NOTES BY SIR MORGAN O'DOHERTY, BART. (1) I have always understood that Pückler Muskaw was turned out of the Travellers' Club; or, what is the same thing, got a hint that his presence would gladly be dispensed with there, in consequence of his having flung a fork at a waiter. To revenge this, he abuses the travellers most unmercifully in his trumpery work; bringing that peculiar charge against their chairs which has (with, I hope, unconscious simplicity) been translated by Mrs. Austen. Bombardinio, in the text, seems to be amazed that the Briefe Eines Verstorbenen should have been addressed to a lady: it is, perhaps, as strange, that they should have been translated by a lady. It may, perhaps, be worth while some of these days to write an account of the prince's proceedings in England, and especially of what brought him here. There would be many strange things found in it, which are not alluded to in the preface to his trumpery Tutti Frutti. But, indeed, the principal object of that preface is to puff off the baths lately opened by the illustrious prince, who has become a kind of licensed vintner, and keeper of a house of entertainment, in a small but respectable way, at Muskaw.-M. O'D. (2) I venture on a rough and ready translation of his majesty's verse: When Augustus got drunk, then all Poland grew tipsy; When Louis the Great became tender in love, Every courtier, of course, had his favourite gipsy, But when he grew pious, and left off the lasses, Then the courtiers all mumbled their prayer-books at masses. It is rather a shabby translation, I own-but I cannot make it better at this day of the month and hour of the night.-M. O'D. (3) In this remark Bombardinio is perfectly right. The writing of the leading French journals is ignorant and stupid beyond all belief; and those who prefer it on any ground to what we have in London do the editorial folk of Cocagne great injustice. But this is matter for a far longer discussion than can be afforded by me in a note. I have a great mind to write a real—that is, a personal-history of the London and the Paris press. I think I could do it; but I have not time. If any good reporter would take notes of my conversation on that subject, for three or four hours of any evening, I warrant him that he would not be playing the part of Jemmy Boswell to disadvantage.-M. O'D. (4) Bombardinio is, like myself, a man of a certain age, and we do not readily assimilate with the dancing matches of our juniors. I suppose they find the way of doing the thing in their way, as we did it in ours. But still I shall ever hold that it was a great mistake to abolish the ancient country dances. A mistake, I mean, in reference to the main object and end of all dancing, which I shall not insult the understandings of those whom I wish to be my readers by saying is getting husbands or wives, or something of the kind-for the country dance was the finest instrument for that purpose ever devised. There you had your partner to yourself, dragging her up and down some five or six miles of ground, and the devil was in the dice if you could not find time to say something sweet in the course of one of the furlongs. You cannot have any thing like such a chance in the quadrille-besides (I speak for myself) people are bothered by the figure, which they must mind much more than their partner. As for the waltz, it is too open a proclamation-it puts girls on their guard. I hope young ladies in general have skipped this note of mine; but as they cannot have come as far as my warning voice without reading to the end of it, I suppose my hope is vain. But I never blot.-M. O'D. (5) Sir Christopher Hatton, we all know, was a dancing chancellor; and The seals and maces danced before him. I do not think that Brougham dances, but I have no doubt that he tumbles. I am sure that nobody who has seen him of late in the House of Lords would dispute the assertion that The lamps and candles dance before him. Well, why should he not jollify if he likes? At all events, he shall not be reprehended by me for it.-M. O'D. (6) On this business of the flowing costume, &c. of the Gael, much may be said. I am of opinion that the kilt is quite a modern invention; but as Bombardinio tells us he wore it, I shall not say any thing in the disparagement even of its antiquity. As for the Celtic club, if that unfortunate body should still exist, I leave it to the unmixed reprobation of Bombardinio.-M. O'D. (7) Humph! I'll think about it. Le Roy s'avisera. Perhaps I may tip 'em the silk.