rayer's Geschichte des Kayserthums von Trapezunt T Third Part of the Library of Entertaining Enon. Bard-executed by the self-taught Artist, Mr. THOM,

List of four-hundred and sixty-nine of the principal of DYSPEPSIA, or INDIGESTION, and other

WEDGWOOD'S MANIFOLD WRITERS establishing a New Theory of the Globe, in which will

417

No. 89.

AND

LITERARY CHRONICLE.

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 1829.

THE SUBLIME AND THE RIDICULOUS.

A DIALOGUE.

A. WHAT was the subject of conversation between you and Wharton, when I interrupted you the other day?

B.-Do not laugh if I tell you-the Character of Napoleon?

A.-I should be the last person to laugh at a confession of such singular honesty. And so Wharton, who spends half his time in studying the teeth of questions, to discover whether they are not too old for service, actually discussed one which is marked stale, in the index expurgatorius of every country coterie ?

B.-He waives his scruples about the antiquity of a question, which will serve as a peg for some spick and span paradox.

A. What is the latest which he has suspended upon it?

B. He asserts that Napoleon ought not to be called a Conqueror, so long as that title is also given to Alexander and Cæsar.

6

A. His exquisite reason? B.-He says that 'Conquest,' in the modern feudal sense, is synonymous with Acquisition,' and that, in the heroic and classical times, no two meanings could be at a wider distance from each other than those which are denoted by these two words. A.-Well?

B.-That Alexander was a classical Conqueror; Napoleon a feudal one; and that we are constantly losing our sense of this difference.

A.-What name does he propose to substitute? B. He would call Alexander the Vanquisher, or else Napoleon the Acquisitor.-The first would be the most correct, because the word Conquest, of right belongs to modern times, but the latter would be most useful in curing the confusion in our notions, because it gives the meaning to one cause which we have hitherto tacitly given to both.

A.-A mere refinement, I think?

B. Nevertheless, Acquisitiveness, as the phrenologists speak, was actually a much more remarkable characteristic of Napoleon than of Alexander or Cæsar. How strikingly we discover it in his sayings. A.-In his sayings? I do not understand you. B. Have you never remarked the very great

Holland, Italy, and Spain. The thought is his, so
far as mere Acquisition, as our friend would say,
can make any thing any man's.

A.-I am again at a loss. If the title be one
which will stand against an adverse claim, what sig-
nifies it whether it be of descent, purchase, or occu-
pancy?

B. In spiritual properties the difference is con-
siderable. In every country you will find some
honey-suckles and dog-roses, hemlock and night-
shade, in the hedge-rows, which every one has a
right to appropriate who pleases, but which only
children care to appropriate, because almost all,
save children, value the beauty of the landscape
above the pleasure of possession. Now in this
description of flowers or weeds, must be reckoned
did not sow it, nor till the ground which was to
the saying of which we are speaking. Napoleon
bear it; he merely plucked it. There it was in the
thousands, every year, from the light sandy soil of
fields amidst a thousand others, which shoot up by
France, adding something to the general appearance
of the country, and sometimes noticed individually
in the books of our herbalists, but never gathered
till some child, or some one who has carried the
childish lust of 'Acquisition' into manhood, chances
to pass by. Napoleon kept it in water, and dis-
played it, many years after, at St. Helena, to the
admiring eyes of Mr. Barry O'Meara.
A.-By what criterion do you determine that the
sentiment is French?

B-The thickness of the outer leaves and a total
deficiency of heart are infallible proofs.

A.-I wish you would not resort to those metaphorical expressions. What do you mean by 'outer leaves,' and heart?"

B.-If you have leisure we will examine the sentiment, by which means you will perhaps understand me better. Does it not strike you that there are a great many instances which seem at once to establish

its truth?

A.—A great many; and it is the recollection of
them which makes me wonder that you should ex-
press so contemptuous an opinion of it. For in-
appeals to Jupiter, Mars, the shade of Henri Quatre;
stance, nearly all the fine speeches, apostrophes,
and, above all, the death scenes of the heroes of the
French Revolution, strike me as dwelling on the
border land.

B. Very well; do you remember any others?
A.-The others which occur to me are different,

B.-We shall see.
A.-I apprehend so.

Price 8d.

Does 'Sublime' mean High?

B.--And what does Ridiculous' mean, Low?
A.-Scarcely.

B. So I should think, for to say that there is but one step from the 'High' to the 'Low,' is nonsense. There may be but one step; but there is only threelow; and only half-a-step to that which is half as quarters of a step to that which is one quarter less low. When the question is one of measure, it cannot signify where you fix unity; but if it does not

mean Low,' what can it mean?

A.-Vulgar, mean, absurd.

B.-All which are only the antipodes of sublime when it is used figuratively, as low is its antipode jection applies to them. when it is used literally; and therefore the same ob

A.-May not ridiculous be used in its honest sense as the synonyme of 'Ludicrous?' B. Be it so.

