rule and compass, on a similar principle of absurdity, to that of composing an epic poem by a steam-engine. Such and the same, we esteem the folly of teaching young artists grace, symmetry, and beauty, by the measurement of the proportions of the antique statues. They are, when this is practised, deceived and deluded into a wrong path at the outset, and they can seldom afterwards regain their way. So far has the absurdity been carried, that tables have actually been constructed of the feet, inches, and parts of an inch necessary to be observed by every painter and every statuary, in embodying his conceptions of human beauty-the Venus de Medicis being taken as the standard of female, and the Apollo Belvidere of male beauty.

But granting that the Venus exhibits the finest proportions of female beauty, which were ever embodied or ever conceived; yet it does not follow, that there could be no other female form beautiful, or that no other would be beautiful, that had. not all the characteristics of this. On the contrary, we conceive that there may be a thousand other female forms, all differing in proportion from this statue, and all as supremely beautiful. The Venus is represented as a mere girl of about fourteen or sixteen, and such as every one knows, may have a style of beauty very different, though not supe

rior to one of eighteen, twenty, or twentyfive. One may be a timid beauty like the Venus, who seems to shrink back from the world, and even from herself; another, a modest beauty; another, a sprightly beauty; another, a majestic beauty; all of which characters cannot be combined in any one form-for they are totally incompatible, and if combined, would infallibly destroy one another and produce deformity. The tables of feet and inches drawn up from the Venus and the Apollo, as the only standards of human beauty, which the young artist is to look up to, are, therefore, worse than useless;-and the following of such absurdities will infallibly injure the finest genius for the arts.

This deception-this misleading, and injurious fallacy, will be most obviously exposed by bringing it to the test of experiment. Every body knows that some beauties have blue, and others black eyes; now if the theorists can show, that a mixture of blue and black would be more beautiful than either blue or black taken singly-then will we allow that we are wrong; but a blackish blue or a blueish black eye, though no such eyes ever really occur, would, we are persuaded, appear to be the very reverse of beautiful.

J. M. N.

WE are half sorry for having announc ed Dr. Kitchener as the second of this our highly popular series, after the little opium-eater. For though undoubtedly the Doctor has quantum suff. of humbug about him, yet he, by no means, deserves to be ranked with so superb a specimen of it, with such a mass of humbugging pure as little Quincy. As we have here been obliged to allude to Q. we may as well remark, that Taylor and Hessey are most horribly puzzled how to get rid of this tremendous bore -this incubus, which is evidently smothering their magazine. Now, as they are both respectable men, for whom every body that we happen to know, has a regard, we shall mention to them a short and easy process of ejecting him. When next he comes towards No. 90, Fleetstreet, let one of the aforesaid gentlemen

plant the ball of the great toe of the dexter foot upon that part of Quincy which is most sensible, and project him across the street, at the rate of seventyfive and a half paces in a second, right a head among the sausages, 'bolognas, pigs-feet, sheeps-trotters, neatstongues, bellies of tripé, and gammons of bacon, that abound, in luxurious heaps, in the shop of the city cook opposite; whose name, at the present writing, we happen most unfortunately to forget. Then let him sprawl against the window, like a spread-eagle reversed -or else bursting through the pane, wamble about, while ever and anon there drops into his mouth a sausage, as fat and greasy as his own brains, or a pig's-foot, as redolent of mire as his speculations on divine philosophy..

Taylor and Hessey may depend upon

it, that they have no other way of get ting rid of this intolerable burr, this calamitous caltrop, which has clung to them. If they follow our advice, their magazine, eased of the unhealthy load which now oppresses it, will obtain a tone, an elasticity of motion, an activity of gait, which will astonish even its proprietors. The application is simple but effective. As the manual part of the labour of the magazine falls principally upon Taylor, it is only fair that this pedal department should be executed by Hessey. Or, if he should object, let him call in Allan Cunningham, from Pimlico. That stout youth of Nithisdale will be most happy, we are sure, to operate on Quincy-who has planted himself in his neighbourhood very much to the disquietude of Mrs. C. who happens to be in the way that ladies love to be that love their lords; and, with a natural maternal feeling, is afraid of the sympathetic effect the sight of such an apparition as Quincy may have on her future offspring. If it take effect, the coming baby will not serve, as its fine brothers and sisters have often done, as a model for the beautiful creations of Chantry.

