PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. (continued 9)

His opponent in the argument was Fonblanc, the famous editor of the Examiner, said to be the best political writer of his day. I never saw a much worse face—sallow, seamed and hollow, his teeth irregular, his skin livid, his straight black hair uncombed and straggling over his forehead—he looked as if he might be the gentleman

Whose "coat was red, and whose breeches were blue."

A hollow, croaking voice, and a small, fiery black eye, with a smile like a skeleton's, certainly did not improve his physiognomy. He sat upon his chair very awkwardly, and was very ill-dressed, but every word he uttered, showed him to be a man of claims very superior to exterior attractions. The soft musical voice, and elegant manner of the one, and the satirical, sneering tone and angular gestures of the other, were in very strong contrast.

A German prince, with a star on his breast, trying with all his might, but, from his embarrassed look, quite unsuccessfully, to comprehend the drift of the argument, the Duke de Richelieu, whom I had seen at the court of France, the inheritor of nothing but the name of his great ancestor, a dandy and a fool, making no attempt to listen, a famous traveller just returned from Constantinople; and the splendid person of Count D'Orsay in a careless attitude upon the ottoman, completed the cordon.

I fell into conversation after a while with Smith, who, supposing I might not have heard the names of the others, in the hurry of an introduction, kindly took the trouble to play the dictionary, and added a graphic character of each as he named him. Among other things he talked a great deal of America, and asked me if I knew our distinguished countryman, Washington Irving. I had never been so fortunate as to meet him. "You have lost a great deal," he said, "for never was so delightful a fellow. I was once taken down with him into the country by a merchant, to dinner. Our friend stopped his carriage at the gate of his park, and asked us if we would walk through his grounds to the house. Irving refused and held me down by the coat, so that we drove on to the house together, leaving our host to follow on foot. 'I make it a principle,' said Irving, 'never to walk with a man through his own grounds. I have no idea of praising a thing whether I like it or not. You and I will do them to-morrow morning by ourselves.'" The rest of the company had turned their attention to Smith as he began his story, and there was a universal inquiry after Mr. Irving. Indeed the first question on the lips of every one to whom I am introduced as an American, are of him and Cooper. The latter seems to me to be admired as much here as abroad, in spite of a common impression that he dislikes the nation. No man's works could have higher praise in the general conversation that followed, though several instances were mentioned of his having shown an unconquerable aversion to the English when in England. Lady Blessington mentioned Mr. Bryant, and I was pleased at the immediate tribute paid to his delightful poetry by the talented circle around her.

Toward twelve o'clock, "Mr. Lytton Bulwer" was announced, and enter the author of Pelham. I had made up my mind how he should look, and between prints and descriptions thought I could scarcely be mistaken in my idea of his person. No two things could be more unlike, however, than the ideal Mr. Bulwer in my mind and the real Mr. Bulwer who followed the announcement. Imprimis, the gentleman who entered was not handsome. I beg pardon of the boarding-schools—but he really was not. The engraving of him published some time ago in America is as much like any other man living, and gives you no idea of his head whatever. He is short, very much bent in the back, slightly knock-kneed, and, if my opinion in such matters goes for anything, as ill-dressed a man for a gentleman, as you will find in London. His figure is slight and very badly put together, and the only commendable point in his person, as far as I could see, was the smallest foot I ever saw a man stand upon. Au reste, I liked his manners extremely. He ran up to Lady Blessington, with the joyous heartiness of a boy let out of school; and the "how d'ye, Bulwer!" went round, as he shook hands with everybody, in the style of welcome usually given to "the best fellow in the world." As I had brought a letter of introduction to him from a friend in Italy, Lady Blessington introduced me particularly, and we had a long conversation about Naples and its pleasant society.

Bulwer's head is phrenologically a fine one. His forehead retreats very much, but is very broad and well marked, and the whole air is that of decided mental superiority. His nose is aquiline, and far too large for proportion, though he conceals its extreme prominence by an immense pair of red whiskers, which entirely conceal the lower part of his face in profile. His complexion is fair, his hair profuse, curly, and of a light auburn, his eye not remarkable, and his mouth contradictory, I should think, of all talent. A more good-natured, habitually-smiling, nerveless expression could hardly be imagined. Perhaps my impression is an imperfect one, as he was in the highest spirits, and was not serious the whole evening for a minute—but it is strictly and faithfully my impression.

I can imagine no style of conversation calculated to be more agreeable than Bulwer's. Gay, quick, various, half-satirical, and always fresh and different from everybody else, he seemed to talk because he could not help it, and infected everybody with his spirits. I can not give even the substance of it in a letter, for it was in a great measure local or personal. A great deal of fun was made of a proposal by Lady Blessington to take Bulwer to America and show him at so much a head. She asked me whether I thought it would be a good speculation. I took upon myself to assure her ladyship, that, provided she played showman the "concern," as they would phrase it in America, would be certainly a profitable one. Bulwer said he would rather go in disguise and hear them abuse his books. It would be pleasant, he thought, to hear the opinions of people who judged him neither as a member of parliament nor a dandy—simply a book-maker. Smith asked him if he kept an amanuensis. "No," he said, "I scribble it all out myself, and send it to the press in a most ungentlemanlike hand, half print and half hieroglyphic, with all its imperfections on its head, and correct in the proof—very much to the dissatisfaction of the publisher, who sends me in a bill of sixteen pounds six shillings and fourpence for extra corrections. Then I am free to confess I don't know grammar. Lady Blessington, do you know grammar? I detest grammar. There never was such a thing heard of before Lindley Murray. I wonder what they did for grammar before his day! Oh, the delicious blunders one sees when they are irretrievable! And the best of it is, the critics never get hold of them. Thank Heaven for second editions, that one may scratch out his blots, and go down clean and gentleman-like to posterity!" Smith asked him if he had ever reviewed one of his own books. "No—but I could! And then how I should like to recriminate and defend myself indignantly! I think I could be preciously severe. Depend upon it nobody knows a book's defects half so well as its author. I have a great idea of criticising my works for my posthumous memoirs. Shall I, Smith? Shall I, Lady Blessington?"

Bulwer's voice, like his brother's, is exceedingly lover-like and sweet. His playful tones are quite delicious, and his clear laugh is the soul of sincere and careless merriment.

It is quite impossible to convey in a letter scrawled literally, between the end of a late visit and a tempting pillow, the evanescent and pure spirit of a conversation of wits. I must confine myself, of course, in such sketches, to the mere sentiment of things that concern general literature and ourselves.

"The Rejected Addresses" got upon his crutches about three o'clock in the morning, and I made my exit with the rest, thanking Heaven, that, though in a strange country, my mother tongue was the language of its men of genius.

LETTER LXX.

LONDON—VISIT TO A RACE-COURSE—GIPSIES—THE PRINCESS VICTORIA—SPLENDID APPEARANCE OF THE ENGLISH NOBILITY—A BREAKFAST WITH ELIA AND BRIDGET ELIA—MYSTIFICATION—CHARLES LAMB'S OPINION OF AMERICAN AUTHORS.

I have just returned from Ascot races. Ascot Heath, on which the course is laid out, is a high platform of land, beautifully situated on a hill above Windsor Castle, about twenty-five miles from London. I went down with a party of gentlemen in the morning and returned at evening, doing the distance, with relays of horses in something less than three hours. This, one would think, is very fair speed, but we were passed continually by the "bloods" of the road, in comparison with whom we seemed getting on rather at a snail's pace.

The scenery on the way was truly English—one series of finished landscapes, of every variety of combination. Lawns, fancy-cottages, manor-houses, groves, roses and flower-gardens make up England. It surfeits the eye at last. You could not drop a poet out of the clouds upon any part of it I have seen, where, within five minutes' walk, he would not find himself in Paradise.

We flew past Virginia Water and through the sun-flecked shades of Windsor Park, with the speed of the wind. On reaching the Heath, we dashed out of the road, and cutting through fern and brier, our experienced whip put his wheels on the rim of the course, as near the stands as some thousands of carriages arrived before us would permit, and then, cautioning us to take the bearings of our position, lest we should lose him after the race, he took off his horses, and left us to choose our own places.

