and overlooking delicacy; and "snow" expresses its colour and season, but not the green with which it is so exquisitely touched. It is curious that so coldlooking, and yet flowery a flower, as delicate as if it was bred in a hot-house, should come at a time, when a more glowing one would seem more welcome. But there is a beauty in similarity, as well as in contrast. Japan Quince (Cydonia Japonica; more commonly known as Pyrus Japonica, or Japan Pear). Flowers of a rich crimson. Japan Allspice (Chimonanthus fragrans, Sweetsmelling Winter-flower). Yellow and red flowers, variegated. China Roses (Rosa Indica, the Indian Rose; and Rosa Semperflorens, Ever-flowering Rose). The first pink, the second erimson. Of both these species there are roses called monthly; and they appear accordingly in the monthly lists; but in point of fact, is it true that the monthly roses flourish all the year round in the open air?-It is a charming sight to see China Roses covering the front of a cottage in winter-time. It looks as if we need have no winter, if we chuse, as far as flowers are concerned; and, in fact, as the reader may see by the above list, it is possible to have both a beautiful and fragrant garden in January, especially if the flowers are cultivated in good lumps of each, and not sparingly. There is a story in Boccaccio, of a magician who conjured up a garden in winter-time. His magic consisted in his having a knowledge beyond his time; and magic pleasures, so to speak, await on all who chuse to exercise knowledge after his fashion, and to realize what the progress of information and good taste may suggest. Even a garden six feet wide is better than none. Let the possessor show his "magic" by making the most of it, and filling it with colour. same sort of affectation and pretence are banished by from that of the authors above-mentioned, as it This is justly considered as one of the most de. lightful of Shakspeare's comedies. It is full of sweetness and pleasantry. It is, perhaps, too goodnatured for comedy. It has little satire, and no spleen. It aims at the ludicrous rather than the ridiculous. It makes us laugh at the follies of mankind, not despise them, and still less bear an illwill towards them. Shakspeare's comic genius resembles the bee rather in its power of extracting sweets from weeds or poisons, than in leaving a sting behind it. He gives the most amusing exaggeration of the prevailing foibles of his characters, but in a way that they themselves, instead of being offended at, would almost join in to humour; he rather contrives opportunities for them to show themselves off in the happiest lights, than renders them contemptible in the perverse construction of the wit or malice of There is a certain stage of society in which people become conscious of their peculiarities and absurdities, affect to disguise what they are, and set up pretensions to what they are not. This gives rise to a corresponding style of comedy, the object of which is to detect the disguises of self-love, and to make reprisals on these preposterous assumptions of vanity, by marking the contrast between the real and the affected character as severely as possible, and denying to those, who would impose on us what they are not, even the merit which they have. This is the comedy of artificial life, of wit and satire, such as we see it in Congreve, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, &c. To this succeeds a state of society from which the others. "DUKE. What's her history? VIOLA. A blank, my Lord, she never told her love : DEKE. But died thy sister of her love, my boy? And all the brothers too;-and yet I know not." Shakspeare alone could describe the effect of his own poetry. "Oh it came o'er the ear like the sweet south That breaths upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour." What we so much admire here, is not the image of Patience on a monument, which has been generally quoted, but the lines before and after it. "They give a very echo to the seat where love is throned." How long ago it is since we first learned to repeat them and still, still they vibrate on the heart, like the sounds which the passing wind draws from the trembling strings of a harp left on soine desert shore! There are other passages of not less impassioned sweetness. Such is Olivia's address to Sebastian, whom she supposes to have already deceived her in a promise of marriage:— "Blame not this haste of mine: if you mean well We have already said something of Shakspeare's "DUKE. O, fellow, come; the song we had last night. The spinsters, and the knitters in the sun, SONG. Come away, come away death, I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My part of death no one so true Not a flower, not a flower sweet Not a friend, not a friend greet My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown: Lay me, O! where To weep there." Who after this will say that Shakspeare's genius was only fitted for comedy? Yet, after reading other parts of this play, and particularly the garden. scene, where Malvolio picks up the letter, if we were to say that his genius for comedy was less than his genius for tragedy, it would perhaps only prove that our own taste in such matters is more saturnine than mercurial. "Enter MARIA. SIR TOBY. Here comes the little villain :- How now, my nettle of India? MARIA. Get ye all three into the box-tree: Malvolio is coming down this walk: he has been yonder i' the sun, practising behaviour to his own shadow this half hour; observe him, for the love of mockery! for I know this letter will make a contemplative idiot of him. Close, in the name of jesting! Lie thou there; for here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling. [They hide themselves. MARIA throws down a letter and exit.] Enter MALVolio. MALVOLIO. 