natural interest over the commonest daily-life objects? A table, or a joint stool, in his conception, rises into a dignity equivalent to Cassiopeia's chair. It is invested with constellatory importance. You could not speak of it with more deference, if it were mounted into the firmament. A beggar in the hands of Michael Angelo, says Fuseli, rose the Patriarch of Poverty. So the gusto of Munden antiquates and ennobles what it touches. His pots and his ladles are as grand and primal as the seething-pots and hooks seen in old prophetic vision. A tub of butter, contemplated by him, amounts to a Platonic idea. He understands a leg of mutton in its quiddity. He stands wondering, amid the commonplace materials of life, like primæval man, with the sun and stars about him.' Resist, if you can, the intoxicating magnificence of this sketch, in airy portraiture displayed,' of a still better player than the other a player in real life-one who played himself into a realising sense of affluence, whereof his pocket and table were utterly unconscious! Captain Jackson was a retired, half-pay officer, with a wife and two daughters. the no And was I in danger of forgetting this man?—his cheerful suppers ble tone of hospitality, when first you set foot in the cottage. the anxious ministerings about you, where little or nothing (God knows) was to be ministered. Althea's horn in a poor platter- the power of self-enchantment, by which, in his magnificent wishes to entertain you, he multiplied his means to bounties. You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what seemed a bare scrag cold savings from the foregone meal-remnant hardly sufficient to send a mendicant from the door contented. But in the copious will -the revelling imagination of your host — the mind, the mind, Master Shallow,' whole beeves were spread before you-hecatombs no end appeared to the profusion. It was the widow's cruse- the loaves and fishes; carving could not lessen, nor helping diminish it- the stamina were left the elemental bone still flourished, divested of its accidents. Let us live while we can,' methinks I hear the open-handed creature exclaim; 'while we have, let us not want,' here is plenty left; want for nothing '--with many more such hospitable sayings, the spurs of appetite, and o'd concomitants of smoking boards, and feast-oppressed chargers. Then sliding a slender ratio of Single Gloucester upon his wife's plate or the daughters', he wou'd convey the remanent rind into his own, with a merry quirk of the nearer the bone,' &c., and declaring that he universally preferred the outside. For we had our table-distinctions, you are to know, and some of us in a manner sate above the salt. None but his guest or guests, dreamed of tasting flesh luxuries at night, the fraginents were verè hospitibus sacra. But of one thing or another there was always enough, and leavings only he would sometimes finish the remainder crust, to show that he wished no savings. 'Wine we had none; nor, except on very rare occasions, spirits; but the sensation of wine was there. Some thin kind of ale I remember- British beverage,' he would say! Push about, my boys;' drink to your sweethearts, girls.' At every meagre draught, a toast must ensue, or a song. All the forms of good liquor were there, with none of the effect wanting. Shut your eyes, and you would swear a capacious bowl of punch was foaming in the centre, with beams of generous Port or Madeira radiating to it from each of the table corners. You got flustered, without knowing whence; tipsy upon words; and reeled under the potency of his unperforming Bacchanalian encouragements. "We had our songs-Why, Soldiers, Why,' and the British Grenadiers' in which last we were all obliged to bear chorus. Both the daughters sang. Their proficiency was a nightly theme-the masters he had given them the 'noexpense which he spared to accomplish them in a science so necessary to young women.' But then they could not sing without the instrument.'' 6 * 'Enthusiasm is catching; and even his wife, a sober native of North Britain, who generally saw things more as they were, was not proof against the continual collision of his credulity. Her daughters were rational and discreet young women; in the main, perhaps, not insensible to their true circumstances. I have seen them assume a thoughtful air at times. But such was the preponderating opulence of his fancy, that I am persuaded, not for any half hour together, did they ever look their own prospects fairly in the face. There was no resisting the vortex of his temperament. His riotous imagination conjured up handsome settlements before their eyes, which kept them up in the eye of the world too, and seem at last to have realized themselves; for they both have married since, I am told, more than respectably.' The above extracts (which we have taken copiously, from a shrewd suspicion that they will be new to more of our readers than passages of equal merit from any other book in the light literature of the last twenty years) have justified, we trust, all our praises of Elia, in point of graphic and humorous fancy. But most gracefully does he, ever and anon, mingle with this Euphrosynean vein, a grave or delicate pensiveness of sentiment, into which, we have observed that pure and poetic humor is ever prone softly to shadow. Take a random 'specimen for a great many, as good or better, see Elia passim. His sentiment, indeed, often indicates plainly enough a nervous temperament, and perhaps over-sensitive tastes; but it is never sickly, or vicious, or hard, or mean never. 