Ten Thousand Things relating to China: with a Synopsis of the Chinese Collection. By W. B. Langdon. THIS work, published by the gentleman who is the curator of the Chinese Collection in London, will be of great utility to those who visit it, and to those who have not the opportunity it will afford some insight into the customs and habits of the most ancient and singular people on the face of the earth. We turned to the account of the Chinese ladies as the first subject of inquiry, and we found (p. 67) that a Chinese lady must not show her hands, which are covered with long sleeves; that her nails must grow very long; that she must have large pendant ears; a slender willow waist; that her natural eyebrows must be removed, and a delicate pencil-line, resembling Lewshoo, must be drawn instead; that her foot must not exceed two inches in length; and that she must paint her face white and red. There is a good account of the "Jugglers "given at p. 77 and following pages. We extract one of their feats :

"A man is armed with an instrument resembling a trident, or what is termed by sailors " grains, to which formidable weapon is attached a long handle of hard wood. The juggler with surprising strength of arm throws his weapon perpendicularly in the air to a great height; as it gains the greatest elevation he measures with a practised eye and wonderful precision the exact spot on which it will fall. To this point he advances step by step; in an instant the weapon descends with fearful velocity, scraping the edges of some protruding part of his person, thus giving proof of a singular daring and successful effort which surpasses in skill even the most celebrated rifle-shots of the hunter of Kentucky.'

The account of a Chinese dinner given by Captain Laplace might excite envy even at the Mansion House (p. 103). The first course consisted of salted earth worms, prepared and dried Japan leather, a darkish skin, hard and tough, with a strong and not GENT. MAG. VOL. XX.

agreeable taste; little balls made of shark's fins; eggs prepared by heat, of which the smell and taste are equally repulsive; immense grubs, crabs, and pounded shrimps, &c. Instead of butter the castor-oil-plant is eaten. The flesh of dogs, rats, cats, and mice, enter into the bill of fare. The larvæ of the sphinx-moth and a grub found in the sugar-cane are much relished, also the flesh of wild horses, the sea-slug, and the paws of bears. The waterbeetle is captured for food, and silkworms are fried in oil. At an imperial feast given to the British embassy, a soup concocted of mare's milk and blood was among the dishes. White cabbage and soy complete the catalogue of this ambrosial fare.

There is a good account of the different teas given by Mr. Davis (p. 230). Pekoe is formed of the early leaf-buds in spring (Pak-hoo, white down), Souchong of the more matured leaves, Congou of still larger, and Bohea is of the last picking. Bohea is the name of a district; Congou, man's labour (Kung-foo); Souchong (smaller scarce sort.) Green teas may be divided into 1. Twankay; 2. Hyson; 3. Gunpowder; 4. Young Hyson. The Hyson Pekoe has never been brought to England on account of its scarcity and high price. The mandarins send it in very small canisters, as presents to their friends. Green tea (p. 233) is not dried in copper, but in pans of cast iron.*

White's History of Selborne. A new Edition with Notes. By Rev. Leonard Jenyns, M.A.

WHEN Mr. White was observing nature and her various productions

* China, in a Series of Views, &c. by T. Allom, esq. and Rev. G. N. Wright, is a beautiful work now in the course of

publication. The scenes are highly interesting, the engravings are finely executed, and the descriptions written with good taste, and in a pleasing and agreeable

manner.

H

with the eye of a scientific naturalist at Selborne, with the exception of Mr. Pennant and Barrington, he had scarcely any companions in his interesting field of inquiry, and he lived remote from the world, in a wild and unfrequented district of northern Hampshire. We are old enough to know those who remembered White in his favourite village taking his regular morning stroll with his gun in his hand, along the hedgerows and coppices and by the beechen hangers, in pursuit of his game; and we ourselves have wandered over the scenes of his pleasing labours, now completely despoiled of many of their former charms. White's volume contains the knowledge of a naturalist delivered in the language of a scholar. It has been deservedly much praised and read, and of late several new editions of it have appeared. There is one by the late Mr. Bennet, which is particularly distinguished for the valuable information on the habits, instincts, &c. of birds, by Hon. and Rev. Mr. Herbert, now Dean of Manchester; and the present, by Mr. Jenyns, will be not less esteemed for the original matter which it contains. Mr. Jenyns has not made his what may be called a variorum edition like the former, but has given White's text, with his occasional notes upon it, adding or commenting as was necessary, and as additional information has been obtained. We gave to our friend Mr. Jesse, a few years since, a list of the birds which had been killed in our neighbourhood on the eastern coast of England (Suffolk), which he inserted in the third volume of his Gleanings; to which we have now to add the honey buzzard, and a most beautiful bird, the Iceland falcon, the colour of the plumage white, with brown spots,-perhaps the only bird of the kind ever shot in England. It probably had been a trained bird, for, only having been winged, it was kept alive some time; and what was curious in his habits was its willingness to be fed by the hand, while it never attempted to feed itself. This bird is now placed in a collection near Beccles. The birds of prey of all kinds are become extremely scarce in this part of England; the larger hawks and the raven no longer seen, the crow and magpie very seldom, and in a few

The Grandeur of the Law; or, the Legal Peers of England, &c. By Edward Foss, Esq.