'Tis but fortune; all is fortune. Maria once told me, she did affect me; and I have heard herself come thus near, that, should she fancy, it should be one of my complexion. Besides she uses me with a more exalted respect than any one else that follows her. What should I think on't? SIR TOBY. Here's an overweening røgue ! FABIAN. O, peace! Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him; how he jets under his advanced plumes! SIR ANDREW. 'Slight! I could so beat the rogue. SIR TOBY. Peace, I say. MALVOLIO. To be Count Malvolio ; SIR TOBY. Ah, rogue! SIR ANDREW. Pistol him, pistol him. SIR TOBY. Peace, peace! MALVOLIO. There is example for't; the lady of the Strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe. SIR ANDREW. Fie on him, Jezebel! FABIAN. O, peace! now he's deeply in; look, how imagination blows him. MALVOLIO. Having been three months married to her, sitting in my chair of state,— SIR TORY. O for a stone bow, to hit him in the eye. MALVOLIO. Calling my officers about me in my branched velvet gown; having come from a day-bed, where I have left Olivia sleeping. SIR TOBY. Fire and brimstone! MALVOLIO. And then to have the humour of state: and after a demure travel of regard, telling them, I know my place, as I would they should do theirs, to ask for my kinsman Toby. SIR TOBY. Bolts and shackles ! FABIAN. O, peace, peace, peace! now, now. MALVOLIO. Seven of my people, with an obedient start, make out for him. I frown the while; and, perchance, wind up my watch, or play with some rich jewel. Toby approaches; curtsies there to me. SIR TOBY. Shall this fellow live? FABIAN. Though our silence be drawn from us with cares, yet peace! MALVOLIO. I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my familiar smile with an austere regard of controul. THE AMERICAN LOCUST. [Query-Is not this animal the same as the Cigala of the South of Europe,-Anacreon's Grasshopper, -the Cicada of the Latins?-ED.] MR EDITOR,-America offers few objects of greater curiosity for the entomologist than the inseet commonly called "the locust." This insect makes its appearance only once in seventeen years. The inhabitants of the middle States look for it, in its regular periods, of emerging, as naturally as they expect the vicissitudes of the seasons. Some assert that it is always seen, for the first time, on the 25th of May. I cannot vouch for the truth of this observation, since, having witnessed the occurrence but twice, I was so very young on the first occasion as to remember little about it. It was not, however, until the 25th of May 1833, that I had an opportunity of seeing it for the second time in my life. Going into the fields, on that day, I observed the ground everywhere perforated with innumerable little holes, near some of which were lying the shells of locusts which had emerged during the night; other shells were hanging, attached by sharp pointed claws, to the leaves of the surrounding bushes upon which the insects had crawled previously to coming forth. These shells (about the size of a large hornet) are of a semitransparent yellow, very thin, and so nicely adapted to the forms they enclose as to exhibit the development of the minutest fibre. The aperture through which the insect emerges (a straight slit in the back) extends about half the distance between the neck and the extremity of the tail. Its first colour is white; and, when about half protruded, it remains attached to the shell, until the action of the air in drying and strengthening its wings (which in that state resemble slim pieces of thin wet paper) enables it in a short time to burst away. The rising sun soon gives it strength to fly to the nearest tree, where it perches and makes a long, monotonous noise, produced by the vibration of a little membrane under each of its wings. Some of them (but it is not known, with certainty, whether the male or female) are destitute of this harmonious organ, and doomed to remain in total silence. Reasoning from analogy, however, I should hardly suppose this to be the female locust. Neither is it ascertained with certainty whether it ever partakes of any other food than that which may be afforded by the air. It carries under its body a sharp pointed instrument, the extremity of which resembles the point of a spear, by means of which it perforates the bark of fruit trees to deposit its eggs. Its wings are transparent like those of the wasp, although much larger and more fibrous. There is a SIR TOBY. And does not Toby take you a blow vulgar superstition that, if the letter P is visible upon o' the lips then? MALVOLIO. Saying-Cousin Toby, my fortunes have cast me on your niece, give me this prerogative of speech; SIR TOBY. What, what? MALVOLIO. You must amend your drunkenness. FABIAN. Nay, patience, or we break the sinews of our plot. the wing, the country will enjoy peace until its next return, but that the letter W is portentous of war. The wings of all that I observed, this year, were inscribed very distinctly with a W. The longest period of its existence is said to be only forty days. The swarms are so numerous that millions of them are every where to be seen, every tree is covered with them, and the whole country is vocal with their long MALVOLIO. Besides you waste the treasure of sounding, monotonous clamour. your time with a foolish knight— SIR ANDREW. That's me, I warrant you. SIR ANDREW. I knew 'twas I; for many do call me fool. MALVOLJO. What employment have we here? [Taking up the letter." The letter and his comments on it are equally good. If poor Malvolio's treatment afterwards is a little hard, poetical justice is done in the uneasiness which Olivia suffers, on account of her mistaken attachment to Cesario, as her insensibility to the violence of the Duke's passion is atoned for by the discovery of Viola's concealed love of him. Curious Fact.