spirit in the world, against that brute, who hated every body that he hoped would get him a mitre, and did not.-His own journal, sent to Stella, during the last four years of the queen, is a fund of entertainment. You will see his insolence in full colours, and at the same time how daily vain he was of being noticed by the ministers he affected to treat arrogantly. He goes to the rehearsal of Cato, and says, the drab that acted Cato's daughter could not say her part. This was only Mrs. Oldfield. I was saying before George Selwyn, that this journal put me in mind of the present time, there was the same indecision, irresolution, and want of system; but I added, 'There is nothing new under the sun'-'No,' said Selwyn, nor under the grandson." [George II. and III.]

"I am got into puns, and will tell you an excellent one of the king of France, though it does not spell any better than Selwyn's. You must have heard of count Lauragais, and his horse-race, and his quacking his horse till he killed it. At his return, the king asked him what he had been doing in England? Sire, j'ai appris à penser' 'des chevaux ?' replied the king."

6

Reserving a curious anecdote of Hogarth, and some other interesting extracts, for hereafter, we may be excused, if, so near the close of such limits as we can conveniently allot to one subject, however various, we follow the example of our author, and say, having got into puns, we will conclude with a few of the witticisms which we find scattered through these pages.

"Though I have little to say, it is worth while to write, only to tell you two bon mots of Quin, to that turn-coat hypocrite infidel, bishop W-b-n. That saucy priest was haranguing at Bath on behalf of prerogative: Quin said, pray, my lord, spare me, you are .not acquainted with my principles, I am a republican; and perhaps I even think that the execution of Charles the First might be justified-aye! said W-b-n, by what law? Quin replied, By all the laws he had left them. The bishop would have got off upon judgments, and bade the player remember that all the regicides came to violent ends; a lie, but no matter. I would not advise your lordship, said Quin, to make use of that inference, for if I am not much mistaken, that was the case of the twelve apostles. There was great wit ad hominem in the latter reply; but I think the former equal to any thing I ever heard."

"Unless the deluge stops, and the fogs disperse, I think we shall all die. A few days ago, on the cannon firing for the king going to the house, somebody asked what it was for? M. de Choiseul replied, apparement, c'est qu'on voit le Soleil."-[A happy compliment to our then youthful king, in 1761.]

"The cry in Ireland has been against lord Hillsborough, supposing him to meditate an union of the two islands; George

Selwyn seeing him set t'other night between my lady Hand my lord B, said, Who can say that my lord Hillsborough is not an enemy to an union!"

A hit of equal force against another lady of gallantry, is recorded of Charles Townshend:

"My lord said he, has quite mistaken the thing; he soars too high at first: people often miscarry by not proceeding by degrees; he went, and at once asked for my lord's garter; if he would have been content to ask for my lady's garter, I don't know but he would have obtained it!"

The anecdote of Hogarth, which we have mentioned, is contained in a letter of the 5th May, 1761.

"The true frantic Estrus (says the writer) resides at present with Mr. Hogarth; I went t'other morning to see a portrait he is painting of Mr. Fox. Hogarth told me he had promised, if Mr. Fox would sit as he liked, to make as good a picture as Vandyke or Rubens could. I was silent-Why now,' said he, you think this very vain, but why should not one speak truth?" This truth was uttered in the face of his own Sigismonda, which is exactly a maudlin-tearing off the trinkets that her keeper had given her, to fling at his head. She has her father's picture in a bracelet on her arm, and her fingers are bloody with the heart, as if she had just bought a sheep's-pluck in St. James's market. As I was going, Hogarth put on a very grave face, and said, Mr. Walpole, I want to speak to you.' I sat down, and said, I was ready to receive his commands. For shortness, I will mark this wonderful dialogue by initial letters.

6

“H. I am told you are going to entertain the town with something in our way. W. Not very soon, Mr. Hogarth. H. I wish you would let me have it to correct; we painters must know more of those things than other people. W. Do you think no body understands painting but painters? H. Oh! so far from it, there's Reynolds, who certainly has genius; why, but t'other day he offered a hundred pounds for a picture, that I would not hang in my cellar; and, indeed, to say truth, I have generally found that persons, who have studied painting least, were the best judges of it; but what I particularly wished to say to you was about sir James Thornhill, (you know he married sir James's daughter:) I would not have you say any thing against him; there was a book published some time ago, abusing him, and it gave great offence. He was the first that attempted history in England, and, I assure you, some Germans have said that he was a very great painter. W. My work will go no lower than the year 1700, and I really have not considered whether sir J. Thornhill would come within my plan or not; if he does, I fear you and I shall not agree upon his merits. H. I wish you would let me correct it; besides, I am writing something of the same kind myself; I should be sorry

t'other day in an old French author, which is a great drawback on beaux sentiments and romantic ideas. Pasquier, in his Recherches de la France, is giving an account of the queen of Scots' execution; he says, the night before, knowing her body must be stripped for her shroud, she would have her feet washed, because she used ointment to one of them, which was sore. I believe I have told you, that in a very old trial of her, which I bought from lord Oxford's collection, it is said that she was a large lame woTake sentiments out of their pantouffles, and reduce them to the infirmities of mortality, what a falling off there is!"

man.