But before we apply this meaning to the phrase, let us be careful that we distinguish it from the one we have rejected. Ludicrous, in the acceptation which we are about to give it, means nothing vulgar, mean, or absurd.

have just said. It need not be any of these, but it A.-I do not see how that follows, from what we

may be all of them.

between the Ridiculous' and the Ludicrous;'
B. What difference did you understand, then,
a difference of kind, or merely the difference of
degree?

would you answer?
A. Supposing I said, 'merely of degree,' what

-

B. That as ridiculousness includes all degrees of itself, the distinction was inadınissible.

ridiculous is that which is such by nature; the luA.-Well then, I say, the difference is this: the dicrous, that which is perceived to be such, or made such by art.

though I think we shall soon arrive at a much B. That will suit my purpose sufficiently well, more rational classification than that which you to the Ludicrous,' in this sense, what do you suggest. When you say, that the sublime is akin

mean?

A.-I mean that it is akin to the ridiculous in art and not the ridiculous in nature.

B. But hold? The ridiculous of art, which you rightly define to be the Ridiculous perceived or

poverty and feebleness of all the best-known thoughts and serve to furnish another sort of evidence in its created;' becomes,-when it is created or perceived

and phrases which are attributed to Napoleonsetting them in such strong contrast with the life and originality of Cæsar's, for instance.

A.-And to what do you attribute it? B.-To the circumstance that the thoughts of the one have grown from slips, the other from roots. Whence it happens that Napoleon's look withered and sickly the moment they are taken out of their native soil, and that Cæsar's, into whatever country they may have been transplanted, are as healthy and vigorous now as they were eighteen hundred years

ago.

A.-Illustrate your meaning by an instance. B.-Suppose we take the hackneyed one. From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but a step.' A.-Are you sure that is Napoleon's? B.-The question every one naturally asks; but there is no reason to dispute his property in it, any more than to deny that he was once possessor of

support. They are such as the conversation between
the Fool and Lear; parts of the trial scene of Fer-
gus M'Ivor; the grave digger's scene; and innu-
servient to the sublime, and increases its effect.
merable others, in which the ludicrous is made sub-

and thus you may comprehend the first part of my
B.-Your double set of instances are weighty;
sentence respecting this saying of Napoleon's; so
far as it can derive strength from outward observa-
tions which are to a sentiment what the sun and
rain are to a p'ant; so far it is strong and hence
was induced to say that it was thick in its outer
leaves. Now let us look at the sentiment in itself;
let us see whether it has any inward coherency, or
whether, as I affirmed just now, from having no
original seed, it is utterly coreless and heartless.

I

A.-You will have some difficulty in proving that, I think, after having first shewn that there is so much evidence in its favour.

the same in kind and quality with the ridiculous which exists in nature.

A.—I do not exactly see your meaning?

B.-Is not Sir Andrew Aguecheek precisely as ridiculous, and ridiculous precisely in the same sense, as any existing fool in Illyria or England? A. Certainly.

wish to draw, is not between the ludicrous and B.-Then I suppose the distinction which you ridiculous-between the ridiculous of art and of nature, but between the power of perceiving and the thing perceived. In other words, you mean to say, that Napoleon meant to signify, not that the sublime is but one step from the ridiculous but that the perception of the ridiculous is but one step from

what?

A. The perception of the sublime, I suppose Do you not think this may have been his meaning? B.-But the misfortune is, that it totally destroys

his meaning, for the more sense of the ridiculous,
and the more sense of the sublime a man has, the
less he is likely to make the sublime ridiculous.
A.-But will this explanation account for the
phenomena from which you admitted that this sen-
timent derived some plausibility. As, for instance,
my first class the speeches of the heroes and mar-
tyrs in the French Revolution?

life there is within, which they have derived from
the mind of their authors. Omitting the first mode
of judging, great men are often intolerant to one
another, attributing to original perversity, opinions to
which, but for accidental circumstances, they would
never have given birth. Omitting the second, or-
dinary men are constantly paying respect to some
dicta which their own narrow experience has made
plausible, and rejecting others more important, be-
cause the evidence of them is beyond their ken.
Uniting both, I think we may be able to excuse the
very errors which we are correcting, to account for
the very phenomena from which we refuse to draw
our inferences.

A.-I shall be happy to join you in making the
experiment.

