vestigation in such cases proceeds upon chains of reasoning where all the links are seen and understood; where the connection of the parts found with other parts and with habitudes is perceived, and the reason understood -as that the animal had a trunk, because the neck was because its teeth were imperfect for complete masticashort compared with its height; or that it ruminated, tion. But frequently the inquiry is as certain in its results, although some links of the chain are concealed from our view, and the conclusion wears a more empirical aspect-as gathering that the animal ruminated, from observing the print of a cloven hoof; or that he had horns, from his wanting certain teeth; or that he wanted the collar-bone, from his having cloven hoofs. In The discoveries already made in this branch of science are truly wonderful, and they proceed upon the strictest rules of induction. It is shewn that animals formerly still known; but it also appears that species existed, and existed on the globe, being unknown varieties of species even genera, wholly unknown for the last five thousand years. These peopled the earth, as it was, not before the general deluge, but before some convulsion long prior to that event had overwhelmed the countries then dry, and raised others from the bottom of the sea. these curious inquiries, we are conversant, not merely with the world before the flood, but with a world which, before the flood, was covered with water, and which, in far earlier ages, had been the habitation of birds, and beasts, and reptiles. We are carried, as it were, several worlds back, and we reach a period when all was water, and slime, and mud, and the waste, without either man lions and elephants, and river-horses, while the water or plants, gave resting-place to enormous beasts like was tenanted by lizards the size of a whale, sixty or seventy feet long, and by others with huge eyes having shields of solid bone to protect them, and glaring from a neck ten feet in length, and the air was darkened by flying reptiles covered with scales, opening the jaws of the crocodile, and expanding wings, armed at the tips with the claws of the leopard. No less strange, and yet no less proceeding from induction, are the discoveries made respecting the former state of the earth, the manner in which those animals, whether of known or least the way in which, they ceased to exist. unknown tribes, occupied it, and the period when, or at by his elevation to the office of Lord Chancellor, its viscera, and its general habits. Sometimes the inand the name of the great commoner, Henry Brougham, was merged in that of Lord Brougham and Vaux, the nation generally felt and acknowledged that the honours were well won, and worthily bestowed. Lord Brougham held the Great Seal for four years, retiring with his party in November 1834. This terminated his official life, but he afterwards laboured unceasingly as a law reformer. His withdrawal from office also left him leisure for those literary and scientific pursuits which he had never wholly relinquished. Subsequent to that period he brought out a variety of works-Memoirs of the Statesmen of the Reign of George III.; Lives of Men of Letters and Science in the Reign of George III.; Political Philosophy; Speeches, with Historical Introductions, and Dissertation upon the Eloquence of the Ancients; Discourse on Paley's Natural Theology; Analytical View of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia; Contributions to the Edinburgh Review; and several pamphlets on Law Reform. A cheap collected edition of these works, in ten volumes, was issued in 1855-6. In his youth, Brougham is said to have written a novel, and to have tried his hand at poetry! There is, perhaps, no department of science or literature into which he did not make incursions. He only, however, reaped laurels on the fields of forensic and senatorial eloquence. As an essayist or critic, he must rank below his youthful associates, Francis Jeffrey and Sydney Smith. His liveliest contribution (which he never openly acknowledged) was his critique on Lord Byron's Hours of Idleness. In the first twenty numbers of the Review he wrote eighty articles! Brougham's style is generally heavy, verbose, and inelegant; and his time was, during the better part of his life, too exclusively devoted to public affairs to enable him to keep pace with the age, either in exact scientific knowledge or correct literary information. In his sketches of modern statesmen, however, we have occasionally new facts and letters, to which ordinary writers had not access, illustrative of interesting and important events. Lord Brougham died at Cannes (where he had built a villa, and resided part of every year), on the 7th of May 1868. Seven years before this, in his eighty-fourth year, the veteran statesman commenced writing notices of his