On looking over our extracts, we are admonished that so many grave ones would afford an ill specimen of the work before us, and reserving a few selections for a concluding Number, we shall close the present with some lighter examples.

"I have by me a love-letter written during my father's administration, by a journeyman tailor to my brother's second chambermaid; his offers were honourable; he proposed matrimony, and to better his terms, informed her of his pretensions to a place they were founded on what he called, some services to the government. As the nymph could not read, she carried the epistle to the house-keeper to be deciphered, by which means it came into my hands. I inquired what where the merits of Mr. Vice Crispin; was informed that he had made a suit of clothes for a figure of lord Marr, that was burned after the rebellion !"

"Did I tell you that I had found a text in Deuteronomy to authorise my future battlements? (at Strawberry Hill.) When thou buildest a new house, then shalt thou make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thy house, if any man fall from thence." 1749.

"Loo is mounted to its zenith; the parties last till one and two in the morning. We played at lady H-d's last week, the last night of her lying-in, till deep into Sunday morning. It is now adjourn

ed to Mrs. F -y's, whose child the town calls Pam-ela. The invasion is not half so much in fashion as loo, and the king demanding the assistance of the militia does not add much dignity to it. The great Pam of parliament, who made the motion, entered into a wonderful definition of the several sorts of fear; from fear, that comes from pusillanimity, up to fear from magnanimity. It put me in mind of that wise Pythian, my lady L, who, when her sister, lady D- was dying, pronounced, that if it were a fever from a fever, she would live; but if it were a fever from death, she would die."

Having already devoted three Numbers to this entertaining quarto, we are compell. ed, for variety's sake alone, to bid our adieu to it in the present publication. The narra

tive of the fate of lord Ferrers is very interestingly given in several letters. The first is of the 28th of January, 1760:

"You have heard, I suppose, a horrid story of another kind, of lord Ferrers' murdering his steward in the most barbarous and deliberate manner. He sent away all his servants but one, and, like that heroic murderess, queen Christina, carried the poor man through a gallery and several rooms, locking them after him, and then bid the man kneel down, for he was determined to kill him. The poor creature flung himself at his feet, but in vain,-was shot, and lived twelve hours. Mad as this action was from the consequences, there was no frenzy in his behaviour; he got drunk, and at intervals talked of it coolly; but did not attempt to escape till the colliers beset his house, and were determined to take him alive or dead. He is now in the jail at Leicester, and will soon be removed to the Tower, then to Westminster Hall, and I suppose to TowerHill-"

On the 19th April, the trial, which lasted three days, is thus described:

"At first I thought lord Ferrers shocked, but in general he behaved rationally and coolly; though it was a strange contradiction to see a man trying, by his own sense, to prove himself out of his senses. It was more shocking to see his two brothers brought to prove the lunacy in their own blood, in order to save their brother's life. Both are almost as ill-looking men as the earl; one of them is a clergyman, suspended by the bishop of London for being a methodist; the other a wild vagabond, whom they call in the country, ragged and dangerous. After lord Ferrers was condemned, he made an excuse for pleading madness, to which he said he was forced by his family. He is respited till Monday fortnight, and will then be hanged, I believe in the Tower; and to the mortification of the peerage, is to be anatomized, conformably to the late act for murder. Many peers were absent; lord Foley and lord Jersey attended only on the first day; and lord Huntingdon, and my nephew Orford, (in compliment to his mother,) as related to the prisoner, withdrew without voting. But never was a criminal more literally tried by his peers, for the three persons who interested themselves most in the examination, were at least as mad as he; lord Ravensworth, lord Talbot, and lord Fortescue.

