Student and The Golden Legend. There in the evenings; of Sally Manchester; and

are occasional descriptions in them marked by a certain weak grace and delicacy of language; and the venerable traditions of the playwright as to the duty of breaking-up the serious business at due intervals by snatches of song and that peculiar species of comic repartee among the minor characters which makes the deepest tragedy an intense relief, are all faithfully observed. On the whole, they are neither better nor worse than the general run of those plays, one or more of which so many clever and cultivated men think fit in their lifetime to publish, we suppose as a sacrifice to oblivion.

Of Mr. Longfellow's prose works, the best known, Hyperion, has little continuous interest; its slender thread of a love-story being altogether lost amid the profuse and gaudy descriptions and sentimental and high-flown musings. Kavanagh is decidedly better; there is more story, and the characters of Mr. Churchill, the schoolmaster, who makes no progress with his great poem, and puzzles his wife out of the Sanscrit arithmetic-book

of the mischievous schoolboy "Billy Wilmerdings," who promises his mother that if she will forgive him he will "experience religion," are drawn with a quiet humor one would scarcely have expected from Mr. Longfellow. Kavanagh is altogether a very pleasant and freshly-colored tale of American village-life, with its primitive conditions, its transparent and amusing affectations, its homely joys and sorrows. But prose fiction, or indeed prose or fiction of any kind, is not Mr. Longfellow's forte. He is a born poet, though not a poet of the highest rank; and his strength lies in the melodious and graceful expression of some

"Familiar matter of to-day,

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again." We cannot take leave of Mr. Longfellow without saying what it is not exactly in our province as critics to say, but what is never that his readers insensibly acquire from his unfelt in forming an estimate of a writer,writings a very strong regard and affection for their author.

A PLAGUE OF MICE.-It was during the year | miralty, and had been successful in killing the 1814, especially, but to a certain degree also in rats and mice in the fleet, was sent down, and the preceding and succeeding ones, that the tried several plans, all of which failed. At last, Forest of Dean and the New Forest were visited a miner living on Edge Hills, named Simmons, with an enormous number of mice. They ap- came forward and said that he had often, when peared in all parts, but particularly in Haywood sinking wells or pits, found mice fallen in, and enclosure, destroying a very large proportion of dead, in consequence of their endeavors to exyoung trees, so much so, that only four or five tricate themselves, and he had little doubt that plants to an acre were found uninjured by them. the same plan would succeed in the Forest. It The roots of five years' old oaks and chestnuts was tried, and holes were dug over the enclosures were generally eaten through just below the sur- about two feet deep, and the same size across, face of the ground, or wherever their runs pro-and rather hollowed out at the bottom, and at ceeded. Sometimes they were found to have the distance of about twenty yards apart, into barked the young hollies round the bottom, or which the mice fell, and were unable to get out were seen feeding on the bark of the upper again. Simmons and others were employed, branches. These mice were of two kinds, the and paid by the number of tails which they common long-tailed, field mouse, and the short- brought in, which amounted in the whole to tailed. There were about fifty of these latter more than one hundred thousand. In addition sort to one of the former. The long-tailed mice to this it may be mentioned that polecats, kites, had all white breasts, and the tail was about the hawks, and owls visited the holes regularly, and same length as the body. These were chiefly preyed upon the mice caught in them; and a caught both on the wet greens in the Forest, small owl, called by Pennant, Strix passerina, and the short-tailed were caught both on the wet never known in the Forest before or since, apand dry grounds. A variety of means were peared at that time, and was particularly active resorted to for their destruction, such as cats, in their destruction. The mice in the holes also poisons, and traps, but with little success. A ate each other.-The Forest of Dean, by H. G. Mr. Broad, who had been employed by the Ad- | Nicholls, M.A.

From The Athenæum.

who boast that they would rather be first of a Memoirs of William Beckford, of Fonthill. famous race than the last of a disgraceful stock. 2 vols. (Skeet.)

