instant seeming overcharged, like the Italian faces, nor coarse and unfeminine under whatever impulse; on the contrary, it is so thoroughly harmonized when quiescent, and so expressive when impassioned, that most people think her more beautiful than she is; so great, too, is the flexibility of her countenance, that the rapid transitions of passion are given with a variety and effect that never tire upon the eye. Her voice is naturally plaintive, and a tender melancholy in her level speaking denotes a being devoted to tragedy; yet this seemingly settled quality of voice becomes at will sonorous or piercing, overwhelms with rage, or in its wild shriek absolutely harrows up the soul. Her sorrow, too, is never childish-her lamentation has a dignity which belongs, I think, to no other woman: it claims your respect along with your tears. Her eye is brilliant and varying like the diamond; it is singularly well placed; "it pries," in Shakspeare's language, "through the portal of the head," and has every aid from brows flexible beyond all female parallel, contracting to disdain, or dilating with the emotions of sympathy, or pity, or anguish. Her memory is tenacious and exact-her articulation clear and distinct-her pronunciation systematic and refined.

Nor has Nature been partially bountiful she has endowed her with a quickness of conception, and a strength of understanding equal to the proper use of such extraordinary gifts. So entirely is she mistress of herself, so collected, and so determined in gestures, tone, and manner, that she seldom errs, like other actors, because she doubts her powers or comprehension. She studies her author attentively, conceives justly, and describes with a firm consciousness of propriety. She is sparing in her action, because English nature does not act much; but it is always proper, picturesque, graceful, and dignified: it arises immediately from the sentiments and feeling, and is not seen to prepare itself before it begins. No studied trick or start can be predicted;-no forced tremulation of the figure, where the vacancy of the eye declares the absence of passion, can be seen;-no laborious strainings at false climax, in which the tired voice reiterates one high tone beyond which it cannot reach, is ever heard;

-no artificial heaving of the breasts, so disgusting when the affectation is perceptible ;- -none of those arts by which the actress is seen, and not the character, can be found in Mrs. Siddons. So natural are her gradations

and transitions, so classical and correct her speech and deportment, and so intensely interesting her voice, form, and features, that there is no conveying an idea of the pleasure she communicates by words. She must be seen to be known. What is still more delightful, she is an original: she copies no one living or dead, but acts from nature and herself.

SPIRIT OF THE

Public Journals.

THE TWO MUNCHAUSENS.

By a veteran.

IN the late Regiment of Light Dragoons, were two worthy persons, who were denominated the regimental liars: a distinction to which, giving every man his due, they were eminently entitled. The great and fundamental requisites for accomplished lying, I conceive to be a good memory, a fertile fancy, a ready wit, fluency of speech, and a brazen countenance, so that you shall tell a man a most bare-faced falsehood, and afterwards adduce such connected proofs as especially characterize actual facts. The following dialogue is a specimen of the talents of the aforementioned mendacious personages.

C.-" See a man walk after he was shot dead! so have I, a whole day's march."

B.-"Come, come, that's stealing a march on our senses. No, no, it wont do: that's a naked one; do pray turn them out with some kind of probability covering over them."

C.-"What, doubt my veracity;"

B." Not for the world; that would be illiberal and unkind, and by the way, now I think on it, I believe the possibility of a man travelling without his cranium, for at the battle of Laswaree, during that desperate contest for British India, I saw a sergeant of the seventysixth shot dead; yet the fellow pursued his antagonist some hundred yards afterwards, threatening vengeance on the miscreant for having robbed the service of one of its best men. Finding himself weak from loss of blood, he deliberately unscrewed his head, threw it violently at the foe, and took him on the spine; down he tumbled; the veteran jumped upon him; fearful was the struggle; chest to chest, fist to fist; at last they joined in the death grapple, and dreadful indeed was their dying hug."

