All the instruments.--Pray tell us all about it? Second Violoncello.-It is a difficult task. The Symphony we have just played is a musical monster. It is not the execution of any particular thought, and no object is regarded except that of appearing novel and original. We

"Lady Aymar suggests that perhaps you'll set down have to climb up, like the violin. Count Pallardos, on your way!"

First Violoncello, (interrupting.)-Just as if I could

"Why-ah, certainly, certainly!" replied Lord Frederick, not do it as well. with some hesitation.

"My thanks to Lady Aymar," said Spiridion very quietly, "but say to her ladyship that I am provided with overshoes and umbrella! Shall I offer your lordship half of the latter?" added he in another key, leaning with cool mock-earnestness towards Lord Frederick, who only stared a reply as he passed out to his chariot.

And marvelling who would undergo such humiliations and such antagonism as had been his lot that evening, for any. thing else than the love of a Lady Angelica, Count Spiridion | stepped forth into the rain to grope his way to his obscure lodgings in Parliament-street.

(We are averse to "to-be-continueds," but the whole value of this tale being the separate pictures it presents of scenes in high-life, we do not hesitate to stop with finish ing one of them. Another will be given in the next number, and will, like this, be a distinct sketch, if not the conclusion of the story.)

four notes every quarter of an hour-then a kettle-drum, and some mysterious tenor-tones, adorned with a quantity of pauses and rests!-next a furious tempo, wherein no principal idea becomes so apparent as to leave the auditor time to think. Rapid transition from one tone to another must succeed. At last take a run through semitones, and then rest upon the particular tone we wish, and the modulation is done. Upon the whole, avoid everything regular, for rule only binds genius.

Here the string of a guitar that hung over me suddenly burst, and I awoke, just as I was on the eve of becoming a great composer of the modern school; or, in other words, a fool. Thanks to thee, friendly companion of my song, for this attention. I hurried quickly to my just completed work, found that it was not according to the plot of the learned Venetian director, and, with the heavenly anticipations of success in my breast, walked leisurely to rehearsal.

KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER.

It is astonishing, with all our opportunities and practice, how little we know of this subject. For myself, I feel that the more I learn, the less I understand it.

nearly to the feeling he has of his personal identity; and this image of himself, rising from his thoughts, and shrouding his faculties, is that which sits with him in the house, walks out with him into the street, and haunts his bed-side. The best part of his existence is dull, cloudy, leaden: the flashes of light that proceed from it, or streak it here and there, may dazzle others, but do not deceive himself. Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a real confession is justly undervalued by others. Whatever good properties of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself he may possess are, in fact, neutralized by a "cold rheum" running through his veins, and taking away the zest of his pretensions, the pith and marrow of his performances. What is to me that I can write. It is true I can, by a reluctant effort, rake up a parcel of half-forgotten observations, but they do not float on the surface of my mind, nor stir it with any sense of pleasure, nor even of pride. Others have more property in them than I have: they may reap the benefit, I have only had the pain. Otherwise, they are to me as if they had never existed; nor should I know that I had ever thought at all, but that I am reminded of it by the strangeness of my appearance, and my unfitness for everything else.

I remember, several years ago, a conversation in the diligence coming from Paris, in which, on its being mentioned that a man had married his wife after thirteen years courtship, a fellow-countryman of mine observed, that "then, at least, he would be acquainted with her character;" when a Monsieur P, inventor and proprietor of the invisible girl,||and deportment. One reason that we do not see it in any made answer, "No, not at all; for that the very next day she might turn out the very reverse of the character that she had appeared in during all the preceding time." I could not help admiring the superior sagacity of the French juggler, and it struck me then that we could never be sure when we had got at the bottom of this riddle.

There are various ways of getting at a knowledge of character-by looks, words, actions. The first of these, which seems the most superficial, is perhaps the safest, and least liable to deceive: nay, it is that which mankind, in spite of their pretending to the contrary, are generally governed by. Professions pass for nothing, and actions may be counterfeited: but a man cannot help his looks. "Speech," said a celebrated wit, "was given to man to conceal his thoughts." Yet I do not know that the greatest hypocrites are the least silent.