THE LIFE OF LOCKE.

their sympathy or reverence. Nor was Locke a man
to separate himself (like Milton) from his fellows,
and build up and people in solitude a spiritual king-
dom of his own, not governed by the laws of time
or custom, nor liable to the changes of vulgar opinion.
He had not himself imagination to re-establish the
intercourse between the sphere of ideas and the
sphere of practice. And feeling most strongly (as,
not being endowed with a creative and spiritual
imagination, he was right to feel,) the insufficiency
of that which seemed to him, and to all around him,
a remote and lifeless system, he began to labour in
raising up, out of this sensible frame of things, a
compacted and lofty tower, such as might in some
degree content mankind by a faint resemblance to
the height and order of the heaven which they had
no longer wings to scale, and which, in their eyes,
was divested of the chiefest portion of its glory.
This is, in few and inadequate sentences, our
establish in the minds of thinking men the import-
ance of the actual world. This lay trodden under
the feet of his contemporary theorists, while the spi-
raise the sensations and the practical understandings
ritual region had gone afar off, and was beyond his
reach as well as theirs. He, therefore, attempted to
of mankind into the place of honour and power,
which it was so important that something else than
mere impulse and guess-work should occupy.

The Life of John Locke, with Extracts from his Cor-conception of Locke's design. He wished to re-
respondence, Journals, and Common-Place Books.
By Lord King. 1 vol. 4to. pp. 404. Colburn.
London, 1829.

B.-If you study the French literature of the 18th century, you will be convinced that one calamity had already befallen that nation, which was the loss of all sense of the sublime; and that another was likely soon to befall it, which was, a loss of all sense of the ridiculous. And what singularly illustrates the truth we have just been elucidating, one of these effects took place through the other. Voltaire, in teaching his countrymen that the business, of ridicule was to parody and counterfeit sublimity, set the two principles at war-took away from wit its natural province, and made such utter confusion between them, that in a very short time it was impossible for a Frenchman to know any thing about either. The effect was not perceived at first, and the other nations of Europe went on imagining that the French nation had a keener perception of Locke is very little read in England. His reputaMR. STEWART has observed, with great truth, that the ridiculous than any existing, till the revolution tion is almost entirely collegiate or foreign. Educated came and proved that there never had been or could be, a nation which ran so headlong into absurdities of his works in universities, where they are used as men generally judge of him either from what is known from the want of it. And thus the union of sub-text-books, and of course dessicated and impoverished limity and ridiculousness, instead of proceeding from into mere heaps of dry bones, or from the renown any law of the human mind which connected them, given him by the French philosophers of the eighteenth proceeded from the violation of a law which pro- century, by Condillac and Voltaire, who understood vided for their constant separation. but little of the books, and nothing at all of the man. Nor is it very wonderful that he failed in making himself easily intelligible to his successors, for he certainly did not very clearly comprehend himself. Honest and modest as he was, he seems to have thought that he was in some degree fitted to write a scientific treatise on the human mind; though he certainly did not fancy that he had produced the complete and circular work which the Essay on the Human Understanding' has been called by many of his admirers. On this point we believe that he On the other hand, let us look into his works for was mistaken; and we are sure that the million are what they really contain of excellent, and we find so still. The service which, in our opinion, Lord them the productions of one of the clearest and most King has rendered is the publication of a book that cautious understandings that ever gave rules for will go far towards convincing every one in how human conduct. They are covered all over with a small a degree Locke was a scientific thinker, and rich fruitage of good sense and of the soundest feelhow admirable were his practical sense and judgings. And there are scarcely any books in which ment, and his social virtues and accomplishments.

A.-And the other class of phenomena, the union of sublimity and ludicrousness, and the subserviency of the latter to the former, how do you explain that? B. From the opposite cause to that just noted, producing the opposite effect. That true law of connection between the perception of the sublime and the perception of the ridiculous, which had worn out in the French nation, has its highest vigour in the mind of a man of genius. Consequently in never trembling, lest his sublimity should become ridiculous, he is always to exert both the faculties, and to exhibit in the same wonderful work the miracles which are wrought by their united agency. And hence the friendly connection between the scenes of wit and pathos in Shakspeare-hence the easy transition in our minds from the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, to the heath which trembled under the sense of fear. And so let it ever be in literature and art. Let each of their provinces be cultivated to the highest limits of its capacity, and let there be the freest, the most unrestricted commerce between them. Let no port-dues, no prohibiting duties, ever prevent the goods of one from finding their way, by the shortest and easiest route, into the other. Let there be a thorough sympathy between the natures of each a well-grounded understanding of the other's provincial government and municipal regulations, and let there be one law over them all, deriving its origin and its sanction from that central principle which imparts life to the system, and directs the energies of each part of it, so that it shall best minister to the good of the whole.

A.-And now may it please you to enlighten my dark understanding as to the special object of the conversation into which you have unawares betrayed me.

B. My object was not very definite when we began to talk, and, as far as I know, I was chiefly occupied with replying to your questions. But if you will have a moral out of every thing, I think we may probably extract one, even from our loose and vagrant dialogue. Do you not think it would be possible to apply the method we have pursued in discussing Napoleon's dictum, to other much more original and important sayings of great men ; might it not be a useful exercise to bring to this test many sayings of Dr Johnson and others who have given hogmas to the world, which exercise a silent and strong influence over its opinions and modes of dinking; first examining them outwardly, to see that facts may have suggested them, and what then

It is worth while to consider, for a moment, what was really done by Locke in philosophy, and how it came to be supposed that he had done so much which he in fact never did think of, and so much more which so wise a man could never by any possibility have thought of.

