there is nothing of his. Cossé has a very pretty picture, representing boys returning from school, not equal, however, to his " Asking in Marriage" at the other exhibition. There is here a mixture of water colours and oil paintings, which has a paltry appearance. The English do not deceive themselves as to the state of the art in their country, and do not speak of the exhibition more favourably than I do. They seem to wish to see the fine arts flourish among them, and are disposed to give every encouragement, but they do not pretend to have acquired much excellence, nor indeed to attach any exaggerated importance to the thing. It is, after all, a mere ornament of the great social fabric; the solid and majestic style of its architecture does not require it absolutely. The most curious thing we saw there was young Betty, the infant Roscius, whose premature reputation filled England some years ago; -not his picture, but himself. He is a great calf; ill made,-knock-kneed,-a pretty face, fresh, round, and rosy, without expression, or any perceivable trace of sentiment or genius. I suspect there must have been much exaggeration in the fashionable enthusiasm displayed on the occasion, as well as a great fund of bad taste. The cleverest child that ever was can at best mimic passions which he never felt; and at the height of your fallacious raptures, merely his face and figure afford you irrefragable proofs that you are

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166 LONDON-CHELSEA HOSPITAL-ASYLUM.

the dupe of a shallow counterfeit and perfect mystification of sentiment.

The military asylum at Chelsea is a very fine establishment for orphan children of soldiers who have lost their lives in the service of their country. This edifice is remarkable for the noble simplicity of the architecture, which is, however, the least merit of the establishment. Seven or eight hundred male children, and half that number of girls, all looking clean and healthy, are brought up here by Lancaster's method. The kitchen is à la Rumford. The whole work of the house is done by themselves, and the current expence but little compared to the utility. The building itself cost L.80,000 sterling. We saw the boys go through their exercises with great precision and activity; the young officers, wholly promoted by merit, seemed very proud of their situation; the general in chief was an old soldier. Although brought up militarily, these boys are allowed at a certain age to choose another profession,-but they generally choose the military. This establishment does honour to the Duke of York, its founder.

May 6-I have just seen the originals of which Mathews gave us a faithful copy a few days ago, in Hit or Miss,-the very barouche club; the gentlemen-coachmen, with half-a-dozen great coats about them,-immense capes,a

large nosegay at the button-hole,-high mounted on an elevated seat,-with squared elbows,-a prodigious whip,-beautiful horses, four in hand, drive in a file to Salthill, a place about twenty miles from London, and return, stopping in the way at the several public-houses and gin-shops. where stage-coachmen are in the habit of stopping for a dram, and for parcels and passengers; the whole in strict imitation of their masters, and making use, as much as they can, of their energetic professional idiom. All this is, no doubt, very ingenious and amusing. But let these gentlemen remember, that the lowering of the superior classes, the fashionable imitation of the vulgar, by people of superior rank in France, under the name of Anglo-mania, was one of the things that contributed to bring about the revolution. The influence of rank owes much to the delusion of distance, and should not be brought too near the vulgar eye.

I give here a sketch of English stage-coaches; those made like a vessel are of modern invention,

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and carry most of their passengers inside. I have counted on the top of the others as many as seventeen persons. These carriages are not suspended, but rest on steel springs, of a flattened oval shape, less easy than the old mode of leathern braces on springs. The consequence of this accumulation of weight on the top is, a dangerous tendency to overturn. If a double tier of passengers is necessary, the lower should at least be very near the ground. This has been in part attended to, for some of these stage-coaches carry their baggage below the level of the axletree.

I have again seen Mrs Siddons twice; in Henry VIII. and in Macbeth, two tragedies of Shakespeare. Henry VIII. is a good easy sort of a tyrant, who suffers himself to be grossly imposed upon by his minister, and knows nothing of what is going on in the state, till his queen brings him word, telling him about certain commissions, and taxations, and exactions, which are on the point of producing an insurrection. The good man turns in anger to his minister, Cardinal Wolsey, another simple character, who excuses himself by saying, that the council had so ordered, and that he, poor soul, having only one voice, could not help it. The king makes, on the subject, some very philosophical remarks, and humane to a weakness, on the subject of resistance. The Cardinal, in the mean time, gives orders to grant all

the people ask, and that it may appear to be by his intercessions. Henry, however, soon shews himself a little more in character, by the crafty manner in which he gets rid of Queen Catharine, in order to marry Anna Boleyn, with whom he has suddenly fallen in love. Wolsey, who always manages him as he pleases, sends a great Lord to the scaffold, because he has consulted a fortune-teller. At last his turn comes. By a blunder, a little extraordinary for a man of his sort, he places under the eye of the king a certain unlucky document, being an inventory of his enormous ill-gotten wealth; and, as misfortunes never come single, a letter which he had written to the Pope, begging his assistance to prevent the marriage of the king with Anna Boleyn, is intercepted. The king, who is become at last the Henry VIII. of history, after having confronted his eminence, sends him away to read these unfortunate papers; " and then to breakfast with what appetite you may;" an expression which has become proverbial in English, and which, though highly derogatory from the French notions of tragical decorum, appears to me strong and natural enough. The minister, finding himself irrevocably disgraced, turns at once a philopher and a saint. The divorced queen is not so resigned as the Cardinal; seated in a great armchair, and surrounded by her women and attend.