C.-"My dear friend, I was an eye

witness of the whole transaction. You have however forgotten the best part of the story. After the sergeant had well pummelled his enemy, he picked up his head again, and thrust into a neighbouring great gun: from the want of his peepers he made a random shot, and killed the horse on which Lord Lake was riding his Lordship saluted the sod."

B.-"I recollect it perfectly; for the nose of the said sergeant (recognised by sundry carbuncles) was so hard, that the following day it was extracted from the abdomen of the unfortunate animal."

C.-"You make a mistake about the nose; it was discovered lodged in a loaf in a corporal's knapsack; the man could swear to it, for it was perforated by three balls, and otherwise curiously marked. Report said that a shell had once blown it completely off, and that it was stitched on again by a shoe-maker, who, ever after, went by the name of the nosy cobbler."

B.-"Nothing impossible. It reminds me of a story somewhat as strange: During the battle of Delhi there was a quarter-master in the regiment, a queer fellow, who was never at a loss; (he is now in the corps, and can vouch for my statement) he was charging at the head of his squadron, when he caught a cannon shot in his hands: instantly dismounting, he chucked the ball into a field-piece, but, for want of a ramrod, he drove it home with his head. One of the enemy, seeing him thus zealously occupied, fired off the gun; strange to tell he was not killed! From constant

exposure to the sun, in search of toddy, and from the free use of cocoa-nut oil, his head had become proof against shot. The distance from the place whence he was projected, to that where he was picked up, measured three miles, two furlongs, three yards, and eleven inches. A hard-headed fellow, Sir.-In his career he upset his colonel and a brace of captains."

C." He did; and where the colonel was capsized, he made such a hole by his enormous weight, that the sovereign of Delhi ordered a large well to be dug on the spot, in memory of the event.

B.--"I remember the well-twelve feet, three inches and a half, was the exact depth of the excavation occasioned by the fall."

C.-"There you are wrong; only eleven feet, three inches->›

B. No, believe me, I am right; twelve feet, and three inches to a barleycorn."

B.-" By no means extraordinary. You remember the great gun of Agra, in which a regiment of cavalry used to drill."

C." I do. The one that fired the stone ball to the wall of Futtipoore Sikrah-twenty miles."

B.-"The same. Well, when that gun was fired, a thing that never occurred but once, the head of the rash man who fired it was afterwards found in the Old Woman's Tank, eleven miles from the spot, without so much as a blemish, except a slight singing of the right whisker."

C.-"Ah! I can never forget the time; I had just landed in Calcutta when we heard the report. Some of the wadding went as far as Cawnpore."

Here the trumpet, sounding for morning drill, put a stop to the colloquy.Englishman's Magazine.

On the exchange, or in the market-place
When money was in plenteous circulation,
Gaze after it with such Satanic looks
Of eagerness, that I have wonder'd oft

How he from theft and murder could refrain.
Twas cowardice alone withheld his hauds,
For they would grasp and grapple at the air,
When his grey eye had fixed on heaps of gold,"
While his clench'd teeth, and grinning, yearning
face,

Were dreadful to behold The merchants oft
Would mark his eye, then start and look again,
As at the eye of basilisk or snake.
His eye of greyish green ne'er shed one ray
of kind benignity or holy light
On aught beneath the sun. Childhood, youth,
beauty,
To it had all one hue. Its rays reverted
Right inward, back upon the greedy heart
Preyed without ceasing, straining every sense
On which the gnawing worm of avarice
To that excruciable and yearning core.

