A LIBRARY! What laborious days, what watchings by the midnight lamp, what rackings of the brain, what hopes and fears, what long lives of laborious study, are here sublimised into print, and condensed into the narrow compass of these surrounding shelves!-HORACE SMITH. sundry other members of the bas bleu met, and prevailed upon Mrs. Siddons to be of the party. Their object was to examine her, and to get from her the secret how she I could act with such wonderful effect. Mrs. Montagu was deputed to be the prolocutress of this female convocation. Pray, madam,' said she to Mrs. Siddons, addressing her in the most formal manner, 'give me leave to interrogate you, and to request you will tell us, without duplicity or mental reservation, upon what principle you conduct your dramatic demeanour. Is your mode of acting, by which you obtain so much celebrity, the result of certain studied principles of art? Have you investigated, with profound research, the rules of elocution and gesture, as laid down by the ancients and moderns, and reduced them to practice? or do you suffer Nature to predominate, and only speak the untutored language of the passions?' 'Ladies,' said the modern Thalia, with great diffidence, but without hesitation, 'I do not know how to answer so learned a speech. All I know of the matter, and all I can tell you is, that I always act as well as 1 can.' Taylor says, 'My best pun was that which I made to Sheridan, who married a Miss Ogle. We were supping together at the Shakespeare, when, the conversation turning on Garrick, I asked him which of his performances he thought the best. 'O,' said he, 'the Lear, the Lear.' 'No wonder,' said I, 'you were fond of a Leer when you married an Ogle.' Scottish Anecdotes. · well-known Free Church minister, he remarked, in his usual pleasant way, 'I hear, Mr. M., you are about to join the Church of Scotland.' man of God forbid,' said the zealous Free Churchman. 'Well, sir,' rejoined the Doctor, that was what I said myself when I heard of it.' A GRAND old Scottish figure has recently disappeared-Dr. John Macleod of Morven, familiarly known as 'the High Priest of Morven.' He was a 'imposing presence and of noble utterance in the Gaelic language; a Highland chieftain among divines.' His father was minister of Morven before him, and occupied for about half a century the manse in which his son afterwards lived for nearly sixty years. In Dr. Macleod the Established Church of Scotland has lost the oldest and one of the most remarkable of her sons. He was a true Highlander, and in conversation displayed a quick and ready power of repartee. It is told of him that, meeting a The old Scottish hearers were very particular on the subject of their ministers preaching old sermons; and to repeat a discourse which they could recollect was always made a subject of animadversion by those who heard it. A beadle, who was a good deal of a wit in his way, gave a sly hit in his pretended defence of his minis A GOOD jest in time of misfortune is food and drink. It is strength to the arm, digestion to the stomach, and courage to the heart. A prosperous man can afford to be melancholy; but if the miserable are so, they are worse than dead-it is sure to kill them.-ANON. ter on the question. As they were proceeding from church, the minister observed the beadle had been laughing as if he had triumphed over some of his parishioners with whom he had been in conversation. On asking the cause of this, he The Humours of FASHIONABLE Beauties. The professional beauty' is no new feature of the London season; and though photography has no doubt done much to give publicity to the charms of the loveliest women in the ranks of fashion, yet in the days of our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers the reigning belles excited just as much vulgar curiosity and gossip as they do now. Take, for example, the Gunnings, Maria and Elizabeth, who appeared at the Court of George II., one at the age of eighteen and the other of nineteen, and both without a shilling to their dowry. They are declared,' writes Walpole, to be the handsomest women alive; they can't walk in the park or go to Vauxhall but such crowds follow them that they are generally driven away.' One day they went to see Hampton Court; as they were going into the Beauty Room another party arrived; the housekeeper, in a state of great excitement, said to the newcomers, 'This way, ladies, here are the famous beauties!' The Misses Gunning thereupon flew into a passion, and asked her what she meant; they went to see the palace, and not to be shown as a sight themselves. The youngest of the two sisters a received for answer, 'Indeed, sir, they were saying ye had preached an auld sermon to day, but I tackled them; for I tauld them it was no' an auld sermon, for the minister had preached it no' sax months syne.' London Season. became the wife of James, Duke of Hamilton; he fell in love with her at a masquerade, and a fortnight later met her at an assembly in Lord Chesterfield's gorgeous new house in Mayfair. His Grace was so enamoured of the lovely Elizabeth that he left the faro-table, where he had staked a thousand guineas, and let the game slide' whilst he paid devoted court to his enchantress. Two nights later, at half an hour past midnight, they were married by Dr. Keith with the ring of a bedcurtain in Mayfair Chapel, one of the most hasty and eccentric marriages on record. In less than three weeks Maria Gunning followed her sister's example, and was wedded to Lord Coventry, though not with such indecent haste as in the other case. The two beauties were even greater objects of popular curiosity after their marriages than before. When the Duchess of Hamilton was presented, the crowd at the Drawing-room was so great that even noble persons' clambered upon chairs and tables to look at her; whilst mobs gathered round the doors of the two 'goddesses' to see them get into their sedanchairs; and such crowds flocked to see the Duchess when she went to her castle that 700 persons sat up HERE are three classes of readers: some enjoy without there are who judge while they enjoy, and enjoy while they judge. The latter class reproduces the work of art on which it is engaged. Its numbers are very small.-Goethe. all night in a Yorkshire town in order to see her start in her postchaise the next morning! 