recorded talk of dear old Johnson! In their the second class. Benjamin West was his nights at the club, their modest cups never favorite painter, and Beattie his favorite ended in riots. There were Goldsmith, so poet. The life led by him and his queen odd and natural; Burke, the finest talker in was of that quiet monotonous kind which the world; Garrick, flashing in with a story none but the commonest class of minds can from his theatre; with Percy, and Langton, endure. "The simple, stubborn, affectionand poor Bozzy at the table. Not merely ate, bigoted man earnestly tried to learn, how pleasant, and how wise, but how good and succeeded in perfectly acquiring, all the the men were! Relating how Johnson car- routine parts of the royal business. Who ried an old woman on his back down Cheap- could wonder that, with such a man to rule side, and how Burke, in returning from the and lead the people, to declare war and to club, encountered a poor Magdalene, to decide who his millions of subjects were to whom he spoke in his kind, wise way, and slay, and who they were to be friends with, whose tears so moved him that he took her humiliation and failure should be the result? home to his wife and family, until he could George III. was always at war with the find her an honest way of living. O, you aristocracy; it was he and the people that fine gentlemen!' said the lecturer, you carried on the American war, denied justice March, Selwyn, Chesterfield, how small you to the Roman Catholics, and on these queslook by the side of these great men.' John- tions beat the patricians. He bribed, and son, more than a whole bench of bishops, bullied, and darkly dissembled upon occamore than Pitt, North, and the great Fox sion; beat North and Fox, and even bowed himself, had the ear of the nation, and his the stately neck of the younger Pitt by his great voice reconciled it to authority. When indomitable determination. In all this, he George III. talked to him, and when the was perfectly honest; for it is by persons nation heard Johnson's opinion of the sove- thoroughly believing they are right, that reign, a whole generation rallied to the nine-tenths of the tyranny of the world has throne. He was regarded as a sort of been perpetrated. Persecution of all kinds oracle; and, when he declared for church has always been popular-in Algiers, in and king, the people followed him. What a humanity the good old man had! He was a fierce foe to all sin, but a gentle enemy to all sinners. He had the liberty of the scenes,' as he called it, at the theatre, and occasionally made use of it. The actresses know me,' he said, and drop a courtesy as they pass.' What a picture this would make," the lecturer thought-" Gayety so tenderly surveyed by wisdom's merciful pure eyes!'"'

Mr. Thackeray's estimate of George III. is mild in expression, but yet overlooks none of the royal faults. It is rather strange he should say little of Wilkes, and absolutely nothing of Junius. The king in youth was wholly under the control of an imperious mother, who treated him as a boy that still required her tutoring, and was continually telling him: "George, be a king!" He was a common-place man, with a natural affinity for common-place things. He married Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz for a common-place letter on the sufferings of ber country by war, which she had addressed to Frederick of Prussia. He disliked all the ablest men of his age, and preferred

Spain, in Italy, as in England. George III. argued thus: I wish nothing but the good of my people: those who oppose my measures must be aiming at the contrary; therefore they are bad men and bad subjects.""

Last

The homely personal habits of the king, ever walking about among his neighbors, and bothering them with questions, were sketched by Mr. Thackeray with humorous effect. The non-success of his strict system of education with his sons was touched on. came his special affection for the Princess Amelia, whose death finally overset his reason, so that from the 10th of November, 1810, he ceased to reign. "History"-thus concluded the lecture amidst the solemn silence of the audience" presents no sadder picture than that old man, blind and deprived of reason, wandering through his palace, haranguing imaginary parliaments and reviewing ghostly troops. He became utterly deaf, too. All sight, all reason, all sound of human voices, all the pleasures of this world of God, were taken from him. Some slight lucid moments he had, in one of which the queen, desiring to see him, entered

the room and found him singing a hymn Mr. Thackeray's fourth lecture was

a

and accompanying himself on the harpsi- merciless exposure of the character and chord; when finished, he kneeled down and habits of the Sybarite of Brighton -3 prayed aloud for her and for his family, and monarch whom, we are ashamed to say, we then for the nation, concluding with a saw hailed and cheered in Scotland, as if he prayer for himself that God would avert his had been possessed of all the royal graces of heavy calamity from him; but if not, that which not one was truly his. We abstain He would give him resignation to submit to from going into this subject, for we feel that it. He then burst into tears, and his reason we have reported as much of the demerits of again fled. What preacher need moralize the four first Guelphs as is likely to do any on this story? What words, save the good. And this brings us to a stricture we simplest, are requisite to tell it? It is too are inclined to make on the general tendency terrible for tears. The thought of such of this gifted writer to select bad types of misery smites me down in submission before humanity for the amusement of the public. the Ruler of kings and men-the Monarch He gives us noble and beautiful characters, supreme over empires and republics-the too: how more than admirable his Colonel inscrutable Dispenser of life, death, happi- Newcome! But such appear exceptional. ness,, victory. O, brothers, I said to those who heard me first in America-0, brothers, speaking the same dear mother-tongue; O, comrades, enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse, and call a truce to battle. Low he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than the poorest, whom millions prayed over in vain. Driven off his throne, buffeted by rude hands, with his children in revolt, the darling of his old age killed before him, old Lear hangs over her breathless lips, and calls -Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little.

