What a contrast close series the portraits of eminent authors, | Such is the perpetual strain. French and English, with most of whom he had are Chatham's letters to his nephew, written at conversed :-over these, and immediately under precisely the same period! the massive cornice, extend all round in foot-long capitals the Horatian lines : NUNC. VETERUM. LIBRIS. NUNC. SOMNO. ET IN- "At the root of all Lord Chesterfield's errors," says Lord Mahon, "lay a looseness of religious principle." In our opinion he had no religion. Very few of his friends and associates had much -and he seems to have taken pleasant pains in DUCERE. SOLICITE. JUCUNDA. OBLIVIA. VITE. recording the various shades of their infidelity. On the mantel-pieces and cabinets stand busts Bolingbroke, he tells us, "professed himself a of old orators, interspersed with voluptuous vases Deist, believing in a general providence, but and bronzes, antique or Italian, and airy statuettes doubting, though by no means rejecting, (as is of opera nymphs. We shall never recall that commonly supposed,) the immortality of the soul princely room without fancying Chesterfield re- and a future state," (vol. ii., p. 450;) a duplicate ceiving in it a visit of his only child's mother-nearly of Voltaire. Pope" was a Deist, believing while probably some new victim or accomplice in a future state; this he has often owned to me; was sheltered in the dim mysterious little boudoir but when he died, he sacrificed a cock to Esculawithin-which still remains also in its original pius, and suffered the priests who got about him blue damask and fretted gold-work, as described to perform all their absurd ceremonies on his to Madame de Monconseil. Did this scene of "sweet forgetfulness" rise before Mrs. Norton's vision when she framed that sadly beautiful episode which we quoted in our last number, of the faded broken-hearted mistress reproaching in his library amidst the busts of "bards and orators and sages," the "Protestant and protesting gentleman," who had robbed her innocence and blasted her life? Hear the paternal voice when Chesterfield House was in the hands of the decorators, and Philip Stanhope was at Paris-a novice of nineteen! "What says Madame Dupin to you? I am told she is very handsome still; I know she was so some few years ago. She has good parts, reading, manners, and delicacy; such an arrangement would be both creditable and advantageous to you. She will expect to meet with all the good-breeding and delicacy that she brings; and, as she is past the glare and éclat of youth, may be more the willing to listen to your story, if you tell it well. For an attachment, I should prefer her to la petite Blot; and, for a mere gallantry, I should prefer la petite Blot to her; so that they are consistent, et l'une n'empèche pas l'autre. Adieu! remember la douceur et les grâces."-Vol. ii., p. 149. And again (May, 1751) :— body." (Ibid., p. 445.) It is to Chesterfield that "While each pale sinner hung his head, It is to Chesterfield that we owe the story of Pope and Atterbury's last interview in the Tower, according to which, unless Pope told Chesterfield a most egregious and circumstantial lie, or Chesterfield invented his own conversation with Pope at Twickenham, Bishop Atterbury, though a Christian when he left England never to return, had been a steady adherent of the sect of Bolingbroke, all the while that he filled a prominent place in the service and guidance of the church of England. Lord Mahon expresses utter disbelief in the whole story. "What judicious critic," he says, (vol. ii., p. 446,) "would weigh in the balance, for a moment, the veracity of Pope against the piety of Atterbury?" We hope his lordship's decision is right. "What do you mean by your Si j'osois? Qu'est ce qui vous empêche d'oser? On ose toujours quand il y a espérance de succès; et on ne perd rien à oser, quand même il n'y en a pas. Un honnête homme sçait oser, et quand il faut oser il ouvre la tranchée par des travaux, des soins, et des attentions; s'il n'en est pas délogé d'abord il avance toujours à l'attaque de la place même. Après de certaines approches le succès est infallible, et il, n'y a que les nigauds qui en doutent, ou qui ne le tentent point. Seroit-ce le caractère respectable de Madame de la Valière qui vous empêche d'oser, ou seroit-ce la vertu farouche de Madame Dupin qui vous retient? La sagesse in- That there was, however, one sincere Christian vincible de la belle Madame Case vous décourage-in the Twickenham set, we have the evidence even t-elle plus que sa beauté ne nous invite? Mais fi donc!-Soyez convaincu que la femme la plus sage se trouve flattée, bien loin d'être offensée, par une déclaration d'amour, faite avec politesse et agrément. Il se peut bien qu'elle ne s'y prêtera point, c'est à dire si elle a un goût ou une passion pour quelque autre; mais en tout cas elle ne vous en sçaura pas mauvais gré; de façon qu'il n'est pas question d'oser dès qu'il n'y a pas de danger."-Vol. ii., p. 150. of Chesterfield. His character of Arbuthnot (now first printed) is a pleasing relief in every way— and here he says: "He lived and died a devout and sincere Christian. Pope and I were with him the evening before he died, when he suffered racking pains from an inflammation in his bowels, but his head was clear to the last. He took leave of us with tenderness, without weakness, and told us that he died, not only with the comfort, but even the devout assurance of a Christian.