was made a lord by the title of Glenbervie, what was Sheridan's remark? You must know, that Syl. Douglas had been an apothecary originally, and a very respectable profession it is-(the late Mr. Keats, who wrote Endymion, a poem, and other books, was an apothecary)but what then? He was now a lord. However, what do you think Sheridan said? The old rogue was playing cards when he heard of Syl's promotion; "what's his title?" said he; "Glenbervie," was the answer: on which he spoke the following indefensible verse while playing his game: What's good for the scurvy?. For his crest an immense gallipot. Could any thing be conceived more illiberal? As we ourselves are goose-descended, we shall not say any thing about taylors; but, en passant, we may remark, that many men-aye, men-of genius have been tailors. We instance Mr. Thelwall, and look at his poetry! You will find it all good measure, and excellent stuff, as Thelwall told Jeffery, when he formerly abused him. "You may curl up at me, as you like," said the rhyming tailor, "Mr. Jeffery, but I shall comb you down. I'll not be bearded by you. You shan't stir me up with your pole." This took off the edge of the criticism very much, and Mr. Thelwall is lecturing to the present day, with infinite satisfaction to a crowded audience, including himself. We confess that the manners of the great cannot be immediately caught by people who come up from the low walks of life; but, after all, what is more common-place and ridiculous, than to make such an objection. Our manners are moulded to a sphere of life in which we act—a dandy initiated thoroughly in all the mysteries of Almack's, would be as much astray in a company of foxhunting Yorkshire 'squires, as any of the 'squires would be amid the starred and spangled company of Almack's. Now you certainly would take Wordsworth, if you met him in company, for a sort of upper bailiff to a small farm in the north; never for a great poet and stamp distributor. What then? It only proves that Mr. Wordsworth, living in the blissful solitude of the eternal hills, or in hearing of the primæval fall of murmuring streams, never was used to the company of ladies and gentlemensuch as we meet eating, drinking, talking, and flirting in this frivolous age. We knew an American, who, after having been reared a carpenter in all the fine simplicity and freedom from manners prevalent in the United States among that class of people, was left a large property by the death of a distant relation in Hampshire: He came over to this country, and found himself among rather a recherchè set of fashionable relatives. They, shocked at his manners, determined to break him in at home, before they exhibited him in companyand one of the ladies was deputed to perform this difficult task. With great pains, she made him sit on a chair-eat off a plate-forbear the use of a clasp knife at meals-and some other such ceremonies. At last, he was deemed perfect enough, and a large dinner was given to the neighbouring Hantsmen, at which he was introduced. Unfortunately, it had been forgotten to teach him to take wine at dinner, and he accordingly made no motion towards accomplishing that piece of table manoeuvering. His patroness observed it, and determined to give him a hint. "Mr. L." said she, you will take a glass of wine with me?"-" No, thank you, ma'am," was the answer, "I much prefers porter." She looked aghast, 66 Ibi omnis Effusus labor But we should be prolix, if we urged this matter any farther. We merely wished to shew that birth did not give talent-and that remarks as to breeding were unfair. Ovid, to use a quotation which has been generally overlooked, remarks: -genus et proavos et quæ non fecimus ipsi Vix ea nostra voco with this sentiment we agree. We shall, perhaps, further elucidate the subject on another occasion. VOL. I. Ꭰ * These lines were addressed by Charles IX. of France, to his mistress, Maria Touchet. She was an apothecary's daughter, possessed of considerable charms. According to the Anecdotes of the Queens of France, she had "le visage rond, les yeux vifs et bien coupés, le front petit, le nez bien fait ainsi que la bouche, et le bas du visage admirable." There appears a rather revolting incongruity, in finding tender and delicate love-verses addressed to her, by the bloody monster of Saint Bartholomew. He was, however, a man of some ability. The device," TOUCHER, AIMER," is a sort of anagram of her name; a species of wit much affected in those days. The royal anagram-match has, however, like many plebeian practitioners in this art, been obliged to depart from the strict spelling of her name, and spell it Toucher, to bring in an R. We all remember the unfortunate shifts to which Miss Mary Bohun's lover was driven, as recorded in the Spectator. To the lady's great indignation, finding these names impracticable, he was obliged to substitute " Moll Boon," which profane contraction lost him his mistress. The "veritable anagramma" of Marie Touchet's name, we are gravely informed, is "Je charme tout." MY WEDDING NIGHT; The obnoxious Chapter in Lord Byron's Memoirs. [Every body knows that Lord Byron's Memoirs have been burnt, though it at present appears difficult to say, who should bear the blame, or deserve the credit, of such a destruction. However, we know, and every body may know if every body pleases, that there are more copies than two, beyond doubt, stilk existent; and that the Memoirs, moreover, have been read by more than five hundred people, as Lady C--ne L-b and Lady B―sh could, perhaps, depose, if they were subpooned for the nonce. Under these circumstances, it is quite impossible that they (begging their ladyships' pardon,) can remain unpublished. In order to expedite this good work, for we think it a pity that an expurgated edition of his lordship's autography should be lost, we here publish, with due mutilations, which we shall not specify, the