His library was a perfect nursery of genealogONLY the other day we rambled, on a sunny ical trees-cranes' foots as the French heralds autumn afternoon, through the domain of that calls them-where, from a central hypothesis, Wiltshire Sardanapalus whose name heads a dozen lies branch and fructify, to prove that the book we review. It is now a tangled the owner really remembers the name of his mass of overgrown woods, bound and clamped great-grandfather. By the aid of heralds, who with brambles. The nine miles drive, along live by ingenious conjectures which gratify the which his four grey ponies used to pad and vanity of new men, Beckford traced his family trot, are now chopped into three estates. The to a certain Beckford village, near Tewkesbury. great Abbey, that country people tell you cost A Sir William Beckford fought for Richard at a million, rose like an exhalation and passed Bosworth, and from that time the heralds lose away like a summer cloud. One turret gallery sight of the name,-quite overlooking a wellalone stands as a place for picnics, and the known Maidenhead tailor and a slop-selling roads are rutted deep with wagons carrying train-band Captain of Charles the Second's stones to the Marquis of Westminster's new time that Pepys mentions not very creditably, mansion, ugly and cumbrous, building far be--and not regaining their intermittent and low the old airy height of the Aladdin's pal

ace.

The agate cups, gold lamps, proof engravings, Hondekoeters, Weeninxes, and all such rarities are scattered to the four winds, just like his old rival Horace Walpole's; and now the bleak winds whistling from the broad crop-eared Wiltshire downs keeps rumbling and muttering in every blast, "Vanity of vanities all is vanity and vexation of spirit."

dishonest sight till, in 1702, a certain Peter Beckford crops up, as Lieut.-Governor of Jamaica in the wild buccaneering times. He had something of the strong passions of his descendant, and, indeed, died in a boiling fit of rage at some disobedience of his commands. From the Hamilton family, by his mother's side, may equally be traced Beckford's voluptuousness and fine taste. It can scarcely be believed that the descendant of the Maidenhead tailor, private soldier, and Jamaica slave-dealer, was the proudest of men, perpetually daring to assert that he was descended from John of Gaunt (no great triumph even if he proved it), on the mere foundation of his father, the Lord Mayor, having purchased some property that had once been John of Gaunt's. The windows at Fonthill burned and glowed with heraldic lies, mere sham claims and suppositions founded on strained and twisted resemblances of names that proved nothing. He spoke with admiration of a certain Mr. Smith because his ancestor was the pioneer who married the Indian Princess Pochontas in Virginia. He curled his lip at modern mushrooms. He declared that since the cessation of Heraldic Visitations grants of arms were of no moment. He even dragged the Latimers into his roll, and, to prove his descent, collected portraits of the martyr-bishop, and learned long passages from his quaint, homely sermons. In these follies an historian whom he kept encouraged him. Beckford's father, the Lord Mayor, was But to the book. A more complete model chiefly remarkable for his enormous riches and of a parvenu never existed than this myste- his consistent opposition to the narrow Hanrious sensualist, Beckford of Fonthill. He was overian interests and the consequent German not one of those sturdy honest Ehglishmen War. He was tedious in the House, and

The memory of Beckford, the author of "Vathek," had better have been left alone. It is darkened with the shadow of crimes, that will not bear even examination. Let these charges be true or untrue, the world has pretty well come to a fair appreciation of his claims for fame. He was an eccentric, proud voluptuary, the author of a wild Arabian story, only half his own ;-a man with refined but perverted tastes, who, shut out by the world, and surrounded by his books, pictures, vases, and flowers, tried to pursuade himself that he was not in a solitary prison, but free, and that the world was, in fact, the prison into which he disdained to enter. His name still lives in Wiltshire as a name certainly not of dread, but of wonder, as the builder of the Great Tower, as the lord of nine miles of terrace drive, as a solitary, severe man, who lived for himself, yet was kind, generous and a great employer of the poor. He was a Dives, whose vices seem scarcely to have been talked of or known in the neighborhood in which he dwelt.

when not tedious was ludicrous. As for his resistance to the Bute party, and his celebrated Protest, it is still uncertain whether Horne Tooke did not write it; and it is even more doubtful, in spite of the factious Guildhall monument, whether the daring millionaire ever uttered it. Although himself in some things abstemious to a miserly pitch, the Lord Mayor used to give City dinners which cost sometimes as much as £10,000 each. He seems to have been a domineering impetuous man, licentious and eccentric almost to the pitch of insanity. Perhaps it was Chatterdon who in his elegy spoke of

"His soul untainted with the golden bait," -little thinking how small a merit it is in a millionaire to resist place and pension.

