known almost every man in Europe, whose inter-ence for that free constitution which he was course could strengthen, or enrich, or polish the universally admitted to understand better than any mind. His own literature was various and elegant. other man of his age, both in an exactly legal and In classical erudition, which by the custom of in a comprehensively philosophical sense." England is more peculiarly called learning, he was inferior to few professed scholars. Like all men of genius, he delighted to take refuge in poetry, from the vulgarity and irritation of business. His own verses were easy and pleasant, and might have claimed no low place among those which the French call vers de société. The poetical character of his mind was displayed by his extraordinary partiality for the poetry of the two most poetical nations, or at least languages of the west, those of the Greeks and of the Italians. He disliked political conversation, and never willingly took any part in it.

THE PORCELAIN TOWER AT NANKING.-A British officer obtained some particulars and a printed paper from a person in charge of the above edifice, of which the following is a translation. It exhibits in a striking manner the gross credulity and superstition of the Chinese. Subjoined is an extract from the literal translation :

"After the removal of the imperial residence from Nanking to Pekin, this temple was erected by the bounty of the Emperor Yung-lo. The work of erection occupied a period of 19 years. The building consists of nine stories of variegated porcelain, and its height is about 350 feet, with a pineapple of gilt copper at the summit. Above each of the roofs is the head of a dragon, from which, supported by iron rods, hang eight bells, and, below, at right angles, are 80 bells, making in all 152. On the outside of the nine stages there are 128 lamps; and below, in the centre of the octagonal hall, twelve porcelain lamps. Above they illuminate the thirty-three heavens, and below, they enlighten both the good and the bad among men. On the top are two copper boilers, weighing 1,200 lbs., and a dish of 600 lbs. weight, placed there in order constantly to avert human calamities.

"To speak of him justly as an orator, would require a long essay. Every where natural, he carried into public something of that simple and negligent exterior which belonged to him in private. When he began to speak, a common observer might have thought him awkward; and even a consummate judge could only have been struck with the exquisite justness of his ideas, and the transparent simplicity of his manners. But no sooner had he spoken for some time, than he was changed into another being. He forgot himself and everything around him. He thought only of his subject. His genius warmed and kindled as he went on. He darted fire into his audience. Torrents of impetuous and irresistible eloquence swept along their feelings and conviction. certainly possessed above all moderns that union "This pagoda has been the glory of the ages of reason, simplicity, and vehemence, which form- since Yung-lo rebuilt and beautified it; and, as a ed the prince of orators. He was the most De- monument of imperial gratitude, it is called the mosthenean speaker since the days of Demos-Temple of Gratitude.' The expense of its erecthenes. I knew him,' says Mr. Burke, in a tion was 2,485,484 Chinese ounces of silver, pamphlet written after their unhappy difference, equivalent to 150,000l. sterling. 'when he was nineteen; since which time he has risen, by slow degrees, to be the most brilliant and accomplished debater the world ever saw.'

He

"The quiet dignity of a mind roused only by great objects, the absence of petty bustle, the contempt of show, the abhorrence of intrigue, the plainness and downrightness, and the thorough good nature which distinguished Mr. Fox, seem to render him no unfit representative of the old English character, which if it ever changed, we should be sanguine indeed to expect to see it succeeded by a better. The simplicity of his character inspired confidence, the ardor of his eloquence roused enthusiasm, and the gentleness of his manners invited friendship. I admired,' says Mr. Gibbon, after describing a day passed with him at Lausanne, the powers of a superior man, as they are blended, in his attractive character, with all the softness and simplicity of a child: no human being was ever more free from any taint of malignity, vanity, or falsehood.'

6

The measures which he supported or opposed may divide the opinions of posterity, as they have divided those of the present age. But he will most certainly command the unanimous reverence of future generations, by his pure sentiments towards the commonwealth; by his zeal for the civil and religious rights of all men; by his liberal principles, favorable to mild government, to the unfettered exercise of the human faculties, and the progressive civilization of mankind; by his ardent love for a country, of which the wellbeing and greatness were, indeed, inseparable from his own glory; and by his profound rever

"There are in this pagoda, as a charm against malignant influences, one carbuncle; as a preservative from water, one pearl; from fire, one pearl; from wind, one pearl; from dust, one pearl; with several Chinese translations of Sanscrit books relating to Buddha and Buddhism."