A thousand red and yellow flags were flying from as many snowy tents in the midst of the green heath; ballad-singers and bands of music were amusing their little audiences in every direction; splendid markees covering gambling-tables, surrounded the winning-post; groups of country people were busy in every bush, eating and singing, and the great stands were piled with row upon row of human heads waiting anxiously for the exhilarating contest.

Soon after we arrived, the King and royal family drove up the course with twenty carriages, and scores of postillions and outriders in red and gold, flying over the turf as majesty flies in no other country; and, immediately after, the bell rang to clear the course for the race. Such horses! The earth seemed to fling them off as they touched it. The lean jockeys, in their party-colored caps and jackets, rode the fine-limbed, slender creatures up and down together, and then returning to the starting-post, off they shot like so many arrows from the bow.

Whiz! you could tell neither color nor shape as they passed across the eye. Their swiftness was incredible. A horse of Lord Chesterfield's was rather the favorite; and for the sake of his great-grandfather, I had backed him with my small wager, "Glaucus is losing," said some one on the top of a carriage above me, but round they swept again, and I could just see that one glorious creature was doubling the leaps of every other horse, and in a moment Glaucus and Lord Chesterfield had won.

The course between the races is a promenade of some thousands of the best-dressed people in England. I thought I had never seen so many handsome men and women, but particularly men. The nobility of this country, unlike every other, is by far the manliest and finest looking class of its population. The contadini of Rome, the lazzaroni of Naples, the paysans of France, are incomparably more handsome than their superiors in rank, but it is strikingly different here. A set of more elegant and well-proportioned men than those pointed out to me by my friends as the noblemen on the course, I never saw, except only in Greece. The Albanians are seraphs to look at.

Excitement is hungry, and, after the first race, our party produced their baskets and bottles, and spreading out the cold pie and champaign upon the grass, between the wheels of the carriages, we drank Lord Chesterfield's health and ate for our own, in an al fresco style worthy of Italy. Two veritable Bohemians, brown, black-eyed gipsies, the models of those I had seen in their wicker tents in Asia, profited by the liberality of the hour, and came in for an upper crust to a pigeon pie, that, to tell the truth, they seemed to appreciate.

Race followed race, but I am not a contributor to the Sporting Magazine, and could not give you their merits in comprehensible terms if I were.

In one of the intervals, I walked under the King's stand, and saw Her Majesty, the Queen, and the young Princess Victoria, very distinctly. They were listening to a ballad-singer, and leaning over the front of the box with an amused attention, quite as sincere, apparently, as any beggar's in the ring. The Queen is the plainest woman in her dominions, beyond a doubt. The Princess is much better-looking than the pictures of her in the shops, and, for the heir to such a crown as that of England, quite unnecessarily pretty and interesting. She will be sold, poor thing—bartered away by those great dealers in royal hearts, whose grand calculations will not be much consolation to her, if she happens to have a taste of her own.

[The following sketch was written a short time previous to the death of Charles Lamb.]

Invited to breakfast with a gentleman in the temple to meet Charles Lamb and his sister—"Elia and Bridget Elia." I never in my life had an invitation more to my taste. The essays of Elia are certainly the most charming things in the world, and it has been for the last ten years, my highest compliment to the literary taste of a friend to present him with a copy. Who has not smiled over the humorous description of Mrs. Battle? Who that has read Elia would not give more to see him than all the other authors of his time put together?

Our host was rather a character. I had brought a letter of introduction to him from Walter Savage Landor, the author of Imaginary Conversations, living at Florence, with a request that he would put me in the way of seeing one or two men about whom I had a curiosity, Lamb more particularly. I could not have been recommended to a better person. Mr. R. is a gentleman who, everybody says, should have been an author, but who never wrote a book. He is a profound German scholar, has travelled much, is the intimate friend of Southey, Coleridge, and Lamb, has breakfasted with Goëthe, travelled with Wordsworth through France and Italy, and spends part of every summer with him, and knows everything and everybody that is distinguished—in short, is, in his bachelor's chambers in the temple, the friendly nucleus of a great part of the talent of England.

I arrived a half hour before Lamb, and had time to learn some of his peculiarities. He lives a little out of London, and is very much of an invalid. Some family circumstances have tended to depress him very much of late years, and unless excited by convivial intercourse, he scarce shows a trace of what he was. He was very much pleased with the American reprint of his Elia, though it contains several things which are not his—written so in his style, however, that it is scarce a wonder the editor should mistake them. If I remember right, they were "Valentine's Day," the "Nuns of Caverswell," and "Twelfth Night." He is excessively given to mystifying his friends, and is never so delighted as when he has persuaded some one into the belief of one of his grave inventions. His amusing biographical sketch of Liston was in this vein, and there was no doubt in anybody's mind that it was authentic, and written in perfectly good faith. Liston was highly enraged with it, and Lamb was delighted in proportion.

There was a rap at the door at last, and enter a gentleman in black small-clothes and gaiters, short and very slight in his person, his head set on his shoulders with a thoughtful, forward bent, his hair just sprinkled with gray, a beautiful, deep-set eye, aquiline nose, and a very indescribable mouth. Whether it expressed most humor or feeling, good nature or a kind of whimsical peevishness, or twenty other things which passed over it by turns, I can not in the least be certain.

His sister, whose literary reputation is associated very closely with her brother's, and who, as the original of "Bridget Elia," is a kind of object for literary affection, came in after him. She is a small, bent figure, evidently a victim to illness, and hears with difficulty. Her face has been, I should think, a fine and handsome one, and her bright gray eye is still full of intelligence and fire. They both seemed quite at home in our friend's chambers, and as there was to be no one else, we immediately drew round the breakfast table. I had set a large arm chair for Miss Lamb. "Don't take it, Mary," said Lamb, pulling it away from her very gravely, "it appears as if you were going to have a tooth drawn."

The conversation was very local. Our host and his guest had not met for some weeks, and they had a great deal to say of their mutual friends. Perhaps in this way, however, I saw more of the author, for his manner of speaking of them and the quaint humor with which he complained of one, and spoke well of another was so in the vein of his inimitable writings, that I could have fancied myself listening to an audible composition of a new Elia. Nothing could be more delightful than the kindness and affection between the brother and the sister, though Lamb was continually taking advantage of her deafness to mystify her with the most singular gravity upon every topic that was started. "Poor Mary!" said he, "she hears all of an epigram but the point." "What are you saying of me, Charles?" she asked. "Mr. Willis," said he, raising his voice, "admires your Confessions of a Drunkard very much, and I was saying that it was no merit of yours, that you understood the subject." We had been speaking of this admirable essay (which is his own), half an hour before.

The conversation turned upon literature after a while, and our host, the templar, could not express himself strongly enough in admiration of Webster's speeches, which he said were exciting the greatest attention among the politicians and lawyers of England. Lamb said, "I don't know much of American authors. Mary, there, devours Cooper's novels with a ravenous appetite, with which I have no sympathy. The only American book I ever read twice, was the 'Journal of Edward Woolman,' a quaker preacher and tailor, whose character is one of the finest I ever met with. He tells a story or two about negro slaves that brought the tears into my eyes. I can read no prose now, though Hazlitt sometimes, to be sure—but then Hazlitt is worth all modern prose writers put together."

Mr. R. spoke of buying a book of Lamb's, a few days before, and I mentioned my having bought a copy of Elia the last day I was in America, to send as a parting gift to one of the most lovely and talented women in our country.

"What did you give for it?" said Lamb.

"About seven and sixpence."

"Permit me to pay you that," said he, and with the utmost earnestness he counted out the money upon the table.

"I never yet wrote anything that would sell," he continued. "I am the publisher's ruin. My last poem won't sell a copy. Have you seen it, Mr. Willis?"

I had not.

"It's only eighteen pence, and I'll give you sixpence toward it;" and he described to me where I should find it sticking up in a shop-window in the Strand.

Lamb ate nothing, and complained in a querulous tone of the veal pie. There was a kind of potted fish (of which I forget the name at this moment), which he had expected our friend would procure for him. He inquired whether there was not a morsel left perhaps in the bottom of the last pot. Mr. R. was not sure.

