kings of Brentford!—there they sit upon their thrones-the Examiner and the Edinburgh Review-sedet, eternumque sedebit" both warbling of one note, both in one key." Each "doth bestride his little world like a Colossus"-(little, but, oh! how great!) There they are, teres et rotundus; while Universal Suffrage, like "Universal Pan, knit with the graces" of Whiggism, leads on the eternal dance! We have said in The London, that, "to assume a certain signature, and write essays and criticisms in THE LONDON MAGAZINE, was a consummation of felicity hardly to be believed." But what is writing in the Edinburgh Review, or the New Monthly, or the London, compared to writing in Blackwood's Magazine? That, after all, is your only true passport to Fame. We thought otherwise once, but we were wrong! Well, better late than never. But we must get to our subject.

What admirable pictures of duty (finer than Mr. Wordsworth's Ode to Duty) are now and then presented to us in these rhymes! What powerful exhortations to morality (stronger and briefer than Hannah More's) do we find in them!What can be inore strenuous, in its way, than the detestation of slovenliness inspired by the following example? The rhyme itself seems" to have caught the trick" of carelessness, and to wanton in the inspiration of the subject:

See saw, Margery Daw, sold her bed, and lay in the straw;

Was not she a dirty slut, to sell her bed, and lay in the dirt?

Look at the paternal affection (regardless of danger) so beautifully exemplified in this sweet lullaby:

Bye, baby bunting! papa's gone ahunting,

To catch a little rabbit-skin, to wrap the baby bunting in.

There is a beautiful spirit of humanity and a delicate gallantry in this one. The long sweep of the verse reminds one of the ladies' trains in Watteau's pictures: One a penny, two a penny, hot cross

way in which the most abstruse sciences are conveyed to the infant understanding? Here is an illustration of the law of gravitation, which all Sir Richard Phillips's writings against Newton will never overthrow !

Rock a bye, baby, on the tree top, When the wind blows, the cradle will rock:

If the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, Then down tumbles baby, and cradle, and all.

The theories of the Political Economists are also finely explained in this verse, which very properly begins with an address to J. B. Say, who has said the same thing in prose: See, Say, a penny a-day, Tommy must have a new master:

Why must he have but a penny a-day?— Because he can work no faster.

This is better than the Templar's Dialogues on Political Economy in The London, and plainer and shorter than the Scotsman. It is as good as the Ricardo Lecture. Mr. M'Culloch could not have said any thing more profound!

There is often a fine kind of pictured poetry about them. In this verse, for instance, you seem to hear the merry, merry ring of the bells, and you see the tall white steed go glancing by : Ride a cock-horse to Bamborough Cross, To see a fair lady sit on a white horse; With rings on her fingers, and bells on

her toes,

That she may have music wherever she goes.

There is also a rich imagination about the "four-and-twenty blackbirds, baked in a pye;" it is quite oriental, and carries you back to the Crusades. But, upon the whole, we prefer this lay, with its fearful and tragic close: Bye, baby bumpkin, where's Tony Lumpkin?

My lady's on her death-bed, with eating half a pumpkin.

No wonder! for we have seen pumpkins in France that would "make Ossa like a wart!" There is a wildness of fancy about this one, like the night-mare: what an overwhelming idea in the last line!

We're all in the dumps, for Diamonds is trumps,

And the kittens are gone to St. Paul's; And the babies are bit, and the moon's in a fit,

And the houses are built without

walls!

But there is yet another, finer than all, of which we can only recollect a few words; the rest is gone with other visions of our youth. We often sit and think of

these lines by the hour together, till our hearts melt with their beauty, and our eyes fill with tears. We could probably find the rest in some of Mr. Godwin's twopenny books; but we would not for worlds dissolve the charm that is round the mysterious words. The "gay ladye" is more gorgeous to our fancy than Mr. Coleridge's "dark ladye !”

London bridge is broken down-
How shall we build it up again?
With a gay ladye.

