THE DINNER.

THUS to his mate Sir Richard spoke—
"The House is up; from London smoke
All fly, the Park grows thinner;
The friends, who fed us, will condemn
Our backward board; we must feed them:
My dear, let's give a dinner."

Agreed," his lady cries," and first Put down Sir George and Lady Hurst."

"Done! now I name-the Gatties !" "My dear, they're rather stupid."-" Stuff! We dine with them, and that's enough: Besides I like their paties."

"Who next?" "Sir James and Lady Dunn." "Oh no.”—“ Why not?"-" They'll bring their son,

That regular tormentor;

A couple, with one child, are sure

To bring three fools outside their door,

Whene'er abroad they venture.”

"Who next?"-" John Yates.". "What! M.P. Yates; Who o'er the bottle, stale debates

Drags forth ten times a minute?"

"He's like the rest: whoever fails,

Out of St. Stephen's school tells tales

He'd quake to utter in it."

"Well, have him if you will."-" The Grants."

66

My dear, remember, at your aunt's

I view'd them with abhorrence."

"Why so?"" Why, since they've come from Lisle, (Which they call Leel) they bore our isle

With Brussels, Tours, and Florence.

"Where could you meet them ?"-" At the Nore."

"Who next?""The Lanes."

Lieutenant General Dizzy."

"We want two more,

"He's deaf." "But then he'll bring Tom White." "True! ask them both: the boy's a bite;

We'll place him next to Lizzy."

"Tis seven-the Hursts, the Dunns, Jack Yates, The Grants assemble: dinner waits:

In march the Lanes, the Gatties.

Objections, taunts, rebukes are fled,
Hate, scorn, and ridicule lie dead
As so many Donatties.

Yates carves the turbot, Lane the lamb,
Sir George the fowls, Sir James the ham,
Dunn with the beef is busy.

His helpmate pats her darling boy,
And, to complete a mother's joy,
Tom White sits next to Lizzy.

All trot their hobbies round the room;
They talk of routs, retrenchments, Hume,
The bard who won't lie fallow,

The Turks, the statue in the Park,
Which both the Grants, at once, remark
Jump'd down from Mount Cavallo.

They talk of dances, operas, dress,
They nod, they smile, they acquiesce;
None pout; all seem delighted:
Heavens can this be the self-same set,
So courteously received, when met;
So taunted, when invited?

So have I seen, at Drury-Lane,
A play rehearsed: the Thespian train
In arms; the bard astounded;
Scenes cut; parts shifted; songs displaced;
Jokes mangled; characters effaced;
"Confusion worse confounded."

But, on the night, with seeming hearts,
The warring tribe their several parts
Enact with due decorum.

Such is the gulph that intervenes

'Twixt those who get behind the scenes, And those who sit before 'em!

TO ZEPHYR.

FROM DON ESTEVAN MANUEL DI VILLEGAS.

SWEET inmate of the verdant wood,

Of flowery April aye the friend,
Thou who with Love canst fire the blood,
Zephyr! attend.

Oh! didst thou know my heart's dismay
When floated on thy breast my sigh!
Listen! and to my false nymph say—
Say, that I die.

To Phillis once my grief was dear,

My sorrows once would Phillis mourn;
She loved me once, but now I fear-
I fear her scorn.

So may the gods propitious prove,

The Heavens with kindly ardour glow, And free the earth, where'er you rove, From chilling snow!

Ne'er may thy airy flight be bound

By those dark clouds that morning brings,

Ne'er may the hail-storm rudely wound

Thy balmy wings!

A. Z.

JOURNAL OF A TOURIST.-NO. IV.