chapter which has given most offence; and, it is said, finally determined Lord Byron's relatives on the destruction of the MS. For its genuineness we can only answer, that it was given to us by a person who had the best opportunities of perusing the original. That there is such a chapter in the book, and that it was this alone which sealed the fate of the whole, is beyond all dispute.] "It was now near two o'clock in the morning, and I was jaded to the soul by the delay. I had left the company, and retired to a private apartment. Will those, who think that a bridegroom on his bridal-night should be so thoroughly saturated with love, as to render it impossible for him to yield to any other feeling, pardon me when I say, that I had almost fallen asleep on a sofa, when a giggling, tittering, half-blushing face popped itself into the door, and popped as fast back again, after having whispered as audibly as a suivante whispers upon the stage, that Anne was in bed? It was one of her bridemaids. Yet such is the case. I was actually dozing. Matrimony begins very soon to operate narcotically-had it been a mistresshad it been an assignation with any animal, covered with a petticoat-any thing but a wife -why, perhaps, the case would have been different. “I found my way, however, at once into the bed-room, and tore off my garments. Your pious zeal will, I am sure, be quite shocked, when I tell you I did not say my prayers that evening -morning I mean. It was, I own, wrong in me, who had been educated in the pious and praying kingdom of Scotland, and must confess myself-you need not smile-at least half a Presbyterian. Miss N-1-should I yet say Lady Byron-had turned herself away to the most remote verge, and tightly enwrapped herself in the bed-clothes. I called her by her name-her Christian name-her pet name-every name of endearment-I spoke in the softest under tones-in the most melodious upper tones of which my voice is master. She made no answer, but lay still, and I stole my arm under her neck, which exerted all the rigidity of all its muscles to prevent the (till then undreamt of) invasion. I turned up her head-but still not a word. With gentle force I removed the close-pressed folds of the sheet from her fiue form-you must let me say that of her, unfashionable as it is, and unused as I have been to paying her compliments-she resisting all the while. After all, there is nothing like a coup de main in love or war. I conquered by means of one, with the other arm, for I had got it round her waist, and using all my strength, (and what is that of a woman, particularly a woman acting the modeste, to that of a vigorous fellow, who had cleft the Hellespont,) drew her to my arms, which now clasped her to my bosom with all the warmth of glowing, boiling passion, and all the pride of victory. I pressed my lips warmly to hers. There was no return of the pressure. I pressed them again and again-slightly at last was I answered, but still that slightly was sufficient. Ce n'est que la premiere pas qui coute. She had not, however, opened her lips. I put my hand upon her heart, and it palpitated with a strong and audible beating under my touch. Heaven help it! it little knew how much more reason it would, ere long, have for more serious and more lasting throbbings. As yet she had not uttered a word, and I was becoming tired of her obsti nacy. I made, therefore, a last appeal. 'Are you afraid of me, dearest ?—I uttered, in a half-fond, half-querulous, tone. It broke the ice. She answered in a low, timid, and subdued voice'I am not,'-and turned to me, for the first time, with that coy and gentle pressure which is, perhaps, the dearest and most delightful of all sensations ever to be enjoyed by man. I knew by it that I had conquered. * * [There follows immediately, in his lordship's manuscript, a long passage-long enough to fill three of our pages, but it is unfortunately illegible. At least our correspondent assures us that he could not decypher it—it is not, however, impossible that some more skilful decypherer will be found-nor is it totally out of the question, but that even this difficult passage may find its way into print.] "My sleep might have been profound, but it was, of course, not over-long. I slept about three hours, which were sadly infested with dreams. I fancied that I had died, yet retained a puzzling sense of consciousness of existence. I seemed to be a sort of spectator of my own actions-to be looking at what the deceased Lord Byron was occupied about, yet, nevertheless, intimately blended and mixed up with all his actions. After my death, I descended to the infernal regions. The hell into which I had entered, was not the orthodox depository for damned souls, nor was it the Miltonian region of sorrow and doleful shades; nor was it the hall of Eblis as in Beckford's Vathek; nor what would be perhaps more to be expected from my style of reading at the time, the Inferno of Dante, with its dread inscription of Lasciate ogni speranza. No, it was the old classical hell, with the grim ferryman that poets write of, in the full costume of the Æneid, or rather, of an old weather-beaten engraving in Tooke's Pantheon. I had no sense of apprehension about me; I was but a visitor, although disembodied. Like our old schoolboy friends, Ulysses, or Æneas, I was but on a cruize, in quest of infernal novelties. I crossed the darksome flood, in the leathern boat, ploughing through it like a sluggish stream of molten lava. I trod on the burning soil, and saw, through a long perspective of irregular fires, the smouldering rivers of unextinguishable flame. I perceived all the old company to whom I had been introduced by Dr. Drury at Harrow. Ixion, on his wheel; Sisyphus rolling up his endless stone, like Southey, labouring after interminable quartos, puffed up as uselessly, and doomed to as rapid a revolution downhill; Tityus, with his vultures, and