gust the style in which the he-dancers attempt to disguise their persons; we say attempt to disguise their persons, for they dress themselves in close imitation of women, and do all they can to make themselves look like women. They now wear their silk or satin tunics cut low in the bosom, like a lady's dress, and as their tunics resemble pretty exactly in length the short petticoats of the female dancers, they are scarcely to be distinguished from the other sex; indeed, were the women to come in handing on M. Coulon or Theodore, we are persuaded that half the spectators would never suspect that the things with naked bosoms were of the he gender.

The Opera continues to be well filled, and ill attended. We would recommend the proprietor to be a little more nice in the distribution of his orders; for if he perseveres in the system of cramming the Pit with shop-boys, coxcombs will soon come to a resolution not to be seen there, and then all the world will think it vulgar to be found in the Pit; and as every lady cannot get into the Boxes, the consequence will be, that a large class will cease to visit the Theatre. The would

be fashionables will be altogether excluded from the house, and grievously will the treasury feel their absence. It is a point of the first importance to the proprietor of the Opera to uphold, by all means, the fashion of the Pit.

BRAMBLETYE HOUSE.*

THE receipt for making a Mock-Waverley novel is now so well understood, that having said that this is a concoction of that hackneyed kind, it is scarcely necessary to say any thing more about it. These performances are in all essential particulars pretty exactly similar. A mysterious old woman, who is to be here, there, and every where, omniscient as well as omnipresent, seems to be the staple of the class. These old women vary only in dress and degree. They are all copies of the outline of Meg, and differ only in texture and colours. Cooper, the American fabricator of Waverleys, in one of his extravagant tales, has a washerwoman, with a little black bonnet on her head, who does Merriles duty through the book-who is the machine, as pedants would call it, of the piece. She is the person who appears at every crisis of difficulty and danger, and directs the action of the story. With Homer such a personage would have been a goddess. Scott made her a gipsy in a red cloak. Cooper turned her into a washerwoman in a little black bonnet. In how many hundred other phases the same machine has appeared, it is now utterly impossible to say. It would fill half a number to run over half the names of them. affair is with the last production of the class, the "Brambletye House of Horace Smith, Esq. one of the Authors of the Rejected Addresses,” as the title-page and the advertisements have it. This is avowedly one of the Mock-Waverley family; but, as in all the other works of

* Brambletye House. London, Colburn, 1826.

Our

By One of the Authors of the "Rejected Addresses."

the same stamp, the only likeness consists in the character, common to all, of an old woman, who, like many old women, knows every body's business as well as, or better than the parties know it themselves; and who, unlike any old woman, (as old women now are,) goes about working wonders. Mr. Horace Smith's old woman is not a gipsy, like the great original, Mistress Margaret Merriles, nor is she a washerwoman, like Cooper's old woman, but she is an old woman in black-not a black bonnet, but a black gown; and she appears at all times and in all places where she is least expected or desired, crying out," Anathema! Maranatha !" to the unspeakable consternation of the hearers; for (why we know not) these words are words of great force, and give a terrible and sublime character to the speaker, at least so the author obviously imagines.

We shall not. attempt to describe the plot of this novel, because nothing is more wearisome, both to the writer and the reader, than the description of the plot of a dull tale, which this is, if ever there was a dull tale in this world. Suffice it to say, that the scene of the story is laid in England, France, and the United Provinces; the time, that of the Commonwealth and Charles II.; the characters, of course, Roundheads and Cavaliers. The hero is the son of an old Cavalier, against whose house the old woman in black has conceived a mortal enmity. She haunts the old Cavalier, says "Anathema! Maranatha!" to him, discovers his plots against the government of Cromwell, and denounces him. Until the end of the third volume, of course, we do not find out the cause of all this pother. When, however, we arrive at that part of the book where secrets can no longer be kept, the old woman becomes communicative, and explains her actions, her motives, and other important mysteries, to a stranger, in consideration of his performing a certain small service for her, which she could not perform for herself. And what was that service? That we must state; for nothing so absurd was ever before conceived, we think, in the brain of a Romancer. The old woman tells a certain youth, whom she meets with in her walks, that she has collected, with great pain and toil, an immense pile of faggots, for the express purpose of burning down the old Cavalier's uninhabited house, merely for the fun, or the spite of the thing. Now, she says, if you will promise to set fire to the sticks, (a thing which she could not do, why, we don't clearly see,) I will tell you a great secret, in return for so important a service. The youth, readily perceiving that the old woman, who had collected the faggots, had not the power of putting a lighted match among them, does as he is requested, and sets fire to the pile; but there being some gunpowder in the vaults, when enjoying the blaze, they are both suddenly canted up into the air, and blown into a thousand pieces, so that the old woman was only just able, when she fell down again, to say how she came by her misfortune, and to tell the whole history over again, which she had told in vain to the young man that was blown to sticks, and then she died.

