gone to the India House with the express purpose of accepting whatever invitation he should give me; and, therefore, I accepted this, took my leave, and left Lamb in the act of resuming his aerial position." For a happy piece of narrative in an unusual style, suited to the occasion, we know nothing clearer or more appreciative, remembering the tangled web of Hazlitt's charac ter, than this account of an almost forgot ten volume and series of emotions: HAZLITT'S MODERN PYGMALION. and stately upon this aerial station, to have bowed condescendingly from this altitude, would have been-not ludicrous indeed; performed by a very superb person, and supported by a very superb bow, it might have been vastly fine, and even terrifying to many young gentlemen under sixteen; but it would have had an air of ungentlemanly assumption. Between these extremes, therefore, Lamb had to choose: between appearing ridiculous himself for a moment, by going through a ridiculous evolution, which no man could execute with grace; or, on the other hand, appearing lofty and assuming, in a degree which his truly humble nature (for he was the humblest of men in the pretensions which he put forward for himself) must have shrunk from with horror. Nobody who knew Lamb can doubt how the problem was solved: he began to dismount instantly; and, as it happened that the very first round of his descent obliged him to turn his back upon me as if for a sudden pur-Liber Amoris, or the Modern Pygmalion.' pose of flight, he had an excuse for laughing; which he did heartily-saying, at the same time, something to this effect, that I must not judge from first appearances; that he should revolve upon me; that he was not going to fly; and other facetiæ, which challenged a general laugh from the clerical brotherhood. "Hazlitt had published a little book which was universally laughed at, but which, in one view of it, greatly raised him in my opinion, by showing him to be capable of stronger and more agitating passions than I believed to be within the range of his nature. He had published his And the circumstances of the case were these:—— "When he had reached the basis of terra firma on which I was standing, naturally, as a mode of thanking him for his courtesy, I pre-thing, which he confesses in his book, or did sented my hand, which, in a general case, I should certainly not have done; for I cherished, in an ultra-English degree, the English custom (a wise custom) of bowing in frigid silence on a first introduction to a stranger; but, to a man of literary talent, and one who had just practised so much kindness in my favor at so probable a hazard to himself of being laughed at for his pains, I could not maintain that frosty reserve. Lamb took my hand; did not absolutely reject it," but rather repelled my advance by his manner. This, however, long afterwards I found was only a habit derived from his too great sensitiveness to the variety of people's feelings, which run through a gamut so infinite of degrees and modes as to make it unsafe for any man who respects himself to be too hasty in his allowances of familiarity. Lamb had, as he was entitled to have, a high self-respect; and me he probably suspected (as a young Oxonian) of some aristocratic tendencies. The letter of introduction, containing (I imagine) no matters of business, was speedily run through; and I instantly received an invitation to spend the evening with him. Lamb was not one of those who catch at the chance of escaping from a bore by fixing some distant day, when accidents (in duplicate proportion, perhaps, to the number of intervening days) may have carried you away from the place he sought to benefit by no luck of that kind; for he was, with his limited income-and I say it deliberately-positively the most hospitable man I have known in this world. That night, the same night, I was to come and spend the evening with him. I had confess in conversation, made much against it "On this occasion, in consequence of something. I said very much like what I am now say cares. man. 6 ing, Hazlitt sent me a copy of his Liber [ported with all its necessary circumstances, Amoris; which, by the way, bore upon the something which redeemed Hazlitt from the retitle-page an engraved copy of a female figure-proach (which till then he bore) of being open by what painter I forget at this moment, but I to no grand or profound enthusiasm-no overthink by Titian-which, as Hazlitt imagined, mastering passion. But now he showed inclosely resembled the object of his present ado- | deed— ration. The issue for Hazlitt, the unhappy 'The nympholepsy of some fond despair.'" issue, of the tale, was as follows:-The girl One of the earlier literary portraits of was a heartless coquette; her father was an humble tradesman (a tailor, I think); but her these volumes, Mrs. Grant, of Laggan, will sister had married very much above her rank; always attract the attention of New Yorkers and she, who had the same or greater preten- for her pictures of the primitive life of the sions personally, now stood on so far better Dutch settlers at Albany, pictures which Mr. ground than her sister, as she could plead, which Cooper transferred with little difficulty, so originally her sister could not, some good con- romantic was the fact, from her page of the nexions. Partly, therefore, she acted in a spirit chronicler to his of the novelist, the ideal of manoeuvring as regarded Hazlitt: he might artist of human nature. De Quincey has do as a pis aller, but she hoped to do better; felt the charm of this work, the "Memoirs of partly also she acted on a more natural impulse. an American Lady," for he thus gives his It happened that, amongst the gentlemen lodgers