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dancer of the day. He has fought a duel, caused a divorce, won a steeple-chase, ruined a raw ensign in the Guards at piquet, and is supposed to be able to distinguish himself in public life any rainy day, when, having nothing else to do, he should see fit to throw himself away upon politics."

But this son of fortune has his share of ill luck. His yacht takes him to the Baltic; there he gets drunk, gets into a quarrel, is knocked down by some of the Danish fishermen, as a noble marquis was lately knocked down by the Norwegian police; but, unlike that noble marquis, he dies of the consequent fever, and thus opens the way for the baronet to an earldom.

The Doctor. The old earl's manner of taking the loss of his heir is equally true to character. He is angry and afflicted: but it is at the scandal of a battle with the Jutlanders, terminating too in a beating. He is even more angry than afflicted. It was such a mode to die, such a waste of all the fashion, favour, and popularity, enjoyed by the best seat, best shot, best whip, best everything, in England. Such a cruel want of consideration for his father, such a sinful disregard to his own position in life, such an inattention to the demands of his own consequence. What business had he, a member of White's and the House of Commons, a peer expectant, whose bay filly was entered for the Derby two years following, whose name was honoured at Coutts's, and good at Crockford's, to drink and squabble with a gang of Holstein skippers? What business had he at all yachting in the Baltic? Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?

The Doctor. One of this gallery of originals is Sir Jacob Harford, an old merchant of vast wealth, who gives sumptuous Sunday dinners, much against his will. Lord Monthermer, on their retiring from the dinner-table, says something about his enjoying life. The old man declares that his lordship is altogether mistaken, and that he never did anything he liked in the course of his life. "The world thinks otherwise," said his Lordship. "The world's an ass," is the cynical reply. 66 I say, I never had the smallest liberty to indulge my own likings. The world fancies I like those Sunday dinners, which I would give my little finger to leave off; for (no offence to you, Sir) I find them vastly tedious. Now, if I were to close my house on Sundays, people would declare that it was about to close on week-days. If Sir Jacob grows too old for pleasure, they'd say he grows too old for business. So, you see, I'm obliged to tire myself to death, and keep up my table, to keep up my

credit."

The Barrister. The party of Blues is a caricature, but just such a caricature as H. B. would produce, one in which the groups are made ridiculous, but the likenesses living. Lord Monthermer is introduced to the house of an opulent parvenu, who cultivates blueism. His first astonishment is excited by the affected diversity of their costumes. It is not by so paltry a thing as diversity of costume that people in their senses stoop to distinguish themselves. But the Blues are not always in their senses. One philosopher thinks it a proof of wisdom to dress as his father and grandfather did before him. Another, a votary of the picturesque, dotes on the richness of velvet, and, eschewing broad-cloth and neckcloth, Vandykes it with a naked throat. A third expands his

A

skirts, enabling his pockets to contain his own prodigious MSS. fourth adheres to gaiters, to proclaim himself an unblushing peripatetic. A fifth loves Hessian boots; a sixth is curious in a pig-tail.

Thus runs the world, and the Woman of the World away. Lady Adelaide is the loveliest of speculators, and the most speculating of the lovely. She has the useful art of holding her heart like a falcon in a string, ready to fly, and ready to be brought back. She makes fools of wise men, and in turn makes even fools wise. She wins all. gazers with her smiles, and frightens them all with her calculations; till, like overadroit politicians, she hazards the loss of credit with all parties, and is happy to escape on a fool and a pension: in less figurative language, she marries a rich blockhead, and, with her sense and sensibilities, prepares to be opulent, showy, and wretched for life.

The Doctor. "What Asylums were, are, and ought to be."-This volume is the substance of five lectures on the treatment of lunacy, by Mr. Browne, Medical Superintendent of the Montrose Asylum. The lecturer treats this interesting yet startling topic with a due respect for the public feelings, and gives his advice in a clear, intelligent, and unobtrusive style.

It

The Rector. The different classes of Monomania, or the disease of certain mental powers, in contradistinction to Mania, or the disease of the whole, give some of the most curious illustrations of the mental structure of man. Thus the author describes the monomania of imagination, as presenting a series of ideas the most fantastic, various, and even pleasurable. He defines it the "mania of accomplishments." The description touches with formidable closeness on modern manners. is displayed in attempts to do everything, and in a pleased conviction that everything is done perfectly. The dreamer is, in fact, a painter, poet, or mathematician, as the case may be; he writes verses, they are desperate, but he is charmed with them; he sketches portraits, they are like nothing on earth, but he fancies them exquisite; he sings out of tune, and imagines that he bewitches all his hearers. Everything, with him, is successful and superlative. This is the madness of Don Quixote. He does all odd things, and if reprimanded, he will, in all probability, reply in some impassioned strain to the lady of his love, as Shakspeare; or to his keeper, as the Emperor of Morocco. Except for the dignity of the persons concerned, might we not imagine that we saw in the habits, pleasures, and vanity of the Monomania, some of the most showy propensities of the great world?