There are people whom we do not like, though we may have known them long, and have no fault to find with them, except that their appearance is so much against them. That is not all, if we could find it out. There is, generally, a reason for this prejudice; for nature is true to itself. They may be very good sort of people, too, in their way, but still something is the matter. There is a coldness, a selfishness, a levity, an insincerity, which we cannot fix upon any particular phrase or action, but we see it in their whole persons other way may be, that they are all the time trying to conceal this defect by every means in their power. There is, luckily, a sort of second-sight in morals: we discern the lurking indications of temper and habit a long while before their palpable effects appear. I once used to meet with a person at an ordinary, a very civil, good-looking man in other respects, but with an odd look about his eyes, which I could not explain, as if he saw you under their fringed lids, and you could not see him again: this man was a common sharper. The greatest hypocrite I ever knew was a little, demure, pretty, modest-looking girl, with eyes timidly cast upon the ground, and an air soft as enchantment; the only circumstance that could lead to a suspicion of her true character was a cold, sullen, watery, glazed look about the eyes, which she bent on vacancy, as if determined to avoid all explanation with yours. I might have spied in their glitterFirst impressions are often the truest, as we find (not uning, motionless surface, the rocks and quicksands that await. frequently) to our cost, when we have been wheedled out ed me below! We do not feel quite at ease in the company of them by plausible professions or studied actions. A man's imperfection of person. The reason is, they are not on the or friendship of those who have any natural obliquity or look is the work of years, it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay more, by the hand of off on others the tricks that nature has played them. This, best terms with themselves, and are sometimes apt to play nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily. There is, as it however, is a remark that, perhaps, ought not to have been has been remarked repeatedly, something in a person's apI know a person to whom it has been objected as pearance at first sight which we do not like, and that gives us an odd twinge, but which is overlooked in a multiplicity made. of other circumstances, till the mask is taken off, and we a disqualification for friendship, that he never shakes you see this lurking character verified in the plainest manner in cordially by the hand. I own this is a damper to sanguine the sequel. We are struck at first, and by chance, with and florid temperaments, who abound in these practical dewhat is peculiar and characteristic; also with permanent monstrations and "compliments extern." The same pertraits and general effect: these afterwards go off in a set of son, who testifies the least pleasure at meeting you, is the last to quit his seat in your company, grapples with a subject unmeaning, commonplace details. This sort of prima facie evidence, then, shows what a man is, better than what he in conversation right earnestly, and is, I take it, backward says or does; for it shows us the habit of his mind, which is to give up a cause or a friend. Cold and distant in appearthe same under all circumstances and disguises. You will and a no less zealous partisan. The most phlegmatic conance, he piques himself on being the king of good haters, say, on the other hand, that there is no judging by appear-stitutions often contain the most inflammable spirits—as ances, as a general rule. No one, for instance, would take such a person for a very clever man without knowing who he was. Then, ten to one, he is not: he may have got the reputation, but it is a mistake. You say, there is Mr. undoubtedly a person of great genius: yet, except when excited by something extraordinary, he seems half dead. He has wit at will, yet wants life and spirit. He is capable of the most generous acts, yet meanness seems to cling to every motion. He looks like a poor creature-and in truth he is one! The first impression he gives you of him answers

fire is struck from the hardest flints.