The age in which Locke lived was undoubtedly the least poetical of modern history. The human imagination had scarcely ever been so feeble as it then was. From this resulted an almost entire separation between philosophy and real life. The great truths of metaphysics, which for those who first brought them out into distinct consciousness, were living powers, became bare and meagre abstractions. The imagination, wherever it had been vigorous and creative, had always served to connect, in the mind of the speculative thinker, the ideal with the actual world; to impersonate the principles of being as individual conceivable forms; and to clothe and exalt the work-day persons and affairs of society with the light of a higher sphere. This was the genuine and healthy state of the human mind. The two worlds, the world of thought and the world of action, remained perfectly distinct, and each in itself complete; while the imagination moved and ministered between them on its etherial ladder, attended by all its troop of angelic spirits. In the age of Locke such was no longer the state of things. The loftier and purer region contained no longer those forms born of imagination, without which that region is an object for the intellect only, and cannot be beneficially brought into connection with actual society. It had, therefore, become a pale abstraction hanging above the heads of men, but incapable of engaging

Locke was a virtuous and an humble-minded, as

well as an able and accomplished man, and where his skill and strength were not adequate to conduct his fellows in safety, he willingly paused, and declared his own insufficiency. He found that his own method of leading men back to practice and common sense would take him only a little way in philosophy; but he seldom attempted to push forward desperately, and he confessed the existence of the difficulties which he could not overcome. Even thus he fell into many hazards, and many contradictions; and remained as far as possible from giving the world an entire and methodical exposition.

you can find fewer propositions fit to become parts of a scientific treatise, or a greater number of useful, serviceable observations.

But see how his writings have been treated by the French. He tried the experiment of making a system out of our sensations, and failed. He was met on all sides by difficulties which sensations could not account for, and of which he was far too wise, too good, too careful for human welfare, and for morality and religion, to deny the existence. But some of the French philosophers, and more especially Condillac, fearing not at all to expose mankind to dangers which the stronger and better-cultivated mind of

Locke had wished to withdraw them from encountering, bravely pushes on to the end with that guidance which the Englishman felt to be insufficient,

tell us that the moral perils which Locke was so honourably afraid of are mere phantoms and delusions, and builds on his foundation a system altogether circular, and towering to the skies, where he had felt that no such thing was possible without shutting out a world of truths to which his quack disciple was utterly indifferent.

'The Life of Locke, by Lord King,' is, as far as his lordship's part in the volume goes, most especially worthless. Two or three rants about toleration, and two or three very needless hits at the church, are almost all that he adds to Locke's papers, and to those facts which might have been found in any biographical dictionary. He attempts nothing like an estimate of the character and writings of the eminent man whose manuscripts he publishes, and does not write one discriminating word as to his influence on society, and on subsequent thinkers. He has throughout modernised the spelling of the papers

What, we would ask, can be more pleasant and gentlemanly than the following letter, written when Locke was thirty-three?