-M. O'D. were. (8) George the Fourth might have had a great many good points about him, though, to speak the truth, it would puzzle me very much to tell you what they But as to dressing, he had the vilest taste. He studied hard, which is a recommendation to any man in the business, but he never could have been a first class or senior wrangler. I think he would have been decidedly plucked or gulphed, or whatever is the name they give these things at the Universities on this side of the water. At our own we call it cautioned. I remember seeing him one day in a purple velvet waistcoat, with a running stripe of a gold tree, surmounted with gold monkeys upon it; and congratulating him on his exquisite taste in the selection of colours, he felt evidently very proud of my approbation; but when I recommended him a yellow coat, with purple braiding to match, I think he smelt a rat- he did not ask me to Carlton House for nearly a month afterwards. He had, however, uncommon cleverness in making punch, which was, I think, the best thing he did and when a man can do that well, it is wrong for any person to speak disparagingly of his talents. He was very civil to me always; but I cut him at the time of the Catholic question. I wonder what kind of a postmaster the Marquess of Conyngham will make. Perhaps it may be only mere rambling in me to introduce his name on the present occasion, but writing notes makes a man gossipy. As I have rambled, however, I do not wish to conclude without asking what has become of the verses- the printed verses, my good friend--written as an epitaph on the old fat king, immediately after his death. They were very bad. I only remember a few. "Here lies the corpse of George the Fourth, A fellow without wit or worth. Rotten through life in soul and thought, His body is laid here to rot." The rest is just as infamous. We wish that somebody would send it to us, and the name of the author.-M. O'D. SOME PASSAGES IN A VISIT TO THE EXHIBITION OF BY MORGAN RATTLER. AND now, my own dearest little Lizzy, we have reached the top of this accursed staircase! The ascent is as tedious, as tiresome, as winding, as wearisome, as slippery, and therefore, Lizzy, as dangerous, as that to the very topmost stone of Quin's high tower "Our abbey's old monastic tower." And shall we be in like manner rewarded by the view? You let your long dark eye-lashes fall in soul-fraught shadow upon the deep blue orbs beneath, and you smile a sweet, an enthusiastic, "No!" You are right! Your mind, my girl, is far away!—it is possessed by a vision of our own romantic land! But let the fond illusive recollection pass away. Remember we are going to see mere things-mere toys of art. We are not to measure them by the high standard of our own thoughts, our own recollections, our own sympathies, our own aspirations. Painting is at the best a small art— and an art most artificial. I speak of it in reference to the fine arts-not to arts mechanical; and I say it is a small art. So thought Napoleon. The asinine dauber of canvass will sneer at the idea of the emperor's asserting an opinion upon such a subject. But would Michael Angelo or Raphael do so, had they flourished under the shadow of his greatness? Most assuredly they would not. The stock-jobbing secretary, Bourrienne, ridiculed Napoleon's taste in poetry! But Béranger, in the pervading wisdom and full truth of genius, declared that Napoleon, albeit he had never penned a couplet, was the greatest poet of modern times, and haply of all times:- "Le plus grand poëte des temps modernes; et peut-être de tous les temps." And so he was, my Lizzy-and in like manner was he the greatest actor and the greatest painter. The fact is, that the man of genius is every thing in posse-that is, he can be any thing when occasion may require,-even the warrior of the working day-even the athlete of the needful hour. The feeble frame of a Cæsar, the delicate form of an Alexander, becomes instinct with giant strength under the impulse of the almighty mind. You smile, Lizzy, at my enthusimusy, and I know the meaning of your smile; but really I have said all this merely to strengthen the force of my authority; and I now repeat that I do think with Napoleon — Napoleon, the imbodiment of the genius of the greatest age of the world--that painting is a small art. It is, I again say, an art artificialand our taste for it is altogether factitious. We relish it not in youth, the season of warm and true sensation. It is gradually created for us as we advance in years; and this after we have once and for ever determined to admire. In a word, it is an art which furnishes forth but a distant approximation to the truth of things, and one in which there is not, and there cannot be intrinsically the least illusion-to him, perhaps, I should say, who is not under the power of a spell-his own enthusiasm, wrought by long dreaming of results impracticable and effects impossible-a spell which, like the faëry ointment, gives grace, and beauty, and the innumerable glories of the specious miracle, to things themselves cold and incapable. Look to your historical pictures! What are they? The poet says: "Painting, mute and motionless, Steals but one glance from time." A glance! -ay, truly, it is but a glance, and that seldom, if indeed ever, a correct one, for the artist sacrifices all to effect-fact, costume, scene, circumstance-every thing must be bent to suit his idea of that which ought to be accessory to a delightful picture. As a record of things, as an imbodiment of events, pictures are useless—as an abstract exemplification of passions, they are very feeble. They cannot compare for an instant with sculptured marble, which has in it the touch of reality, albeit cold reality-nor can they compete with the mere sketch in outline of a Retzch. As an abstract representation of congregated beauties -as in the Venus of Titian, the Madonna of Murillo-again do they fall far behind the works of the sculptor, and afford but a cold and meagre resemblance of any of the " cunning patterns of excelling nature," though many have been rendered tributary to the creation of the painter. Next, as to landscapes, why, Lizzy, these be perchance the least real of any one of the productions of the pencil. It seldom happens that a man can recognise in a landscape a scene with which he is familiar; and I should think never yet was there a spot of earth, now seen for the first time, identified in your mind's eye with the painting of it, over which you had from time immemorial expatiated in rapture. Trees are introduced where trees never did grow-water, as false as the mirage of the desertruins, moss-adorned and ivy-clad, where structure never yet was raised; and, then, as for the hues in which earth and sea and sky are clothed, they have existed once, and the artist saw them happy hues!