gardens of Mexico. The flower and the leaf you admire to-day, are replaced to-morrow by fresh buds and renewed verdure. Sickness in Vera Cruz is great, and most fatal in its results, especially vomits. There are two influences at work to counteract the pestilent influence, and prevent the additional power of dirty streets in spreading malady, the zopilotes or turkey-buzzards, and the galley slaves, who both act as scavengers. To kill a zopilote is a high crime; they are under the protection of the laws, and walk the streets with the utmost nonchalance. One relief against the pressing urgencies of poverty in the capital is the Monte Pio, or national pawnbroker establishment. It is situated in the great square, occupying the building known as the palace of Cortes, said to be erected on the ruins of the ancient palace of Montezuma. This is a most beneficent institution, and was founded in 1775 by the Conde de Regla, at a cost of 300,000 dollars. Since that time, it has been carefully administered by government, and affords succour daily to more than two hundred persons. It is ruled by a general board of directors, and receives pledges of clothes, jewels, plate, and every species of valuables. These articles are appraised at a fair valuation, the amount of which, deducting the interest, is paid to the pawner; they are then retained for six months, during which the owner can redeem them; but if the money be unrefunded at the expiration of that period, the pledges are disposed of by public sale; and should they produce anything over the valuation, the difference is handed to the owner. During the revolutionary difficulties of Mexico, this institution has saved many from disgrace and misery, 2,232,611 persons having availed themselves of it; 31,674,702 dollars* (besides 134,740 dollars given in alms) had been loaned up to 1836; and in 1837, the sum of 477,772 dollars was spent in aiding the distresses of the poor. A walk through the extensive apartments of the Monte Pio tells a tale concerning the rank and variety of persons who avail themselves of its services, which would be anything but pleasant to some even of the noble families in Mexico. You will find every species of garment, from the tattered reboso of the lepero to the lace mantilla of the high-born lady; every species of dress, from the blanket of the beggar to the military cloak and jeweled sword of the improvident or impoverished officer; and as to jewels, the choice is infinite. In the immediate neighbourhood of this building is the Accordada, or common prison, in front of which, on an inclined plain, are laid the dead bodies found daily within the limits of the city; within are the living. 'Passing through several iron and wood-barred gates, you enter a lofty corridor, running round a quadrangular courtyard, in the centre of which is a fountain of troubled water. The whole of this area is filled with human beings-the great congress of Mexican crime, mixed and mingling like a hill of busy ants. Some are stripped and bathing in the fountain, some fighting in a corner, some making baskets. In one place, a crowd is collected round a witty story-teller relating the adventures of his rascally life; in another, a group is engaged in weaving with a hand-loom. Robbers, murderers, thieves, felons of every description, are crammed within this courtyard.' A brief glance at the statistics of crime for the year 1842 in the city of Mexico, will account for the crowded state of the prison. For bigamy, and more heinous crimes consequent on incontinence, 491, of which 179 were women; robbery, 1970, of which 470 were women; quarrelling and wounding, 3233, of which 1104 were women; quarrelling, bearing arms, 1056, of which 444 were women; homicide attempted, &c. 87, of which 17 were women; violence, &c. 86, of which 17 were women; forgery, 8, of which one was a woman; gambling, 3 men; besides for higher crimes, 1927. Further numbers were committed for throwing vitriol; 113 dead bodies were found, 894 sent The Mexican dollar varies in value from 4s. to 4s. 4d. to the hospital, and 17 executed by the garotte;* in all, 8861, an amount of crime, with a population of 200,000, almost unparalleled. Smoking is the constant practice of all classes and sexes. The ladies of highest rank take their little aromatic cigaritto, and use it in a peculiarly graceful manner, if anything so unfeminine can in any way appear graceful. When on a morning visit, if you are a particular favourite, the lady of the house, who indulges in the weed, will take a delicate one from her golden stui, light it, touch it with her lips, and present it to you. It is, however, an almost universal custom in Spanish and Portuguese America, and Stephens relates many amusing instances of it in his several productions. The great amusement of the Mexicans is the play, the excessive indulgence in which amusement makes the women live too much abroad, and is injurious to their habits: the dull morning at home is succeeded by an evening drive, and then again by the regular