it, unless the spirit of le Patriache has migrated from Ferney just to sketch the portrait of a fair denizen of Grosvenor-square, as though in her own person. After talking, as is the custom in the society in which countesses move in England of "The hoarsest watchman within the bills of mortality growling four,"-she enters into the pith of her subject thus: we must premise that she is a widow :—

To begin, then, at the very beginning,—and an enchanting one it was.- -I left my toilet about eleven, as perfect as Maradan could make me-jolie comme un cœur! Nardin had surpassed himself in my coeffure; and my chrysophrase necklace reflected that sort of subdued tint upon my countenance,-that air à sentiment,—which, Alberville says, is like moonlight on the sea. En fait du genre pensif I was really perfect; yet I felt a sort of evil presentiment! I stumbled on the trimming of my dress as I was getting into the carriage; I knew it must inevitably be chiffonné somewhere or other; but, after the loss of five minutes in investigation, Mademoiselle could not detect the exact spot, and I was left in the horror of uncertainty! Another five minutes at Lady Mary's door!-who always keeps one whilst she is putting on her last nuance of Végétal superfin; and her great fat porter stands yawning in one's face. And this, by the way, is not the most provoking of her sins: she wears nothing but des couleurs prononceésamber, or ponceau, or emerald;-so that, whoever hazards an entrée by her side is sure to look vapid and faded. On the present occasion her ladyship had thought proper to blaze forth in a cerise satin, by which I was quite écrasée."

Two things will strike our readers: the exact resemblance to the manner in which women of education in England write; and the admirable exposition of the lines,

"Vous qui possédez la beauté

Sans être vaine

As for coquette, the following will suffice: she is almost engaged to be married to the Lord Alberville, who uses the new simile of "like moonlight on the sea." She had told him "in the course of their morning's ride, but purely par epreuve et pour désoler son amourpropre that she should not be there." She, however, sees him on an ottoman with a certain Lady Alicia, and forthwith, being jamais indiscrète, rushes to the écarté table, and loses, Lord Alberville looking on, besides what she has in her purse, three hundred pounds, borrowed from a Sir Somebody Something, who is the object of her particular abhorrence. The next day she reflects thus:

"That I, with a jointure of six thousand a-year, cannot keep out of debt;-that I, at four-and-twenty years of age, cannot keep out of ——. No! I will not write the word: never did four innocent letters combine to form one so miss-ish and so mawkish as that of Love. Quant au prémier délit, let me once get out of this scrape with Foley, and I will dream of nought but Joseph Hume and retrenchment; et quant au second, I have half a mind to trancher l'affaire, and forestall the declaration of Alberville's new engagement, by accepting Sir George at once, and devoting myself to the podagrian duties of a conjugal life,"

This certainly proves her to be jamais indiscrète, and to have,

66

de lumieres naturelles,

Un esprit juste, gracieux,

Solide dans le serieux,

Et charmant dans les bagatelles."

Inexpressibly so indeed!

We can hold no longer. We will not sicken, we might almost say insult, our readers with any more of such a production as this. We cannot regard it otherwise than as a flagrant outrage, that this foolish, ignorant, and offensive vulgarity should be represented as forming the spirit, and giving tone to the manners, of good society in this country. We are certain that if Garrick had written his farce of High Life below Stairs on the same model, it would have been reckoned a scandal and ashame to attribute cuch manners and such morals even to Mrs. Kitty and my Lord Duke.

9th. We are among the very foremost of Mr. Mathews's real ad

mirers as we think we have shewn on more than one occasion. We will say at once that we consider him to possess genius, and that of a very diversified sort. To those, if any such be left in the world, who consider him a mere farceur, we shall not address ourselves-but we do not at all consider him as no more than a very fine comedian to do full justice to his merits. Mr. Mathews goes further than this. His powers of creating emotion are great. If we use a periphrasis to avoid the word tragedy, it is because that word has been warped from its truest meaning. The real criterion is-" Were you touched?" If you were, the actor or actress had those gifts which can produce all the effects of the best and purest tragedy. We don't care what the vehicle may be--is the sensation conveyed? Who that heard Pasta sing the song to the harp, in Otello'-who that has seen Brigottini, in Nina la folle par Amour,' that has not been touched to the very quick by the most tragic emotions. What matters it that the one is an opera and the other a ballet? What does it signify whether it be prose or verse, speech, look, or gesture, that produces the effect, if it be produced?