--and he transferred them to his canvass-and he glories accordingly in them, as though they were a grand invention of his own certainly, they never will exist again; and therefore I presume it is, or at least should be, that you are expected to admire them for their rarity, or rather singularity, and to be very grateful to the man who had the cleverness to catch them as they gleamed, and the talent to embody them in his colours. Well, then, Lizzy, be grateful; but when you come to see the vale of Tempe, or the vale of Arno, or any other such storied place, you will want, after uttering due lamentations for the lack of the trees, and bowers, and towers, and so forth, which you remembered as things of grace and beauty in the pictures-you will want the loan of the peculiarly coloured glasses through which the artist looked upon the scene-yellow, or green, or blue, or grey-and then perhaps you may be led to acknowledge, if not positively to believe, that the scene you are gazing upon is the scene which was painted. You remember at Greenwich, yesterday, the old pen - sioner furnished you with yellow glasses, that made the whole country around look like Lord Durham's face, or a landscape of Turner's. You do not understand what I mean just now; but I will shew you one of the artist's grand pieces of flaming yellow nonsense, by and by, and then you will feel the force of my illustration. Halı! you think our run upstairs, for such it almost was, has put me out of humour, though not out of breath, being mountain-bred. Perhaps it has, Lizz-but it was the dust, and not the distance. I feel, indeed, that I have been throwing forth some notions which would strike horror ineffable into the minds of the patrons, and raise a rage unquenchable in the breasts of the professors of the art. I am sorry for it, because painting is a gentle craft. It has been followed by men of the very highest intellect; several of those now pursuing it are scholars and gentlemen, and my friends, and I love them much. So, Lizzy, with all feeling of kindliness to the art, and all possible disposition to be delighted, let us boldly rush through the adverse crowd. We will endeavour to make our way into the great room at once. You will only have some dozen pictures to look at- the rest you may pass by unheedingly. I will shew you the works which Wilkie, Landseer, Stanfield, Calcott, Eastlake, and MacClise exhibit; and shall beg of you to bestow a passing glance upon the productions of one or two others. What a throng of portraits! Ay, well may you say so. I never can see them without thinking of the indignant burst of "Glorious John""Good Heaven! that sots and knaves should be so vain, To wish their vile resemblance may remain, And stand recorded, at their own request, To future days, a libel or a jest!" And, apropos to that, Lizzy, I will shew you two portraits, one of which is a libel and the other a jest. Behold Wordsworth!—you cannot believe itthat rough, clumsy, frowsy, old, sturdy beggarman, with small eyes and narrow nostrils be the author of Dion and Laodameia - he the poet of wild nature! he whose whole soul is fraught with high and gentle sympathies -- Sympathies Aloft ascending, and descending deep, Even to the inferior kinds!" Impossible!-I would fain agree witn you, my Lison, for it is a vile libel! The painter may indeed tell me it is Be it so. very like. But I would then only cite against him the maxim of our law," the greater the truth the greater the libel.' It is an atrocious resemblance. How different from that which ought to be the portraiture of a poet! Likeness should be ever there, as Dryden observes — "But still the best, Like proper thoughts in lofty language drest." You maintain that there must be some mistake in the catalogue, and that the picture was intended as an imbodiment of Scott's old bedesman, Edie Ochiltree. Certainly the fact of the cloak, or blue gown, being wrapped so carefully about his nether-man, doubtless to conceal the rents in his inexpressibles, and the blue cap extended in quest of charity, would seem to countenance this hypothesis. But no, Liz; do you not perceive, from the lack of speculation in the eye, and the dull, frozen, impassible expression of the face, that the poor fellow in the picture is deaf (which Edie was not), and probably dumb. He has in all likelihood been writing down a statement of his deplorable case with that pencil yet in his hand, in the hope of attracting the notice of some benevolent passenger. But, all joking apart, it really is too