Lecompte, in his Journey through China, says, "The wall at the bottom is at least twelve feet thick. The staircase is narrow and troublesome, the steps being very high; the ceiling of each room is beautified with paintings, and the walls of the upper rooms have several niches full of carved idols. There are several priests or bonzes attached to the building, to keep it in order, and illuminate it on festival occasions. This is effected by means of lanterns made of thin oyster shell, used by the Chinese instead of glass. These are placed at each of the eight angles, on every story, and the effect of the subdued light on the highly reflective surface of the tower is very striking and beautiful."

THE TRADE IN GUANO.-We are glad to learn that tonnage is in brisk demand at Liverpool. The desirable change is attributed to the success of the guano trade. The import of this new article of commerce has given a large amount of employment to shipping, which promises to increase. Whole cargoes of the article are readily sold on arrival, and it cannot be obtained in sufficient quantity to supply the market. Shipping is said to have advanced within the last month 10 per

cent.

SIR,

In reply to your communication I beg to state, that having afforded you the benefit of my professional knowledge and experience in the selection of a picture, I am quite as deeply concerned as I ought to be that the result has not proved satisfactory to yourself, Mr. Jones the house painter, and the rest of the provincial connoisseurs.

As to taking back the picture, under any of the arrangements you propose, it is quite out of the question; and indeed altogether inconsistent with the rules and views of a society expressly instituted for the encouragement of a taste for the

Fine Arts.

Sur,

Am sorry you decline to take the Picter off my hands havin proposed such Fair Terms. As to my encurragin a taste for the Fine Harts, as my missis say, its my bisness to encurrege a taste for fine meat Witch is the fact. And as such ort praps to have confined my attentions to butcherin Whereby I mite sit cumfitable in my own parler But a 200 ginny Picter, and a greasy blue jacket & red nite cap don't match no how. Howsumever I shant put in agin At least not till sich time as theres a Hart Union for Hagriculture & a raffle for a Prize Ox.

and manner soon reassured the startled child, who other merry little ones were sporting around it. thankfully took the offering, broke it up into little Think what she must have suffered, as she gazed, bits in her hand, and carried it to the door-step op- day after day, at the frowning door, that shut out posite, where she again took up her station. An- more than all the world's value to her. Think of other child, seeing the gingerbread, came up to the suffering mother, dreading to lose, with her the solitary infant, who gave the new-comer some, place and character, the means of supporting her and, by her gestures, the lady thought that she hapless, prematurely old infant.-Oh, man, man, was informing the other child whence the gift thou hast much to answer for! came. After waiting a considerable time without eating her gingerbread, the poor little girl rose dejectedly and went away, still looking back at the house.

Tracks my feet where'er I go;
All the day I see her scowling,
In my sleep I hear her howling,
Wildly flitting to and fro.

Last of all my dear companions,

Hope! sweet Hope! befriend me yet!
Do not from my side depart,
Do not leave my lonely heart

All to darkness and regret!
Short and sad is now my voyage
O'er this gloom-encompass'd sea,
But not cheerless altogether,
Whatsoe'er the wind and weather,

Will it seem if bless'd with thee.

Dim thine eyes are, turning earthwards,
Shadowy pale, and thin thy form ;-
Turned to heaven thine eyes grow bright,
All thy form expands in light,

Soft and beautiful and warm.
Look then upwards! lead me heavenwards!
Guide me o'er this darkening sea!
Pale Remorse shall fade before me,
And the gloom shall brighten o'er me,
If I have a friend in Thee.

From Hood's Magazine.