-O qui me gelidis in vallibus Hæmi

Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbrâ!

omne

LET every man, even if his imagination be "duller than the fat weed that rots itself at ease on Lethe's bank," rest contented with its creations, and not attempt to compare them with the realities which they anticipated; for he may be well assured that in the great majority of instances he will be bitterly disappointed. The tamest embodying of fancy generally surpasses the most brilliant matter-of-fact; and to have all one's rich but indefinite ideas dissipated by the rude assault of ocular demonstration, is like being awakened out of a delicious dream by the dustman's bell. He is a wise man who saves all the expense of travelling; performs the grand tour in his easy chair; sets his mind in motion instead of his limbs; and conjures before him, by an instantaneous process of his mind, all those celebrated towns, ruins, and landscapes, which tourists expend so much time and trouble in exploring, and, after all, never behold in half so magnificent or picturesque a point of view, as the fire-side visionary, whose eyes have never wandered from the poker or the rug. According to the old adage of " ignotum pro magnifico," the less a man knows, the more magnificent are his ideas; and let him repose upon this imaginary grandeur, for there is poetical authority for declaring, that where "ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise."....The reader may well think me timid, but I really feel seriously alarmed at the daily increase of my information, for every step forward seems to be the demolition of some delightful conception; and every new sight seen by the bodily eye, destroys in a moment some beautiful vision on which the mind's eye had feasted for years. Such has been the effect of my visit to-day to the Hermitage of Jean Jacques Rousseau, in the woods of Montmorency. O what picturesque, what romantic associations did I connect with this spot! A hermitage in the midst of woods is abstractedly scenic and piquant to the fancy; but when I recollected the glowing and pastoral beauties with which this morbid enthusiast had invested it in his Confessions-when I called to mind that he had here composed some of his most touching effusions, and had attributed their fervour to the inspiration of these sylvan and sequestered haunts, my imagination was disposed to run riot in the luxuriance of its rural shadowings. I had determined, however, that the Hermitage itself was a kind of Swiss cottage, somewhat like those in the gardens of the little Trianon, the trellis-work of whose latticed windows was nearly hidden by clusters of roses, jessamin, and honeysuckle; while acacias, mountain ash, laburnum, and other flowering trees gracefully threw their varicoloured foliage over the roof, contrasting finely with the gigantic boughs and impenetrable shade of the forest in which the whole was embowered. Alas! this inauspicious day was but a tissue of disappointments. After toiling up the hill of Montmorency, I looked around me, and if its valley be in reality, what it is generally stated to be,-one of the most picturesque and romantic spots in France, I can only say, so much the worse for France. I agree with the Parisian, who pronounced that the view from Richmond Hill would be no great matter, if you took away the wood and water, for here they

are both wanting, and the prospect is precisely as he states-no great matter. The town itself is small and shabby, and would be little known but from its vicinity to the Hermitage, and the influx of pilgrims to visit it, for whose accommodation a large and well-appointed establishment of donkies is in perpetual readiness. Not choosing to avail ourselves of this conveyance, we walked along a winding road, which led to the point of attraction, and here we did encounter the prettiest and most pastoral scene imaginable. A sudden dip of the path left some high and broken ground on our left, thickly planted with the finest walnut-trees we had yet seen. The sound of music induced us to climb this ascent, and upon the summit, under the shade of outspreading boughs, was a group of peasant girls dancing quadrilles, all attired alike in their Sunday costume, (for it was the Sabbath-day,) consisting of crimson cotton gowns, black aprons, and elegantly-worked caps; while the band had converted a grassy bank into an orchestra, and the parents, seated on benches, or reclining upon the ground, encircled the whole assemblage. Nothing could be more melodramatic than the dresses, scenery, dancing, and tout-ensemble of this picturesque little company; and yet nothing could be more unaffected, simple, and modest, than the air of the performers. It seemed a spontaneous effusion of tranquil enjoyment, and was rendered doubly attractive to us, whatever it might be to the parties concerned, by the absence of men, who in this country are in woeful discordance with all pastoral associations. Unwillingly quitting this primitive scene, we bent our steps to the Hermitage, which we found to be a common-place, square, vulgar house, in the court-yard of which stood a carriage, no very hermit-like appendage. Passing through some shabby rooms, we were ushered into the far-famed garden, a small, formal, square enclosure, surrounded by walls, in one corner of which was a poor bust of Jean Jacques, with some lines by his quondam patroness; in another was a bust of Gretry, the musician, who tenanted the house after Rousseau ; and at the extremity was a miserable miniature attempt at rusticity, consisting of a cork-screw walk, a gutter with a large stone or two, meant to imitate a cascade and rock, and that indispensable article in all French gardening, a little basin with a jet d'eau. "O what a falling off was here!"-Disappointed and dejected I left this paltry cabbagegarden, resolved to plunge, for consolation, into the woods of Montmorency; but these have long since gone to warm ragouts and fricandeaus for the epicures of Paris, and nothing now exists but some mathematical rows of poplars, and straggling plantations of young trees and underwood. Yet this dry chalky valley, glaring with white houses, this forest of twigs and young poplars, this cockney hermitage, worthy of Mile End or Homerton, the Parisians consider as the beau idéal of all that is wild, sylvan, and romantic; proudly adducing them as irrefragable proofs of the superiority of their own environs, whenever a Londoner ventures to say a word in behalf of Richmond Hill.

