, he declared that he by accident visited the church that morning; that he had observed the tombstone of the Count Ughelli, (the murdered man); that his guide had told him the Count's son was in Naples—a spendthrift and a gambler. While we were at play, he had heard the Count mentioned by name at the table; and when the challenge was given and accepted, it had occurred to him to name the place of burial, by an instinct which he either could or would not account for." This is a fair specimen of the méchanceté of the story, and means by which its puppets, or actors, are moved. Glyndon easily falls into its meshes, notwithstanding the persuasion of his impenetrable matter-of-fact friend, Mervale, who regards the whole as "the hackneyed charlatanism of the Marvellous;" but Glyndon's credulity is somewhat explained by one of his ancestors having been a philosopher and alchemist of repute. The plot is too intricate to unravel here, but, as the work abounds with brilliant bits, and highly wrought poetical gems, we shall have no difficulty in stringing together a few specimens, over and above several selected for another occasion. Zanoni, although a putative Rosicrucian, has nothing in his palace to indicate the follower of the occult sciences, save the following: "Whether at Rome, or at Naples, or in fact, wherever his abode, he selected one room from the rest of the house, which was fastened by a lock, scarcely larger than the seal of a ring, yet which sufficed to baffle the most cunning instrument of the locksmith-at least, one of his servants, prompted by irresistible curiosity, had made the attempt in vain; and, though he fancied it was tried in the most favourable time for secrecy-not a soul near-in | the dead of the night-Zanoni himself absent from home, yet his superstition, or his conscience, told him the reason why the next day the Major Domo quietly dismissed him. He compensated himself for this misfortune by spreading his own story, with a thousand exaggerations. He declared that as he approached the door, invisible hands seemed to pluck him away; and that when he touched the lock, he was struck as by palsy, to the ground. One surgeon, who heard the tale, observed, to the distaste of the wonder-mongers, that possibly Zanoni made a dexterous use of electricity. Howbeit, this room, once so secured, was never entered, save by Zanoni himself." Nicot, a French artist, somewhat of the reckless cast of Cæsarini, in Ernest Maltravers, introduces the poisonous doctrines of the dawning Revolution, to the two Englishmen, and acts as a spy upon Viola, whom he attempts to entrap, but in vain; but the maiden is captured by the masked minions of the Prince di - A drunken broil at the prince's palace, at which Zanoni and Glyndon are present, and his highness is killed, whilst Viola is captive beneath the same roof, is an effective piece of narrative; as is also Glyndon's meeting the Neapolitan banditti. Here is a very spirited sketch: "From one of the dismal cabins emerged a form superior to the rest. Instead of the patched and ragged overall, which made the only garment of the men he had hitherto seen, the dress of this person was characterized by all the trappings of the national bravery. Upon his raven hair, the glossy curls of which made a notable contrast to the matted and elfin locks of the savages around, was placed a cloth cap, with a gold tassel, that hung down to his shoulders; his mustaches were trimmed with care, and a silk handkerchief of gay hue was twisted round a well-shaped but sinewy throat; a short jacket of rough cloth was decorated with several rows of gilt filagree buttons; his nether garments fitted tight to his limbs, and were curiously braided; while in a broad parti-coloured sash were placed two silver-hilted pistols, and the sheathed knife, usually worn by Italians of the lower order, mounted in ivory elaborately carved. A small carbine of handsome workmanship was slung across his shoulder, and completed his costume. The man himself was of middle size, athletic yet slender, with straight and regular features, sunburnt, but not swarthy; and an expression of countenance which, though reckless and bold, had in it frankness rather than ferocity, and, if defying, was not altogether unprepossessing.” Glyndon journeys to a baronial fortress in the mountains-the abode of the mystic Mejnour, leagued with Zanoni; and here the subtlety of the seer soon overpowers the credulous Englishman. Their conferences are brilliantly written, as in the following defence of the alchemist's transmutation of metals: "Nature herself is a laboratory in which metals, and all elements, are for ever at change. Easy to make gold,— easier, more commodious, and cheaper still, to make the pearl, the diamond, and the ruby. Oh, yes; wise men found sorcery in this too; but they found no sorcery in the discovery, that by the simplest combination of things of every-day use, they could raise a devil that would sweep away thousands of their kind by the breath of consuming fire. Discover what will destroy life, and you are a great man!