"Send and see," said Lamb, "and if the pot has been cleaned, bring me the cover. I think the sight of it would do me good."

The cover was brought, upon which there was a picture of the fish. Lamb kissed it with a reproachful look at his friend, and then left the table and began to wander round the room with a broken, uncertain step, as if he almost forgot to put one leg before the other. His sister rose after a while, and commenced walking up and down, very much in the same manner, on the opposite side of the table, and in the course of half an hour they took their leave.

To any one who loves the writings of Charles Lamb with but half my own enthusiasm, even these little particulars of an hour passed in his company, will have an interest. To him who does not, they will seem dull and idle. Wreck as he certainly is, and must be, however, of what he was, I would rather have seen him for that single hour, than the hundred and one sights of London put together.

LETTER LXXI.

DINNER AT LADY BLESSINGTON'S—BULWER, D'ISRAELI, PROCTER, FONBLANC, ETC.—ECCENTRICITIES OF BECKFORD, AUTHOR OF VATHEK—D'ISRAELI'S EXTRAORDINARY TALENT AT DESCRIPTION.

Dined at Lady Blessington's, in company with several authors, three or four noblemen, and a clever exquisite or two. The authors were Bulwer, the novelist, and his brother, the statist; Procter (better known as Barry Cornwall), D'Israeli, the author of Vivian Grey; and Fonblanc, of the Examiner. The principal nobleman was Lord Durham, and the principal exquisite (though the word scarce applies to the magnificent scale on which nature has made him, and on which he makes himself), was Count D'Orsay. There were plates for twelve.

I had never seen Procter, and, with my passionate love for his poetry, he was the person at table of the most interest to me. He came late, and as twilight was just darkening the drawing-room, I could only see that a small man followed the announcement, with a remarkably timid manner, and a very white forehead.

D'Israeli had arrived before me, and sat in the deep window, looking out upon Hyde Park, with the last rays of daylight reflected from the gorgeous gold flowers of a splendidly embroidered waistcoat. Patent leather pumps, a white stick, with a black cord and tassel, and a quantity of chains about his neck and pockets, served to make him, even in the dim light, rather a conspicuous object.

Bulwer was very badly dressed, as usual, and wore a flashy waistcoat of the same description as D'Israeli's. Count D'Orsay was very splendid, but very undefinable. He seemed showily dressed till you looked to particulars, and then it seemed only a simple thing, well fitted to a very magnificent person. Lord Albert Conyngham was a dandy of common materials; and my Lord Durham, though he looked a young man, if he passed for a lord at all in America, would pass for a very ill-dressed one.

For Lady Blessington, she is one of the most handsome, and, quite the best-dressed woman in London; and, without farther description, I trust the readers of the Mirror will have little difficulty in imagining a scene that, taking a wild American into the account, was made up of rather various material.

The blaze of lamps on the dinner table was very favorable to my curiosity, and as Procter and D'Israeli sat directly opposite me, I studied their faces to advantage. Barry Cornwall's forehead and eye are all that would strike you in his features. His brows are heavy; and his eye, deeply sunk, has a quick, restless fire, that would have arrested my attention, I think, had I not known he was a poet. His voice has the huskiness and elevation of a man more accustomed to think than converse, and it was never heard except to give a brief and very condensed opinion, or an illustration, admirably to the point, of the subject under discussion. He evidently felt that he was only an observer in the party.

D'Israeli has one of the most remarkable faces I ever saw. He is lividly pale, and but for the energy of his action and the strength of his lungs, would seem a victim to consumption. His eye is black as Erebus, and has the most mocking and lying-in-wait sort of expression conceivable. His mouth is alive with a kind of working and impatient nervousness, and when he has burst forth, as he does constantly, with a particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy of a Mephistopheles. His hair is as extraordinary as his taste in waistcoats. A thick heavy mass of jet black ringlets falls over his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, while on the right temple it is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a girl's, and shines most unctiously,

"With thy incomparable oil, Macassar!"

The anxieties of the first course, as usual, kept every mouth occupied for a while, and then the dandies led off with a discussion of Count D'Orsay's rifle match (he is the best rifle-shot in England), and various matters as uninteresting to transatlantic readers. The new poem, Philip Van Artevald's, came up after a while, and was very much over-praised (me judice). Bulwer said, that as the author was the principle writer for the Quarterly Review, it was a pity it was first praised in that periodical, and praised so unqualifiedly. Procter said nothing about it, and I respected his silence; for, as a poet, he must have felt the poverty of the poem, and was probably unwilling to attack a new aspirant in his laurels.

The next book discussed was Beckford's Italy, or rather the next author, for the writer of Vathek is more original, and more talked of than his books, and just now occupies much of the attention of London. Mr. Beckford has been all his life enormously rich, has luxuriated in every country with the fancy of a poet, and the refined splendor of a Sybarite, was the admiration of Lord Byron, who visited him at Cintra, was the owner of Fonthill, and, plus fort encore, his is one of the oldest families in England. What could such a man attempt that would not be considered extraordinary!

D'Israeli was the only one at table who knew him, and the style in which he gave a sketch of his habits and manners, was worthy of himself. I might as well attempt to gather up the foam of the sea, as to convey an idea of the extraordinary language in which he clothed his description. There were, at least, five words in every sentence that must have been very much astonished at the use they were put to, and yet no others apparently, could so well have conveyed his idea. He talked like a race-horse approaching the winning-post, every muscle in action, and the utmost energy of expression flung out in every burst. It is a great pity he is not in parliament.[11]

The particulars he gave of Beckford, though stripped of his gorgeous digressions and parentheses, may be interesting. He lives now at Bath, where he has built a house on two sides of the street, connected by a covered bridge a la Ponte de Sospiri, at Venice. His servants live on one side, and he and his sole companion on the other. This companion is a hideous dwarf, who imagines himself, or is, a Spanish duke; and Mr. Beckford for many years has supported him in a style befitting his rank, treats him with all the deference due to his title, and has, in general, no other society (I should not wonder, myself, if it turned out to be a woman); neither of them is often seen, and when in London, Mr. Beckford is only to be approached through his man of business. If you call, he is not at home. If you would leave a card or address him a note, his servant has strict orders not to take in anything of the kind. At Bath, he has built a high tower, which is a great mystery to the inhabitants. Around the interior, to the very top, it is lined with books, approachable with a light spiral staircase; and in the pavement below, the owner has constructed a double crypt for his own body, and that of his dwarf companion, intending, with a desire for human neighborhood which has not appeared in his life, to leave the library to the city, that all who enjoy it shall pass over the bodies below.

Mr. Beckford thinks very highly of his own books, and talks of his early production (Vathek), in terms of unbounded admiration. He speaks slightingly of Byron, and of his praise, and affects to despise utterly the popular taste. It appeared altogether, from D'Israeli's account, that he is a splendid egotist, determined to free life as much as possible from its usual fetters, and to enjoy it to the highest degree of which his genius, backed by an immense fortune, is capable. He is reputed, however, to be excessively liberal, and to exercise his ingenuity to contrive secret charities in his neighborhood.

Victor Hugo and his extraordinary novels came next under discussion; and D'Israeli, who was fired with his own eloquence, started off, apropos des bottes, with a long story of an empalement he had seen in Upper Egypt. It was as good, and perhaps as authentic, as the description of the chow-chow-tow in Vivian Grey. He had arrived at Cairo on the third day after the man was transfixed by two stakes from hip to shoulder, and he was still alive! The circumstantiality of the account was equally horrible and amusing. Then followed the sufferer's history, with a score of murders and barbarities, heaped together like Martin's Feast of Belshazzer, with a mixture of horror and splendor, that was unparalleled in my experience of improvisation. No mystic priest of the Corybantes could have worked himself up into a finer phrensy of language.