-Few of the Latin authors were Romans by birth. The only men of which the capitol can boast, are those of Lucretius, Cæsar, and Varro.-Dunlop's Roman Literature. If, sir, you may think that the following verses, written shortly before leaving my native country, and addressed to one of these little insects, are not unworthy of insertion in your journal, they are perfectly at your service. TO A LOCUST. I. SWEET little visitor, all hail!- II. The tuneful age is rare with thee, E'en amid Reason's sons: 'Twixt bards there's many a century That intervening runs. FINE ARTS. Gallery of Portraits. No. XXXII. Charles Knight. THE new number of the Portrait Gallery,' contains portraits of Des Cartes, Spenser, and Hugo Grotius. Grotius looks a proper Dutchman; but with more vivacity in his face than we are apt to allow the composed Hollander. What a singular fate, was his, after an eventful life, to fall a victim to an impudent attempt of Christine of Sweden to keep him in her service, nolens volens; even sending for him back when he had got away without a passport. It was characteristic of the wilfulness and recklessness which she afterwards so audaciously exhibited. The portrait of Des Cartes is clearly and vigorously engraved ; though the shadows are perhaps a little opaque. The hair is excellent; it comes very near to oil painting. The countenance is a singular one; there is a striking expression of thoughtful abstraction about the eyes he seems to be "looking at nothing," as the saying is-and of bland good-nature about the mouth, which accords with the character which he bore, of an industrious thinker, and a good and amiable man. The portrait of Spenser is a fine specimen of chalk engraving: the eyes-the eyebrows, the flesh, blending in the hair,—the ear, and its tender shadows,-the laced ruff,-are instances of exquisite delicacy and finish; while the excellent keeping preserved throughout the whole, the justness of the tone of the lights and shades, and the beauty of the expression, leave nothing wanting in point of force and effect. The commonly received portrait of Spenser is from a picture in Pembroke Hall, Cambridge; between that and the present one there is no point of resemblance; they represent two dif ferent individuals. There is, we believe, no positive proof of the authenticity of either. The one before us, however, is evidently an actual portrait of some one at least; the other bears no obvious traces of having been taken from any living original; it has nothing in itself to disprove its being an invention. Both are, therefore, traditional, but internal evidence is in favour of the Kinnoull picture. The face, too, is better suited to the poet. The Cambridge picture is more ideal, and perhaps more accordant with our general notions of the head of a poet, as to a certain picturesque bearing; but this other exhibits more refinement of feeling, more suffering, suitable to the gentle Spenser, the friend of Sidney, the inventor and painter of that lovely world of Faery, the man who struggled with calamity, and died in poverty and despair. In the Earl of Tyrone's rebellion, in 1598, he was plundered and deprived of his estate. No direct or authentic account of the circumstances attending this calamity has come down to us; but among the heads of a conversation between Ben Jonson and Drummond, at Hawthornden, given in the works of the latter, Jonson, after saying that neither Spenser's stanzas pleased him nor his matter, is stated to have given the following appalling description of his misfortune: "That his goods were robbed by the Irish, and his house and a little child burnt; he and his wife escaped, and after died for want of bread in King street, Westminster." Jonson, however, adds a circumstance, the strangeness of which throws suspicion over the former part of the story: "He refused twenty pieces sent him by my Lord Essex, and said he was sure he had no time to spend them." But whether these particulars be true or not, it is certain that he died in London, ruined, and a victim to despair, according to Camden, in 1598, but, according to Sir James Ware, who wrote the Preface to the View of the State of Ireland,' in 1599. Sir James, after having given a high character of his poetry, says, "with a fate peculiar to poets, Spenser lived in a continual struggle with poverty: he was driven away from his house and plundered by the rebels: soon after his return in penury to England, he died. He was buried in Westminster Abbey near Chaucer, at the expence of the Earl of Essex; the poets of the time, who attended his funeral, threw verses into his grave." In order to account for the inaccuracy of the dates on the monument, it is alleged that the inscription had been defaced, perhaps by the puritans in revenge for the descriptions of the Blatant Beast; and that, on its renewal, the carver (the year of his birth being illegible) put ten at a venture, and ninety-six, instead of ninety-eight, or ninety-nine." (The Musical Library,' and other musical subjects, next week.) CHARLES LAMB. To the great regret of his friends, and the loss of the lovers of wit and fine writing, Mr Lamb has just died, suddenly. There was a brief but happy mention of him in the Times of Monday, which we regret to say we accidentally missed copying, and cannot, at this moment, recur