And this is another reason that makes it difficult to judge of character. Extremes meet; and qualities display themselves by the most contradictory appearances. Any inclination, in consequence of being generally suppressed, vents itself the more violently when an opportunity presents itself; the greatest grossness sometimes accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief, one to the other; and we find the most reserved and indifferent tempers at the beginning of an entertainment, or an acquaintance, turn out the most communicative and cordial at the end of it. Some

*"It is not a year or two shows us a man."-EMILIA, in spirits exhaust themselves at first; others gain strength by OTHELLO.

progression. Some minds have a greater facility of throw

ing off impressions, and are, as it were, more transparent or porous than others. Thus the French present a marked contrast to the English in this respect. dresses you at once with a sort of lively indifference: an A Frenchman ad. Englishman is more on his guard, feels his way, and is either exceedingly silent, or lets you into his whole confidence, which he cannot so well impart to an entire stranger. Again, a Frenchman is naturally humane: an Englishman is, I should say, only friendly by habit. His virtues and his vices cost him more than they do his more gay and volatile neighbours. An Englishman is said to speak his mind more plainly than others:-yes, if it will give you pain to hear it. He does not care whom he offends by his discourse; a foreigner generally strives to oblige in what he says. The French are accused of promising more than they perform. That may be, and yet they may perform as many good-natured acts as the English, if the latter are as averse to perform as they are to promise. Even the professions of the French may be sincere at the time, or arise out of the impulse of the moment; though their desire to serve you may be neither very violent nor very lasting. I cannot think, notwithstanding, that the French are not a serious people; nay, that they are not a more reflecting people than the common run of the English. Let those who think them merely light and mercurial, explain that enigma, their everlasting prosing tragedy. The English are considered as comparatively a slow, plodding people. If the French are quicker, they are also more plodding. See, for example, how highly finished and elaborate their works of art are! How systematic and correct they aim at being in all their productions of a graver cast! "If the French have a fault," as Yorick said, "it is that they are too grave." With wit, sense, cheerfulness, patience, good-nature, and refinement of manners, all they want is imagination and sturdiness of moral principle! Such are some of the contradictions in the character of the two nations, and so little does the character of either appear to have been understood! Nothing can be more ridiculous, indeed, than the way in which we exaggerate each other's vices and extenuate our own. is an affair of prejudice on one side of the question, and of The whole partiality on the other. Travellers who set out to carry back a true report of the case appear to lose not only the use of their understandings, but of their senses, the instant they set foot in a foreign land. The commonest facts and appearances are distorted and discoloured. They go abroad with certain preconceived notions on the subject, and they make everything answer, in reason's spite, to their favourite theory. In addition to the difficulty of explaining customs and manners foreign to our own, there are all the obstacles of wilful prepossession thrown in the way. It is not, therefore, much to be wondered at that nations have arrived at so little knowledge of one another's characters; and that, where the object has been to widen the breach between them, any slight differences that occur are easily blown into a blaze of fury by repeated misrepresentations, and all the exaggerations that malice or folly can invent!

This ignorance of character is not confined to foreign nations; we are ignorant of that of our own countrymen in a class a little below or above ourselves. We can hardly pretend to pronounce magisterially on the good or bad qualities of strangers; and, at the same time, we are ignorant of those of our friends, of our kindred, and of our own. are in all these cases either too near or too far off the obWe ject, to judge of it properly.

Persons, for instance, in a higher or middle rank of life know little or nothing of the characters of those below them, as servants, country-people, etc. I would lay it down in the first place as a general rule on this subject, that all uneducated people are hypocrites. Their sole business is to deceive. They imagine themselves in a state of hostility with others, and stratagems are fair in war. The inmates of the kitchen and the parlour are always (as far as respects their feelings and intentions towards each other) in Hobbes's "state of nature," Servants and others in that line of life have nothing to exercise their spare talents for invention upon but those about them. Their superfluous electrical particles of wit and fancy are not carried off by those established and fashionable conductors, novels and romances. Their faculties are not buried in books, but all alive and stirring, erect and bristling like a cat's back. Their coarse conversation sparkles with "wild wit, invention ever new." Their betters try all they can to set themselves up above them,