visit to the opera or theatre, where they hear the saine things over and over again. Were the entertainments of an intellectual character, less harm would arise; but the taste is all for comedy, or domestic tragedy of the Newgate school. The boxes are usually let by the month or year, and are filled by the families in full dress every evening, who there receive their friends. The pit seats are arm-chairs, which are also rented by the month. The music-a science in which, both in taste and execution, the Mexicans excel-is far better than the acting. Without the least knowledge of music as a science, the common people are still fond of carolling the little airs of the country in chorus, and have ears exquisitely correct in singing the different parts. Frequently, while upon the road, the Mexican prisoners or volunteers may be heard giving their native songs with pleasing effect. The different voices, from the highest falsetto to the deepest bass, were many of them of the purest and softest quality, and blended together with a harmony at once musical and soothing. Bull-fights-the great amusement of the descendants from the Spanish conquerors-still occasionally take place in the Plaza de Icroz, an immense circus, erected when this sport was in its palmy days in Mexico, and are usually given on Sunday, when the people are quite unoccupied. This is about one of the most savage of all the amusements which have ever been devised. When the Romans had exhausted the whole round of natural excitement, they invented the circus, which tended as much as anything to brutalise and degrade that falling empire. In Mexico, the results are most demoralising; not more so, however, than the national taste for gambling, a vice in which all classes indulge. The feast of St Augustin, at San Augustin, is the signal for a great day of gambling. There are humble booths where small copper coins only are played; next for copper medios and reals; next for copper and dollars; then banks for silver alone; then for silver and gold; and lastly for gold alone. All the banks save one lost on the occasion of Meyer's visit; and the gains of the lucky corporation must have been immense, as at one time it lost 2000 doubloons, equal to about L.8000. The cockpit follows, where ladies of the highest respectability appear, their great object being to outshine each other in the splendour and variety of their garments. The rage is to have one dress for mass, one for the cockpit, one for the afternoon ball, and the other for the evening one on the occasion of the féte above alluded to. The cocks were placed in the centre of the pit, within the ring, the president's fowls being there generally first put on the earth. They were then thrown off for a spring at each other, and taken up again before the betting began. Brokers went round, proclaiming the amount placed in their hands to bet on any particular fowl. Whenever a bet was offered against Santa *The culprit is seated in a chair, and his neck placed in an iron collar, which may be turned by a screw; a sudden turn drives a spike through the spinal marrow, and life is extinct.-See Meyer's Mexico. London: Wiley and Putnam. Anna's bird, the broker was called to his box, and an aide covered it. Besides these bets, the general usually had some standing ones agreed on beforehand with the owners of other cocks; and in this manner five or six thousand dollars were lost or won by him in the pit daily.' The amusements of the humbler classes in the rural districts-consisting chiefly in fandangoes or balls, where the elders look on while the young people dance, laugh, and enjoy themselves-are somewhat more rational and humanising than those which delight the heads and rulers of a nation which has very far yet to advance to lay even a primary claim to be rated among the civilised lands of the earth. RIDING THE STANG. About noon, when labour daily and usually refreshes itself, an uncommon stir was observable among the lower classes of the town population-something like what precedes the swarming of a bee-hive. By and by appearances took a more definite form, and a number of women and children were seen crowding together, shouting and clamouring, and rattling with sticks and pans, and, in short, raising a most intolerable din; in the midst of which, the name of one obnoxious individual was ominously heard. The characteristics of a Scotch mob are pretty generally known, before and since the fate of Captain Porteous. They are furious and formidable; and when once the passions of a generally calm and prudent race are excited, be it to lower the price of meal, or to carry any other popular purpose, it requires no small force to resist or modify the impulse. On the present occasion, rough-looking men began to mix with the screeching multitude, and soon were visible a stout posse of them, armed with a pitchfork. The idea that murder was about to be committed thrilled the blood of the uninformed spectators, and their terror increased when they witnessed a fierce assault made