the fingers ought to be tinged with a healthy red. When the Greeks spoke of the rosy-fingered Morn, it was not a mere metaphor, alluding to the ruddi. ness of the time of day. They referred also to the human image: the metaphor was founded in Nature, whether the goddess's office or person was to be considered. My friend George Bustle used to lament, that, in consequence of the advancement of knowledge and politeness, there was no longer any distinguishing mark of gentility but a white hand. Poor George! He had better have thought otherwise. He attempted one day to show off among us, by letting the blood be drawn out of his finger's ends; which acting upon an ill constitution, was the death of him. People who have nothing but a white hand to show for their breeding, are in a bad I would as soon trust the long nails of a Chiway. nese dandy, who thinks it vulgar to be without talons. He supposes that nobody can be polite, whose hands retain a look of utility. Unreflecting Hi-Fong! not to know, that beauty, grace, and utlity are fellow-workers. A sculptor might as well shut up his tools.

"The instrument of instruments, the hand,"

is not a thing to be stuck in a 'scutcheon, like a baronet's device. The most delicate need not be afraid of turning it to account, even on the score of de licacy. If it is worth anything at all, it is worth preserving; and a reasonable exercise of the various joints, muscles, and other useful pieces of machinery which Nature, whatever some may think, has really bestowed on that graceful member, serves to keep it in health and perfectness. Look at the delicate withered claw of some foolish old lady, West Indian for instance, who has never been suffered to lift a comb to her head, or carry a bundle of music across a threshold; and compare it with many accomplished hands, that have been used to fifty good offices, and that remain soft and young-looking to the last. Wherever a genuine and lasting beauty is desired, the blood must be circulated.

Figure, Carriage, &c.—The beauty of the female figure consists in being gently serpentine. Modesty and luxuriance, fulness and buoyancy, a rising, as if to meet; a falling, as if to retire; spirit, softness, apprehensiveness, self-possession, a claim on protection, a superiority to insult, a sparkling something enshrined in gentle proportions and harmonious movement, should all be found in that charming mixture of the spiritual and material. Mind and body are not to be separated, where real beauty exists. Should there be no great intellect, there will be a sort of intellectual instinct, a grace, an address, a naturally wise amiableness. Should intellect unite with these, there is nothing upon earth so powerful, except the spirit whom it shall call master.

Beauty too often sacrifices to fashion. The spirit of fashion is not the beautiful, but the wilful; not

the graceful but the fantastic; not the superior in the abstract, but the superior in the worst of all concretes, the vulgar. It is the vulgarity that can afford to shift and vary itself, opposed to the vulgarity that longs to do so, but cannot. The high point of taste and elegance is to be sought for, not in the most fashionable circles, but in the best-bred, and such as can dispense with the eternal necessity of never being the same thing. Beauty there, both moral and personal, will do all it can to resist the envy of those who would deface, in order to supercede it. The highest dressers, the highest painters, are not the loveliest women, but such as have lost their loveliness, or never had any. The others know the value of their natural appearance too well. It is these that inspire the mantua-maker or milliner with some good thought. The fantastics of fashion take it up, and spoilit. Sixty or seventy years ago it was the fashion for ladies to have long waists like a funnel. Who would suppose that this originated in a natural and even rustic taste? And yet the stomachers of that time were only caricatures of the bodice of a country beauty. Some handsome women brought the original to town; fashion proceeded to render it ugly and extravagant; and posterity laughs with derision at the ridiculous portraits of its grandmo

thers. The poet might have addressed a beauty forced into this fashion, as he did his devoted heroine in those celebrated lines:

"No longer shall the bodice, aptly laced,
From thy full bosom to thy slender waist,
That air and harmony of shape express,
Fine by degrees, and beautifully less."
Prior's Henry and Emma.

No: it was

"Gaunt all at once, and hideously little."

It was like a pottle of strawberries, with two oranges at the top of it. Now-a-days it is the fashion to look like an hour-glass, or a huge insect, or anything else cut in two, and bolstered out at head and feet. A fashion that gracefully shows the figure is one thing: a fashion that totally conceals it, may have its merits; but voluntarially to accept puffed shoulders in lieu of good ones, and a pinch in the ribs for a body like that of Venus de Medici, is what no woman of taste should put up with who can avoid it. They are taking her in. The levelling rogues know what they are about, and are for rendering their crook backs and unsatisfactory waists indistinguishable. If the levelling stopped here, it might be pardonable. Fair play is a jewel that one wishes to see everybody enriched by. But as fashion is naturally at variance with beauty, it is also at variance with health. The more a woman sacrifices of the one, the more she loses of the other.

Thick legs are the least result of these little waists. Bad lungs, bad livers, bad complexions, deaths, me

lancholie, and worse than all, rickety and melancholy children, are too often the undeniable consequences of the tricks that fashion plays with the human body. By a perverse spirit of justice, the children are revenged on the parents; and help, when they grow up, to pervert those who have the advantage of them.

It is a truism to say that a waist should be neither pinched in nor shapeless, neither too sudden nor too shelving, &c., but a natural unsophisticated waist, properly bending when at rest, properly falling in when the person is in motion. But truisms are sometimes as necessary to repeat in writing, as to abide by in painting or sculpture. The worst of it is, they are not always allowed to be spoken of. For instance, there is a truism called a hip. It is surely a very modest and respectable joint, and of great use to the rising generation; a sculptor could no more omit it in a perfect figure, than he could omit a leg or an arm and yet by some very delicate train of reasoning, known only to be double-refined, not merely the word, but the thing, was suppressed about twenty years back. The word vanished: the joint was put under the most painful restrictions: it seemed as if there was a Society for the Suppression of Hips. The fashion did not last, or there is no knowing what would have become of us. We should have been the most melancholy, hipped, unhipped generation, that ever walked without our proper dimensions. Moore's Almanac would have contained new wonders for us. Finally, we should have gone out, wasted, faded, old maided-andbachelored ourselves away, grown

"Fine by degrees and beautifully less,"

till a Dutch jury (the only survivors) brought in the verdict of the polite world,-Died for want of care

in the mother. At present a writer may speak of hips, and live. Nay, the fancies of the men seem to have been so wrought upon by the recollection of those threatening times, that they have amplified into hips themselves, and even grown pigeon-breasted. Such are the melancholy consequences of violating

the laws of Nature.