Some thirteen days agone, he comes to me,
And after many sore and mean remarks
On men's rapacity and sordid greed,
He says, "Gabriel, thou art an honest man,
As the world goes. How much, then, will you
charge

And make a grave for me, fifteen feet deep?""We'll talk of that when you require it, sir." "No, no. I want it made, and paid for too; I'll have it settled, else I know there will

Be some unconscionable overcharge

make

That grave at two days' work: and I can have Men at a shilling each-without the meatThat's a great matter! Let them but to meat, 'Tis utter ruin. I'll give none their meat

That I'll beware of. Men now-a-days are cheap,

Cheap, dogcheap, and beggarly fond of work. One shilling each a-day, without the meat, Mind that, and ask in reason; for I wish To have that matter settled to my mind.""Sir, there's no man alive will do't so cheap As I shall do it for the ready cash," Says I, to put him from it with a joke. "I'll charge you, then, one-fourth part of a farthing

For every cubic foot of work I do,

Doubling the charge each foot that I descend." "Doubling as you descend! Why, that of

round,

And gallant payment over." The Miser's face
Assumed the cast of death's worst lineaments.
His skinny jaws fell down upon his breast;
He tried to speak, but his dried tongue refused
Its utterance, and cluck'd upon the gum.

His heart-pipes whistled with a crannell'd sound;
His knell-knees plaited, and his every bone
Seem'd out of joint. He raved-he cursed-he
wept-

But payment he refused. I have my boud,
Not yet a fortnight old, and shall be paid.
It broke the Miser's heart. He ate no more,
Nor drank, nor spake, but groan'd until he died;
This grave kill'd him, and now yearns for his

bones.

But worse than all. 'Tis twenty years and more
Since he brought home his coffin. On that chest
His eye turn'd ever and anou. It minded him,
He said, of death. And as he sat by night
Beside his beamless hearth, with blanket round
His shivering frame, if burst of winter wind
Made the door jangle, or the chimney moan,
Or crannied window whistle, he would start,
And turn his meagre looks upon that chest;
Then sit upon't, and watch till break of day.

Old wives thought him religious-a good man!
A great repentant sinner, who would leave
His countless riches to sustain the poor.
But mark the issue. Yesterday, at noon,

Two men could scarcely move that pouderous

chest

To the bedside to lay the body in.

They broke it sundry, and they found it framed With double bottom! All his worshipp'd gold Hoarded between the boards! O such a worm Sure never writhed beneath the dunghill's base! Fifteen feet under ground! and all his store Snug in beneath him. Such a heaven was his. Now, honest Teddy, think of such a wretch,

And learn to shun his vices, one and all.
Though richer than a Jew, he was more poor
Than is the meanest beggar. At the cost
Of other men a glutton. At his own,
A starveling. A mere scrub. And such a coward,
A cozener and liar-but a coward,
And would have been a thief-But was a coward.
Blackwood's Magazine, :

The Selector;

AND

LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

PARIS AND ITS HISTORICAL SCENES.

(Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Part 18.)

WE have little inclination to quote more than a few passages from the General View of Paris in this Number; the topographical portion of which, (as far as a four months residence there will serve our judgment) is eminently characteristic. Ancient City.

The Archbishop of Narbonne, writing in the reign of Francis I., (about 1520,) calls Paris even then a world rather than a city*; yet at that period its population was probably not much more than the fifth part of what it now is; nor did the quantity of ground it covered bear even the same proportion to the immense space over which it has now extended. but in both convenience and elegance, Paris has made still more extraordinary advances since the time of Francis than even in population and extent. It was then, compared to what it now is, but a gloomy and incommodious fortress, without even the security which encompassing fortifications might be supposed to yield. Lighted only by candles placed here and there by the inhabitants themselves in their windows, it was so infested by thieves and assassins that hardly any person ventured out after dark, and the approach of night was the source of constant terror even to those who remained in their houses. The streets thus imperfectly lighted, were worse paved; and most of them were as dirty and narrow as those still to be seen in the more ancient part of the city. The supply of water was so inadequate that the severest miseries were sometimes suffered from the absolute want of that necessary of life, and the greatest inconveniences at all times from its scarcity. Finally, the public edifices were without splendour, and even the best of the private houses unprovided with many of what are now accounted the most indispensable accommodations. Instead of all this, we behold Paris now one of the very central seats of civilization; and although *Felibien, Histoire de Paris, tome i.

still deficient in many of the accommodations which supply to the necessities of the many instead of the luxuries of the few, in possession of the greater portion of the most important provisions which ingenuity has found out, whether for the comfort or the embellishment of existence. What a contrast between the French capital of 1831, and that Lutetia of the ancient Parisii, which Cæsar found nearly nineteen hundred years ago occupying the little island, around which has since extended itself so wide a circle of wealth, industry, intelligence, and the works which these create !