on a low tenement inhabited by the person (a shoemaker) so dreadfully denounced, who had barely time to lock and barricade himself from the threatened vengeance. In vain. The windows and doors were smashed and battered in, and a violent tumult took place in the interior. Within two minutes the culprit was dragged out, pale and trembling, and supplicating for mercy. But he had shown little to his wretched partner, who, with a blackened eye, weeping bitterly, and also begging them to spare her unworthy spouse, who she was sure would never strike her again, joined her pitiful intreaties to his. The ministers of public justice were inexorable his sentence was pronounced, his doom sealed. The portentous pitchfork was immediately laid horizontally from the shoulder of one to the shoulder of another of the ablest of the executioners, who thus stood, front and rear, with the stang (the shaft) between them. Upon this narrowbacked horse the offender was lifted by others, and held on by supporters on either side, so that dismounting was completely out of the question; and there he sat elevated above the rest, in his most uncomfortable and unenviable wooden saddle. The air rung with yells of triumph and vituperation. Very slight arrangements were necessary, and the procession moved on. The wife, surrounded by a party of her gossips, was compelled to accompany it; and it bent its course toward the river side. The unmanly fellow who had provoked this fate, showed by his terrors that he was just one of those cowards who could ill-treat the creature who had a right to his protection, and had not fortitude to endure an evil himself. He howled for compassion, appealed by name to his indignant escort, and prayed and promised; but they got to the brink of that clear and deep pool which mirrored the glittering sun above the mill wear (or cauld, Scottice), and there the bearers marched boldly in before they tumbled their burden from his uncasy seat. Into the water he went over head and ears, and rose again, by no means 'like a giant refreshed ;' and no sooner did he reappear, than a powerful grasp was laid upon him, and down again he was plunged, and replunged, with unrelenting perseverance. The screams of his distracted wife fortunately attracted the attention of a magistrate (my revered where this scene was enacting, and he hastened to interfather) whose garden shelved to the edge of the stream fere. Had he not done so, life might probably have been lost; for the ruffian was execrated by his fellow-men for his continued abuse of late a pretty, sweet, and healthful maiden, now a pale-faced, bruised, and sickly matron, and one too of meck and unresisting temper, suffering cruelly without offence. As it was, the populace listened to the magistrate's voice, for he was much beloved by them; and giving the rascal one dash more, allowed him to crawl to the bank of the silver, now polluted, Tweed. From thence he was hooted the whole way to his home; and so salutary was the effect of the day's proceedings on the half-drowned rát, that he never more misbehaved in such a manner as to render himself liable to ride the stang.-Archæological Album. THE SONG OF THE SPADE ALL honour be paid to the homely spade- A bright thought from heaven to the tiller was given, MAGNANIMITY. J.G. In Germany, during the war, a captain of cavalry was ordered out upon a foraging expedition. He put himself at the head of his troop, and marched to the quarter assigned him. It was a solitary valley, in which hardly anything but wood was to be perceived. Finding in the midst of it a small cottage, he approached and knocked at with a beard silvered by age. the door, which was opened by an old and venerable man, 'Father,' said the officer, 'show me a field where I may set my troop to foraging." The old man complied, and conducting them out of the valley, after a quarter of an hour's march came to a fine field of barley. Here is what we are in search of,' exclaimed the captain; father, you are a true and faithful guide.' 'Wait yet a few minutes,' replied the old man ; 'follow me patiently a little further.' The march was accordingly resumed, and at the distance of a mile they arrived at another field of barley. The troop immediately alighted, cut down the grain, trussed it, and remounted. The officer thereupon said to his conductor, 'Father, you have given yourself and us unnecessary trouble; the first field was far better than this. Very true, sir,' replied the good old man, but it was not mine.St Pierre The present number of the Journal completes the third volume (new series), for which a title-page and index have been prepared, and may be had of the publishers and their agents. END OF THIRD VOLUME. Printed and Published by W. and R. CHAMBERS, Edinburgh. Sold by W. S. ORR, Amen Corner, London. JOURNAL CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c. No. 79. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, JULY 5, 1845. PERSISTENCY OF FAMILY FEATURES. It is well known that personal peculiarities of all kinds, defects as well as beauties, casts of features, and traits of expression, are transmitted from parents to their children. The fact stares us in the face whenever we enter a family parlour, for there it is invariably seen that the young people bear a resemblance in one respect or another to either their father or mother, or to both. This is a subject which has never, as far as we are aware, been honoured with more than a transient notice at the hands of the learned; yet it might be worthy of philosophical investigation. We merely propose, in this place, to illustrate it by a few facts which we have picked up either from personal observation, or from books. PRICE 1d. grandmothers, notwithstanding that, in one or two exist, their union may be held as even more decisively condemned by nature, than is that between brothers and sisters who are not observably alike. Sometimes the reproduction of face and figure in the child seems almost perfect. Sometimes face is borrowed from one parent, and form of head, or of body, or of some of the limbs, from the other. Occasionally, there is a remarkable blending of the two throughout the whole, or parts of the person. Even peculiarities in the carriage of the head or of the mode of walking are transmitted, and a family voice is nearly as common a marvel as a family face. A man, in a place distant from his home, and where he was totally unknown, has been distinguished as the brother of one known there by the sound of his voice heard in a neigh-affected by this consideration. Where resemblances bouring apartment. But the almost perfect reproduction of the elder Kean's voice in the younger is perhaps the most convincing illustration we could adduce upon this point. It will also be found that children resembling either parent externally, have a stronger affinity of mental character to that parent than to the other. A gentleman, very intimately known to us, is strikingly like his father, who has been deceased since his early youth: he also exhibits the same dispositions and intellectual tendencies in a remarkable degree, delights in the same studies, has the same turn for the perception of human character; nay, he often feels, in the simplest procedure of common life, so absolute an identity with what he remembers of his father in the same circumstances, and at the same period of life, as expressed by gesture and conversation, that it seems to him as if he were the same person. Nor can this, he says, be a result of imitation; it is something which takes place independently of all design, and which he only remarks, in general, after the act, or feeling, or movement which recalls his father, has passed. But it is not parents alone who are thus reproduced in new generations. In a large family familiarly known to us, as are all its relationships, we see, in some of the young persons, resemblances at once to the father and mother, and to one or other of the two grandfathers and The limitation of portrait-painting as to time, is a bar to our knowledge with regard to instances of long transmission of family faces and features. Yet enough is ascertained to establish the law of the case. In our own royal family, a certain fulness of the lower and lateral parts of the face is conspicuous in the portraits of the whole series of sovereigns, from George I. to Victoria. It has been equally seen in other members of the family. The Duke of Cumberland, who figured at Culloden, presents generally the same visage as several of the sons of William IV. This physiognomy may be traced back to Sophia, the mother of George I.; how much farther, we cannot tell. It is equally certain that a thickness of the under lip, peculiar to the imperial family of Austria (Maria Louisa is said to be characterised by it), has been hereditary in the race since a marriage some centuries ago with the Polish house of Jagellon, whence it came. A remarkable anecdote illustrative of this subject was told us, some years ago, by a gentleman who has since distinguished himself in the walk of fictitious literature. Born in Nova Scotia, where his family, originally Scotch, had been settled for the greater part of a century, he had not an opportunity of visiting our country till past the middle of life. Here he made it pression was so strong, that we spoke of it to our comhis endeavour to see as many as possible of the indi-panion, who said, 'It is very odd, but the gentleman is viduals bearing his rather uncommon name, and in General Dunlop of Ayrshire, a descendant, you are well this quest he often took journeys to considerable aware, of a brother of Wallace.' We were far from the estate of the gallant general, though in the county distances. Having heard of a family of the name represented by him in parliament, and had no reason to residing at a lonely farm amongst the Lammermuir suppose that this was General Dunlop, nor did we even hills, he proceeded thither on foot from the nearest remember at the moment how he stood related to the market town. As is not uncommon in such