Sketch-Book,' 1828; Sailors and Saints,' 1829; 'Tales of a Tar,' 1830, Land Sharks and Sea Gulls,' 1838; and other works, by CAPTAIN GLASSCOCK, R. N., are all genuine tales of the sea, and display a hearty comic humour and rich phraseology, with as cordial a contempt for regularity of plot. Captain Glasscock died in 1847. He was one of the inspectors under the Poor Relief Act in Ireland, and in that capacity, as well as in his naval character, was distinguished ly energy and ability.- Rattlin the Reefer,' and 'Outward Bound, or a Merchant's Adventures,' by MR. HOWARD, are better managed as to fable-particularly Outward Bound,' which is a well-constructed tale-but have not the same breath of humour as Captain Glasscock's novels.-The Life of a Sailor' and 'Ben Brace,' by CAPTAIN CHAMIER, are excellent works of the same class, replete with nature, observation, and humour.-'Tom Cringle's Log,' by MICHAEL SCOTT, and The Cruise of the Midge'-both originally published in 'Blackwood's Magazine'-are also veritable productions of the sea-a little coarse, but spirited, and shewing us things as they are.' Mr. Scott, who was a native of Glasgow, spent a considerable part of his life-from 1806 to 1822-in a mercantile situation at Kingston, in Jamaica. He settled in his native city as a merchant, and died there in 1835, aged forty-six.-MR. JAMES HANNAY also added to our nautical sketches. He may, however, be characterised as a critical and miscellaneous writer of scholastic taste and acquirements. Mr. Hannay was a native of Dumfries, a cadet of an old Galloway family, and was born in 1827. He served in the navy for five years-from 1840 to 1845, and was afterwards engaged in literature, writing in various periodicals—including the 'Quarterly and Westminster Reviews,' the Athenæum,' &c.-and he published the following works: Biscuits and Grog,' The Claret Cup.' and 'Hearts are Trumps,' 1848: 'King Dobbs,' 1849; Singleton Fontenoy, 1850; Sketches in Ultramarine,' 1853; Satire and Satirists,' a series of six lectures, 1854; Eustace Conyers,' a novel in three volumes, 1855; &c. Mr. Hannay died at Barcelona (where he resided as British consul), January 8, 1873, in the forty-sixth year of his age. We subjoin from 'Eustace Conyers' a passage descriptive of

Nights at Sea.

Eustace went on deck. A dark night had come on by this time. The ship was tranquilly moving along with a fair wind. Few figures were moving on deck. The officer of the watch stood on the poop. The man at the wheel and quarter-master stood in silence before the binnacle; inside which, in a bright spot of light, which contrasted strongly with the darkness outside, lay the compass, with its round elquent face, full of meaning and expression to the nautical eye. The men of t watch were lying in black heaps, in their sea-jackets, along both sides of the ship's waist. Nothing could be stiller than the whole scene. Eustace scarcely heard t! e ripple of the ship's motion, till he leant over the gangway, and looked out on the sea. Nights like these make a man meditative; and sailors are more serious than is generally supposed; being serious just as they are gay, because they give themselves up to natural impressions more readily than other people. At this moment, the least conventional men now living are probably afloat." If you would know how your an

cestors looked and talked, before towns became Babylonish, or trade despotic, you must go and have a cruise on salt water, for the sea's business is to keep the earth fresh; and it preserves character as it preserves meat. Our Frogley Foxes and l'earl Studdses are exceptions; the results of changed times, which have brought the navy into closer relation with the shore than it was in old days; and sprinkled it with the denizens of other regions. Our object is to shew how the character of the sailor born is affected by contact with the results of modern ages. Can we retain the spirit of Benbow minus that pigtail to which elegant gentlemen have a natural objection? Can we be at once polished, yet free from what the newspapers call 'juvenile extravagance?' Such is our ambition for Eustace. Still, we know that Pearl Studs would go into action as cheerfully as any man, and fears less any foe's face than the banner of Levy, and we must do him no injustice.