Almost every eminence in the vicinity of Paris capable of affording a view, has been seized by some monarch or mistress for the construction of a chateau; and if Voltaire and other leading writers of the French have fixed their Augustan æra of literature in the reign of Louis Quatorze, and decried all deviation from this standard of per

fection as barbarous, it is not to be expected that succeeding builders of palaces should depart from the established system of gardening practised by Le Notre under that grund monarque, and so happily illustrated in the quincunxes, stars, terraces, parterres, clipped allies, and verdant sculpture of Versailles. The ostentatious, formal and artificial style of that age has not only extended itself by means of the Academy to the literature of France, but has stamped itself upon the taste of the country, and left a legible impress upon the national character. Magnificence and extent in some degree redeemed the original;-its successors have only meanness and poverty superadded to the reproach of servile imitation, and this is the character of nearly all the gardens and grounds in the immediate vicinity of the capital. Circumstances have conspired to perpetuate the parsimony of nature. The practice of cutting down all the trees of a certain age for fuel is utterly destructive of any thing like scenery. Those hoary monarchs of the forest which impart a character of grandeur to the glades they overshadow, and awaken correspondent emotions in the spectator by carrying his thoughts into the past and the future, are strangers to these purlieus; but there is no lack of slim, sickly shoots,-plantations of underwood, and forests of sticks disposed in rows, with rectilinear avenues. With the exception of the trees that line the roads, and those forming the Boulevards, I have not yet seen one of any apparent age; nor even among these have I encountered a single noble or majestic specimen.

There is nothing fantastical in supposing some general analogy to exist between the features of a country and the character of its inhabitants. Unconversant with the physical beauties of nature, the French know not how to appreciate her moral charms; and as they supply her niggardliness in the one instance by a jet d'eau and an evergreen maze, so they substitute for the other, frigid declamation, pedantic rules, and elaborate art. Who can wonder at La Harpe's declaration, that pastoral poetry is more in discredit among them than any other species of composition? or at the Abbé de Lille's regretting that the "false delicacy and unfortunate prejudices" of his countrymen should have proscribed the style suited to such writings? Who can be amazed that they are not only blind to that fervent, impassioned, and enthusiastic drama which draws its inspiration from the deep founts of Nature, but that from the time of Voltaire they have ever flouted it with derision and contempt? Is it not consistent that they should exalt the classical, meaning by that term the productions of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, over the romantic, as exemplified in the works of such bunglers as Shakspeare? Can we wonder, in fine, that they should utterly fail in gardening, and in all those works of art the perfection of which requires an intense feeling of nature, or taste for simplicity; while they are the inventors of cocked-hats, hoops, and hair-powder; unrivalled in bijouterie, and all the littlenesses of art; peerless in dancing, as far as perfection consists in deviating from all natural attitudes, and paramount in cookery, which necessarily implies a similar departure from every thing primitive and simple.

The demolition of the wood of Boulogne is eagerly ascribed to the English who were quartered in it at the second occupation of Paris;