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perdition! Mr Pecker had not passed the threshold ere he became aware of the mistake. We forget to mention the matter in the presence of P— Dear girl ! better preserve her illusive confidence in the non-existence of evil, till maturity shall bring in its train the cruel knowledge ! Till now the dew of her mind has never been ruffled.—And Mr. Niblett knows this : capable the while of acting the traitor's part! Dark will be his account * Mr. Pecker assures me that the person was singularly repulsive in her appearance. This adventure is sacred, too, from his partner. Dear Mrs. Pecker still believes the invitation to have glanced from the sportively mysterious pen of the author of " Cecil,” whose similar brochures, some years ago, excited a nine days' wonder, which reached the precincts of Tinglebury ;-not ours, as you know, to loiter behind in the transmission of intelligenca

Whither have I rambled ? Did you not ask me about dress in Belgravia ? The adaptability which is so essential a feature and privilege of aristocratic taste presides here also. The free circulation of air is insured by the bonnets, which also are arranged so as to admit the summer sun- -the last how cheering! Defence in crowds, too, is provided for by the structural forms of the petticoat. Lady Gale's extreme timidity is said to have originated that sweep of robe which the garish and frivolous French claim to have discovered. Mrs. Pecker thinks the amplitude mercifully calculated, also, to prove a safeguard in the case of railway accidents. The spread of the natural taste which Wordsworth and Cowper have so laudably fostered, keeps pleasing pace with these more sophisticated devices of civilisation. Gooseberries, grapes, and other vegetable productions, are essential as ornaments. Our ingenious P- promises that your friend's bonnet shall not long be ungraced by a modest sprig of barberries—herself the manufactress! For singularity, my dear, is what no Christian gentlewoman will desire Even the simple herbage of the brook claims its part. Nay, we have seen a panache of cress, bejewelled with the shells of passing snails, and a bouquet of the same, doomed to grace the high-born bosom of the Duchess of -! A wreath of love-apples has been commissioned for Royalty, whose tasteful garnitures were so vividly conspicuous in her recent visit to continental Europe.

Too much, however, of these frivolous themes, introduced merely to show that in small matters as well as in momentous conjunctions,-I am, in the bonds of charity,

Decidedly yours,

DIANA RILL.

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P.S.-A medieval card, with difficulty decypherable as is its subjunctive pencil date.--"Eve of Saint Romuald," apprises us

, of a visit from Mr. Niblett. This open profession of his new views does not shake the current of my soul, with regard to his truancy and its true import. Our sweet P- , however, owns the pill to be bitter, and, I think, has shed tears. But she loves not any should see them fall.

A period of some days has elapsed since the above was written. What will you say--what will England say- , what will Tinglebury and Wailford feel, when it is known that, owing to the interference of the Papal Chair, through the agency of the sovereigns of France and Belgium, the Church is to be stripped by the passing of the Corn Bill ? in which, they say, H. M. reluctantly acquiesces. It was wrung from her during the enfeebled state of her approaching maternity! May the Disposer Nothing, Mr. Pecker assures me, can save us. The letting of Tinglebury is canvassed !!! A foreign journey, even, in prospetto. One more letter shall you have from Belgravia ; but just now my shaken spirits preclude further exercise of the pen.

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New Books.