'I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better than five-and-twenty years ago, that walking in the gardens of Gray's Inn - they were then far finer than they are now- the accursed Verulam Buildings had not encroached upon all the east side of them, cutting out delicate green crankles, and shouldering away one or two of the stately alcoves of the terrace— the survivor stands gaping and relationless, as if it remembered its brother-they are still the best gardens of any of the Inns of Court, my beloved Temple not forgotten-have the gravest character, their aspect being altogether reverend and law-breathing-Bacon has left the impress of his foot upon their gravel-walks-taking my afternoon solace on a summer day upon the aforesaid terrace, a comely sad personage came towards me, whom, from his grave air and deportment, I judged to be one of the old Benchers of the Inn. He had a serious thoughtful forehead, and seemed to be in meditations of mortality. As I have an instinctive awe of old Benchers, I was passing him with that sort of subindicative token of respect which one is apt to demonstrate toward a venerable stranger, and which rather denotes an inclination to greet him than any positive motion of the body to that effect-a species of humility and will-worship which I observe, nine times out of ten, rather puzzles than pieases the person it is offered to when the face turning full upon me strangely identified itself with that of Dodd. Upon close inspection I was not mistaken. But could this sad thoughtful countenance be the same vacant face of folly which I had hailed so often under circumstances of gayety; which I had never seen without a smile, or recognized but as the usher of mirth; that looked out so formally flat in Foppington, so frothily pert in Tattle, so impotently busy in Backbite; so blankly divested of all meaning, or resolutely expressive of none, in Acres, in Fribble, and a thousand agreeable impertinences? Was this the face-full of thought and carefulness - that had so often divested itself at will of every trace of either to give me diversion, to clear my cloudy face for two or three hours at least of its furrows? Was this the face-manly, sober, intelligent — which I had so often despised, made mocks at, made merry with? The remembrance of the freedoms which I had taken with it * Charles Lamb's complete works are announced as in press by George Dearborn, of New-York. Many thanks to him. How rich a treat is in store for us! came upon me with a reproach of insult. I could have asked its pardon. I thought it looked upon me with a sense of injury. There is something strange as well as sad in seeing actors - your pleasant fellows particularly-subjected to and suffering the common lot their fortunes, their casualties, their deaths, seem to belong to the scene, their actions to be amenable to poetic justice only. We can hardly connect them with more awful responsibilities. The death of this fine actor took place shortly after this meeting. He had quitted the stage some months; and, as I learned afterwards, had been in the habit of resorting daily to these gardens almost to the day of his decease. In these serious walks probably he was divesting himself of many scenic and some real vanities-weaning himself from the frivolities of the lesser and the geater theatre - doing gentle penance for a life of no very reprehensible fooleries — taking off by degrees the buffoon mask which he night feel he had worn too long and rehearsing for a more solemn cast of part. Dying, he Put on the weeds of Dominic.'' Shall we essay now to justify that presumptuous suggestion of ours, that Elia doth (we said not how faintly or transiently) now and then remind us of Shakspeare? How can we prove the likeness? Can we (can any man ?) analyze Shakspeare's witthat unaccountable happiness-that easy insight-that loving truth that diction, free as air, and lighter and more various than the birds that wing it? No. Reader, we must appeal to your candor. Do you not recognize a likeness, though haply indescribable? In the foregoing citations, have you not caught a frequent glimpse of the Shakspearean air and feature? Pr'y thee, read this: 'ALL FOOLS' DAY. The compliments of the season to my worthy masters, and a merry first of April to us all! -you Many happy returns of this day to you and you and you, Sir― nay, never frown man, nor put a long face upon the matter. Do not we know one another? what need of ceremony among friends? we have all a touch of that sameunderstand me-a speck of the motley. Beshrew the man who, on such a day as this, the general festival, should affect to stand aloof. I am none of those sneakers. I am free of the corporation, and care not who knows it. He that meets me in the forest to-day, shall meet with no wiseacre, I can tell him. Stultus sum. Translate ine that, and take the meaning of it to yourself for your pains. What, man, we have four quarters of the globe on our side, at the least computation. Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry we will drink no wise, melancholy politic port on this day and let us troll the catch of Amiens - duc ad me- duc ad me- -how goes it? Here shall be see Now would I give a trifle to know, historically and authentically, who was the greatest fool that ever lived. I would certainly give him in a bumper. Marry, of the present breed, I think I could without much difficulty name you the party. 'Remove your cap a little farther, if you please; it hides my bauble. And now each man bestride his hobby, and dust away his heels to what tune he pleases. I will give you for my part, 'Good master Empedocles, you are welcome. It is long since you went a salamander-gathering down Etna. Worse than samphire-picking, by some odds. "Tis a mercy your worship did not singe your mustachios. 