a wall of paste round it, which provokes a siege of this kind; and the cheese-cake has its amenities of approach. The acid flavour is a relief to the mawkishness of the biffin or pressed baked apple, and an addition to the gliband quivering lightness of the jelly. Twelfth Cake, which when cut looks like the side of a rich pit of earth covered with snow, is pleasant from warmer associations. Confectionary does not seem in the same request as of old; its paint has hurt its reputation. Yet the schoolboy has still much to say for its humbler suavities. Kisses are very amiable and allegorical. Eight or ten of them, judiciously wrapped up in pieces of letter-paper, have saved many a loving heart the trouble of a less eloquent billet-doux. Candied citron we look upon to be the very acmé and atticism of confectionary grace. Preserves are too much of a good thing, with the exception of the jams that retain their fruit-skins. "Jam satis." They qualify the cloying. Yet marmalade must not be passed over in these times, when it has been raised to the dignity of the peerage. The other day there was a Duke of Marmalade in Hayti, and a Count of Lemonade,—so called, from places in which those eminent relishes are manufactured. After all, we must own that there is but one thing for which we care much at a pastry-cook's, except our old acquaintance the bun; especially as we can take up that, and go on. It is an ice. Fancy a very hot day; the blinds down; the loungers unusually languid; the pavement burning one's feet; the sun, with a strong outline in the street, baking one whole side of it like a brickkiln; so that everybody is crowding on the other, except a man going to intercept a creditor bound for the Continent. Then think of a heaped-up ice, brought upon a salver with a spoon. What statesman, of any warmth of imagination, would not pardon the Neapolitans in summer, for an insurrection on account of the want of ice? Think of the first sidelong dip of the spoon in it, bringing away a wellsliced lump; then of the sweet wintry refreshment, that goes lengthening down one's throat; and lastly, of the sense of power and satisfaction resulting from having had the ice.

Not heaven itself can do away that slice;

But what has been, has been; and I have had my ice.

We unaccountably omitted two excellent shops last week, - the fruiterer's and the sculptor's. There is great beauty as well as agreeableness in a well-disposed fruiterer's window. Here are the round piled-up oranges, deepening almost into red, and heavy with juice; the apple with its brown red cheek, as if it had slept in the sun; the pear, swelling downwards; thronging grapes, like so many tight little bags of wine; the peach, whose handsome leathern coat strips off so finely; the pearly or ruby-like currants, heaped in

light long baskets; the red little mouthful of strawberries; the larger purple ones of plums; cherries, whose old comparison with lips is better than anything new; mulberries, dark and rich with juice, fit to grow over what Homer calls the deep black-watered fountains; the swelling pomp of melons; the rough inexorable-looking cocoa-nut, milky at heart; the elaborate elegance of walnuts; the quaint cashoo-nut; almonds, figs, raisins, tamarinds, green leaves,-in short,

Whatever Earth, all-bearing mother, yields
In India East or West, or middle shore
In Pontus or the Punick coast, or where
Alcinous reigned, fruit of all kinds, in coat
Rough, or smooth rind, or bearded husk, or shell.

Milton.

There is something of more refined service in waiting upon a lady in a fruit-shop, than in a pastry-cook's. The eating of tarts, as Sir Walter Scott handsomely saith in his Life of Dryden (who used to enjoy them, it seems, in company with "Madam Reeves"), is "no inelegant pleasure ;" but there is something still more graceful and suitable in the choosing of the natural fruit, with its rosy lips and red cheeks. A white hand looks better on a basket of plums, than in the doubtful touching of syrupy and sophisticated pastry. There is less of the kitchen about the fair visitor. She is more Pomona-like, native, and to the purpose. We help her, as we would a local deity.

Here be grapes whose lusty blood
Is the learned poets good,
Sweeter yet did never crown

The bead of Bacchus;-nuts more brown
Than the squirrels' teeth that crack them;
Deign, O fairest fair, to take them.
For these black ey'd Driope

Hath often times commanded me,
With my clasped knee to climb;
See how well the lusty time
Hath deckt their rising cheeks in red,
Such as on your lips is spread.
Here be berries for a Queen,
Some be red, some be green;

These are of that luscious meat,
The great God Pan himself doth eat.
All these, and what the woods can yield,

The hanging mountain or the field,

I freely offer, and ere long

Will bring you more, more sweet and strong.