-what will prolong it, and you are an impostor! Discover some invention in machinery that will make the rich more rich, and the poor more poor, and they will build you a statue! Discover some mystery in art that would equalize physical disparities, and they will pull down their own houses to stone you!" The pupil is left by Mejnour in the castle, with an injunction not to penetrate the mystic chamber; he dis 132 obeys, and what he there witnesses, glitters in the page; as, when he takes a stopper from a crystal vase, and a delicious odour suddenly diffuses itself through the room; the air sparkles as if with diamond dust; a sense of unearthly delight-of an existence that seems all spirit flashes through his whole frame, and a faint, low, but exquisite music creeps thrilling through the chamber. His visit works wonders; for, "glancing at an old Venetian mirror, his form, before bent with thought, seemed to him taller by half the head; so lithesome and erect his slender stature, his eyes glowed, his cheeks bloomed with health and the innate and pervading pleasure. If the mere fragrance of the elixir was thus potent, well might the alchemists have ascribed life and youth to the draught!" The pupil's second visit to the mystic chamber is still more powerfully told. Varieties. The Foreign Secretary.-Lord Aberdeen is a man of clear, Habitually acquainted calm, and well-informed intellect. with foreign politics; at an early period of his life remarkable for his scholarship, completing it by classical research throughout Europe; and consummating his education for public life, by long personal intercourse with the most distinguished names in the most distinguished era of modern history; he probably possesses as large a political experience as any living statesman. Meanwhile, Zanoni is wedded to Viola; and we find, in a letter written by him many months after, the follow-dom, I shall not pine for intellectual companionship, and I ing impassioned burst :— "Ah! if they for whom exist all the occupations and resources of human life-if they can thrill, with exquisite emotion, at the thought of hailing again their own childhood in the faces of their children-if, in that birth, they are born once more into the holy innocence which is the first state of existence-if they can feel that on man devolves almost an angel's duty, when he has a life to guide from the cradle, and a soul to nurture for the heavens-what to me must be the raptures to welcome an inheritor of all the gifts which double themselves in being shared! How sweet the power to watch, and to guardto instil the knowledge, to avert the evil, and to guide back the river of life in a richer, and broader, and deeper stream, to the paradise from which it flows. And beside that river our souls shall meet, sweet mother. Our child shall supply the sympathy that fails as yet; and what shape shall haunt thee, what terror shall dismay, when thy initiation is beside the cradle of thy child!” The reader will meet but little of that domestic portraiture and familiar life, which we have ever been accustomed to admire in Sir E. Bulwer's novels. On the other hand, Zanoni is an attempted sublimation (to borrow from the book of alchemy), of human character, its motives and impulses, drawn with a charmed pen, and here and there with a diamond; though the contrast will be better seen by the two last chapters of the second volume in juxtaposition with the rest of the work. These pages picture to the life a matter-of-fact home-Mervale married, and settled, (how ominous that term)! and the recreant Glyndon just returned from the inanities of the continent: "A worthier woman, or one more respected (than Mrs. Mervale) was not to be found, except in an epitaph!" The meeting of the two friends, the revival of Mervale's bachelor habits with Glyndon, over sundry bowls of punch, and the repeated hints of the wife as to the lateness of the hour, &c.