Enough however of this-Having thus recommended the kicking out of Quincy, let us turn to the knight of the knife and fork. Against him, as we have already mentioned, our charges are of a far less aggravated nature. But we must nevertheless say, that one of the primest features of quackery is exhibited most notoriously in his person we mean the variety and discrepancy of the subjects to which he turns his pen. is a perfect, admirable Crichton in a small way. As that eminent buffoon of the middle ages brandished the sword, calculated the results of the articlabe, disputed on the physics of Aristotle, and played—

He

Bransles, ballads, virelayes, and verses vaine, on whatever was the fashionable vehicle for sound in his day, so our Kitchener wields the spit, and points the telescope, tips us the dogmata of the physics of Thomson, and hammers forth lustily the ancient music of Britain, we suppose, on its appropriate organ→ in his case, with tenfold propriety more appropriate the marrowbone and cleaver. To him the music of the spheres is as familiar as that of the bagpipe, and he looks with equal eye, as lord of all, on the productions of Cullen or the cullender. Andreini, in his Adamo, is a

subject of Voltaire's laughter, for making a chorus of angels commence an ode with

A la lira del Ciel Iri sia l'arco,

Corde le sfere sien, note le stelle, Sien le pause e i sospir l'aure novelle E'l tempo i tempi a misurar non parco. In Voltaire's English-" Let the rainbow be the fiddlestick of the heavens! Let the planets be the notes of our music! Let time beat carefully the measure, and the winds make the sharps, &c. A very inaccurate translation, by the bye, according to Master Arouet's usual custom. This we say is matter of joke in the mouth of a cherub, but would only be correct in that of the telescopic editor of Dibdin's songs. Nay, more, in the sky he would find other matters of judicious reflection. His mouth would run over with water at the signs of the zodiac. Aries would call up visions vast of haunches of mutton, dressed venison-fashion, redolent of allspice and black pepper-Taurus, phantasms of glorious barrons of beef [Gemini and Cancer we leave to the accoucheurs and Sir Somebody Aldis], and so on through all the constellations of the sky. It was observed by Canning [we believe, but do not venture pointedly to assert it as a fact], that he never could look at Rev. E. Irving, the preacher, who, entre nous, will figure away in due course as a humbug of the age, without thinking that his squint was typical of the man; as, while one eye rolled upward among the sanctities of heaven, the other glanced over the devout maidens of the tabernacle below-So can our hero sweep, with one glance of his spectacles, through the firmament of heaven and ferment of the soup-pot.

It is principally on account of this aiming at being a walking encyclopædia that we have placed him in the seats of humbug. Like Dryden's Zimri, he is every thing by starts and nothing long." Hence, with all his bustle and pretension, there is not a book of his but is infested with most outrageous quackery. His Peptic Precepts are humbug from beginning to end. There is nothing worth reading in them that has not been stolen, in the most barefaced manner, from a thousand unacknowledged sources. And yet he has the face to puff it off as original. In the same way he informs us, that there is not a receipt in his Cook's Oracle which he has not tried and submitted to the opinion of a committee of taste! Now, this

is exactly what one of that polite nation, the Houynhms, would call "saying the thing which is not." Turn up Kitchener by chance-Here he is, page 224.

"Put half-a-pint of oatmeal into a porringer with a little salt, if there be not enough in the broth-of which add as much as will mix it to the consistence of hasty-pudding, or a LITTLE THICKER

lastly, take a little of the fat THAT SWIMS ON THE BROTH, and put it on the crowdie-and eat it in the same way. as hasty-pudding,"

Gods of Gastronomy! here is a dose for a horse! And Doctor Kitchener pretends he actually ate of that dish, and submitted it to a committee of taste!

Taste! Foh! They must have been Kamschakadales, or else Tarare must have revived to fill the prese's chair.

Again, does he think any body with a head on his shoulders will believe him, when he tells us of his having eaten skate fried in dripping or ox-cheek dressed with two whole onions, two cloves of garlick, two bay-leaves, &c.— or a fat pudding, a compound of grease, or extract of vermin under the name of Soy, or a hundred other similar things. No! No! Doctor! We shall not swallow either your dishes or your assertions.

This then is quackery of an unmitigated kind. We own, besides, that it does strike us as something infinitely disgusting, to see an elderly gentleman of a liberal profession and an ample fortune, stooping to study cookery as a working cook. In the Almanach des Gourmands, all is as it ought to be. The author is an amazingly pleasant fellow, who writes on the culinary art with that mock gravity that is truly delightful. We receive from his book, pleasure of the same species exactly as we receive from burlesque poetry. Nobody suspects him of caring more for the subject on which he treats, than the pseudo-Homer did for the imaginary contest of the frogs and mice, or Boileau for the frivo lous disputes of the authorities of an old cathedral, concerning the due disposition of a church reading-desk, or Alexander Pope for the trifling occurrences connected with cutting off a lady's lock of hair. But here we have coming forward, in propria persona, a man with no pretensions to wit, though he makes some heavy offers at it, seriously to represent himself as personally mixing himself up with the greasy arcana of the kitchen, and swallowing, for the benefit

of book-making, lumps of oatmeal beaten up with the skimmings of a pot, or hor• rible fishes anointed with execrable dripping. It is any thing but a pleasant picture: we are instinctively reminded of Polyphemus in the Odyssey (we must, though we have the fear of pedantry duly before our eyes, quote the Greek with an attempt at translation of our own, having none of the acknowledged over-settings, as the Germans phrase it, and in the case of the English Homer most appropriately, within convenient reach.) The monster is described at his feast as one, who,

*Ησθιε δ' ώστε λέων ορεσίτροφος, οὐδ ̓ ἀπσέ καὶ ὀστέα μυελ

λειτσεν Εγκατά τε σάρκας τε, όεντα.

