on the occasion than I suspect would have been the case had I not been present, for the subject could scarcely be discussed without reference to America. My own opinion, however, was given without reserve; nor have I since seen reason to change it, every day's experience of the labors of a literary life convincing me that wherever a common language is spoken, the author should have protection. Where the husbandman casts his seed, he ought to gather in the crop.

Lady Blessington changed the theme, and led the conversation to more agreeable topics, discoursing with infinite grace on all she touched upon--poetry, the fine arts, the drama, literature, incidents of travel, and anecdotes of the many remarkable persons with whom she had been acquainted abroad and at home. Byron, Lawrence, Canova, Mezzofanti, Lafayette, Sismondi, Cuvier, Casimir Perier, Scott, Moore, Dickens, Carlyle, were passed in review, with many more; and for all she had something to say that illustrated the particular genius of each. Count D'Orsay also showed that the talent of the raconteur, a talent which his countrymen cultivate so successfully, was one of the many which nature and education had joined to endow him with; nor was what he said less piquant from the peculiar accent with which he spoke English. I cannot remember a tithe of the stories told either by him or the other guests, and I fear that those I have been able to recall will give but a very imperfect idea of the general style of the conversation.

One slight anecdote, however, clings to my recollection, that amusingly exemplifies the facility with which people of the world forget their dearest friends. Count D'Orsay told it of the Countess of D-, when verging on her ninetieth year. This old lady was always a strict observer of birthdays, not only her own, but those of all her friends. One morning, on examining the calendar, she found it was the fête of Miss L-, a spinster of sixty, whom she had known nearly half a century. She desired her gardener to cut a fine bouquet in the conservatory, and then drove off some seven or eight miles to lunch with Miss L, and present her offering. When the carriage drew up at her friend's door, a very dismal-looking servant made his appear

man, advancing, "mistress died this morning at half-past six o'clock."

Then,

Bless my heart," exclaimed Lady D, "dead! how shocking!" looking at her watch, "Coachman, drive to Mrs. P's; I shall be just in time for luncheon there."

She was so, and without saying a word about its original destination, presented the bouquet which she had intended for her deceased friend to the live luncheon-giver. I thought, as this story was being told, that it sounded just like a bit of gossip from Madame de Sevigné.

In the evening many additions were made to the dinner-guests; some, like Lords C and M- noted for their position

in the world of fashion; others, such as B and T—, skilled in diplomacy; others again celebrated for their various talents: like G, the famous surgeon; L, the clever lithographic artist; SK, the dramatist; J F- the accomplished and acute critic; L the wondrous piano-forte player; Lord D S, the firm friend, not only of suffering Poland, but of all who suffer; and the two handsome brothers, Charles and Frank Sn, whom neither wit nor beauty could save from an early tomb. Some of the habitués were absent, whom I should have been glad enough to have met; and in the list of absentees were the two ex-chancellors; M-, the poet, whose journeys to London, always like angels' visits, have now, unhappily, ceased altogether; CD, of world-wide reputation, whom I missed seeing when he visited the States; Sir EB, in the zenith of his literary fame; and, not less earnestly desired because the thing was impossible, Prince Louis Napoleon, a prisoner then in a dreary fortress in Picardy, and now the President of Republican France!

The absence of these might be regretted, but I found enough, and more than enough, in Gore House that evening, to reconcile me even to greater disappointment; and the recollection of the kind reception which was given to a comparative stranger, will live among the memories which I cherish most.

It was with altered feelings that I bent my way to Gore House at the beginning of last month. I had only been in England a few days, and already found-besides what the public papers had told, of little as well as of great events--that more change had happened than the heart would willingly

have been cognizant of. Not the least pain- | ful intelligence was the announcement that the hospitable owner of Gore House had suddenly quitted the scene of which she had so long been the principal ornament; and not only gone, but without any prospect of return, for the sale of everything was to take place the following week.

I was unwilling, in the first instance, to go near the spot; but the desire once more and for the last time to visit a place where I had spent so many happy hours, and something also of the wish to possess myself of some slight relic, on which I might fix beforehand, prevailed over my first resolution; and instead of going down to the flower-show at Chiswick, whither everybody was hurrying, I stopped short at Kensington.

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Both gates were wide open; and, amidst an array of street-cabs, hurrying to avoid the storm which suddenly came pelting down, I forced my way into the vestibule, no longer lined with well-dressed servants, but thronged by curious idlers and scowling bailiffs. It was difficult to believe that I was actually in the same house again; but the mute tokens of the taste and genius, not yet displaced, which gleamed from the walls and met my gaze at every turn, only too surely convinced me that there was no delusion. Pierre's description of the ruin in Jaffier's house was fully realized; the ruffians were there, "lording it o'er the heaps of massive plate;" men in possession, insolently lolling in brocaded chairs, measured the visitors with a scrutinizing eye, as if doubtful of their honesty; long-aproned men, in paper caps, answered indifferently, "Yes," and "No," to the numerous questions put to them; and busy brokers scuffled through the crowd offering their cards and tendering their services to possible purchasers. In one place a number of stooping figures were bent over a curious cabinet, or a portfolio of rare prints; in another, a group were eagerly discussing, with loud-voiced criticism, the merits of a picture, of which they neither knew the subject nor the artist; some were laboriously following their catalogues, and bewildering themselves inextricably in wrong rooms, insisting upon it that a boudoir was a study, and a bed-chamber a dining-room; while others, tired to death of staring at objects that did not interest them, and fatigued with the heat and the crowd, stole off into quiet corners and composed themselves to sleep. One party consisted of a bevy of fine ladies: Lady J was their leader, who scornfully, but no less eagerly,

