THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

THE PALACE OF ALI PASHA.

The secretary carried us through several chambers, decorated with much cost and barbarous splendour. The wainscot of one of the principal saloons is inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ebony, coral, and ivory; but the workmanship seems harsh and ungraceful. The ceiling is plastered with massive gilding, the effect of which is rather cumbrous than ornamental; "not graced with elegancy, but daubed with cost." Pillars, of a composition to resemble the richest marble, support the compartments, and the cornice is coloured with some imperfect efforts at arabesque painting. There is, however, one article extremely elegant and well-finished—a low sofa, carried round three-fourths of the room, covered with dark velvet, tastefully embroidered, and hung with gold fringe. The general arrangement of the rooms is certainly, grand and imposing, though occasionally deformed by much bad taste. I should not omit to mention, that our conductor desired us to notice two very handsome carpets, which he gave us to understand were of British manufacture. In the apartment where Ali sleeps, the walls are hung with sabres and fire-arms of different descriptions; all of which are ornamented with precious stones. One of the scimitars is profusely adorned with diamonds and rubies, and a particular musket has a cartouche-box, studded with brilliants of surpassing splendour, the central stone being nearly the size of a die. A fowling-piece, sent to the pasha by Bonaparte, is also enriched with gems, though this last article is considered to derive its chief value from the circumstance of having been once the property of the imperial warrior, by whom it was presented. The chamber opens into a long and spacious gallery; at one extremity we observed a singularly awkward piece of furniture, resembling a large old-fashioned arm-chair. So useless an article in a Turkish palace induced me to inquire the purpose to which it was applied; and I was informed that, on certain festivals, the pasha gives an entertainment for the diversion of the children of the principal families in the capital, who on such occasions assemble in the gallery. Ali himself always attends, to encourage and assist their gaiety; and, while reclining on this cumbrous seat, distributes to them, as they are successively presented to him, baskets of sweetmeats, and such other tokens of regard as are suited to their respective ages and condition.—Narrative of an Excursion from Corfu to Smyrna.

POLICE OFFICES AND POLICE REPORTS.

The police reports are frequently the most amusing part of the daily press: they let the reader into many of the secrets of low, and, now and then, of high life; they are redolent of the phraseology of the vulgar; they often tickle our fancies by their humour, and sometimes touch our sympathies by their pathos. As anecdotes of real life; daily catalogues of droll and dismal occurrences among our fellow-citizens; pictures of what is passing in the streets while we, who are sober sort of folks, are dreaming in our beds; sketches of manners, and records of the habits, feelings, and minor as well as major delinquencies of those who breathe the same air with us; they could not fail to be interesting to us all, were we not aware that, like the novels which are said to be "founded on fact," their most rich and racy parts are frequently fiction.

Let not the non-gnostic portion of our readers imagine, that if they haunt the justice-seat of Birnie and his judicial co-mates, that they will ever witness such pleasant, sparkling, humorous examinations as those reported in the columns of the papers which matinally grace their breakfast-tables. The tyro upon town will stare at this. Why, will he say, cannot I, if I frequent the same place, see and hear what those who are employed for the press see and hear there? He can; but the fact is, that our police reporters are by far too clever to set down the words of other people, without throwing in something of their own. Their plan is to drop the duller parts of a story or a speech, and to embellish its livelier portion—to select the tit-bits, and sauce and spice them up sufficiently high to please the palates of the news-reading public. The offices afford them an excellent variety of characters, which, like skilful dramatists, they work up until they become really humorous: many of the cases afford them capital plots, into which they cleverly dovetail pleasant little episodes, and adhere no closer to the deposed facts than many of our by-gone playwrights have done to the sacred page of history. We allude only to the cases of humour which occur at the police-offices: those reports which can be interesting only in proportion as they are correct, are, in general, accurately given; but the matrimonial squabbles, the Irish farçettas, and the frays between the Dogberrys of the night and late walkers—albeit they may, peradventure, contain the leading facts disclosed—are highly wrought up by the fanciful powers of those who cause the public and feed themselves at a per-line-age for the daily press. Many cases which, on hearing, are dull and oftentimes disgusting, under the magic pens of the police-office scribes become lively and entertaining; they are furnished with the raw material—the metal in its ore—which they purify and polish, until it bears little or no resemblance to what it was before it underwent the process of manufacturing for the paper-market under their skilful hands. There are many who delight to visit the police-offices for the sake of seeing those beings who appear there, of whom others only read: some of our readers may, perhaps, be bitten with a similar fancy; but, we warrant, that they will find the actual doings at Bow-street very different to what they had imagined; as Charles Mathews' Sir Harry Skelton says, "There's nothing at all in it; people talk a great deal about it—but there's nothing in it, after all—nothing."

