that the Club, after removing from Shire-lane, met at Christopher Kat's other abode, the Fountain, in the Strand. (This is doubtful.) As Tonson's room at Barnes, where the Club often dined, and where the portraits were originally intended to be placed, (they were so placed,) was not lofty enough for what are called half-length pictures, a shorter canvas was used, (36 inches long, and 28 inches wide,) but sufficiently long to admit a hand. This occasioned the Kit-Kat size to become a technical term in painting for such pictures as were of similar dimensions and form.

THE MAYOR OF GARRETT.-(Page 216.)

Sir Richard Phillips, in his Morning's Walk from London to Kew, 1817, gives the following interesting details of the Garrett Elections:

Wandsworth having been the once-famed scene of those humorous popular elections of a mayor or member for Garrett; and the subject serving to illustrate the manners of the times, and abounding in original features of character,-I collected among some of its older inhabitants a variety of amusing facts and documents, relative to the eccentric candidates and their elections.

Southward of Wandsworth, a road extends nearly two miles to the village of Lower Tooting; and nearly midway are a few houses, or a hamlet, by the side of a small common called Garrett, from which the road itself is called Garrett-lane. Various encroachments on this common led to an association of the neighbours about threescore years since, when they chose a president, or mayor, to protect their rights; and the time of their first election being the period of a new parliament, it was agreed that the mayor should be re-chosen after every general election. Some facetious members of the Club gave, in a few years, local notoriety to this election; and when -party-spirit ran high in the days of Wilkes and Liberty, it was easy to create an appetite for a burlesque election among the lower orders of the metropolis. The publicans at Wandsworth, Tooting, Battersea, Clapham, and Vauxhall made a purse to give it character; and Mr. Foote rendered its interest universal, by calling one of his inimitable farces the Mayor of Garrett. I have, indeed, been told that Foote, Garrick, and Wilkes wrote some of the candidates' addresses, for the purpose of instructing the people in the corruptions which attend elections to the legislature, and of producing those reforms by means of ridicule and shame, which are vainly expected from solemn appeals of argument and patriotism.

Not being able to find the members for Garrett in Beatson's Political Index, or in any of the Court Calendars, I am obliged to depend on tradition for information in regard to the early history of this famous borough. The first mayor of whom I could hear was called Sir John Harper. He filled the seat during two parliaments, and was, it appears, a man of wit; for on a dead cat being thrown at him on the hustings, со

and a bystander exclaiming that it stunk worse than a fox, Sir John vociferated, "That's no wonder, for you see it's a poll-cat." This noted baronet was in the metropolis a retailer of brick-dust; and his Garrett honour being supposed to be a means of improving his trade and the condition of his ass, many characters in similar occupations were led to aspire to the same distinctions.

He was succeeded by Sir Jeffrey Dunstan, who was returned for three parliaments, and was the most popular candidate that ever appeared on the Garrett hustings. His occupation was that of buying old wigs, once an article of trade like that in old clothes, but become obsolete since the full-bottomed and full-dress wigs of both sexes went out of fashion. Sir Jeffrey usually carried his wig-bag over his shoulder, and to avoid the charge of vagrancy, vociferated, as he passed along the streets, "old wigs;" but having a person like Esop, and a countenance and manner marked by irresistible humour, he never appeared without a train of boys and curious persons, whom he entertained by his sallies of wit, shrewd sayings, and smart repartees; and from whom, without begging, he collected sufficient to maintain his dignity of mayor and knight. He was no respecter of persons, and was so severe in his jokes on the corruptions and compromises of power, that under the iron régime of Pitt and Dundas, this political Punch, or street-jester, was prosecuted for using what were then called seditious expressions; and as a caricature on the times, which ought never to be forgotten, he was, in 1793, tried, convicted, and imprisoned! In consequence of this affair, and some charges of dishonesty, he lost his popularity, and at the general election for 1796, was ousted by Sir Harry Dimsdale, muffin-seller, a man as much deformed as himself. Sir Jeffrey could not long survive his fall, for in 1797 he died of suffocation from excessive drinking.