The following is "perplexed in the extreme"-a pantomime of confusion: Cock-a-doodle-do, my dame has lost her shoe,

The cat has lost her fiddle-stick-I know not what to do.

There is "infinite variety" in this one: the rush in the first line is like the burst of an overture at the Philharmonic Society. Who can read the second line without thinking of Sancho and his celestial goats" sky-tinctured?"

Hey diddle, diddle, a cat and a fiddle,

The goats jump'd over the moon ; And the little dogs bark'd to see such sport,

And the cat ran away with the spoon. But if what we have quoted is fine, the next is still finer. What are all these things, to Jack Horner and his Christmas pye? What infinite keeping and gusto there is in it!-(we use keeping and gusto in the sense of painters, and not merely to mean that he kept all the pye to himself, (like a Tory), or that he liked the taste of it-which Mr. Hunt tells us is the meaning of gusto.) What quiet enjoyment! what serene repose! There he sits, teres et rotundus, in the chiar' oscuro, with his finger in the pye! is satisfying, delicious, secure from intrusion, "solitary bliss!"

All

Little Jack Horner sat in a corner,
Eating his Christmas pye;
He put in his thumb, and he pull'd out a
plumb,

And said, "What a good boy am I !" What a pity that Rembrandt did not paint this subject! But perhaps he did not know it. If he had painted it, the picture would have been worth any money. He would have smeared all the canvass over with some rich, honeyed, dark, bright, unctuous oil-colour; and, in the corner, you would have seen (obscurely radiant) the figure of Jack; then there would have been the pye, flashing out of the picture in a blaze of golden light, and the green plum held up over it, dropping sweets! We think we could paint it ourselves!

We are unwilling that any thing from

our friend, C. P., Esquire,* should come in at the fag-end of an article; but, for the sake of enriching this one, we add a few lines from one of the Early French Poets, communicated to C. P., by his friend Victoire, Vicomte de Soligny, whom he met in Paris at the Caffée des Milles Colonnes. The translation is by Mr. Hunt; it is like Mr. Frere's translations from the Poema del Cid, but is infinitely more easy, graceful, and antique:+

C'est le Roy Dagobert,

Qui met sa culotte à l'envers;
Le bon Saint Eloy

Lui dit: "Mon bon Roy,
Votre Majesté

Est mal culottée."

"Eh bien," lui dit le bon Roy,

"Je vais la remettre à l'endroit."

It was king Dagobert who, poking on his yellow breeches,

Whisk'd out the lining with a fling, and most elaborate stretches; Kind Saint Eloi perk'd crisply up, and said with frankliest air, "Your majesty's most touching legs are got one don't know where." "Well," (with his best astonishment, hush'd out the kindly king), "We'll swale them over jauntily, and that's the very thing."

W. H.

Blackwood's Mag.

Alias Wictoire, Wicomte de Soligny. This cockney wrote (as few but Mr. Colburn, the bookseller, have the misfortune to remember), Letters on England, under this title, which we demolished. We had then occasion to shew

that this impostor did not even know how French noblemen signed their names; and we might have added, that his title-page proved he did not know a man's name from a woman's; Victor being evidently the name which C. P. Esq. was vainly endeavouring to spell. Victoire, Vicomte de Soligny, sounds to a French ear just as Sally, Lord Holland, would to an English one. Besides, Victoire is, as every body knows, a name given in France (almost exclusively) to females of this Wicomte's own rankmaid-servants; and when he was in Paris, he had, no doubt, often occasion to violate propriety, by calling out from his room on the ninth floor, Wictoire, woulez wous wenir wite awec du win.-C. N.

+ Quære, antic.-Printer's devil.

JOHN BULL IN PARIS. WHILE waiting at the British ambassador's to have my passport signed for Madrid, a downright John Bull, whose face and general condition reflected fresh honour on the roast-beef of old England, entered the waiting-room; and, after seating himself, took it into his head to find fault with every thing in France. The system of passports was the peculiar object of his resentment.