Count D'Orsay kept up, through the whole of the conversation and narration, a running fire of witty parentheses, half French and half English; and with champaign in all the pauses, the hours flew on very dashingly. Lady Blessington left us toward midnight, and then the conversation took a rather political turn, and something was said of O'Connell. D'Israeli's lips were playing upon the edge of a champaign glass, which he had just drained, and off he shot again with a description of an interview he had had with the agitator the day before, ending in a story of an Irish dragoon who was killed in the peninsula. His name was Sarsfield. His arm was shot off, and he was bleeding to death. When told that he could not live, he called for a large silver goblet, out of which he usually drank his claret. He held it to the gushing artery and filled it to the brim with blood, looked at it a moment, turned it out slowly upon the ground, muttering to himself, "If that had been shed for old Ireland!" and expired. You can have no idea how thrillingly this little story was told. Fonblanc, however, who is a cold political satirist, could see nothing in a man's "decanting his claret," that was in the least sublime, and so Vivian Grey got into a passion, and for a while was silent.

Bulwer asked me if there was any distinguished literary American in town. I said, Mr. Slidell one of our best writers, was here.

"Because," said he, "I received, a week or more ago, a letter of introduction by some one from Washington Irving. It lay on the table, when a lady came in to call on my wife, who seized upon it as an autograph, and immediately left town, leaving me with neither name nor address."

There was a general laugh and a cry of "Pelham! Pelham!" as he finished his story. Nobody chose to believe it.

"I think the name was Slidell," said Bulwer.

"Slidell!" said D'Israeli, "I owe him two-pence, by Jove!" and he went on in his dashing way to narrate that he had sat next Mr. Slidell at a bull-fight in Seville, that he wanted to buy a fan to keep off the flies, and having nothing but doubloons in his pocket, Mr. S. had lent him a small Spanish coin to that value, which he owed him to this day.

There was another general laugh, and it was agreed that on the whole the Americans were "done."

Apropos to this, D'Israeli gave us a description in a gorgeous, burlesque, galloping style, of a Spanish bull-fight; and when we were nearly dead with laughing at it, some one made a move, and we went up to Lady Blessington in the drawing-room. Lord Durham requested her ladyship to introduce him, particularly, to D'Israeli (the effect of his eloquence). I sat down in the corner with Sir Martin Shee, the president of the Royal Academy, and had a long talk about Allston and Harding and Cole, whose pictures he knew; and "somewhere in the small hours," we took our leave, and Procter left me at my door in Cavendish street weary, but in a better humor with the world than usual.

LETTER LXXII.

THE ITALIAN OPERA—MADEMOISELLE GRISI—A GLANCE AT LORD BROUGHAM—MRS. NORTON AND LORD SEFTON—RAND, THE AMERICAN PORTRAIT PAINTER—AN EVENING PARTY AT BULWER'S—PALMY STATE OF LITERATURE IN MODERN DAYS—FASHIONABLE NEGLECT OF FEMALES—PERSONAGES PRESENT—SHIEL THE ORATOR, THE PRINCE OF MOSCOWA, MRS. LEICESTER STANHOPE, THE CELEBRATED BEAUTY, ETC., ETC.

Went to the opera to hear Julia Grisi. I stood out the first act in the pit, and saw instances of rudeness in "Fop's-alley," which I had never seen approached in three years on the continent. The high price of tickets, one would think, and the necessity of appearing in full dress, would keep the opera clear of low-bred people; but the conduct to which I refer seemed to excite no surprise and passed off without notice, though, in America, there would have been ample matter for at least, four duels.

Grisi is young, very pretty, and an admirable actress—three great advantages to a singer. Her voice is under absolute command, and she manages it beautifully, but it wants the infusion of Malibran. You merely feel that Grisi is an accomplished artist, while Malibran melts all your criticism into love and admiration. I am easily moved by music, but I came away without much enthusiasm for the present passion of London.

The opera-house is very different from those on the continent. The stage only is lighted abroad, the single lustre from the ceiling just throwing that clair obscure over the boxes, so favorable to Italian complexions and morals. Here, the dress circles are lighted with bright chandeliers, and the whole house sits in such a blaze of light as leaves no approach even, to a lady, unseen. The consequence is that people here dress much more, and the opera, if less interesting to the habitué, is a gayer thing to the many.

I went up to Lady Blessington's box for a moment, and found Strangways, the traveller, and several other distinguished men with her. Her ladyship pointed out to me Lord Brougham, flirting desperately with a pretty woman on the opposite side of the house, his mouth going with the convulsive twitch which so disfigures him, and his most unsightly of pug-noses in the strongest relief against the red lining behind. There never was a plainer man. The Honorable Mrs. Norton, Sheridan's daughter, and poetess, sat nearer to us, looking like a queen, certainly one of the most beautiful women I ever looked upon; and the gastronomic and humpbacked Lord Sefton, said to be the best judge of cookery in the world, sat in the "dandy's omnibus," a large box on a level with the stage, leaning forward with his chin on his knuckles, and waiting with evident impatience for the appearance of Fanny Elssler in the ballet. Beauty and all, the English opera-house surpasses anything I have seen in the way of a spectacle.

An evening party at Bulwer's. Not yet perfectly initiated in London hours, I arrived, not far from eleven, and found Mrs. Bulwer alone in her illuminated rooms, whiling away an expectant hour in playing with a King Charles spaniel, that seemed by his fondness and delight to appreciate the excessive loveliness of his mistress. As far off as America, I may express, even in print, an admiration which is no heresy in London.

The author of Pelham is a younger son and depends on his writings for a livelihood, and truly, measuring works of fancy by what they will bring, (not an unfair standard perhaps), a glance around his luxurious and elegant rooms is worth reams of puff in the quarterlies. He lives in the heart of the fashionable quarter of London, where rents are ruinously extravagant, entertains a great deal, and is expensive in all his habits, and for this pay Messrs. Clifford, Pelham, and Aram—(it would seem), most excellent good bankers. As I looked at the beautiful woman seated on the costly ottoman before me, waiting to receive the rank and fashion of London, I thought that old close-fisted literature never had better reason for his partial largess. I half forgave the miser for starving a wilderness of poets.

One of the first persons who came was Lord Byron's sister, a thin, plain, middle-aged woman, of a very serious countenance, and with very cordial and pleasing manners. The rooms soon filled, and two professed singers went industriously to work in their vocation at the piano; but, except one pale man, with staring hair, whom I took to be a poet, nobody pretended to listen.

Every second woman has some strong claim to beauty in England, and the proportion of those who just miss it, by a hair's breadth as it were—who seem really to have been meant for beauties by nature, but by a slip in the moulding or pencilling are imperfect copies of the design—is really extraordinary. One after another entered, as I stood near the door with my old friend Dr. Bowring for a nomenclator, and the word "lovely" or "charming," had not passed my lips before some change in the attitude, or unguarded animation had exposed the flaw, and the hasty homage (for homage it is, and an idolatrous one, that we pay to the beauty of woman), was coldly and unsparingly retracted. From a goddess upon earth to a slighted and unattractive trap for matrimony is a long step, but taken on so slight a defect sometimes, as, were they marble, a sculptor would etch away with his nail.

I was surprised (and I have been struck with the same thing at several parties I have attended in London), at the neglect with which the female part of the assemblage is treated. No young man ever seems to dream of speaking to a lady, except to ask her to dance. There they sit with their mamas, their hands hung over each other before them in the received attitude; and if there happens to be no dancing (as at Bulwer's), looking at a print, or eating an ice, is for them the most enlivening circumstance of the evening. As well as I recollect, it is better managed in America, and certainly society is quite another thing in France and Italy. Late in the evening a charming girl, who is the reigning belle of Naples, came in with her mother from the opera, and I made the remark to her. "I detest England for that very reason," she said frankly. "It is the fashion in London for the young men to prefer everything to the society of women. They have their clubs, their horses, their rowing matches, their hunting and betting, and everything else is a bore! How different are the same men at Naples! They can never get enough of one there! We are surrounded and run after,

"and really, one feels that one is a belle." She mentioned several of the beaux of last winter who had returned to England. "Here I have been in London a month, and these very men that were dying for me, at my side every day on the Strada Nuova, and all but fighting to dance three times with me of an evening, have only left their cards! Not because they care less about me, but because it is 'not the fashion'—it would be talked of at the club, it is 'knowing' to let us alone."