-all make up a capital picture of real life, without a shade of the tinsel or gossamer of romance. The third volume is almost exclusively occupied with scenes from the French revolution, which, indeed, lead to the dénouement of the story. The prime movers in that carnival of terror are fiercely painted: the portrait of Robespierre, for example, is terrific reality. We had almost forgotten the confessions of a bandit, a very piquant episode of the second volume. But the work abounds in striking beauties—in strange, original, bold, and startling views of mankind, and of the points upon which their destinies hang—and as such, Zanoni will be appreciated. Greek Pastry, made with honey, oil, and flour, is strictly a national delicacy; for it is indigestible to any stomach but that of a Greek. Riches of the Mind.-No matter how poor I am, (says Dr. Channing,) no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling, if the sacred writers will come in and take up their abode with me; if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakspeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the hu man heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wis may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called "the best society" of the place where I reside. Equality.-Whither do the advocates of universal equality point for illustrations of their doctrine? Not to savage life— certainly not to Western Australia, where the people reject in there is no race that imposes more irksome restraints upon practice all idea of the equality of persons or classes; for certain classes of the community. Rice Flowers.-Miss Jack was celebrated for the beauty and accuracy of her artificial flowers, which she made from rice paper. For a bouquet which this lady presented to the late Princess Charlotte, she received the regal present of 701. Tea in Scotland appears to have been known a century later than in England. Sir Walter Scott used to relate, that people were living who recollected how the Lady Pumphraston, to whom a pound of fine green tea had been sent as a rare and valuable present, boiled the same, and served it up with melted butter, as condiment to a salted rump of beef; and these foreign greens tender." complained that no cooking she could contrive" would make Country Houses.-We have often remarked that most of our leading nobility, who possess large mansions, also hold "lodges," or smaller residences; and, in former times, these minor dwellings appear to have been used as "secret houses." In the Northumberland Household Book, it is stated that, "at certain times of the year, the nobility retired from their principal mansions to some little adjoining lodge; where they lived private, no longer kept open house, but put their servants to board-wages, dismissed part! of them to go to their friends, and only retained a few of the most necessary about their person." Angels.-There is no reason for fancying Angels more of one sex than of the other, since amongst them there is no such distinction; but they may as well be imagined female as male.--Adam Littleton. “Pancakes, Sir!" used General Ford to say, "I could eat my way through an acre of good pancakes.”—Epicure's Almanac. Tom Cringle's Log.-Though a thorough sailor every inch of him, "ship-shape and Bristol fashion," yet Tom is no ordinary scholar, and his quotations, both from the Spanish and the German, are generally correct and always apposite; and are not of that species of Lingua Franca-neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring-neither English, nor French, nor Dutch which one meets in the sloppy anonymous novels which scheming booksellers would have us believe are written by persons of quality, because no decent man or woman will put his or her name to them.—Times. Asthma.-Residence in towns is especially prejudicial to persons afflicted with Asthma. Of 1,000,000, there appear to have died in 1839, 182 in the country, and 645 in towns. London: Published for the Proprietors, by W. BRITTAIN, Paternoster Row. Edinburgh: JOHN MENZIES. Glas gow: D. BRYCE. Printed by J. Rider, 14, Bartholomew Close. LONDON SATURDAY JOURNAL. CONDUCTED BY JOHN TIMBS, THIRTEEN YEARS EDITOR OF "THE MIRROR," AND "LITERARY WORLD." A LITTLE TALK ABOUT STRAWBERRY HILL. SOMEWHAT less than a century and a half ago, (i. e. in 1698,) a ci-devant coachman to the Earl of Bradford, built upon a gentle but fine ascent, near the village of Twickenham, upon the north bank of the Thames, a small tenement, which, from its beautiful situation, the owner profitably let as a lodging-house. One of its first tenants was that quick-witted, good-humoured, and elegant actor, dramatist, and poet-laureat, Colley Cibber, whose fine portrait hangs at the Garrick Club, in Covent Garden. In this rustic retreat from the artificial life of the theatre, and the wear and tear of London gaiety, Cibber wrote his comedy of The Refusal; or the