NOTES OF A READER.

PORTRAIT OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Appended to a fine portrait of Sir Walter Scott, in the Literary Souvenir for 1829, is the following—by Barry Cornwall:—

We can scarcely imagine a thing much more pleasant indeed, to an artist, than to be brought face to face with some famous person, and permitted to examine and scrutinize his features, with that careful and intense curiosity, that seems necessary to the perfecting a likeness. It must have been to Raffaelle, at once a relaxation from his ordinary study, and a circumstance interesting in itself, thus to look into faces so full of meaning as those of Julius and Leo—and to say, "That look—that glance, which seems so transient, will I fix for ever. Thus shall he be seen, with that exact expression (although it lasted but for an instant) five hundred years after he shall be dust and ashes!"

This was probably the feeling of Raffaelle; and it must have been with a somewhat similar pride that our excellent artist, Mr. Leslie, accomplished his portrait of Sir Walter Scott, which the reader will have already admired in this volume. It is surely a perfect work. No one, who has once seen the great author, can forget that strange and peculiar look (so full of meaning, and shrewd and cautious observation—so entirely characteristic, in short, of the mind within) which Mr. Leslie has succeeded in catching. One may gaze on it for ever, and contemplate an exhaustless subject—all that the capacious imagination has produced and is producing,—the populous, endless world of fancy.

Let the reader look, and be assured that there is the strange spirit that has discovered and wrought all the fine shapes that he has been accustomed to look upon with wonder—Claverhouse, and Burley, and Bothwell,—Meg Merrilies and Elspeth—the high and the low—the fierce and the fair—Cavaliers and Covenanters, and the rest—presenting an assemblage of character that is absolutely unequalled, except in the pages of Shakspeare alone. There is no other writer, be he Greek, or Goth, or Roman, who has ever astonished the world by creations so infinitely diversified. The mind of the author appears so free from egotism, so large and serene, so clear of all images of self, that it receives, as in a lucid mirror, all the varieties of nature.

ON A GIRL SLEEPING.

Blackwood's Magazine.

A species of fames canina is to be met with amongst schoolboys, which affects the juveniles most when most in health. We remember a gentleman offering a wager, that a boy taken promiscuously from any of the public charity-schools, should, five minutes after his dinner, eat a pound of beef-steaks.—Brande's Jour.

THE GIPSY'S MALISON.

C. LAMB. Blackwood's Magazine.

EPICURES.

As a mere untravelled practical Englishman, and, moreover, of the old school, Quin, no doubt, ranks high in the lists of gastronomy: but he is completely distanced by many moderns, both in love for and knowledge of the science. Among the most noted of the moderns we beg to introduce our readers to Mr. Rogerson, an enthusiast and a martyr. He, as may be presumed, was educated at that University where the rudiments of palatic science are the most thoroughly impressed on the ductile organs of youth. His father, a gentleman of Gloucestershire, sent him abroad to make the grand tour, upon which journey, says our informant, young Rogerson attended to nothing but the various modes of cookery, and methods of eating and drinking luxuriously. Before his return his father died, and he entered into the possession of a very large monied fortune, and a small landed estate. He was now able to look over his notes of epicurism, and to discover where the most exquisite dishes were to be had, and the best cooks procured. He had no other servants in his house than men cooks; his butler, footman, housekeeper, coachman, and grooms, were all cooks. He had three Italian cooks, one from Florence, another from Sienna, and a third from Viterbo, for dressing one dish, the docce piccante of Florence. He had a messenger constantly on the road between Brittany and London, to bring him the eggs of a certain sort of plover, found near St. Maloes. He has eaten a single dinner at the expense of fifty-eight pounds, though himself only sat down to it, and there were but two dishes. He counted the minutes between meals, and seemed totally absorbed in the idea, or in the action of eating, yet his stomach was very small; it was the exquisite flavour alone, that he sought. In nine years he found his table dreadfully abridged by the ruin of his fortune; and himself hastening to poverty. This made him melancholy, and brought on disease. When totally ruined, having spent near 150,000l., a friend gave him a guinea to keep him from starving; and he was found in a garret soon after roasting an ortolan with his own hands. We regret to add, that a few days afterwards, this extraordinary youth shot himself. We hope that his notes are not lost to the dining world.

COLLEGE DREAMS.

How often in senior common-rooms may be marked the gradual dropping asleep of the learned and venerable members! First, after a few rounds of the bottle, the tongues, which are tired of eulogizing or vituperating the various dishes which had smoked upon the board, gradually begin to be still,—soon conversation comes absolutely to a stand,—the candles grow alarmingly long in the wick,—comparative darkness involves the sage assembly,—and first one, then another, drops off into a placid and harmonious repose. Then what dreams float before the eyes of their imagination! Blue silk pelisses jostling shovel hats, church spires dancing in most admired disorder, fat incumbents falling down in a fit, neat clerical-looking gigs standing at vicarage doors, and these all incongruously commingled with white veils, lawn sleeves, roast beef, pulpit cushions, bright eyes, and small black sarsnet shoes. Suddenly the chapel bell dissolves the fleeting fabric of the vision; and, behold! the white veil is a poet's imagination, the church spire is still at a miserable distance, the vicarage is a Utopian nonentity, and the fat incumbent, in a state of the ruddiest health, is the only reality of the dream.

—Blackwood's Magazine.

WOMAN

Nothing sets so wide a mark "between the vulgar and the noble seed" as the respect and reverential love of womanhood. A man who is always sneering at woman is generally a coarse profligate, or a coarse bigot, no matter which.

ANGLING.

We have often thought that angling alone offers to man the degree of half-business, half-idleness, which the fair sex find in their needle-work or knitting, which, employing the hands, leaves the mind at liberty, and occupying the attention so far as is necessary to remove the painful sense of a vacuity, yet yields room for contemplation, whether upon things heavenly or earthly, cheerful or melancholy.—Quarterly Rev.