The young heir, born 1789, with the first fortune in England, and ten years to nurse it in, was spoiled by his widowed mother, His tutor, recommended by the celebrated Lord Littleton, and aided by the dead father's greatest friend, the Earl of Chatham, did little to correct his pupil's pride, irritability, and desultory cleverness. His mother's friends,

"She was then at the age of fourscore, with a superior understanding and perfect knowledge of the bienséances of rank. Having frequently failed at breakfast-time, from the want of doing something which he thought rather rigorous on the part of the Duchess, she desired him to ring the bell, and when the servant entered the room, bade him bring to her the great family Bible. This she opened at the Book of Wisdom, and a passage applicable to the occasion, desiring young Beckford to read it aloud. When he had done, her Grace said, 'There it was, young man, that I learned my manners.'"

Beckford's first literary work was a frivolous parody of Descamp's amusing "Lives of the

Flemish Painters." In this, under buffoon names, such as Og of Basan and Watersouchy of Amsterdam, the young wit compiled a guide-book for his father's pictureastonish rustic visitors. The following exgallery to confuse the old housekeeper and tract shows the degree of humor which the writer showed, and the sensuous color

young

Lords Camden, Thurlow and Bathurst, Hermes Harris, and Gay's old patroness, the Duchess of Queensberry, petted and caressed him. Lord Chatham, the great gentleman even on his coronetted crutches, moved about among his workmen like a Roman consul, smiling at the handsome wilful son of his old city supporter. The tall, thin, gouty, eagle-nosed, old peer was at this time talking history that his son William, then fourteen, might profit by it, or praising Lady Hester for her progress in Greek. He used to warn Beckford in rounded periods of the danger of encouraging a fondness for Oriental reading, which would draw "He accompanied his disciple (the artist in love), tried by sage discourse to set his conhim away, he said, from the chaster models of duct in its proper light, and told him, with his Greece and Rome. From the following an- aecustomed gravity, that what was right could ecdote it would seem that the great Earl pre-not be wrong, and vice versa. He added, fered the paste to the real jewel, and that he that youth was the season of folly, and that did not fully understand his son's genius: passion was like an unbridled horse, a torrent

he was one of the first to introduce into modern writing, till Keats came and doubled the suade the artist, Aldrovandus Magnus, out of power of words. Hemmelinck tries to perhis love for Anne Spindlemans :

without a dyke, or a candle with a thief in it, and ended by comparing Anne Spindiemans herself to a vinegar bottle, who would deluge the salad of matrimony with much more vinegar than oil."

"One day it was proposed that young Beckford should repeat a speech of considerable length before the earl, which he had translated from Thucydides, some time before, and rehearsed at Fonthill. He exhibited no want of confidence, had it perfectly by heart, and was by no means wanting in a proper emphasis and action. The whole of Lord Chatham's family were present, and the young speaker "In a picture of the Burgomaster Van was heard with the greatest attention. When Gulph he exhausted minuteness. He baffled ae had concluded, Lord Chatham rose from Mieris, numbering even the hairs in his sister's his seat, flung aside his crutch, and embraced | eyelashes: and the carbuncle at the end of