to. The following cordial notice, from the True Sun,' is the only other we have seen up to this present writing, but many others will have appeared by the time it is published. "It is with a feeling of the deepest pain and sorrow that we have to record the death of this friend and benefactor of humanity. Charles Lamb, the fine-minded and noble-hearted Elia, expired at his house at Edmonton, on the morning of Saturday last. His death was rather sudden, and we greatly fear that it may have been hastened by an accident which he met with a few days before. While taking his customary morning walk on the London road, his foot slipped, and he fell striking his face against some stones, so as to wound it severely. He was recovering, however, when we heard of him (on Christmas-day), and as full of jest and whim as ever. Mr Lamb sustained a severe shock in the loss of his, perhaps, oldest and dearest friend, Coleridgeto whom he so recently paid the last tribute of mortality with whom he has so soon been re-united. All love and honour wait upon the memory of the Friends! No man was ever more loved and honoured in life than Charles Lamb; his audience was fit, though few. His exquisite humour, his refined and subtle thought, his admirable critical powers the fancy, the feeling, the wit that give a character to his essays quite unique All were but ministers of love, that love which embraces humanity-the sympathy TO CORRESPONDENTS. We are very sensible of the good-will and approbation of the Manchester Times.' A press of matter connected with the time of the year has delayed our extracts from Mr Simpson's valuable book, but we shall resume them in our next. It is our intention to resume the subject mentioned by our kind friend Europos of Hereford. We hope also he will see his other wishes attended to in some a memory to which years will but add grace and shape or other, as occasion arises. He is right respecting the channel of communication. lustre." Mr Lamb was a humanist, in the most universal sense of the term. His imagination was not great, and he also wanted sufficient vigour of impulse to render his poetry as good as his prose; but, as a prose-writer, and within the wide circuit of humanity, no man ever took a more complete range than he. He had felt, thought, and suffered so much, that he literally had intolerance for nothing, and never seemed to have it, but when he supposed the sympathies of men, who might have known better, to be imperfect. He was a wit and an observer of the first order, as far as the world around him was concerned, and society in its existing state; for as to had less care for it, or less power. To take him out anything theoretical or transcendental, no man ever of habit and convention, however tolerant he was to those who could speculate beyond them, was to put him into an exhausted receiver, or to send him naked, shivering, and driven to shatters, through the regions of space and time. He was only at his ease in the old arms of humanity; and she loved and comforted him like one of her wisest, though weakest children. His life had experienced great and peculiar sorrows; but he kept up a balance between those and his consolations, by the goodness of his heart, and the ever-willing sociality of his humour; though, now and then, as if he would cram into one moment the spleen of years, he would throw out a startling and morbid subject for reflection, perhaps in no better shape than a pun; for he was a great punster. It was a levity that relieved the gravity of his thoughts, and kept them from falling too heavily earthwards. Mr Lamb was under the middle-size, and of fragile make; but with a head as fine as if it had been carved on purpose. He had a very weak stomach; and three glasses of wine would put him in as lively a condition as can only be wrought in some men by as many bottles; which subjected him, sometimes, to mistakes on the part of the inconsiderate. We will consider the subject mentioned to us by H. W. H. We read with great pleasure the letter of our friend T. R., and shall pay our best attention to his communication, of which we can here only acknowledge the receipt. Perhaps ELLEN will favour us with some further account of the author in question, that we may be able to say more of him if necessary. Thanks for the approbation and advice of CHRISTOPHER EASEL. We entertain no contempt for any form of verse, in which clever men can convey their feelings; but the particular one selected by T. T. Jun. would give rise to the necessity of rejecting many of a like sort; and we foresee, from our press of matter, especially that portion of it connected with our older poetry, that we shall be compelled to admit fewer poetical contributions than usual into the LONDON JOURNAL. Indeed, we are already under the necessity of withholding many of those contributions, for similar and other reasons lately mentioned; otherwise we should have been much gratified in showing our sense of the minds and hearts of many of our Correspondents; Iora for one, and E. N. and W. D., whose letters were very acceptable. We cannot even say any more to the truly womanly letter, dated Dublin, December 23, and containing lines on a deceased friend of the fair writer. We will see if we cannot do what is desired by Mr F. R., respecting the title-pages to the volumes he speaks of, and let him know in our Notices to Correspondents a week or two hence. E.'s communications from Croydon were received and duly relished, his letter not the least of them. He will understand why our acknowledgments are not more specific. As to the " astonishing brilliance," it was a license of announcement taken