Bridges.

Paris, stands, like London, on both banks of a river, and is thus cut into two great divisions, one to the north, and the other to the south, of the water. The Seine, however, is not nearly so broad as the Thames; and the northern and southern halves of Paris are not, therefore, by any means so much separated from each other, either locally, politically, or socially, as are the corresponding portions of the English metropolis. They form, in all respects one city.

The Seine flows in a direction nearly opposite to that of the Thames, namely, from south-east to north-west. It preserves almost a perfectly straight course in passing through Paris, except that it bends considerably to the south imme'diately before leaving the town. The river, as it flows through the heart of the city, is interrupted by three small islands lying in succession, the two most westerly of which, the Ile de la Cité (otherwise called the Ile du Palais) and the Ile St. Louis, or de Notre Dame, are covered with streets and houses. The third, called the Ile Louvier, is used only as a depôt for fire-wood. The parts of the town on the opposite sides of the river are connected with each other, and with these islands, by nineteen bridges, thirteen of which are constructed of stone, and two of stone and iron: of the others two are chain-bridges, one is built of wood, and two of wood and iron. Several of these structures, especially the -Pont des Arts, the Pont Louis XVI., and the Pont de Jena, or de l'Ecole Militaire, all of which are to the west of the Ile du Palais, are distinguished by their majesty or elegance, and add much beauty and picturesque effect to the vista of the river. Excepting at one place where the two branches enclosing the Ile du Palais unite, immediately to the west of that island, the breadth of the Seine at Paris is no where greater than about 550 English feet, and at some

points it is not more than half that distance from the one bank to the other. The bridges, therefore, by which the Seine is traversed, are not to be compared in point of magnitude with those of the Thames at London. Even the Pont Neuf, which connects the Ile du Palais with both the northern and the southern divisions of the city, and comprehends in fact two bridges, with an intermediate street, is shorter taken altogether, than Waterloo bridge by more than 200 feet; and the Pont Louis XVI., which next to the Pont Neuf is the longest of the Parisian stone bridges, measures only about 485 feet between the abutments, while Westminster Bridge measures 1223, and Waterloo Bridge 1242 feet. It is in the number of its bridges alone, therefore, that the Seine is superior to the Thames.

The Boulevards.

The most remarkable feature in the general appearance of Paris, is the inner inclosure formed by the celebrated road called the Boulevards. On the north side of the river, the Boulevards follow a line nearly midway, on an average, between the river and the wall. The space which they comprehend, therefore, is but a small portion of that included within the outer boundary of the city. The length of this part of the road is about 5,200 English yards, or somewhat under three miles. That on the south side of the river is of far greater extent, approaching, as it does, throughout its whole sweep, very much closer to the wall, and in some parts entirely coinciding with it. It measures about 16, 000 yards, or above nine miles in length. Each of these lines, although in reality forming an uninterrupted road from its commencement to its termination, is divided into a succession of parts, each having its particular name. The northern Boulevards are twelve in number, the southern seven. We have nothing in England like the Parisian Boulevards. They may be generally described as a road or street, of great breadth, along each side of which are planted double rows of elms. But these shady avenues do not present merely a picture of rural beauty. Rising as they do in the heart of a great city, they partake also of its artificial elegance and splendour, and are associated with all the luxuries of architectural decoration. Considered merely as a range of streets, the Boulevards are hardly rivalled by any other part of Paris. Those to the north of the river are lined on both sides throughout their whole extent, by buildings more uniformly handsome than