GAUTIER'S TRAVELS IN SPAIN. SINCE Inglis' clever tour, and a spirited work from the pen of an American naval officer,-both of which date from a dozen years back,-there has been no book of any mark written about Spain. Narratives of the war we have had in abundance; and, once or twice a cautious tourist, landing at Cadiz or some other safe port, has entered the country just far enough, and remained just long enough, to pick up a few erroneous notions of Spain and Spaniards, which have afterwards helped to fill the pages of a fashionable post octavo. But neither from details of the endless guerillafighting and throat-cutting, which appear to have become the natural element of the inhabitants of the Peninsula, nor from the superficial and condescending glances of tourists of the silver-fork school, can one form any just idea of the real state of Spanish habits and society, in both of which, it may reasonably be supposed, that changes worthy of note have taken place during ten years of civil war and revolution.

Gautier, an author of considerable talent, and holding no mean rank in the corps of French literati. Under the fantastical but not inappropriate title of "Tras los Montes," he has put forth two volumes, which, to our thinking, combine all the requisites of a very admirable book of travels.

Frenchmen are generally good travellers. By this we do not mean that they travel much or far, but well, and with advantage to themselves. Of twenty persons whom you meet out of their own country, one only shall be a Frenchman, more than half the others English, the remainder Russians, Germans, Poles, and Americans. Yet the chances are, that, out of those twenty persons, the Frenchman will be the one who has the best opportunities of observing the habits and manners of the nations he visits. This is easily explained. The English travel in too great a hurry, are too exclusive, too shy, too fearful of unwittingly compromising themselves by contact with persons who are not quite up to their standard of gentility. They attach great importance to going to the best and most correct hotel, and to seeing all that Mr. Murray's guide-books say ought to be seen; some of them also spend a good deal of time in devising how they shall avoid being cheated; (and those it is, by the bye, who are generally cheated the most ;) but they seldom think of looking for anything that is not set down for them by the aforesaid guide-books; they rarely go off the beaten track, seldom show a disposition to cultivate the society of foreigners, and when they reside for any time in one place, are too gregarious inter se, too apt to form themselves into a sort of Britannic phalanx, from the formal and bristling aspect of which, the often kindly and well-disposed aborigines recoil in dismay. How different are Frenchmen in this respect! Wherever they go, they seem to glide easily and naturally into the habits and society of the people amongst whom they find themselves; doing at Rome as Romans do, accommodating themselves to national peculiarities, and generally proving themselves possessors of the grand art of making themselves liked. We have met Frenchmen travelling in countries where certainly their nation was in no good odor; in parts of Germany, for instance, and in Spain; but we observed that in spite of any dislike or even hatred existing to the French as a nation, they were generally popular as individuals. Frenchmen are usually much more agreeable and good natured people out of their country than in it, (in this respect, as in many others, being exactly the converse of the English,) and their freedom from anything like formality or bashfulness, added to a certain pleasant enjoument of manner, partly natural to them and partly assumed, often procures them admission into the society, and consequent facilities of observing the domestic life and habits of the nations they visit.

Englishmen are not generally timid travellers when a field for observation is opened to them. It is always easy to find persons willing to explore African deserts, American prairies, or Asiatic jungles, and write about them afterwards; yet no one apparently has of late thought it worth while to risk an encounter with the knives and blunderbusses of Spanish banditti and facciosos, for the sake of what might be learnt in a country which is unquestionably indebted, for the interest attaching to it, more to the associations it calls up, and its own natural beauty, than to any qualities of its present degenerate inhabitants. The deficiency, however, has been recently supplied-to readers M. Gautier has evidently good travelling qualiof French at least-by the pen of M. Theophile ties: he sets out on his journey with a disposition