"May 6th. The extraordinary history of lord Ferrers is closed: he was executed yesterday. Madness, that in other countries is a disorder, is here a systematic character: it does not hinder people from forming a plan of conduct, and from even dying agreeably to it. You remember how the last Ratcliffe died with the utmost propriety; so did this horrid lunatic coolly and sensibly. His own and his wife's relations had asserted that he would tremble at last. No such thing, he shamed heroes. He bore the so

lemnity of a pompous and tedious procession of above two hours, from the Tower to Tyburn, with as much tranquillity as if he was only going to his own burial, not to his own execution. He even talked on indifferent subjects in the passage; and if the sheriffs and the chaplains had not thought that they had parts to act too, and had not consequently engaged him in most particular conversation, he did not seem to think it necessary to talk on the occasion: he went in his wedding-clothes, marking the only remaining impression on his mind. The ceremony he was in a hurry to have over: he was stopped at the gallows by the vast crowd, but got out of his coach as soon as he could, and was but seven minutes on the scaffold, which was hung with black, and prepared by the undertaker of his family at their expense. There was a new contrivance for sinking the stage under him, which did not play well; and he suffered a little by the delay, but was dead in four minates. The mob was decent, and admired him, and almost pitied him. - With all his madness he was not mad enough to be struck with his aunt Huntingdon's sermons. The methodists have nothing to brag of his conversion, though Whitfield prayed for him, and preached about him."

There are points, both in the circumstances of this extraordinary case, and the reflections to which it leads, which seem peculiarly applicable to recent murders and suicides. Is it really true that in Britain, madness is a system rather than a disease? We have not room for a curious account of a visit to the Cock-lane ghost, in which Mr. Walpole accompanied the duke of York and several noble ladies as well as lords. Our author had sense enough to laugh at this imposture.

But the portions of this work which strike us as particularly worthy of attention, are those which contain the remarks of this acute and worldly-versed observer on the first indications of that state of society in France, and of that new philosophy, which have been consummated under our eyes in blood and horror.

Mr. Walpole visited France in 1765, and in several letters he thus speaks of what he saw and noticed at that period:

"Instead of laughing (at Harlequin) I sit silently reflecting how every thing loses charms when one's own youth does not lend it gilding! When we are divested of that eagerness and illusion, with which our youth presents objects to us, we are but the caput mortuum of pleasure.

"Grave as these ideas are, they do not unfit me for French company. The present tone is serious enough in conscience. Unluckily the subjects of their conversation are duller to me than my own thoughts, which may be tinged with melancholy reflections, but I doubt from my constitution will never be insipid. The French affect philosophy, literature, and free-thinking: the first

never did, and névér will possess me: of the two others I have long been tired. Freethinking is for one's self, surely not for society; besides, one has settled one's way of thinking, or knows it cannot be settled, and for others, I do not see why there is not as much bigotry in attempting conversions from any religion as to it.-I dined to-day with a dozen sçavants, and though all the servants were waiting, the conversation was much more unrestrained, even on the Old Testament, than I would suffer, at my own table in England, if a single footman were present."

And right too, for these servants in France afterwards rewarded their masters, for the corruption of their principles, by cutting their throats, and dragging them to the scaffold. But we continue our extracts.

"Jesuits, methodists, philosophers, politicians, the hypocrite Rosseau, the scoffer Voltaire, the Encyclopedists, the Humes, the Lyttletons, the Grenvilles, the atheist tyrant of Prussia, and the mountebank of history, Mr. Pitt, all are to me but impostors in their various ways. Fame or interest are their objects; and after all their parade, I think a ploughman who sows, reads his almanac, and believes the stars but so many farthing candles, created to prevent his falling into a ditch as he goes home at night, a wiser and more rational being, and I am sure an honester, than any of them. Oh! I am sick of visions and systems, that shove one another aside, and come over again, like the figures in a moving picture."

The following amusing anecdote is related in the next letter. It is in French, but will bear an English translation :

"The Canton of Berne ordered all the impressions of Helvetius's 'SPIRIT' (ESprit) and Voltaire's VIRGIN' (Pucelle) to be seized. The officer of justice, employed by them, came into the council and said, 'Great lords, after every possible research, we can find, in the whole city, only a very few of Spirit, and not one Virgin !"

Having fallen again into the lighter reading, we proceed to copy some lines by Mr. Walpole, on lady Mary Coke having St. Anthony's fire in her cheek:

"No rouge you wear, nor can a dart
From Love's bright quiver wound your heart.
And thought you Cupid and his Mother
Would unreveng'd their anger smother?
No, no, from heaven they sent the fire
That boasts St. Anthony its sire;
They pour'd it on one peccant part,
Inflam'd your cheek, if not your heart.
In vain for see the crimson rise,;
And dart fresh lustre thro' your eyes;
While ruddier drops and baffled pain
Enhance the white they meant to stain.
Ah! nymph, on that unfading face,
With fruitless pencil, Time shall trace
His lines malignant, since disease
But gives you mightier power to please."