situa- Scottish hero. There is a peculiar difficulty in the case, tions, the approach of a visitor could be observed for no reflecting person would have previously supposed from this house while he was yet fully a mile distant. it likely that the common portrait of Wallace was a geMr H was observed at that distance by some of nuine likeness. It can only be said that the fact of a rethe children, who immediately cried out with one semblance in General Dunlop to the portrait is a strong voice,There is uncle George!' When the stranger argument, as against merely negative evidence, for its arrived at the house, the seniors of the family fully authenticity. We may suppose it to have been painted acknowledged the general resemblance of the figure and when Wallace visited France, as he is now certainly carriage to the person called uncle George; and it was known to have done, from documents discovered by Mr ascertained, after a little conversation, that the Nova Tytler. The space of time between the death of WalScotian was in reality their cousin at two or three re- lace and the birth of General Dunlop must have been upwards of four centuries and a half. The improbability of a face being kept up so long in a family is, we readily own, very great, and yet only so, perhaps, because we know of no other facts to the same purport. Such facts might be found if they were sought. It is, we are assured, a common remark amongst those who remember the last Mrs Bruce of Clackmannan, who boasted that King Robert of Scotland was of her family, that the features of the old lady bore a resemblance to the portraits of the heroic monarch. And even now the children of one of the gentlemen of this family, settled in Clackmannanshire, are said to have that stronglymarked form of the cheek-bones and jaws which appears in Bruce's coins, as it did in the structure of his actual face, when his bones were disinterred at Dunfermline, moves. When Mr William Howitt visited Stratford-on-Avon, in order to write respecting, the places connected with Shakspeare, the schoolmaster informed him that a descendant of a near relation of the poet was one of his pupils. He marshalled his laddish troop in a row,' says Mr Howitt, and said to me, "There, now, sir, can you tell which is a Shakspeare?" I glanced my eye along the line, and quickly fixing it on one boy, said, "That is the Shakspeare." You are right," said the master, "that is the Shakspeare-the Shakspeare cast of countenance is there. That is William Shakspeare Smith, a lineal descendant of the poet's sister." The lad,' continues Mr Howitt, 'was a fine lad of perhaps ten years of age; and certainly the resemblance to the bust of Shakspeare, in the church at Stratford, is wonderful, considering he is not descended from Shakspeare himself, but from his sister, and that the seventh in descent. What is odd enough, whether it be mere accident or not, the colour of the lad's eyes, a light hazel, is the very same as that given to those of the Shakspeare bust, which it is well known was originally coloured, and of which exact copies remain.'* These observations of Mr Howitt are confirmed by a portrait of the youth, which he gives in his book. We are the less disposed to entertain doubts on the subject, in consequence of circumstances which have fallen under our own notice. Some years ago, a young man in humble life came forward to claim the restoration of the forfeited titles of the Setons, Earls of Wintoun, his grandfather having been assured that he was a legitimate though obscurely born son of the noble, who lost honours and lands by joining in the insurrection of 1715. From want of evidence, the claim was a hopeless one, and it was not prosecuted; but of one fact there could be no doubt, that the young man so nearly resembled the sons of the fifth Lord Seton, as represented in a family picture painted by Antony More, that he might have passed for their brother. These persons lived in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Such instances are perhaps less uncommon than might be supposed. We have seen an elderly lady descended from John Knox, and bearing no slight resemblance to him; and, if we are not much mistaken, a profile of Cardinal Beatoun, in Pinkerton's Scottish Gallery, might pass for a tolerably successful likeness of his brother's descendant, the present Mr Drinkwater Bethune. These instances will, we fear, serve but inadequately to prepare the reader for another, which makes a larger demand upon his faith. Walking in the country some years ago, we saw an elderly man pass in a carriage, and were instantly struck with his resemblance to the bluff majestic countenance attributed by Scottish painters to Sir William Wallace. The im Visits to Remarkable Places. First Scries. Mr Howitt adds anno 1819. The doubts which might rest on such cases of particular resemblance in families, ought perhaps to be in a great measure dispelled, when we reflect on the evidence that exists with respect to the persistency of external characters in sets