There were only three men in the party, which was a very crowded one, who could come under the head of beaux. Of the remaining part, there was much that was distinguished, both for rank and talent. Sheil, the Irish orator, a small, dark, deceitful, but talented-looking man, with a very disagreeable squeaking voice, stood in a corner, very earnestly engaged in conversation with the aristocratic old Earl of Clarendon. The contrast between the styles of the two men, the courtly and mild elegance of one, and the uneasy and half-bred, but shrewd earnestness of the other, was quite a study. Fonblanc of the Examiner, with his pale and dislocated-looking face, stood in the door-way between the two rooms, making the amiable with a ghastly smile to Lady Stepney. The 'bilious Lord Durham,' as the papers call him, with his Brutus head, and grave, severe countenance, high-bred in his appearance, despite the worst possible coat and trowsers, stood at the pedestal of a beautiful statue, talking politics with Bowring; and near them, leaned over a chair the Prince Moscowa, the son of Marshal Ney, a plain, but determined-looking young man, with his coat buttoned up to his throat, unconscious of everything but the presence of the Honorable Mrs. Leicester Stanhope, a very lovely woman, who was enlightening him in the prettiest English French, upon some point of national differences. Her husband, famous as Lord Byron's companion in Greece, and a great liberal in England, was introduced to me soon after by Bulwer; and we discussed the Bank and the President, with a little assistance from Bowring, who joined us with a paean for the old general and his measures, till it was far into the morning.

LETTER LXXIII.

BREAKFAST WITH BARRY CORNWALL—LUXURY OF THE FOLLOWERS OF THE MODERN MUSE—BEAUTY OF THE DRAMATIC SKETCHES GAINS PROCTOR A WIFE—HAZLITT'S EXTRAORDINARY TASTE FOR THE PICTURESQUE IN WOMEN—COLERIDGE'S OPINION OF CORNWALL.

Breakfasted with Mr. Procter (known better as Barry Cornwall). I gave a partial description of this most delightful of poets in a former letter. In the dazzling circle of rank and talent with which he was surrounded at Lady Blessington's, however, it was difficult to see so shrinkingly modest a man to advantage, and with the exception of the keen gray eye, living with thought and feeling, I should hardly have recognised him, at home, for the same person.

Mr. Procter is a barrister; and his "whereabout" is more like that of a lord chancellor than a poet proper. With the address he had given me at parting, I drove to a large house in Bedford square; and, not accustomed to find the children of the Muses waited on by servants in livery, I made up my mind as I walked up the broad staircase, that I was blundering upon some Mr. Procter of the exchange, whose respect for his poetical namesake, I hoped would smooth my apology for the intrusion. Buried in a deep morocco chair, in a large library, notwithstanding, I found the poet himself—choice old pictures, filling every nook between the book-shelves, tables covered with novels and annuals, rolls of prints, busts and drawings in all corners; and, more important for the nonce, a breakfast table at the poet's elbow, spicily set forth, not with flowers or ambrosia, the canonical food of rhymers, but with cold ham and ducks, hot rolls and butter, coffee-pot and tea-urn—as sensible a breakfast, in short, as the most unpoetical of men could desire.

Procter is indebted to his poetry for a very charming wife, the daughter of Basil Montague, well known as a collector of choice literature, and the friend and patron of literary men. The exquisite beauty of the Dramatic Sketches interested this lovely woman in his favor before she knew him, and, far from worldly-wise as an attachment so grounded would seem, I never saw two people with a more habitual air of happiness. I thought of his touching song,

and looked at them with an inexpressible feeling of envy. A beautiful girl, of eight or nine years, the "golden-tressed Adelaide," delicate, gentle and pensive, as if she was born on the lip of Castaly, and knew she was a poet's child, completed the picture of happiness.

The conversation ran upon various authors, whom Procter had known intimately—Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Keats, Shelley, and others, and of all he gave me interesting particulars, which I could not well repeat in a public letter. The account of Hazlitt's death-bed, which appeared in one of the magazines, he said was wholly untrue. This extraordinary writer was the most reckless of men in money matters, but he had a host of admiring friends who knew his character, and were always ready to assist him. He was a great admirer of the picturesque in women. He was one evening at the theatre with Procter, and pointed out to him an Amazonian female, strangely dressed in black velvet and lace, but with no beauty that would please an ordinary eye. "Look at her!" said Hazlitt, "isn't she fine!—isn't she magnificent? Did you ever see anything more Titianesque?"[12]

After breakfast, Procter took me into a small closet adjoining his library, in which he usually writes. There was just room enough in it for a desk and two chairs, and around were piled in true poetical confusion, his favorite books, miniature likenesses of authors, manuscripts, and all the interesting lumber of a true poet's corner. From a drawer, very much thrust out of the way, he drew a volume of his own, into which he proceeded to write my name—a collection of songs, published since I have been in Europe, which I had never seen. I seized upon a worn copy of the Dramatic Sketches, which I found crossed and interlined in every direction. "Don't look at them," said Procter, "they are wretched things, which should never have been printed, or at least with a world of correction. You see how I have mended them; and, some day, perhaps, I will publish a corrected edition, since I can not get them back." He took the book from my hand, and opened to "The Broken Heart," certainly the most highly-finished and exquisite piece of pathos in the language, and read it to me with his alterations. It was to "gild refined gold, and paint the lily." I would recommend to the lovers of Barry Cornwall, to keep their original copy, beautifully as he has polished his lines anew.

On a blank leaf of the same copy of the Dramatic Sketches, I found some indistinct writing in pencil, "Oh! don't read that," said Procter, "the book was given me some years ago, by a friend at whose house Coleridge had been staying, for the sake of the criticisms that great man did me the honor to write at the end." I insisted on reading them, however, and his wife calling him out presently, I succeeded in copying them in his absence. He seemed a little annoyed, but on my promising to make no use of them in England, he allowed me to retain them. They are as follows:

"Barry Cornwall is a poet, me saltem judice, and in that sense of the word, in which I apply it to Charles Lamb and W. Wordsworth. There are poems of great merit, the authors of which, I should not yet feel impelled so to designate.

"The faults of these poems are no less things of hope than the beauties. Both are just what they ought to be: i. e. now.

"If B. C. be faithful to his genius, it in due time will warn him that as poetry is the identity of all other knowledge, so a poet can not be a great poet, but as being likewise and inclusively an historian and a naturalist in the light as well as the life of philosophy. All other men's worlds are his chaos.

"Hints—Not to permit delicacy and exquisiteness to seduce into effeminacy.

"Not to permit beauties by repetition to become mannerism.

"To be jealous of fragmentary composition as epicurism of genius—apple-pie made all of quinces.

"Item. That dramatic poetry must be poetry hid in thought and passion, not thought or passion hid in the dregs of poetry.

"Lastly, to be economic and withholding in similes, figures, etc. They will all find their place sooner or later, each in the luminary of a sphere of its own. There can be no galaxy in poetry, because it is language, ergo, successive, ergo every the smallest star must be seen singly.

"There are not five metrists in the kingdom whose works are known by me, to whom I could have held myself allowed to speak so plainly; but B. C. is a man of genius, and it depends on himself (competence protecting him from gnawing and distracting cares), to become a rightful poet—i. e. a great man.

"Oh, for such a man; worldly prudence is transfigured into the high spiritual duty. How generous is self-interest in him, whose true self is all that is good and hopeful in all ages as far as the language of Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, is the mother tongue.

"A map of the road to Paradise, drawn in Purgatory on the confines of Hell, by S. T. C. July 30, 1819."

I took my leave of this true poet after half a day passed in his company, with the impression that he makes upon every one—of a man whose sincerity and kind-heartedness were the most prominent traits in his character. Simple in his language and feelings, a fond father, an affectionate husband, businessman of the closest habits of industry—one reads his strange imaginations, and passionate, high-wrought, and even sublimated poetry, and is in doubt at which most to wonder—the man as he is, or the poet as we know him in his books.

LETTER LXXIV.

AN EVENING AT LADY BLESSINGTON'S—ANECDOTES OF MOORE, THE POET—TAYLOR, THE PLATONIST—POLITICS—ELECTION OF SPEAKER—PRICES OF BOOKS.