6 Lady Coventry was equally run after at Worcester a shoemaker made two guineas and a half by showing, at a penny a head, the shoe which he was making for the Countess. She had, however, little but her beauty to recommend her; it was she who made the singularly maladroit remark to his Majesty that the one sight she longed to see was a coronation. Her husband, who was a sensible man in many respects, though somewhat of a bear in manners, objected strongly to her ladyship's excessive use of red and white powders and paints; and once at a large dinner party, suspecting that she had been making herself up,' he chased his wife round the table till he caught her, when, before all the company, he scrubbed her face with a napkin. When Lady Coventry visited Paris she expected that her beauty would meet with the applause which had followed her and her sister through England; but she was put to flight by an English lady, still more lovely in the eyes of the Parisians. A certain Mrs. Pitt took a box at the opera opposite the Countess, and was so much handsomer than her ladyship that the parterre cried out that this was the real English angel; whereupon Lady Coventry quitted Paris in a huff. Not long afterwards she died of consumption, accelerated, it was said, by the red and white paint with which she plastered those luckless charms of hers. FREAKS OF FASHION. But before we blame poor Maria, Countess of Coventry, for thus ruining her natural charms, we must bear in mind that all fashionable female Europe at that time beplastered itself with white, and raddled itself with red. Ladies wore periwigs, too. 'Lord, Mrs. White, have you been ill that you have shaved your head!' exclaimed Walpole in amazement to a lady whom he met at a ball, and then proceeds to explain: 'Mrs. White, in all the days of my acquaintance with her, had a professed head of red hair; to-day she had not hair at all. Before and at a distance above her ears I discerned a smart brown bob, from beneath which had escaped some long strings of original scarlet.' Nevertheless, that a lady's head of natural hair was of considerable value to her in those days will be gathered from the following anecdotes : The Countess of Suffolk had married Mr. Howard, and they were both so poor that they took a resolution of going to Hanover, before the death of Queen Anne, in order to pay their court to the future Royal Family. Such was their poverty that, having some friends to dinner, and being disappointed of a full remittance, the Countess was forced to sell her hair to furnish the entertainment. Long wigs were then in fashion, and the Countess's hair being long, fine, and fair, produced her twenty pounds. The Countess's hair, however, appears to have been exceeded in value by that of an Oxfordshire I LOVE to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking I am reading. I cannot sit and think; books think for me. I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low.-CHARLES LAMB. lass, of whom we find the follow- unless her friends could advance fifty pounds for her portion, which, they being incapable of doing, the lass came to this city to try her fortune, where she met with a good chapman in the Strand, who made a purchase of her hair, which was delicately long and light, and gave her sixty pounds for it, being twenty ounces, at three pounds an ounce, with which money she joyfully returned into the country, and bought her a husband.' Even the hair of this Oxfordshire lass is rivalled by that of an old lady who died in 1720, whose long gray tresses are said, in the journals of that period, to have been sold to a periwig-maker for fifty pounds. One of the principal charms of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, by the way, was a prodigious abundance of fine hair. One day, at her toilet, in a fit of anger, to spite her husband, the famous warrior, she cut off her magnificent tresses and flung them in his face, when he coolly retorted, I thank you, madam, for presenting me with materials for an excellent new periwig.' To no person was the improved appearance in female costume during the reign of George III. so much indebted as to Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire, who, on her first presentation at Court, was denominated the 'new grace.' At this period the rage for dress was more prevalent than at present, though it took a different direction. It is true that we had abolished the starched ruff, the stiff brocade, and the high-crested battlements that literally served for a breastwork, and rendered beauty at the Court of the Tudors like a maiden fortification; yet we then had distortions and extravagances in female costume which were equally unnatural and ridiculous. No sooner, however, did the Duchess of Devonshire appear in the world of fashion than simplicity began to prevail; and although Addison says, 'There is not so variable a thing in Nature as a lady's headdress,' yet, had he lived in our days, he would have seen how the exuberance of ornament has been gradually curtailed, until a modern head-dress has been at length made to affect all the simplicity of the ancient statues. The fashions were now set by this lady: the apron, the gown, and the cap in vogue were all Devonshire, being closely copied from those worn, or supposed to be worn, by the Duchess. The bell-hoop and the apparatus of whalebone which had continued from the age of the Stuarts to that of George III., and which were so injurious to health, were abolished; the female form became less encumbered, and consequently more natural and more elegant. WIT IT loses its respect with the good when seen in company with malice; and to smile at the jest which plants a thorn in another's breast is to become a principal in the mischief.-SHERIDAN. A Few Lines from the American Minister at the Court of St. James's. I'VE thought very often 'twould be a good thing Were set off by itself, like the seas from the dry lands, And filled with such books as could never be read Save by readers of proofs, forced to do it for bread,- J. R. LOWELL. Freshening up the Court. AN artful juryman, addressing the clerk of the court while the latter was administering the oath, said, 'Speak up; I cannot hear what you say.' 'Stop,' said Baron Alderson from the bench. 'Are you deaf?' Yes, my lord, of one ear.' Then you may leave the box; for it is necessary that jury. men should hear both sides.' Maule. I wish, sir,' interrupted the judge, you would put your facts in some order; chronological order is the best, but I am not particular. Any order you likealphabetical order.' Henry Erskine, pleading before Lord Thurlow, had to speak of a certain curator, and gave the Scotch pronunciation of the word, with the accent on the first syllable. 'Pardon me, sir,' said Thurlow; we pronounce the word curator in England, following the analogy of the Latin language, in which the penultimate syllable is long.' 'I thank you, my lord,' replied Erskine; and I bow at once to the authority of a senātor so learned and an orator so eloquent as your lordship.' The following is a specimen of Sir W. Maule's way of addressing a jury: Gentlemen, the learned counsel is perfectly right in his law. There is some evidence upon that point. But he is a lawyer |