I beg you to follow up the affair of the priory, of which I before wrote to you, with my cousin de Fescaut, as you did with monsieur, the late cardinal, my uncle. I have written a few words to him, which you must deliver, and beg him to let me know his decision, and let me know, as speedily as possible, what answer he gives. Send Nau to me without delay.

I had forgotten to beg you to stand sponsor, in my name, for M. Duvergier's infant; if it is a boy, name him after yourself-if a girl, Antoinette. You are acquainted with the custom, and that the present) and the money must be given in the chamber, in the usual manner. A chain for the waist, and another for the neck, of a moderate price, must serve for the present. I forgot to tell you that I wrote to you some time ago, begging you to assist the good Lady Seyton in her affairs, with my name and interest; but I have been told you never received those letters. I, however, trust these few words will suffice for this purpose of recommendation, and I am sure that you will exert yourself so readily, that I shall not have occasion to repeat my request; remember me to her, and let her be paid agreeably to what you will perceive to be my intention in the memorandum.

A farewell letter, p. 106, is addressed by Mary to Mendoça, from Fotheringay Castle, after Lord Blackhurst and Beal had announced to her that sentence of death had been pronounced against her; this is, perhaps, the most interesting of all she has written. "Yesterday," she says, "they took down my canopy, saying that I was no more than a dead woman, and without any rank. They are at present working in my hall-erecting the scaffold, I suppose, whereon I am to perform the last act of this tragedy." But not so promptly was the coup-de-grace to be dealt to the royal victim, who was doomed to take a lengthened draught of the bitterness of death during the three gloomy months which intervened between the publication of her sentence and its execution. Her letter to Mendoça, dated November 23d, 1586, was written under the impression that she would be summoned to the scaffold in a few hours. She bequeaths to him a precious legacy in these words, p. 109: "You will receive from me, as a token of my remembrance, a diamond, which I have held very dear, having been given to me by the late Duke of Norfolk, as a pledge of his troth, and I have always worn it as such. Keep it for my sake."

After the samples that have been given of this interesting and beautiful correspondence it will be unnecessary to add any commendation of a work that speaks so admirably for itself, and which must be regarded as one of the most valuable contributions to historical literature that has ever issued from the press.

THE MISER'S DAUGHTER.*

THE author of this work has inscribed upon its opening page the names of his two youthful daughters, to whom he presents the tale. It is a fitting and graceful offering; being a story well adapted to charm the young, and well worthy of their acceptance, by its vivid portrayal of the style and manner prevalent in England a century ago, by its animated pictures of struggling and generous affection, of

The Miser's Daughter. By W. Harrison Ainsworth, Esq. With Illustrations by George Cruikshank. 3 vols.

Nov.-VOL. LXVI. NO. CCLXIII.

2 G

filial love under grievous trials, of honest devotion in servitude, of grateful and unfaltering fidelity; and then on the darker side, of flippant and idle folly, ending in disappointment, of vicious intrigue foiled, of sprendthrift knavery exposed, of sordid and miserable avarice eating away the heart, and working its own misery in that of others.

These are subjects which embrace a large view of human life, and enable the writer to fulfil many of the objects of the moralist without writing a moral essay in chapters. The tone of the story, though it has its startling and romantic situations, its deep tragic passion, and its exhibitions of melancholy depravity, is upon the whole extremely cheerful and winning, and calculated to put the world in good humour with itself. One cause of this result is, that the virtues are here painted with manliness and sincerity; there is nothing mawkish in them; nothing of that intolerable heartlessness and affectation which so often make good people in books so lackadaisical, and set us wishing for the knaves and villains to be always on the scene. Nor are the knaves and villains here painted blacker than they need to be. Where the shade of vice and treachery is of a deep dye, the influences which have darkened it are truly shown, and nature is therefore never outraged for the sake of a convenient effect.

The plot, which clears up from the interesting and the mysterious into the simple, is skilfully constructed. The characters are many without overcrowding the scene, the majority of them belonging to comedy. Indeed many parts of this story carry us quite back into a past age. We move amidst the frolics and fashions of Ranelagh, we are rowed away into the folly on the Thames, we breathe the same air with Kitty Conway the actress, we scent the essences of Beau Villiers, and take "snush" out of the borrowed box of his incomparable valet. It is a merit in the plot, not a common one, that there is but one action going on, that the rapidly occurring incidents all tend to the same point, and that every character is more or less an agent in carrying on the design.