A true female figure, then, is falling and not too broad in the shoulders; moderate, yet inclining to fulness rather than deficiency, in the bosom; gently tapering, and without violence of any sort, in the waist; naturally curving again in those never-to-bewithout-apology-alluded-to hips; and, finally, her buoyant lightness should be supported upon natural legs, not at all like a man's; and upon feet, which,

though little, ought to be able to support all the rest. Ariosto has described a foot,

"Il breve, asciutto, e ritondetto piede." "The short, and neat, and little rounded foot." The shortness, however, is not to be made by dint of shoes. It must be natural. It must also be not too short. It should be short and delicate, compared with that of the other sex ; but sufficient for all purposes of walking, and running, and dancing, and dispensing with tight shoes; otherwise it is neither handsome in itself, nor will give rise to graceful movements. It is better to have the sentiment of grace in a foot, than a forced or unnatural smallness. The Chinese bave three ideas in their heads;-tea, the necessity of keeping off ambassadors, and the beauty of small feet. The way in which they caricature this beauty, is a warning to all dull understandings. We make our feet bad enough already by dint of squeezing. Nations with shoes have no proper feet, like those who wear sandals. Chinese out-pinch an Inquisitor. I have seen a model of a lady's foot of that country, in which the toes were fairly turned underneath. They looked as if they were almost jammed into and made part of the sole. In the British Museum, if I remember, there is a pair of shoes that belonged to such a foot as this, which are shown in company with another pair, the property of Queen Elizabeth. Her Majesty stood upon no ceremony in that matter, and must have stamped to some purpose.

But the

But what are beautiful feet, if they support not, and carry about with them, other graces? What are the most harmonious proportions, if the soul of music is not within? Graceful movement, an unaffected

elegance of demeanour, is to the figure what sense and sweetness are to the eyes. It is the soul looking out. It is what a poet has called the "thought of the body." The ancients, as the moderns do still in the south, admired a stately carriage in a woman : though the taste seems to have been more general in Rome than Greece. It is to be observed, that neither in Greece nor Rome had the women at any time received that truly feminine polish, which renders their manners a direct though not an unsuitable contrast to those of the other sex. It was reserved for the Goths and their chivalry to reward them with this refinement; and their northern descendants have best preserved it. The walk which the Latin poets attribute to their beauties, is still to be seen in all its

stateliness at Rome. "Shall I be treated in this manner?" says Juno, complaining of her injured dignity," I, who walk the queen of the gods, the sister and the wife of Jove?"-Venus, meeting Æneas, allows herself to be recognized in departing :

"Pedes vestis defluxit ad imos,

Et vera incessu patuit Dea." "In length of train descends her sweeping gown, And by her graceful walk the queen of love is

known."-Dryden..

A stately verse;-but known is not strong enough for patuit, and Virgil does not say "the queen of love," but simply the goddess—the divinity. The walk included every kind of superiority. It is the step of Homer's ladies,

"Of Troy's proud dames whose garments sweep the ground."-Pope.

The painting has more of Rubens than Raphael and I could not help thinking, when I was in Italy, that the walk of the females had more spirit than feminine grace. They know nothing of the swimming voluptuousness with which our ladies at court used to float into the drawing-room with their hoops ; or the sweet and modest sway hither and thither, a little bending, with which a young girl shall turn and wind about a garden by herself, half serious, half vehement. The grace is less reserved. playful. Their demeanour is sharper and more There is,

perhaps, less consciousness of the sex in it, but it is not the most modest or touching on that account. The women in Italy sit and sprawl about the door

"Ego, quæ divum ineedo regina," &c.

ways in the attitudes of men. Without being viragoes, they swing their arms as they walk. There is infinite self-possession, but no subjection of it to a sentiment. The most graceful and modest have a certain want of retirement. Their movements do not play inwards, but outwards: do not wind and retreat upon themselves, but are developed as a matter of course. If thought of, they are equally suffered to go on, with an unaffected and crowning satisfaction, conquering and to conquer. evidently the walk that Dante admired :

:

This is

"Soave a guisa va di un bel pavone; Diritta sopra se, come una grua." "Sweetly she goes, like the bright peacock; straight Above herself, like to the lady crane."

This is not the way we conceive Imogen or Desdemona to have walked. The head is too stiffly held up; admiration is too much courted: there is a perking consciousness in it, as if the lady, like the peacock, could spread out her shawl the next minute, and stand for us to gaze at it.

The carriage of Laura, Petrarch's mistress, was gentle; but she was a Provençal, not an Italian. He counts it among the four principal charms which rendered him so enamoured. They were all identified with a sentiment. There was her carriage or walk; her sweet looks; her dulcet words; and her kind, modest, and self-possessed demeanour.

E con l'andar, e col soave sguardo,
S'accordan le dolcissime parole,
E l'atto mansueto, umile, e tardo.