And has it not been produced by Mr. Mathews often? To say nothing of the touches of tenderness in some of his parts in the regu lar drama; look at his Gamester'-if you can bear to look—all the horrors of that odious passion are flung forth with a force that no tragedian ever surpassed. Look at his 'Mallet' for the picture of the softer and more pathetic feelings-every heart beat with him there.

Of his comic talents we need not speak-every body is full of them —but we say that his powers over both the fiercer and the softer passions, ought to be denominated tragic at once-though we do not care a cherry-stone what it is called as long as it is there. This gift, we think, is not sufficiently recognised by the public, and perhaps is too little cultivated by himself.

Having spoken thus, we are now not going to give him advice, like the people he complains of in his present At Home,' but to scold him at once. Not for any thing he does as an actor-but for his choice as

a manager. We respect his talents more than ever for the effect he is able to produce with such miserable materials-but he might get good ones, and he ought. We cannot afford to throw away the efforts of genius so uncommon as this upon such trumpery.

Mr. Mathews, we pretend to a slight knowledge of metaphysics, and therefore we regret most sincerely that your entertainments are not formed from your own observation, and the workings of your own mind upon what you observe. This very At Home,' now going ón, proves us to be right. Our metaphysics always spring from facts. Those portions of it which are your own are admirable-impayable: the rest is never mind. One of the portions we are alluding to, we chanced to know was yours-" Company, up or down"-and it is your creation—for you made the actual occurrence what it was. Another part which we liked exceedingly, namely, the very beginning, we have since heard, is also your's, and it confirmed another idea of ours which we will tell you as a secret; we are quite certain you are totally ignorant of it yourself. Those passages which you feel come from nature-the humour which is frank and true-the pathos which really has something to say to the heart-you deliver in a manner as superior to the composition of men who undertake to furnish so many puns in a page as but we will make no comparisons-we are sure you understand

us now.

In the present At Home,' there is alas! no pathos: and very angry we are with you for it. But if you had heard your voice change from the regular business-like grind of the song-speech in the second part to the fine fresh reality, of" O' your nain-sell," when the snow began to fall in Cumberland, you'd give us a little more of it, or you're not the kind-hearted man we take you for. Kitchener is good

but there is too much of him; and there is this dilemma besides. To those who did not know him, he cannot be very interesting, and to those who did, it must be painful to see him even by you. We, indeed, always regret seeing you come to individual imitation. In the first place, the best-humoured imitation may be unpleasing at least to the party if not to the friends. It always does, and is mostly meant, to cast more or less ridicule-which is of necessity undeserved: for this reason, that mimicry is compelled to single out peculiarities, and leaves them unblended with, and consequently unsoftened by, all that the individual possesses in common with the rest of the world.

Our second reason is, that your condensation of general characteristics into one person is so admirable, that we are sorry that you should waste your powers in the lower and narrower sphere of imitating a real man. To borrow an illustration from painting, the one is a history-piece, the other only a portrait.

One word more. The man who is writing his life-the man who is cruel to animals because he endeavours to be kind-the passengers in the Ramsgate steamer-and all their coachings, boatings, dinings, inns, and conversation, (laus Deo!) never did, can, or shall exist. And, therefore, we cannot but lament and condemn the giving up to these lusus, not naturæ, but male artis, the time, and talents, and most wearing exertion, of one whose representations of real nature are like 'yours, Mr. Mathews.

Yates was exceedingly lively and clever throughout his part of the piece. In the trial before Lord Norbury, he was his lordship, Mr. Charles Phillips, Mr. Somebody else, on the other side, and two witnesses in a succession equally rapid and happy. The best thing, in this, was general nature also. We mean the male witness. It was one of the most skilful and characteristic exhibitions of an Irishman we ever beheld. We do not think Charles Phillips very like—but, indeed, his manner is not sufficiently peculiar to render imitation very easy. In the speech of his opponent, there are one or two passages which, we consider, might be softened with advantage.

As for the Harlequinade! Wheugh! We should like to see the person who would describe it! Go see it, and you will see one of the most animated, ludicrous, and extraordinary exhibitions mortal eyes ever lighted upon. Pray, Mr. Yates, have you the gift of ubiquity?

