VIEW OF BELVOIR CASTLE, the Seat of his Grace the Duke of Rutland, from an Original Drawing, by A. Pugin, Esq., F.A.S.N. VIEW OF WARWICK CASTLE, from the Inner Court, sketched Sept. 1830. FIVE PORTRAITS OF LADIES IN FASHIONABLE MORNING AND WALKING DRESSES TO SUBSCRIBERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. The substitution of another work for the Royal Lady's Magazine has, we have reason to know, in numerous instances, disappointed our friends. They who have suffered by the artifice, or mistake, whichever it may be, may have copies of our first number, in exchange, upon application at No. 5, Lancaster Place, Strand. The conclusion of "The Unrevealed " did not reach our hands till the 28th; though, from the date of the note which accompanies it, we surely ought to have received it, at least a week earlier. The cause of the delay we are wholly unable to explain but we hope this circumstance will be a sufficient apology both to "The Unknown," and to our readers, for an omission which has vexed us exceedingly. Several Musical favours are unavoidably postponed. To J. P.-Whatever length will best express a thought, will be most acceptable, whether it be four lines or four hundred. We have received two or three angry letters on the subject of our Theatricals: we can only assure the writers, that we have great respect for many persons whom we nevertheless shall be very candid with in print; and that a favourable notice in the Royal Lady's Magazine can be obtained but in one way-it must be deserved. Those who are most angry with us, do not venture to say we are wrong; we cannot help being " unkind" now and then. It is impossible to notice one-half the communications we have received. Thanks to M. H. J. Her verses do her credit. She will, however, see that it is only occasionally we can avail ourselves of her kindness. F. M. should read our opinions on poetry; we have given them honestly in the first number: their perusal will show what is acceptable. Several newspapers have taken articles from our first number, without having the honesty to say whence they copied them. It is an unworthy trick, to say the least of it. To" Incognita" we are much indebted. Her Legendary Ballad was in type, and not omitted without deep regrets. In other papers we were more fortunate, though they appear, according to her wish, without her usual signature. The sketch of the "Castle of "was received too late for the present number, but we shall have it in our next in a style worthy of the deep interest which it naturally excites. James, O. Y. the author of "M," and the poem of I. T., have been read, ordered to lie on the table and be printed-some shall appear in our next. The "Lines on a Churchyard," the "Lines to a Wood Nymph," and one or two other "lines," are not original. Our correspondents in this way can never hope to hoax us with any thing bal; they will see, however, that we do not mind running the risk of inserting a good thing, come whence it will, so that we have not seen it in print. We could indulge here in the expression of very grateful thanks, for the enthusiastic manner in which the females of England have seconded our attempts to rescue the literature devoted to them from the merited obloquy which confined its circulation to the lower classes, but we are sure that our thanks will be better expressed by a determined perseverance in the course we have pointed out for ourselves, and in which, though at an immeasurable distance, we shall soon have followers. We cannot answer for the insertion of any advertisements that arrive after the 25th of each month. Archives of the Court of St. James's. "OUR AMBITION IS TO RAISE THE FEMALE MIND OF ENGLAND TO FEBRUARY 1831. MADAME LA COMTESSE DE GENLIS. MADAME DE GENLIS is dead!--Time was when such an annunciation would have struck sorrow to the heart of every novel-reading member of the community; and, although we can ourselves recollect a period when such an epithet would have been deemed an insult by the merest boarding-school girl, who, now, does not, more or less, belong to that class? But the days are gone by when we expected the Romans of Madame de Genlis, if not quite with the eagerness with which we have since watched for the novels of Sir Walter Scott, yet with as much as the writings of the Bulwers and the Jameses call forth. The lapse of years naturally dimmed the original brilliancy of the authoress's imagination; and in her anile endeavours to recall the energies of youth, the flights of her fancy became far more extravagant than those of the wildest of the Romanticists whom she so inveterately reprobates; and the same solar revolutions that withered the VOL. I. charms of her imagination, matured her didactic propensities, as they deepened her conviction of being the great schoolmistress of the world, the sole effective instructress of men and women, of children and sovereigns. Her writings grew proportionably duller, and gradually ceased to be read. Still the name of the almost nonagenarian Comtesse stood prescriptively high-traditionally, we apprehend, with the rising generation of readers-the epistolary intercourse to which she was admitted-she says invited-by Napoleon, that hater, and professed despiser of Mad. de Stael, added a new peculiarity to the career of a woman who had already enjoyed the singular, and, we believe, unparalleled distinction of being appointed governor to princes of the blood; and the recent elevation to the French throne of the prince, whose education is her best claim to praise, has casually produced a sort of second Martinmas-summer flowering of F |