To Mr. John Strachy, Sutton Court, Bristol.
DEAR SIR,

he gives us; and yet in nearly every page there is all was like the noise of choosing Parliament men, where some word, English, French, or Latin, so strangely every one endeavours to cry loudest. Besides the men, written that we involuntarily look for a note, and not there were a company of little choristers, I thought when finding one, are left in doubt whether to attribute the I saw them at first, they had danced to the other's music, error to Locke's careless writing, or to his lordship's and that it had been your Gray's Inn revels; for they were correction of the press. There is, moreover, one jumping up and down, about a good charcoal fire that was omission which we would entreat Lord King to re- in the middle of the quire (this their devotion and their medy in any reprint of the book. It appears that singing was enough, I think, to keep them warm, though the papers, some of which he has now published, it were a very cold night); but it was not dancing, but while others have not yet seen the light, contain a singing they served for; when it came to their turns, great many references to books, almost all of which away they ran to their places, and there they made as have been omitted by the editor. Yet a list of all good harmony as a concert of little pigs would, and they the works quoted or alluded to by Mr. Locke would were much about as cleanly. Their part being done, out have been one of the most curious and valuable do- they sallied again to the fire, where they played till their cuments that Lord King could possibly have pub-cue called them, and then back to their places they hudlished. His lordship does not seem to be at all aware dled. So negligent and slight are they in their service in how much controversy has existed as to the extent and nature of this celebrated author's reading, nor them to be more careful; but I suppose the natural tena place where the nearness of adversaries might teach to perceive how interesting a subject of inquiry it dency of these outside performances, and these mummemust necessarily be for every speculative Englishman.ries in religion, would bring it every where to this pass, It must not, however, be supposed that we do not did not fear and the severity of the magistrate preserve think this volume of great value. It does more than it; which being taken away here, they very easily suffer all that before existed in print to show us Locke the themselves to slobber over their ceremonies, which in individual, and thereby to set the genuine man apart other places are kept up with so much zeal and exactness; from the Locke of the French theorists. In these but methinks they are not to be blamed, since the one pages he appears as a perfect gentleman, a kind seems to me as much religion as the other. In the afterfriend, a keen and general observer, a most accurate noon, I went to the Carthusians' church; they had their and delightful writer, and a man of the strongest and little gentry too, but in finer clothes; and their angels most grounded sense, in all questions of manners, with surplices on, and singing books in their hands; for politics, literature, science, and morals. And it is here is nothing to be done without books. Hither were most consolatory to perceive how much more of his crowded a great throng of children to see these pretty mind was devoted to kindliness, good humour, uni- babies, and I amongst them, as wise and as devout as versal inquiry, social enjoyment, and sound and they, and for my pains had a good sprinkle of holy water, active principles, than to that abstract system which, and now I may defy the devil: thus have I begun the in general estimation, is almost solely connected with holidays with Christmas gambols. But had I underhis name, and of which only a portion was ever stood the language, I believe, at the reformed church, 1 really adopted by him. had found something more serious; for they have two here. That which pleased me most was, that at the same sermons at their church, for Christmas lasts no longer Catholic church the next day, I saw our Lady all in white linen, dressed as one that is newly lain in, and on her lap something that, perhaps twenty years since, was designed for a baby, but now it was grown to have a beard; and methought was not so well used as our country fellows used to be, who, though they escape all the year, are usually trimmed at Christmas. They must pardon me for being merry, for it is Christmas: but, to be serious with you, the Catholic religion is a different thing from what we believe it in England. I have other thoughts of it than when I was in a place that is filled with prejudices, and things are known only by hearsay. I have not met with any so good-natured people, or so civil, as the Catholic priests, and I have received many courtesies from them, which I shall always gratefully acknowledge. But to leave the good-natured Catholics, and to give you a little account of our brethren the Calvinists, that differ very little from our English Presbyterians. I met lately, accidentally, with a young sucking divine, that thought himself no small champion; who, as if he had been some knight-errrant, bound by oath to bid battle to all comers, first accosted me in courteous voice; but the customary salute being over, I found myself assaulted most furiously, and heavy loads of arguments fell upon me. I, that expected no such thing, was fain to guard myself under the trusty broad shield of ignorance, and only now and then returned a blow by way of inquiry: and by this Parthian way of flying, defended myself till passion and want of breath had made him weary, and so we came to an accommodation; though, had he had lungs enough, and I no other use of my ears, the combat might have lasted (if that may be called a combat, ubi tu cades ego vapulo tantum) as long as the wars of Troy, and the end of all had been like that, nothing but some rubbish of divinity as useless and incoherent as the ruins the Greeks left behind them. This was a probationer in theology, and, I believe, (to keep still to my errantry), they are bound to show their prowess with some valiant unknown, before they can be dubbed, and receive the dignity of the order. I cannot imagine why else he should set upon me, a poor innocent wight, who thought nothing of a combat, and desired to be peaceable, and was too far from my own dunghill to be quarrelling; but, it is no matter, there were no wounds made but in Priscian's head, who suffers much in this country. This provocation I have suffi

⚫ Cleve, 1665. "Are you at leisure for half an hour's trouble? will you be content I should keep up the custom of writing long letters with little in them? 'Tis a barren place, and the dull frozen part of the year, and therefore you must not expect great matters. 'Tis enough, that at Christmas you have empty Christmas tales fit for the chimney-corner. To begin, therefore, December 15th, (here 25th), Christmas-day, about one in the morning, I went a gossiping to our Lady; think me not profane, for the name is a great deal modester than the service I was at. I shall not describe all the particulars I observed in that church, being the principal of the Catholics in Cleves; but only those that were particular to the occasion. Near the high altar was a little altar for this day's solemnity; the scene was a stable, wherein was an ox, an ass, a cradle, the Virgin, the babe, Joseph, shepherds, and angels, dramatis persona: had they but given them motion, it had been a perfect puppet play, and might have deserved pence a-piece; for they were of the same size and make that our English puppets are; and I am confident, these shepherds and this Joseph are kin to that Judith and Holophernes which I have seen at Bartholomew fair. A little without the stable was a flock of sheep, cut out of cards; and these, as they then stood without their shepherds, appeared to me the best emblem I had seen a long time, and methought represented these poor innocent people, who, whilst their shepherds pretend so much to follow Christ, and pay their devotion to him, are left unregarded in the barren wilderness. This was the show: the music to it was all vocal in the quire adjoining, but such as I never heard. They had strong voices, but so ill-tuned, so ill-managed, that it was their misfortune, as well as ours, that they could be heard. He that could not, though he had a cold, make better music with a chevy chace over a pot of smooth ale, deserved well to pay the reckoning, and go away athirst. However, I think they were the honestest singing men I have ever seen, for they endeavoured to deserve their money, and earned it certainly with pains enough; for what they wanted in skill, they made up in loudness and variety: every one had his own tune, and the result of