I am obliged to "gazette" Lady Blessington rather more than I should wish, and more than may seem delicate to those, who do not know the central position she occupies in the circle of talent in London. Her soirées and dinner-parties, however, are literally the single and only assemblages of men of genius, without reference to party—the only attempt at a republic of letters in the world of this great, envious, and gifted metropolis. The pictures of literary life, in which my countrymen would be most interested, therefore, are found within a very small compass, presuming them to prefer the brighter side of an eminent character, and presuming them (is it a presumption?), not to possess that appetite for degrading the author to the man, by an anatomy of his secret personal failings, which is lamentably common in England. Having premised thus much, I go on with my letter.

I drove to Lady Blessington's an evening or two since, with the usual certainty of finding her at home, as there was no opera, and the equal certainty of finding a circle of agreeable and eminent men about her. She met me with the information that Moore was in town, and an invitation to dine with her whenever she should be able to prevail upon "the little Bacchus" to give her a day. D'Israeli, the younger, was there, and Dr. Beattie, the king's physician (and author, unacknowledged, of "The Heliotrope"), and one or two fashionable young noblemen.

Moore was naturally the first topic. He had appeared at the opera the night before, after a year's ruralizing at "Sloperton cottage," as fresh and young and witty as he ever was known in his youth—(for Moore must be sixty at least). Lady B. said the only difference she could see in his appearance, was the loss of his curls, which once justified singularly his title of Bacchus, flowing about his head in thin, glossy, elastic tendrils, unlike any other hair she had ever seen, and comparable to nothing but the rings of the vine. He is now quite bald, and the change is very striking. D'Israeli regretted that he should have been met, exactly on his return to London, with the savage but clever article in Fraser's Magazine on his plagiarisms. "Give yourself no trouble about that," said Lady B., "for you may be sure he will never see it. Moore guards against the sight and knowledge of criticism as people take precautions against the plague. He reads few periodicals, and but one newspaper. If a letter comes to him from a suspicious quarter, he burns it unopened. If a friend mentions a criticism to him at the club, he never forgives him; and, so well is this understood among his friends, that he might live in London a year, and all the magazines might dissect him, and he would probably never hear of it. In the country he lives on the estate of Lord Lansdowne, his patron and best friend, with half a dozen other noblemen within a dinner-drive, and he passes his life in this exclusive circle, like a bee in amber, perfectly preserved from everything that could blow rudely upon him. He takes the world en philosophe, and is determined to descend to his grave perfectly ignorant, if such things as critics exist." Somebody said this was weak, and D'Israeli thought it was wise, and made a splendid defence of his opinion, as usual, and I agreed with D'Israeli. Moore deserves a medal, as the happiest author of his day, to possess the power.

A remark was made, in rather a satirical tone, upon Moore's worldliness and passion for rank. "He was sure," it was said, "to have four or five invitations to dine on the same day, and he tormented himself with the idea that he had not accepted perhaps the most exclusive. He would get off from an engagement with a Countess to dine with a Marchioness, and from a Marchioness to accept the later invitation of a Duchess; and as he cared little for the society of men, and would sing and be delightful only for the applause of women, it mattered little whether one circle was more talented than another. Beauty was one of his passions, but rank and fashion were all the rest." This rather left-handed portrait was confessed by all to be just, Lady B. herself making no comment upon it. She gave, as an offset, however, some particulars of Moore's difficulties from his West Indian appointment, which left a balance to his credit.

"Moore went to Jamaica with a profitable appointment. The climate disagreed with him, and he returned home, leaving the business in the hands of a confidential clerk, who embezzled eight thousand pounds in the course of a few months and absconded. Moore's politics had made him obnoxious to the government, and he was called to account with unusual severity; while Theodore Hook, who had been recalled at this very time from some foreign appointment, for a deficit of twenty thousand pounds in his accounts, was never molested, being of the ruling party, Moore's misfortune awakened a great sympathy among his friends. Lord Lansdowne was the first to offer his aid. He wrote to Moore, that for many years he had been in the habit of laying aside from his income eight thousand pounds, for the encouragement of the arts and literature, and that he should feel that it was well disposed of for that year, if Moore would accept it, to free him from his difficulties. It was offered in the most delicate and noble manner, but Moore declined it. The members of "White's" (mostly noblemen) called a meeting, and (not knowing the amount of the deficit) subscribed in one morning twenty-five thousand pounds and wrote to the poet, that they would cover the sum, whatever it might be. This was declined. Longman and Murray then offered to pay it, and wait for their remuneration from his works. He declined even this, and went to Passy with his family, where he economized and worked hard till it was cancelled."

This was certainly a story most creditable to the poet, and it was told with an eloquent enthusiasm, that did the heart of the beautiful narrator infinite credit. I have given only the skeleton of it. Lady Blessington went on to mention another circumstance, very honorable to Moore, of which I had never before heard. "At one time two different counties of Ireland had sent committees to him, to offer him a seat in parliament; and as he depended on his writings for a subsistence, offering him at the same time twelve hundred pounds a year, while he continued to represent them. Moore was deeply touched with it, and said no circumstance of his life had ever gratified him so much. He admitted, that the honor they proposed him had been his most cherished ambition, but the necessity of receiving a pecuniary support at the same time, was an insuperable obstacle. He could never enter parliament with his hands tied, and his opinions and speech fettered, as they would be irresistibly in such circumstances." This does not sound like "jump-up-and-kiss-me Tom Moore," as the Irish ladies call him; but her ladyship vouched for the truth of it. It was worthy of an old Roman.

By what transition I know not, the conversation turned on Platonism, and D'Israeli, (who seemed to have remembered the shelf on which Vivian Grey was to find "the latter Platonists" in his father's library) "flared up," as a dandy would say, immediately. His wild, black eyes glistened, and his nervous lips quivered and poured out eloquence; and a German professor, who had entered late, and the Russian Chargé d'affaires who had entered later, and a whole ottoman-full of noble exquisites, listened with wonder. He gave us an account of Taylor, almost the last of the celebrated Platonists, who worshipped Jupiter, in a back parlor in London a few years ago, with undoubted sincerity. He had an altar and a brazen figure of the Thunderer, and performed his devotions as regularly as the most pious sacerdos of the ancients. In his old age he was turned out of the lodgings he had occupied for a great number of years, and went to a friend in much distress to complain of the injustice. He had "only attempted to worship his gods, according to the dictates of his conscience." "Did you pay your bills?" asked the friend. "Certainly." "Then what is the reason?" "His landlady had taken offence at his sacrificing a bull to Jupiter in his back parlor!"

The story sounded very Vivian-Greyish, and everybody laughed at it as a very good invention; but D'Israeli quoted his father as his authority, and it may appear in the Curiosities of Literature—where, however, it will never be so well told, as by the extraordinary creature from whom we had heard it.

February 22d, 1835.—The excitement in London about the choice of a Speaker is something startling. It took place yesterday, and the party are thunderstruck at the non-election of Sir Manners Sutton. This is a terrible blow upon them, for it was a defeat at the outset; and if they failed in a question where they had the immense personal popularity of the late Speaker to assist them, what will they do on general questions? The House of Commons was surrounded all day with an excited mob. Lady —— told me last night that she drove down toward evening, to ascertain the result (Sir C. M. Sutton is her brother-in-law), and the crowd surrounded her carriage, recognizing her as the sister of the tory Speaker, and threatened to tear the coronet from the panels. "We'll soon put an end to your coronets," said a rapscallion in the mob. The tories were so confident of success that Sir Robert Peel gave out cards a week ago, for a soirée to meet Speaker Sutton, on the night of the election. There is a general report in town that the whigs will impeach the Duke of Wellington! This looks like a revolution, does it not? It is very certain that the Duke and Sir Robert Peel have advised the King to dissolve parliament again, if there is any difficulty in getting on with the government. The Duke was dining with Lord Aberdeen the other day, when some one at table ventured to wonder, at his accepting a subordinate office in the cabinet he had himself formed. "If I could serve his majesty better," said the patrician soldier, "I would ride as king's messenger to-morrow!" He certainly is a remarkable old fellow.

