Q. S. P., 24th September, 1827.

MY DEAREST BEST BOY,-You are not so much as fifty. I am four-score -a few months only wanting: I am old enough to be your grandfather, I could at this moment catch you in my arms, toss you up into the air, and, as you fell into them again, cover you with kisses. It shall have-ay, that it shall—the dear little fellow, some nice sweet pap of my own making: three sorts of it-1. Is Evidence. 2. Judicial Establishments. 3. Codification Proposal-all to be sucked in in the order of the numbers.

Again

30th November, 1827.

MY DEAR BOY,-You have now been breeched some time; and, with a little study, you are able, I am sure, to get a short exercise by heart, and speak it quite pretty. Here is one for you; the next time you toddle to Q. S. P., let me hear you say it; and if you say it without missing more than four words, I have a bright silver fourpence for you, which you shall take and put into your pocket.

When you say it you are to fancy you are in the House of Commons; that I am speaker; and you sitting on one of the forms, with a pretty silk gown on your little shoulders, and a fine bushy wig on your little pate; and then you start up as fierce as a little lion, and say what is in the paper which is here enclosed.

Do as you are bid—I am sure you can, if you will—and the one I have mentioned is not the last of the silver fourpences you will receive from the hands of your loving guardian.

Master Henry Brougham.

J. B.

P.S.-In some places, you will see various readings marked by brackets. Give my respects to your grandmamma, and beg of her to choose for you which you shall say.

İn our next, Broom is still the person addressed, a summons to a dinner-party being the occasion:

13th May, 1822.

Get together a gang, and bring them to the Hermitage, to devour such eatables and drinkables as are to be found in it.

I. From Honourable House :

1. Brougham, Henry.

2. Denman.

3. Hume, Joseph.

4. Mackintosh, James.

5. Ricardo, David.

II. From Lincoln's Inn Felds :--

6. Whishaw, James.

III. From India House:

7. Mills, James.

Hour of attack, half after six.

Hour of commencement of plunderage, seven.

Hour of expulsion, with the aid of the adjacent Police-office if necessary, quarter before eleven.

Day of attack to be determined by Universal Suffrage.

N.B.-To be performed with advantage, all plunderage must be regulated. Witness matchless Constitution.

VOL. I. (1843) No. I.

L

Burdett figures along with Brougham in what immediately follows, the views of the philosopher having been communicated to one of his friends:

The member by whom this letter is franked is the famous Mr. Brougham -pronounce Broom-who, by getting the orders in council revoked, and peace and trade with America thereby restored, has just filled the whole country with joy, gladness, and returning plenty. He has been dining with me to day and has but just gone. This little dinner of mine he has been intriguing for any time these five or six months; and what with one plague and another, never till this day could I find it in my heart to give him one -I mean this year: for the last we were already intimate. He is already one of the first men in the House of Commons, and seems in a fair way of being very soon universally acknowledged to be the very first, even beyond my old and intimate friend, Sir Samuel Romilly: many, indeed, say he is so now. Sir Francis Burdett is still upon my hands, for a dinner he has been wanting to give me, any time these six weeks, offering to have anybody I will name to meet me. In real worth he is FAR BELOW those others: but being the hero of the mob, and having it in his power to do a great deal of harm, as well as a great deal of good, and, being rather disposed to do good, and indeed, having done a good deal already, must not be neglected.

To Lord Burdett himself:

Q. S. P., 11th February, 1828. FRANCIS, I see how it is with you. You don't know where to go for a dinner; and so you are for coming to me. I hear you have been idler than usual, since you were in my service; always running after the hounds, whenever you could get anybody to trust you with a horse. I hear you are got among the Tories, and that you said once you were one of them: you must have been in your cups. You had been reading High Life Below Stairs, suppose, and wanted them to call you Lord Burdett. You have always had a hankering after bad company, whatever I could do to keep you out of it. You want to tell me a cock-and-a-bull story about that fellow Brougham. I always thought you a cunning fellow; but I never thought it would have come to this. You want to be, once more, besides getting a bellyful, as great a man as

*

*

Well, I believe, I must indulge you. No work will there be for you on Wednesday; I can tell you that. That is the day, therefore, for your old master to be charitable to you. So come here that day little before seven.