he put me in mind of England, with her borough lords preying for ever on her entrails, while she still lingers on, and appears ever to suffer nothing in her constitution—and so on. "As I had been presented to Ali Pacha, I had no scruple whatever of making my approaches to Pluto. He was sitting, silent, in which he had much the advantage of most kings with whom I have the honour of being acquainted, for he thereby avoided talking nonsense; and by him sate his bride; pale, dark-haired, with melancholy eye, and conjugal detestation of her sovereign lord; she looked as if she would have no objection to an earthly lover. I approached her, methought gallantly, and bowing reverently before her throne, with my right-hand placed with an air of devotion on my breast, I said, ' Hail, Proserpine!' "And, so saying, I awoke: but the influence of the dream was still strong upon me. The sound of my salutation rung in my ears, and the objects that met my eyes did not for some moments dispel the illusion. It was a clear January morning, and the dim grey light streamed in murkily through the glowing red damask-curtains of our bed. It represented just the gloomy furnace light with which our imaginations have illuminated hell. On the pillow reclined the head of my wife, with her face paler than the white cover which she was pressing; her hair had escaped from the night-cap, and it waved in long irregular tresses over her neck and bosom. She slept, but there was a troubled air upon her countenance. Altogether, that light-that cavern-like bed-that pale, melancholy visage that disordered and dark hair so completely agreed with the objects which I had just seen in my slumbers, that I started. I was almost going to continue the address, which, in the inferior realms I had commenced. 'Hail, Proserpine,' was again upon my lips, but reason soon returned. Her hand casually met mine, and, instead of the monumental-marble-like [There is some more of this chapter, but this is sufficient for a sample. We leave the remainder to the imagination of our readers. We are promised additional sketches from the same quarter.] THE HUMBUGS OF THE AGE. No. I.-The Opium Eater. THERE are some humbugs with which we have no patience. If we see a quack-doctor vending gin and rosemary-oil, under the name of the balsam of Rakasiri―or a mock-patriot bellowing loudly in a cause for which he does not care a pinch of snuff-or a pseudo-saiut turning up the whites of his eyes, and rolling them about in all the ecstacies of hypocrisy, at a conventicle-or a poor anxious author sitting down to puff himself in a review, got up for the occasion -or twenty thousand more things of the kind, we can appreciate and pardon them all. The quack mixes -the orator roars-the saint praysthe author puffs-for a tangible and intelligible reason, money. This is the lawful object of humbug. Even with those who go through similar operations for fame, which is a secondary scope of the humbuggers, we are not very angry, if that fame be for any thing worth looking after. But the sort and description of humbugs which we cannot tolerate, even in thought, are the fellows who, on the strength of some wretched infirmity, endeavour to puff themselves into notice, and not satisfied with being thought worthy of being objects of charity and compassion, look about the company, into which they introduce themselves, for wonder or applause. Such, however, is the spirit of rivalry, implanted by nature in the human breast, that, even in the most degrading things, the mind is sometimes so diseased as to quarrel for superiority. A dwarf, twenty-two inches long, envies and hates his fellow urchin who measures but twenty-one. In an hospital, not very far from the room in which we write, it is not long since two unfortunates were in a ward, labouring under that very unpleasant disorder which calumny has consigned to the exclusive use of the people north of the Tweed. Two worse cases, perhaps, never came under the eye of a physician. They were disgusting to the last degree, and, strange to say, they quarrelled about their pre-eminence in misfortune. Things went so far that they proceeded even to blows, and were obliged to be separated. Here we have two wretched creatures claiming the prerogative of being the most itch-bitten of mankind, and fighting savagely for the proud distinction! To this we know no parallel, except the case of the Opium Eater, who makes it his glory that he has chewed more opium than any other man of his time. "Let them," says this poor animal, "vaunt themselves on itch-I plume myself on opium." Instigated by hunger, it is now three years since this man wrote the Confessions of an Opium Eater, for Taylor and Hessey, and they paid him for it very handsomely; as, indeed, they pay every body with whom they have any connexion. The article made a sensation, which was kept alive by all those arts of puffing which we well know, and ere long shall most thoroughly expose. Medical men saw that it was all nonsense-men of taste perceived that it was mere fudge-but still it evidently made a sensation. Southey, with that amazing obliquity of intellect, and that bare-faced esprit de corps which distinguishes the lake school, of which the Opium Eater was a sort of hangeron, gave it a sentence in the Quarterly Review of most daubing panegyricand magistrates, from their judicial seats, declared that it had done much mischief. Of Southey's total want of knowledge of every thing connected with things that exist, there is no need whatever to speak, it being as universally acknowledged as the existence of Saint Paul's; and, therefore, of his opinion, which has been the regular text in all the advertisements of the book ever since, we make no account---no, not the smallest. As to the magisterial decision on the mischief of the book, there, too, we must demur. Some silly lads, as silly as their sheep, may have been |