-Vol. ii., p. | In truth, that this tall, dark-haired, graceful wo 448." man sprung from the amours of a Hanoverian king Whether Chesterfield had the satisfaction of and a Dutch-built concubine seems to us, after all, making his filial pupil either a libertine or an infi- very doubtful. These pretensions and advantages, del we have no sufficient evidence. Notwithstand- however, were all hers when she selected Chestering Mr. James Boswell's attestation to the respec-field from a host of suitors; and certainly during tability of Mr. Philip Stanhope's character, (Cro- the flower of her life and his own he was a most ker's edition, i., 254,) these points remain in ob- profligate husband. Nevertheless, the Correspondscuro. We suppose there is no question that the ence bears evidence that the childless countess noble tutor failed in his grand object of social ele-treated his son with almost maternal regard, and gance and that, as Chesterfield had for his father that in his infirm old age she watched over him a saturnine Jacobite, so he had a pedantic sloven with unwearied devotion. For his memory after for his son. But we hope these lines, which we he was gone she on all occasions showed an anxtake from the fly-leaf of a friend's copy of the fifth ious concern. Dr. Maty's weak book is the monuedition of the Letters (1774)-the handwriting ment of her tenderness. We are, we suppose, to unknown to that friend, though he is well skilled divide our admiration between the generosity of in such matters-have no merit but their point :- the sex which Chesterfield flattered, outraged, and despised-the clinging instincts of virgin love and "Vile Stanhope-Demons blush to tell In twice two hundred places conjugal pride-and the fascination of his habitual small courtesies. Has shown his son the road to hell, Escorted by the graces: But little did the ungenerous lad Concern himself about them; For base, degenerate, meanly bad, His The likeness prefixed to these volumes is from a very fine picture by Gainsborough at Chevening. It was painted in his seventieth year-but we should have guessed him far above eighty: for the excesses of youth and manhood (especially his conHe sneaked to hell without them." tempt of Boerhaave's celebrated prescription for Mr. Stanhope certainly made, in one important him when consulted at the Hague) had produced matter, a very ungrateful return for the unbounded a general languor and relaxation of the nervous attention which Lord Chesterfield bestowed on his system, and seamed the beautiful countenance all success in this world. He married without his over with wrinkles which no Lawrence could ever father's knowledge. The earl never heard that have ventured to imitate. We are surprised that such a step had been contemplated even, until a Lord Mahon did not take rather the exquisite porwidow and two children presented themselves at trait in Crayons by Rosalba, done when Chesterhis door with evidence of their position. He was field House was building, and still empannelled in at this time very frail. The want of confidence its original position. This gives us the no longer cut the aged apostle of dissimulation to the quick-young, but perfectly preserved Chesterfield-the it was upon that son that he had concentrated his ambassador, the viceroy, the secretary. cares, and latterly at least, his affections. But he figure, though on a small scale, was very gooddid not visit the offence on the widow and the or- every limb turned by Nature's daintiest hand, yet phans. He dealt with them all in the most generous full of vigor, till it paid the penalties of vice. The manner. His letters to the lady are models of gra- head is inimitable-we never saw any engraving ciousness, and he provided for her boys' education of him, either from bust, or medal, or picture, that and future establishment with liberality. Again gives an approach to its peculiar expression. The he had an ungrateful return. As soon as he was features are all classical-the eyes full of softness, in his coffin Mrs. Eugene Stanhope set about sell- yet of fire-the brow and eyebrows grave and ing the manuscript of his letters to her husband-manly-the mouth small, but impressed with such which certainly were written, if ever letters were, a mixture of firmness, sense, wit, gaiety, and vofor the exclusive use of one person, and that per- luptuous delicacy as few artists could have imaginson and his representatives bound by every tie to ed-and no one of that day but Rosalba could have guard the secret-dum calebant cineres at all events. transcribed.* But she got £1500 by the job. We doubt if any earl has died since 1773 for two little volumes of whose private letters any one bookseller would have given a third of the sum. They went through five editions in the first twelve months. His less exemplary usage of his own wife met with another sort of return. Her birth was, according to the now obsolete notions of that time, an illustrious distinction, to which were added a peerage in her own right, a handsome fortune, the prospect of a great one, and, unless her painters rivalled her lovers, no common share of beauty. We have a serious complaint to make of this "Collective edition of Chesterfield's letters."