ciently revenged upon one of their church, our landlord, who is wont sometimes to Germanize and to be a little too much of the creature. These frailties I threaten him to discover to his pastor, who will be sure to rebuke him (but sparing his name) the next Sunday from the pulpit, and severely chastise the liberty of his cups; thus I sew up the good man's mouth, because the other gaped too much, and made him as much bear my tongue as I was punished with the other's. But for all this, he will some

times drink himself into a defiance of divines and disci

pline, and hearken only to Bacchus's inspirations. You must not expect any thing remarkable from me all the following week, for I have spent it in getting a pair of gloves, and think, too, I have had a quick despatch; you will perhaps wonder at it, and think I talk like a traveller; but I will give you the particulars of the business. Three days were spent in finding out a glover, for though I can walk all the town over in less than an hour, yet their shops are so contrived, as if they were designed to conceal, not expose their wares; and though you may think it strange, yet, methinks, it is very well done, and 'tis a becoming modesty to conceal that which they have reason enough to be ashamed of. But to proceed: the two next days were spent in drawing them on, the right hand glove, (or, as they call them here, hand shoe) Thursday, and the left hand, Friday, and I'll promise you this was two good days' work, and little enough to bring them to fit my hands and to consent to be fellows, which, after all, they are so far from, that when they are on, I am always afraid my hands should go to cuffs one with another, they so disagree: Saturday we concluded on the price, computed, and changed our money, for it requires a great deal of arithmetic and a great deal of brass to pay twenty-eight stivers, and seven doits; but, God be thanked, they are all well fitted with counters for reckoning; for their money is good for nothing else, and I am poor here with my pockets full of it. I wondered at first why the market horse, till I found it necessary to carry home the price of people brought their wares in little carts, drawn by one them; for a horse-load of turnips, would be two horseload of money. A pair of shoes cannot be got under half a year: I lately saw the cow killed, out of whose hide I hope to have my next paif. The first thing after they are married here is to bespeak the child's coat, and truly the bridegroom must be a bungler that gets not the child before the mantle be made; for it is far easier here to have a man made than a suit. To be serious with you, they are the slowest people, and fullest of delays that ever I have met with, and their money as bad. December 22nd

saw the inscription that entitles the Elector's house here to so much antiquity; it stands at the upper end of a large room, which is the first entrance into the house, and is as follows:-" Anno ab urbe Romanâ conditâ 698 Julius Cæsar Dictator hisce partibus in ditionem susceptis arcem

hanc Clivensem fund." I know not how old the wall younger than I am, as appears by the characters and was that bore it, but the inscription was certainly much other circumstances; however, I believe the painter reverenced the antiquity, and did homage to the memory of Cæsar, and was not averse to a tradition which the situation and antique mode of building made not improbable. The same time, I had the favour to see the kitchen and the cellar, and though in the middle of the first there was made on the floor a great fire big enough to broil half a dozen St. Laurences, yet methought the cellar was the better place, and so I made haste to leave it, and have little to say of it, unless you think fit I should tell you how many rummers of Rhenish I drank, and how many biscuits I ate, and that I had there almost learned to speak High Dutch. December 24,-At the Lutherans' church, after a good lusty, rattling High Dutch sermon, the sound whereof would have made one think it had the design of reproof, I had an opportunity to observe the administration of the Sacrament, which was thus :-the sermon being ended, the minister that preached not (for they have two to a church) stood up at a little desk which was upon the communion table, almost at the upper end of the church, and then read a little while, part of which reading I judged to be prayer, but observed no action that looked like consecration, (I know not what the words were); when he had done, he placed himself at the north end of the table, and the other minister that preached, at the south end, so that their backs were toward one another; then there marched up to him on the north side a

communicant, who, when he came to the minister, made a low bow, and knelt down, and then the minister put water into his mouth; which done, he rose, made his obeisance, and went to the other end, where he did the same, and had the wine poured into his mouth, without taking the cup in his hand, and then came back to his place by the south side of the church. Thus did four, one after another, which were all that received that day, and amongst them was a boy, about thirteen or fourteen years old. They have at this church a sacrament every Sunday morning: in the afternoon, at the Calvinists', I saw a christening. After sermon there came three men and three women, (one whereof was the midwife, with a child in her arms, the rest were godfathers and godmothers, of which they allow a greater number than we do, and so wisely get more spoons,)-to the table which i just by the pulpit. They taking their places, the minister in the pulpit read a little of the Institution, then read a short prayer; then another minister, that was below, took the child, and with his hand poured water three times on its forehead, which done, he in the pulpit read another short prayer, and so concluded. All this was not much longer than the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments; for all their service is very short, beside their preaching and singing, and there they allow good measure.'-Pp. 13–18.