WE think that Mr. Foss has executed his work with much judgment and good taste. His biographical sketches vary in fullness and length according to the importance of the character delineated, and the materials that were at command. Mr. Foss has shown that impartiality that becomes the historian, and has never suffered either the bias of politics, or the partiality of private feeling, to lead him from the truth. Few persons, we believe, who have not read this work have any conception of the debt which our peerage owes to the profession of the law, and how illustrious are the names recorded of those persons who, having risen to fame and fortune by the arduous toil of legal studies, have united themselves with the oldest nobility of the land. Of the favourable reception of the work we have no doubt whatever; and we think that in his next edition Mr. Foss might without any hazard venture on the extension of his biographical notices, and with advantage give reference to the books, historical or critical, wherein the lives are noticed, or the works reviewed, in the same manner that he has quoted from Dryden in his character of Buckingham. We pencilled the following trifling notes on the margin of our copy:

Pref. p. xi. Was not the H. Philips whom Mr. Foss mentions as the author of the work with a title like his own, called the Grandeur of the Law, the nephew of Milton, and a popular author of the day?

P. 22. Should not Giddy Hall, Essex, be Gidea? It stands about two miles from Romford, on the left of the Colchester road.

P. 30. "The eldest Edward (Bruce) the second Baron having been killed in a duel with Sir Edward Sackville." This was the famous duel that is so well known from the paper in the Guardian on the subject, No. 129 and No. 133.

P. 145. We think there is a trifling mistake in the account of the Lyttleton family. The present Lord is son of William Henry Lord Lyttleton, who came to the title on the death of his half-brother, who died unmarried in 1828. If we are right, grandson should replace son in the text.

P. 198. In the account of Lord Redesdale, it might be noticed that he was returned for Beeralston and East Looe, in the influence of the Duke of Northumberland. This laid probably the foundation of his fortune, which was sustained and improved by his talents and industry. He was a good artist, drew with taste and spirit, and possessed a critical knowledge of pictures. Mr. Foss has not mentioned his controversy with Sir S. Romilly on the subject of the vice-chancellorship.

The Lawyer: his Character and Rule of Life, &c. By Edward O'Brien,

&c.

A WORK written in imitation of Herbert's Country Parson, and deserving praise for its good sense, its sound reasoning, its pleasing imagery, and its finished, though quaint, style of composition. A very well written introduction, signed A. DE V. (Aubrey de Vere) informs us that the author was his friend, that he was the third son of the late Sir Edward O'Brien of Dromeland, that he was born in 1808, was at Trin. Coll. Cambridge, became a member of the Irish bar, and died in 1840 of a fever.

"In the composition of this book (he adds) the author had no thoughts of fame or what is called literary success. His impulse was simply the love of justice; his only motive was the desire to assist others in the performance of their duty. I can truly affirm of this treatise that it is a sincere book. It came from the heart of the author, and embodies his most solemn convictions."

"The style of the following pages, though different from that of the present day, is entirely unaffected. The author's reading lay principally among old books, and he therefore wrote naturally in their manner," &c.

The object of the work (p. 10) is to pourtray in outline the character of the British lawyer; to suggest the motives which should animate him, and the principles which should direct

him in the exercise of his calling. The work will be found as entertaining as instructive, for the author shows great variety of information, and leads the mind of the reader by very luminous and pleasing lines of reasoning, while the pure and lofty spirit in which it is written imparts an increased dignity and importance to the subject.

Sketches of Human Life. By C. E. S. Dering, M.A.

A SPRIGHTLY, sensible, and amusing little volume. Sound observation, entertaining anecdote, with a sprinkling of humour and joke, are no bad materials for a book in these days of ponderous and massive dullness. We beg to refer all those of our married friends, who consider it impossible that any difference of opinion could possibly take place between them and their better-halves, to the story of the blackbird and thrush at p. 62; and, as an inculcation of the virtue of patience, we refer to p. 71, which, not being too long, we shall give.