Such nights, then, Eustace a'ready felt as fruitful in thought. If he had been pining for a little more activity, if he had drooped under the influence of particular kinds of talk, a quiet muse on deck refreshed him. The sea regains all its natural power over the spirit, when the human life of the ship is hushed. In the presence of its grand old familiar majesty you forget trouble and care little for wit. Hence, the talk of the middle watch, which occupies the very heart of the night from twelve to four, in the most serious, the deepest, the tenderest. the most confidential of the twenty-four hours; and by keeping the middle with a man, you learn him more intimately than you would in any other way. Even Studds in the middle watch. at least after thewatch-stock.' or refreshment, was disposed of, grew a somewhat different man. A certain epicurean melancholy came over the spirit of Studds, like moonlight falling on a banquet-table after the lamps are ont! By Jove. sir,' he would sigh, speaking of the hollowness of life generally; and was even heard to give tender reminiscences of one Eleanor' whose fortune would probably have pleased him as much as her beauty, had not both been transferred in matrimony to the possession of a Major Jones.

Hannay was very profuse, and often very happy, in similes, a few of which we subjoin.

Detached Similes.

Many a high spirit, which danger, and hardship, and absence from home could never turn from its aims, has shrunk from the chill thrown on its romantic enthusiasm. The ruder the hand, the more readily it brushes away the fine and delicate bloom from the grape. And the bloom of character is that light enthusiasm which makes men love their work for the beauty in it-which is the essence of excellence in every pursuit carried on in this world.

From nil admirari to worldly ambition is only a short step. It is an exchange of passive selfishness for active selfishness-that's all.

CONSISTENCY.-There may be consistency and yet change. Look at a growing tree, how that changes! But for regular consistency, there's nothing like a broomstick; for it never puts out a fresh leaf.

There were signs of energy about the boy, which on a small scale predicted power. Mr. Conyers studied them, as Watt studied the hissing of a tea-kettle, descrying far off the steam-engine.

Could he place him but safely under the influence of one of the leading ambitions of kind? A ship goes along so merrily with a trade-wind.

A party is like a mermaid; the head and face may enchant and attract you, and yet in a moment you shall be frightened off by a wag of the cold, scaly, and slimy tail.

(Of Sir W. Scott.) We do not hear so much of him as his contemporaries did, of cour e; but just as we don't have any longer yesterday's rain, which is the life of to-day's vegetation.

(Of Thackerary's poetical vein.) He was not essentially poetical, as Tennyson, for instance, is. Poetry was not the predominant mood of his mind. or the Intellectual law by which the objects of his thought and observations were arranged and classified. But inside his fine sagacions common-sense understanding there was, so to speak, a pool of poetry-like the impluvium in the hall of a Roman house,

which gave an air of coolness, and freshness, and nature, to the solid marble columns and tesselated floor.

MRS. CATHERINE GRACE FRANCES GORE.