Lady's Philosophy. The cottage was afterwards taken by the Marquis of Caernarvon, and other persons of distinction, as an occasional summer-residence; and was subsequently let upon lease to Mrs. Chevenix, the noted toy-woman, of whom, in 1747, it was purchased by Horace Walpole, who, in the following year also bought the fee-simple of the estate. The place received its present appellation before Walpole's purchase; for, in his pleasant loungingbook, he notes: "the name Strawberry Hill was not, as some suppose, a modern appellation. In the old leases it is named Strawberry Hill Shot. The house was built by a nobleman's coachman, for a lodging-house; and some people of rank lived in it before it came to me.' Walpole's description of his new purchase, in a letter dated "Twickenham, June 8, 1747," addressed to his friend Mr. (afterwards Marshal) Conway, is so humorous, that we cannot resist quoting it : "You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor; it is a little plaything house that I have got out of this Chevenix's shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled mea. dows, with filigree hedges; A small Euphrates through the piece is roll'd, And little fishes wave their wings in gold.' Two delightful roads, that you would call dusty, supply me continually with coaches and chaises; barges, as solemn as Barons of the Exchequer, move under my window. Richmond Hill and Ham walks bound my prospects; but, thank God, the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensbury. Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope's Ghost is just now skimming under my window, by a most poetical moonlight. The Chevenixes had tricked the cottage up for themselves. Up two pair of stairs is what they call Mr. Chevenix's library, furnished with three maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lunar telescope, without glasses." Walpole numbered among his literary attainments great taste for architectural antiquities: in truth, he was "A man so various, that he seemed to be Not only one, but all mankind's epitome." Ballad, by William Pulteney, Earl of Bath. eye. In various essays and correspondence, he wrote on architecture with the taste of a scholar and the judgment of an amateur; and he began to work out his views, by making the little cottage at Strawberry Hill the nucleus of an edifice, in which the most beautiful examples of the Pointed style of architecture, whether castellated or ecclesiastical, should be adapted to the domestic purposes of a modern villa. His success has been variously estimated; but from his own showing, Strawberry Hill is a failure: he tells us "the Gothic (or Pointed) style seems to bespeak an amplification of the minute, not a diminution of the great;" of this latter, the "toy-shop" at Strawberry Hill is, unquestionably, an exemplar. But we defer fur ther criticism until we have sketched the fantastic creation of genius en petite. "The villa at Strawberry Hill," says a meritorious topographer, "commands pleasing views over the lovely mixture of wood and water, with which this neighbourhood is enriched. Two sides abut on the high road, and from this circumstance of site, the house loses a portion of that romantic gloom, desirable in an edifice affecting a poetical air of ancient costume. Viewed from the more distant road, which runs nearly parallel with the river, its mullioned window, numerous pinnacles, and embattled towers, present an imposing picture of Gothic sublimity, that agreeably deludes the judgment, and would appear the work of hands long since mouldered in the dust." The approach to the house from the north, is through a grove of lofty trees; the embattled walls, overgrown with ivy; the spiry pinnacles and gloomy cast of the building, give it the air of an ancient abbey, and fill the beholder with awe; especially on entering the gate, where a small Oratory, enclosed with iron rails, and having a cloister behind it, appears in the fore-court. As you walk round the edifice, you find it possesses the characteristic variety, or rather non-uniformity, of the style: spire and pinnacle, buttress and embattlement, the circular and octagonal tower, and the embattled gable and bay window, with the reflection of the lover of art and the enthusiast of the antique story richly dight," attract the attention, and rivet picturesque. The pretty pile groups well with the tall trees as seen from the Thames, and shown in our Engraving. You are instantly carried back to the days of the noble architect: doubtless, it was at one of the windows in this front that the Abbé Raynal, and some Frenchmen of rank, then on a visit to