Perhaps, however, literary news would interest you more. Bulwer is publishing in a volume, his papers from the New Monthly. I met him an hour ago in Regent-street, looking what is called in London, "uncommon seedy!" He is either the worst or the best dressed man in London, according to the time of day or night you see him. D'Israeli, the author of Vivian Grey, drives about in an open carriage, with Lady S——, looking more melancholy than usual. The absent baronet, whose place he fills, is about bringing an action against him, which will finish his career, unless he can coin the damages in his brain. Mrs. Hemans is dying of consumption in Ireland. I have been passing a week at a country house, where Miss Jane Porter, Miss Pardoe, and Count Krazinsky (author of the Court of Sigismund), are domiciliated for the present. Miss Porter is one of her own heroines, grown old—a still handsome and noble wreck of beauty. Miss Pardoe is nineteen, fair-haired, sentimental, and has the smallest feet and is the best waltzer I ever saw, but she is not otherwise pretty. The Polish Count is writing the life of his grandmother, whom I should think he strongly resembled in person. He is an excellent fellow, for all that. I dined last week with Joanna Baillie, at Hampstead—the most charming old lady I ever saw. To-day I dine with Longman to meet Tom Moore, who is living incog. near this Nestor of publishers at Hampstead. Moore is fagging hard on his history of Ireland. I shall give you the particulars of all these things in my letters hereafter.

Poor Elia—my old favorite—is dead. I consider it one of the most fortunate things that ever happened to me, to have seen him. I think I sent you in one of my letters an account of my breakfasting in company with Charles Lamb and his sister ("Bridget Elia") at the Temple. The exquisite papers on his life and letters in the Athenæum, are by Barry Cornwall.

Lady Blessington's new book makes a great noise. Living as she does, twelve hours out of the twenty-four, in the midst of the most brilliant and mind-exhausting circle in London, I only wonder how she found the time. Yet it was written in six weeks. Her novels sell for a hundred pounds more than any other author's except Bulwer. Do you know the real prices of books? Bulwer gets fifteen hundred pounds—Lady B. four hundred, Honorable Mrs. Norton two hundred and fifty, Lady Charlotte Bury two hundred, Grattan three hundred and most others below this. D'Israeli can not sell a book at all, I hear. Is not that odd? I would give more for one of his novels, than for forty of the common saleable things about town.

The authoress of the powerful book called Two Old Men's Tales, is an old unitarian lady, a Mrs. Marsh. She declares she will never write another book. The other was a glorious one, though!

LETTER LXXV.

LONDON—THE POET MOORE—LAST DAYS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT—MOORE'S OPINION OF O'CONNELL—ANACREON AT THE PIANO—DEATH OF BYRON—A SUPPRESSED ANECDOTE.

I called on Moore with a letter of introduction, and met him at the door of his lodgings. I knew him instantly from the pictures I had seen of him, but was surprised at the diminutiveness of his person. He is much below the middle size, and with his white hat and long chocolate frock-coat, was far from prepossessing in his appearance. With this material disadvantage, however, his address is gentleman-like to a very marked degree, and, I should think no one could see Moore without conceiving a strong liking for him. As I was to meet him at dinner, I did not detain him. In the moment's conversation that passed, he inquired very particularly after Washington Irving, expressing for him the warmest friendship, and asked what Cooper was doing.

I was at Lady Blessington's at eight. Moore had not arrived, but the other persons of the party—a Russian count, who spoke all the languages of Europe as well as his own; a Roman banker, whose dynasty is more powerful than the pope's; a clever English nobleman, and the "observed of all observers," Count D'Orsay, stood in the window upon the park, killing, as they might, the melancholy twilight half hour preceding dinner.

"Mr. Moore!" cried the footman at the bottom of the staircase, "Mr. Moore!" cried the footman at the top. And with his glass at his eye, stumbling over an ottoman between his near-sightedness and the darkness of the room, enter the poet. Half a glance tells you that he is at home on a carpet. Sliding his little feet up to Lady Blessington (of whom he was a lover when she was sixteen, and to whom some of the sweetest of his songs were written), he made his compliments, with a gayety and an ease combined with a kind of worshipping deference, that was worthy of a prime-minister at the court of love. With the gentlemen, all of whom he knew, he had the frank merry manner of a confident favorite, and he was greeted like one. He went from one to the other, straining back his head to look up at them (for, singularly enough, every gentleman in the room was six feet high and upward), and to every one he said something which, from any one else, would have seemed peculiarly felicitous, but which fell from his lips, as if his breath was not more spontaneous.

Dinner was announced, the Russian handed down "milady," and I found myself seated opposite Moore, with a blaze of light on his Bacchus head, and the mirrors, with which the superb octagonal room is pannelled, reflecting every motion. To see him only at table, you would think him not a small man. His principal length is in his body, and his head and shoulders are those of a much larger person. Consequently he sits tall, and with the peculiar erectness of head and neck, his diminutiveness disappears.

The soup vanished in the busy silence that beseems it, and as the courses commenced their procession, Lady Blessington led the conversation with the brilliancy and ease, for which she is remarkable over all the women of her time. She had received from Sir William Gell, at Naples, the manuscript of a volume upon the last days of Sir Walter Scott. It was a melancholy chronicle of imbecility, and the book was suppressed, but there were two or three circumstances narrated in its pages which were interesting. Soon after his arrival at Naples, Sir Walter went with his physician and one or two friends to the great museum. It happened that on the same day a large collection of students and Italian literati were assembled, in one of the rooms, to discuss some newly-discovered manuscripts. It was soon known that the "Wizard of the North" was there, and a deputation was sent immediately, to request him to honor them by presiding at their session. At this time Scott was a wreck, with a memory that retained nothing for a moment, and limbs almost as helpless as an infant's. He was dragging about among the relics of Pompeii, taking no interest in anything he saw, when their request was made known to him through his physician. "No, no," said he, "I know nothing of their lingo. Tell them I am not well enough to come." He loitered on, and in about half an hour after, he turned to Dr. H. and said, "who was that you said wanted to see me?" The doctor explained. "I'll go," said he, "they shall see me if they wish it;" and, against the advice of his friends, who feared it would be too much for his strength, he mounted the staircase, and made his appearance at the door. A burst of enthusiastic cheers welcomed him on the threshold, and forming in two lines, many of them on their knees, they seized his hands as he passed, kissed them, thanked him in their passionate language for the delight with which he had filled the world, and placed him in the chair with the most fervent expressions of gratitude for his condescension. The discussion went on, but not understanding a syllable of the language, Scott was soon wearied, and his friends observed it, pleaded the state of his health as an apology, and he rose to take his leave. These enthusiastic children of the south crowded once more around him, and with exclamations of affection and even tears, kissed his hands once more, assisting his tottering steps, and sent after him a confused murmur of blessings as the door closed on his retiring form. It is described by the writer as the most affecting scene he had ever witnessed.

Some other remarks were made upon Scott, but the parole was soon yielded to Moore, who gave us an account of a visit he made to Abbotsford when its illustrious owner was in his pride and prime. "Scott," he said, "was the most manly and natural character in the world. You felt when with him, that he was the soul of truth and heartiness. His hospitality was as simple and open as the day, and he lived freely himself, and expected his guests to do so. I remember him giving us whiskey at dinner, and Lady Scott met my look of surprise with the assurance that Sir Walter seldom dined without it. He never ate or drank to excess, but he had no system, his constitution was herculean, and he denied himself nothing. I went once from a dinner party with Sir Thomas Lawrence to meet Scott at Lockhart's. We had hardly entered the room when we were set down to a hot supper of roast chickens, salmon, punch, etc., etc., and Sir Walter ate immensely of everything. What a contrast between this and the last time I saw him in London! He had come down to embark for Italy—broken quite down in mind and body. He gave Mrs. Moore a book, and I asked him if he would make it more valuable by writing in it. He thought I meant that he should write some verses, and said, 'Oh I never write poetry now.' I asked him to write only his own name and hers, and he attempted it, but it was quite illegible."

Some one remarked that Scott's life of Napoleon was a failure.

"I think little of it," said Moore; "but after all, it was an embarrassing task, and Scott did what a wise man would do—made as much of his subject as was politic and necessary, and no more."

"It will not live," said some one else; "as much because it is a bad book, as because it is the life of an individual."