Life and Times, which were published in three volumes, 1871. These volumes abound in errors and inaccuracies, easily accounted for by the great age of the writer; his vanity and prejudices are also very conspicuous; but the work has the merit of disclosing many of the springs of political movements, and includes a number of valuable letters and other papers. Studies in Osteology. From Discourse on Natural Theology. A comparative anatomist, of profound learning and marvellous sagacity, has presented to him what to common eyes would seem a piece of half-decayed bone, found in a wild, in a forest, or in a cave. By accurately examining its shape, particularly the form of its extremity or extremities (if both ends happen to be entire), by close inspection of the texture of its surface, and by admeasurement of its proportions, he can with certainty discover the general form of the animal to which it belonged, its size as well as its shape, the economy of Peroration of the Speech at Conclusion of the Trial of Let me call on you, even at the risk of repetition, never to dismiss for a moment from your minds the two great points upon which I rest my attack upon the evidence: first, that the accusers have not proved the facts by the good witnesses who were within their reach, whom they had no shadow of pretext for not calling; and, secondly, that the witnesses whom they have ventured to call are, every one of them, irreparably damaged in their credit. How, I again ask, is a plot ever to be discovered, except by the means of these two principles? Nay, there are instances in which plots have been discovered through the medium of the second principle, when the first had happened to fail. When venerable witnesses have been brought forward--when persons above all suspicion have lent themselves for a season to impure plans-when no escape for the guiltless seemed open, no chance of safety to remain-they have almost providentially escaped from the snare by the second of those two principles; by the evidence breaking down where it was not expected to be sifted; by a weak point being found where no provision, the attack being unforeseen, had been made to support it. Your Lordships recollect that great passage-I say great, for fifteen times over, in order to render it as perfect and effective Lord Brougham is said to have written this peroration as possible. it is poetically just and eloquent, even were it not inspired-in the sacred writings, where the Elders had joined themselves in a plot which had appeared to have succeeded; for that,' as the Book says, 'they had hardened their hearts, and had turned away their eyes, that they might not look at Heaven, and that they might do the purposes of unjust judgments.' But they, though giving a clear, consistent, uncontradicted story, were disappointed, and their victim was rescued from their gripe by the trifling circumstance of a contradiction about a tamarisk tree. Let not men call these contradictions or those falsehoods which false witnesses swear to from needless and heedless falsehood, not going to the main body of the case, but to the main body of the credit of the witnesses-let not men rashly and blindly call these things accidents. They are just rather than merciful dispensations of that Providence which wills not that the guilty should triumph, and which favourably protects the innocent. whose sway so mighty an undertaking shall be accomplished. Of a truth, the holders of sceptres are most chiefly to be envied for that they bestow the power of thus conquering, and ruling. It was the boast of Augustus-it formed part of the glare in which the perfidies of his earlier years were lost-that he found Rome of brick and left it of marble; a praise not unworthy a great prince, and to which the present also has its claims. But how much nobler will be the sovereign's boast, when he shall have it to say, that he found law dear and left it cheap; found it a sealed book, left it a living letter; found it the patrimony of the rich, left it the inheritance of the poor; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression, left it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence! ISAAC D'ISRAELI. A taste for literary history and anecdote was Such, my Lords, is the case now before you! Such diffused by MR ISAAC D'ISRAELI (1766-1848), is the evidence in support of the measure-evidence author of the Curiosities of Literature, and a inadequate to prove a debt-impotent to deprive of a civil right-ridiculous to convict of the lowest offence long series of kindred works and compilations. monstrous to ruin the honour, to blast the name of an After some abortive poetical efforts, Mr D'Israeli English queen! What shall say, then, if this is the in 1791 published the first volume of his Curiosities proof by which an act of judicial legislation, a parlia- of