Thus prepared to admire and exaggerate as he goes, our traveller hies him to London, and takes up his quarters, as he minutely specifies, at the domicile of John Wagner, tailor, No. 3, Richmond Buildings, Dean Street, Soho, where he lodges with numbers of his own countrymen. Being settled in his new residence, our royal librarian occupies himself, rationally, as well as characteristically enough, after his vocation, in visiting all the public libraries of London. First among them the British Museum of course excites his astonishment; and he really gives, with the happy aid of catalogues, a very tolerable outline description of the contents of that great national repository. He is not without a respectable knowledge of books; but he admires with all the air of a wondermaking German: and in his language, his tastes, and his opinions, he betrays all the coarseness and vulgarisms of a miserable bourgeois. He is pleased to affirm that, owing to our mercantile spirit, London contains fewer public libraries and other institutions of intellectual refinement, than Paris. He is ignorant of all the facilities for education which this country affords; because they are not held up to display, nor maintained under the public regulation of a police minister and a gens-d'armerie. Neither has he discovered how vast a part of the bibliographical stores of this country is contained in the innumerable collections of noblemen and private individuals; and yet he seems to have been permitted to visit Lord Spencer's magnificent library of old and curious books. Among other subjects of education, our traveller is not slow, upon his intimate acquaintance with our metropolis, to offer his opinion of the projected "London University."

and

'Nothing is inore necessary for the scientific cultivation of all classes in London than a university. When we arrived, the general wish for the erection of such an institution, after the pattern of that of Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, was the common topic of conversation. The higher servants of the state have hitherto exerted all their aristocratical influence to place their younger relatives in the eight hundred and forty rich benefices of Fellows at Oxford and Cambridge; from whence they are advanced into the service of the state, according to the degree of interest, which each may possess. And this takes place, although these young men during their academical residence may have only pursued a course of idleness, vice, extravagance. In the opinion of those who are experienced in these matters, the project of a rich nobleman in Yorkshire, who proposed to establish a third university with an income, to begin with, of fifteen thousand guineas per annum, afforded no better prospect than those already established. The richer and poorer citizens of London, therefore, were very rarely able to thrust their sons into any vacancy at those colleges of the universities, which were not monopolised by the aristocracy; and even this was only possible under the previous distinct condition of being a candidate for holy orders. The wish for the establishment of an university must in this manner have become the more general, from the great expenses to which parents were subjected in giving their sons a scientific education necessary for public life; as they were obliged either to have private masters, or to send them on the Continent.'-pp. 32, 33.

Of our public establishments, for the promotion of science and letters, Mr. Jack takes a survey very tolerably accurate. But he pronounces judgment upon our legal institutions with all the presumption of superficial ignorance; and among other mistakes, he imagines that our spiritual courts still exercise in practice all the despotic powers which they are permitted in theory to retain.

The four ecclesiastical courts,' says he, extend their jurisdiction over all moral offences whatever, over wills and the disposal of property immediately arising out of them, over marriage dispensations, separations, &c., and over all cases purely clerical. Whoever examines the jurisdiction of this court, and compares it with the Spanish Inquisition, will find little difference between them. For, however great the political freedom of England may be, in every thing which regards religion the citizen is more trammelled and confined in this country than in any other.'

The remaining part of Mr. Jäck's volume, which relates to sightseeing in the metropolis, we shall dismiss very briefly. He examines all the churches, and other public buildings, the docks, bridges, palaces, &c., with scrupulous regularity, and gives a tiresome circumstantial account of each. The docks and the shipping of the port of London, as the astonishing evidences of our cominercial grandeur, are justly his admiration; and he warms into natural eulogies, on the immense variety, the splendid endowments, and the judicious regulation of the humane and benevolent institutions of our country. Here England stands unrivalled among the nations; and her public charities may well be numbered with honest pride among the brightest ornaments of her grandeur, while they extort the unqualified tribute of enthusiastic praise and respect from the lips of every foreign traveller.

After exhausting the catalogue of sights in the "Picture of London," Mr. Jäck, before his departure from the metropolis, is pleased to favour us with a few sketches of our national character, manners, and customs; from which we shall extract a specimen or two.