TRAVELS OF LADY HESTER STANHOPE, forming the completion of her Memoirs

Narrated by her PHYSICIAN. 3 vols. 8vo. Colburn, This work professes to be a completion of the memoirs of an eccentric lady, whose character it very much assists in developing, and by no means tends to elevate, either in compass of intellect, or in acquirement. Resolute, or, rather, obstinate, proud, and credulous, this unfeminine woman acquired notoriety among the Asiatics, by the display of qualities that were unbecoming in her sex, and little complimentary to her understanding. Her purse, and aristocratic insensibility to danger, rather than cool intrepidity, backed by her arrogant self-consequence, were qualities quite sufficient to account for the ascendancy she acquired over a few Arab chiefs : this once gained, the respect of their inferiors was a natural consequence. It must be recollected, too, that her English connexions obtained for her the interest of all the diplomatists of her own country-throughout the East. Our ambassador at Constantinople administered to her interests with the Ottoman Porte, and thus everything aided to place Lady Hester in that position of influence among a barbarous people, which flattered her ambition, and made her prefer a state where she could exercise a power grateful to her ambitious feelings, to being absorbed at home in the common mass of individuals of her station, among whom, the qualities that gained her pre-eminence in Syria would have depressed, rather than raised her in estimation. Destitute, it would appear, of the better feelings of social life, Lady Hester sacrificed everything to her self-love, and attracted towards herself not a single human sympathy. Isolated as she was, her retainers and servants came and left her without a single mark of attach nent on the part, or regret upon hers. Her visionary sovereignty, matured by pride, led her on with no very valuable traits, save her indomitable energy, up to the moment of reaction. In her career she resembled her relation, Pitt: obstinacy, even in conscious wrong ; the policy that aided her objects before any justice ; great miscalculation, and recklessness of consequences,—all these were remarkable in both. The acquirements and cultivated intellect of Pitt were not, indeed, to be traced in Lady Hester, the comparison mainly regards natural, and not acquired tendencies. Destitute of humanity, she could exert her influence with indifference to carry fire and sword among a mountain people, occasioning scenes of ravage and bloodshed among the innocent, to avenge the death of a traveller, murdered by a robber or robbers within their territory; or, with equal indifference, hear the cries of men tortured by the petty despots where she resided, whom one word from herself would have saved-and, in such cases, pleading in justification some absurd axiom about justice and law, arising out of the innate pride of her proud and vain heart. In regard to mind, Lady Hester passed her solitude without books; she seems to have scorned the pleasures of intellect, and was proportionably ignorant and credulous. What can be said for a woman possessing judgment, upon the strength of an old manuscript, with the possession of very small pecuniary means at the time, setting out with a grand caralcade, to discover the hidden wealth of a dead pacha, having applied for the firmans necessary at Constantinople, perhaps through the English ambassador-God save the mark !—then to go from her residence at Lebanon to Askalon, in order to dig for this imaginary treasure ! Under such an authority from the Porte, Lady Hester was honoured with distinctions usually paid to princes only: twenty tents were pitched for her, numerous attendants provided, and an escort of a hundred horse ordered to accompany her, upon a fool's errand. The governor of Jaffa was commanded to accompany her. She had been so credulous as to believe that the English Government ought to pay the expenses of her search, as it would give the name reputation. The Porte was of course to have the treasure he himself could never discover but through her means.

She toiled to Askalon with cumbrous pomp,dug,-found nothing but a curious and mutilated statue, which she barbarously ordered to be broken up, because she would not have it said she came to look for statues for the English. Then, bereft of her escort, she journeyed back, crest-fallen, to her habitation in Lebanon. Thé whole affair exhibits a poor picture of her judgment, and a good one of her pride, that fed itself upon the achievement of presenting millions of

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buried treasure to the Porte! The whole affair was pitiably ridiculous. Lady Hester's connexions in England, and her eccentricities combined