Sir Harry Dimsdale dying before the next general election, and no candidate starting of sufficient originality of character, and what was still more fatal, the victuallers having failed to raise a public purse, the borough of Garrett has since remained vacant, and the populace have been without a professed political buffoon. None but those who have seen a London mob on any great holiday can form any just idea of these elections. On several occasions, a hundred thousand persons, half of them in carts, in hackney-coaches, and on horse and ass-back, covered the various roads from London, and choked up all the approaches to the place of election. At the two last elections, I was told that the road within a mile of Wandsworth was so blocked up by vehicles, that none could move backward or forward during many hours; and that the candidates, dressed like chimney-sweepers on May-day, or in the mock fashion of the period, were brought to the hustings in the carriages of peers, drawn by six horses, the owners themselves condescending to become their drivers!

GOLDSMITH AT EDINBURGH.-(Page 261.)

The following delightful

letter is printed in Mr. Forster's

"Notes and Corrections." It is dated Edinburgh, Sept. 26,

1753; and is addressed to

Ireland:

Robert Bryanton, at Ballymahon,

MY DEAR BOB,—

How many good excuses (and you know I was ever good at an excuse,) might I call up to vindicate my past shameful silence. I might tell you how I wrote a long letter on my first coming hither, and seem vastly angry at my not receiving an answer; I might allege that business (with business, you know, I was always pestered) had never given me time to finger a pen. But I suppress those, and twenty more as plausible, and as easily invented, since they might be attended with a slight inconvenience of being known to be lies. Let me then speak truth. An hereditary indolence (I have it from the mother's side) has hitherto prevented my writing to you, and still prevents my writing at least twenty-five letters more due to my friends in Ireland. No turnspit-dog gets up into his wheel with more reluctance than I sit down to write; yet no dog ever loved the roast meat he turns better than I do him I now address.

Yet what shall I say now I am entered? Shall I tire with a description of this unfruitful country; where I must lead you over the hills all brown with heath, or their valleys scarcely able to feed a rabbit? Man alone seems to be the only creature who has arrived to the natural size in this poor soil. Every part of the country presents the same dismal landscape. No grove, nor brook, lend their music to cheer the stranger, or make the inhabitants forget their poverty. Yet, with all these disadvantages to call him down to humility, a Scotchman is one of the proudest things alive. The poor have pride ever ready to relieve them. If mankind should happen to despise them, they are masters of their own admiration; and that they can plentifully bestow upon themselves. From their pride and poverty, as I take it, results one advantage this country enjoys; namely, the gentlemen here are much better bred than among us. No such characters here as our fox-hunters; and they have expressed great surprise when I informed them, that some men in Ireland of one thousand pounds a-year, spend their whole lives in running after a hare, drinking to be drunk, and . . . . . Truly, if such a being, equipped in his hunting dress, came among a circle of Scotch gentry, they would behold him with the same astonishment that a countryman does King George on horseback.

The men here have generally high cheek-bones, and are lean and swarthy, fond of action, dancing in particular. Now that I have mentioned dancing, let me say something of their balls, which are very frequent here. When a stranger enters the dancing hall, he sees one end of the room taken up by the ladies, who sit dismally in a group by themselves: in the other end stand their pensive partners that are to be: but no more intercourse between the sexes than there is between two countries at war. The ladies indeed may ogle, and the gentlemen sigh ; but an embargo is laid on any closer commerce. At length, to interrupt hostilities, the lady-directress, or intendant, or what you will, pitches upon a lady and gentleman to walk a minuet; which they perform with a formality approaching to despondence. After five or six couple have thus walked the gauntlet, all stand up to country dances; each gentleman furnished with a partner by the aforesaid lady-directress; so they dance much, say nothing, and thus roncludes our assembly. I told a Scotch gentleman that such profound silence resembled the ancient procession of the Roman matrons in honour of Ceres; and the

Scotch gentleman told me (and faith, I believe he was right) that I was a very great pedant for my pains.

