best neighbours, best friends, best subjects, and the best Christians in the world. Good-nature was a thing so peculiar to the English nation, and so appropriated by Almighty God to them, as a great person observed, that it cannot well be translated into another language, or practised by any other people.

"Amongst these excellent tempers, amongst this goodly wheat, whilst men slept, the enemy came and sowed tares. There sprang up of late years a sort of people," [not unlike certain worthies of modern times,]" sour, sullen, suspicious, querulous, censorious, peevish, envious, reserved, narrowhearted, close-fisted, self conceited, ignorant, stiff-necked, children of Belial, (according to the genuine signification of the word,) ever prone to despise dominion, to speak evil of dignities, to gainsay order, rule, and authority; who have accounted it their honour to contend with kings and governors, and to disquiet the peace of kingdoms; whom no deserts, no clemency, could ever oblige; neither oaths nor promises bind; breathing nothing but sedition and calumnies against the establisht government; aspiring without measure, railing without reason, and making their own wild fancies the square and rule of their consciences; hating, despising, or disrespecting the nobility, gentry, and superior clergy.”

"The nobility and chief gentry of England have been, even by strangers, compared to the finest flour, but the lower sort of common people to the coarsest bran; the innate goodnature, joined with the liberal education and converse with strangers in foreign countries, render those exccedingly civil; whereas the wealth, insolence, and pride of these, and their rare converse with strangers, have rendered them so distasteful, not only to the few strangers who frequent England, but even to their own gentry, that they could sometimes wish that either the country were less plentiful, or that the impositions were heavier; for by reason of the great abundance of the flesh and fish, corn, leather, wool, &c., which the soil of its own bounty, with little labour, doth produce, the peasants, at their ease, and almost forgetting labour, grow rich, and hereby so proud, insolent, and careless, that they neither give

that humble respect and awful reve rence, which in other kingdoms is usually given to nobility, gentry, and clergy, nor are they so industrious or so skilful in manufactures as some of our neighbour nations; so that in England it is no paradox to affirm, that as too much indigency in the inferior sort of people doth depress the spirits and dull the minds of them, so too plentiful and wanton a fortune causeth in them a laziness and less industry: that state commonly enjoying most peace, and order, and happiness, where either the moderate barrenness of the country, or want of ground, or multitude of imposts, (as in Holland,) do necessitate the common people to be industrious in their callings, and so to mind their own, as not to disturb the state and church affairs.

"Morcover, of the English, especially of the peasantry, it hath been formerly and unhappily observed, that then it is happiest with them when they are somewhat pressed in a complaining condition, according to that old rhyming verse,

Rustica gens est optima flens, et pessima ridens !'"'

Dr Chamberlayne speaks in a most pauper-pinching strain. He would see much to gratify him if he could for a time revisit the upper carth. The next sentence reminds us of the believers in Sir William Courtenay :"The English people anciently were, and at this day are, very apt to hearken to prophecies, and to create prodigies; aud then to interpret them according to their own extravagant conceits.

"Stabbing in England is much more seldom than in Italy, the English being easy to be reconciled, to pardon and remit offences, not apt to seck revenge; the true well-bred English have more of inclination to goodness, which the Greeks called Philanthropia, than other nations; the nobility and well-bred gentry delighting to be gracious and courteous with strangers, compassionate to the afflicted, and grateful to benefactors, when their purse or estate, not diverted by other extravagant expenses, will give them leave to remember them.

"Their ingenuity (ingenuousness) will not allow them to be excellent at the cheat, but subject in that point rather to take than give; and supposing others as open-hearted as them

selves, are many times in treaties overmatcht by them whom they overmatcht in arms and true valor." This remark has often been made since, and never was more applicable than now. It is Lord Palmerston's only excuse.

The English, especially the gentry, are so much given to prodigality, sports, and pastimes, that estates are oftener spent and sold than in any other country. They think it a piece of frugality beneath a gentleman to bargain beforehand, or to count afterwards, for what they eat in any place, though the rate be most unreasonable; whereby it comes that cooks, vintners, innkeepers, and such mean fellows, enrich themselves, and beggar and insult over the gentry. In a word, by their prodigality it comes, that not only those, but tailors, dancing-masters, and such trifling fellows, arrive to that riches and pride as to ride in their coaches, keep their summerhouses, to be served in plate, &c., an insolence insupportable in other wellgoverned nations!"