We have read many cart-loads of novels in our time, but such stuff as this we never met with before. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive how any man of ordinary capacity could sit down and deliberately commit to paper and print the pitiable trash before us. It is scarcely possible to open these volumes at random, without observing some example of

extraordinary nonsense, which is rendered the more offensive as it is put forth by the author with an air of infinite self-satisfaction, he thrusts a silly conceit on us as if he were presenting us with a gem of the finest water. We take the first sample of nonsense that occurs

to us.

"When the sounds of trumpets and kettle-drums gave notice that the procession was about to commence, every street, window, cornice, projection, and house-top, through which it was to pass, became thickly studded with heads, whose eager EYES, GLITTERING IN THE SUN, looked like the countless dew-drops that hang upon the forest leaves, as they sparkle in the first rays of morning."-Vol. ii. p. 21.

It is a pretty bold flight to march a procession through windows, cornices, projections, and house-tops, but that little blunder we must set down to the account of our author's want of skill in grammar; the other stroke is, however, a studied conceit, and of matchless absurdity. What mortal but Mr. Horace Smith would ever have thought of describing the eyes in peoples' heads as glittering in the sun! A child must perceive that this is sheer crazy nonsense. And really the follies which this author commits to paper are of so very gross a kind, as to astonish those who are unfortunately too well prepared for the occurrence of foolishness in works of this order. In one place, he tells us that Cromwell practiced his troops in hardy exercises, by encouraging them to throw pillows or cushions, we forget which, at each other's heads. This is naked nonsense. Sometimes he disguises it in an abundance of words. We will give an example of this kind. A young lady, not mad, is made to express herself thus, on the subject of reciprocal love :

66

Reciprocal love must indeed sublimate the soul almost to an antepast of the celestial beatitudes, when the heart can find it sweet to make sacrifices and encounter perils for the object of its secret attachment, even where it feels the passion to be unrequited, nay, even where it knows the affections of that object to be devoted to another." The author goes on to say: "Constantia had spoken with enthusiasm, for she had been giving utterance to her own deep feelings, she had pressed her hand upon her heart, FOR she had been converting its pulsations into language."

As we have so generally condemned this book, we cannot pass over any approximation to a merit that may be discovered in it; and therefore we must not omit to say, that there is one character in it, that of Beverning, a Dutch merchant, which is drawn with some degree of cleverness. But here we trace the besetting sin of the author, antithesis; his whole art of writing consists in setting up one thing, and then counterbalancing it with another: all his periods are see-saws. Beverning, on this plan, is made a man of the most opposite qualities. He is somewhat like one of Sir Jonah Barrington's Irish characters, which are commonly thus see-sawed-" Liberal, but mean; cautious, yet rash; active, but indolent; fickle, yet constant; faithful, but false," &c.

Before we take leave of this book, we must entreat the author, in his future productions, not to make so unmerciful a use of the word egregious as he has done in these volumes. Egregious is incessantly occurring, and is almost always improperly applied. Perhaps, however, this is intended for wit. We know that drolls endeavour to raise a laugh by the eternal repetition and abuse of some one word.

THE EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION OF COUNSELLOR O’D——,

THE SON OF AN IRISH PEASANT.

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.