-it has no Index. It was the same with the Collective edition of Walpole's Letters," lately issued from the same establishment, and, like this, in other respects satisfactorily arranged. The publisher ought to know that, though such omissions may not be regarded by the keepers of circulating libraries, they are most annoying to people who have libraries of their own, and buy books to be bound, preserv ed and consulted-not merely to be read or glanced over, like a "standard novel." or some sentimental spinster's mince or jocular captain's hash of history or memoirs. In every considerable printing office there may he found some intelligent man willing and able to compile a sufficient index for such a book as this now before us, for a very moderate remuneration, at his leisure hours. From the Edinburgh Review. American views of society, we take to be by far Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil. By N. P. F. the most notable of the Dashes." The judgWILLIS. 3 vols. 8vo. London 1845. WHATEVER doubt or surprise the details and extracts with which we are about to amuse our readers, may seem to attach to the fact, we beg to assure those of them who do not already know it, that Mr. Willis has actually written some rather clever books, occasionally marked by traits of genius. But, with respect to the present publication, we confess we have been frequently at a loss to judge whether his narratives were intended to be taken as serious, or only jocular-as what he himself believed to be truths, or intended only as amusing fancies. True, he writes, as he tells us, with a free pencil;" but it also is true that he writes as if he wished his readers to think that he is perfectly in earnest; that he speaks in his own proper person, and reveals his own adventures, or what he appears to wish to be taken as such; and we therefore feel it to be quite fair-indeed that we are bound to take him at his word, and to deal with him accordingly. ment of foreigners has been called, by a happy blunder of logic, that of contemporary posterity. In Mr. Willis we have "a republican visiting a monarchical country for the first time, traversing the barrier of different ranks with a stranger's privilege, and curious to know how nature's nobility holds its own against nobility by inheritance, and how heart and judgment were modified in their action by the thin air at the summit of refinement." That Mr. Willis, in this exalted sphere, should have got on in a manner satisfactory to himself, is no wonder. Don Christopher Sly conducted himself, we all remember, with perfect ease in the ducal chair. Another personage of somewhat humble rank in life, was, as we also know, quite at home at the court of Queen Titania, and inspired her majesty with a remarkable passion. So also our republican stranger appears to have been equally at his ease, when he appeared for the first time in European aristocratical society. The great characteristic of high society in England, Mr. Willis assures us, is admiration of literary talent. "At the summit of refinement," a natural nobleman, or a popular writer for the magazines, is in all respects the equal of a duke. As some captain of Free Lances of former days, elbowed his way through royal palaces, with the eyes of all womankind after him-so in the present time a man, by being a famous Free Pencil, may achieve a similar distinction. Of such a cham The history of these "Dashes at Life," which some of our contemporaries have much extolled, is thus modestly given in the preface :-" Like the sculptor, who made toys of the 'fragments of his unsalable Jupiter,' the author, in the following collection of brief tales, gives material, that, but for a single objection, would have been moulded into works of larger design. That objection is the unmarketableness of American books in America, owing to our (Mr. Willis is an American) defec-pion, the ladies don't say as in the times of the tive law of copyright." And he proceeds to show, with pathetic accuracy, that as an American publisher can get all English books for nothing, he will not throw away his money on American writers; hence the only chance of a livelihood for the latter, is to contribute to periodical literature, and to transport works of bulk and merit to the English market. Free Lances, he fought at Hennebon or Pavia, but that he wrote that charming poem in Colburn, that famous article in Blackwood. Before that title to fame, all aristocratic heads bow down. The ladies do not care for rank, or marry for wealth-they only worship genius! This truly surprising truth forms the text of almost every one of Mr. Willis' "Dashes" at So, after all, if a few authors and publishers English and Continental life. The heroes of the grumble at piracy, the public gains. But for the tales are all more or less alike-all" Free Penpirates of New York and Boston, we should never cils." Sometimes the tales are related in the first have had Mr. Willis' "Dashes." And though person, as befalling our American; sometimes a the genius which might have perfected the Jupi- flimsy third person veils the author, but you can't ter, has been thus