Now I am come to the ladies; and to show that I love Scotland, and everything that belongs to so charming a country, I insist on it, and will give him leave to break my head that denies it, that the Scotch ladies are ten thousand times finer and handsomer than the Irish. To be sure, now, I see your sisters Betty and Peggy vastly surprised at my partiality; but tell them flatly, I don't value them, or their fine skins, or eyes, or good sense, or-a potato; for I say, and will maintain it, and as a convincing proof (I ani in a great passion) of what I assert, the Scotch ladies say it themselves. But to be less serious; where will you find a language so prettily become a pretty mouth as the broad Scotch? And the women here speak it in its highest purity: for instance, teach one of your young ladies at home to pronounce the "Who ar wull I gong?" with a becoming widening of the mouth, and I'll lay my life they'll wound every hearer.

We have no such character here as a coquet, but alas! how many envious prudes! Some days ago, I walked into my Lord Kilconbry's (don't be surprised, my lord is but a glover), when the Duchess of Hamilton (that fair, who sacrificed her beauty to her ambition, and her inward peace to a title and gilt equipage) passed by in her chariot : her battered husband, or more properly, the guardian of her charms, sat by her side. Straight envy began, in the shape of no less than three ladies who sat with me, to find faults with her faultless form. "For my part," says the first, "I think, what I always thought, that the Duchess has too much of the red in her complexion." "Madam, I am of your opinion," says the second. "I think her face has a pallid cast too much on .the delicate order." "And let me tell you," added the third lady, whose mouth was puckered up to the size of an issue, "that the Duchess has fine lips, but she wants a mouth." At this very lady drew up her mouth as if going to pronounce the letter P. But, how ill, my Bob, does it become me to ridicule women with whom I have scarcely any correspondence? There are, 'tis certain, handsome women here; and 'tis as certain they have handsome men to keep them company. An ugly and a poor man is society only for himself; and such society the world lets me enjoy in great abundance. . I leave you

to your own choice what to write.

While I live, know you have a true friend in

Yours, &c., &c.,

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

P.S.-Give my sincere respects, (not compliments,) do you mind, to your agreeable family, and give my service to my mother, if you see her; for, as you express it in Ireland, I have a sneaking kindness for her still. Direct to me-Student in Physic, in Edinburgh.

GOLDSMITH'S "VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.”—(Page 277.)

There is no end to the delight afforded by the Vicar of Wakefield. Moore read it to his wife Bessy, and notes: "What a gem it is! we both enjoyed it so much more than Joseph Anderson." Again: "finished the Vicar of Wakefield to Bessy; we both cried over it."

GOLDSMITH IN THE TEMPLE.-(Page 285.)

Goldsmith did not remove direct from the Library Staircase, Inner Temple, to Brick-court, Middle Temple, but to Garden-court, in the latter Inn, and thence to Brick-court. It was in Garden-court that he sat at the window and watched the rooks; and whilst living here, he practised medicine for a short time, as described at page 287.

THE GOLDSMITH FAMILY AND GENERAL WOLFE.

In a paper of genealogical memoranda of the Poet's family, obligingly communicated by a Correspondent, we find the following note as to a Will of Edward Goldsmith, of the City of Limerick, Esq., dated 27th October, 1762, proved 10th December, 1764: leaving 1000l. to “my esteemed Kinsman, Major-General James Wolfe, payable on the death of my dearest and most esteemed aunt, Henrietta Wolfe, mother of the said General Wolfe," &c. It appears that General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec, died 19th September, 1759: he was the son of Colonel Edward Wolfe and Henrietta his wife, who, in Burke's Landed Gentry, vol. ii. p. 1389, is set down as daughter of Edward Thompson.

STATUE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

In the year 1857, the admirers of Thomas Moore erected, by subscription, upon College-green, and close to Trinity College, Dublin, a Statue of this distinguished Poet. At the inauguration ceremony, on the 14th of October, in the above year, His Excellency the Earl of Carlisle stated Moore to be the first of "the sacred band of poets," to whom a statue had been erected in the open air in London or Dublin, and the Attorney-General O'Hagan further observed that Moore was the first Irishman of whom a statue had been set up in - Dublin. It was subsequently suggested by the Earl of Carlisle that a similar memorial of Oliver Goldsmith should be placed in the same locality; His Excellency munificently contributed 1007. to the statue fund, and a Committee was formed to carry the design into effect; the Prince Consort heading the subscription list with a contribution of 1007.

An essential part of the plan is to place the statue in such a site that, while it will connect the memory of the poet in