It is not often that we look in at morning or evening sitting of the magistrates; we are content to have the police reports served up to us with our potted beef and buttered toast at breakfast; we enjoy them, although we feel convinced that many of them bear no more resemblance to the affairs they are founded on, than mock-turtle to calf's-head; still, like the soup, they are by far the most pleasant and palatable of the two.—Every Night Book.

THE CURRAL.

The view in front was obstructed by a high ridge, of which we had nearly gained the highest point, when we left our horses, and running up a few yards of steep turf found ourselves all at once on the brink of the Curral. It is a huge valley, or rather crater, of immense depth, enclosed on all sides by a range of magnificent mountain precipices, the sides and summit of which are broken in every variety of buttress or pinnacle—now black and craggy and beetling—at other times spread with the richest green turf, and scattered with a profusion of the evergreen forest-trees, indigenous to the island; while far below, in the midst of all these horrors, smiles a fairy region of cultivation and fruitfulness, with a church and village, the white cabins of which seem half smothered in the luxuriance of their own vines and orchards.

We gazed long and eagerly at the prospect. It is not easy to give an accurate notion of its peculiar character; and even painting would but ill assist, for one of the most striking features is the great and sudden depth which you look down, the effect of which we know the pencil cannot at all convey. The side on which we stand, however, though steep, is not absolutely precipitous; on the contrary, the gradation of crag and projection, by which it descends to the bottom, is one of the finest things in the view. Close on our right a lofty peak presents its rocky face to the valley, to which it bears down in a magnificent mass, shouldering its way, as it seemed, half across it. The opposite sides appear more bare, precipitous, and lofty; and this last character is heightened by some white clouds that rest upon and conceal their summits.

Rejoining the road, we for awhile lost sight of the valley. When we again came in view of it, it was rapidly filling with clouds, but at first their interposition was hardly a disadvantage; they gave a vague indefinite grandeur to the cliffs and mountains, which seemed to rise one knew not from what depth, and lose their summits in regions beyond our ken. The breaks, too, that occurred in this shrouding of the scene, showed fragments of it with strange effect—till at length the whole hollow filled, and presented a uniform sea of vapour.

Rambles in Madeira.

A PORTUGUESE BALL.

The ladies are carried in palanquins, and each received at the street entrance by the master of the house—or if there be more than one lady, by some gentlemen deputed for that purpose—who takes her hand, and so ushers her up stairs. There is much of this elaborate gallantry observable in the manner of the Portuguese towards the sex. Thus, a man never passes a lady in the street, or in her balcony, without taking off his hat, and this whether he be acquainted with her or not. We understand they used to offer a similar mark of respect to the English ladies, but desisted on finding that our gentlemen did not reciprocate in the same homage towards the fair Portuguezas. I don't think that this difference in the manners of the two people does us credit. Not that all that kind of homage means much. In this, as in a more serious concern, our southern neighbours may seem to have the advantage in the practices of external devotion; but it would be a mistake to infer from thence, that there is with us less of that service of the heart, which, after all, is the one thing needful. The party was large, probably two hundred, including most of the native rank and fashion of the island. We found the ladies all seated together in one room, and the effect of this concentration was sufficiently dazzling. Some people deny that there is any standard of female beauty; and, at any rate, there is no doubt but that habits and associations, as well as complexional and sentimental considerations, interfere more with our perceptions in respect to this than any other object of taste. It is not immediately that we enter into the merits of a style of beauty very different from that which we have been accustomed to. Perhaps it is owing to this circumstance that I was not struck by so many instances of individual attractiveness as might have been expected in so crowded a galaxy. The traits that first strike a stranger in a Portuguese belle, are the tendency to embonpoint in the figure, and to darkness—I had almost said swarthiness, in complexion. This last character, however, is not particularly obvious by candle-light; and it is always relieved by the most raven hair, and eyes such as one seldom sees elsewhere, so large and black; if their fire were softened by a longer lash, and their expression less fixed, there would be no resisting them. I fancy, too, that their effect would be rather greater in a tête-à-tête than in a circle like this, where, looking round, one sees on all sides the same eyes—and which all (it is everywhere the reproach of black eyes) say always the same thing. Their dress was perfectly in the English fashion; and, in general, there was something not un-English in their mise and tournure. The superiority of French women in these matters is incontestable. Perhaps we may account for it something on the principle by which Dr. Johnson explained the excellence of our neighbours in cookery, when he suspected that the inferiority of their meats rendered indispensable some extraordinary skill in dressing it. The general arrangement and progress of the evening was very English too. They dance remarkably well, the men as well as the women. Indeed, it is, I believe, the great end and occupation of the earlier part of their existence. We came away at two o'clock; few of the English staid later; but among the Portuguese, the more ardent spirits kept up the dance till long after day-break, when it is customary to serve up caldo, a sort of chicken-broth, for their refreshment.—Ibid.