with our own spirits, and the good-humour of the readers; but it is alarming to be reminded of it; and we trust that E., and all other readers, will judge of it by the impulse and not the performance. JUNIUS DELECTOR, alas! does not know how much the time of a man of letters is taken up, nor what a number of things must take place, besides what he thinks necessary, Between the printing of a dreadful article, His essays, especially those collected under the signature of ELIA, will take their place among the daintiest productions of English wit-melancholy,— an amiable melancholy being the ground-work of them, and serving to throw out their delicate flowers of wit and character with the greater nicety. Nor will they be liked the less for a sprinkle of old language, which was natural in him by reason of his great love of the old English writers. Shakspeare In the rest we hope we may do something to gratify himself might have read them, and Hamlet have quoted them; for truly was our excellent friend of the genuine line of Yorick; and we cannot help fancying the old skeleton, Death himself, looking kindly on him, and saying, “Come, you see even I have a right to your good word." Roman Politeness.—Messala was united to Terentia, who had been first married to Cicero, and subsequently to Sallust, the historian. After the death of Messala, she entered, in extreme old age, into a fourth marriage, with a Roman senator, who used to say that he possessed the two greatest curiosities in Rome,—the widow of Cicero, and the chair in which Julius Cæsar had been assassinated.-Dunlop's Roman Literature. True Breeding.-Lord Chatham, who was almost as remarkable for his manners as for his eloquence and public spirit, has defined good-breeding "Benevolence in trifles, or the preference of others to ourselves in the little daily occurrences of life."- Sharp's Letters and Essays. him. The explanation promised to F. respecting Northumberland House was omitted last week by forgetfulness; and on reflection we think it had better appear in the ensuing number of the Supplement itself; which shall also contain the corrections with which he has favoured us. We thank him for the spirit of his second letter. It will have rendered it unnecessary for us to notice with regret something which pained us in the first. We must beg J. C. M. to wait till next week, The communication of a SoN OF LABOUR came too late, but we are obliged to him for his letter. The alteration he proposes in the size of the JOURNAL would not be accounted a judicious one by those who are conversant with such publications. AUNT SELBY, the first opportunity. Also LAURA LATIMER, and the LADYE's Farewelle to the False Knyghte. LONDON: Published by H. HOOPER, Pall Mall East, and supplied to Country Agents by C. KNIGHT, Ludgate-street. From the Steam-Press of C. & W. REYNELL, Little Pulteney-street. LONDON JOURNAL. TO ASSIST THE INQUIRING, ANIMATE THE STRUGGLING, AND SYMPATHIZE WITH ALL. WEDNESDAY, JAN. 14, 1835. THE PIANO-FORTE. HENRY THE FOURTH expressed a patriotic hope to see the time arrive when every man in France should have "a fowl boiling in his pot." The anathemas of an able political writer against music-playing in farmers' houses (very just if his calculation of the effect of it were the only one) do not hinder us from expressing a hope, that the time may arrive, when every family that can earn its subsistence, shall have its Piano-forte. Not to make them "fine and fashionable," or contemptuous of any right thinking; but to help them to the pleasures of true refinement, to reward them for right thinking and right doing, and make them feel how compatible are the homeliest of their duties with an elegant recreation. Just as the fields and homesteads around them are powdered with daisies and roses, and the very cabbages in their gardens can glitter with sunny dew-drops, to those that have eyes beyond their common use. In Germany they have Piano-fortes in inns and cottages; why should they not have them in England? The only true answer is, because we sea-faring and commercial Saxons, by very reason of our wealth, and of the unequal advance of knowledge in comparison with it, have missed the wiser conclusions, in this respect, of our continental brethren, and been accustomed to the vulgar mistake of identifying all refinement with riches, and, consequently, all the right of being refined with the attainment of them. We fancy that nobody can or will be industrious and condescend to a homely duty, who has a taste for an elegance; and, so fancying, we bring up the nation, at their peril, to have the same opinion, and thus the error is maintained, and all classes suffer for it; the rich, because it renders them but half sensible of the real enjoyment of their accomplishments, and makes them objects of jealousy to the poor; and the poor, because it forces them to work out, with double pain, that progression towards a better state of things, the steps of which would be healed and elevated by such balmy accompaniments. In England, it is taken for an affectation, or some worse sign, if people show an inclinataon to accomplishments not usually found within their sphere. But the whole evil consists in the accomplishments not being there already, and constituting part of their habits; for in Germany the circumstance is regarded with no such ill-will; nor do the male or female performers who can play on the Piano-forte, or sing to it (and there are millions of such) fancy they have the less duties to perform, or that they are intitled a bit the more to disrespect those duties. On the contrary, they just know so much the better what is good both