are those of almost any other street in the city, and by many which may be even described as magnificent. Some of these are private residences; others are shops, cafés, public hotels, and theatres. The crowds by whom so many parts of these Boulevards are frequented chiefly give to the scene its singular liveliness and brilliancy. The southern Boulevards, though equally beautiful, are far from being so much the habitual resort of the citizens; but the walks on this very account, have a charm for some moods of mind which the others want. Another road, planted in a similar manner, has more recently been carried round the outside of the present walls of the city. It is distinguished from the inner Boulevards by the name of the Boulevards Extérieurs.

Streets.

To a person accustomed to the appear ance of the streets of London, or indeed of any other English town, those of the interior of Paris will present considerable novelty of aspect. The extreme narrowness, in the first place, of those in the more ancient parts of the city, and the great height of the houses, with their windows in many cases fortified by bars of iron, would alone give them an air of gloom and precaution, almost sufficient to impress the Englishman who walks through them with the feeling that he has been transported, not only into another country, but into another age. Even where these indications of the more ancient evils of Paris are not visible, the general aspect of the town shows that it has not grown with the growth of a free people, amongst whom the inequalities of rank have been softened down by respect to the comforts of all classes. Under the ancient régime, which was in full activity half a century ago, there were only two classes in Paris, the noblesse, and the bourgeoisie; and the latter, being driven into the gutters by the carriage-wheels of their arrogant masters, went by the general name of the canaille. Few of the streets even now have any side pavement for foot passengers-that invaluable accommodation which gives such perfect security to the pedestrian even in our most crowded and tumultuous thoroughfares. The causeway itself, on which walkers and drivers are thus mingled together in confusion, is often most uneven and rugged. The stones of which it is formed, about ten inches square, present each a convex surface, usually wet and slippery, so that under the most favourable -circumstances, walking in the streets of

Paris is anything but an agreeable exercise. Still farther to abridge the level space, the street is made to incline from both sides towards the centre, in order to form there a sort of ditch, in which flows a black and fetid stream. From the want of a proper system of drains, this receptacle of filth is generally sufficiently replenished even in the driest weather, to keep the whole street wet and dirty. Carriages, having usually one wheel in the midst of the kennel, dash about the offensive puddle in all directions. But the principle of a clear middle way, such as our English streets possess, is neglected in all the arrangements connected with those of Paris. Even the lights, instead of being fixed on posts, as ours are, at the sides, are suspended in the middle on ropes swung across, and having their opposite ends fastened to the walls of the houses. It was these ropes which the mob, in the Revolution of 1789, were wont to make use of as halters for their victims; whence their famous cry of á la lanterne, as they dragged them along to execution.

The aspect of Paris by night, except in a few of the principal streets where gas has been very partially introduced, is singularly gloomy. The darkness is occasionally relieved by the brilliancy of a café; but in the more quiet parts of the town, particularly in the fashionable quarter of the Faubourg St. Germain, it is almost impossible for the pedestrian to direct his steps aright. It is quite evident that the arrangements of this capital have not been made for a walking people. This evil, however, is fast disappearing. Numerous passages have been constructed, within the last ten years, which are paved with flat stones, and brilliantly lighted; and the active and pleasure-seeking population of Paris crowd to these attractive and convenient places, to the Boulevards, or to the Pafais-Royal, and leave the narrow and dirty streets principally to the few who keep their own carriages, or to the many who hire public conveyances. These are of various kinds; and such was the growing importance of the middle classes, that fiacres (so called after the sign of St Fiacre, at the house where they were first established) were in use a century and a half ago.

The remainder of the Part is occupied with a sketch of the Revolution of 1789.

REFORM OF EARLY PARLIAMENTS.

Though no language can adequately condemn the base subserviency of Henry's parliament, it may be reasonably doubt