Di tai quattro faville, e non già sole,
Nasce 'l gran foco di ch' io vivo ed ardo:
Che son fatto un augel notturno al sole."
Sonnet 131.
"From these four sparks it was, nor those alone,
Sprung the great fire, that makes me what I am,
A bird nocturnal, warbling to the sun."

In this sonnet is the origin of a word of Milton's, not noticed by the commentators.

"With store of ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence.-L'Allegro.

"Da begli occhi un piacer sì caldo piove." "So warm a pleasure rains from her sweet eyes." And in another beautiful sonnet, where he describes her sparkling with more than her wonted lustre, he says,

"Non era l'andar suo cosa mortale,

Ma d'angelica forma."- Sonnet 68. !

"Her going was no mortal thing; but shaped
Like to an angel's."

Now this is the difference between the walk of the ancient and modern heroine; of the beauty classical and Provençal, Italian and English. The one was like a goddess's, stately and at the top of earth; the other is like an angel's, humbler but nearer heaven.

It is the same with the voice. The southern voice is loud and uncontrolled; the women startle you, bawling and gabbling in the summer air. In the north, the female seems to bethink her of a thousand delicate restraints; her words issue forth with a sort of cordial hesitation. They have a breath and apprehensiveness in them, as if she spoke with every part of her being.

"Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low,
An excellent thing in woman.”—Shakspeare.

As the best things, however, are the worst when spoiled, it is not easy to describe how much better the unsophisticated bawling of the Italian is, than the affectation of a low and gentle voice in a body full of furious passions. The Italian nature is a good one, though run to excess. You can pare it down. A good system of education would as surely make it a fine thing morally, as good training renders Italian singing the finest in the world. But a furious English woman affecting sweet utterance I"Let us take any man's horses," as Falstaff says.

It is an old remark, that the most beautiful women are not always the most fascinating. It may be

is obvious. They are apt to rely too much on their beauty; or to give themselves too many airs. Mere beauty ever was, and ever will be, but a secondary thing, except with fools. And they admire it for as little time as anybody else; perhaps not so long. They have no fancies to adorn it with. If this secondary thing fall into disagreeable ways, it becomes but a fifth or sixth-rate thing, or nothing at all, or worse than nothing. We resent the unnatural mixture. We shrink from it, as we should from a serpent with a beauty's head. The most fascinating women, generally speaking, are those that possess the finest powers of entertainment. In a particular and attaching sense, they are those that can partake our pleasures and our pains in the liveliest and most devoted manner. Beauty is little without

this. With it, she is indeed triumphant, unless affection for a congenial object has forestalled her. In that case, fascination fixed carries the day hollow against fascination able to fix. I speak only of hearts capable of being fixed as well as fascinated; nor are they so few, as it is the interest of too many to make out. A good heart, indeed, requires little to fix it, if the little be good, and devoted, and makes it the planet round which it turns.

I reckon myself a widower, though I was never wedded; and yet with all my love for a departed object, a sympathising nature would inevitably have led me to love again, had not travelling and one or two other circumstances thrown me out of the way of that particular class of my countrywomen, among whom I found the one, and always hoped to meet with the other. When I do, she may, or may not, as it happens, be beautiful; but the following charms, I undertake to say, she will and must have; and as they are haveable by others, who are not in possession of beauty, I recommend them as an admirable supply. They are far superior to the shallower perfections enumerated in this paper, and their only preservative where they exist.

Imprimis, an eye whether blue, black, or grey, that has given me the kindest looks in the world, and is in the habit of looking kindly on others.

Item, a mouth-I do not choose to say much about the mouth, but it must be able to say a good deal to me, and all sincerely. Its teeth, kept as clean as possible, must be an argument of cleanliness in general; and, finally, it must be very good-natured to servants, and to friends who come in unexpectedly to dinner.

Item, a figure, which shall preserve itself, not by neglecting any of its duties, but by good taste and exercise, and the dislike of gross living. I would have her fond of all the pleasures under the sun, except those of tattling, and the table, and ostentation. Fourthly, a power to like a character in a book, though it is not an echo of her own.

Fifthly, a great regard for the country.
Item, a hip.

ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE.

LXX. THE APOLOGIST BELIEVED AGAINST HIS WILL

[THts, perhaps, should rather be called a Novel than a Romance; but the turn of the adventure is at all events rare and unexpected; and the entertainment is increased by the maliciously comic figure cut by the great melancholy Cromwell, whose propensity to the refreshment of a little occasional fun is here gratified in a manner that must have been as delightIt ful to himself, as distracting to the poor divine. is a regular scene in a play, transferred to the stage of life. We take it from that shrewd, amusing, and valuable book,Granger's Biographical History of England.']

JEREMIAH WHITE received a liberal education, and was brought up at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which house he became a Fellow. In the troublesome times of the war, Mr White's politics led him to join the prevailing powers, and in time procured him to be made preacher to the council of state, and domestic chaplain to his highness, Oliver, Lord Protector. He was a very sprightly and facetious man, despised the cant and hypocrisy of the Puritanical party of his time, and was considered one of the chief wits of the Protector's court. Possessing all the advantages of youth, and a fine person, he had the ambition to aspire to the hand of Cromwell's youngest daughter, the Lady Frances. The young lady appears by no means to have discouraged his addresses but, in so religious a court, this gallantry could not be carried on without being taken notice of. The Protector was informed of it; and, having no inclination for such an alliance, was so much concerned, that he ordered the person who told him to keep a strict look out, promising, if he would give him any substantial proofs, he should be well rewarded, and White severely punished.. The spy followed his business so close, that in a little time he dogged Jerry White (as he was generally called) to the lady's chamber, and ran immediately to the Protector to acquaint him that they were together. Oliver, in a rage, hastened to the chamber, and going hastily in, found Jerry on his knees, either kissing his daughter's hand, or having just kissed it. Cromwell, in a fury, asked what was the meaning of that posture before his daughter Frances? White, with a great deal of presence of mind, said, "May it please your highness, I have a long time courted that young gentlewoman there, my lady's woman, and cannot prevail; I was, therefore, humbly praying her ladyship to intercede for me." Oliver, turning to the young woman, cried, "What's the meaning of this, hussy? Why do you refuse the honour Mr White would do you? He is my friend, and I expect you would treat him as such." My lady's woman, who desired nothing better, with a very low curtesy replied, "If Mr White intends me that honour, I shall not be against him." "Sayest thou so, my lass," cried Cromwell, "call Goodwyn,-this business shall be done presently, before I go out of the room." Mr White had gone too far to recede from this proposal; his brother parson came, and Jerry and my lady's woman were married in the presence of the Protector, who gave the bride 500l. to her portion, to the secret disappointment and indignation of the enraged dupe of his own making, but intire gratification and satisfaction of the fair Abigail, the moment they were made one flesh, who by this unexpected good fortune, obtained a husband much above her most sanguine hope or expectation.