"I will conclude my letter with a most charming trait of Madame de Mailly, which

With this affecting story we take our leave of one of the most amusing volumes we ever perused; and have only to add, that a key to all the blanks has been published since the appearance of the Work. Lon. Lit. Gaz.

REMARKS ON MEXICO AND THE MEXICAN
LANGUAGE.

By M. Sonneschmid.* Buffon, in his Natural History, mentioning the Mexican names of quadrupeds, says, "The Mexican language is extremely barbarous." Even great men are liable to error, and the learned Naturalist has, on this occasion, been guilty of one of no mean importance; for the Mexican language, as pronounced by the natives, is sonorous and agreeable, and is distinguished to its advantage among all the Indian languages with which I have become acquainted.

A person whose organs of speech have been rendered pliant by the difficult pronunciation of his own mother-tongue, will pronounce the most difficult words of the Mexican language in a pleasing and correct manner; but by no means attain the extremely fluent, rapid, and agreeable pronun ciation of the native and real Mexicans. Thus, for instance, I myself, in the first years after my arrival in that country, pronounced the most difficult Mexican words, after once hearing them, so perfectly, that my Spanish friends living in Mexico were much surprised at it, and were not able to do the same. But after I had lived some years in New Spain, and spoken little or no German, my organs of speech were so spoiled by the easy and soft pronunciation of the Spanish, that I found it difficult and almost impossible to pronounce, with ease and propriety, a Mexican word that was at all difficult; as, for instance, Xicalquahuitl, (the name of a tree peculiar to the country.)

The same circumstance was the cause that, on my return to my own country, nobody took me for a German, and many affirmed that I was a foreigner, who had but just begun to learn German; though I had never forgotten the German, and still fancied that I pronounced it correctly. However, I suffered very much by it, and when For an interesting account of the Mexican Glaciers, by this gentleman, see Nos. 31 and 32 of the Literary Gazette. The present paper affords a view of Mexican manners, so opposite to what we are accustomed to entertain, that from a resident in that country of twelve years standing, it seems at this moment to merit peculiar attention.

From these remarks I think it clearly appears why the Mexican language should seem barbarous to a Frenchman, who perhaps did not even recollect that, in the Mexican as in the Spanish, X must be pronounced like G, Z like S, &c. I, at least, should be very much surprised if a Frenchman praised this language, which does not please the Spaniards, on account of their organs being spoiled, as I have said, by their own. For my part, I was always very happy when I had an opportunity to put in motion the voluble tongues of the native Mexicans; and in my walks or journeys I seldom let a pretty Mexican woman pass me without inquiring my road, with which I was, however, usually well acquainted. On these occasions, I not only admired the mild, obliging, and yet lively characters of these good people, but took also particular delight in their pleasing and melodious pronunciation of the many zatl, olin, litzle, zincatl, buitl, motzin, zomatli, calipatl, paliri, lotli, huatl, oztli, titlan, pantili, zintli, which occur in, their language.

As I mention the good Mexicans, ill-informed persons will perhaps pity the fate of this people; and it may, therefore, not be useless to combat this error beforehand. Nothing so incessantly occupied my atten tion as the condition of the natives of that country. I often visited them in their houses, their huts, and in some caves, in which they live voluntarily and contentedly. On the great canal of Mexico, in the markets, where numbers of them come for the purposes of buying and selling, I frequently mingled with them to observe them, and always found a very urbane, cheerful, and contented people, whom nobody, whether European or Creole, may abuse. They are, happily, protected by the laws. Whoever ill treats a Mexican, is immediately thrown into a prison as a criminal, and severely punished. Such occurrences, however, are certainly very rare; for the Spanish nation is the most humane that I know, and its general characteristic is the greatest. abhorrence of oppression of a fellow-creature, whether his complexion be white or black, yellow or brown.*

Besides my own twelve years experience, I might confirm this assertion by the testimony of many impartial travellers, who have not gone as enemies to Spain and its colonies. I will quote only Langsdorf's Observations on a Voyage round the World, in the years 1803 to 1807, Part II. :-"The rural, unaffected simplicity of these good people (at San Francisco) charmed us so much, that we immediately felt an interest in the acquaintance with the individuals, and took a lively share in the happiness of this amiable family." What is here said of one family, I can certify of the whole Spanish nation in Europe and America.