5

and they try all they can to pull them down to their own level. They do this by getting up a little comic interlude, a daily, domestic, homely drama out of the odds and ends of tiful supply, or make up the deficiency of materials out of the family-failings, of which there is in general a pretty plentheir own heads. They turn the qualities of their masters scension only sets them the more against you. They are and mistresses inside out, and any real kindness or condenot to be taken in in that way-they will not be baulked in the spite they have to you. They only set to work with redoubled alacrity, to lesson the favour or to blacken your character. They feel themselves like a degraded caste, and side, and the advantages all on the other. You cannot cannot understand how the obligations can be all on one come to equal terms with them-they reject all such overtures as insidious and hollow-nor can you ever calculate upon their gratitude or good-will, any more than if they no fellow-feeling, they keep no faith with the more priviwere so many strolling gipsies or wild Indians. They have leged classes. They are in your power, and they endeavour to be even with you by trick and cunning, by lying and chicanery. In this they have nothing to restrain them. Their whole life is a succession of shifts, excuses, and expedients. The love of truth is a principle with those only who have made it their study, who have applied themselves severely tasked, and learns by habit to take a pride in, and to the pursuit of some art or science, where the intellect is to set a just value on the correctness of its conclusions. To have a disinterested regard for truth, the mind must have contemplated it in abstract and remote questions; whereas the ignorant and vulgar are only conversant with those things in which their own interest is concerned. All their notions are local, personal, and consequently gross and selfish. They say whatever comes uppermost-turn whatever happens to their own account-and invent any story, or give any answer that suits their purpose. Instead of being bigoted to general principles they trump up any lie for the occasion, and the more of a thumper it is, the better they like it; God-send! They have no conscience about the matter; the more unlooked-for it is, why, so much the more of a and if you find them out in any of their manœuvres, are not ashamed of themselves, but angry with you. If you remonyou have of them is their interest-you can but dismiss them Istrate with them, they laugh in your face. The only hold from your employment; and service is no inheritance. If they affect anything like decent remorse, and hope you will pass it over, all the while they are probably trying to recover the wind of you. Persons of liberal knowledge or sentiments have no kind of chance in this sort of mixed intercourse with these barbarians in civilized life. You cannot tell, by any signs or principles, what is passing in their minds. There is no common point of view between you. You have not the same topics to refer to, the same language to express yourself. Your interests, your feelings are quite distinct. You take certain things for granted as rules of pick up all their knowledge out of their own occasions, are action; they take nothing for granted but their own ends, on the watch only for what they can catch-are

"Subtle as the fox for prey;

Like warlike as the wolf, for what they eat.'

may affect their livelihood or advancement, none as it is They have indeed a regard to their character, as this last mother-wit and native talents at work upon a double file of connected with a sense of propriety; and this sets their expedients, to bilk their consciences, and salve their reputa. tion. more than if they were a different species of animals; and In short, you never know where to have them, any in trusting to them, you are sure to be betrayed and overreached. You have other things to mind, they are thinking only of you, and how to turn you to advantage. Give and take is no maxim here. You can build nothing on your own moderation or on their false delicacy. After a familiar conversation with a waiter at a tavern, you overhear him calling you by some provoking nickname. If you make a present to the daughter of the house where you lodge, the mother is sure to recollect some addition to her bill. It is a running fight. In fact, there is a principle in human nature not willingly to endure the idea of a superior, a sour jacoefface the tinsel of external advantages-and where others binical disposition to wipe out the score of obligation, or have the opportunity of coming in contact with us, they

generally find the means to establish a sufficiently marked degree of degrading equality. No man is a hero to his valetde-chambre, is an old maxim.