bad to turn poor Wordy into one of the gens de casquette! Now for the jest: it has been perpetrated by the same artist. If it were to be applied practically, however, to the person of Jack Murray, I know who would be an angry man. Only fancy our jovial friend Jack being compelled to sit bolt upright, and look pretty in an arm-chair, and read proofs with the gravity of a tea-drinking mandarin ! It is very funny! But as Jack likes the picture, I will say no more about it. Enough of this. Let us betake ourselves to the consideration of other matters; and first, Lizzy, to one of the two gems of the exhibition, "A Scene of the Olden Time at Bolton Abbey." Is it not a title rich in associations? All, all of Wordsworth's most exquisite "Tale of Tears shadows the mind with a sweet and holy feeling of gentle sorrowfulness! You dream, my Lizzy, of" the consecrated Emily" and her lowly friend, the soft-paced doe. But again dismiss your dream; the scene we have to gaze upon has nothing of the soulstriking pensiveness you imagine. We have to deal with times long before the sumptuous Priory had felt "the bitterness of wrong and waste." Come! here we are in the refectory; the door is open, and gives us a glimpse of the glories of the ancient pile: the prior is in presence an awful man, just touched with years; the stalwart frame has begun, and only begun, to relax into corpulency, and that evidently from the new indulgence of dignified ease and the lack of accustomed exercise; for these magnific limbs are not the limbs of a cloistered monk. Many and many a time has that broad chest swelled and that haughty nostril been expanded to the breezes of the mountain; many and many a day of free and sweet toil has it taken to develop those splendid muscles. Higher attributes, however, has he than those of mere physical conformation: look at that magnificent brow-that pile of a brow - in which thought, and will, and power seem enthroned. Bow down, Lizzy, to the impersonation of mighty intellect! bow down in your knowledge and gentleness, as your fair sister the peasant-girl of the picture does in her ignorance and humility. But mark! the prior is reading a letter. What be the purport of its contents? We are told it is an epistle of compliment, comprising an inventory of the various heads of game, and so forth, exhibited to his view. An epicurean twinkle in the corner of the eye, and his portly person, are quoted in support of this theory. I believe it not; I will not believe it: that letter is touching matters of high import. The Neville or the Percy is about to raise his banner, and shout his war-cry against the king or against the Scot; and he prays the aid of his dear friend and kinsman, the most reverend prior, with his following. And is not that prior as well able to wield a battle-axe in foughten field as was the mitred lord of Beauvais? Or else the letter advises him of the perilous assaults made upon holy church by the zeal and labours of some heretic -some preacher of the reformed faith,- and invokes him to stretch forth the arm of power to crush the apostle of innovation; and in either case he is meditating, even as he reads, whether it will be advisable or expedient for him to embark in the enterprise to which he is so earnestly invited. He gazes intently upon the scroll, though he has ceased to regard the words, to wring a new, an occult meaning an omen- an inspiration, from it. In the words of the poet“His mind is wandering away, away !" In vain does the forester kneel at his feet, pointing to the haunch of a magnificent stag of ten;" in vain is the floor strewn with gastronomic trea sures "The treasures of earth, of sea, of air;" in vain does a lay brother stand in all humility at his side, with a salver gleaming with the richest cordials; in vain does a groom, bearing some noble's cognizance on his shoulder, gaze upward to his countenance in the depth of awe and admiration, waiting to catch a glance and deliver, with some courtly message from his lord, the heron and bittern wherewith he is loaded; in vain does one of the loveliest girls that ever adorned earth, that ever made earth gladsome with her presence in vain does she stand before him with downcast eyes, cheeks gently flushed, and swelling bosom -even she remains unheeded! The prior's mind has expanded far beyond the circumstances whereby he is surrounded. This, Lizzy, is my theory of the picture. But, setting the story it may convey aside, let us examine it again in detail. Can any thing be more exquisite? What character, and how appropriate the character conveyed in all those figures! We have spoken of the prior; now mark the lay brother he is of common clay; the lines of servility are on his brow and withered countenance; he watches the prior with moist eye, and it is the eye of a menial. The forester, albeit kneeling, has more of the consciousness of manhood; he has something of the freedom of the forest in his look and bearing, vassal though he be. The groom is a younger servant, and in him, added to the awe for the prior as the feudal lord, which alone perchance remains with the vassals of the abbey, there is a touch of superstitious reverence for the dignified ecclesiastic, well evinced in the earnest concentrated gaze wherewith he contemplates, without that |