This lady (1799-861) was a clever and prolific writer of tales and fashionable novels. Her first work, Theresa Marchmont,' was published in 1823; her next was a small volume containing two tales, The Lettre de Cachet' and 'The Reign of Terror,' 1827. One of these relates to the times of Louis XIV., and the other to the French Revolution. They are both interesting, graceful tales-superior, we think, to some of the more elaborate and extensive fictions of the authoress. A series of Hungarian Tales' succeeded. In 1830 appeared Women as they Are, or the Manners of the Day,' three volumes an easy, sparkling narrative, with correct pictures of modern society; much lady-like writing on dress and fashion; and some rather misplaced derision or contempt for excellent wives' and 'good sort of men' This novel soon went through a second edition; and Mrs. Gore continued the same style of fashionable portraiture. In 1831, she issued Mothers and Daughters, a Tale of the Year 1830.' Here the manners of gay life-balls, dinners, and fêtes-with clever sketches of character and amusing dialogues, make up the customary three volumes. The same year we find Mrs. Gore compiling a series of narratives for youth, entitled The Historical Traveller.' In 1832 she came forward with The Fair of May Fair,' a series of fashionable tales, that were not so well received. The critics hinted that Mrs. Gore had exhausted her stock of observation; and we believe she went to reside in France, where she continued some years. Her next tale was entitled Mrs. Armytage,' which appeared in 1836; and in the following year came out Mary Raymond' and Memoirs of a Peeress. In 1838, The Diary of a Desennuyee,' The Woman of the World,' The Heir of Selwood,' and The Book of Roses, or Rose-fancier's Manual,' a delightful little work on the history of the rose, its propagation and culture. France is celebrated for its rich varieties of the queen of flowers, and Mrs. Gore availed herself of the taste and experience of the French floriculturists. Mrs. Gore long continued to furnish one or two novels a year. She had seen much of the world both at home and abroad, and was never at a loss for character or incident. The worst of her works must be pronounced clever. Their chief value consists in their lively caustic pictures of fashionable and high society. Besides her long array of regular novels, Mrs. Gore contributed short tales and sketches to the periodicals, and was perhaps unparalleled for fertility. All her works were welcome to the circulating libraries. They are mostly of the same class-all pictures of existing life and manners; but the want of genuine feeling, of passion and simplicity, in her living models, and the endless frivolities of their occupations and pursuits, make us sometimes take leave of Mrs. Gore's fashionable triflers in the temper with which Goldsmith parted from Beau Tibbs-The

company of fools may at first make us smile, but at last never fails of rendering us melancholy.'

Mrs. Gore was a native of East Retford, Nottinghamshire, daughter of Mr. Moody, a wine-merchant of that town. In 1823 she was married to Captain C. A. Gore, by whom she had two children, a son and daughter; the latter married, in 1853, to Lord Edward Thynne.

Character of a Prudent Worldly Lady.-From 'Women as they Are.'

Lady Lilfield was a thoroughly worldly woman-a worthy scion of the Mordaunt stock. She had profess diy accepted the hand of Sir Robert because a connection with him was the best that happened to present itself in the first year of her début the best match' to be had at a season's warning! She knew that she had been brought out with the view to dancing at a certain number of balis, refusing a certain number of good offers, and accepting a better one, somewhere between the months of January and Jane; and she regarded it as a propitious dispensation of Providence to her parents and to herself, that the comparative proved a superlative-even a highsherift of the county, a baronet of respectable date, with ten thousand a year! She felt that her duty towards herself necessitated an immediate acceptance of the dullest good sort of man' extant throughout the three kingdoms; and the whole routine of her after-life was regulated by the same rigid code of moral selfishness. She was penetrated with a most exact sense of what was due to her position in the world; but she was equally precise in her appreciation of all that, in her turn, she owed to society; nor, ironi her youth upwards

Content to dwell in decencies for ever

bad she been detected in the slightest infraction of these minor social duties. She knew with the utmost accuracy of domestic arithmetic-to the fraction of a course or an entrée-the number of dinners which Beech Park was indebted to its neighbourhood-the complement of laundry-maids indisp nsable to the maintenance of its county dignity-the aggregate of pines by which it must retain its horticultural precedence. She had never retarded by a day or an hour the arrival of the fami y-couch in Grosvenor Square at the exact noment creditable to Sir Robert's senatorial punctuality; nor procrastinated by half a second the simultaneous bobs of her ostentatious Sunday school, as she sailed majestically along the aisle towards her tall. stately, pharisaical, squire-archical pew. True to the execution of her tasks-and her whole life was but one laborious task-true and exact as the great bell of the Beech Park turret-clock. she was enchanted with the monotonous music of her own cold iron tongue proclaiming herself the best of wives and mothers, because Sir Robert's rent-roll couid afford to command the services of a first-rate steward, and butler, and housekeeper, and thus insure a well-ordered household; and because her seven substantial children were duly drilled through a daily portion of rice-pudding and spelling-book, and an annual distribution of mumps and measles! All went well at Beech Park; for Lady Lilfield was the excellent wife' of 'a good sort of man!