"Vex not his ghost, O! let him pass, he hates him That would upon the rack of this rough world Stretch him out longer."

The greater number are paragons of selfishness and folly. This we think untrue to nature, and we thoroughly believe that it has a bad effect; for when any undecided mind is encouraged to think that his fellowcreatures in general pursue only their own interests, and that by bad means, he feels himself justified in going into the same course; whereas a picture of the opposite kind is calculated to act as a good example for such persons. As to the historical verity, we continually, throughout the lectures, felt inclined to say-" This is perhaps the truth, or part of the truth, about those low-minded kings and those servile courtiers; but the age in general is not to be depicted from the bits of scandal which have been handed

body of the people have passed into ob

Hush strife and quarrel over the solemn down to us, while the virtues of the great grave! Sound, trumpets, a mournful march. Fall, dark curtain, upon his pageant, his livion." pride, his griefs, his awful tragedy!"

BURMAH AND THE BURMESE. When the fields are flooded with water, the Burmese ride into them on the backs of buffaloes, dragging a rough sort of harrow after them: the feet of the animal pound the mud into holes, and the harrows spread it about, and then the seed is scattered over the surface carelessly, literally "cast upon the waters." A Burmese man does nothing but fishing, boating, building bamboohuts, and riding on buffaloes-all very easy work the navigation part of the business especially so. These people are all great drunkards, and addicted to opium. They all smoke, men, women, and children; an infant in its mother's arms will take the cheroot from her mouth, and indulge in a whiff or two. Wild

animals are remarkably scarce in Southern Burmah; probably the annual flooding of the country is the reason; but four-legged animals are rarely seen except in the neighborhood of the Aracan Hills, or mountainous frontier to the eastward. North of the delta, there are a good many elephants, and an occasional rhinoceros. Tigers are not numerous. There are no jackals, but sometimes a fox is seen. Deer and pig are to be found, but not plentiful. Birds, even, are not numerous; a few snipe, plover, jungle-fowl, and pigeon are to be got with great practice; but such a bag as a sportsman might make anywhere in India, is not to be made in Burmah. Private letter to Chambers' Journal.

From The Athenæum.

How firm is the line, how full the sense! Read this maxim on the relation of mind to body:

""Tis the mind's beauty keeps the other sweete."

"Give me next good, an understanding wife,
By nature wise, not learned by much art,
Some knowledge on her side, will a't my life
More scope of conversation impart :

Besides, her inborne vertue fortifie.

They are most firmly good, that best know
why.

"A passive understanding to conceive,
And judgment to discerne, I wish to finde :
Beyond that, all as hazardous I leave;
Learning and pregnant wit in woman-kinde,
What it findes malleable, makes fraile,
And doth not adde more ballast, but more
saile."

The Miscellaneous Works, in Prose and Verse, of Sir Thomas Overbury, Knt. Now First Collected. Edited, with Notes, and a Biographical Account of the Author, by E. F. Rimbault, LL.D. J.R. Smith. How modern, too, is the ring of these OVERBURY is one of our suppressed poets. lines! Strong-minded women will scarcely Who reads "The Wife," or "The Remedy relish Overbury's judgment on the virtues of of Love"? Who reads even the "Char-blue-stockinghood, but even they will not acters," those exquisite galleries of figures, deny the pregnant fancy and brilliant point beauties and gallants, serving-men and of the following comparisons: soldiers, fashioned in ivory and gold? Overbury's verse passed unmentioned by Hallam, a devout reader of the best things, -and is unknown to collectors and editors of what is called classical British poetry. Yet the writer of "The Wife" was not only one of the most original poets of his age, the age of Spenser and Shakspeare, of Raleigh and Donne,-but in point of popularity he was perhaps at the very head of his class. Fine ladies learned his poem by heart -swains sang it to their mistresses—and amorous damsels sighed it as they now sigh Thomson's "Seasons," or lisp Gray's "Elegy." In one year "The Wife" ran through five editions; and forty years after fewer poets have been Byron-struck than it is no exaggeration to assert that its first appearance in print the seventeenth edition was exhausted. What other poem Venus and Adonis "? Overbury-mad. Who cared to imitate How many anof that time ran through seventeen editions in one generation? Not "Lucrece," not to "Colin Clout"? Imitation is a test of swers, continuations, and additions have we "Astrophel and Stella," not the "Shepherd's popularity, of original thought, more certain Yet Overbury is a forgotten than successive editions. Two years after poet! Nor is the poem undeserving of its Overbury's "Wife," appeared "The Husfame. It possesses wit, polish, and imagina- band: a Poem expressed in a Complete tion of the brightest kind,-profound knowl- Man," and "A Select Second Husband edge of mankind, of the world, and of the for Sir Thomas Overbury's' Wife." heart, and a vigor of expression only found "Second Husband" was the work of no elsewhere in Shakspeare. From the Pope-less a poet than John Davies,-not the like line with which it opens,

Calendar."