examined the thousand objects of virtù, of which they had, doubtless, heard much, and longed still more to see, perhaps even to possess. To a worshipper of the gentler virtues which adorn the female character, it was not a gratifying spectacle; and I thought more than once that forbearance, if not pity, would have set off those ladies even more than the witty and sarcastic comments in which they indulged.

And what a profusion of beautiful things were gathered together in the rooms upstairs, which I had never yet seen!

First, there was Lady Blessington's study, where the thirty or forty volumes of clever novels, travels, and biographical sketchesthe authorship of which she has acknowledged-have, for the greater part, been written. The place of honor was now usurped by a stout, vulgar, over-dressed fellow of Jewish physiognomy, who had adorned his huge fingers with heavy, glittering rings, as if that were any justification for the exposure of his coarse ungloved hands. Sullen and watchful, there was no mistaking who he was; and I gladly turned away to look at a sketch of poor L. E. L., in whose mournful fate, without knowing her personally, I had deeply sympathized. Many other portraits also interested me greatly; one of them, a miniature copy of Lawrence's picture, painted on Hanoverian china.

There was one set of objects under a glass case which was amusing enough to look at, particularly for a republican. It consisted of a number of little painted figures, representing the court and household of the King of Hanover, stiff and stately and ridiculous as the German originals. They seemed as closely affined to ceremonials as Polonius himself. Here again were statuettes, vases, clocks, flambeaux, and a hundred nameless contrivances for the display of ornament. One portfolio or album, richly bound in morocco, had nothing now but its binding and its golden clasps to attract the purchaser. It was locked, and the key was gone, but the leaves had all been cut out, with a hasty, and, as I fancied from the broken line of the paper, a trembling hand. It told its own story and the ruin of the house as completely as the richest amongst the objects sacrificed to the mercy of a callous creditor. I fixed on this as the relic I wished to preserve, and I had scarcely a competitor for its purchase. Of the rarer things in this room were a miniature of Madame de Maintenon, ascribed in the catalogue to Petitot, but denounced in my hearing as a copy only, by a

well-known Hebrew curiosity-dealer; a silver-gilt old Italian knife, fork, and spoon, set with turquoises, once the actual property of the lucky widow of Scarron, whose authenticity the Jew did not venture to contest; a ring with a black pearl found in the East by Lord Byron, and given by him to Lady Blessington when so much in her society at Genoa; a gold enamelled vinaigrette, which once had been Napoleon's; a pair of Gondola bracelets set with precious stones, the gift to Lady Blessington of the King of Naples; rings that had belonged to royal dukes, and golden medals scattered at coronations.

From the study I passed into a gallery running through the depth of the house, and with a bed-room on the north side filled with works of art of every description, the most precious being drawings and sketches by Edwin Landseer, Maclise, and other modern English celebrities. To enumerate them all would be impossible in this place, so that the mention of a few must suffice-such, for instance, as the original sketch in sepia of that beautiful picture "The Challenge," by E. Landseer, which went at the sale for twentysix guineas; the portrait of Montaigne, the canine Chancellor, by the same hand, still further immortalized (lucky dog) in the great picture now in the Duke of Devonshire's collection at Chiswick, and fetching in this early state the sum of nineteen guineas; a clever blackbird, in appropriate black chalk, which looked as if it could sing but wouldn't in such a crowd, and afterwards gave itself away out of spite for five guineas; a singular drawing of a Centaur, with the features of Count D'Orsay substituted for those of Nessus, by Lane; some pretty landscapes by E. Landseer, and a spirited sketch by him in pen and ink of the single-stringed wizard Paganini; an etching of a Scotch terrier on its hind legs begging, which according to Landseer's own description was "etched and bit-in in half an hour at Buckingham Palace, and drawn from recollection"-this brought 221.; a wonderfully amusing sketch by Maclise of Count D'Orsay painting the great O'Connell, treated satirically, which sold for ten guineas; a curious book of ornamental sketches by old masters from the antique, for which a Spanish gentleman gave at the sale thirty-four guineas; and finally, two noble portfolios filled with portraits by Count D'Orsay of "the aristocracy and distinguished political and literary characters of the day," a collection which was well worth the 165 guineas which was given for it by a bookseller in Bond-street. These silhouettes

are of a kind never surpassed for accuracy of likeness and delicacy of treatment, and constitute Count D'Orsay's greatest claim to rank high in the artistical world.

