NOTES OF A READER

JOHN KEMBLE AND MISS OWENSON.

There is more of the patter and fun of fashion in Lady Morgan's books than in any other chronicles of the ton. Her last work, the Book of the Boudoir, to use an Hibernicism, is not yet published; but from one of its scenes shifted into the Court Journal, we pick the following anecdote of John Kemble and her ladyship, (then Miss Owenson), about twenty years since. All the town were then running mad after her "wild Irish girl," and Miss O. was invited to a blue-stocking party, at the mansion of the Dowager Countess of Cork, in New Burlington Street.

"Mr. Kemble was announced. Lady C——k reproached him as 'the late Mr. Kemble;' and then, looking significantly at me, told him who I was. Kemble, to whom I had been already presented by Mrs. Lefanu, acknowledged me by a kindly nod; but the intense stare which succeeded, was not one of mere recognition. It was the glazed, fixed look, so common to those who have been making libations to altars which rarely qualify them for ladies' society. Mr. Kemble was evidently much pre-occupied, and a little exalted; and he appeared actuated by some intention, which he had the will, but not the power, to execute. He was seated vis-à-vis, and had repeatedly raised his arm, and stretched it across the table, for the purpose, as I supposed, of helping himself to some boar's head in jelly. Alas, no!—the bore was, that my head happened to be the object which fixed his tenacious attention; and which being a true Irish cathah head, dark, cropped, and curly, and struck him as a particularly well organized Brutus, and better than any in his repertoire of theatrical perukes. Succeeding at last in his feline and fixed purpose, he actually struck his claws in my locks, and addressing me in the deepest sepulchral tones, asked—"Little girl, where did you buy your wig?"

Lord Erskine "came to the rescue," and liberated my head.

Lord Carysfort exclaimed, to relieve the awkwardness of the scene, "les serpents de l'envie ont sifflés dans son coeur;" on every side—

—while I, like Macbeth—

Meantime Kemble, peevish, as half-tipsy people generally are, and ill brooking the interference of the two peers, drew back, muttering and fumbling in his coat-pocket, evidently with some dire intent lowering in his eyes. To the amusement of all, and to my increased consternation, he drew forth a volume of the "Wild Irish Girl," (which he had brought to return to Lady C——k) and, reading, with his deep, emphatic voice, one of the most high-flown of its passages, he paused, and patting the page with his forefinger, with the look of Hamlet addressing Polonius, he said, "Little girl, why did you write such nonsense? And where did you get all these d—d hard words?"

Thus taken by surprise, and "smarting with my wounds" or mortified authorship, I answered, unwittingly and witlessly, the truth: "Sir, I wrote as well as I could, and I got the hard words out of Johnson's Dictionary."

The eloquence of Erskine himself would have pleaded my cause with less effect; and the "J'y allois" of La Fontaine was not quoted with more approbation in the circles of Paris, than the naïveté of my equally veracious and spontaneous reply. The triumph of my simplicity did not increase Kemble's good humour; and, shortly after, Mr. Spenser carried him off in his carriage, to prevent any further attacks on my unfortunate head—inside or out.

WOMAN.

There is no doubt that the proper study of mankind is WOMAN; and Mr. Pope was wrong; for the endless variety of character among the sex is of itself a mine, endless and inexhaustible; but to study them in their domestic capacity, is the sweetest of all—

So says one poet, I have forgot his name. Another hath this expression—

But the sweetest thing that ever was said of woman in this amiable capacity, or ever will be said again, is by a contemporary:—"A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies in adventure; she embarks her whole soul in the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless, for it is a bankruptcy of the heart!"—The Ettrick Shepherd.

BURMESE TEMPLES.

In the Burman towns and villages the number of temples seem to exceed the number of dwellings, which is not unusual. The former are as splendid as gilding can make them, and the latter as humble as can be conceived from the frail materials of which they are constructed—bamboos, palm leaves, and grass. The wealth of a Burman, always insecure, is very generally expended on the luxury of temple-building. Religious merit, indeed, consists mainly in the construction of one of these huge, costly, and showy edifices; and is not considered as increased by building a durable one. No one ever thinks of repairing or restoring an old temple; and the consequence is, that in every part of the country may be seen half-finished structures of enormous magnitude—the respective founders having died before they were completed.—Crawfurd's Embassy to Ava.