"Each woman is a briefe of womankind," to the line with which it closes,

"Woman converts to man, not man to her," "The Wife" is full of point and apophthegm, conveyed in words more clinging and compact than Donne's. Take this example of the balance of virtue and ancestry in a wife :

"Rather in her alive one vertue see,

Than all the rest dead in her pedigree."

Again:

Things were first made, then words; she were the same

With, or without, that title or that name."

Such a poem-so strong, so clear, so wise, and successful-gathered crowds of imita

tors;

The

lawyer-poet of the same name, so distinguished in Irish story, but Davies of Hereford. Braithwaite composed "The Description of a Good Wife,”—Patrick Picturæ Loquentes, or Pictures drawn Hannay "A Happy Husband,"-Saltonstall forth in Characters, with a Poem of a Maid," and Aylet "A Wife not ready made, but bespoken.".

verse.

Overbury's prose' is not less noble than his Good judges may even pronounce it nobler, or the same judges in other moods, as fine port may be on occasion preferred to fine hock for its greater strength, flavor, and bouquet. His "Characters" contain more

wit than "The Wife," and not less poetry. [he corrupts the whole text." Overbury That Shakspeare read Overbury may be teems with these masterly and pointed safely inferred;-that Jonson read and illustrations. Here is a figure from the praised him is on record in his "Sonnets," Gallery of Characters-a courtier who dressed and in his Conversations with Drummond. after Somerset and dangled after CarletonWhy then is such a writer forgotten? yet who belongs by artful touches of nature Public interest in Overbury as a poet has to one period and all periods, like the been oppressed by a yet stronger interest in Rosenkrantzes and Guildensterns: his death. All things weighed together,time, place, person, circumstances, and results, the poisoning of Overbury is, perhaps, the most startling and dramatic crime in English history. Other crimes chiefly affect the individual; this influenced a nation. It struck down a first minister of the crown. It threw into deepest shade the first family in England. It darkened the king himself. Overbury, proud, witty, poetical as he was, sank under the majesty and mystery of his own fate: so that of the many writers who have rounded periods with his name, few probably have ever looked for inspiration into his own works.

"A Courtier to all mens thinking is a man, and to most men the finest all things else are defined by the understanding, but this by the senses; but his surest marke is, that he is to be found only about princes. judgment about the situation of his clothes. He smels; and putteth away much of his Hee knowes no man that is not generally knowne. His wit, like the marigold, openeth with the sun, and therefore he riseth not before ten of the clock. He puts more confidence in his words than meaning, and more in his pronunciation than his words. Occasion is his Cupid, and he hath but one receit of making love. He followes nothing but inconstancie, admires nothing but beauty, honors nothing but fortune. Loves nothing. In truth, until now the writings of Over-The sustenance of his discourse is newes, and bury have not been very accessible, some his censure like a shot depends upon the of them not at all, except at pains and cost charging. He is not, if he be out of court, but fish-like breaths destruction, if out of beyond their worth. We are, therefore, his owne element. Neither his motion, or thankful to Mr. Rimbault for this compact aspect are regular, but he mooves by the collection, with its notes, memoirs, and inupper spheares, and is the reflection of troduction-a volume to become a favorite higher substances. If you find him not with many who scarcely class themselves here, you shall in Pauls, with a picke tooth among "lovers of old books." That Over-in his hat, a capecloak, and a long stocking." bury's prose is full of local manners, tricked and colored with the fashions of his day,so that we see in it the daily aspects of Shakspeare-life, is well known to the few, and is a fact we need not dwell on now. We propose to show by a few extracts that it has properties higher and universal-the wit that is for all places and the fancy that is for all time. The Puritan, the Jesuit, the Jailer, and a hundred other characters, are struck out-carved in walnut wood. Of the Jesuit, we read: "In Rome, and other countries that give him freedome, he weares a maske upon his heart; in England he shifts it, and puts it upon his face. No place in our climate bides him so securely as a ladies chamber: the modesty of the pursevant hath only forborne the bed, and so mist him. There is no disease in Christendome, that may so properly be call'd The kings evill." A Puritan, we are told, with striking wit and force, "is a diseas'd peece of Apocrypha: bind him to the Bible, and

Have you, gentle reader, not met the Affectate Traveller many times in his lounges between Pall Mall and Piccadilly-in another garb, it may be, for tailors change, yet unmistakably the man whom Overbury knew and limned? Here is the picture-of course you recognize the face, the gait, and the expression.

"An Affectate Traveller is a speaking fashion; hee hath taken paines to be ridiculous, and hath seen more than he hath perceived. His attire speakes French or Italian, and his gate cries, Behold me. He censures all things by countenance, and shrugs, and speakes his own language with shame and lisping: he will choake, rather than confesse beere good drinke; and his pick-tooth is a maine part of his behavior. He chuseth rather to be counted a spie, then not a politician: and maintaines his reputation by naming great men familiarly. Hee chuseth rather to tell lies, then not wonders, and talkes with men singly: his discourse sounds big, but meanes nothing: and his boy is bound to admire him howsoever. He comes