"One day an old and somewhat humorous friend of mine, travelling in a gig, came to a stand-still (seemingly a hopeless halt) in a narrow lane (of course he was in a hurry) owing to the wilfulness of a carter, who advanced the more resolutely, until their several horses were almost come into contact, the more he angrily desired him not to advance. My friend, to use a favourite term of the present day, was not to be done,' so he took a newspaper and read very patiently as he imagined; but the carter was, to use another peculiar phrase,' wide awake,' and knew, as well as my friend in his heart knew, that his opponent was inwardly boiling with hopeless anger; so, after he had read, or seemed to read, for half an hour, the carter said, ' Sir, when you have done with that paper, will you oblige me by letting me read it?' It is a long lane that has no turning, and this cool impudence showed so much fun in the fellow that it turned away my friend's wrath, and he said 'Well, my hearty, you have got the best of it; you had more patience than I had, so now let us both try, and see how we can manage to pass each other.' Where there's a will there's a way, so matters were arranged, and the travellers parted good friends."

Now for another proof of the virtue of patience.

"I remember a storm on Loch Chorib

in Ireland. To fight through this vast lake in a storm requires patience or you are lost, and become food for the sacred trout, which the people believe were livers and live for ever; at all events, for their lives, they dare not kill them. Now of patience on that evening I saw a remarkable proof, and an instance to which no country but Ireland, probably, could muster a parallel. A poor fisherman, living on the edge of the lake, was alarmed under an impression that this autumn storm would unroof his cabin, and he knew it was unlikely he should ob tain another thatched roof before the impending winter. I have said the Irishman so situated was poor; it is an evil to be poor, but I say he was not poor in invention, and so he proved; for, having divested himself of nearly all his clothing to avoid injury to it from the rain, he awaited very patiently (sitting astride on the roof of his cabin, in order to keep safely the thatched roof thereof) the conclusion of the storm. A truly Irish scheme, but he succeeded in his object. If that was not patience, perhaps another tour in Ireland may teach me what is."

Nature, a Parable; a Poem in seven books. By Rev. J. B. Morris, M.A. THIS has been to us a volume of much interest, but rather from the general spirit, feeling, and doctrine, than for its poetical merits, though we do not think meanly of them, or for the peculiar fitness of the subject for poetical illustration and ornament. The author is master both of poetical language and of rhythmical harmony. His expression and his versification resemble those of Wordsworth, but without direct imitation, and his metre is elegant and harmonious throughout while the poem abounds with beautiful topics, allegorical pictures, and poetical images and resemblances taken from the writings of the Fathers of the Church. The author

says,

"I might not disadvantageously employ my leisure hours in correcting and chastening whatever amount of imaginative tendencies I had myself, by noticing things of the kind in the works of the Fathers. I went to them in this, as in other respects, with a desire to consult them as oracles, not to judge of them as authors."

And then he adds.

"As for a blind reverence for them, I cannot believe that such a thing exists, or

was even talked of, except by such as were either ignorant of their writings, or, with some knowledge of these, made no effort to follow their stern holiness and patient gentleness. The graciousness of our Lord's promises reaches even to the efforts to do his Father's will."

We must add another extract from the preface, which we do, not only because what the author says is in accordance with what we think, but for the far better reason, that this preface gives the key-note to his poem, and unfolds the spirit and purpose in which it is written.

"I hope that whatever defects of style or judgment or doctrine there may be in this work, I have throughout it expressed a conviction that stern living is the way to understand the subjects of which it makes a feeble attempt to treat. If in expressing that conviction, I have any where seemed deficient in gentleness, I have little doubt myself that it is to be attributed to my own want of sternness myself. Of the seeming childishness of some interpretations of Scripture, or other things contained in this book, (if they are taken from the Fathers,) we have no right to form an opinion, until we live the strict lives of the Fathers. And as there are people in England who, one trusts, are moving in that direction, I humbly hope that this book may not be unaccepta ble to such persons. It is addressed to them, and not to other people; and the possession of leisure for studying the Fathers, or the liability to do so as a duty, seems in some measure a call upon one to venture, in spite of one's own great deficiencies, the attempt so to direct one's studies as to supply the wants of people of that description," &c.

For the subject of the poem, the author says,

"The whole of the typical meaning of nature is but a continuation, or rather an instance or illustration, of the subject of Bishop Butler's Analogy, for assuming that the Church system and the system of nature proceeded from the same author; thence arises, upon the principles of that great divine, an immediate probability that there will be a great similarity between the two ** and the theory assumed in this book is that such analogies are not accidental, but designed; and that the Church system will clear up the meaning of nature in the same way that Christianity clears up the meaning of prophecy. Facilius Prophetiæ credas discipulus naturæ,' said Tertullian. The