The Colonel. "Six Years in Biscay," by J. F. Bacon. This is the work of a clever man, who was present from 1830 to 1837 in the northern provinces of Spain, who saw the chief proceedings of the rival forces, and who, excepting an acknowledged and unaccountable zeal for the Christino cause, writes with candour and discretion.

The Rector. Spain is the great problem of modern times. No other nation has so totally contradicted all experience, all conception of national character, and all hope of national improvement. Her first contradiction, it must be allowed, was a noble one. Her long submission to the influence of her imperious neighbour on the north of the Pyrenees, her actual humiliation before the tyranny of Napoleon, her

public feebleness and her private love of ease, gave Europe the universal impression that she was sunk into the last sluggishness of slavery. Yet, to the universal surprise, Spain was seen, single-handed, daring the conqueror of the continent; in the desertion of her king, the seizure of her throne, and the utter disorganisation of all regular government, substituting for them the integrity and enthusiasm of her untaught people; baffling or breaking down the veteran strength of the most disciplined, successful, and powerful army that Europe had seen for a thousand years; and finally kindling from the pile on which her own government had perished, that torch which was to light the way of the continental nations once more to independence.

The Barrister. The problem is still to be worked out. Spain, once the most remote of all nations from the great topics which have occupied the jurists and legislators of Europe for centuries, has suddenly become the very centre of political discussion. She has now for nearly a quarter of a century been the subject of a perpetual series of experiments on the principles of government; has seen constitutions succeed each other with a rapidity that throws France and her jacobins into the shade; and, while the rest of Europe is in profound peace, exhibits the deplorable instance of a great people involved in a desperate civil war, of which the end seems as much beyond calculation, as the object is worthless and the slaughter is horrible.

The Doctor. The volume, which contains some good engravings of the principal features of the country round Bilboa, contains also details of the origin of the present contest in Spain. The nature of the Biscayan privileges, of the law of Spanish succession, with various anecdotes of the two sieges of Bilboa, and, though confessedly a Christino publication, throws light upon many of the complicated transactions of a most noble, but most self-willed, and most unhappy country.

The Rector. "Seven Weeks in Belgium, Switzerland," &c. &c., by J. Raby. The writer of these volumes has already made himself known by "Traditions of Lancashire ;" and now, after examining some of the peculiarities of his own country, he has extended his research to the Continent. His movements have been obviously rapid; but an observing eye can see a good deal even in seven weeks, and those who are sceptical on such subjects will have only to look for conviction and conversion in these volumes.

The Barrister. The writer gives some of his pages to the topic of passports; one which is productive of more trouble, more ill-will, and more positive expense, if we include time with money, than any other possible discomfort of modern travel. Why the sovereigns of the continent should suffer a folly of this kind to exist, which has never excluded a knave, a spy, or a smuggler, but which exposes every respectable person to the insolence of custom-house menials, the peculation of low officials, the superintendence of policemen, and the actual robbery to which the constant system of douceurs gives rise, is wholly unaccountable, but on the supposition that they are either scandalously negligent of public convenience, or that they share in the peculation of their officials. On the chief points connected with those most troublesome impediments to travelling, much information will be found in Mr.

Raby's books, combined with spirited and intelligent traits of the vast and interesting countries through which he swept with such glowing wheels.

The Rector." The Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer, Bart." Edited by Sir Henry Bunbury, Bart.-The sources of posthumous fame might furnish a curious moral to human ambition. Men who have been toiling all their lives for distinction, who have been bowing at courts, intriguing in parliament, haranguing at elections, alternately burning with faction and frozen with unpopularity, often glide out of sight with no more probability of being remembered than their epitaph of being believed. Yet when their distinctions and their efforts are equally forgotten, some slight circumstance, some casual study, some passing intercourse with man or literature, suddenly revives them, and, like a great ship all whose anchors have given way, they are suddenly brought up by a chance turn of the helm.

The Doctor. In the instance of Sir Thomas Hanmer, we have a man of great activity, public ability, and senatorial rank, almost wholly forgotten within a few years after his death, and returning to the public recollection only within the last half-century, and then only as a commentator on Shakspeare.

name.

The Barrister. Hanmer had remarkable advantages for national He was the descendant of a family of Cavaliers, distinguished in the cause of the unhappy Charles, restored with his son, and resuming their rank, and, what was more unusual, their estates, at the Restoration. He was highly educated, opulent, and handsome; qualities which gained for him at twenty-one the hand of the Duchess of Grafton, a widow of thirty, but one of the most striking beauties of the Court, and with a large dower. Thus launched into the great world, the career of public honours was plain before him. In his twenty-fifth year he entered Parliament; and, bringing with him those sentiments in which his ancestors had fought for Church and State, he joined the great opposition party of the Tories. In 1710 that party overthrew the Whigs, already enfeebled by their traffic with sectarianism, and the Opposition came into office in the midst of national triumph.