impressions of it. "But the work which was another, more favored by nature, as to per- interested me the most was that in which son, than ever Hazlitt had been; and Hazlitt she painted her own early years as passed was now somewhat withered by life and its This stranger was her fancy-man.'land States. It was a condition of society among the Anglo-Dutch of the New EngHazlitt suspected something of this for a long which had thus much of a paradisiacal contime; suspected, doted, and was again persuaded to abandon his suspicions; and yet he could not dition-that none was afore or after the relish her long conversations, with this gentle- other; no jealous precedencies; no suspiWhat could they have to say, unless cions; no spectacles of grinding poverty. their hearts furnished a subject? Probably the Aristocracy, there was none; pauperism, girl would have confessed at once a preference, there was none; and every member of the which, perhaps, she might have no good reason community saw a friend and a well-wisher in for denying, had it not been that Hazlitt's lavish every other. Happy, happy state, in which liberality induced him to overwhelm her with were to be found valuable presents. These she had no mind to renounce. And thus she went on, deceiving, and beguiling, and betraying poor Hazlitt, now half crazy with passion, until one fatal Sunday. On that day (the time was evening, in the dusk), with no particular object, but unhappy because he knew that she was gone out, and with some thought that, in the wilderness of London, he An anecdote of this lady gives rise to a might, by chance, stumble upon her, Hazlitt went out; and not a half mile had be gone, vindication of a paragraph or two of Wordswhen, all at once, he fancied that he saw her. Worth's poetry. It is worth quoting, for A second and nearer glance showed him that he similar blunders are being constantly repeatwas right. She it was, but hanging on the armed, as a warning to ignorant and impudent of the hated rival-of him whom she had a hundred times sworn that she never spoke to but upon the business of the house. Hazlitt saw, but was not seen. In the blindness of love, hatred, and despair, be followed them home; kept close behind them; was witness to the blandishments freely interchanged, and soon after he parted with her forever. Even his works of criticism this dissembling girl had accepted or asked for as presents, with what affectation and hypocrisy Hazlitt now fully understood. In his book he, in a manner, whistles her down the wind; notwithstanding that, even at that time, her jesses' were even yet his heart-strings.' There is, in the last apostrophe to her- Poor weed!--something which, though bitter and contemptuous, is yet tender and gentle; and, even from the book, but much more from the affair itself, as then re No fears to beat away, no strife to heal ;' a state which, with the expansion of civilization as it travels through American forests, may, for a century to come, be continually renewed in those lands, but elsewhere I fear never more in this world." fault-finding. An author, worth reading at all, may generally be supposed to mean something in what he writes, and, until the reader has found out what it is, he should give that author the benefit of a presumption of its value. This was the stupid prejudice against Wordsworth in polite society. WHAT A WORDSWORTH PUERILITY TURNS OUT. "Either from myself or from somebody else, Mrs. Grant had learned my profound veneration for the poetry of Wordsworth. Upon this she suddenly put a question to me upon the lines of Wordsworth, on seeing a robin red-breast pursuing a butterfly. The particular passage which she selected was to this effect: If Father Adam could open his eyes, Now,' said Mrs. Grant, what possible relation can Father Adam have to this case of the bird and the butterfly?' It must be mentioned here, that the poem was not in the Lyrical Ballads,' by which originally Wordsworth had become known, but in a second collection which had but just issued from the press. The volumes had been in the public hands, if they could be said to have reached the public at all in those years, for about a fortnight; but in mine, who had only recently arrived in London, not above two days. Consequently I had not seen the poem; and being quite taken aback by such a question, in a dinner party made up of people who had either not heard of Wordsworth, or heard of him only as an extravagant and feeble innovator, I believe that I made some absurd answer about Adam being possibly taken as a representative man, or representing the general sensibilities of human nature. Anything passes in company for a reason or an explanation, when people have not the demoniac passion for disputation; and Mrs. Grant accordingly bowed, in sign of acquiescence. I easily judged, however, that she could not have been satisfied; and in going home, with a strong feeling of selfreproach for having but ill sustained a poetic reputation for which I was so intensely jealous, I set myself to consider what could be the meaning for this connexion of Father Adam with the case; and, without having read the poem, by the light of so much as Mrs. Grant had quoted, instantly it flashed upon me that the secret reference must be to that passage in the Paradise Lost' where Adam is represented-on the very next morning after his fatal transgression, and whilst yet in suspense as to the shape in which the dread consequences would begin to reveal themselves, and how soon begin-as lifting up his eyes, and seeing the first sad proof that all flesh was tainted, and that corruption had already travelled, by mysterious sympathy, through universal nature. The passage is most