and qualities of his mind-to bring them out there, and nowhere else. In the society in which he moved, Lord Dudley played any thing but the part which nature, and even his own inclinations, intended him to play; there he was a wit, a trifler, and (worst of all) an oddity; or he affected to be all these-partly from the love of distinction-partly in order to hide the thing he was, and keep it from the vacant wondering stare, or the shallow sneer, of the frivolous crowd. But in his lettersin those at least which he addressed to men gifted and endowed like himself—he was all that nature and education had made him; and he was nothing else: an acute and often an original thinker; a shrewd and nice observer; with sensibility and taste to appreciate all that was graceful and elegant in literature and art; and with sufficient candour to look from the vantage-ground of his station, upon most that was right, and upon much that was wrong, in morals, in politics, and the various social relations of actual life. He was essentially a Tory; but with a bias towards Liberalism, which at that time was even more dangerous to his pretensions as an active statesman than even Liberalism itself would have been; for it placed him out of the pale of either party; "For Tories thought him Whig, and Whigs a Tory." Not that he cared for this: for he was much too indolent and unambitious for a statesman; and nothing but his high station and great wealth, kept him from being a recluse, a poet, and a dreamer. The charming volume of his letters which his friend the Bishop of Llandaff has here given to the world, if it does not precisely realize what we could have hoped for from such a man so situated, is quite as rich in all the qualities of the best order of epistolary style as we could reasonably have looked for. There is no topic connected with the leading movements of social life during the eventful years included between 1814 and 1823 that is not touched upon, in that best of all manners which marks the entire confidence that subsists between highly-cultivated and intellectual friends, addressing each other as openly and undisguisedly as if they were thinking aloud. The leading literature of the day (which included, be it remembered, many of the chef-d'œuvres of Scott and Byron); the wondrous political events (which included the downfal of Napoleon, and his temporary re-elevation during the Hundred Days); the opening of the continent to English travellers-of which Lord Dudley immediately availed himself: the accession to office of Canning, who was Lord Dudley's close political and personal friend and ally-all these, and an infinite variety of "personal themes," form the subjects of these letters; and all are treated with that ease, grace, candour, and vivacity, which render the correspondence of intellectual and cultivated men the most captivating reading in the world. PRINCE ALBERT.* THOUGH it is not our practice to notice new editions, we have the less scruple to make an exception in favour of the interesting volume Prince Albert, and the House of Saxony, &c. By Frederic Shober!, Esq. Second edition, with additions. before us, inasmuch as it affords us an opportunity of correcting some mistakes into which we were led in our remarks on "The Music and Poetry of Prince Albert" in our last number.* We have reason to know that the account of his royal highness in this new edition of Mr. Shoberl's work is the only one that is acknowledged in the highest quarter to be authentic; and it enables us to contradict the report of his having ever resided in England when a child. In the eagerness of the press to gratify the public curiosity, in regard to illustrious characters, it is but natural that rumours and fictions should be sometimes presented as facts: so much the more necessary it is that readers should be informed where they must look for the latter without any admixture of the former. We repeat it, that the account of Prince Albert here given, is the only one which can be said to be published by authority.] THE NEW ZEALANDERS.+ THE Condition and prospects of New Zealand are exciting so much interest and attention at the present moment, and especially in connexion with the important question of colonization, that a work exclusively devoted to the actual manners and customs of the natives, as modified by their intercourse with Europeans, cannot fail to prove acceptable to a large class of readers, if produced under favourable circumstances, as regards the position and capabilities of the writer. That Mr. Polack, the author of the present volumes, fulfils one of these conditions, will not be doubted: his position as a resident in New Zealand for many years, has given him more knowledge concerning all facts relating to it, than is perhaps possessed by any other European. Whether his position as its largest landed proprietor, added to his somewhat unprimitive passion for fine writing, has not tinged his descriptions and inferences with too rose-coloured a hue, may be doubted. Still his book is both interesting and useful-interesting to all classes of readers, for the amusement it affords; and to emigrants, or those who are debating whether or not they shall become such, almost indispensable, if they desire to form a fair comparative estimate of the various spots which put forth claims to their attention at the present time. Making due allowance for an involved, obscure, and diffuse style, a natural tendency to overstate the advantages of his adopted country, and (the cardinal sin of our age) a determination to write a book in two goodly volumes, instead of confining it to one of moderate dimensions, Mr. Polack's work will answer the purpose for which it was intended. By far the most valuable portion, forming the body of the work, however, is the latter half of the second volume, which chiefly concerns itself with the actual state of the country, and enters into details which it behoves the resident or the would-be emigrant to know: and the appendix, referring to the natural history of the island-its geography and geology-its trees, fruits, vegetables-its birds, animals, &c., is the most valuable of all. * Page 425. † Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders, &c. By J. S. Polack, Esq. 2 vols. ENGLISH AMUSEMENTS.