(To be continued.) THE NEW FOREST.

The New Forest: a Novel. By the Author of
Brambletye House, &c. Three vols. Colburn.
London, 1829.

THE work before us is unlike the other novels of
the author, in this respect, that the time of its action
is within the present century. We are inclined to
think that this difference will be unfavourable to the
popularity of The New Forest.' People in general
like to read of obsolete or outlandish customs; and
an author may be pretty sure of finding readers who
professes to retail the forgotten scandal of London in
the seventeenth century, and Jerusalem in the days
of Mark Antony.
We can, however, assure the
public that if they will take the trouble to examine
at all minutely, they will discover the characters and
manners of England in our own time, as represented
by the author of The New Forest,' to be no less
strange and fanciful than those which he has as-
signed to the Roundheads and the Pharisees. We
find in this work, people of the highest fashion de-
scribed as showing their superior breeding, not by
ease and elegance, but by peculiar stiffness and af.
fectation. We have a heroine (Fanny) designed to be
one of the most delightful of those delightful creatures,
pretty and lively young ladies, and yet ejaculating

tunity of treating them uncivilly, would simply be
kicked in consequence, out of all educated society,
with as little mercy as might be shewn to an un-
licked North American bear. It is no doubt very true,
that there is no natural distinction of ranks, that men
are not born with coronets on their heads, or even
with WHOLE coats on their backs; and we do not
pretend that money is a virtue. But it happens that
the richer classes are, in general, the best instructed,
and have the most agreeable manners; and a person
who does not feel this, is thereby only convicted of
not comprehending a kind of merit of which he has
none himself. The error of the picture of purse-
proud arrogance and ignorance, is this, that in the
great majority of cases, there is, in truth, more mental
cultivation among persons having some property,
than among persons having none. And Mr. Smith,
by way of writing a novel with a moral, has merely
made a gross blunder in 3 vols. 8vo., which has been
committed before him by a dozen other writers.
The design of his book is, in fact, substantially the
same as that of an old novel, Hermsprong, or
Man as he is not,' which we are convinced the
author of The New Forest' never saw, as, if it had
fallen in his way, he must have immediately per-
ceived the faults of his own plan. **

its area;.

that a painter loves: detached clumps of trees, breaking its monotony, served to unite its woody boundaries with while a large sheet of water that occupied its centre, was nearly bisected by a long projecting tongue of land, upon which, especially in the sunny evenings of summer, might be seen groups of cattle, or forest mares with their foals, sending their long shadows athwart the golden bloom of the little lake. The view from the opposite side of the gentle eminence on which the village stood, though totally dissimilar, was scarcely less attractive-the eye passing over enclosed corn-fields, pastures, and meadows, till it reached the Isle of Wight, the insularity of which not being perceptible to the eye, gave to the intervening channel the appearance of an extensive lake bounded by rugged cliffs and distant mountains.

6

A clump of lofty elms and lime-trees, branchless for some distance from the ground, but tufting over luxuriously at top, formed an arch across the road leading to the village, around which numerous flights of pigeons were generally to be seen wheeling and careering; while beneath its aperture might be discerned the low spire of the church embosomed in foliage. Athwart the strag gling irregular central road of Thaxted, dignified by the name of the High-street, hung the sign of the chief inn, exhibiting a most bellipotent Saint George on a fiery white horse, having obviously the best of it in a conflict The story of the book is rather confined, and not with a portentous green dragon, who seemed to be comvery original; but some of the descriptions are plea-plaisantly opening his mouth for the express purpose of sant, and of these none so much so as the opening swallowing his adversary's javelin. The building to chapter. There are no characters nor scenes of any which this flaring daub was prefixed, was an ancient low great force or truth; and, the author has succeeded edifice, constructed with solid timbers blackened on the best in the very lowest of his attempts, the talk, | outside, the interstices being plastered and white-washed. namely, of an innkeeper who attends scientific lec- A sharp-pointed gable, fretted with half-decayed oak tures, and hashes into his conversation the blundered wood, crowned the front! and the roof was of large sand. nomenclature of natural philosophy. stones, covered with moss and house-leek, from the

We subjoin a part of the first chapter, which pleasantly reminds us of Miss Mitford's sketches:

'On the southern verge of the New Forest, in Hampshire, and at no great distance from the sea, stands a large and populous village, to which, for special reasons of our own, we shall assign the fictitious appellation of Thaxted. Its situation and appearance were much more picturesque than might have been expected from its vicinity to the sea, an element which, in our northern latitudes, generally imparts a sterile and unlovely character to the contiguous shores, either preventing altogether the growth of trees, or giving such a stunted, warped, and cankered appearance to those that struggle against the chalky soil and stormy winds, as to make them rather disfiguring than ornamental to the scenery. Such was not the case at Thaxted, which was sufficiently removed from the great landscape-spoiler to be beyond the reach of its baneful influence, and yet near enough to derive from it all those scenic embellishments which so

midst of which issued a ponderous red brick chimney,

placed edgeways, and surmounted with numerous ragged and the cornice that divided them had sunk considerably mouldings. The upper story projected over the lower, on one side, without, however, appearing to have injured the general solidity of the building, which, humble as it was, constituted the most important structure in the High-street.