Literature; a second was added in 1792, and mentary sentence, an ex post facto law, is sought to be a third in 1817. A second series in three volumes passed against this defenceless woman? My Lords, I was published in 1823. During the progress of pray you to pause. I do earnestly beseech you to take this magnum opus of the author, he issued essays heed! You are standing upon the brink of a precipice; on Anecdotes, on the Manners and Genius of then beware! It will go forth your judgment, if sentence the Literary Character, a volume of Miscellanies shall go against the queen. But it will be the only or Literary Recreations, and several volumes of judgment you ever pronounced, which, instead of reach- novels and romances long since forgotten. At ing its object, will return and bound back upon those who gave it. Save the country, my Lords, from the length, in 1812, he struck into his natural vein horrors of this catastrophe-save yourselves from this with Calamities of Authors, Quarrels of Authors, peril; rescue that country of which you are the orna- 1814; the Literary and Political Character of ments, but in which you can flourish no longer, when James I., 1816; Commentaries on the Life and severed from the people, than the blossom when cut off Reign of Charles I., 1828-31; Eliot, Hampden, and from the roots and the stem of the tree. Save that Pym, 1832 ; &c. Though labouring under partial country, that you may continue to adorn it; save the blindness, Mr D'Israeli in 1841 issued three Crown, which is in jeopardy; the Aristocracy, which is volumes entitled The Amenities of Literature, shaken; save the Altar, which must stagger with the consisting, like the Curiosities and Miscellanies, blow that rends its kindred Throne. You have said, my of detached papers and dissertations on literary Lords, you have willed-the Church and the King have and historical subjects, written in a pleasant willed that the queen should be deprived of its solemn service. She has, instead of that solemnity, the heartfelt of antiquarian research and study-not, howphilosophical style, which presents the fruits prayers of the people. She wants no prayers of mine. But I do here pour forth my humble supplications at ever, always well digested or accurately stated the throne of mercy, that that mercy may be poured-without their dryness and general want of condown upon the people in a larger measure than the merits of their rulers may deserve, and that your hearts may be turned to justice! Law Reform. From Speech in the House of Commons, Feb. 7, 1828. The course is clear before us; the race is glorious to run. You have the power of sending your name down through all times, illustrated by deeds of higher fame, and more useful import, than ever were done within these walls. You saw the greatest warrior of the ageconqueror of Italy-humbler of Germany-terror of the North-saw him account all his matchless victories poor, compared with the triumph you are now in a condition to win-saw him contemn the fickleness of Fortune, while, in despite of her, he could pronounce his memorable boast: 'I shall go down to posterity with the Code in my hand.' You have vanquished him in the field; strive now to rival him in the sacred arts of peace! Outstrip him as a lawgiver, whom in arms you overcame! The lustre of the Regency will be eclipsed by the more solid and enduring splendour of the Reign. The praise which false courtiers feigned for our Edwards and Harrys, the Justinians of their day, will be the just tribute of the wise and the good to that monarch under nection. Few authors have traversed so many fields of literature, and gleaned such a variety of curious and interesting particulars. After a long life spent in literary research and composition, Mr D'Israeli died at his seat of Brandenham House, Bucks, in 1848, aged eighty-two. In the following year, a new edition-the fourteenth-of the Curiosities of Literature was published, accompanied with a memoir from the pen of his son, the Right Hon. Benjamin Disraeli, who has since published a collected edition of his father's works in seven handsome portable volumes. The family of D'Israeli settled in England in 1748. The father of Isaac was an Italian descendant of one of the Hebrew families whom the Inquisition forced to emigrate from the Spanish peninsula at the end of the Venetian republic. His ancestors,' says Mr the fifteenth century, and who found a refuge in Benjamin Disraeli, 'had dropped their Gothic surname on their settlement in the Terra Firma, and, grateful to the God of Jacob who had sustained them through unprecedented trials, and guarded them through unheard-of perils, they assumed the name of Disraeli [more correctly D'Israeli, for so it was written down to the time of its present political owner], a name never borne before or since by any other family, in order that their