I was born about the year 1780, in the county of Leitrim. Mý father's circumstances were very humble; he held six acres of very barren land, for which he paid a yearly rent of two guineas. He kept one cow, and cultivated so much of the land as supported the family. The cabin in which we resided was built of sods and thatched with heath and potatoe stalks. In the midst of it were placed three large stones, which served as a back to the fire, over which, in the roof, there was a hole for the smoke to pass; from the ceiling was suspended a hay rope, having a crook at the end to hang the pot on. The cow and the pig took up their abode at night at one end of the cabin, and we at the other. My father, mother, brother, sister, and myself, all slept in one bed, which was composed of rushes or straw. The pig used often to make one of the number, and on one occasion, being instigated more by hunger than by love, she took a mouthful out of my cheek without any ceremony, the effects of which are visible to-day. Upon this a humorous friend of mine once (rather paradoxically) remarked, that it subtracted from my jaw without diminishing it. Our food consisted almost entirely of potatoes and buttermilk: the latter being scarce in winter, we used salt as a substitute. I do not remember having eaten flesh-meat ten times any one year in my father's house; even the luxury of butter or eggs we seldom experienced, for these formed the principal source for making the rent. Wretched as our condition may appear to have been, the number of those in the neighbourhood, who were inferior to us in their circumstances, was by far greater than of those who were more comfortable.

When about six years old I was sent to school. The circumstances of the first day are fresh in my memory; it was in May, the school was beside a ditch, there was not even a shed to protect us from the rain; in that state we continued till November, when the parents of the children assembled, and built a house of sods; each boy carried a turf every morning under his arm for a fire. The master had no residence, but spent a night alternately with his pupils: his charges were from sixpence to a shilling per quarter. At this school I learned the catechism in the Irish language, by repeating it after the master; and such is the effect of early impressions, that I recollect every word of it even yet, though in every other respect I have forgotten the language. At the age of nine I was removed to a superior school, where I continued for three years, at which time I had made a considerable proficiency in arithmetic, and my father resolved to send me to Dublin to seek my fortune, as I was deemed a smart lad. He accordingly decked me out in a jacket, made out of an old freize coat of his own, and a pair of brogues (being the first I ever had, save my national one) and a pair of sheep-skin breeches; but he gave me neither MARCH, 1826.

Y

stockings, nor hat, nor shirt. Being thus equipped, he gave me two shillings, and told me that I would get lodgings gratis on the road, and that the money would support me in Dublin till I could procure a situation.

It being deemed malominous, in setting out on a journey, to meet a woman first, in order to guard against such an event, my father proceeded a few minutes before me, with the intention, that in returning he might be the first to encounter me; but in this he was disappointed, for I had not gone far from the house when I unfortunately met a beggar woman, who happened to be passing at the time. This proved an insuperable objection to my progress. Three circumstances combined to render it superlatively malominous; first, she was a woman; secondly, she was red haired; and, thirdly, she was barefoot. To proceed on my journey after this would be acting in downright contempt to the manifest will of the Deity himself; I therefore was prevailed on by my father to return home, sorrowful and dejected for the disappointment.

Trivial as this occurrence may appear, it is, perhaps, to it I am indebted for not being a shoe-black, or in some other inferior employment to-day, instead of being a barrister-at-law. My mother, who was ill at this time, died a few days after, which prevented me from resuming my journey. About two months after her death, a circumstance occurred in the neighbourhood, which, as illustrative of the manners and superstition of the people, may not be deemed unworthy of insertion in this place.

A servant-maid was haunted by the ghost of her mistress, who had died some time previously. By the persuasion of her friends, she resolved to question it as to its object in tormenting her, and accordingly went through the following form:

A little after sunset, accompanied with two or three friends, she took some holy water with her into a field, and when the ghost made its appearance, she marked out a circle with the water, and commanded the ghost, in the name of the Trinity, not to come within that circle, and to answer such questions as she should put to it. The ghost then shrieked with joy, at the prospect of being relieved from its miseries by being questioned, (for it was not allowed to speak otherwise,) and replied to Biddy's queries:-that it had served all its time in purgatory and was now ready to go to Heaven if three masses were said for it; but that till then the soul was obliged to lodge in a bush, that was at the foot of the garden, exposed to the inclemency of the weather. Biddy then put some questions respecting some of her own friends who had died, to which the ghost answered, that some of them were in Heaven, others as yet in purgatory, and more waiting to have some masses said for them, or pilgrimages to Lough Dergh performed for them, before Peter would open the door. The ghost being obliged to disappear at twelve o'clock, Biddy commanded it to attend the night following. In the mean time, the ghost's husband built a shed over the bush in the garden, to protect the soul from cold, and a report of the occurrence being circulated throughout the neighbourhood, thousands flocked at the appointed time to the place, to make enquiries concerning their deceased friends. The ghost knew every thing about all Pluto's subjects, and gave satisfactory information, through Biddy,