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fulness of the most faithful race in creation. About the time of the last persecution of the Protestants, an officer of that persuasion was shut up in the donjon. He wished much to have his dog admitted with him; it was a greyhound, which he had reared. This innocent request being refused, the dog, though turned out of the fortress, watched an opportunity on the following day, and re-entered within the innermost court. His master was confined in one of the lower cells, the window of which was near the ground, and the animal appeared at it and was recognised. He came to the bars and visited his unhappy master, whose relatives knew nothing of his fate, diurnally for four whole years, in spite of cold or wet. At length the officer was set at liberty, returned home, and died in a few months afterwards. The dog again returned to Vincennes, and repeated its visits, taking up its dwelling with an outer turnkey, and frequently going to the window, where it sat for hours gazing in vain for its master, until death terminated its career. These two anecdotes respecting Vincennes I met with on my return to Paris, and the latter is worthy of being added to our extant collections of animal attachment and sagacity. I now thought of extending my walk, and of seeking Paris by a circuitous route. I quitted the chateau with a feeling of pleasure, and congratulated myself, that though it was but a little time comparatively, not indeed forty years ago, since Vincennes sent forth the sighs of the captive, we had had no secret prison in England since the reign of Henry VIII., when the Tower of London was used as such. At no period after him for three hundred years, including the bloody proscriptions of Mary, have we such instances of incarceration and mean cowardly oppression acting in darkness and blasting for ever the hope of its victims, as the eighteenth century discloses among our neighbours. There have been instances enough of injustice, but they took place in open day. We never pounced upon our unoffending and unsuspicious prey amid the darkness of the night, and wrapped its fate in eternal oblivion. Our state oppressions were boldly perpetrated upon the most illustrious of our victims; and we could have no motive for acting otherwise with the meaner, about whom much less interest and partisanship would naturally be excited.

The village of Vincennes had nothing novel or worthy a pedestrian stranger's notice. Passing, therefore, some way into the Park by an indirect route, I reached St. Mandé, a pleasant commune about the distance of a petit pas, as the French style every measure within a league. How often have I asked the distance to a chateau, or village, and been answered un petit pas, when an hour's walking, à grand pas, has barely brought me to my object! The Frenchman, like the Irishman, speaks often without reflection; he is eager to oblige and satisfy an enquirer, but he does not reflect that precision is of consequence at all. I found, however, that in the present instance a few feet and yards were of no moment, as the scene I had just quitted exchanged for the beauty of the vegetation, the smiling flowers, the freedom of the expanded horizon, and the springiness and elasticity they diffused over the frame, would have made me forget leagues of distance. I ran, hopped, and really think I danced along the path; I thought myself supernaturally gifted with the levity of the nation,-no balloon could be more buoyant. The excitement I felt was a delicious sensa

tion, such as I imagine few dwellers in cities know any thing about. In this way I entered an hotel in St. Mandé, and encountered a pretty but petite girl, who looked the very picture of health and good-humour. Her dark locks were neatly dressed and arranged, and her light step, with that peculiar and captivating air which the sex in France always possess, completely fixed my attention, so that it was not until Madamoiselle Pauline, as she afterwards told me she was called, inquired if Monsieur would please to have some refreshment, that I recollected I had entered the house for that very purpose. Madamoiselle Pauline informed me that the grilled leg of a turkey or a mutton cutlet, could be got ready in a few minutes, and preferring the dindon to the mutton, with some potage à la Julienne and a bottle of Burgundy, I made a most excellent repast. Madamoiselle Pauline then insisted upon my taking some of her coffee, which she assured me was superbe in taste and flavour; and having swallowed it on credit of her recommendation and found it so, I walked back to my hotel in Paris, and concluded my day at the spectacle of the Opera Comique. 0.

ADDRESS TO THE STARS.

Ye are fair-ye are fair-and your pensive rays
Steal down like the light of parted days;
But have sin and sorrow ne'er wander'd o'er

The green abodes of each sunny shore?

Hath no frost been there, and no withering blast,
Cold-cold o'er the flower and the forest past?
Does the playful leaf never fall nor fade,
The rose ne'er droop in the silent shade?

Say, comes there no cloud on your morning beam,
On your night of beauty no troubled dream?
Have ye no tear the eye to annoy,

No grief to shadow its light of joy?

No bleeding breasts that are doom'd to part,

No blighted bower, and no broken heart?

Hath death ne'er saddened your scenes of bloom,
Your sun's ne'er shone on the silent tomb?