and races of people. Not only have we such facts as a prevalent tallness in the inhabitants of Potsdam, where Frederick I. assembled his regiment of longitudinal guards, and a strong infusion of Spanish features in the people of the county of Galway, in which some centuries ago several Spanish settlements were made; but we are assured by Major Bevan that he could distinguish the several castes in India by their peculiarities of countenance; and the Jews are the same people in Egyptian entablatures of three thousand years ago, as they are in some countries at the present day. Mr Kohl, in his travels in Austria, speaks of Prague as a very garden of beauty. For the young ladies of 1841,' says he, I am ready to give my testimony most unreservedly, and many an enraptured traveller has left us his books as living witnesses to the loveliness of the grandmothers and greatgrandmothers of the present generation. The old chronicler, Hammerschmidt, and his contemporaries, dwell with equal pleasure on the sweet faces that smiled upon them in their days, and the picture-gallery of many a Bohemian castle is there to testify to the truth of their statements. One witness there is to the fact, whose right few will question to decide on such a point. Titian, who studied the faces of lovely women for ninety-six years, and who, while at the court of Charles V., spent five years in Germany, tells us it was among the ladies of Prague that he found his ideal of a beautiful female head. If we go back beyond the times of Titian, we have the declaration of Charles IV., that Prague was a hortus deliciarum, and whoever has read the life of that emperor, will scarcely doubt that beautiful women must have been included in the delights of a capital so apostrophised. Nay, the time-honoured nobility of the beauty of Prague may be said to go back even to the earliest tradition, where we find it celebrated in the 'Ireland, when in 1793 making collections for his Views on the legends of Libussa and Vlasta, and the countless songs Aron, was much struck with the likeness to this bust in Thomas * A son of Mrs Dunlop, the kind patroness of Burns. composed in honour of the Deviy Slavanske or Tshek- arrangement amuses the fancy in a very agreeable hian damsels.' manner.' While there is a law of persistency, there seems also Some ornamental details on the exterior of the house to be one modifying it, a law of variation. The con- point it out to the eye of the stranger; they are not tinuance of national features depends much on adher-likely, however, to detain it very long, and indeed obence to the same region of the earth, and the same mode of living. When a people migrate to a remote and differently characterised clime, they are often seen to undergo, in the next generation, a change of features and of figure. Thus the unctuous Saxon of Kent and Suffolk, when transferred to Massachusetts, becomes metamorphosed into the lank and wiry New Englander. Descendants of British settlers in the West Indies have been remarked, after several generations, to acquire some of the peculiar features of the aboriginal Americans, particularly high cheek bones and eyes deeply set in the head. It has also been remarked in New South Wales, that the generation of English born there are changed from their progenitors-taller, and less robust, besides having a share of that nasal tone which is found in the American English. These are curious facts, conveying the impression that national forms have been determined to some extent by peculiarities of climate and other external influences. In the main, one generation is represented in another succeeding it. We die as individuals, but the character in mind and body, with a difference,' is revived and continued by those who come after us, and the tissue of human races is a kind of immortality. THE SOANE MUSEUM. servers of severe taste may wish them away. The door having opened and closed again, the first thing which will engage the visitor's attention is a bust in the entrance lobby of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who, though the son of an innkeeper, was, both in manners and bearing, one of the most aristocratic of men, the painter and companion of princes and nobles. A fine specimen of his workmanship may be seen in the next apartment (the diningroom and library thrown together), being nothing less than a portrait of Sir John Soane himself. It is an excellent painting, and cannot fail to charm every beholder by the clearness of its colouring; one hand seen hanging down is exquisitely painted. Exactly opposite hangs a picture by Lawrence's famous predecessor, Sir Joshua Reynolds. It represents a passage from the story of the goddess of beauty, and her wimpled, winning, purblind, wayward boy, Dan Cupid.' It shows the sad result of Sir Joshua's experimenting in oils and colours, being grievously disfigured with cracks, whilst a hectic flush on the countenances usurps the place of a healthy, rosy hue, a defect too common in the works of this painter. The pencil