in the duty and the recreation; for no true thing can co-exist falsely with another that is true; each reflects light and comfort on each. To have one set of feelings harmonized and put in good key, is to enable us to turn others to their best account; and he or she who could go from their music to their duties in a frame of mind the worse for it, would only be the victim of a false opinion, eradicable, and not of a natural feeling improveable. But false refinements are first set up, and then made judges of true ones. A foolish rich man, who can have concerts in his house, identifies his music, not with anything that he really feels or knows about it, but with his power to afford it. He is of opinion with From the Steam-Press of C. & W. REYNELL, Little Pulteney-street.] No. 42. Hugh Rebeck in the play, when he is asked why music is said to have a "silver sound,"-" Because musicians sound for silver." But if he knew what music really was, he would not care twopence for the show and flare of the thing, any more than he would to have a nightingale painted like a parrot. You may have an Æolian harp in your window that shall cost twenty guineas-you may have another that shall cost little more than as many pence. Will the winds visit the poor one with less love? or the true ear hear it with the less rapture? One of the obstacles in the way of a general love of music, in this country, is the dearness of it, both print and instrument; and this is another effect of the mistakes of wealth. The rich, having monopolized music, have made it costly; and the mistaken spirit of trade encourages the delusion, instead of throwing open the source of comfort to greater numbers. A costly Piano-forte makes a very fine, and, it must be owned, a very pleasing show in a room, if made in good taste; but scarcely a bit of the fineness is necessary to it. A Piano-forte is a harp in a box; and the box might be made of any decent materials, and the harp strung for a comparative nothing to what it is now. If we took a lesson from our cousins in Saxony and Bavaria, the demand for cheap Piano-fortes would soon bring down the price; and instead of quarrelling over their troubles, or muddling them with beer and opium, and rendering themselves alike unfit for patience or action, the poor would "get up" some music in their villages, and pursue their duties, or their claims, with a calmness beneficial to everybody. it. We are aware of the political question that might be put to us at these points of our speculation; but we hold it to be answered by the real nature of the case, and, in fact, to have nothing whatever to do with We are an unmusical people at present (unless the climate have to do with it), simply because of what has been stated, and not for any reason connected with questions of greater or less freedom. The most musical nations-Greece, Italy, and Germany have alike been free or enslaved, according as other circumstances happened; not as music was more or less regarded; with this difference, that the more diffused the music, the more happy the peace, or the "deliberate" the "valour."* The greatest among the most active as well as most contemplative of mankind have been lovers of music, often performers of it, and have generally united, in consequence, both action and contemplation. Epaminondas was a flute-player; so was Frederick the Second; and Luther and Milton were organists. more In connexion with music, then, let us hear nothing about politics, either way. It is one of God's goods which we ought to be desirous to see cultivated among us, next after corn, and honesty, and books. The human hand was made to play it, the ear to hear it, the soul to think it something heavenly; and if we do not avail ourselves of it accordingly, we turn Anon they move In perfect phalanx, to the Dorian mood of flutes and soft recorders: such as rais'd PRICE THREE HALFPence. not our hands, ears, and souls to their just account, nor reap half the benefit we might from the very air that sounds it. A Piano-forte is a most agreeable object. It is a piece of furniture with a soul in it, ready to waken at a touch, and charm us with invisible beauty. Open or shut, it is pleasant to look at ; but open, it looks best, smiling at us with its ivory, like the mouth of a sweet singer. The keys of a Piano-forte are, of themselves, an agreeable spectacle,-an elegance not sufficiently prized for their aspect, because they are so common; but well worth regarding even in that respect. The colour of the white keys is not a cold white, or even when at their whitest there is something of a warmth in the idea of ivory. The black furnish sort of Mosaic, and all are smooth and easy to the touch. It is one of the advantages of this instrument to the learner, that there is no discord to go through in getting at a tone. The tone is ready made. The finger touches the key, and there is music at once. Another and greater advantage is, that it contains a whole concert in itself, for you may play with all your fingers, and then every finger performs the part of a separate instrument. True, it will not compare with a real concert,—with the rising winds of an orchestra; but in no single instrument, except the organ, can you have such a combination of sounds; and the organ itself cannot do for you what the Piano-forte does. You can neither get it so cheap, nor will it condescend to play everything for you as the other does. It is a lion which has "no skill in dandling the kid.". It is Jupiter, unable to put off his deity when he visits you. The Piano-forte is not incapable of the grandest music, and it performs the light and neat to admiration, and