Walpole, were standing to enjoy "the prospect to the Thames, which they found flat;" "one of them," Walpole relates, "said in French, not thinking that I and Mr. Churchill overheard them: 'Every thing in England only serves to recommend France to us the more.' Mr. Churchill instantly stepped up, and said, "Gentlemen, when the Cherokees were in this country, they could eat nothing but train oil.'" How the gentle Abbé bore the retort we are not told, but he was by no of wit," as Cowper calls Churchill; whom we picture in his blue coat, gold-laced waistcoat, large ruffles, and goldlaced hat, playing "Pomposo" at Strawberry. He was the most industrious trifler of his time: his conceit was outrageously amusing; he boasts that with an amanuensis, he could scribble a book of ana in twenty-means a match for the "spendthrift alike of money and four hours; he sneered at every thing, and by a kind of poetical justice, which overtakes all coxcombs, he almost lived to be sneered at in turn, by the world; whilst it is certain that he sneered at his own vanities. Sir Henry Wotton has quaintly said that every man's proper mansion-house and home ought to be "decently and delightfully adorned;" a fine aristocratic aphorism for an English gentleman, which, probably, caught Walpole's mind's Stepping up to the house, however, you may consider Walpole to have succeeded in the design, you will regret that he did not commence a new edifice of stone, or a more uniform and comprehensive plan than that which he constructed around the old cottage; for, on examining the apparently time-worn structure, you will find the walls slight, and coated with rough-cast, at best a mean covering for unsubstantiality; whilst the coping of the battlement, and the pinnacles, which rise in mimic antiquity, are of wood. Well might Walpole himself call Strawberry his "pasteboard villa;" and Burke say that it "may be considered as a picture of the master's mind who formed it, in which there was nothing truly great; though at the same time it was plentifully stored with elegant knowledge, and gifted with a power of communicating it, in a manner of superior polish and amusement." This is sound criticism, no sooner written than powdered with diamonddust-alike truthful and brilliant. induced men of letters, vertu, and taste, and even the affectors of taste, to talk about, and even to think on, the subject. It appeared as a novelty; it was ridiculed by satirists, was praised by poets, and was diversely commented on by professional and amateur critics. All this tended to its welfare, for it induced men of good sense, and common sense, to look at and inquire into the merits and integral characteristics of those monastic edifices which were referred to as prototypes for Strawberry Hill and other villas. The contrast and comparison became ridiculous, and modern Gothic was stigmatised by the professors, and avoided by noblemen and gentlemen who had to erect new houses. The designs of Batty Langley were even worse than the Walpole Gothic, and these had nearly brought the newly revived architecture into contempt." He was succeeded by Wyatt, and a specimen of his poor and trifling skill arose in Walpole's own neighbourhood-the palace at Kew, taken down about fourteen years since.* To return to Strawberry Hill. Walpole, it is well known, fitted the interior according to its external architectural character. He was an untiring collector of curiosities; and it is amusing to find that he looked at the The architectural failure of Strawberry Hill has been, by some, attributed to its want of harmony with the buildings in the neighbourhood; an objection which is very difficult to be met. A shrewd critic has observed that “the apparition of a Gothic abbey, or baronial castle, in Waterloo Place, could be hardly more startling and of fensive than at Chelsea or Richmond. Even Holland House, venerable though it is as a remnant of the olden time, and agreeably reminding us, as we pass it, of the days when St. Giles's stood in the fields, and Covent Garden was the pleasaunce of a rural convent-now that. s. d. of his hobby: now grumbling at the price of his ebony London has embraced it, looks quite out of place; and the toy-shop architecture of Strawberry Hill, and other soi-disant Gothic villas, supposing even they were pure examples of the style they usually caricature, would be grating to the feelings from their refusing to harmonize with the character of the buildings that surround them." So, then, old English architecture is not allowed to be at home, in English scenery, simply because a few Cock-count of pictures and rarities is given with a