partly balked-though Mr. but see that it is Cæsar who is writing his own Willis has been forced to fritter away his marble | British or Gallic victories, for the "Free Pencil" and intellect in a commerce of toys; still the always conquers. Duchesses pine for his love; fragmented Jupiter has, with the frieze of the Par-modest virgins go into consumptions and die for thenon, found an appropriate locality in the capital of the world. But, to proceed with the history, we may state that it was Mr. Willis' intention to work up some of these sketches into substantive novels, but for the unsatisfactory state of the market for that commodity; and there can be no sort of doubt that the genius which conceived, might have enlarged the Dashes" to any size. In the first half of these volumes, there are some twenty tales illustrative of English and Continental life-true copies, Mr. Willis states, of what he had seen there; and most of them of so strange and diverting a nature, that a man of genius might have made many scores of volumes out of the adventures recorded in only a few hundreds of these duodecimo pages. The Americans, by their piratical system, have robbed themselves of that pleasure; and the Union might have had a novelist as prolific as M. Dumas or Mr. James, had it possessed the common generosity to pay him. The European, as contradistinguished from the him; old grandmothers of sixty forget their families and propriety, and fall on the neck of this "Free Pencil." If this be true, it is wonderful; if it is fiction, it is more wonderful still, that all a man's delusions should take this queer turn-that Alnaschar should be always courting the vizier's daughter-courting! what do we say it is the woe-worn creature who is always at Alnaschar's feet, and he (in his vision) who is kicking her. The first of the pictures of London life is called "Leaves from the Heart-book of Ernest Clay." This, but for the unfavorable circumstance before alluded to, was to have been a novel of three volumes; and indeed it would have been hard to crowd such a hero's amours into a few chapters. Ernest is a great "Free Pencil," with whom Jules Janin himself (that famous chieftain of the French" Free Pencils," who translated Sterne, confessing that he did not know a word of English, and "did" his own wedding-day in a feuilleton of the Journal des Débats) can scarcely compare. The " Heart-book" opens in Ernest's lodgings, debt! "And thus fugitive and easy of decoy; thus compulsory, irresolute, and brief, is the unchastised toil of genius-the earning of the fancybread' of poets? "in a second floor front, No, South Audley the immortal centre-the world of heaven-born Street, Grosvenor Square,' "where Ernest is imagination-melted from about him! He stood writing, before a three-halfpenny inkstand, an in patent leather, human, handsome, and liable to article for the next New Monthly Magazine. It was two o'clock, and the author was at breakfast -and to show what a killing man of the world poor Ernest was, his biographer tells us, that"On the top of a small leather portmanteau, near by, (the three-half-penny inkstand, the like of which you may buy in most small shops in Soho,') stood two pair of varnished-leather boots of a sumptuous expensiveness, slender, elegant, and without spot, except the leaf of a crushed orange blossom clinging to one of the heels. The boots and the inkstand were tolerable exponents of his (the fashionable author's) two opposite but closely woven existences." A printer's devil comes to him for his tale, and as the man of genius has not written a word of it, he begins to indite a letter to the publisher, which we print with what took place subsequently; that the public may be made acquainted with the habits of "Free Pencils" in composition. "He had seized his pen and commenced :"Dear Sir,-The tale of this month will be called As it was not yet conceived, he found a difficulty in baptizing it. His eyebrows descended like the bars of a knight's visor; his mouth, which had expressed only lassitude and melancholy, shut close, and curved downward, and he sat for some minutes dipping his pen in the ink, and at each dip adding a new shoal to the banks of the inky Azores. "A long sigh of relief, and an expansion of every line of his face into a look of brightening thought, gave token presently that the incubation had been successful. The gilded note-paper was pushed aside, a broad and fair sheet of foreign post' was hastily drawn from his blotting-book, and forgetful alike of the unachieved cup of tea (!) and the waiting devil' of Marlborough street, the felicitous author dashed the first magic word on mid-page, and without title or motto, traced rapidly line after line, his face clearing of lassitude, and his eyes of their troubled languor, as the erasures became fewer, and his punctuations further between. 