to be pleased, and displays throughout its whole-almost calcined-by the sun. I doubt if Deduration a bonhommie and a freedom from preju- camps, the painter, ever encountered, during his dice which we have rarely seen surpassed. He rambles in the heart of Asia Minor, anything more one day, and in an unguarded moment, as he tells than these wretched collections of hovels. Wanburnt and tawny, more crumbling and decayed, us, uttered the imprudent words, "I should like dering about among their dilapidated walls, were to go to Spain." Some of his friends who over- a few jackasses, of that philosophical and contemheard him, repeated this expression, with slight plative aspect peculiar to the Spanish donkey, variations, and in two or three days' time he who is fully aware of his own utility, considers was accosted by everybody he met, with the himself as part of the family to which he belongs; and, moreover, having read Don Quixote, assumes question, "When are you going to Spain?" A an additional degree of importance, on account of week later it was still worse. "I thought you the possibility of his being lineally descended from were at Madrid," was the salutation of one ac- Sancho's celebrated Dapple. Besides the asses, quaintance. "What! back already!" cried an- the only living things visible were some magnifiother. M. Gautier saw plainly that he was ostra- cent dogs of various breeds; amongst others, several enormous greyhounds, such as one sees cized; that his friends considered they had a claim introduced in the paintings of Paul Veronese and upon him for an absence, and that go he must. Velasquez; and here and there a group of peasant With some difficulty he obtained a three-days' children, whose eyes sparkled, like black diamonds, respite, and at the expiration of that time, found through their filthy rags and long tangled hair." himself rattling along the Bordeaux road.

Between Valladolid and Madrid the diligence Having undertaken the task, our traveller per- stops for dinner at Olmedo, which was once a force accomplishes it with the best grace imagina- town of some importance, but is now in ruins, its ble. He sees Spain, not by a visit to some of its fortifications crumbling and overgrown with ivy, seaports, or most accessible towns, or even by a run its houses for the most part uninhabited, and the up to Madrid and back again, but by going right grass growing in the streets. This is only one through the country, from the Pyrenees to the pil-out of hundreds of Spanish towns that are now lars of Hercules; diverging from the straight route when he finds motives for such divergence, and returning to France through Valencia and Catalonia. He has scarcely entered the Peninsula, when, after describing some trifling local peculiarities, he gives us his profession of faith as a tourist.

sees.

upon

the road from the French frontier to Madrid, and at first appears rather disappointed in what he The truth is, that his imagination had been too busy, and it is only when he gets to Andalusia that his expectations seem to be fully or nearly realized. He grumbles at the want of local coloring, of that originality which he had anticipated in everything Spanish, and is disposed to quarrel with the very first inn at which he passes a night, because the sheets and bed-curtains are clean, the floors scoured, the chambermaids tidy and wellkept lasses. To a man who had been expecting a posada à la Cervantes, reeking with garlic, swarming with fleas, and occupied by muleteers and Maritornes, the disappointment must certainly have been a cruel one. On getting into Castile, however, he finds some compensation in the increasingly Spanish character of the country and its

inhabitants.

"Between Pancorbo and Burgos we passed several half-ruined villages, which appeared parched

the abode of the bat and the owl. The depopulation of the Peninsula has been frightful. In the time of the Moors Spain reckoned thirty-two millions of inhabitants, which are now reduced to less than eleven millions.

While waiting for dinner M. Gautier is witness to a characteristic trait.

"In the room in which dinner was laid out, a fine robust-looking woman was walking up and down, carrying on her arm an oblong basket, covered with a cloth, out of which there proceeded at intervals little plaintive cries and whinings, not unlike those of a very young child. This puzzled that any infant contained in it must have been a me a good deal, because the basket was so small Lilliputian phenomenon, fit only to exhibit at a fair. The riddle, however, was soon solved. The took a little coffee-colored dog out of her basket, -for such she was-sat down in a corner, and began very gravely to suckle this extraordinary nursling. She was a peasant woman, from the province of Santander, and was proceeding to Madrid, where she was engaged as wet-nurse. Fearful of being disqualified by the interval be foster-child, she had provided herself with this tween leaving her own infant and joining her canine substitute."

nurse

Our traveller's first care, on reaching Madrid, is to procure tickets for the next bull-fight, which is to take place in two days' time; two days that appear terribly long to the impatient Frenchman and his companion, who are perfectly mad after all that is national and characteristic. Their impatience, however, is the more excusable, as Madrid is in most respects a very uninteresting capital. Barcelona is, or at least was, before it became the fashion to bombard it, a far more agreeable city, and the officers of the royal guard, who in time of peace were only quartered in Madrid and Barce lona, usually preferred the latter garrison.