"But what an individual!" Moore replied. "Voltaire's life of Charles the Twelfth was the life of an individual, yet that will live and be read as long as there is a book in the world, and what was he to Napoleon?"

O'Connell was mentioned.

"He is a powerful creature," said Moore, "but his eloquence has done great harm both to England and Ireland. There is nothing so powerful as oratory. The faculty of 'thinking on his legs,' is a tremendous engine in the hands of any man. There is an undue admiration for this faculty, and a sway permitted to it, which was always more dangerous to a country than anything else. Lord Althorp is a wonderful instance of what a man may do without talking. There is a general confidence in him—a universal belief in his honesty, which serves him instead. Peel is a fine speaker, but, admirable as he had been as an oppositionist, he failed, when he came to lead the house. O'Connell would be irresistible were it not for the two blots on his character—the contributions in Ireland for his support, and his refusal to give satisfaction to the man he is still coward enough to attack. They may say what they will of duelling, it is the great preserver of the decencies of society. The old school, which made a man responsible for his words, was the better. I must confess I think so. Then, in O'Connell's case, he had not made his vow against duelling when Peel challenged him. He accepted the challenge, and Peel went to Dover on his way to France, where they were to meet; and O'Connell pleaded his wife's illness, and delayed till the law interfered. Some other Irish patriot, about the same time, refused a challenge on account of the illness of his daughter, and one of the Dublin wits made a good epigram on the two:—

"The great period of Ireland's glory was between '82 and '98, and it was a time when a man almost lived with a pistol in his hand. Grattan's dying advice to his son, was, 'Be always ready with the pistol!' He, himself never hesitated a moment. At one time, there was a kind of conspiracy to fight him out of the world. On some famous question, Corrie was employed purposely to bully him, and made a personal attack of the grossest virulence. Grattan was so ill, at the time, as to be supported into the house between two friends. He rose to reply; and first, without alluding to Corrie at all, clearly and entirely overturned every argument he had advanced, that bore upon the question. He then paused a moment, and stretching out his arm, as if he would reach across the house, said, 'For the assertions the gentleman has been pleased to make with regard to myself, my answer here, is they are false! elsewhere, it would be—a blow! They met, and Grattan shot him through the arm. Corrie proposed another shot, but Grattan said, 'No! let the curs fight it out!' and they were friends ever after. I like the old story of the Irishman, who was challenged by some desperate blackguard. 'Fight him!' said he, 'I would sooner go to my grave without a fight! Talking of Grattan, is it not wonderful that, with all the agitation in Ireland, we have had no such men since his time? Look at the Irish newspapers. The whole country in convulsions—people's lives, fortunes, and religion, at stake, and not a gleam of talent from one year's end to the other. It is natural for sparks to be struck out in a time of violence, like this—but Ireland, for all that is worth living for, is dead! You can scarcely reckon Shiel of the calibre of her spirits of old, and O'Connell, with all his faults, stands 'alone in his glory.'"

The conversation I have thus run together is a mere skeleton, of course. Nothing but a short-hand report could retain the delicacy and elegance of Moore's language, and memory itself cannot embody again the kind of frost-work of imagery, which was formed and melted on his lips. His voice is soft or firm as the subject requires, but perhaps the word gentlemanly describes it better than any other. It is upon a natural key, but, if I may so phrase it, it is fused with a high-bred affectation, expressing deference and courtesy, at the same time, that its pauses are constructed peculiarly to catch the ear. It would be difficult not to attend to him while he is talking, though the subject were but the shape of a wine-glass.

Moore's head is distinctly before me while I write, but I shall find it difficult to describe. His hair, which curled once all over it in long tendrils, unlike anybody else's in the world, and which probably suggested his sobriquet of "Bacchus," is diminished now to a few curls sprinkled with gray, and scattered in a single ring above his ears. His forehead is wrinkled, with the exception of a most prominent development of the organ of gayety, which, singularly enough, shines with the lustre and smooth polish of a pearl, and is surrounded by a semicircle of lines drawn close about it, like entrenchments against Time. His eyes still sparkle like a champaign bubble, though the invader has drawn his pencillings about the corners; and there is a kind of wintry red, of the tinge of an October leaf, that seems enamelled on his cheek, the eloquent record of the claret his wit has brightened. His mouth is the most characteristic feature of all. The lips are delicately cut, slight and changeable as an aspen; but there is a set-up look about the lower lip, a determination of the muscle to a particular expression, and you fancy that you can almost see wit astride upon it. It is written legibly with the imprint of habitual success. It is arch, confident, and half diffident, as if he were disguising his pleasure at applause, while another bright gleam of fancy was breaking on him. The slightly-tossed nose confirms the fun of the expression, and altogether it is a face that sparkles, beams, radiates,—everything but feels. Fascinating beyond all men as he is, Moore looks like a worldling.

This description may be supposed to have occupied the hour after Lady Blessington retired from the table; for, with her, vanished Moore's excitement, and everybody else seemed to feel, that light had gone out of the room. Her excessive beauty is less an inspiration than the wondrous talent with which she draws from every person around her his peculiar excellence. Talking better than anybody else, and narrating, particularly, with a graphic power that I never saw excelled, this distinguished woman seems striving only to make others unfold themselves; and never had diffidence a more apprehensive and encouraging listener. But this is a subject with which I should never be done.

We went up to coffee, and Moore brightened again over his chasse-café, and went glittering on with criticisms on Grisi, the delicious songstress now ravishing the world, whom he placed above all but Pasta; and whom he thought, with the exception that her legs were too short, an incomparable creature. This introduced music very naturally, and with a great deal of difficulty he was taken to the piano. My letter is getting long, and I have no time to describe his singing. It is well known, however, that its effect is only equalled by the beauty of his own words; and, for one, I could have taken him into my heart with my delight. He makes no attempt at music. It is a kind of admirable recitative, in which every shade of thought is syllabled and dwelt upon, and the sentiment of the song goes through your blood, warming you to the very eyelids, and starting your tears, if you have soul or sense in you. I have heard of women's fainting at a song of Moore's; and if the burden of it answered by chance, to a secret in the bosom of the listener, I should think, from its comparative effect upon so old a stager as myself, that the heart would break with it.

We all sat around the piano, and after two or three songs of Lady Blessington's choice, he rambled over the keys awhile, and sang "When first I met thee," with a pathos that beggars description. When the last word had faltered out, he rose and took Lady Blessington's hand, said good-night, and was gone before a word was uttered. For a full minute after he had closed the door, no one spoke. I could have wished, for myself, to drop silently asleep where I sat, with the tears in my eyes and the softness upon my heart.

"Here's a health to thee, Tom Moore!"

I was in company the other evening where Westmacott, the sculptor, was telling a story of himself and Leigh Hunt. They were together one day at Fiesole, when a butterfly, of an uncommon sable color, alighted on Westmacott's forehead, and remained there several minutes. Hunt immediately cried out, "The spirit of some dear friend is departed," and as they entered the gate of Florence on their return, some one met them and informed them of the death of Byron, the news of which had at that moment arrived.

I have just time before the packet sails to send you an anecdote, that is bought out of the London papers. A nobleman, living near Belgrave square, received a visit a day or two ago from a police officer, who stated to him, that he had a man-servant in his house, who had escaped from Botany Bay. His Lordship was somewhat surprised, but called up the male part of his household, at the officer's request, and passed them in review. The culprit was not among them. The officer then requested to see the female part of the establishment; and, to the inexpressible astonishment of the whole household, he laid his hand upon the shoulder of the lady's confidential maid, and informed her she was his prisoner. A change of dress was immediately sent for, and miladi's dressing-maid was re-metamorphosed into an effeminate-looking fellow, and marched off to a new trial. It is a most extraordinary thing, that he had lived unsuspected in the family for nine months, performing all the functions of a confidential Abigail, and very much in favor with his unsuspecting mistress, who is rather a serious person, and would as soon have thought of turning out to be a man herself. It is said, that the husband once made a remark upon the huskiness of the maid's voice, but no other comment was ever made, reflecting in the least upon her qualities as a member of the beau sexe. The story is quite authentic, but hushed up out of regard to the lady.

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