then more cruel, for "the rigour of the law is the rigour of oppression." Judges may expound them, new jails and penitentiaries may arise, but all will be in vain. Once "Merrie Englande," is now, unfortunately, teaching this sad lesson to the world. God grant she may not teach in vain! GOLD AND SILVER PLATE.-Davenant แ says, more family plate was wrought from 1666 to 1688, than had been fabricated in 200 years before,"* this was openly and of course osten tatiously displayed on their side-boards and buffets, but which would not now remain so exposed for twenty-four hours in any house in the three kingdoms, without there was a police-man * Harrison says, their "costlie cupboards of plate was worth 500 or 600 or £1000, and their tables covered with carpets, and laid with fine naperie." The collection often consisted of chargers, dishes, plates, porringers, saucers, vases, cups, tankards, flaggons, pitchers, pottels, ewers, creuses, bowls, goblets, washing-basins, and jugs; caudle-cups, cruets, spice-poter, spiceries, salt-cellars, and candle-sticks. a watchman, or steel traps and spring guns actually set to protect them. To my sorrow, I am compelled to state that those wealthy families who can afford to keep a service at each residence, when they leave, have their chest of plate uniformly sent either to their London or provincial banker for safe keeping. In former days, country constables need not, as the facetious Hudibras describes: "Search the planets and the moon, For thief in thimble, thief in spoon," they did not then, as now, number legion. Oh! what a change; who is there now who covets the crown of England? Verily, Queen Victoria is at once the most to be envied and the most to be pitied, of any lady in the world. Alas! where is there a female in this union who, after knowing all the circumstances under which she reigns, would exchange places with her? Yet the fault is not hers. I write this on her birth-day, 24th May, being reminded thereof by the rattling of the guns of her ship, the Warspite, now reverberating amidst the prominences of this beautiful harbour, and I know the same is the case in every harbour of any consequence on the face of the globe; of this circumstance every native Englishman may be justly proud; but, alas! a thrill of dissatisfaction must come across the minds of those who reflect that the mass of the labourers over whom she reigns are in misery and distress, although the most industrious of any people in the world, and all for the want of not having bare justice meeted out to them, yet are we told, that "he who stops at bare justice, halts at the beginning of virtue." The system wants a change; it may be all very well for the Arkwright's, the Baring's, the Rothschild's, the Peel's, and other leviathan fundholders, to cry up 66 national faith;" but is not "national faith" also due to the children in the cradles, none of whom have been a party to these iniquitous, usurious contracts, yet no one cries out for them. Their parents have borne "Enough, and more, the burden of that fault, If this statement wants farther corroboration, I can quote from "A short statement of facts connected with the proposed changes in our Commercial Tariff," &c. by the Rev. T. Farr, 1841, this discriminating clergyman states, "that in England the taxation falls like a lump of lead on the poor, and like a feather on the rich." What says the sagacious De Tocque ville?"The English aristocracy is perhaps the most liberal which ever existed, and no body of men has ever uninterruptedly furnished so many honourable and enlightened individuals to the government of a country. It cannot, however, escape observation, that in the legislature of England, the good of the poor has been sacrificed to the advantage of the rich, and the rights of the majority to the privileges of the few. The consequence is, that England combines the extremes of fortune in the bosom of her society, and her perils and calamities are almost equal to her power and her renown." EMBLEMATIC STATUARY.-These were mostly of lead, and cast in Holland.