20th. Unless five other papers be wrong-The 'Times,' the 'Morning Chronicle,' the Morning Journal,' the Globe,' and the Courier,'-the 'Morning Herald,' of yesterday was guilty of a gross outrage against public decency, and of the foulest slander against a gentleman holding an official situation of considerable importance. We allude to the report of the inquest on the body of the girl lately murdered near Kensington. The circumstances, of the case are most singularly revolting altogether-but even this is not sufficient for the Herald.' In its report of yesterday, it puts into the mouth of Mr. Stirling the Coroner, in a ease of life and death, two jests of a character so grossly and revoltingly filthy, that it is impossible for us to reprint them. Now we believe this to be an invention of the 'Morning Herald;' because there is a much more detailed report in the Times,' one quite as long as that in the 'Herald' in the 'Chronicle,' and moderately lengthy ones in the remainder. In these there is not one word of the kind, We cannot conceive a statement more calculated to injure Mr. Stirling, not only in his official capacity, but as a gentleman and a man. We have not the very slightest acquaintance with him, but we do not believe he acted in this shameful manner, for the reasons we have above stated If be so, it is an additional reason for the giving a power to the magistrates, which we have heard hinted at, of punishing editorial, malefactors summarily. Why should pick-pockets be punished, if they are let off.

25th. The papers again! In this instance, advantage is taken of a gentleman being in a profession which brings him personally before the public, to set his very dining-room before them also, as though it were à scene at his own theatre. We allude to a paragraph which appeared in the Sunday Times' of yesterday, concerning Mr. Yates, of a character such as we scarcely thought the papers had yet reached. For this contains nothing political or indecent; only a violation of the hospitality of a private gentleman of worth and respectability. It is needless to go into the details; but the conduct of the parties concerned during the transaction, was very much on a par with the act of sending an ac count of it to the newspaper afterwards. And why the paper should print it, we cannot for the life of us conceive. Really these people must be kept in order by some means or other.

29th. Two very remarkable circumstances occurred at the Review yesterday. The Duke of Wellington fell off his horse, at the head of the troops: we understand his Grace took it very good-humouredly. There was also, as we heard, one of the female "equestrians" from Astley's, in a dress resembling the uniform of the Tenth Hussars, and with a Bird of Paradise feather in her bonnet, who caracolled round the circle to the great entertainment of the crowd. There was a strangely absurd rumour spread that this was Lady Londonderry.

THE EDITOR'S ROOM.

No. XIV.

We have no time, this month, gentle reader, for any idle talk about things in general; for-witness these heaps of the new-born that cumber our table, and cry for criticism from the floor of this our sanctuary -we have more real business to go through, than the minutes we may spend with thee now would suffice for, were they ten times told. An author's period of gestation has not, we believe, been yet exactly determined by naturalists; and indeed, we are inclined to think, that nature is a little irregular here, and will be found not very much disposed to submit to any precise law; but be this as it may, it is certainly the fact, that a very unusual number of craniological conceptions generally contrive to come to maturity about this time. This makes the duties of criticism doubly severe in the dog-days-the very season when one is least disposed to work hard. There is something a little perplexing, it must be confessed, in this arrangement-so unlike the other beneficent ordinations of nature; but there is no help for it-we must just submit to what we cannot alter. Now then for business: and here, in the first place, are two dumpy, little volumes, yclept

SHREDS AND PATCHES OF HISTORY, IN THE FORM OF RIDDLEs.

This is no bad riddle of a title-page to begin with, at all events. Indeed, when we first opened the book, we were ourselves, we confess, fairly pozed by the mysterious announcement. We recollect very well when at school accidentally making the discovery that one of our classfellows laboured under a slight misapprehension as to the import of the term ænigma, which happened to stand among a list of Latin vocables set us to get by heart-and that we were malicious enough to leave him in his error till he had an opportunity of being set right by the universal shout that followed his solemn repetition to the master of "ænigma, a riddle for riddling corn!!" This was, after all, only a proper punishment to our erudite friend for his conceit of being wise above what was written; for, to do the book justice, it said not a word about corn; and if Tom had confined himself to speaking what was set down for him, he might have retained his peculiar notion touching the meaning of the term for years to come, without any one