Orders will be given for letting you in.

Relative to Sir Robert:

Peel is weak and feeble. He has been nursed at the breast of Alma Mater. Like the greyhounds of a lady I know, which were fed upon brandy to prevent their growth, so he feeds upon old prejudices to prevent his mind from growing. He has done all the good he is capable of doing, and that is but little. direction.

He has given a slight impulse to law improvement in a right

Once more of Brougham:

Insincere as he is, it is always worth my while to bestow a day on him. I shall try to subdue him, and make something of him. I shall see whether he has any curiosity to assist in tearing the established system of procedure to rags and tatters.

I amgoing off the stage. Brougham keeps on. When I am in the grave I shall have the advantage over him. He will, perhaps, disappoint me.

And lastly, at present the philosopher himself,--the love-stricken, disappointed, heart-covenant-keeping philosopher! How touching and deep, how manly and instructive the love-letter!

Q.S.P., April 1827. I am alive more than two months advanced in my 80th year-more lively than when you presented me, in ceremony, with the flower in the green lane. Since that day, not a single one has passed (not to speak of nights), in which you have not engrossed more of my thoughts than I could have wished. Yet, take me for all in all, I am more lively now than then -walking, though only for a few minutes, and for health sake, more briskly than most young men whom you see-not unfrequently running.

In the enclosed scrap there are a few lines, which I think you will read with pleasure.

I have still the pianoforte harpischord, on which you played at Bowood : as an instrument, though no longer useful, it is still curious; as an article of furniture, not unhandsome; as a legacy, will you accept it?

I have a ring, with some of my snow-white hair in it, and my profile, which everybody says is like. At my death you will have such another; should you come to want, it will be worth a good sovereign to you. You will not, I hope, be ashamed of me.

The last letter I received from Spanish America (it was in the present year), I was styled Legislador del Mundo, and petitioned for a Code of Laws. It was from the man to whom that charge was committed by the legislature of his country-Guatemala.

Every minute of my life has been long counted and now I am plagued with remorse at the minutes which I have suffered you to steal from me. In proportion as I am a friend of mankind (if such I am, as I endeavour to if within my reach, would be an enemy.

be), you,

I have, for some years past, had a plan for building a harem in my garden, upon the Panopticon principle. The premiership waits your acceptance; a few years hence, when I am a little more at leisure than at present, will be the time for executing it.

For these many years I have been invisible to all men (not to speak of women), but for special reason. I have lost absolutely all smell; as much as possible all taste, and swarm with petty infirmities. But it seems as if they ensured me against serious ones. I am, still am I gay, eminently so,

and "the cause of gaiety in other men.' To read the counterpart of this in your hand would make a most mischievous addition to my daily dose of bitter sweets-the above-mentioned mixture of pain and pleasure. Oh, what an old fool am I, after all, not to

leave off, since I can, till the paper will hold no more. This you have done at sixty, and at half six miles distance. What would you have done at present, and at sixteen? Embrace

though it is for me,

as it is by you she will not be severe, nor refuse her lips, as to me she did her hand, at a time, perhaps, not yet forgotten by her, any more than by me.

ART. XIV.

1. The Jack o' Lantern (Le Feu-Follet), or the Privateer. By J. F. COOPER, Esq. Bentley.

2. Midsummer Eve. A Tale.

A Tale. Saunders and Otley.