memorable, and can never be forgotten by one who has thoughtfully read it : "The bird of Jove stoop'd from his airy flight, | outward signs by which Adam was made aware of a secret but awful revolution, which had gone like a whisper through all nature, was this very phenomenon of two animals pursuing in wrath others of more innocent and beautiful appearance. Reasonably, therefore, we may imagine, for the purposes of a poet, that if Adam were permitted to open his eyes again upon this earthly scene of things, it would send a peculiar anguish through his thoughts to see renewed before him that very same image and manifestation of ruin by which his eyes had been met and his suspense had been resolved on the very first morning succeeding to his fall. The only question which could arise after this upon the propriety of Mr. Wordsworth's allusion, was: Had he a right to presume in his readers such a knowledge of Milton? The answer to which is that Milton is as much a presumable or presupposable book in the reference of a poet, as nature herself and the common phenomena of nature. These a poet postulates, or presupposes in his reader, and is entitled to do so. ever, I mentioned the case afterwards to Mr. Wordsworth; and, in consequence of what I then said, he added the note of reference to Milton, which will be found in the subsequent editions. Another, and hardly, perhaps, so excusable a mistake, had been made upon the very same poem by The Edinburgh Review. Mr. Wordsworth had noticed the household charac ter of the red-breast and his consecration to the feelings of men, in all Christian countries; and this he had expressed by calling it The bird, whom by some name or other, How All men who know thee call their brother ;'— which passage the Reviewer had so little understood as to direct attention to it by italics. Yet the explanation was found in what immediately followed: Their Thomas in Finland, foll The Peter of Norway boors.' The bird is Robin with us in Britain, Thomas in another land, Peter in another, and so on. This was the explanation of what the Reviewer thought so absurd or inexplicable. To call a bird by a Christian name is, in effect, when expressed by a poet, to call him a brother' of man. And with equal ease might all the passages be explained which have Here, then, we find, that in Milton's representa- hitherto been stumbling-blocks to critics, where tions of the Fall, the very earliest-not the at least the objection has arisen out of misconsecond or third, but positively the very first-struction of the sense." The notion of foreign superiority is one that pervades vulgarity, both poor and mean, wealthy and noble, in this country. An opera dancer or singer would have no chance as Miss Smith. No merit, however astounding, would suffice to create a furore in her favor; unless, indeed, she came accredited from Paris or Milan. Here she could not, as Miss Smith, hope to emerge from obscurity. A poor singing-master, the other day, applied to the Insolvent Debtor's Court, as John Whittle. He had gained his livelihood as Giovanni Vitelli.-London Mirror. IF yer want to know who I am, I can tell yer just as quick as a fire flash: yer can bet yer life on th-a-t! I runs with Number Sixty: I does, and I sleeps on her pile of hose every night. The ma-chine don't go out to fires unless I go first and then may be she don't lag! I never wrote many letters and them wos on Forty's doors to let 'em know that Sixty's men was al around for the target go. But I'm blessed if I hasn't a curiosity to know wots wot about that ere Fire 'Nihilator which the papers are makin' such a muss about and I'm agoing to write one more letter to ask. I know it's a humbug afore I commence: cause that ere Barnum lays the hose of the whole concern. There's some kind of a Jenny Lindketch" about it though, or he wouldn't go in! Maybe he aint coon though! He's around when there's money in the pipe-bet your life on tha-a-t. I'm cussed if I didn't study over the "Sun" one blessed hour the other day at Pete Snediker's bar-room a-trying to find out wot it was all about. There's a man named Phillips invented it, the Sun said: but now look-a-here where is Phillips anyhow. Ef he's around roll him out for inspection. Where does he keep his machines to put out fire with a stream of smoke gushing through a pipe? Oh g-a-a-a-s! Why don't he bring the Nihilator out and try it on a fire? Ef he'll only try it when Sixty's boys have got their stream on I guess he'll know who's got the strongest play! Lane, where Number Thirty played old Talk of charcoal, too! No, you don't! I guess I knows all about charcoal by this time-I does. I read as how all engines will be worth now will be to put the smoke out and wash the old embers; that this ere gas knocks down flame just as flame used to knock down old Corneel Anderson. And yer may go yer length that flame 'ill mind this ere gas just about as much as Corneel used to mind flame! Now if Mr. Barnum or the Corporation think that I'm a goin' to take the ma-chine to de fi-re to play second fiddle to this ga-s, they may just take my coat and wear it out next Christmas. I don't sleep by de machine for nothing! I doesn't clean it out every Sunday for nothing!! I doesn't run to a fire out of my district without I knows my fun. What's the fun of pumping water on a bit of smoke I'd like to know? D'ye think I've held Sixty's pipe for nothing, when the man inside calls out to stop, the fire's out? Maybe I can't drench a house out, though-just try me, though. Maybe, too, I can't hit a streak of flame at sixty feet, and only half strike! And yer don't get this ere child to carry one of them ere Nihilators. He aint so fond of gases-s! I might as well