In passing the irregular assortment of barns, sheds, shops, and houses, thatched, tiled, and slated, that made observe, from the various inscriptions, that there seemed up the straggling village, the attentive traveller might to be but four names in the whole place, the two first ex

hibiting the unmeaning monosyllables of Wilks and

and Stubbs, and the remaining two the more rural compounds of Penfold and Haslegrove, which, with various interchanged; while a physiognomist would have been baptismal distinctions, were perpetually alternated and tempted to imagine, from the similarity of the faces sur

had successively intermarried until the whole village had become, as it were, one numerous family. They who patriarchal times, might dream that such a mutually conhave derived their notions from the golden age or the

lud' at every second sentence. We have a South-eminently enhance the beauty of a rich land view, by rounding him, that the owners of these four appellations ampton smuggler, one of the most generous and high-affording occasional glimpses of the gleaming sea, or a minded of men; and a captain (of hussars, we believe,) evidently intended to be a picture of a class, and who is only distinguished from other gentlemen by cowardice and mispronunciation. We might add a dozen more of these extravagances; but they all shrink into obscurity before the dazzling absurdity

of the hero.

white sail, caught beneath the boughs of noble trees,
athwart the undulating hollows of the intervening downs,
or over an enclosed and cultivated level. The village
stood upon the extreme edge of a heath, not of such ex-
in the interior of the New Forest, are extensive enough to
tent as some of those which, forming spacious openings

deserve the name of

""Vast savannas, where the wand'ring eye,
Unfixed, is in a verdant ocean lost;"

This young gentleman has been educated in the United States, where he has become an Utilitarian.' (Thank Heaven! the word is not English! any more than the thing.) The way in which this and yet sufficiently large to give breadth, distance, and prudent personage manifests the principle of Uti-picturesqueness, to the surrounding scenery. Its oppolity," in his conduct, is by throwing about his site extremity was bounded by the forest, forming woody money (of which he has not much) to every one bays and promontories, alternately receding from, and who is willing to relieve him from it; and by keep-advancing into, the heath; now opening upon some deep ing a large stock of the readiest and most profound dark vista, athwart whose distant gloom the deer were sensibility for the sufferings of every one around him. Yet, some how or other, it never occurs to this paragon of trans-atlantic philosophy, that his sylogistic pedantry and contemptuous affectation are more annoying to every one he meets than would be the thumb-screw or the rack. Mr. Smith is not, perhaps, aware that there is no proof of a strong propensity to examine every thing by the test of reason, in a fondness for putting bad reasoning into the form of a syllogism. Neither does he seem to know, that a person who should profess to despise the wealthy classes, and should take every oppor

occasionally seen to hound, or from which a timber-wain,
in Hampshire called a tug, was slowly emerging, under
the efforts of a numerous team of oxen ;-now throwing
forward some prominent grove so far upon the open
land, that the tuftings of its noble trees fell into rich
masses of light and shade, relieved by the umbrageous
back-ground of the Forest. Nor was the heath itself by
any means so forlorn or dreary an object as might be sup-
posed. Its broken surface, tufted with every variety of
furze, fern, and other wild plants, and presenting here
and there the red ochreous banks of a road that wound
through it, was tinted with the rich harmonious hues

nected society, inhabiting so beautiful and sequestered a retreat, would form an united brotherhood of peace and love; while they who contemplate our peasantry, “as truth will paint them, and as bards will not," will not widely err in forming a very different conclusion. In most large families, indeed, the claims of consanguinity are too apt to be forgotten in opposing interests, and the consequent feelings of jealous rivalry; in which respect, the greater part of the inhabitants of Thaxted, “a little

more than kin and less than kind," offered no exception to the general rule. Towards the end of the village the road branched off in two directions round a little green, furnished with a finger-post, of which, according to the laudable practice of semi-barbarous England, one of the boards was broken off,, and the other rendered totally illegible; while a milestone on the opposite side of the road was equally unserviceable, from its figures having been carefully punched out and obliterated. In front of the green stood the stocks, the neglected state of which attested either the orderly habits of the villagers, or the remissness of the constable; and behind this crumbling machine was a pool of muddy water, termed the hors pond, on the poached margin of which might usually be seen six or eight ducks performing their toilet with busy beak, and now and then detaching a feather from