The Colonel. One of the questions which tested the strength of parties, remote as it was from the true point at issue, was the conduct of the ministry in suffering the battle of Almanza to be fought by so small a British force as 8600 men, while the proposed number for the Peninsular service had been estimated at 29,600. On this occasion a powerful speech from Hanmer carried the question; and, on the accession of his friends to office, he was offered one of the five Commissionerships of the Treasury. This offer he declined, probably as inadequate to his rising importance, and continued a powerful and frequent debater-a party luminary.

INDEX

TO THE

SECOND PART OF 1838.

Actors, Notes on early French, 15
Admiral's Daughter, the; or, Man of Fa-
shion at Sea. A Nautical Novel, 507
Ancient Days, by M. J. Quin, Esq., No. I.
82, No. II. 181

Aretino, Pietro, comedies of, 342
Ariosto, works of, 341

Arthur of Brittany, 253; death of, 258

Bardwell's "Temples, Ancient and Mo-
dern," reviewed, 134

Barry, his theatre in Crow-street, Dublin,
112, 117

Bellini, Mrs., 400

Belloni, Scaramouche, 18

Beni Hassan, Memorials of, 83, 183, 185
Bennett, G. J., Esq., his "Tour through
North Wales," 428

Birds, Singing, 40

British Museum, Egyptian works of art in
the, 84, 85, 183, 187, 188
Brougham, Lord, 283

Bruce, the traveller, 89, 90
Brussels, My First Visit to, by T. C. Grat-
tan, Esq., 52, 198

Bulwer, Sir Edward Lytton, Bart., his
"Siege of Granada," noticed, 279
Burgh, Hubert de, 259, account of, 261, 264

Campbell, Thomas, Esq., the Parrot, by,
447

Canning, Mr., 371; and Lord Castlereagh,

425

Cape of Good Hope: the Table Mountain,
170; surrounding prospect, 173

Carleton, Mrs. C., her Inquiry into the Na-
ture and Effects of Nervous Influence,
319

Caulincourt, Duke of Vicenza, Recollections
of, reviewed, 286

Chariot, the Plain Green, a Tale, 68

Charles I., collection of paintings of, 282

Charles II., the Beauties of the Court of,
by Mrs. Jameson, reviewed, 139

Chinese Empire, the, 285
Coleridge, the poet, 250, 252
Compact, the, 22

Constantini, Angelo, Italian harlequin, 15
Conversazione, the, for May, 133-for June,
279-for July, 424-for August, 563
Cooke, George, his letter to Incledon, 221
Cooper, Mr. Fenimore, 89
Coriolanus, Shakspeare's, 346, 348

Aug.-VOL. LIII. NO. CCXII.

Coronation of the Kings of France, On the,
145

Courtenay, Rt. Hon. T. P., his "Shak-
speare's Historical Plays, considered His-
torically," No. I. 250-No. II. 364-No.
III. 463

Covent-Garden Theatrical Fund, the, 105

Dante, style of, 340
Decencies, the, 118

Dipper, or Water Blackbird, 40

Drama of Italy, the; with an account of
the dramatic poets of that classic land,
337

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Egyptians, Ancient, their example in civili-
zation and in art, 83-their works in the
British Museum, 84-their music, 89-
paintings representing dancing, 181-
vases, ib.-kitchen and utensils for cook-
ing, 182-jugglers, 183-dolls, ib.-" the
thimble-rig' not modern, 184-dwarfs
and imps, ib.-games, wrestling, ib.-
cudgel-playing, ib.-bull-fights, 185-
fishing, 186-glass, 187-Chinese in-
scribed bottles discovered in Egypt, ib.-
costume of, 189-wigs, 190-mummies,
ib.- carpets, ib.-" Manners and Cus-
toms," 136

Emery, John, Memoir of the comic actor,
530

Fan-qui in China, the, by Mr. Downing,
reviewed, 285

Fawcett, John, the comedian, account of,
101

Fazry, the beautiful, story of, 293, 296
Fresco-paintings of Rome, 86-of Pompeii,
ib.-of Thebes, Beni-Hassan, and other
places in Egypt, 181, 185

Gambling-houses, in Brussels, 53
Garrick, David, 191, 111.

Gentleman-at-Arms, Papers of a; by Henry
Brownrigg, Esq., No. II. 91; Ño. III.
241; No. IV. 408

Gentleman, an ill-treated, 448
Grammont, Countess de, [la belle Hamil-
ton,] 139

Grattan, T. C., Esq., "My first Visit to
Brussels," by, 52, 198-" Teresa, a Tale
of Revolutionized Rome," by, 379-
Paddy in search of a Son," by, 455
P 2

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