Did their sportive radiance never fall
On the cypress tree or the ruin'd wall?
"Twere vain to guess, for no eye hath seen
O'er the gulf eternally fix'd between.

We hear not the song of your early hours;
We hear not the hymn of your evening bowers.
The strains that gladden each radiant sphere

Ne'er poured their sweets on a mortal ear,

Though such I could deem-on the evening's sigh,
The air-harp's unearthly melody!

Farewell!-farewell! I go to my rest,
For the shades are passing into the West;
And the beacon pales on its lonely height-
Isles of the Blest-good-night!-good-night!

M.

FIRST LETTER TO THE ROYAL LITERARY SOCIETY.
"Our court shall be a little academy."-SHAKSPEARE.

"Doctor, I want you to mend my cacology."-Heir at Law.

CANDOUR requires, Mr. Secretary, that I should commence my letter by confessing the doubts I once entertained as to the necessity of any such establishment as that which I have now the honour to address; for at a time when our booksellers evince such unprecedented munificence, that no author of the least merit is left unrewarded, while all those of superior talent acquire wealth as well as fame, it did appear to me that our writers needed no chartered patrons or royal remunerators. At the first public meeting, however, of the Society, the president having most logically urged the propriety of such an institution, because this country had become "pre-eminently distinguished by its works of history, poetry, and philology," without the assistance of any corporate academy; while they had long possessed one in France, (where literature has been notoriously stationary or retrograde from the period of its establishment), I could not resist the force of this double argument, and am now not only convinced that it is necessary to give to our literature "a corporate character and representation," but prepared, as far as my humble abilities extend, to forward the objects of the Society, by hastening to accept its invitation for public contributions. Aware that the model of the French academy should always be kept in view, and remembering the anecdote recorded by M. Grimm, of one of its members, who died in the greatest grammatical dilemma as to whether he should say " Je m'en vais," or, "je m'en va, dans l'autre monde," I shall limit my attention to considerations of real importance, particularly to such as may conduce "to the improvement of our language, and the correction of capricious deviations from its native purity," such being one of the main objects proposed in the president's address. Not having time, in this my first letter, to methodize all my suggestions, I shall loosely throw upon paper such observations as have occurred to me in a hasty and superficial view of the subject.

Nothing forms so violent a deviation from philological purity as a catachresis. We sneer at the slip-slop of uneducated life, and laugh at Mrs. Malaprop upon the stage, yet what so common in colloquial language as to hear people talk of wooden tombstones, iron milestones, glass inkhorns, brass shoeing-horns, iron coppers, and copper hand-irons ?-We want a substitute for the phrase going on board an iron steam-boat, and a new verb for expressing its motion, which is neither sailing nor rowing: these are desiderata which the Society cannot too speedily supply, considering the prodigious extension of that mode of conveyance. Many expressions are only catachrestical in sound, yet require emendation as involving an apparently ludicrous contradiction; such, for instance, as the farmer's speech to a nobleman at Newmarket, whose horse had lost the first race, and won the second:-"Your horse, my lord, was very backward in coming forward, he was behind before, but he's first at last."-I myself lately encountered a mounted friend in Piccadilly, who told he was going to carry his horse to Tattersall's whereas the horse was carrying him thither, an absurdity which could not occur in France, where (owing,

doubtless, to the Academy) they have the three words porter, mener, and amener, which prevent all confusion of that nature, unless when spoken by the English, who uniformly misapply them.-All blackberries being of a wan, or rosy hue in their unripe state, we may with perfect truth affirm, that every blackberry is either white or red when it is green, which sounds like a violent catachresis, and on that account demands some new verbal modification. Nothing is so likely to corrupt the taste of the frugivorous generation as any looseness of idea connected with this popular berry.-By the structure of our language, many repetitions of the same word occasionally occur, for which some remedy should be provided by the Society. "I affirm," said one writing-master, disputing with another about the word "that," written by their respective pupils," I affirm that that That,' that that boy has written, is better than the other." Here the same word occurs five times in succession, and many similar examples might be adduced; but enough has been urged to prove the necessity of prompt interference on the part of the Society.