The Restoration deprived White of all hope of preferment, if he refused to take the oaths, and offered him but faint prospects if he did; he therefore prudently chose to remain quiescent, for he was too pleasant a man to take up his abode in a prison, for preaching in a conventicle. His wit and cheerfulness gained him many friends, but he would have found himself more at home in the palace of Charles II, than in that of Oliver. He survived not only the restoration and revolution, but the union, and died in 1707, aged seventy-eight.

"BE mine my father's life, he cried,
Although I suffer pains severe,-
There is a something in my breast
That wars with this inglorious rest,—
I cannot linger here.

"And who can tell what I may be?"-
That feeling was ambition's spring:

In fancy forward far he ran,

He was a youth, he was a man,—
He was the Gipsy King.

He fled and wandered through the land;
And worked or starved as chance befell:

He saw the various lives of men,
And often in the beggars' den
It was his lot to dwell.

His was an undirected mind

He ever undetermined stood; Unskilled the fitting to discern : Too quick to rest, submit, or learn: And ready was at any turn

For evil, or for good.

But want and travel sharpen wit;
And by degrees he grew in knowledge;
And as he was a lad of parts,
He soon the master was of arts

Taught in the wide world's college.
IIe camped with gipsies in the wolds;

And gazed in tall young gipsies' eyes; And with much guile and little truth, He had the ready tricks of youth To stir their tears and sighs.

Early a father he became

And left his children in the land:'
He soon forsakes who soon deceives—
He left them as the ostrich leaves
Her eggs among the desert sand.

THE WEEK.

MEN.

PERSONAL PORTRAITS OF EMINENT
THE EMPEROR CHARLES V, HIS SON PHILIP II, AND
HIS GRANDSON DON CARLOS.

[FROM a curious work, a translation of which has been just published by Murray,-Von Raumer's "History of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Illustrated by Original Documents." It is full of portraits of this kind, and of the manners of existing courts. The three likenesses here given to the reader are from the pen of Badoer, a Venetian envoy.

In poor Don Carlos, who was unquestionably mad, and who afterwards underwent a tragical fate, the circumstances of which are still a matter of dispute, we see the natural result of the bad and pampered blood of despotism. There is a sort of incipient madness in the excessive self-will and incontinence of his father and grandfather.]

CHARLES V.

THE Emperor Charles is of the middle size, well grown, and of dignified appearance. A broad forehead, blue eyes, expressing much intellect, aquiline nose, fair skin, the under jaw long and broad, on account of which the teeth do not shut well, and the last words of his discourses are feast intelligibi. His

front teeth are few and jagged; his beard short and grey. His temperament is phlegmatic, with melancholy at the bottom. The gout has often severely attacked him in the hands, feet, and shoulders; but more severely ten years since than at the time when he determined to retire to the cloister of St Justus.

In all his discourses and dealings the Emperor showed the greatest veneration for the Catholic belief. He heard mass every day; was regular at prayers and preachings, caused the Bible to be read to him, communicated four times in the year, gave great alms to the poor, and was wont, before he started on his journies to Spain, often to hold a crucifix in his hand. In the perilous time of the Smalcaldic league, he was seen praying on his knees at midnight before a crucifix ;-and another time he suggested to the Nuncio, not to release the persons of his court, without very satisfactory reasons, from the obligations imposed by the church-for instance, in the matter of fasts.

The Emperor has been always a strong man, and one who required variety and high seasoning in his food; he never kept himself within restraint, when he fell in with women, whether of the higher or lower classes.

PHILIP II.

King Philip is now thirty years old, of small stature and fine limbed. The forehead high and fair, azure eyes, tolerably large; strong eyebrows, not much parted; well-shaped nose, great mouth, with a heavy, somewhat disfiguring under lip, white and fair beard; in exterior a Fleming, but in haughty deportment a Spaniard. His temperament is melancholy and phlegmatic; he suffers from stomach pains, and side stitches, on account of which, by advice of his physicians, he goes much to the chase, as affording the best means of strengthening the body and ridding the spirit of melancholy thoughts. He hears mass regularly, and on Sundays, sermons and vespers. He gives alms regularly, or on special occasions. So, for example, last year, in Brussels, when the poor were dying in the streets of cold and hunger, he caused bread, beer, straw, and firewood to be given out to 800 persons. They say at court, he asked his confessor whether his having done this could oppress his conscience; it is certain, at least, that in such cases he had many consultations with his council.