race might be for ever recognised.' This seems a poetical genealogy. Benjamin D'Israeli, the first English settler of the race, entered into business in London, made a fortune while still in middle life, and retired to Enfield, where he died in 1817, at the age of ninety. Isaac, his son, was wholly devoted to literature. His parents considered him moon-struck, but after various efforts to make him a man of business, they acquiesced in his determination to become a man of letters. He wrote a poem against Wolcot, a satire On the Abuse of Satire, and then entered on that course of antiquarian literary research which has made his name known to the world. His fortune was sufficient for his wants, his literary reputation was considerable, and he possessed a happy equanimity of character. His feelings,' says his son, "though always amiable, were not painfully deep, and amid joy or sorrow, the philosophic vein was ever evident.' His thoughts all centred in his library! The Curiosities of Literature still maintain their place. Some errors-chiefly in boasted discoveries and second-hand quotations-have been pointed out by Mr Bolton Corney, in his amusing and sarcastic volume of Illustrations (1838), but the labours of D'Israeli are not likely to be soon superseded. He was not the first in the field. Among my earliest literary friends,' he says, 'two distinguished themselves by their anecdotical literature; James Petit Andrews, by his Anecdotes Ancient and Modern, and William Seward, by his Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons. These volumes were favourably received, and to such a degree, that a wit of that day, and who is still (1839) a wit as well as a poet, considered that we were far gone in our anecdotage.' "D'Israeli's work, The Literary Character, or the History of Men of Genius drawn from their own Feelings and Confessions, is his ablest production. It was a favourite with Byron-often a consolation, and always a pleasure.' REV. CALEB C. COLTON. An excellent collection of apophthegms and moral reflections was published in 1820, under the title of Lacon, or Many Things in Few Words; addressed to those who Think. Six editions of the work were disposed of within a twelvemonth, and the author in 1822 added a second volume to the collection. The history of the author of Lacon conveys a moral more striking than any of his maxims. The REV. CALEB C. COLTON was vicar of Kew and Peters ham; gambling and extravagance forced him to leave England, and he resided some time in America and in Paris. In the French capital he is said to have been so successful as a gamester that in two years he realised £25,000. He committed suicide at Fontainebleau in 1832. We subjoin a few of the reflections from Lacon. *Those works are now rarely met with. The Anecdotes of JAMES PETIT ANDREWS (1737-1797) were published in 1789-90. He wrote also a Continuation of Henry's History of England, and other historical and antiquarian works.-WILLIAM SEWARD (1747-1799) published his Anecdotes of some Distinguished Persons, in two volumes, in 1794. He added three more volumes, and afterwards another work of the same kind, Biographiana, two volumes, 1799. Mr Seward was the son of a wealthy brewer, partner in the firm of Calvert & Co. Notices of him will be found in Boswell's Life of Johnson. True Genius always united to Reason. The great examples of Bacon, of Milton, of Newton, of Locke, and of others, happen to be directly against the popular inference, that a certain wildness of eccentricity and thoughtlessness of conduct are the necessary accompaniments of talent, and the sure indications of genius. Because some have united these extravagances with great demonstrations of talent, as a Rousseau, a Chatterton, a Savage, a Burns, or a Byron, others, finding it less difficult to be eccentric than to be brilliant, have therefore adopted the one, in the hope that the world would give them credit for the other. But the greatest genius is never so great as when it is chastised and subdued by the highest reason; it is from such a combination, like that of Bucephalus reined in by Alexander, that the most powerful efforts have been produced. And be it remembered, that minds of the very highest order, who have given an unrestrained course to their caprice, or to their passions, would have been so much higher, by subduing them; and that, so far from presuming that the world would give them credit for talent, on the score of their aberrations and their extravagances, all that they dared hope or expect has been, that the world would pardon and overlook those extravagances, on account of the various and manifold proofs they were constantly exhibiting of superior acquirement and inspiration. We might also add, that the good effects of talent are universal, the evil of its blemishes confined. The light and heat of the sun