666 Any answer to the note, sir?' said the maidservant, who had entered unnoticed, and stood close at his elbow, wondering at the flying velocity of his pen. "He was at the bottom of the fourth page, and in the middle of a sentence. Handing the wet and blotted sheet to the servant, with an order for the messenger to call the following morning for the remainder, he threw down his pen and abandoned himself to the most delicious of an author's pleasures-revery in the mood of composition. He forgot work. Work is to put such reveries into words. His imagination flew on like a horse without his rider-gloriously and exultingly, but to no goal. The very waste made his indolence sweeter-the very nearness of his task brightened his imaginative idleness. The ink dried upon his pen. Some capricious association soon drew back his thoughts to himself. His eye dulled. His lips resumed their mingled expression of pride and voluptuousness. He started to find himself idle, remembered that he had left off the sheet with a broken sentence, without retaining even the concluding word, and with a sigh more of relief than vexation, he drew on his boots. Presto!-the world of which his penny-halfpenny inkstand was "It would be hard if a man who has made himself a name,' (beside being paternally christened,) should want one in a story-so, if you please, I will name my hero in the next sentence. Ernest Clay was dressed to walk to Marlborough street to apply for his guinea a page' in advance, and find out the concluding word of his MS., when there was heard a footman's rap at the street door. The baker on the ground-floor ran to pick up his penny loaves jarred from the shelves by the tremendous rat-a-tat-tat, and the maid ran herself out of her shoes to inform Mr. Clay that Lady Mildred- -wished to speak with him. Neither maid nor baker were displeased at being put to inconvenience, nor was the baker's hysterical mother disposed to murmur at the outrageons clatter which shattered her nerves for a week. There is a spell to a Londoner in a coroneted carriage which changes the noise and the impudence of the unwhipped varlets who ride behind it into music and condescension. "You were going out,' said Lady Mildred, can I take you anywhere?" "You can take me,' said Clay, spreading out his hands in an attitude of surrender, when and where you please; but I was going to my publisher's.' 66 The chariot steps rattled down, and his foot was on the crimson carpet, when a plain familycarriage suddenly turned out of Grosvenor Square, and pulled up as near his own door as the obstruction permitted." Both the carriages, the coroneted chariot and the plain coach "out of Grosvenor Square," contain ladies who are wildly in love with the celebrated writer for the Magazines. He is smitten by the chariot; he has offered marriage to the family coach; which of the two vehicles shall carry him off? The rival owners appear in presence, (at Mrs. Rothschild's ball!) and after a slight contest between vice and virtue, the wellprincipled young man of genius finishes the evening by running away with the coronet to a beautiful retreat in Devonshire, leaving his bride-elect to wear the willow. This may be considered as Volume I. of the "Heart-book." Who would not be interested in reading the secrets of such a heart-who would not pardon its poetic vagaries? In Volume II. the "Free Pencil" seeing in the newspapers the marriage of an old flame, merely in joke writes the lady a letter so thrilling, tender, and impassioned, that she awakens for the first time to a sense of her exquisite beauty, and becomes a coquette forever after. The "Free Pencil" meets with her at Naples; is there kissed by her in public; crowned by her hand, and proclaimed by her beautiful lips the prince of poets; and as the lady is married, he, as a matter of ordinary gallantry, of course wished to push his advantages further. But here (and almost for the only time) he is altogether checked in his advances, and made to see that the sovereign power of beauty is even paramount to that of "free penciling" in the genteel world. By way of episode, a story is introduced of a young woman who dies of love for the poet, (having met him at several balls in London.) He consoles her by marrying her on her death-bed. In Volume III., the Free Pencil recovers his first love, whom he left behind in the shawl-room at Mrs. Rothschild's Ball, and who has been pining and waiting for him ever since. The constancy of the beautiful young creature is rewarded, and she becomes the wife of the highlygifted young man. Such briefly is the plot of a tale, purporting to be drawn from English life and manners; and wondering readers may judge how like the portrait is to the original; how faithfully the habits of our society are depicted; how magazine writers are the rulers of fashion in England; how maids, wives, and widows, are never tired of running away with them. But who can appreciate the powers of description adorning this likely story; or the high-toned benevolence and morality with which the author invests his hero? These points can only be judged of by a perusal of the book itself. Then, indeed, will new beauties arise to the reader's perception. As, in St. Peter's, you do not at first appreciate the beautiful details, so it is with Mr. Willis' masterpiece. But let us, for present recreation, make one or two brief extracts lifted to the lips? The answer brings me back. Eyes shining from amid jewels, voices softened with gentle breeding, smiles awakening beneath costly lamps-an atmosphere of perfume, splendor and courtesy-these form the poet's Hebe, and the hero's Ganymede. These pour for ambition the draught that slakes his fever-these hold