As nature has made this king of weak body, so has she also constituted him of timorous mind. He eats sometimes too much pastry, and likes variety in his food; with women he is intemperate, and likes to go about at night in disguise. His expenses in dress, furniture, livery, &c., are not great. Out of doors he wears a mantle and cap; often, also, suits cut in the French fashion, or with large buttons, and feathers in his cap.

He shows himself rather composed than passionate, and tolerates persons and pretensions of an unusual and not very befitting description. He speaks sometimes with sharpness and wit, and loves jesting and nonsense. Yet he shows this disposition less at table where buffoons are present, than when in' the privacy of his apartment he lets himself loose

and is merry. He possesses a good capacity, and

one equal to great affairs, but is not active enough to rule over dominions so extensive as his; yet he may be said to do quite as much as his weak body can endure. Petitions and reports, as they come in, he reads himself, receives them often into his own hand, and listens with great attention to everything that is said to him. While doing so, he commonly avoids looking the speaker in the face, but casts his eyes to the ground, or turns them towards some other quarter. He answers quickly and shortly, point by point, but, nevertheless, does not decide for himself.

DON CARLOS.

The Prince is of twelve years of age and of a weak complexion. He has a head of disproportioned bigness, black hair, and a fierce disposition. It is said of him that when, in the chase, hares or other animals are brought to him, he takes delight in seeing them roasted alive. Once when a long-tailed lizard was presented to him, he bit him in the finger, he bit off the animal's head, and for this once only, showed

courage by so doing. It is also believed that he is immoderately inclined to the female sex. If he finds himself without money, he gives away (without the knowledge of the Princess his aunt,) chairs, medals, and even his clothes, though otherwise fond of show. When he was told, after the marriage of Philip with Mary of England, that their son, if they should have one, would inherit the Netherlands, he said, this he would never consent to, but would oppose to the last; he also begged a suit of armour of the Emperor, then resident in Brussels, with which the Emperor was much pleased. He shows uncommon pride, in that he will never remain long standing in his father's presence, or take off his cap, and that he calls the Emperor father, and his father only brother. He is

as passionately addicted to his own opinions, and as prone to anger as a young man can be. He amuses himself with uttering on every occasion, so many predictions (cose augure) that his tutor collected them in a volume, and presented them to the Emperor.

THE RIVAL UNIVERSITIES.

A BALLAD.

["WRITTEN," says a Correspondent, " by the Rev. W. Cooper, who, in 1780, was usher at the school of Houghton-le-Spring."]

ONE evening, when Bacchus prevailed o'er Apollo, And wrangling and jangling of course were to follow,

Arose a dispute which the muse may now blab, 'Tween Jack the Oxonian, and Will the Cantab. Derry down, &c. Quoth Will, after filling a bumper of wine, "Come Jack, here's a toast! 'tis a favourite of mine: Alma Mater, say I, prithee Jack fill thy glass; Who flinches this toast, I pronounce him an ass.' Quoth Jack, "Methinks, Will, 'tis a rough declaration;

Besides, 'tis a rule in all argumentation,

A term amphibolical first to define,
Then say is it my Alma Mater or thine?"

"Tis mine, without doubt," in a heat, answered Will: "Dost thou think that to thine such a bumper I'd fill?"

"If so then," quoth Jack, "thou must surely agree That thine hath no right to a bumper from me." Quoth Will," Thy vile logic is now out of season, And, at best, is a paltry employment of reason: But paltry as 'tis, it is all thou well know'st, Which Oxford, thy poor Alma Mater, can boast.” Jack's face turn'd as white as his mistress's smock; Quoth he, "Hast thou ne'er heard the name of John Locke?

John Locke was of Oxford, and one of our College, And to us at his death he bequeath'd all his know

ledge."

"A mighty bequest (answers Will) all ideal!— But our great Isaac Newton left us something real: No verbal distinctions and tergiversations, But sound mathematics and clear demonstrations. "Leave Oxford, I say, with her logical fools: Go to Cambridge and step into one of her schools; Ask any young Soph, and he'll answer you soon, How many calves' tails reach from thence to the moon."

"Care we for calves' tails or the moon?" answer'd Jack,

"The road to the moon is quite out of our track; But ours is the road to a Mitre and LawnBesides, you must own, we excel you in Brawn.” Cried Will," On this issue we'll put the whole matter,

Here's Dick knows both sorts, and be he arbi

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF THE

LATE CHARLES LAMB.

THESE are the extracts, of which we have latterly spoken. They are from the Court Magazine,' and contain the most full and particular account of Mr Lamb yet given to the public. We have now made up our minds to give the whole of it in the LONDON' JOURNAL, with the exception of a brief passage or two, valued by ourselves, but not of consequence to the subject. We think we owe this, both to the writer, who is no common observer, and who says everything (we are sure) in perfect good faith, and to that solidity of heart, genius, and reputation on the part of Mr Lamb, which could stand the investigations even of an enemy, if a sincere and wise one, much more those of an attached friend, however speculative, and however we may here and there differ with his conclusions. Upon one or two points we shall perhaps touch in a note;-certainly upon the very erroneous conclusions he has drawn respecting

the non-appearance of some of Mr Hazlitt's friends at his funeral, and their alleged silence about him since.]

WHEN I first became acquainted with the Lambs,

they lived at that little white house which stands alone, behind the New River, at the farther end of Colebrook row, on the left-hand side; the river bounding the little garden in front. It was here that George Dyer, in one of his sudden fits of abstraction, committed the alarming mauvaise plaisanterie of walking into the river at noon-day, to the infinite dismay of Lamb, who was bidding him good. bye at the moment he disappeared from view beneath the water! And I have sometimes wondered that Lamb did not follow the example of his friend, out of that delightful mixture of intense sympathy with the spirit of contradiction, which so often made him do precisely that which was not expected from him. I am serious in saying, that there really was a chance of this, and that those friends of Lamb who truly loved and regarded him had this among other causes of congratulation on his quitting town for Enfield. The truth is, that many who went to him at Islington, did so from mere idle curiosity, and the excitement of seeing and hearing something different from the ordinary modes of social intercourse; and that others went to seek favors or benefits at his hands; neither of these classes having the smallest sense of the qualities of mind and character which made him what they found him. By removing to Enfield he got rid of both these classes of visitors, and retained those only, between whom and himself there was a real interchange of kindness and affection.