of Howard, R. A., has adorned several of the compartments in the ceiling, and a number of clegantly-bound books, principally relating to architecture, covers the walls. Passing through some lobby-like apartments-in which two small engravings by Hogarth might escape notice amongst the crowd of objects, if not specially pointed out-we arrive at the door of the room in which the most of the paintings are hung. But before entering, pray pause to admire the model of a sleeping child by Banks. The marble has been placed in Ashbourne church, Devonshire, to the memory of a daughter of Sir Brook Boothby. The helpless sleep of innocent childhood was never more perfectly represented; but as yet it has not been so fortunate as the sleeping children in Lichfield cathedral, for no one has uttered in verse the feelings it inevitably excites. By an ingenious arrangement, the space upon which paintings can be hung in the picture-room is considerably increased. Large shutters are made to move on hinges, and pictures are suspended on both sides. Thus the small space of 13 feet 8 inches by 12 feet 4 inches, is rendered capable of holding as many paintings as a gallery 45 feet long by 20 feet broad. The first objects that challenge attention are a series of four pictures by Hogarth, who may be truly said to have imitated none, and to be inimitable of any. They represent the scenes of an election. In the first an entertainment is depicted. Many figures are crowded upon the canvas, every one of which plays a part in a disgusting but 'owre true' story. The riotous license too frequently attendant upon such occasions is drawn with forcible ludicrousness. with apoplexy, others are desperately wounded with brickbats; but still the gluttons and drunkards around With a continue their eating and drinking. A man who has had his face daubed with soot, talks with great animation, in entire ignorance of the cause of his neighbour's laughter. In one group a tailor, who is simple enough to keep about him that embarrassing article, a conscience, and resolutely refuses a bribe, is fiercely attacked by his termagant wife, whilst his son shows how his toes have become visible at the end of his shoe. The canvassing follows, and then the polling, where the booth is filled with freeholders, deaf, sick, maimed, and blind, as if the very hospital had been ransacked for voters. In the fourth picture, the successful candidate is seen to possess but a precarious tenure of his chair. The incidents by which this awkward result has been brought about are whimsically complicated and amusingly depicted. The member here represented was Bubb Doddington, afterwards Lord Melcombe Regis, a man of the lowest political morals, who naïvely revealed his sins in a self-complacent diary. To him Even undemanded by a sign or sound.-THOMSON. THERE is a public exhibition in London, at which we have from time to time spent many hours with equal pleasure and instruction, but which, from the comparatively small number of visitors, does not appear to be so highly appreciated as it deserves. We allude to the collection of pictures, antiques, articles of virtû, &c. got together by the late Sir John Soane, and deposited in the house he occupied at No. 13, Lincoln's Inn Fields. The paucity of visitors is doubtless owing in a great measure to the restrictions under which the public are admitted; Thursday and Friday in the months of April, May, and June, being the only days throughout the year on which strangers have the privilege of viewing the place. The applicant must also attend a day or two previously to procure an order from the curator. When, however, the nature of the exhibition is considered (a great number of objects in a series of rooms, none of which are very large), it is obvious that to admit the public indiscriminately would be in effect to place a slight value upon a collection, great part of which requires considerable acquaintance with art to enjoy, and would improvidently afford opportunities, in a mixed and crowded multitude, for mischief and theft. view of directing the attention of visitors in the metropolis to one of its treasures, we propose concisely to describe in our present paper the principal contents of the Soane Museum. There is no institution in London,' says Mrs Jameson* in her description of this place, in which a few hours may be more pleasantly whiled away, or even more profitably employed, than in this fairy object of virtù, where the infinite variety of the objects assembled together in every department of art many indeed sufficiently trivial, some also of peculiar beauty and value-suggest to the intelligent mind and cultivated taste a thousand thoughts, remembrances, and associations, while the ingenuity shown in the *Handbook to the Public Galleries of Art in and near London; a work calculated to diffuse true and elevated ideas on the subject to which it relates, and forming a delightful and invaluable companion for the student of art to the metropolitan collection of pic tures. Some are seized |