THE scene of "The Jack o' Lantern" is Elba and the Italian coast; and the period Caraccioli's disgraceful execution. The characters are various as well as numerous; Nelson being one of them, who is cleverly, though coldly sketched. The author, however, has exhibited art in the portraiture, having studied fairness without exaggeration or extenuation of the foul affair to which we have alluded. Raoul Yvard the hero, Ghita Caraccioli the heroine, and Ithuel Bolt the unscrupulous and coarse American, are the best drawn in the novel. The first of these is the handsome, elegant, dashing fellow, whose enthusiasm and bravery has been fed by the French revolution, and whose love of honour is such as was bred during that convulsion in the breasts of the respectable part of the nation. Ghita deeply loves the gallant sailor, but being an earnest, intelligent, religious Italian, she refuses to marry him on account of his scepticism, the author's aim being to draw a contrast between profound belief and light-hearted infidelity. There is thus opposed the enthusiasm of patriotism and warlike honour to unwavering piety and submissiveness of spirit, giving rise to many tender scenes, and preserving the principal interest of the story during the requisite number of volumes. Bolt is a seaman who has been impressed into the British service; so that, independently of his democratic notions, he harbours bitter and rankling feelings. There is another character in the novel who interests the reader: this is the unlucky, good-hearted, drunken Clinch.

With regard to the work as a novel, or, to come still nearer to a test, as compared with Cooper's former naval and maritime stories, it would be too much to say that it bears out the assertion of the author, that this class of works of fiction have an inexhaustible field to traverse and cultivate. Certainly we have here, in the shape of character, scenes, and incidents, a goodly number that can present little novelty to persons who have read Mr. Cooper's earlier seastories. Still, we think that Le Feu-Follet is one of the best of this author's novels. The characters are drawn with discrimination as well as with the freedom and ease of a practised artist. The dia

logue is dramatically conducted. The story reads as if it might have had reality for its foundation; because the novelist not merely understands the service he endeavours to picture, even to its minutest technicalities, but because the scenery and the parts which he describes have been observed by him. He does not speak at random, or only as an adventurous fancy might do, to the violation of a truthful effect, but as knowledge, familiarity, and study have enabled his otherwise fertile mind to do. He even has accomplished a higher object in this work than to absorb the reader's attention and give a most striking semblance of reality to the story; for he impresses truths distinctly, and places before you important characteristics; enabling you at the same time to understand how such results have come to pass, and what has originated them. Thus, one is led to see in what way the British service operates upon the minds of those bred in it. One discovers, besides, the influences of the French revolution and the mode of its working; and even the difference between the spirit of religious creeds upon the conduct of its several professors.

It is difficult, in the way of extract, to convey any idea of the more stirring and animated parts of the "Jack o' Lantern," or of the more impressive scenes in the history of the hero and heroine, without spoiling the novel-reader's curiosity and pleasure. However, we may copy out one passage of considerable length, and which contains a story in itself, that will engage and inform the mind. In fact, it gives one a better idea of promotion and of the disappointed feelings that must abide in many a breast, than anything we have read in the way of complaints of a like nature, either in the reports of parliamentary speeches, in pamphlets written on the subject, or from the lips of subalterns.

"I hope you parted good friends?"

"The best in the world, Captain Cuffe. No one that feeds and lodges me well need dread me as an enemy."

"I'll warrant it. That's the reason you are so loyal, Clinch."

The hard, red face of the master's-mate worked a little, and, though he could well look all sorts of colours, he looked all ways but in the captain's eye. It was now ten years since he ought to have been a lieutenant, having once actually outranked Cuffe, in the way of date of service at least; and his conscience told him two things quite distinctly,-first, the fact of his long and weary probation; and second, that it was, in a great degree, his own fault.

"I love his Majesty, Sir," Clinch observed, after giving a gulp, "and I never lay any thing which goes hard with myself to his account. Still, memory will be memory; and spite of all I can do, sir, I sometimes remember what I might have been, as well as what I am. If his Majesty does feed me, it is with the spoon of a master's-mate; and if he does lodge me, it is in the cockpit."

"I have been your shipmate often, and for years at a time," answered Cuffe, good-naturedly, though a little in the manner of a superior; and