This story will perhaps be more popular than any of Mr. Ainsworth's writings. It has one quality in common with his other tales; he never appears upon the stage himself. His close, clear, distinct narrative, and his characters entering into full and explicit dialogue (this is carried sometimes to a faulty extent), tell the whole tale and work out the author's purpose-amusement, moral and all. There is perhaps not a line in these volumes in the way of observation or reflection by the writer, or that does not actually belong to the story. The stream of fiction flows continually on, and bears the reader, be its course rough or smooth, with it. The illustrations, by George Cruikshank, partake of the animation, vigour, and picturesque grouping of the pages they so beautifully embellish.

THE

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

MORE NEWS FROM CHINA.

BY THE EDITOR.

No. IV.

To Mr. Abel Dottin, Grocer, Manchester.

Dear Brother,

A violent cold having flown to my chest, I am too ill to enjoy retorting and retaliating, and which must plead my apology for not recriminating at more length. As such you must excuse my not resenting sereatim every point in your last letter, and making you thoroughly ashamed of yourself and your unnatural sentiments. I allude particularly to your taking refuge as an Uncle in the character of a Pawnbroker, and declining loans to your nearest ties, except on the usual sharking terms of those moral monsters. But trade hardens every thing. It teaches to adulterate our genuine feelings with sordid ingredients, and to weigh the just claims of consanguity in scales that are any thing but correct.

Gracious heavens! where is a sister or a nevy to look up to for assistance if needful, but to a rich connexion without chick or child, rolling in wealth; and where I venture to say, every shilling he advances will be to his everlasting credit! O, Brother, consider your nevy's propinquity! Your sister's own son-and if ever a youth exhibited a decided propensity to get elevated, its him. I do hope, therefore, you will reflect before you shirk one so likely to redound upon you as dear Gus. Already by his native genius, improved by talent, he has arrived at a pitch of splendour to which few sons rise in the East; and of course the greater his eminence and prosperity, the more he will reflect on his relations. To be sure, if a nevy was going down in the world instead of up, some people might feel justified in backing him with a cold shoulder; but where he promises wealth, affluence, and opulence, rank, title, and dignity, to cut one's own flesh and blood, must be perfect infatuation! And suppose a little pecunery assistance was necessary to his exaltation, ought the laudable heights of his ambition to be chilled and snowed upon by a cold calculating passimony, Dec.-VOL. LXVI. NO. CCLXIV. 2 H

and let him be arrested on the high-road to fame and fortune, for want of a trifle, as I may say, to pay the gates? What's a paltry 501. for such a figure in China! And that dear Gus has turned out a phenomenon, is plain from his own account. So great a rise in life of course demands a corresponding study of appearances,-but as transpires, poor fellow, from his letter, he has lost all his linen and clothes. Such a misfortune must and shall be remedied, whatsoever shifts I may have to make, or if I strip myself to my last dividend. For I presume even you would not wish your nevy to be a General without a shirt, or a Colonel without inexpressibles, and especially when he has attracted, as I may say, the Eyes of Europe. A nevy who may some day have to be sculptured, collossially, and set up on a prancing charging horse, over a triumphant arch.

But some people may treat such a picture as chimerical, though quite as wonderful metamorphoses have come down to us. Look at Boneyparte, who at first was only an engineer officer, like Mr. Braidwood, and yet came to be Emperor of the French. Or look at Washington, who from a common American soldier rose to be king of the whole republic! For my own part I will say for my son, it has been my constant aim to instil genius into him, morning, noon and night, and to cultivate a genteel turn for either the army, or the navy, or the church. The last, I own, would have been most congenial to my maternal wishes, for besides the safety of a pulpit, a soldier or a sailor when peace comes, is a moral non-entity, but there is no peace in the church. However dear Gus would never hear of a shovel hat and a silk apron, and especially at the present time, when, as I understand, the clergy is to go back to their ancient, antiquated costume, and put on their oldfashioned rubrics. As to the law, he never could abide a chancellor's wig and gown, and indeed always showed a perfect antipathy to any thing legal. So far, then, the Chinese war was a blessing, and all has turned out for the best; for dear Gus has attained to martial glory, quite unusual at his age, and if a parent may predict, will some day be made a peer of, like Wellington, and hand himself down to posterity with his family arms.