Women, according to Mrs. Peachum, are "bitter bad judges" of the characters of men; and men are not much better of theirs, if we can form any guess from their choice in marriage. Love is proverbially blind. The whole is an affair of whim and fancy. Certain it is, that the greatest favourites with the other sex are not those who are most liked or respected among their own. I never knew but one clever man who was what is called a lady's man; and he (unfortunately for the argument) happened to be a considerable coxcomb. It was by this irresistible quality, and not by the force of his genius, that he vanquished. Women seem to doubt their own judgments in love, and to take the opinion which a man entertains of his own prowess and accomplishments for granted. The wives of poets are (for the most part) mere pieces of furniture in the room. If you speak to them of their husbands' talents or reputation in the world, it is as if you made mention of some office that they held. It can hardly be otherwise, when the instant any subject is started or conversation arises, in which men take an interest, or try one another's strength, the women leave the room, or attend to something else. The qualities then in which men are ambitious to excel, and which ensure the applause of the world, eloquence, genius, learning, integrity, are not those which gain the favour of the fair. I must not deny, however, that wit and courage have this effect. Neither is youth or beauty the sole passport of their affections. "The way of woman's will is hard to know, Harder to hit."

and not by measure. We know all about the individuals, their sentiments, history, manners, words, actions, every. thing but we know all these too much as facts, as inveterate, habitual impressions, as clothed with too many associations, as sanctified with too many affections, as woven too much into the web of our hearts, to be able to pick out the different threads, to cast up the items of the debtor and creditor account, or to refer them to any general standard of right and wrong. Our impressions with respect to them are too strong, too real, too much sui generis, to be capable of a comparison with anything but themselves. We hardly inquire whether those for whom we are thus interested, and to whom we are thus knit, are better or worse than othersthe question is a kind of profanation-all we know is, they are more to us than any one else can be. Our sentiments of this kind are rooted and grow in us, and we cannot eradicate them by voluntary means. Besides, our judgments are bespoke, our interests take part with our blood. If any doubt arises, if the veil of our implicit confidence is drawn aside by any accident for a moment, the shock is too great, like that of a dislocated limb, and we recoil on our habitual impressions again. Let not that veil ever be rent entirely asunder, so that those images may be left bare of reverential awe, and lose their religion: for nothing can ever support the desolation of the heart afterwards!

The greatest misfortune that can happen among relations is a different way of bringing up, so as to set one another's opinions and characters in an entirely new point of view. This often lets in an unwelcome daylight on the subject, and breeds schisms, coldness, and incurable heart-burnings in families. I have sometimes thought whether the progress of society and march of knowledge does not do more Yet there is some clue to this mystery, some determining harm in this respect, by loosening the ties of domestic atcause; for we find that the same men are universal favour-tachment, and preventing those who are most interested in, ites with women, as others are uniformly disliked by them. and anxious to think well of one another, from feeling a Is not the load-stone that attracts so powerfully, and in all cordial sympathy and approbation of each other's sentiments, circumstances, a strong and undisguised bias towards them, manners, views, etc. than it does good by any real advantage a marked attention, a conscious preference of them to every to the community at large. The son, for instance, is brought other passing object or topic? I am not sure, but I incline up to the church, and nothing can exceed the pride and to think so. The successful lover is the cavalier servente pleasure the father takes in him, while all goes on well in of all nations. The man of gallantry behaves as if he had this favourite direction. His notions change, and he imbibes made an assignation with every woman he addresses. An a taste for the fine arts. From this moment there is an end argument immediately draws off the scholar's attention from of anything like the same unreserved communication bethe prettiest woman in the room. He accordingly succeeds tween them. The young man may talk with enthusiasm of better in argument-than in love!-I do not think that what his "Rembrandts, Correggios, and stuff:" it is all Hebrew is called love at first sight is so great an absurdity as it is to the elder; and whatever satisfaction he may feel in hearsometimes imagined to be. We generally make up our ing of his son's progress, or good wishes for his success, he minds beforehand to the sort of person we should like, grave is never reconciled to the new pursuit, he still hankers after or gay, black, brown, or fair; with golden tresses or with the first object that he had set his mind upon. Again, the raven locks; and when we meet with a complete exam-grandfather is a Calvinist, who never gets the better of his ple of the qualities we admire, the bargain is soon struck. disappointment at his son's going over to the Unitarian side We have never seen anything to come up to our newly dis- of the question. The matter rests here, till the grandson, covered goddess before, but she is what we have been all some years after, in the fashion of the day and "infinite our lives looking for. The idol we fall down and worship agitation of men's wit," comes to doubt certain points in the is an image familiar to our minds. It has been present to creed in which he has been brought up, and the affair is all our waking thoughts, it has haunted us in our dreams, like abroad again. Here are three generations made uncomsome fairy vision. Oh! thou, who, the first time I ever be- fortable and in a manner set at variance, by a veering point held thee, didst draw my soul into the circle of thy heavenly of theology, and the officious meddling of biblical critics! looks, and wave enchantment round me, do not think thy Nothing, on the other hand, can be more wretched or comconquest less complete because it was instantaneous; for mon than that upstart pride and insolent good fortune which in that gentle form (as if another Imogen had entered) I saw is ashamed of its origin; nor are there many things more all that I had ever loved of female grace, modesty, and awkward than the situation of rich and poor relations. Hapsweetness! py, much happier, are those tribes and people who are confined to the same caste and way of life from sire to son, where prejudices are transmitted like instincts, and where the same unvarying standard of opinion and refinement blend countless generations in its improgressive, everlasting mould!