* When the new system of gardening came into practice, they went out of fashion. Prudence was known by her rule, pointing to a globe at her feet. Temperance by a bridle, sometimes with a pair of compasses, and the following appropriate motto: "Keep within compass, and you may ensure, also: "Temperance is a bridle of gold, and he that can use it aright, is liker a God than a man." Modesty was veiledClemency held an olive branch-Devotion, was throwing incense on an altar-Tranquillity was seen to lean on a columnLiberty by her cap-Gaiety by her myrtle-and the following motto: "Feast often, and use friends not still nor sad, Whose jests and merriments may make thee glad." Hope, with an anchor; and the following motto: "When fortune smiles, ye may with hope get tipsy, But when she frowns, suspect the flattering gipsey." HORACE.. The statues were coarse and rude in the outline; but, perhaps, they were none the worse for that. Gilpin, in his "Observations on the Western Parts of England," with much taste and judgment, speaking of painted statues, and waxen figures, properly remarks: "When the art of imitation, applied to human life, is so perfect, as to produce a real though momentary illusion, it presents, by its mere approach to life, but deficiency of motion in which the essence of life consists, an image of death. We are shocked by the sudden and unexpected transition, and disgusted at having been for a moment imposed upon by so paltry a trick." The writer once felt the full force of * See letters of Lord Byron, who once threw out of a window, a bottle of ink over one in a garden, at Hastings, in Sussex. it was these remarks, on beholding a model of an infant in wax, so exquisitely executed, that at first sight, he felt irresistibly inclined to embrace it, but there was no motion- Weak inclination, 'ere it grows to will." DAVENANT. After Sir W. Temple, the ambassador (reign of Charles II.) had retired to private life, he scratched with a diamond the following quartrain on the window at Moor Park, opposite a statue of Leda : The reply was "Tell me, Leda, which is best Ne'er to move, or ne'er to rest? "Mr. Temple, hear me tell, Both to move and rest are well: To that question I reply If you'll stand here, and let me go, Very shortly you will know." Courtnay's Memoirs of Sir W. Temple. The reviewer states, "we put such a question the other day to a statue in Hampton Court gardens, and were equally favoured with an answer. Q. "Prithee statue, tell me how I can be as fair as thou?" A. "The means I speedily will name, I got white wash'd-do the same." Whether the modern system of gardening may not have been carried too far, in totally abolishing statuary, may be disputed, according to the spirit of true taste. No one, however, can dispute, but that the present system has innumerable beauties. And so thought the poet Mason, when he penned the following lines: "Can music's voice, can beauty's eye, As blows the hollow gust of wind, As drops the little weeping rill Soft tinkling down the moss grown hill? While through the west, where sinks the crimson day, How delightful, in addition to these beauties, would it have been to have had the ear suddenly charmed with the melancholy carollings of a fresh arrived nightingale; the simple song of this plaintive emigrant was considered "old when Homer sang:" "Thee, chantress of the woods among, I woo to hear thy evening song." These soul-cheering warblers arrive every Spring from the banks of the Nile, to carry on their connubial affairs. Who could not sit up all night in such a spot as Mason so graphically describes? The tell-tale wind being due south, whispering, with Eolian sprightliness, through the sombre foliage of a wide spreading cedar, occasionally carrying some thin, fleecy vapours over the visage of the full moon, sailing with majestic solemnity before the watching eye, tempering down, with a little tarnish her silvery decoration, and thus hiding her saucy face with a "Mysterious veil, of brightness made, At once her lustre and her shade." HUDIBRAS. Who could not thus pass a short summer night, listening to this elegant shaped nut-brown bird "warbling forth its wood notes wild?" till the sun "Had tricked his beams, and with new spangled ore, Flamed in the forehead of the morning sky." warning you of your daily labour, and other duties, for "Hark, the bee winds her small, but mellow horn, Blithe to salute the sunny smile of morn, O'er thyme downs she bends her busy course, EMBLEMATIC PROPERTIES OF FLOWERS AND PLANTS.-Either love or oppression, both of which have hitherto ruled the world, was the origin of emblems. Wordsworth has prettily wrote: "The meanest flower that blows, can give A sprig of rue is the emblem of the Picts and Scots; the heath plant is the emblem of the Plantagenets; the red and white rose, blooming in fragrant beauty from one stem, is the badge royal of England; the thistle, of Scotland; the shamrock, of Ireland; and the leek, of Wales. How sweetly and how historically does Mary Howitt describe one sort of this ever-admired flower, in the following poem: ROSE OF MAY. "Ah! there's the lily, marble pale, |