"Truly," said he, this France is a common prison. It may be right enough not to allow a foreigner to come here without some sort of permission; but that is not all. When you arrive at Calais, the officers of the police take your passport from you, and they give you another paper, in which they mark down your age, your size to the very tenth of an inch, the colour of your hair, the colour of your eyes, the appearance of your forehead, and the form of your mouth. They even measure your nose; and put down on their rag of paper whether you have a big nose, a middling nose, or a little nose; and what is more, they describe the character of your chin-in short, there, you are bandied about from one officer to another, as if you were a common thief advertised in the Hue and Cry. Well,. sir, you come to Paris, and here you get into another mess. Your name and description are sent to the police immediately on your arrival, and you must go yourself to the prefect to ask leave of him to be so good as to permit you to stay in Paris for a little while. He will give it, no doubt, as he is very glad that we are come to fool away our money upon his country. But that is not all: why is not au Englishman allowed to go home when he pleases, and as he pleases? Here am 1, waiting to get liberty to return to Eng land-liberty to return to my native country! Did you ever hear the like of that, sir? Yesterday I went to the prefect for my original passport: he told me to go to-day, as he could not find it. Well, I went to him the first thing in the morning he gave it to me, and desired me to come with it here, to Sir something Stuart. When he signs it, I must go back again to the prefect, and from him to the minister for foreign affairs. So here are two days gone, just in asking that this government, in its great charity, would condescend to let me go home again! Well, if ever they catch me leaving old England again, they may tie me up in a bag, and throw me into their muddy kennel of a river. Talk of taxes! why, sir, a common shopkeeper here pays fifteen pounds a-year for his license, or patent, as they call it. Taxes! I'd pay five hundred pounds a-year sooner than have my nose and chin measured in a manner as if I was a robber or a traitor. Talk of cheap living! why, sir, now I know the difference: I could live in England seventy-five per cent. cheaper, and better too, than in Paris. The only thing cheap here is their wine and brandy. Cheap did I say? Yes; when you say that you can get a bottle of wine for one-and-eightpence, it looks cheap

enough. But I tell you, sir, it is dear, One shilling and eightpence is a great deal too much for a bottle of such sour, puny staff, as they call wine. Take one glass of real good port, as you get it in London, and put a pint of water to it, that is a bottle of French wine. It has no life in it-it does not elevate a man. It is not wine for a man, sir. Give me a bottle of good old port, for which I pay down my six or seven shillings, and I will maintain it's cheaper than the sour water which they call ordinary here. They are right in so calling it, for in all conscience it is ordinary enough. As to their brandy, I am told that in some parts of France you may get it right good; but depend upon it, there is not a drop of good brandy to be found in Paris: I know I have not seen it, not any thing like it, and what I have got was dear. For a small measure, scarcely more than an English wine glass, they charged me at my lodgings two francs and a half. Their water is bad,—no more to be compared with our Thames water than a cock-boat to a man of war. Their bread, too, is sour; it turns cold upon the stomach, and has no substance in it: I'll give you a proof of it. A friend of mine told me---and, by the way, he is as heavy a man as I am---he told me that he put a napkin over a quartern loaf at home, and stood upon it with all his weight for ten minutes: the loaf, when he got off, was just the same shape as before. For curiosity's sake, I sent for the largest loaf this morning that was to be had at the baker's I placed my handkerchief over it; but the moment I put my foot upon it, it became as flat and as thin as a sheet of paper, though it looked plump enough before. But it was all wind-no substance. No!-let me get safe to London once moreI know not how long my angry country. man would have kept up his philippic if the time had allowed; but the secre tary came in with his passport signed, and he actually ran out of the room, as well as such a man could run.

MECHANIC'S ORACLE.

Experiment on Sir Humphrey Davy's

Improved Copper Sheathing.