In the adyta penetralia of the mansionthe dressing-room and bed-room of Lady Blessington-amidst crowds of costly and beautiful objects, there was one that was interesting from the associations which surrounded it. At the further extremity of the inner apartment the eye was attracted to a superb bedstead, which reflected the rich blue satin hangings and fine muslin curtains with which it was decorated, in a large pier glass let into the wall behind it. The bedstead itself, of white and gold, was richly carved; but it owed its chief value to the fact of its having once belonged to Josephine Beauharnais. Under that canopy the discrowned empress, and repudiated wife, had sighed through many a sleepless night, mourning the loss of him whom love had been unable to bind; and haply foreseeing with prophetic eye the bitter future reserved to avenge her for his misplaced ambition. An upholsterer carried off his bedstead— figuratively-for something short of 201. Of sofas and cheval glasses, tripods, whatnots, commodes, ottomans, étagères, tables of marqueterie, and garde-robes of boule, I shall say nothing; but I cannot pass over a charming toilet-glass in a silver frame, which, in spite of its mounting, was never, I am sure, open to the reproach cast by William Spencer on the silver furniture of the Prince Regent, that it made all the people in the room look like spectres. One thing I noticed in the catalogue, which, in the confusion of the crowded room, I could not discover. It was thus quaintly described: "A curious ancient watch, with enamel revolving star, which, when wound up, plays on the forehead of Madame de Pompadour.' The forehead of the royal favorite has long been laid low in a grave upon which no star has ever shone! I was more successful in getting a glimpse of another singular ornament, shaped like a beetle, of dark green enamel, which, when it fluttered its wings, disclosed a small watch beneath them.

The jewels But no! I should so imperfectly describe what-owing to the throng of ladies-I so imperfectly saw, that it is better to leave the list of them to the reader's imagination.

Had I been a rich man- But this is one of my numberless day-dreams.

And Gore House now is but a dream!

2. IX. Poems. By V. London, 1841.

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"WHAT do you think of Dr. Channing, Mr. Coleridge?" said a brisk young gentleman to the mighty discourser, as he sat next him at a small tea-party. Before entering upon that question, Sir," said Coleridge, opening upon his inquirer those "noticeable gray eyes," with a vague and placid stare, and settling himself in his seat for the night, I must put you in possession of my views, in extenso, on the origin, progress, present condition, and essence of the Unitarian controversy, and especially the conclusions I have come to on the great question of what may be termed the philosophy of religious difference." In like manner, before telling | our readers what we think of "Henry Vaughan, the Silurist," or of "V.," or of 'Henry Ellison, the Bornnatural," or of "E. V. K.," it would have been very pleasant (to ourselves) to have given, in extenso, our views de Re Poetica, its nature, its laws and office, its means and ends; and to have made known how much and how little we agreed and differed on these points from and with such worthies as Aristotle and Plato, Horace and Richard Baxter, Petronius Arbiter and Blaise Pascal, Ulric von Hütten and Boileau, Hurdis and Hurd, Dr. Arnold and Montaigne, Harris of Salisbury and his famous uncle, Burke and "John Buncle," Montesquieu and Sir Philip Sidney, Dr. Johnson and the two Wartons, George Gascoyne and Spenser's friend Gabriel Harvey, Puttenham and Webbe, George Herbert and George Sand, Petrarch and Pinciano, Vida and Julius Cæsar Scaliger, Pontanus and Savage Landor, Leigh Hunt and Quinctilian, or Tacitus (whichever of the two wrote the Dialogue De Oratoribus, in which there is so much of the best of philosophy, criticism,

and expression,) Lords Bacon and Buchan and Dr. Blair, Dugald Stewart and John Dryden, Charles Lamb and Professor Wilson,* Vinet of Lausanne and John Foster, Lord Jeffrey and the two brothers Hare, Drs. Fuller and South, John Milton and Dr. Drake, Dante and Edie Ochiltree," Wordsworth and John Bunyan, Plutarch and Winkelman, the Coleridges, Samuel, Sara, and Hartley, and Sir Egerton Brydges, Victor Cousin and "the Doctor," George Moir and Madame de Staël, Dr. Fracastorius and Professor Keble, Martinus Scriblerus and Sir Thomas Browne, Mr. Macaulay and the Bishop of Cloyne, Collins and Gray and Sir James Mackintosh, Hazlitt and John Ruskin, Shakspeare and Jackson of Exeter, and the six Taylors, Jeremy, William, Isaac, Jane, John Edward, and Henry. We would have had great pleasure in quoting what these famous men and women have written on the essence and the art of poetry-and to have shown how strangely they differ, and how as strangely at times they agree. But as it is not related when our brisk young gentleman got his answer regarding Dr. Channing, so it likewise remains untold what our read

*We wish Professor Wilson would be prevailed on to give to the world, what he has for years given to his class, his Theory of Imagination, as (if we remember rightly) Intellect working under a law of impersonal emotion. We were persuaded, when we heard these Lectures long ago, and have had no reason to alter our opinion by what we have read or thought since, that in them he came nearer to the quick of this beautiful but baffling subject than any one else, ancient or modern. What a delightful book he might make by prefixing these Lectures, and those on Paradise Lost, to his papers on Homer, Spenser and Thomson, with which all the world, from Hallam downwards, was astonished and charmed!