benefit all, and are by all enjoyed; the spots on his surface are discoverable only to the few. But the lower order of aspirers to fame and talent have pursued a very different course; instead of exhibiting talent in the hope that the world would forgive their eccentricities, they have exhibited only their eccentricities in the hope that the world would give them credit for talent. Error only to be Combated by Argument. We should justly ridicule a general, who, just before an action, should suddenly disarm his men, and putting into the hands of all of them a Bible, should order them, thus equipped, to march against the enemy. Here we plainly see the folly of calling in the Bible to support the sword; but is it not as great a folly to call in the sword to support the Bible? Our Saviour divided force from reason, and let no man presume to join what God hath put asunder. When we combat error with any other weapon than argument, we err more than those whom we attack. Mystery and Intrigue. There are minds so habituated to intrigue and mystery in themselves, and so prone to expect it from others, that they will never accept of a plain reason for a plain fact, if it be possible to devise causes for it that are obscure, far-fetched, and usually not worth the carriage. Like the miser of Berkshire, who would ruin a good horse to escape a turnpike, so these gentlemen ride their high-bred theories to death, in order to come at truth, through by-paths, lanes, and alleys; while she herself is jogging quietly along, upon the high and beaten road of common-sense. The consequence is, that those who take this mode of arriving at truth, are sometimes before her, and sometimes behind her, but very seldom with her. Thus the great statesman who relates the conspiracy against Doria, pauses to deliberate upon, and minutely to scrutinise into divers and sundry errors committed, and opportunities neglected, whereby he would wish to account for the total failure of that spirited enterprise. But the plain fact was, that the scheme had been so well planned and digested, that it was victorious in every point of its operation, both on the sea and on the shore, in the harbour of Genoa no less than in the city, until that most unlucky accident befell the Count de Fiesque, who was the very life and soul of the conspiracy. In stepping from one galley to another, the plank on which he stood upset, and he fell into the sea. His armour happened to be very heavy-the night to be very dark-the water to be very deep-and the bottom to be very muddy. And it is another plain fact, that water, in all such cases, happens to make no distinction whatever between a conqueror and a cat. Magnanimity in Humble Life. In the obscurity of retirement, amid the squalid poverty and revolting privations of a cottage, it has often been my lot to witness scenes of magnanimity and self-denial, as much beyond the belief as the practice of the great; a heroism borrowing no support either from the gaze of the many or the admiration of the few, yet flourishing amidst ruins, and on the confines of the grave; a spectacle as stupendous in the moral world as the falls of the Missouri in the natural; and, like that mighty cataract, doomed to display its grandeur only where there are no eyes to appreciate its magnificence. Avarice. Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children, and, like Priam, survives them all. It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead; and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven than the martyr undergoes to gain it. Avarice is a passion full of paradox, a madness full of method; for although the miser is the most mercenary of all beings, yet he serves the worst master more faithfully than some Christians do the best, and will take nothing for it. He falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities, nor its pleasures for his trouble. He begins to accumulate treasure as a mean to happiness, and by a common but morbid association, he continues to accumulate it as an end. He lives poor, to die rich, and is the mere jailer of his house, and the turnkey of his wealth. Impoverished by his gold, he slaves harder to imprison it in his chest, than his brother-slave to liberate it from the mine. The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchre of all his other passions, as they successively decay. But, unlike other tombs, it is enlarged by repletion, and strengthened by age. This latter paradox, so peculiar to this passion, must be ascribed to that love of power so inseparable from the human mind. There are three kinds of power-wealth, strength, and talent; but as old age always weakens, often destroys the two latter, the aged are induced to cling with the greater avidity to the former. And the attachment of the aged to wealth must be a growing and a progressive attachment, since