There are persons now alive; who remember the great Sir John Gallini going about in his own carriage to give lessons in dancing. But that was in the days of the "minuet de la cour."

"The English are generally great flesh-eaters, although, by the nearness of the sea, and abundance of rivers and fish ponds, there is no want of fish. In former times, their table was in many places covered four times a-day; they had breakfasts, dinners, bever ages, and suppers, and every where set dinners and suppers, until the time of the late troubles; wherein many eminent families being much impoverished, a custom was taken up by some of the nobility and gentry, of eating a more plentiful dinner, but no supper; as, on the contrary, the Romans and Jews anciently, and the hotter climates at this day, have little or no dinners, but set suppers.

"Feasting, also, is not so common and profuse as anciently. Anciently, at a call of sergeants-at law, each sergeant (saith Fortescue) spent 1600 crowns in feasting, which in those days was more than 1600 now.

"Since the late rebellion, England hath abounded in variety of drinks (as it did lately in variety of religions) above any nation in Europe. Besides all sorts of the best wines, from Spain,

France, Italy, Germany, and Grecia, there are sold in London above twenty sorts of other drinks, as brandy, coffee, chocolate, tee, aromatic, mum, sider, perry, beer, ale, many sorts of ales, very different, as cock, stepony, &c.; a piece of wantonness whereof none of our ancestors were ever guilty.

"The ancient English vices were gluttony, pride in apparel, and excess of drinking. Some persons, and those of quality, may not be safely visited in an afternoon, without running the hazard of excessive drinking of healtbs; and in some places it is esteemed an excellent piece of wit to make a man drunk; for which purpose some swilling insipid trencher buffoon is always at hand."

The Doctor speaks as if he had himself been entrapped.

"However, it may be truly affirmed, that at present there is generally less excess of drinking (especially about London, since the use of coffee, &c.) than heretofore. Duelling, so common heretofore, is now almost laid aside here as well as in France."

The general prosperity and comfort of England is evident from the following facts.

"Houses in cities, that were made formerly usually of wood, are now built of good stone or brick, and covered with slate or tile; the rooms within, formerly wainscoten, were then hung with tapestry, or other convenient stuff; and all cieled with plaster, excellent against the rage of fire, against the cold, and to hinder the passage of all dust and noise. The modern buildings were far more slight, and of less continuance than the ancient. The houses of the nobles and rich were abundantly furnished with pewter, brass, fine linen, and plate; the mean mechanics and ordinary husbandmen wanted not sil. ver spoons, or some silver cups in their houses. The windows everywhere glazed, not made of paper or wood, as is usual in Italy and Spain. Chimneys in most places, and no stoves, although the far more southern parts of Germany could hardly subsist in the winter without them.

"Anciently, the fee expected by a sergeant from his client, for advice given at his chamber, or for pleading in any court of judicature, was no more than 20s. and the fee of a barrister 10s. ; but at present it is become almost

ordinary to give some sergeants £10, and some £20, and to a barrister half as much at the hearing of any consi◄ derable cause; whereby it comes to pass that some lawyers in one year gain in fees £3000, and some £4000; and, in a few years, purchase estates fit for lords, and sometimes live to see themselves advanced to be peers of the realm.

"Anciently, the usual fee of a doctor of physic was 20s., and one that had not taken that degree 103.: at present there is no certain rule; but some that are eminent have received in fees yearly two or three thousand pounds, and purchased great estates, which in other countries is very rare.

"The income of the queen-dowager was £60,000 a-year; the lords of the bedchamber had £1000 a year; and the officers of the household seem to have been paid very much according to the present scale."

The following account of the PostOffice is curious, at a time when we have seen its revenues amount to a million and a half of pounds sterling -of which, it seems, the Exchequer could spare one million!