He

Ate like a mountain lion, leaving none

Of meat, or entrails, or of marrowy-bone; or of another personage in the same poem, Irus, the beggar-man, who is introduced to the readers as being conspicuous for continually eating, and exhibiting no small skill in raising the wind off the natives of Ithaca. In this last particular, too, Kitchiner may vie with Irus-for never Jew or Christian, baptized or infidel, has a more active or ready hand at demanding his due from the booksellers, on account of his various performances and, indeed, if that were all that we could accuse him of, we should willingly bear light enough; for the gentlemen of that trade know the value of money as well as those of any other under the sun. We mention it merely that nobody should be taken in by Kitchener, to think him a dilletanti scribbler who writes for amusement. Far from it--he puts his gobblings into print for pay. Even Sir John Hill, quack notorious as he was, had more modesty, or rather more sense of what was due to the decorum of his profession -for when he composed a cookery-book, he put to it the since much-honoured title of Mrs. Glasse.

Kitchener has lately made his appearance with a book on spectacles—a barcfaced reprint of a former work of the same kind, which yet is most heroically puffed off in the second number of the Universal Review. The article, of course, was written either actually by himself or from his dictation-for the reader may believe us, that poor Peter Peebles is quite correct, when he tells us, in Redgauntlet, that there are tricks in other trades besides selling muslius-and it

informs us that this bookselling speculation is a result of the "benevolent ingenuity which marks the spirit of the author." Benevolent figs-end. The wine our friend K. drinks is made of grapes. It is evident that the only benevolence he thinks of is to lift the coppers, partly by the profits of the book— partly by a scheme recommended in it, of opening a depôt for selling spectacles to the poor, at a moderate premium which of course is intended as a job. We shall, however, believe in his benevolence, if he devotes one year's profits of the Cook's Oracle to the design-on the same day we shall cheerfully consecrate a similar proportion of the profits of our Magazine.

In this review he tells us that he "has done himself credit by a succession of works, curious, useful, and popular." Bah! He has raked together some stupid songs to bad music-and got up a humbug dinner in honour of Dibdin. Here, perhaps, some one may say, Well, and where is the harm? He has written bad books and tried to puff them-and in one instance been successful-and why not? We echo the query: Why not? But we do think it right in us, in our new vocation, to expose one circumstance to which we must decidedly allude as an undoubted piece of hum, particularly as it is the cause of the puffs which K. has received from various magazines. He has money, and can give a good dinner. Calidum scit ponere sumen. There is no better way of coming at your critic than through the paunch. There he is most vulnerable. We have heard that there is a quack woman about town who gets panegyrics written for her nostrums by poor and hungry devils-and by hiring

Lean critics for puffs with fat gobbets of mutton,

contrives to physic the public very respectably. In a similar manner acts Kitchener, and accordingly his books are pronounced superb. But moreover and above, as Dick Martin says, he has lately succeeded in getting up a club of writers, of which he is the great critic

AMERICAN BLUE STOCKINGISM, OR Ir is one of the evils of wit, that it is seldom in unison with truth and justice; but commonly delights in misrepresen

the Magnus Apollo-and from every one of the fraternity he receives the tribute of a puff. Of this club, if it be worth it, we shall ere long give a very sufficient analysis: but it is probable that it is not worth the paper which such an exposé would cost.

In a word, Kitchener's cookery-book is bad, and yet it is blown up into a sale by humbug. We imagine, however, the forthcoming translations from the French cooks, whom he has so unmercifully pillaged, will put an end to this. His Peptic Precepts are quack work-so are his songs-so is every thing he has ever written--and, he himself a second Margites, who knows every thing and every thing badly, deserves to be enrolled among the venerable fraternity of the humbugs of the age.

One word as to his name, and we have done. So complete an illustration of the prophetic spirit never was known. Tom Paine, when he sneered at the adaptation of the name of Phaleg to the great occurrence which took place in the days of that patriarch, could not have anticipated that he had a contemporary (Kitchener is about sixty), whose future occupation was distinctly shadowed forth in his name. On which subject we can give our readers a

SONNET TO CONCLUDE.
Knight of the kitchen-telescopic cook-

Medical poet-pudding-building bard-
Swallower of dripping-gulper down of

lard

Equally great in beaufet and in book-
With a prophetic eye that seer did look

Into fate's records when he gave thy name,
By which you float along the stream of
fame,

As floats the horse-dung down the gurgling brook,

He saw thee destined for the boiler's side, With beef and mutton endless war to wage; Had he looked farther, he perhaps had spied

Thee scribbling, ever scribbling page by page, Then on thy head his hand he'd have ap

plied,

And said, This child will be a HUMBUG OF

THE AGE.

So far for Kitchener. Next month for SIR HUMPHREY DAVY.

FEMALE UNIVERSITY AT NEW-YORK. tation, distortion, and caricature. The incongruous things and images, indeed, which it brings together must always