view to their neyfied architects, or their employers, have chosen to copy foreign models, and by constant adoption, have, in the opinion of this writer, rendered the Grecian, Roman, or Italian, appropriate to such situations, to the exclusion of other styles. If he be so rigid in appropriateness, what will he say to the circular-topped peristyle of a temple in the grounds of Garrick's villa at Hampton: have the swampy banks of the Thames any thing in common with the classic sward of the Po; or are balconied first floors, and balustered attics, as much in place in Regent Street, as in the streets of an Italian city? This writer will hardly allow the old English style for our new country churches, and would altogether exclude it from London, which "has been completely Italianized in its general architecture, and the two modes contrast too strongly to please in juxta-position."* Walpole, with all his whimsies, we are rather inclined to think, effected much good indirectly, by their indulgence at Strawberry Hill; though, probably, he was not entirely original in becoming his own architect, for he might have taken the taste from his friend Lord Burlington, who, with the aid of Kent, also a friend of Walpole's, had previously, (in another style,) embellished, with aristocratic profuseness, his mansion in Piccadilly. Kent died there in 1748, and Walpole built his villa between 1753 and 1776. Mr. Britton has spiritedly advocated the object Walpole had in view, which the former calls "the application of Monastic and Christian Architecture to Modern Mansions;" and in a lecture on the subject delivered before the Institute of British Architects, in 1837, he observed that, "Walpole's practical but petty exemplification of modern Gothic at Strawberry Hill, * Quarterly Review, No. XC. p. 472-3.-What an useless excrescence is the platform of the Quadrant colonnade in our smoky atmosphere, which deters the occupants au premier, (mostly étrangeres, by the way), from venturing upon this domestic promenade! chairs, picked up in Great Newport street, or Soho, and then wincing under Reynolds's avarice in charging eight hundred guineas for a family picture. And, to show that Walpole was, in heart and soul, a collector, he looked to the dispersion of his rarities; for, to his catalogue and description of his rarities, filling one hundred and thirteen quarto pages, is prefixed this notice: "the following acfuture dispersion: nor do virtuosos dislike to refer to such a catalogue for an authentic certificate of their curiosities." Is not this in the true spirit of a collector, whose gratification is almost as much in dispersion as assembling: we know not whether the wise man says there is a time to collect, and a time to distribute-but, assuredly there are such phases in our existence. The entire property was bequeathed by Walpole to the Hon. Mrs. Damer for life, on condition of keeping it in repair, towards which Horace also devised her £2,000. That lady resided here some years, but finding the charge very considerable, she declined possession several years since, in favour of the Countess Dowager of Waldegrave; in whom and her heirs the remainder was vested. For some years, the present Earl of Waldegrave resided here; but from causes about which we have little curiosity, the entire contents of the the great; though, probably, from want of attention to detail, only to be mastered by systematic education, few such personages have succeeded in practice. Kew Palace is said to have been an Anglo-Teutonic hobby of George III. His successor almost make "the very (stone) angels weep," as they look played "such fantastic tricks" with Buckingham House as from aloft upon the classic colonnades that lead to nothing. Nash was abused for the design, well known to be of royal creation. At Windsor, better things have been accomplished; though mainly through Wyatville's pertinacity to his own designs, and the monarch being ruled by the man of genius. The Earl de Grey's mansion, at Wrest Park, Bedfordshire, is a very handsome specimen of amateur design; his Lordship being his own architect. But the best example in the style we have been speaking of, is Toddington, in Gloucestershire, completed in 1837, by Mr. Charles Hanbury Tracy, (now Lord Sudeley,) from his own designs. This is, indeed, a stately pile, " picturesque and imposing from every point of view;" it has been the work of twelve years, and, unlike Strawberry Hill, it has not been "run up" with lath and plaster, but built with fine Painswick stone, and sound, well seasoned timber, to last for ages. Architecture is an ennobling study, for the wealthy and |