such are not slow in discovering that those same ruthless years which detract so sensibly from the strength of their bodies and of their minds, serve only to augment and to consolidate the strength of their purse. JOHN NICHOLS-ARTHUR YOUNG. One of the most industrious of literary collectors and editors was JOHN NICHOLS (1745-1826), who for nearly half a century conducted the Gentleman's Magazine. Mr Nichols was early put apprentice to WILLIAM BOWYER, an eminent London printer (1699-1778), who, with scholarship that reflected honour on himself and his craft, edited an edition of the New Testament, with notes, and was author of several philological tracts. On the death of Bowyer, Mr Nichols carried on the printing business-in which he had previously been a partner and became associated with David Henry, the brother-in-law of Cave, the original proprietor of the Gentleman's Magazine. Henry died in 1792, and the whole labours of the magazine and business devolved on Mr Nichols, whose industry was never relaxed. The most important of his numerous labours are his Anecdotes, Literary and Biographical, of William Bowyer, 1782; The History and Antiquities of Leicester, 1795-1811; Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, eight volumes, 1812-14; and Illustrations of the Literature of the Eighteenth Century-supplementary to the Anecdotes-three volumes octavo. Additions have from time to time been made to these works by Mr Nichols's son and successor, so that the Anecdotes form nine large volumes, and the Illustrations eight volumes, the seventeenth-completing the series-having been issued in 1859. Mr Nichols edited the correspondence of Atterbury and Steele, Fuller's Worthies, Swift's works, &c., and compiled accounts of the Royal Progresses and Processions of Queen Elizabeth and James I., each in three volumes quarto. ARTHUR YOUNG (1741-1820) was eminent for his writings and services in the promotion of agriculture. He was one of the first who succeeded in elevating this great national interest to the dignity of a science, and rendering it popular among the higher classes of the country. He was for many years an unsuccessful theorist and experimenter on a small paternal estate in Suffolk to which he succeeded, but the knowledge thus acquired he turned to good account. In 1770 he commenced a periodical, entitled The Farmer's Calendar; and he afterwards edited another periodical, The Annals of Agriculture, to which A list of his published letters, pamphlets, &c. on King George III. was an occasional contributor. subjects of rural economy, would fill one of our pages; but the most important of Young's works are a Tour in Ireland, 1776-79, and Travels in France, 1787-89. These journeys were undertaken by the recommendation and assistance of government, with a view of ascertaining the cultivation, wealth, resources, and prosperity of Ireland and France. He was author also of surveys of the counties of Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincoln, Hertford, Essex, and Oxford; with reports on waste lands, inclosures, &c. The French Revolution alarmed Young with respect to its probable effects on the English lower classes, and he wrote several warning treatises and political tracts. Sir John Sinclair-another devoted and patriotic agriculturist-having prevailed on Pitt to establish a Board of Agriculture, Arthur Young was appointed its secretary, with a salary of £400 per annum, and he was indefatigable in his exertions to carry out the views of the association. To the end of his long life, even after he was afflicted with blindness, the attention of Mr Young was devoted to pursuits of practical utility. Some of his theories as to the system of large farms-for which he was a strenuous advocate-and other branches of agricultural labour, may be questioned; but he was a valuable pioneer, who cleared the way for many improvements since accomplished. SIR JOHN CARR. A series of light descriptive and gossiping tours, by SIR JOHN Carr (1772-1832), made con siderable noise in their day. The first and best was The Stranger in France, 1803. This was followed by Travels Round the Baltic, 1804-5; The Stranger in Ireland, 1806; Tour through Holland, 1807; Caledonian Sketches, 1809; Travels in Spain, 1811. Sir John was also author of some indifferent poems and dramas. This indefatigable tourist had been an attorney in Dorsetshire, but the success of his first work on France induced him to continue a series of similar publications. In Ireland he was knighted by the Lord-lieutenant (the Duke of Bedford), and his Irish tour was ridiculed in a witty jeu d'esprit, My Pocket-book, written by Mr E. Dubois of the Temple. Sir John prosecuted the publishers of this satire, but was non-suited. His Caledonian Sketches were happily ridiculed by Sir Walter Scott in the Quarterly Review; and Byron-who