I cannot say much of friendship as giving an insight into character, because it is often found on mutual infirmities and prejudices. Friendships are frequently taken up on some sudden sympathy, and we see only as much as we please of one another's characters afterwards. Intimate friends are not fair witnesses to character, any more than professed enemies. They cool, indeed, in time-part, and retain only a rankling judge at past errors and oversights. Their testimony in the latter case is not quite free from suspicion.

Not only is there a wilful and habitual blindness in near kindred to each other's defects, but an incapacity to judge from the quantity of materials from the contradictoriness of the evidence. The chain of particulars is too long and One would think that near relations, who live constantly massy for us to lift it or put it into the most approved ethical together, and always have done so, must be pretty well ac. scales. The concrete result does not answer to any abstract quainted with one another's character. They are nearly in theory, to any logical definition. There is black and white the dark about it. Familiarity confounds all traits of dis- and grey, square and round-there are too many anomalies, tinction: interest and prejudice take away the power of too many redeeming points in poor human nature, such as judging. We have no opinion on the subject, any more it actually is, for us to arrive at a smart, summary decision than of one another's faces. The Penates, the household- on it. We know too much to come to any hasty or partial gods, are veiled. We do not see the features of those we conclusion. We do not pronounce upon the present act, love, nor do we clearly discern their virtues or their vices. because a hundred others rise up to contradict it. We sus. We take them as they are found in the lump:-by weight,pend our judgments altogether, because in effect one thing

his powers, and great by design. Perhaps his tenaciousness, on the score of his own merit, might arise from an early habit of polemical writing, in which his pretensions were continually called to the bar of prejudice and party-spirit, and he had to plead not guilty to the indictment. Some men have died unconscious of immortality; as others have almost exhausted the sense of it in their life-time. Correggio might be mentioned as an instance of the one, Voltaire of the other.

There is nothing that helps a man in his conduct through life more than a knowledge of his own characteristic weaknesses (which guarded against, become his strength,) as there is nothing that tends more to the success of a man's talents than his knowing the limits of his faculties, which are thus concentrated on some practicable object. One man can do but one thing. Universal pretensions end in nothing. Or, as Butler has it, too much wit requires

There are those who have gone (for want of this selfknowledge) strangely out of their way, and others who have never found it. We find many who succeed in certain departments, and are yet melancholy and dissatisfied, because they failed in the one to which they first devoted themselves, like discarded lovers who pine after their scornful mistress. I will conclude with observing, that authors in general overrate the extent and value of posthumous fame: for what (as it has been asked) is the amount even of Shakspeare's fame? That in that very country which boasts his genius and his birth, perhaps scarce one person in ten has ever heard of his name, or read a syllable of his writings!

WE join in genius worship wherever we find it, and this, from an anonymous correspondent, is hearty and well

J.