wore a beard-a pleasing introductory interpreter to his volume. There is Mr. Udé, prefacing his own "Cookery-book," well-frilled and frizzled, displaying at once

beef à la Psyche, and curls à la braise.

There is Schah somebody, monarch of Persia, in lithography-by-the-by, those lithographic faces want sadly a little soap and water.-There is Byron, in Hone's shop-window, turning with a pepper and mustard frown from "Poems on his domestic circumstances ;"-Mr. Hunt before his own Memoirs, " quarum pars magna fuit," with divers other worthies of renown.

The wigged frontispieces of the last century have an awful sombreness and sameness about them, the curl of the nose is almost the only difference between the respective personages: and certainly the first revolting step to be got over in the works of Locke, or Boyle, or Shaftesbury, is the stiff visage in the opening page:

With praises of the author penn'd

B' himself, or wit-ensuring friend.

The most comfortable face that ever presided over a title-page, is certainly that of Lord Clarendon; he seems seated on the woolsack, potent and responsible. The mustachios of those days would lead us to expect trea tises on "blunderbusses, drums, and thunder." No such thing; those bitter fellows are as mild as mother's milk upon paper, and calmly lay down their pros and cons with that tranquil energy, which they have so hap pily stamped upon the English language. The churchmen in their black skull-caps look also prodigiously grim, and do not belie their title of the church militant. John Knox looks a far more formidable fellow than old Noll himself, and if Hugh Peters had horns, he might well be mistaken for his arch-enemy, the devil. These spirits, according to our doctrine, must have a spiteful

time of it in modern libraries. Ludlow and the Eikon

Basiliké, cheek by jowl.

bing shoulders together. Puritan preachments.

Milton and Salmasius rub

Hudibras among a heap of Parliamentary Diaries by the

side of Royal Proclamations. I wonder if the cavaliers and roundheads agree no better in calf and parchment, than they did in buff jerkin and cuirass.

But to drop this idle system-spinning, and adopt the experimental mode of proceeding recommended by one Bacon; let us choose yon musty-looking little old hunks of a duodecimo, and discover if there be any truth in our biblio-physiognomical foresight. Old it is for certain, and crabbed withal;-it looks stupid and yet shrewdcompact and yet clumsy-an example of ingenuity thrown away. Let us examine farther-no frontispiece-a titlepage of flourishing type, and in red letters we behold "Argall's Accedens of Armory." Truly we applaud our sagacity; we guessed it to be heraldry, or something thereabouts. Let us probe the old volume for a sample of its contents, as the gauger's auger does a barrel of butter:

"The Herehaught being somewhat moved, sayde: I neither asked you for this cote, shepecote, or hoghiscote, but my meaning was to have seene your coate of armes.— Armes, quod he, I would have good leggs, for myne armes are indifferent."

The facetious herald at arms tempts us to try another specimen-we have hit upon a most truly curious one:

"Far likewise under al these ther are ix movable spheres, severally, unto whome for, their continuall armonye, the poetes compare one of the nyne muses with their appropried people. As Calliope dwels in the hiest and swiftest sphere, where she remaineth goddes of the heraulds or herehaughtes. In the second fixed starry

sphere is Vrania, the goddess of astrologiens. Polimnia inhabiteth the sphere of Sage Saturne, and is goddess of the depe-witted philosophers. Terpsichore, who dwelleth in the sphere of Jupiter, is goddess of all gladness made" with instruments of low, softe, and swete sounde. Clio remaineth in the sphere of Mars, as goddess of the historiographers, and of suche, as with steely strokes have stablished stout stomakes. Melpomene, whose being is in the sonne sphere, is goddess of tragical writers. Erato, that dwelleth in the sphere of Venus, is the goddess of all solace. Euterpe resteth in the sphere of Mercury, and is goddess of loude noysed instruments, as trumpets that geve warning of peace and warre. Thalia occupieth the sphere of the moone, and is counted the goddess of all gode dities, as songes and sonnets*"

Ye gods, what a classification! Heraldry first among the Muses, and Poetry last. Of all the solemnities that ever were solemnized in this solemn world, solemn impudence is certainly the most amusing.

R.

THE gate into St. James's Park, near Mr. Canning's house at Spring-Gardens, had been taken down, and a

"The Accedens of Armory, imprinted at London in Flete-streete within Temple-barre at the signe of the Hande and Starre by Rich. Cottyle. Anno 1572." It is one of the most curious and most scarce volumes ever an antiquarian dived into.

turn-stile substituted in its place; a gentleman inquired of Mr. Canning, why the entrance to the park had been altered "Oh," he replied, "such very fat people went through."

When the army were supposed to be disaffected, during the Queen's trial, Luttrell asked one of the Ministers, "What they designed doing now their extinguisher was on fire."

It was at one time supposed, that the poem of Ampthill Park was written by Mr. Luttrell and Lord Nugent in conjunction. "How do people manage it, Rogers," said Sidney Smith, "when they write a poem together; does one person give one line and another the second, like two men at a saw-pit?"

It was told Jekyl, that one of his friends, a brewer, had been drowned in his own vat-"Ah!" he exclaimed, "floating on his watery bier."

ON WALTER SCOTT'S POEM OF WATERLOO,
BY LORD ERSKINE.

On Waterloo's ensanguined plain,

Full many a gallant man lies slain ;
But none by bullet or by shot

Fell half so flat as Walter Scott.

Madame de Stael, who had no peculiar preference for female society, and confessed that she never knew what to say to a woman, on arriving very early at a dinner

party in Paris, before the master and mistress had come down stairs, found one lady already in the room before her. Mme de Stael felt it necessary to speak. What could she say? The lady had some beautiful diamonds. She first admired these. This was not sufficient. The lady smiled, and made no answer. She must speak again : and to a woman, of course, thought it necessary to speak only of dress. Continuing the subject of the jewels, she expressed herself, "très-curieuse," to be informed of the value of one of her rings. The lady, with a look of "Curieuse, Madame ?-je feigned surprise, repeated, me suis toujours imaginée que la curiosité était une passion de femme."

Dr. Holland was with Mr. Rogers at Pæstum, at the time when the latter is supposed to have written his Some months after, verses, dated from that place.

Sidney Smith met Dr. Holland at a dinner, and inquired, whether it were true, that Rogers had written "No-not any thing at the moment of their visit. that I remember-only a verse or two." Only a verse or two?" interrupted Sidney Smith-" Only a verse or two-why, Rogers takes to his bed after writing a verse or two :-he has straw flung down before the door; his knocker is muffled his friends send to inquire after him: and the servant answers, 'As well as can be expected.""