does not omit even the tender. You may accompany with it, almost equally well, the social graces of Mozart, and the pathos of Winter and Paesiello; and, as to a certain miniature brilliance of taste and execution, it has given rise to a music of its own, in the hands of Clementi and others. All those delicate ivory keys which repose in such evenness and quiet, wait only the touch of the master's fingers to become a dancing and singing multitude, and, out of apparent confusion, make accordant loveliness. How pleasant to the uninitiated to see him lay his hand upon them, as if in mere indifference, or at random; and as he dimples the instrument with touches wide and numerous as rain-drops on a summer-sea, play upon the ear the most regular harmonies, and give us, in a twinkling, elaborations, which it would take us years to pick out. We forget that he has gone through the same labour, and think only of the beautiful and mysterious result. He must have a taste, to be sure, which no labour can gift him with, and of this we have a due sense. We wish we had a book by us, written a few years back, intitled A Ramble among the Musicians in Germany,' in order that we might quote a passage from it about the extempore playing of Hummel, the celebrated master who was lately in this county; but, if we are not mistaken, it is the hand of the same writer which, in so good a style, between sport and scholarship, plays its musical criticisms every week in the Atlas;' for they are the next thing to an instrument themselves; and we recommend our readers to get a sight of that paper as often as they can, in order to cultivate the taste of which England at present seems to be so promisingly ambitious. By the way, we know not whether the Italians use the word in the same sense at present; but in an old dictionary in our possession, the keys of musical instruments are called "tacti,”tastes, a very expressive designation. You do taste the Piano-forte the moment you touch it. Anybody can taste it; which, as we said before, is not the case with other instruments, the tone in them not being ready made; though a master, of course, may apply the word to any. "So said, his hand, sprightly as fire, he flings, And with a quavering coyness tastes the strings." There are superfine ears that profess not to be able to endure a Piano-forte after a concert; others that always find it to be out of tune; and more who veil their insensibility to music in general, by protesting against "everlasting tinkles," and schoolgirl affectation or sullenness. It is not a pleasure, certainly, which a man would select, to be obliged to witness affectations of any sort, much less sullenness, or any other absurdity. Such young ladies as are perpetually thinking of their abstract pretensions, and either affectedly trying to screw up their musical skill to them, or resenting, with tears and petty exclamations, that they cannot do it, are not the most sensible and agrecable of all possible charmers. But these terrible calamities may be safely left to the endurance, or non-endurance, of the no less terrible critics, who are so merciless upon them, or pretend to be. The critics and the performers will equally take themselves for prodigious people; and music will do both parties more good than harm in the long run, however their zeal may fall short of their would-be capacity for it. With respect to Piano-fortes not perfectly in tune, it is a curious fact, in the history of sounds, that no instrument is ever perfectly in tune. Even the heavenly charmer, music, being partly of earth as well as of heaven, partakes the common imperfection of things sublunary. It is, therefore, possible to have senses too fine for it, if we are to be always sensible of this imperfection; to "Die of an air in achromatic pain;" and if we are not to be thus sensible, who is to judge at what nice point of imperfection the disgust is to begin, where no disgust is felt by the general ear? The sound of a trumpet, in Mozart's infancy, is said to have threatened him with convulsions. To such a man, and especially to so great a master, every right of a horror of discord would be conceded, supposing his ear to have grown up as it began; but that it did not do so is manifest from his use of trumpets; while at the same time so fine beyond ultra-fineness was his ear, that there is a passage in his works, pronounced impractically discordant by the whole musical world, which nevertheless the critics are agreed that he must have written as it stands. In other words, Mozart perceived a harmony in discord itself, or what universally appeared to be such,-just as very fine tastes in eating and drinking relish something which is disliked by the common palate; or, as the reading world discovered, not long ago, that Pope, for all his sweetness, was not so musical a versifier as those "crabbed old English poets." The crabs were found to be very apples of the Hesperides. What we would infer from this is, that the same exquisite perception which discerned the sweetness in the sour of that discord, would not have been among the first to despise an imperfection in the tuning of an instrument, nor, though he might wish it away, be rendered insensible by it of that finest part of the good music it performed, which consists in invention, and expression, and grace,— always the flower of music, as of every other art, and to be seen and enjoyed by the very finest ears as well as the humbler ones of good-will, because the soul of a thing is worth more to them than the body of it, and the greater is greater than the less. Thus much to caution true lovers of music how We cannot refer to it