the cup to lips, drinking eagerly, that would turn away, in solitude, from the ambrosia of the gods. Clay's walk through the sumptuous rooms was like a Roman triumph. He was borne on from lip to lip-those before him anticipating his greeting, and those he left still sending their bright and kind words after him." We shall next notice a wonderful history of foreign life, containing the development of a most wonderful idiosyncrasy. It is that of an authorour "Free Penciller!" His life is but a sleeping and forgetting-the new soul that rises in him has had elsewhere its setting, and cometh again from afar. He has not only a Pythagorean belief, but sometimes a consciousness of his previous existence, or existences-nay, he has not only a consciousness of having lived formerly, but often believes that he is living somewhere else, as well as at the place where at the present moment he may be. In a word, he is often conscious of being two gentlemen at once;-a miraculous égarement of the intellect described in the following manner : A lady arriving at a tea-party.-"Quietly, but with a step as elastic as the nod of a water-lily, Lady Mildred glided into the room, and the high "Walking in a crowded street, for example, in tones and unharmonized voices of the different perfect health, with every faculty gaily alive, I groups suddenly ceased, and were succeeded by a suddenly lose the sense of neighborhood. I seelow and sustained murmur of admiration. AI hear-but I feel as if I had become invisible white dress of faultless freshness of fold, a snowy where I stand, and was, at the same time, present turban, from which hung on either temple a clus- and visible elsewhere. I know everything that ter of crimson camelias still wet with the night-passes around me, but I seem disconnected, and dew; long raven curls of undisturbed grace falling on shoulders of that undescribable and demy coolness which follows a morning bath (!) giving the skin the texture and the opaque whiteness of the lily; the lips and skin redolent of the repose and purity, and the downcast but wakeful eye so expressive of recent solitude, and so peculiar to one who has not spoken since she slept-these were attractions which, in contrast with the paled glories around, elevated Lady Mildred at once into the predominant star of the night." * eyes for the minute or two that this trance lasts, and then slowly and reluctantly my absent soul seems creeping back, the magnetic links of conscious neighborhood, and one by one, reättach, and I resume my ordinary life, but with an irrepressible feeling of sadness. It is in vain that I try to fix these shadows as they recede. I have struggled a thousand times in vain to particularize and note down what I saw in the strange city to which I was translated. The memory glides from my grasp with preternatural evasiveness." (magnetically speaking) unlinked from the human beings near. If spoken to at such a moment, I answer with difficulty. The person who speaks seems addressing me from a world to which I no longer belong. At the same time, I have an irresistible inner consciousness of being present in another scene of every-day life-where there are streets, and houses, and people-where I am looked on without surprise as a familiar objectwhere I have cares, fears, objects to attain—a different scene altogether, and a different life from What a discovery regarding the qualities of the the scene and life of which I was a moment before "morning bath"-how naïvely does the "noble-conscious. I have a dull ache at the back of my man of nature" recommend the use of that rare cosmetic! Here follows a description of the triumphs of a "Free Penciller:""We are in one of the most fashionable houses in May Fair. On the heels of Ernest, and named with the next breath of the menial's lips, came the bearer of a title laden with the emblazoned honors of descent. Had he entered a hall of statuary, he could not have been less regarded. All eyes were on the pale forehead and calm lips that had entered before him; and the blood of the warrior who made the name, and of the statesmen and nobles who had borne it, and the accumulated honor and renown of centuries of unsullied distinctions-all these concentrated glories in the midst of the most polished and discriminating circle on earth, paled before the lamp of yesterday, burning in the eye of genius. Where is distinction felt? In secret, amidst splendor? No! In the street and the vulgar gaze? No! In the bosom of love? She only remembers it. Where, then, is the intoxicating cup of homage the delirious draught for which brain, soul, and nerve are tasked, tortured, and spent-where is it This awakening to a sense of previous existence is thus further detailed. "The death of a lady in a foreign land," says Mr. Willis, "leaves me at liberty to narrate the circumstances which follow." Death has unsealed his lips; and he may now tell, that in a previous state of existence he was in love with the beautiful Margaret, Baroness R, when he was not the present "free penciller," but Rodolph Isenberg, a young artist of Vienna. Travelling in Styria, Rodolph was taken to a soirée at Gratz, in the house of a lady of consequence there," by 66 a very courteous and well-bred person, a gentleman of Gratz," with certain |