be a juryman or a Continentaler in a three-cornered hat, going down Broadway with a tag of niggers at his heels. As Ned Forrest-and he's one of the boys-says in Othello, when I comes to that "my occupation's gone:" gone jest like a rainy Fourth of July. It's a brass machine with a brickbat in the paper said. Now I believe's that ere: I does! Acos the man Phillips must have We got a talking over this ere new rig of had a brick in his hat when he invented it. Barnum's in the engine-house, last Sunday Prehaps it's the same brick wot he puts into night, and our foreman, who knows a bit or the ma-chines! A brickbat made of nitre two worth knowing about books, says the and charcoal with some stuff they calls gyp-'Nihilator will all end in smoke-there's nosum-with a bottle inside with sugar and potash and vitriol: and when they smash 'em all up together the gas comes out of the pipe and puts the fire out? Oh y-a-a-s! Yer better believe I'll swallow that ere humbug! thing lively about it. A few precious gulls 'll be bitten by it, and then folks 'll take to the Firemen sweeter than ever. But my mind after all aint exactly straight about it. I'd like to measure off the hose afore I gives in one way or tother. If No. Sixty's men Wasn't I at fifty fires where there was are going to be humbugged by a parcel of drug stores a burning? Hav'n't I seen nitre old boxes (like a boy's squirt engine), workand gypsum, with potash and vitriol, burn-ed with brickbats and vitriol, I'm a goin' to ing together like a stable roof? Don't I leave the company right soon: yer may know better? Hav'n't I heard of the big bet your life on that, shand jimmyjohn of vitriol which got upsot down in the cellar of that ere store down in Maiden ONE WHO RUNS WITH No. "60.” VAGA MUNDO. After some months' residence in Madrid, the author picks up a fellow-traveller who is a fellow-countryman as well, and a servant, whom he tries hard to invest with somewhat of the interest of Sancho Panza (it seems a sine qua non with Iberian tour MR. WARREN has not, in his present work, able to give the results of his individual exthe same virgin field of travel which he pre-perience in an agreeable form. sented in that on the Amazon, noticed by us a few weeks ago. Spain, although almost a terra incognita when compared to France and Italy, is yet a well travelled country, and her very remoteness from the ordinary beat of fashionable travel seems to have secured to her a choicer set of visitors, or atists to have a comic bodyguard) with indifany rate of travel-writers, than have been enjoyed by other countries more comfortable, but less picturesque. Our expectations were highly raised by the capital title of Mr. Warren's book, Vagamundo, which may, we presume, be rendered in the vernacular by the expressive if not classic term, loafer, and which is admirably descriptive of the delightful feeling of vagabondizing independence with which the traveller, having passed the ordeal of custom-house tormentors, and comfortably ensconced himself in a hostelry of fair promise, issues forth on his first ramble through a strange city, with the probability that he does not know a soul out of its many thousands; a feeling which, in some moods of the mind, painful, is in others not unpleasant, from the feeling of self-reliance and independence it produces. ferent success, and with these companions makes the usual tour of the Mediterranean coast of Spain, crossing the Straits for a couple of weeks' sojourn in Morocco, which forms one of the most agreeable portions of the book. au On the second page of his volume the thor takes timely occasion to inculcate the advantages to the traveller of cultivating everywhere in general, and in Spain in particular, GOOD NATURE. "In no country is good nature more absolutely indispensable than in Spain. Let him to whom the generous fates have vouchsafed this precious boon-this sacred talisman, which converts whatever it touches into gold-let him, I say, thank heaven for the inestimable treasure it has bestowed, for a gift inexhaustible in its resources, and which will ever tend to lighten the burden of the brain and heart, and strew the rugged pathway of life with sparkling gems turally peevish and fretful, who is more disposed and fragrant flowers! But to him who is nato pick out a single grain of fault than to regard a peck of merit-who is never willing to allow any noble quality in another of which he himself is utterly deficient ; and who, on the other hand, firmly believes that every evil tendency which he finds existing in his own breast is ag We were somewhat disappointed in the first quarter of the book. The author enters on his subject as he entered Spain, by the least attractive side. We feared that we had encountered another of the many dull and superficial books of travel which appear to have been made up from the famous red guide-book, and not from observation of the broader pages of nature and character ever open to observation around. The Attaché, we thought, somewhat partook of the buck-gravated a hundredfold in the bosom of every ram stiffness of his official collar and skirts; he seemed to have a painful sense that it was his duty to give us an inventory of the places through which he passed, with their population, and an enumeration of the public edifices, if any, which they possessed. Then, too, he passed Burgos by without stopping to explore its famed cathedral or visiting the Tomb of the Cid a few miles distant, an omission we could not pardon. When the traveller however reaches Madrid he settles down in lodgings, and takes time to look about him, and he then becomes interesting as any man may who is other individual-a person of this description, |