In the mean time I have packed up for him a dozen ready-made shirts, together with such money as I could scrape up, namely four sovereigns, a sum, alas! which will fall far short of his Pekin expectations, and certainly not enough to let him see any great capital. In fact he names fifty pounds as the very smallest minimum for supporting the honour of his country at the Chinese court, and which most people will consider as very moderate terms. I do hope, therefore, when such a trifle is in the case and so much at stake, you will kindly contrive to make it up, or if cash is inconvenient, by an accommodation bill or a creditable letter to some banking-house abroad. As to security, my own U. O. I. would, I trust, be sufficient between relatives, or if you preferr'd, dear Gus would no doubt be agreeable to your taking out the amount in tea or Chinese fans, or nid-noddin mandarins, or any other articles you might fancy. In which case you can be no loser, but will enjoy the satisfaction of putting forward a shining branch that will greatly add to our family lustre.

How he escaped from such awful Waterloo work as he described is a perfect miracle. The mere perusal almost turned my whole mass

of blood, and made me feel as if poked and stabbed in every fibre, and squibbed and rocketted besides. Indeed war seems from his picture to be a combination of storm, total eclipse, the great earthquake that should have been, and the fifth of November. It follows that dear Gus must have been specially preserved from such a concatenation for some brilliant destiny, which it would be a sin in us to frustrate by any scrimp measures. I do beg and hope, therefore, to hear from you with the needful, by return of post, in which case I remain, dear Brother, Your affectionate sister,

Wisbech, 17th November, 1842.

Dear Mother,

No. V.

JEMIMA BUDGE.

As I expected in my last, I have at length set foot in the Chinese empire, and am at this moment writing from Chew-shew, a regular Celestial village, though not to be found perhaps on the Celestial globe. However it is a pleasant place enough, and would be pleasanter if our quartermaster had not quartered me with a wholesale breeder of black beetles, for a great Soy manufactury in the neighbourhood—a hint which I suppose will set your face and stomach for the future against that soy-disant sauce. However, here is the process from the Chinese receipt. First fatten your beetles on as much pounded rice as they will eat. Then mash the insects to a paste, which must be slowly boiled in a strong decoction of Spanish liquorice. Strain the liquor carefully, and bottle it, well corked, for English use.

Since my last we have had several brushes with the natives, whose first attempt was to make a bonfire of us in the river, having agreed to a truce for the purpose. In fact a regular gunpowder plot; but such traitors are sure to split amongst themselves, and one of them gave our commander the office the day before. At first the report was treated as a bam. However, after dark, as soon as the tide turned, down came the fire-raft with the ebb, and if the pigtails had been content with a business-like flare-up of combustibles and destructibles, might have played old gooseberry with our ship. But the Chinese are famous for their pirotechnics, in which they take the shine out of Madame Hengler herself, so their vanity could not resist a little show off in the fancy line, to accompany their infernal machine. Accordingly, instead of the raft drifting quietly down on us, with a length of slow-match proportioned to the distance, we were warned of it two miles off by a shower of outlandish squibbs and crackers and serpents, cutting away in all directions, and then forming themselves into Chinese characters, one of them standing, as the pilot told us, for a certain very hot place. Of course we soon shifted our birth, and let the fire-raft drive clear of us, which soon after blew up in the shape of a great fiery dragon with a blazing tail, twisting to a point like a red-hot corkscrew, and spitting a volley of blue zigzaggy lightning darting out of its mouth. It was a splendid sight, beating the grand Vauxhall finales, or the Surrey Zoological, all to sticks-and except in one little accident a very satisfactory performance.

In the hurry of shifting the ship, the Chinese wash-boats that were fastened astern of her were all cut adrift, and getting entangled