Under the name of Watersouchy of Amsterdam the young satirist ridicules Dutch painting :

this time a desire for voluptuous, undisturbed retirement appears. At Venice he grew sentimental, and the sbirri in the Piazza thought the rich, young Englishman mad as he strutted about, tossing up his arms to the phlegmatic and immovable statues. At Pisa he compares the Duomo to a mosque, his mind being seething with "Vathek" dreams of a despotism of riches and pleasure. That he really could observe and describe, and was even then before his age in word-painting and the power of reproducing nature, this sketch of the Alban Hills will show :

his nose, which had baffled Mieris, he ren- | oyster-eyed Dutchmen, and languidly approves dered in full splendor. He resided with its of the Rhine. The life at Ems he thought owner while thus employed, and the admira- quite Indian, and the plains of the Danube he tion he received made Watersouchy mentally compared to the flowery savannahs. Even at exclaim You are worthy to possess me!' He painted his new patron's wife, not in still life, but busy watering a capsicum. Her ruffle, though admirable, was nothing to her hands and arms. Gerard Dow had bestowed five days' work on those parts of the lady's person. Watersouchy spent a month in giving the fingers only the touches of perfection. Each finger had its ring so tinted as at first sight almost to deceive a clever jeweller. This was the artist's last great work. His nealth failed, but he bore up, and became cheerful at times in the company of a few old ladies. He took cordials, became fond of news about tulips, and painted little pieces for his early comforters, such as a dormouse, or a cheese with mites. His old patrons saw his genius was extinguishing, and his difficulty of breathing increasing. Mr. Beckford concluded the life of Watersouchy, and his own volume in the following words: I have been troubled with an asthma for some time,' said the artist (Watersouchy), in a faint voice. 'So I perceive,' said M. Baise-la-main."

We have not a doubt that in this juvenile satire the young, half-educated smatterer of genius was helped by friends and tutors, for there is no touch of the novice in any page.

At eighteen this spoiled child of fortune was sent to Geneva, his mother having some quarrel with the English Universities. There Beckford nibbled at the sciences, "a mouthful of each and a bellyful of none,"-met Saussure and Bonnet, and was a visitor at the house of Huber, the King of the Bees. Of this tour, aided by more tutors no doubt, he wrote "Dreams and Waking Thoughts,"the whole edition of which he suppressed by the advice of friends, who thought his opinions on the cruelty of fox-hunting would affect his chances of parliamentary success. Before returning home he visited Voltaire at Ferney, and found a gallows and chapel on his estate. Voltaire was then a dark, thin, shrivelled, doubled-up, old man, with keen, penetrating eyes and finished address.

Returning home in 1778, just as Plymouth was dreading bombardment, the young dilettante rambles about England, forgetting the Maidenhead tailor, and sneering at modern castles; in 1780 he goes abroad with his tutor for the ten months' grand tour, stealing every odd moment for snatches of voluptuous sham Eastern books. He laughs at green canals,

66

Dreary flats thinly scattered over with ilex, and barren hillocks crowned with solitary towers, were the only objects we perceived for several miles. Now and then we passed a few black, ill-favored sheep, straggling by the wayside, near a ruined sepulchre, just such animals as an ancient would have sacrificed to the manes. Sometimes we crossed a brook, whose ripplings were the only sounds that broke the general stillness, and observed the shepherds' huts on its banks, propped up with broken pedestals, and marble friezes. I entered one of them, whose owner was observed tending his herds, and began writing upon the sand, and murmuring a melancholy song. Perhaps, the dead listened to me from their narrow cells. The living I can answer for; they were far enough removed. You will not be surprised at the dark tone of my musings in so sad a scene, especially as the weather lowered; and you are well acquainted how greatly I depend upon skies and sunshine. To-day I had no blue firmament to revive my spirits; no genial gales, no aromatic plants to irritate my nerves, and lend at least a momentary animation. Heath and a grayish kind of moss are the sole vegetation which covers this endless relics of a happier period; trunks of trees, wilderness. Every slope is strewed with the shattered columns, cedar beams, helmets of bronze, skulls, and coins, are frequently dug up together."

The only now memorable events of this tour were Beckford's final abandonment of a public life,—and his introduction to Sir William Hamilton, who had not yet met with the syren housemaid who beguiled Nelson. In these early tours Beckford's view of things seems to have been as brilliant and hollow as could have been expected from the mere artistic mind of a rich man.

epicurean priests, wanton Court ladies, bigots, pimps, and fools, with whom he there mingled, reckless of the dreadful earthquake that had just closed its jaws, of the expelled Jesuits, and the terrible Pombal.