"Though the number of lettersmissive in England were not at all considerable in our ancestors' days, yet it is now so prodigiously great, (since the meanest people have generally learned to write) that this office is farmed for thirty thousand pounds a year. A letter, containing a whole sheet of paper, is conveyed eighty miles for 2d. ; two sheets 4d. ; and an ounce of letters but 8d. ; and that in so short a time, by night as well as by day, that every twenty-four hours the post goes

120 miles; and in five days an answer of a letter may be had from a place 300 miles distant from the writer."

Travelling, too, had improved :"There is of late such an admirable commodiousness, both for men and women of better rank, to travel from London to almost any great town of England, that the like hath not been known in the world, and that is by stage-coaches, wherein one may be transported to any place, sheltered from foul weather and foul ways, free from endamaging one's health or body by hard joggling or over-violent motion, and this not only at a low price, as about a shilling for every five miles, but with such velocity and speed, as that the posts in some foreign countries make not more miles in a day; for the stage-coaches, called flying coaches, make forty or fifty miles in a day (!) as from London to Oxford or Cambridge, and that in the space of twelve hours, not counting the time for dining; setting forth not too early, nor coming in too late."

Farewell, honest Doctor Chamberlayne: the world would not suit you now, nor you it. Parliament-men do indeed still dine at court, but the royal hospitality has become more discriminating and not a hand has been stricken off within the memory of man. The lower orders are still more encroaching than in your day, and the forty or fifty miles a-day velocity of your flying coaches has been increased nearly to forty or fifty miles an hour. You would have no pleasure in life, and we beg your pardon for this momentary resuscitation.

IMMEDIATELY before and after the completion of the triad of Italian painting, in Michael Angelo, Raffael, and Titian-so immediately that they almost seem to be contemporary with these eminent masters-Leonardo da Vinci and Antonio da Coreggio appear. These, sundered as they are by the intervention of the qualities signified by those great successors of the one and predecessors of the other, and strikingly different in respect to what they must be considered to have separately effected, when their works are viewed in relation to the evolution of sentiment and style, and the processes of painting, present an intimate connexion."

We have previously seen painting under the influence of, and dealing with, the most extended elements of the mind,f in different concentric circles of perception, pursuing its course in dependence upon the mental constitution. The same dependence must continue to be recognised, but in connexion with less elementary and eminent divisions of faculty. Combined, specific, and individual qualities, now take the place of generic. The soundless voices of the authors of the Judgment, the Dispute of the Sacrament, and the Assumption of the Virgin, have been uttered. Their mighty paan has passed. The inclusive (in connexion with poetic sentiment the epic) intellection of Buonarotti; the mediating harmony of human in ter-relation, or moral beauty of Raffael; the outwardness, or materiality of Vecelli-has been evolved, each in their tendency, or essential characteristic, embracing one grand division of the constituents of sentiment and knowledge. But, within the are of these, the triform bounds of the know

able-the inclusive limits of the perceived-lies the sphere of their combination and modification-the varied scene of existence-the illimitable diversity of thought, action, and physical being-the ground whereon the passions" turn and change together" --the constant advance and retroces

sion of particular powers-the field of the interrupted and blent operation of good and ill-of repose, or of

"Tearing, with rough strife,
Through the iron bars of life"-

the stage of extended and of partial endeavour, from the acknowledgment and influence of those "high instincts” which

"Are yet the fountain light of all our day,

Are yet a master light of all our seeing ;" to submission to the predominance of unworthy and petty conventions, which in constant succession bubble up, form, and dispel. This, reflected as it is in painting, not in conformity or merely in connexion with its subjects, (which, in every instance, must found upon, or deal with features or scenes of life in thought and passion, whether produced in abeyance to intellect, as by Michael Angelo, or to morals, as by Raffael, or to impres sious of sense, as by Titian,) but in dependence upon its exemplification in its diverse portions, or elements, as constituting the distiniction of the va rious periods, masters, schools, and classes, remains in its unlimited range the foundation or data whereby their essential features must be discriminated.

We now, also, approach the time when forms of style-what may be termed its artifices when removed