had met the knight-errant at Cadiz, and implored not to be put down in black and white-introduced him into some suppressed stanzas of Childe Harold, in which he is styled 'Green Erin's knight and Europe's wandering star.' REV. JAMES BERESFORD. A humorous work, in the form of dialogues, entitled The Miseries of Human Life, 1806-7, had great success and found numerous imitators. It went through nine editions in a twelvemonthpartly, perhaps, because it formed the subject of a very amusing critique in the Edinburgh Review, from the pen of Sir Walter Scott.It is the English only,' as Scott remarks, who submit to the same tyranny, from all the incidental annoyances and petty vexations of the day, as from the serious calamities of life;' and it is these petty miseries which in this work form the subject of dialogues between the imaginary interlocutors, Timothy Testy and Samuel Sensitive. The jokes are occasionally heavy, and the classical quotations forced, but the object of the author was attained-the book sold, and its readers laughed. We subjoin two short 'groans.' the Review, Sir Egerton Brydges drew public attention to the beauties of many old writers, and extended the feeling of admiration which Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, and others had awakened. In 1835 this veteran author edited an edition of Milton's poetical works in six volumes. A tone of querulous egotism and complaint pervades most of the works of this author, but his taste and exertions in English literature entitle him to high respect. Sir Egerton's original works are numerousSonnets and Poems, 1785-95; Imaginary Biography, 1834; Autobiography, 1834; with several novels, letters, &c. Wordsworth praised highly the following sonnet by Brydges: Echo and Silence. In eddying course when leaves began to fly, Two sleeping nymphs with wonder mute I spy; 1807, by MR FRANCIS DOUCE (1762-1834), and The Illustrations of Shakspeare, published in the British Monachism, 1802, and Encyclopædia of Antiquities, 1824, by the REV. T. D. FosBROOKE (1770-1842), are works of great research and value as repositories of curious information. Works of this kind illustrate the pages of our poets and historians, besides conveying pictures of national manners. Brand's Popular Antiquities, published, with adA record of English customs is preserved in ditions, by SIR HENRY ELLIS, in two volumes After having left a company in which you have been quarto, in 1808; and in 1842 in two cheap portgalled by the raillery of some wag by profession, think-able volumes. The work relates to the customs ing at your leisure of a repartee, which, if discharged at proper moment, would have blown him to atoms. Rashly confessing that you have a slight cold in the hearing of certain elderly ladies of the faculty,' who instantly form themselves into a consultation upon your case, and assail you with a volley of nostrums, all of which, if you would have a moment's peace, you must solemnly promise to take off before night-though well satisfied that they would retaliate by taking you off' before morning. at country wakes, sheep-shearings, and other rural practices, and is an admirable delineation of olden life and manners. Mr Brand (1743-1806) was a noted collector and antiquary. The author of this jeu d'esprit was a clergyman, the REV. JAMES BERESFORD, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford (1764-1840). Mr Beresford was author of several translations and essays. BRYDGES-DOUCE-FOSBROOKE-ETC. In the style of popular literary illustration, with imagination and poetical susceptibility, may be mentioned SIR EGERTON BRYDGES (1762-1837), who published the Censura Literaria, 1805-9, in ten volumes; the British Bibliographer, in three volumes; an enlarged edition of Collins's British Peerage Letters on the Genius of Lord Byron, &c. As principal editor of the Retrospective ROBERT MUDIE (1777-1842), an indefatigable writer, self-educated, was a native of Forfarshire, and for some time connected with the London press. He wrote and compiled altogether about ninety volumes, including Babylon the Great, a Picture of Men and Things in London; Modern Athens, a sketch of Edinburgh society; The British Naturalist; The Feathered Tribes of Great Britain; A Popular Guide to the Observation of Nature; two series of four volumes each, entitled The Heavens, the Earth, the Sea, and the Air, and Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter; and next, Man, Physical, Moral, Social, and Intellectual; The World Described, &c. He furnished the letterpress to Gilbert's Modern Atlas, the natural history to the British Cyclopædia, and numerous other contributions to periodical works. Mudie was a nervous and able writer, deficient in taste in works of light literature and satire, but an acute and philosophical observer of nature, and peculiarly happy in his |