-the last always attractive of notice-made her a wonderment, after all,

scarcely worth the noise made about her here. The present volumes are far more valuable for the disclosures they afford relative to the manners and dispositions of the natives of Syria, whether Turks, Arabs, or Druses, than for what they contain about Lady Hester, with her shrewd and eccentric coarseness. In this respect they are very interesting, and the loss of some of the author's journals is, on that account, to be deplored. We have travels and tours enough over highways and byways, that describe with sufficient generality every common-place object in nature or art - We are saturated with such ; but there is a great paucity of travels that embrace accounts of the domestic life, conversation, personal habits, and modes of thinking of foreign nations. Of those in the East, more especially, we know scarcely anything. This narrative gives a considerable insight into the domestic life of the East, nor does it present so repulsive a picture as we have been accustomed to see in previous accounts. The advantage of a medical character introduced the narrator into several harems, more properly har'yms, in the language of the East, and the pictures he draws of the fair recluses are not at all sombre. The Druses, both males and females, are a singular race; their tenets and forms of religious worship do not seem to be fully understood, but it is clear they have been much misrepresented. The habitation of Lady Hester Stanhope was, for sone time, at the convent of Mar Elias, at no great distance from Sayda, or Sidon of old, which is situated on the sea near where the mountain ridge of Lebanon begins to rise. Ascending for about half a mile to the first ridge of elevations, then descending into a deep valley, and again ascending a second and loftier mountain, by a miserable road barely practicable for the asses of the country, a quadrangular stone building was reached, consisting only of a single story, with a flat terraced roof. This building inclosed a small paved court, square, with a little mound of earth in the centre, a few flowers and a couple of orange-trees. The rooms were whitewashed, without tables or chairs, but some of them had long sofas of solid masonry built up against one of the walls. At one corner of the building was a small chapel with an altar in it, and on a staircase leading to the roof was a discoloration in the wall caused by the corpse of a late patriarch, walled up there, sitting in a chair, and giving out a most offensive smell in that warm climate, although embalmed. The site was picturesque, but lonely and barren, being on a summit destitute of verdure and surrounded with sterile mountains. A few olive and mulberry trees grew at the back of the building, which commanded a vast view, over an ·almost shipless sea, only distant about two miles. The interior of the building consisted of three good rooms on one side ; two occupied by Lady Hester and her maid, one serving as a drawing-room. A kitchen, and couple of storerooms, occupied another side, and three small rooms,

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a wine and oil cellar completed the palace of the visionary Lady, so that her physician and some others of her retainers were lodged in cottages without her abode, at a poor village called Abza, a quarter of a mile away. Destitute, it would appear, of

every

intellectual resource, it is wonderful how this singular woman could pass her time, for now she dropped all communication with Sayda. She had been indisposed soon after her arrival, and on her recovery her character seemed much changed. She adopted the simplest habits almost to cynicism ; showed in conversation a vigorous mind in describing men and things, and almost prophesied some of the events that occurred in Europe, although not so fortunate in prediction as to the Askalon treasures, the deposit of the deceased Pasha el Gezzàr. It was at Mar Elias that she seems to have formed a resolution of taking up her abode in the East, and began to adopt the customs of the orientals. She affected disgust for England, and fancied she might remain in quiet on Mount Lebanon, looking down in disdainful contemplation on the vicissitudes and follies of the worldherself out of their reach.

During this sojourn of Lady Hester, the author had ample time and opportunity for examining the country in the vicinity, and acquiring some knowledge of the inhabitants. His account of the Druses here is interesting. With Lady Hester the narrator visited Palmyra and Damascus. The last a city full of interest, populous and flourishing as in earlier times. His visit to Palmyra is interesting, and still more the reception there of Lady Hester. A snow storm on a journey in such a climate encountered by the travellers, must have been a great novelty. Balbec was visited by the narrator, and the wonderful ruins in which there are stones sixty-eight feet long, seventeen wide, and nearly fourteen thick, about a mile from which the country is described as exceedingly beautiful. After seeing as much of the country as it was possible under very favourable circumstances, and remaining for several years, the author of the present travels left Lady Hester and set out for Europe. He proceeded in the first place to Cyprus, of which he gives some account, and then sailed in a French vessel to Marseilles:

In glancing over these volumes it is impossible not to perceive that the author has laboured under disadvantages in having lost no inconsiderable portion of his journals. At the same time, we are not disposed to rate his descriptive powers very high. He must have sojourned in localities calculated to kindle into a flame the poetry of journeyingthe life of description, imparted not merely by observations, but combined association ; yet we find that no genial warmth cheers us as we are led by him over scenes of brilliant historical renown, places hallowed by religious recollection, or strewed with the dust of perished empires. Certain facts we have most undoubtedly, but their relation seems to hint that we might have had more. There are, in fact, two or three descriptions of travellers who publish, besides those who have no object but to see their names in print, and we would place the author of the