Yet I had never reason to feel satisfied that his habits and mode of life, and the tone and temper of mind which they mutually engendered and sprang from, were improved by the change. The truth I believe to be, that a frequent communion with intellects of the lowest class of cultivation and development was indispensable to the due exercise and the healthful tone of Lamb's mind; and that in the country he could not, or at least did not, obtain this communion, and was the worse for the want of it. "Kings (the proverb says) are fond of low company." Lamb was a king in the realms of intellect ; and certain it is that the meanest peasant or vassal of those realms, and even the merest outcast, was deemed by Lamb to come as fairly under the category of "good company" as the most courtly of lords, the most accomplished of ladies, or the most cultivated of literati.* Who, in fact, of all our English writers,

*

has sympathised like Lamb with the sorrows and deprivations of the poor! Who but he has described them with other than a reluctant, deprecating hand, and a patronising pen! His little paper on The Children of the Poor,' is the most pathetic piece of writing in our language; and it is so only because. it is written in the purest spirit of human sympathy, and the most perfect simplicity and good faith.

One of the most noble and beautiful self-sacrifices

that ever was made at the shrine of human affection, was that made by Lamb when, for the greater security of his sister's health, he quitted his beloved London, and went to reside in the country-which he did not love. For why should the truth be concealed on this point? London seemed to Lamb what the country is to many people: when he was away from it his spirit seemed to shrink and retire inwards, and his body to fade and wither like a plant. in an uncongenial soil; and when he returned to it he seemed to grow regenerate and become filled with a new life and being. In London the whole of what he felt to be the truly vital years of his existence had been passed; almost every pleasant association connected with the growth, development, and exercise of his intellectual being, belonged to some metropolitan locality; every agreeable recollection of his social intercourse with his most valued friends, arose out of some London [A few words are wanting here in the copy with which we have been favoured.-ED.]

The reader may be assured that there is no exagIt is geration or artifice of style in this statement. the simple and literal fact. Before I was fully aware of this feeling of Lamb as to London, and of the associations he was accustomed to connect with it, I once or twice, on visiting and walking about with him among the pleasant scenery of Enfield and its vicinity, referred to the improvement he must find from the change, both as to health and mental condition. But I soon found my mistake, and that the subject was a sore one; and I remember it being

recurred to once afterwards, when he declared, with unusual vehemence of expression, and almost with tears in his eyes, that the most squalid garret in the most confined and noisome purlieu of London would be a paradise to him, compared with the fairest of dwellings placed in the loveliest scenery of "the country." "I hate the country," he said; and I shall never forget the tone of voice and expression of countenance with which he said it, as if the feeling came from the bottom of his soul, and was working ungentle and ungenial results there, that he was himself almost alarmed at.

Yet while Lamb lived in the country he used to spend the whole of the fore part of the day in taking long walks, of eight or ten miles; but merely for the sake of walking; not in search of any specific scene of curiosity, or any external excitement. The act of walking was, in fact, congenial to the somewhat torpid and sluggish character of his temperament. It gave a healthful movement to his thoughts, which otherwise brooded, and, as it were, hovered in a sort of uneasy and restless slumberousness, over dangerous and interdicted questions, on which he knew there was no satisfaction to he gained, yet he could not escape from them.

What may have been his condition of mind when walking about in the open air alone, one can only judge of by the difference observable between him when walking with a friend and when sitting with the same friend by his own fire-side; and I have always remarked that the activity of his mind (and with his mind activity was indispensable to its health) was always greater under the former circumstances. And he evidently felt this himself, without perhaps knowing it; for he would never let you go away from his house, whatever might be the weather or the hour, without walking several miles with you on your road. And his talk was always more free and

There was, however, another reason for these

⚫ It is not intended, surely, to imply by this, that Lamb was fond of the company of outcasts for its own sake, or that he ever "kept company" with any such people. He flowing on these occasions. did them all justice undoubtedly, and insisted on seeing fair play to the causes of their errors and the amount of their humanity: but to judge from our author's text, it might be supposed that he really had some pet rascals among his friends, and was as fond of them as of anybody! This would occasion a grievous error.-ED.

Many;-in spirit at least, if not in letter. Fielding, Johnson, the old Puritan divines, Hazlitt, Elliott,-nay, the writer of this Journal. But to do the poor good, it is sometimes necessary to accommodate the tone to the auditors.-ED.

walks. In whatever direction they lay, Lamb always saw at the end of them the pleasant vision of a foaming pot of porter,which he liked the better when quaffed

"In the worst inn's worst room."

One could not part company (perhaps with the chance of meeting again for weeks or months) without sitting down together for five minutes; and for this purpose Lamb always chose the "parlour" of some wayside public-house. And latterly his regale was always limited to a draft of ale or porter.

Will the reader pardon me if I dwell on this point longer than its seeming insignificance may appear to warrant? But in the habitual actions and feelings of a man like Charles Lamb, there is nothing insignificant, nothing that does not result from, and may not be traced to, some profound or some curious and interesting movement of his mind or heart; and the habit to which I have alluded above was traceable to a deep and beautiful moral feeling. When Lamb was quitting home with you to accompany you part of the way on your journey, you could always see that his sister had rather he stayed at home; and not seldom her last salutation to him on his leaving the room was—“ Now you're not going to drink any ale, Charles?"