Valmontone, on the road from Naples to Rome, is a strange but enchanting spot, enveloped in shade, with magnificent rocks (agglomerated volcanic ashes) hollowed into caverns, which afford coolness in this burning climate, and where an incredible number of nightingales make the whole air musical. The little town rose picturesquely on its rocky pedestal, with a large building like a monastery inhabited by myriads of swallows, darting in and out at its sashless windows. A solitary guardian eyed us through a door a-jar, but did not come out, while we went round the church, and admired some good pictures remaining on its walls. The stillness of death prevailed in the town—a sort of unburied Pompeii through its narrow lanes, up and down zig-zag stairs cut in the rock, we sauntered alone, and the noise of our iron-shod heels on the pavement, was the only sound we heard. The rich abbey, it was evident, had formerly fed the town clustering round it, the inhabitants of which cultivated its vast domains under a paternal administration. These domains, it was also evident, had passed into the hands of upstart speculators, strangers to the people, and indifferent to their welfare, who did not even know how to make their wealth productive to themselves.—Simond's Tour.

ENGLISH AND FRENCH MURDERS.

When will the French nation be able to afford a Thurtell—a man who could turn his pistol round in his friend's brains; not in any insane paroxysm of jealousy, or hatred, or revenge, but merely to ascertain satisfactorily that he had completely effected his business—who could then walk in to his supper of pork chops, with the same composure as if he had come from giving a feed of oats to his horse—a clever and acute man, too, without any stupid insensibility of mind—a man who, when seized and put on his trial, gets off by heart a long and eloquent speech, full of the most solemn and false asseverations of his innocence; not that he clung with desperate eagerness to the hope of escaping, but that, as there was a chance, it was prudent not to throw it away—who, when condemned displayed neither terror nor indifference, neither exquisite sensibility nor sullen brutality, and at the last swung out of life from the gallows with the settled air of a man who feels he has lost the game at which he played, and that he may as well pay the stake calmly? There was a true British composure about the unutterable atrocity of this villain—murderer he was, and a most detestable murderer too—but his character belongs to our country as fully as that of our heroes. Hunt and Probert were pitiful wretches, fit for the Bicêtre. Doubtless the agony of Hunt's feelings until his reprieve came, would, if properly divided into chapters, make a good romance.—Blackwood's Mag.

PETROLEUM.

Petroleum wells supply the whole Burman empire with oil for lamps, and also for smearing timber, to protect it against insects, and particularly the white ant. Its consumption for burning is stated to be universal, until its price reaches that of sesamum oil, the only other kind used for lamps. The wells, which occupy a space of about sixteen square miles, vary in depth from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet; the shaft is square, not more than four feet each side, and is formed by sinking a frame of wood. The oil, on coming up, is about the temperature of ninety degrees of Fahrenheit. It is thrown into a large cistern, in the bottom of which are small apertures for the aqueous part to drain off, when the oil is left for some time to thicken. It is then put into large earthen jars, placed in rude carts drawn by oxen, and carried to the banks of the river, from whence it is sent by water-carriage to every part of the empire. By the number and burden of the boats employed in this trade, and the number of voyages they are supposed to make in the course of a year, the exportation from the wells is estimated to amount to 17,568,000 vis, of twenty-six pounds and a half each. Thirty vis a-year is reckoned to be the average consumption of a family of five persons and a half; and about two-thirds of the oil are supposed to be employed for burning.—Crawfurd's Embassy to Ava.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

Think how the dog, fond and faithful creature as he is, from being the most docile and obedient of all animals, is made the most dangerous, if he become mad; so men acquire a frightful and not less monstrous power when they are in a state of moral insanity, and break loose from their social and religious obligations. Remember too how rapidly the plague of diseased opinions is communicated, and that if it once gain head, it is as difficult to be stopt as a conflagration or a flood.—Southey.

SOFT MUSIC.

The effect of soft music is to produce pleasure or pain, according to the state of the hearer. Thus, while a musician has been known to be cured by a concert in his chamber, the celebrated sentimental air of the "Ranz des Vaches" has also been known to have the opposite effect of killing a Swiss. Indeed, the extraordinary effect produced by it upon Swiss troops has caused it to be forbidden, under pain of death, to be played to them.