After a grand coming-of-age festival at is too well known to need notice. We all Fonthill, the possessor of a million of money remember the motley array of intriguing and a hundred thousand a year went abroad again in search of pleasure, with a physician, a musician, and Cozens the artist, three carriages, led horses and outriders, seeking for "wild spots," yet plunging into every festivity. The composition of “ Vathek" the anonyIn 1796 Beckford returned to reside altomous author assigns to 1782,-the year before gether in retirement in Wiltshire, with a train Beckford married and went abroad for several of artists, musicians, and topographers, to years to Switzerland. To prove this date the encourage him in every despotic whim, eccenauthor brings forward "Al Raoui," an Arabic tricity and vice. How this desire for solitude story, translated at this time, but not printed came upon him the biographer does not say; till 1799. Some feeble verses are also of the but it first evidenced itself in a tyrannical same period. As for "Vathek," written as determination to build a ring wall of nine the author asserted at one sitting, in French, miles round his property to keep out his sworn in three days and two nights, it was after all enemies, the trespassing fox-hunters. As a make up from “ Abdallah; ou, les Aventures soon as this was done he began to take fancies du Fils de Hanif," Paris, 1723, a jumble of about the damp of the Abbey, and began a Hindú and Arabian mythology, written in the new mansion of stupendous magnificence,bad taste of the hybrid Orientalism of Louis dreaming, probably, of Solomon and the deeds the Fourteenth's reign. From this book he of Pre-Adamite builders, for there was alway drew all his machinery. The hall of Eblis a love of the unusual and supernatural in thi: was old Fonthill Hall, and the characters pursuer of pleasure. The visit of Lord Nelwere chiefly the Wiltshire servants idealized. son and Sir William Hamilton, in 1800, was The first translation into English was by an the occasion of a fête, that lit up the old anonymous hand. The story is wild and in-doomed Abbey till it blazed through Wiltshire genious, but sensual, and wanting in the open- like a fiery beacon. Peter Pindar and West air freshness and purity of the Arabian Nights. Vathek is so superlatively and atheistically bad that we lose all sympathy in him. There is a want of all human nature and human interest, and we close the book with the feeling that we have been reading a mad fancy, hideously and impurely distorted by a rich voluptuary who seems to revel in dreams of gigantic and dominating vice.

were among the guests, and Lady Hamilton's theatrical performances were among the day's amusements. They are thus described by an eye-witness :

"In the library, after the old custom, a species of confectionary was presented in goldwired baskets, with wine and spiceries-a measure adopted, perhaps, to gain time as well, while chairs were arranged in the yellow damask room to receive the company. A In 1786, Beckford's wife, a daughter of the clear space was left in front of the seats. Earl of Aboyne, died at Vevay, and from this When the company had returned to that time the Orientalist never did well with the room and taken seats, Lady Hamilton entered, world. He moved at first restlessly about attired in the character of Agrippina, carrySwitzerland, and then going down to Wilt-ing in a golden urn the ashes of Germanicus, shire for six month's sorrowful contemplation, started for Portugal with a retinue of thirty persons. There is a mistaken impression, which Byron in "Childe Harold," and travellers as careless as the poet without his excuses, have tended to keep up, that Beckford built "a bower of bliss at Cintra. At Montserrat he lived a year as truant in a mere barbarous gothic sham house, built by a Falmouth carpenter.

Of this Portuguese tour, which did the morals of the widower no good, we need say nothing. His vivid "Batalha and Alcobaca"

in order to excite the Roman people to avenge the death of her husband, who had soned, as it was supposed, by that Emperor's fallen a victim to the envy of Tiberius, poiorder, while leading an army in the East. The actress showed on this occasion the benefit of the assiduous care Sir William Hamilton had taken to instruct her in the Roman history and manners. She displayed, with great fidelity, the attitudes of a Roman lady: the grief she was supposed to feel, and that which belongs only to good acting; and here nobility of feature directed to express sorrow, she was, as she had been through life an adept. She threw into her character every thing in