"No! no!" was his half impatient reply. The truth was, that his sister, in her almost over-anxious care of his bodily health, had latterly endeavoured to keep him, perhaps even too much, from the use-for to the abuse he had never been addicted—of those artificial stimuli which were to a certain extent necessary to the healthy tone of his mental condition. I have sometimes thought-though, certainly, with out sufficient grounds on which to form a decided opinion either way—that in order to keep him from the chance of being ill, she kept him from the certainty of being well. I have had a pretty extensive experience (passively, at least,) in the way of intellectual Table Talk. There are a few of the most distinguished literary men and conversers of the day with whom I have not partaken in that best of all intellectual enjoyments, when duly understood and rightly conducted. And I have no recollection of any which has left such delightful impressions on my mind as that which has taken place between the first and the last glass of humble gin-and-water, after a rump-steak or a pork-chop supper, in the simple little domicile of Charles Lamb and his sister, at Enfield Chase. Nor must it be supposed that the afore-named gin-andwater played a mere mechanical or corporeal part in those delightful repasts. True, it created nothing. But it was the liquid talisman which not only opened the poor casket in which Lamb's rich thoughts were shut up, but set in motion the machinery in the absence of which they might have lain like gems in the mountain, or gold in the mine.

No really good converser, who duly appreciates the use and the virtue of that noble faculty, ever talks for the pleasure of talking, or in the absence of some external stimulus to the act. He talks well

only because he thinks and feels well; and he is always fonder of listening than of talking. He talks only that he may listen,-never listens merely that he may talk. Now, Charles Lamb, who, when present, was always the centre from which flowed, and

to which tended, the stream of the talk which took place, was literally tongue-tied, till some slight artificial stimulus let loose the sluggish and obstinate member; and even his profound and subtle spirit seemed to wear chains of its own forging, till the same external agency set it at liberty. Compared with what it really contained, his mind remained a sealed book even to the last, as regards the world in general. I mean, that his books, beautiful as they are, are mere spillings, as it were, or forced overflowings, from the curious and exquisite treasures of his mind and heart. It was a task of almost insu

perable difficulty and trouble to him to write; for he had no desire for literary distinction; no affected anxiety to make his fellow-creatures wiser or better than he found them; and no pecuniary necessities pressing him on to the labour. Nor do I believe

that he would ever have written at all, but for a sort of pressure from within himself, which, like the divine afflatus of the oracles of old, would have vent, and ease its inward agony by speech. His thoughts were like the inspirations of the true poet, which must either be expressed by visible symbols, or they drive their recipient to madness. What was "the reading public" to Charles Lamb? He did not care a pinch out of his dear sister's snuff-box whether they were supplied to repletion with the (to him) garbage on which they are accustomed to

feed, or were left to starve themselves into mental health for the want of it. He knew well enough that what he had to offer would be caviare to them. But it was not so with regard to the little world of

friends and intimates that his social and intellectual qualities had gathered about him. Not, indeed, that he cared much even about them, so far as related to any pressing desire for their admiration of his intellectual parts and acquirements. In fact, a spirit of indifference pervaded the whole of his moral being, especially during the last ten years of his life. And such a spirit, when suffered to attain a certain weight and power, is, perhaps, one of the most fatal misfortunes that can befal a highly-gifted and cultivated intellect, especially if it be a self-cultivated one, as Lamb's for the most part was. During the buoyancy of youth, and the strength and prime of manhood, this spirit seldom gains any very mischievous ascendancy. But after a certain time of life, if present at all, it steals and grows over us like frost over still water, binding the faculties and the heart in chains, that are strong as life itself, or weak as ropes of sand, according as we possess and use the means and appliances which are everywhere about us for resisting or counteracting the spell.

Now this spell was one of which Lamb had at all times the good sense to perceive the presence, and to admit the power which it acquired by a submissive yielding to its actions. But, on the other hand, he knew that to oppose is to destroy it;-that to gaze upon its growth in motionless silence, is to aggrandise it into a monster of moral mischief and misery; whereas,

"Lift but a finger, and the giant dies." And till his retirement from London he had the wisdom to act on this knowledge, and the means always at hand of doing so with safety and success.

But in the country it was widely different; for Lamb was not among those fortunate spirits who

profess to

dulging in that mild and genial stimulus which his mental temperament so indispensably required, but which the extreme delicacy of his bodily system rendered a dangerous remedy, unless most carefully and abstemiously applied. And that very sluggishness and indifference, which made the application necessary, made the patient himself the last person in the world to judge, or even to care, as to the distant consequences of the application. But, as I have said, or was about to say, Lamb's whole life was a willing sacrifice of love to the personal comfort and health of his sister; and if the sacrifice was not always sub. mitted to with the best grace in the world, and the willing victim would sometimes seek to escape for a moment from the bonds of affection which held him, what did this prove, but that the affection was deep and pure in proportion to the struggles it overcame? What are the "sacrifices" that nine-tenths of the world ask and receive credit for making, but a forced submission to restraints in' which, after a brief period, there is no restraint felt? Whereas, in Lamb's case, half the feelings and resolves of the latter part of his life were so many struggles between the demands of his brotherly love and duty, and that disposition to self-indulgence, and even selfism in a refined and liberal sense, which were the leading tendencies of his character. And the former always conquered at least, when the temptations of social intercourse did not come too strongly in aid of their opponents. But there were 'times and occasions when Lamb could not, or would not, resist the syren charms of that one extra cup which "is unblest, and its ingredient a devil." But, as before, what did this prove but the almost superhuman self-denial which was the habit of his life?-for, as regarded himself, personally, he was careless of the consequences that might attend any imprudence of the kind referred to. He was not a person who expected to eat his cake and have it too. The present was his hour; it was worth to him(humanly speaking) a world of the past and an eternity of the future.