In our common oaths, exclamations, and interjections, there is much room for Academical supervision. For the vulgar phrase, “All my eye and Betty Martin," we might resume the Latin of the monkish hymn which it was meant to burlesque "O mihi, beate Martine!" It may be doubted whether we could with propriety compel all conjurers to adopt the original "hoc est corpus," pronounced in one of the ceremonies of the Romish church, which they have irreverently corrupted into hocus-pocus; but we may indisputably restore the hilariterceleriter, which has been metamorphosed into the term helter-skelter. It would be highly desirable to give a more classical turn to this department of our language. The Italian "Corpo di Bacco !" might be beneficially imported; and in fact there is no good reason why the Edepol! Hercle! Proh pudor! Proh nefas! Proh deûm atque hominum fides! and other interjections of the ancients, might not be brought to supersede those Billingsgate oaths, which are not only very cacophonous, revolting, and profane, but liable to what their utterers may think a more serious objection-a fine of one shilling each.

Some remedy should be provided for the inconveniences arising from the omission or misapplication of the aspirate H, to which some of our cockney tribe are so incurably addicted. It is upon record, that a Lord Mayor, in addressing King William, called him a Nero, meaning to say a hero; and no longer ago than last season Miss Augusta Tibbs, daughter of a respectable slopseller in Great St. Helen's, entering Margate by a lane that skirted the cliff, and calling repeatedly to the postboy to drive nearer the edge (meaning the hedge on the opposite side of the road,) was so incautiously obeyed, that the vehicle was precipitated into the sea, and the poor young lady declared, by a coroner's inquest, to have died of Inaspiration. Surely so melancholy an occurrence will interest the humanity of the Society in making some provision against similar calamities.

Under the head of Topographical Literature, I would earnestly request the attention of the Institution to various anomalous and contradictory designations of locality, which would long ago have been corrected, if, like the French, we had possessed a special Academy of Inscriptions. Thus we apply the name of Whitehall to a black chapel;

Cheapside is dear on both sides; the Serpentine River is a straight canal, and the New River an old canal; Knightsbridge has no bridge; Moorfields exhibit no more fields; the Green Park was all last autumn completely brown, Green-street was in no better plight, and both, according to Goldsmith's recommendation, should be removed to Hammersmith, because that is the way to Turnham-green. Endeavours should be made to assimilate the names of our streets to the predominant character of their inhabitants, a conformity to which those lovers of good cheer, the citizens, have not been altogether inattentive, inasmuch as they have the Poultry, Fish-street hill, Pudding-lane and Pie-corner, Beer-lane, Bread-street, Milk-street, Wine-court, Portsoken ward, and many others.-If the mountain cannot be brought to Mahomet, we know there is still an alternative for making them both meet; so, if there be too great an inconvenience in transposing the streets, we may remove the householders to more appropriate residences. Upon this principle, all poets should be compelled to purchase their Hippocrene from the Meuxes of Liquorpond-street; those authors who began with being flaming patriots, and are now court-sycophants or treasury hirelings, should be billeted, according to the degrees of their offence, upon the Little and Great Turn-stile. Some of our furious political scribes should be removed to Billingsgate or Old Bedlam; those of a more insipid character, to Milk and Water Lanes; and every immoral or objectionable writer should illustrate the fate of his productions by ending his days in Privy-gardens. Physicians and surgeons might be quartered in the neighbourhood of Slaughter's coffee-house; the spinsters of the metropolis might congregate in Threadneedle-street, and all the old cats in the Mews; the lame-ducks of the Stock Exchange should take refuge in the Poultry or Cripplegate; watchmakers might ply their art in Seven-Dials; thieves should be tethered in the Steel-yard: all the Jews should be restored to the Old Jewry, and the Quakers should assemble in Hatton-garden.

Chancery-lane, which would of course be appropriated to the suitors of that court, should by no means terminate in Fleet-street, but be extended to Labour-in-vain-hill in one direction, and to Long-lane in the other. Members of Parliament, according to their politics, might settle themselves either upon Constitution-hill or in Rotten-row. I am aware that if we wish to establish a perfect conformity between localities and tenants, we must considerably diminish Goodman's-fields, and proportionably enlarge Knave's-acre; but the difficulty of completing a measure is no argument against its partial adoption.

In what may be denominated our external or shopkeepers' literature, the society will find innumerable errors to rectify. Where he who runs may read, correctness and propriety are peculiarly necessary, and we all know how much good was effected by the French Academy of Inscriptions. Having, in my late perambulations through London, noted down what appeared to me particularly reprehensible, and thrown the various addresses of the parties into an appendix, in order that your secretary may write to them with such emendatory orders as the case may require,-I proceed to notice, first, the fantastical practice of writing the number over the door, and the names on either side VOL. VI. No. 35.-1823.

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