Till when humbly leave I take,

Lest the great Pan do awake,

That sleeping lies in a deep glade,
Under a broad beech's shade.

FLETCHER'S Faithful Shepherdess.

How the poets double every delight for us, with their imagination and their music!

In the windows of some of the sculptors' shops, artificial fruit may be seen. It is a better thing to put upon a mantel-piece than many articles of greater fashion; but it gives an abominable sensation to one's imaginary teeth. The incautious epicure who plunges his teeth into "a painted snow-ball" in Italy (see Brydone's Tour in Sicily and Malta), can

hardly receive so jarring a balk to his gums, as the bare apprehension of a bite at a stone peach; but the farther you go in a sculptor's shop the better. Many persons are not aware that there are show-rooms in these places, which are well worth getting a sight of by some small purchase. For the best plaster casts the Italian shops, such as Papera's in Marylebone-street, Golden-square, and Sarti's in Greek-street, are the best. Of all the shoppleasures that are "not inelegant," an hour or two passed in a place of this kind is surely one of the most polite. Here are the gods and heroes of old, and the more beneficent philosophers, ancient and modern. You are looked upon, as you walk among them, by the paternal majesty of Jupiter, the force and decision of Minerva, the still more arresting gentleness of Venus, the budding compactness of Hebe, the breathing inspiration of Apollo. Here the Celestial Venus, naked in heart and body, ties up her locks, her drapery hanging upon her lower limbs. Here the Belvidere Apollo, breathing forth his triumphant disdain, follows with an earnest eye the shaft that has killed the serpent. Here the Graces, linked in an affectionate group, meet you in the naked sincerity of their innocence and generosity, their hands "open as day," and two advancing for one receding. Here Hercules, like the building of a man, looks down from his propping club, as if half disdaining even that repose. There Mercury, with his light limbs, seems just to touch the ground, ready to give a start with his foot and be off again. Bacchus, with his riper cheek, and his thicker hanging locks, appears to be eyeing one of his nymphs. The Vatican Apollo near him, leans upon the stump of a tree, the hand which hangs upon it holding a bit of his lyre, the other arm thrown up over his head, as if he felt the air upon his body, and heard it singing through the strings. In a corner on another side, is the Crouching Venus of John of Bologna, shrinking just before she steps into the bath. The Dancing Faun is not far off, with his animal spirits, and the Piping Faun, sedater because he possesses an art more accomplished. Among the other divinities, we

look up with veneration to old Homer's head, resembling an earthly Jupiter. Plato beholds us with a bland dignity-a beauty unimpairable by years. How different from the brute impulse of Mars, the bloated self-will of Nero, or the dull and literal effeminacy of some of the other emperors! There is a sort of presence in sculpture, more than in any other representations of art. It is curious to see how instinetively people will fall into this sentiment when they come into a place with busts and statues in it, however common. They hush, as if the images could hear them. In our boyhood, some of our most delightful holidays were spent in the gallery of the late Mr. West, in Newman-street. It runs a good way back from the street, crossing a small garden, and opening into loftier rooms on the other side of it. We remember how the world used to seem shut out from us the moment the street-door was closed, and we began stepping down those long carpeted aisles of pictures, with statues in the angles where they turned. We had observed everybody walk down them in this way, like the mild possessor of the mansion, and we went so likewise. We have walked down with him at night to his painting-room, as he went in his white flannel gown, with a lamp in his hand, which shot a lustrous twilight upon the pictured walls in passing; and everything looked so quiet and graceful, that we should have thought it sacrilege to hear a sound beyond the light tread of his footsteps. But it was the statues that impressed us still more than the pictures. It seemed as if Venus and Apollo waited our turning at the corners; and there they were, always the same, placid and intuitive, more human and bodily than the paintings, yet too divine to be over real. It is to that house with the gallery in question, and the little green plot of ground, surrounded with an arcade and busts, that we owe the greatest part of our love for what is Italian and belongs to the fine arts. And if this is a piece of private history, with which the readers have little to do, they will excuse it for the sake of the greatest of all excuse, which is Love.