Is it expected that I apologise for dwelling so long and so minutely on a point of these Recollections which may seem to the self-important wisdom of some, and the superfine delicacy of others, not of a nature to have been introduced at all? If so, my apology can be addressed to those only who have no claim to it; since they must not pretend to feel sufficient interest in the character of the individual I am

referring to, to make these Recollections worth their perusal. But because they are so sensible and prudent and resolute and self-denying that they can feel

"Find tongues in trees, books in the running no interest in the "fears of the brave and follies o brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything;"

On the contrary, he saw about him an infinite deal of bad; and in what was bad he saw no good, and no means of turning it to good. And the good that there is, he saw perpetually overlooked, or turned to bad, by those who should apply and administer it. In a word, Lamb was anything but an optimist, except in respect of human character. In that he could always see the good, and could overlook the bad in favour of it.

I am afraid it will be thought that I am going more deeply into this question than the desultory nature of these recollections warrants, and especially in connexion with the topic out of which it has incidentally arisen-a pot of porter! For I must not shelter myself under Lamb's example in this respect. He might be sublime over a roast pig, or pathetic over a chimney-sweeper, where others could scarcely hope to escape being false, or ridiculous, or unin telligible.

To fulfil my object in alluding to the habit I have spoken of, I must return for a moment to the point from which I have so widely digressed. I have said that Lamb's beloved sister and friend always seemed to me to be uneasy whenever he left home with any visitor, to accompany them on their way; fearing, as she did, that he might make the presence of a friend an exeuse, or a pretence (to himself, I mean, for to others he never sought or made one in his life-he was the very soud of sincerity and good faith) for in

the wise" because they are so "virtuous" that "cakes and ale” are to be expunged from the accredited list of human enjoyments-it does not follow that the rest of the world may not like to see a true picture of a man of genius rather than a false

one.

And as to the personal friends of Charles Lamb being more fastidious about his personal reputation now he is dead than they were when he was alive, it is what I for one of them cannot understand.

And to what, after all, does the sum of my disclosure on this point amount? Why, to this; that Lamb's exquisitely constituted frame and temperament-that bodily conformation on which the tone of his genius depended—could not repair the wear and tear of its movements and operations, and maintain itself in a healthful condition, without the occasional use of those remedial means (for such they are) which were at hand for the purpose; and yet, that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, he forewent those means rather than risk the comfort of another! That that other will be aggrieved or angry at my thus alluding to the subject, I have no fear. And for the false and overstrained delicacy of others, I have no respect. I have told, and will tell, nothing of Charles Lamb that I would have feared for himself to read :—and with that limitation only (which virtually extends to her who was his other self) I shall proceed in my task of putting down what I knew, and felt, and thought of him.

To be continued.

FINE ARTS.

many of his vivid portraits of buildings, mostly drawn from the classical and beautiful land of Italy. • Grand Canal, Venice' (27), an old friend, whom we cannot see too often; the present picture is lively and real; but, to a degree, the parts want bringing together; the general effect is a little disjointed. Part of the Zaringi Palace, Dresden' (77), a magnificent spacious old doorway ;- At Verona' (118), a beautiful painting, of a very singular but graceful tomb. At Orleans' (212), a fine old gate. Gustineau's pictures this year are not his happiest; but they are always pleasing and clever; Part of Warwick Castle' (15), is eninently so. R. Hills has contributed several of his excellent cattle-pieces. Winter' (82) is a very ingenious representation of a fall of snow, with some admirable cows shedded in the foreground. Cattle with a distant view of Derchester Church' (29), and Cattle in Salt Marshes of Lodmoor' (69), are the best among Thales Fielding's contributions; they are both very genially coloured; and he hits better than any man going the placid mildness of those ruminating individuals, looking so comfortable and contented among the hoof-stamped slopes and muddy waters of their favourite ponds. Sir Halbert Glendenning, the Lady of Avenel, and Roland Græme' (41), by Joseph Nash, is a clever design, and the costume and accessories are well studied; but there also lies the defect, for the study is too apparent; the lady is handsome, but years and trouble seem to have induced a peevishness in her gentle nature, if we may judge by the expression the artist has given her. We recollect no warrant for it in the text. • South Porch of the Church at Louviers, Normandy' (198), is a very nice drawing of a fine old bit of masonry. Olivia and Malvolio' (172) is clever, but too vulgar. Malvolio was not a gentleman, nor a man of refinement; but lunatic vanity, such as his, is seldom the accompaniment of so very burly and lusty a condition, while its very fantasticalness and aspirations after gentility make it fastidious and finikin. Mr Nash's Malvolio is a downright, bullying, burly swaggerer, a man without ambition or apprehension enough to dream of love triumphs and gallant conceits. His Don Quixote, quarrelling with the Ecclesiastic before the Duke and Duchess' (181), in like manner is deficient in refinement; there is the madness, the anger, the ridiculous part of the knight's nature, but where is his noble feeling, his pure and disinterested dignity, his intellect, the courtesy that ever inspires him at his most enthusiastic moments? which makes him never, through all his scrapes and disasters, lose our love and respect for his untainted honour and his kindly heart? View on the Dort' (202), by C. Bentley, though not quite natural in the colouring, is clever and very pleasing; the effect is rich, and that dark bird flying to the shore is an accident very happily introduced, giving life and reality to the scene. D. Cox has many