in its place; but it was quoted some time since in the Atlas.' they suffer their natural discernment to be warped by As to those who, notwithstanding their pretended Piano-fortes will probably be much improved by the next generation. Experiments are daily making with them, sometimes of much promise; and the extension of science on all hands bids fair to improve whatever is connected with mechanism. We are very well content, however, for ourselves, with the instrument as it is; are grateful for it, as a concert in miniature; and admire it as a piece of furniture in all its shapes: only we do not like to see it made a table of, and laden with moveables; nor when it is upright does it seem quite finished without a bust on it; perhaps, because it makes so good a pedestal, and seems to call for one. Piano-forte (soft and strong) is not a good name for an instrument which is no softer nor stronger than some others. The organ unites the two qualities most; but organ (ogyavov, instrumentum, -is if the instrument, by excellence) is the proper word for it, not to be parted with, and of a sound fit for its nobleness. The word Piano-forte came up, when the harpsichord and spinet, its predecessors, were made softer. Harpsichord (arpichorda, commonly called in Italian clavicembalo, or keyed cymbal, i. e. a box or hollow, Fr. clavecin) is a sounding, but hardly a good word, meaning a harp with chords-which may be said of any harp. Spinet, an older term (spinette, thorns), signifies the quills which used to occupy the place of the modern clothed hammers, and which produced the harsh sound in the old instruments; the quill striking the edge of the strings, like the nicking of a guitar-string by the nail. The spinett was preceded by the Virginals, the oldest instrument, we believe, of the kind,- -so called, perhaps, from its being chiefly played upon by young women, or because it was used in singing hymns to the Virgin. Spenser has mentioned it in an English TrimeterIambic; one of those fantastic attempts to introduce the uncongenialities of Latin versification, which the taste of the great poet soon led him to abandon. The line, however, in which the virginals are mentioned, presents a picture not unworthy of him. His apostrophe, at the outset, to his "unhappie verse," contains an involuntary satire: "Unhappie Verse! the witnesse of my unhappie state, she be; Queen Elizabeth is on record as having played on "How oft when thou, my music, music play'st Thus we have two out of our great poets, Spenser and Shakspeare, showing us the delight they took in and so bringing themselves near to our Piano-fortes. the same species of instrument which we have now, "Still_virginalling Upon his palm-” says the jealous husband in the Winter's Tale.' Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, all mention the organ. Chaucer speaks of several instru→ ments, but we cannot trace to him any keyed ones. It is rather surprising that the poets, considering the love of music natural to them, and their frequent mention of the art, have spoken of so few musical instruments-at least as if conversant with them in their houses. Milton was an organ-player, and Gay a flute-player (how like the difference of their genius!). Thomson possessed an Æolian harp, of which he seems to have been very fond. He has addressed an ode to it (from which the verses have been set to music, beginning "Methinks I hear the full celestial choir "); and has again mentioned the instrument in his 'Castle of Indolence,' a most fit place for it. All the truest lovers of any one art admire the other arts. Farinelli had several harpsichords, to which he gave the names of painters, according to their respective qualities,-calling one his Raphael, another his Correggio, &c. And the exquisite little painting, by Annibal Carracci, in the British Gallery, of Silenus teaching Apollo to play the panpipe' (together with a companion picture hanging near it) is said to have formed one of the compartments of the harpsichord belonging to that great painter. This is the natural magnificence of genius, which thinks no ornaments too precious for the objects of its love. We should like to be rich enongh to play at imitating these great men, and see how much we could do to aggrandize a Piano-forte. Let us see: It should be of the most precious, aromatic wood; the white keys, ivory (nothing can be better than that); the black, ebony; the legs, sculptured with foliage and Loves and Graces; the pannels should all be Titians and Correggios; the most exquisite verses out of the Poets should be carved between them; an arabesque cabinet should stand near it, containing the finest compositions; and Rossini should come from Italy to play them, and Pasta to sing. Meantime, what signifies all this luxury? The soul of music is at hand, wherever there are keys and strings and loving fingers to touch them; and this soul, which disposes us to fancy the luxury, enables us to do without it. We can enjoy it in vision, without the expense. We take the liberty of closing this article with two copies of verses, which two eminent living musicians, Messrs Barnett and Novello, have done us the honour to set to music. The verses have been printed before, but many of our readers will not have seen them. We did not think it possible for any words of our own to give us so much pleasure in the repetition, as when we heard her father's composition sung by the pure and most tuneful voice of Miss Clara Novello (Clara is she well named); and the reader may see what is thought of Mr Barnett's powers, by musical judges, in a criticism upon it in a late number of the Atlas,' or another in |