* THOUGH it would be scarcely fair to insist on a book devoted to Amusements being an amusing book, yet it is a condition one cannot help looking for; and we should certainly be disappointed if we did not meet with it; just as witty people are expected to be the cause of wit in others. The present little volume, however, whether intended to purvey amusement itself, or only to point the way to it, will be found welcome and acceptable, on either or on both accounts, to that large body of happy unfortunates who have nothing better to do than amuse themselves, and are often sorely puzzled how to set about it. "Colburn's Kalendar of Amusements," like the Catholic Kalendar of Saints, caters to the appetites of its votaries for every day in the year, and often presents them with a variety for choice, which may chance to puzzle them almost as much as the want did before. Balls, masquerades, theatres; winter, summer, and harvest sports; cricket, wrestling, swimming, skating, rowing, and sailing; racing, coursing, and steeple-chasing; hunting, shooting, fishing; in short, pleasures, sports, and pastimes, of every kind and quality, and adapted to every grade and condition of life, every season of the year, and every corner of the land:-this is what the comprehensive little volume before us offers to the reader's choice; and those who need its pleasant assistance will not grudge the very moderate price that makes it available to all. It is embellished with twelve pretty illustrations, by R. Cruikshank, characteristic of each month of the year, and forms one of the most appropriate gift-books that we have lately seen, especially for residents in the country. MEMOIRS OF A STATE PRISONER.† A PORTION of the singular and interesting details which form these two volumes, was published about a year ago, having been condensed and translated from the original French of the author, by Signor Fortunato Prandi. M. Andryane has since published a second part to his work, which proves to be even more valuable and interesting than the first; and the present publication consists of the two works of M. Andryane, abridged into their present form. The origiginal author, whose sufferings as a state prisoner are here so forcibly and graphically described, was a young officer in Napoleon's army, whom the events of 1814 and 1815 threw upon the world with all the ardour of the political feeling of the time full upon him, and who presently fell into the hands of a set of crafty Italian exiles, who made a tool of him to his destruction. He was persuaded to set out from Geneva, on a mission from the secret societies, to endeavour once more to revolutionize Italy, and was (as his heartless abettors must have perfectly well known he would be) cast into prison immediately on his arrival at Milan, and (on the unquestionable evidence which he had been induced madly to bear about him) condemned to perpetual im * Colburn's Kalendar of Amusements in Town and Country, for 1840. Edited by Boleyne Reeves, Esq. 1 vol. + Memoirs of a State Prisoner in the Fortress of Speilberg. By Alexander Andryane. 2 vols. prisonment in the fortress of Speilberg. The work consists of the various details connected with these events, and with his subsequent confinement during a period of ten years, up to his release in 1832. These events are related, in the original French work, with a minuteness of detail, a diffuseness of reflection, and in a style so flowery and fine, and consequently so little adapted to the subject, that Mr. Andryane's four volumes, though containing all the interest of those before us, cannot be said to call it forth, by reason of the weight of words with which it is overlaid. But in the admirable translation (if so it is to be called) of Signor Prandi, every thing has been seized which was worthy of preservation; every thing has been abandoned which clogged the movement of the narrative; and the whole has been put into a style which would do no discredit to the most practised and popular of our native writers. The result is a work quite equal in interest to that of Silvio Pellico; and one that, on account of the greater variety of its materials, will please the popular taste still more. THE CANADIAN NATURALIST.* THE study of natural history is at once so delightful and so beneficial-it would be so irresistibly inviting as an amusement, even if it were not (as in the present state of our intellectual cultivation it is) so indispensable as a part of every education-that we are always happy to meet with a new work on the subject, even where the locality to which it refers may be familiar to us from personal knowledge, or from multiplied reports on its productions. A work, therefore, referring to a locality on the natural history of which we have but little in a formal shape, and ought from our relations with it to know every thing, is doubly acceptable, even though it be not of so comprehensive or of so scientific a nature as we might have desired. "The Canadian Naturalist” of Mr. Gosse is in the somewhat awkward form of dialogue-a form very properly exploded, except in cases of a purely elementary and educational nature. But notwithstanding this defect, and a want (an avowed want, however) of scientific knowledge in the writer, this volume is full of interest, and relates many facts and anecdotes that will be quite new to the European naturalists-some of them so curious, that they will perchance subject the writer to the charge of giving us Americanisms. The following wolf story is too interesting to be discredited, yet almost too curious to be implicitly believed: "A few years ago some men were going up Lee's Pond, a lake about six miles long, which was frozen at the time, when they saw before them a party of wolves crossing the pond. One in the centre appeared sick, and was surrounded by the rest in the manner of a body-guard. One of the men, who had a gun, pursued them, and some of the wolves took to flight, leaving others with the supposed sick one; they, however, dropped off one by one as the pursuit grew hotter, leaving at last only two with it. The men then fired at one of these two, but without killing it, and they both fled. On coming up to the remaining one, they found it was an old she-wolf, completely blind, it was supposed from age alone, as her teeth were almost worn down. After the last attendants had left her, she attempted The Canadian Naturalist: a Series of Conversations, &c. By P. H. Gosse. 1 vol. to continue her course, but in a very uncertain manner, sometimes turning on her steps, or going in a circle. The men put a rope round her and led her to the town. In the woods they found her den, strewed with a vast number of deer's bones, fragments of flesh, &c., all around which the snow, though three feet deep, was trodden hard and smooth; and from the number of paths leading to the spot, it appeared evident that this aged wolf had been for a long time supplied with prey by the assiduous attention of others." SPRING. BY MRS. C. BARON-WILSON. SPRING is bursting from each bud, Every bright and joyous thing Heralds the return of Spring! But, the Heart, whose bloom is past, Cold eternal Winter's cast O'er its waste unmelting snow; Nature's smiles can bloom impart And make all verdant, save—The Heart! |