On the discovery being made by Sir Humphrey Davy, of the protection that might be given to the copper-sheathing of ships, by the application of electrochemical agency, in the manner detailed in our first number, two boats were coppered in the dock-yard at Portsmouth, under his inspection-one of them on the old plan, the other on the new. They were placed in quiet water, where they

were suffered to remain till Friday the 11th ult., when they were taken out for the inspection of Sir Humphrey. On examination, the former was found slightly covered with a muddy deposit, and to appearance much as when launched; but the entire coppering of the latter was hidden by small live animals, which lie apparently by millions among a thick slime, and on which a sea grass, six inches in length, had grown in abundance. This effect was unlooked for in practice, as it must have been impossible to calculate in theory, and excited much surprise. Whether the electrical sensation is a gratifying one to the animals which it seems to have gathered, or it possesses an unavoidable power of attraction on such small objects, it is difficult to say, and it will probably excite much discussion among those who are interested in the result. If this product of the new mode be inevitable, the service of the copper in assisting the passage of vessels through the water, must be destroyed; but it is more than probable that use and motion will prevent all such accumulation, and then the superiority of Sir Humphrey Davy's application is evident; for on weighing portions of the copper from each boat very accurately, the unprepared metal was found to have diminished, and the prepared to have suffered no destruction by the contact of salt water. On Wednesday, the 16th ult., the boats were again hauled up, in the presence of Commissioner Boyle, the master shipwright, and several naval and other officers; when it appeared, that on one side of the boat which had been sheathed with the protected metal, from which the grass and animalculæ had been rubbed off on the 11th ult., a fresh accumulation of animalculæ had already taken place in the short space of five days.-Mechanic's Oracle.

M. Deschamp's Process for Removing Grease from Books and Prints. A TASTE for elegant editions, books in good preservation, and proof impressions of prints, can be considered as a mania only by those who are unacquainted with literature. In a well printed, carefully preserved, and neat book, the sense seems 10 pass through the organs of sight, in order to meet the understanding; while, in a bad, confused edition, or a dirty, stained, and disgusting copy, the confusion of the characters deranges, as it were, the connexion of the author's thoughts; their obscurity divests ideas of their brilliancy; and the dirtiness of the paper, which offends the eye, makes the

subject lose much of its charms and attraction. It is a great misfortune, therefore, to those who purchase books for the sake of reading them, when the objects of their enjoyment are injured by tallow or oil. The following process, devised by M. Deschamps for removing such blemishes, is found quite efficacious.

First, discharge as much as possible of the grease, wax, or oil, by placing the stained paper between some folds of blotting paper, and applying a moderately hot smoothing-iron; or rubbing over it the bowl of a heated iron spoon. Then dip a small brush in the essential oil of well rectified spirit of turpentine, heated almost to ebullition, (for when cold it acts only very weakly,) and draws it gently over both sides of the paper, which must be carefully kept warm. This operation must be repeated as many times as the quantity of the fat body imbibed by the paper, or the thickness of the paper, may render necessary. When the greasy substance is entirely removed, recourse may be had to the following method to restore the paper to its former whiteness, which is not completely restored by the first process. Dip another brush in highly rectified spirit of wine, and draw it, in like manner, over the place which was stained, and particularly round the edges, to remove the border, that would still present a stain. employing these means, with proper caution, the spot will totally disappear; the paper will resume its original whiteness; and if the process has been employed on a part written on with common ink, or printed with printer's ink, it will experience no alteration.— Mechanic's Oracle.

By

THE FAMILY PHYSICIAN AND DOMESTIC GUIDE.-No. V.

HYSTERIC COLIC.

THE symptoms attendant on this colic do not widely differ from those in the bilious affection; thus the patient labours under severe nausea and sickness, great and almost perpetual pain in the stomach, generally increas ing after eating. Usually in hysteric colic, an uncommon depression of spirits is a leading symptom, and the patient appears in a most dejected and forlorn state of mind. The vomiting I have mentioned, is generally severe, but the matter thrown from the stomach is of a green colour; and this appearance often enables us to distinguish this disease from bilious colic, a circumstance of no little conseqnence, the plan of treatment being widely different; those