W Sams Bookseller to the Kingl Sm

ROYAL LADY'S MAGAZINE,

AND

Archives of the Court of St. James's.

DECEMBER, 1831.

Embellishments. !

VIEW OF ST. PETER'S PRIORY.

VIEW OF CHEDDAR CLIFFS.;

THREE GROUPS OF LADIES IN FASHIONABLE ENGLISH COSTUME, FOR DECEMBER. Etched by Cheesman, from original Models and Drawings.

TO SUBSCRIBERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

AMONG Our accessions of literary strength for the new year will be found the contributions of Miss Jane Porter, author of Thaddeus of Warsaw, The Scottish Chiefs, &c., and of a distinguished and favourite writer in Blackwood.

We find it impossible to close our volume without a Supplement; which, however, will be published gratis, with the January number.

ADVICE TO SUBSCRIBERS.-Complete your sets. The four scarce numbers WILL NOT be reprinted.

We have, in deference to our American friends, coloured a plate for them; but we suspect our English subscribers will discard it, which they may do without breaking in upon their volume.

A court end bookseller, the last who ought to neglect the Royal Lady's Magazine, is more than suspected of wilfully, though vainly, endeavouring to retard its progress. To those who have had their numbers kept back till after the first of the month, we have only to observe, that during the whole year it has been published on the last day of the preceding month, and that they will do well to mark any seeming carelessness in respect to us, by transferring their orders for the Royal Lady's Magazine and other favours to more attentive booksellers.

The "Kitchen Tea-party in Rathbone Place" was funny enough, melancholy as was the occasion, but the account is more fitting the Morning Post than the Royal Lady's Magazine.

Poor Margaret's case is deplorable, and her deceiver a consummate, heartless villain, alike reckless of causes and of consequences, of honour and of crime; his affectation of religion, and attendance at divine worship fills up the measure of as abandoned a wretch as ever disgraced humanity. We hope Margaret is satisfied with our opinion, and with our pity for a victim so young. Her "Tale of Real Distress" is not adapted to our work.

The proprietors of the Bouquet request us to state, that the assertion of the editor of the Literary Gazette, that the engravings of the Bouquet were "all published before," is a wilful and deliberate falsehood, and that his subsequent apology, and the admission that he had not examined the work when he noticed it, are as disgraceful (if any thing can disgrace the Literary Gazette) as the lie which called for the explanation. We copy the man's assumed reason for the apology, because it affords a specimen of the grammar of an individual who has the effrontery to praise or condemn, as pay or prejudice may dictate, the writings of other people." "It is only the strict sense of justice and love of perfect truth which induces us," &c. &c.

To several correspondents, who complain of the political bias of the reviewer of Moore's Fitzgerald, we would observe that the talent of a writer will always overcome a good many of our political scruples.

To the article" The Approaching Revolution," in our last, we omitted the signature" WILLIAM."

Among the novelties for the new year, we may mention a series of papers, entitled The Florist, with coloured Illustrations, the first being a review of Chandler and Buckingham's splendid work upon the Camelia Japonica, with a specimen of that beautiful flower, reared from seed in England.

Many favours are unavoidably omitted; "The Algerine", and "Quiet Lodgings," were actually in type, as were also notices of the Edinburgh Cabinet Library, and six or seven other works, and ten or twelve pieces of music, songs, &c.