'Ha! Cleombrotus! and what salads in faith did you light upon at the bottom of the Mediterranean? You were founder, I take it, of the disinterested sect of the Calenturists. Gebir, my old free-mason, and prince of Plasterers at Babel, bring in your trowel, most Ancient Grand! You have claim to a seat here at my right hand, as patron of the stammerers You left your work, if I remember Herodotus correctly, at eight hundred million toises, or thereabout, above the level of the sea. Bless us, what a long beil you must have pulled, to call your top workmen to their nuncheon on the low grounds of Sennaar. Or did you send up your garlic and onions by a rocket? I am a rogue if I am not ashamed to show you our Monument on Fishstreet Hill, after your altitudes. Yet we think it somewhat. 'What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears? — cry, baby, put its finger in its eye, it shall have another globe, round as orange, pretty moppet! C Mister Adams -'odso, i honor your coat-pray do us the favor to read us that sermon, which you lent to Mistress Slipslop the twenty and second in your portmanteau thereon Female Incontinenceit will come in most the same irrelevantly and impertinently seasonable to the time of day. 'Good Master Raymond Lully, you look wise. Pray correct that error. — Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine you a bumper, or a paradox. We will have nothing said or done syllogistically this day. Remove those logical forms, waiter, that no gentleman break the tender shins of his apprehension stumbling across them. Master Stephen, you are late. Ha! Cokes, is it you? - Aguecheek, my dear knight, let me pay my devoir to you. Master Shallow, your worship's poor servant to command. Master Silence, I will use few words with you. Slender, it shall go hard if I edge not you in somewhere. You six will engross all the poor wit of the company to-day. I know it, I know it. How sayest thou, reader? does not this smack of the great stock?is there not a something here beyond book-making, and at first hand?a sprinkling from the spring of Avon ?- a something racy, that tells of a virgin soil and the true root, and of that divine relationship, in short, that native Shakspeareanism, which we trust, O reader, thou wilt not now charge us with rash irreverence for ascribing to our Elia? The style of these essays we cannot but think admirable admirably faithful to the thought- evidently impressed and determined by it, at every turn; and therefore unaffected, though whimsical and quaint. It is quaint without homeliness, copious without flippancy, and embroidered, here and there, but never overladen, with a fanciful and humorous pedantry. Polysyllabled Latinities and little Saxon radicals, as our author dispenses them, are equally seasonable, and harmonize to admiration. In significant simplicity and pleasant naiveté, in happy selection from a full store of words, and in combining means of expression drawn from the most opposite resources of our language, Charles Lamb often rivals and combines, in one page, the styles of Bulwer, of Irving, and of Sterne; while, in the entire freedom of his diction from verbiage-loose ends - underbrush - he sur passes them all. Elia ought to become a classic; that is, among all gentlefolk, (we speak primitively)—all persons of gentle hearts, and, as Addison has it, of a polite imagination' that cherish, or at least indulge, poetry and dreams and metaphysics-not dead in love with mere business, though haply wedded thereto by Necessity grim flamen!-moderately lazy. With all such, -- our gentle Charles should be a household Lar a dear familiar. But for your utilitarian your self-styled matter-of-fact man your busy-body, (out upon them, insufferable bores!) your mere calculator or intriguer your chuckler over petty devices and sordid gains, and all your outrageous devotees to the palpable, (hard-handed, prone-faced crew!) for any of them to enjoy or comprehend or read or endure one page of Elia, is not less intensely impossible than that they should change their spots (spiritual maculations - more dureful than the leopard's) and list sphere music, and love night's virgin crescent and the dewy stillness of dawn. They will read Elia when the briar inhales fragrance from its neighbor rose. SCENES IN EUROPE. ANCIENT PORTRAITS IN THE GALLERY OF FLORENCE., In the famous gallery at Florence, there is a collection of antique busts of distinguished Romans, which are undoubtedly correct portraits, as they are known to have been copied from the life. They interested me greatly; and as I have never seen any description of them in print, I offer the following pages, from notes taken in the gallery. The busts are ranged on each side of an immense corridor, or passage-way. I came first to the bust of Pompey the Great. The head is not very well shaped; the forehead is narrow, but high enough; the face is handsome; the nose rather Grecian; and the features generally small and handsome. The countenance is animated, and expresses an amiable disposition; but there is very little which indicates greatness, either in the expression of the face or the formation of the head. Next to this are two busts of Julius Cæsar, one of which has the head of bronze. The laurel wreath is not seen on either; and the baldness of the fore part of the head, of which he was so much ashamed, is fully displayed. The heads are not alike; the bronze is the best, but both are bad; the marble bust has the forehead very low, and the nose appears extremely long in consequence. The profile of the bronze is good, though the forehead is retreating; the nose is slightly aquiline, and the features small. On the whole, taking either bust for a likeness, or forming my ideas from both, I should say Julius Cæsar had a badly shaped head; but this is perhaps |