So bright an example of domestic merit-and what country neighbourhood cannot boast of its duplicate?-was naturally superior to seeking its pleasures in the vapid and varying novelties of modern fashion. The habits of Beech Park still affected the dignified and primeval purity of the departed century. Lady Lilfield remained true to her annual eight rural months of the county of Durham: against whoso claims Kemp Town pleaded, and Spa and Baden bubbled in vain. During her pastoral seclusion, by a careful distribution of her stores of gossiping, she contrived to prose, in undetected tautology, to successive detachments of an extensive neighbourhood, concerning her London importance-her court dress -her dinner parties-and her refusal to visit the Duchess of; while, during the reign of her London importance, she made it equally her duty to bore her select visiting list with the history of the new Beech Park school-house-of the Beech Park double dahlias-and of the Beech Park privilege of uniting, in an aristocratic dinner-party, the abhorrent heads of the rival political factions-the Bianchi e Neri-the houses of Montague and Capulet of the county palatine of Durham. By such minute sections of the wide chapter of colloquial boredom. Lady Lilifield acquired the character of being a very charming

woman throughout her respectable clan of dinner-giving baronets and their wives; but the reputation of a very miracle of prosiness among those

Men of the world who know the world like men.

She was but a weed in the nobler field of society.

Exclusive London Life.

A squirrel in a cage, which pursues its monotonous round from summer to summer, as though it had forgotten the gay green-wood and glorious air of liberty, is not condemned to a n.ore monotonous existence than the fashiouable world in the unvarying routine of its amusements; and when a Loudon beauty expands into ecstasies concerning the delights of London to some country neighbour on a foggy autumn cay, vaguely alluding to the countless' pleasures and diversified' anusements of London, the country neighbour may he assured that the truth is not in her. Nothing can be more minutely monotonous than the recreations of the really fashionatie; monotony being, in fact, essential to that distinction. Tigers may amuse themselves in a thousand irregular diverting ways; but the career of a genuine exclusive is one to which a mid-horse would scarcely look for relief. London houses, London establishments, are formed after the same unvarying model. At the fifty or sixty balls to which she is to be indebted for the excitement of her season, the fine lady listens to the same band, is refreshed from a buffet prepared by the same skill, looks at the same diamonds, hears the same trivial observations; and but for an incident or two, the growth of her own follies, might find it difficult to point out the slightest difference between the fete of the countess on the first of June and that of the marquis on the first of July. But though twenty seasons' experience of these desolating facts might be expected to damp the odour of certain dowagers and dandies who are to be found hurrying along the golden railroad year after year, it is not wonderful that the young girls their daughters should be easily allur d from their dull schoolrooms by fallacious promises of pleasure.

MRS. FRANCES TROLLOPE.

Another keen observer and caustic delineator of modern manners, MRS. FRANCES TROLLOPE, was the authoress of a long series of fictions. This lady had nearly reached her fiftieth year before she entered on that literary career which proved so prolific and distinguished. She first came before the public in 1832, when her Domestic Manners of the Americans' appeared, and excited great attention. The work was the result of three years' residence and travels in the United States, commencing in 1829. Previous to this period, Mrs. Trollope had resided at Harrow. She drew so severe a picture of American faults and foibles-of their want of delicacy, their affectations, drinking, coarse selfishness, and ridiculous peculiarities-that the whole nation was incensed at their English satirist. There is much exaggeration in Mrs. Trollope's sketches; but having truth for their foundation, her book is supposed to have had some effect in reforming the minor morals' and social habits of the Americans. The same year our authoress continued her satiric portra ts, in a novel entitled The Refugee in America,' marked by the same traits as her former work, but exhibiting little art or talent in the construction of a fable. Mrs. Trollope now tried new ground. In 1833, she published The Abbess,' a novel; and in the following year, Belgium and Western Germany in 1833,' coun tries where she found much more to gratify and interest her than in America, and where she travelled in generally good-humour. The