The character of the Englishman is calm and settled; he is accustomed to precision and regularity, which is seen even in the uniformity of his dress. In London, the ranks of society are neither distinguished by the costliness nor shape of their clothes; and if we should collect in one group, the respectable tradesman, the artist, the man of letters, the merchant and his clerk, the servant of government from the highest to the lowest office, and the rich nobleman, it would be impossible to discover any distinction of rank, in the uniform appearance of the whole. The steady character of the men never permits any foreign style of dress to become the predominant fashion among them; but they have a journal of fashions of their own, the plates of which the tailors cut up into busts and legs, and then throw into a portfolio. When a customer comes, the tailor adjusts the breast and lower part of any two of these different figures, and by that means gives his employer some notion of what his future appearance is to be. On the other hand, however, the character of the English ladies is as changeable as that of all others on the Continent; they are

governed by the Journal de Paris (which seems to enjoy universal citizenship), and it is only occasionally in travelling, and in the country, for example, that by way of intermediate change, they imitate the style of dress of their lovers and husbands. Yet, when at home, the lady and her maid are to be seen dressed in white, without any difference; and whilst thus attired, if the hour, the place, and the society, did not distinguish the former from the latter, they would be seldom known from each other.

The division of the day is almost as uniform in all families as their dress. Although we were daily at the writing-desk, between five and six o'clock in the morning, we could not get the accustomed supply of tea, bread and butter, eggs, rolls, &c., before nine o'clock, because none of the members of the family leave their beds before seven or eight o'clock, and all are summoned to this common breakfast.'-pp. 144–146.

The following account of the worthy Mr. Jack's mode of dining in London, records his unfavourable opinion, both of our style of cookery, and of the entertainment of our coffee-houses. We have not the pleasure of knowing the Harmony Hotel, situate in George Yard, Lombard Street, but we have no doubt that it is a place of excellent reputation; and, indeed, it is to be observed, from the whole tenor of his book, how the royal librarian of Bamberg seems to have been introduced to the best society, and the most fashionable resorts of our metropolis.

'As few of the dishes are prepared according to the German fashion, and the greater part consist of fish, we seldom, though exceedingly hungry, made so agreeable a meal as in France and Germany. We were in the habit of agreeing before-hand with our French and German friends, to dine at a particular coffee-house between the hours of five and six; and always, selected a table in the middle of the room, and outside the usual wooden partitions, in order that we might have a full view of all that was passing. We never visited the same English coffee-house more than once, for we could not find any that satisfied our palate and appetite; and frequently, moreover, the prices were extravagantly dear. The only exceptions were the Harmony Hotel, George Yard, Lombard Street, and the Newton Hotel, St. Martin Street, Leicester Square. At the former of these, we met with a very intelligent head-waiter, who had once resided in our neighbourhood, at Cobourg, and benefited by many of the French campaigns during the last war. At the hotel in St. Martin Street, the exiled Spaniards, Portuguese, and Italians, all in poor circumstances, were wont to assemble daily. Our host here, Dominic, gave us meat and drink, both good in quality and fair in price. It is remarkable that the host, his wife, the waiter, and the chamber maid, came severally from Naples, Portugal, Spain and Piedmont. We enjoyed occasionally a higher pleasure in the conversation of the exiles, who rejoiced to find persons asserting the same opinions respecting representative governments, which they themselves had openly professed, and for which they had endangered their lives. The best informed among them employed themselves in writing translations, and also in contributing to the Spanish periodical, which was published in London, and contained the clearest expositions of the secret causes that overthrew their constitution.'-pp. 147-149.

The manner in which our traveller was wont to dispose of the last part of the day, is then briefly related:

After dinner,' says he, as it is called here, but in Germany, supper, we went to the theatres and other public places of exhibition, which are kept open to a late hour of the night, and passed the remainder of the evening without suffering from hunger or thirst. Our hour of return home

was between ten and eleven, provided we had not been satisfying our curiosity at any great distance; and after a short conversation with the family, we retired to bed. In many English families it is the custom to drink tea and milk between the hours of seven and nine.'

The ordinary course of English life during six days of the week, Mr. Jack seems to have found supportable enough; but the restraints of our Sunday observances, are evidently his abhorrence.

In compliance with the prevailing sentiments of the English, to make a parade of religion on the Sunday, we had resigned our minds to the endurance of still life, although these days in Germany are devoted to public amusements and festivities. Yet our experience of the reality much surpassed our expectations. For, in the very outset, we found that no letters were delivered in the morning, that the religious observances of the day might meet with no distractions. All the shops are shut; whilst at Paris precisely on these very days, from two to three o'clock, the best bargains are made, and even the bricklayers, carpenters, &c. publicly work on until that hour. In London, only the absolute necessaries of life are allowed to be sold. Before ten, and from ten to eleven, the latter being the hour for divine service, we met with few persons in the streets, and even these were only messengers and hair-dressers. But at the hour of service the formal parties of citizens, themselves and their wives leading their families, proceed along, with prayer-books and hymn-books under their arms or in their hands, towards the neighbouring church. The English church service is commonly two hours long; the great duration of which, with its too lifeless simplicity, cannot possibly be agreeable to thinking men. After church, those who have attended take a ramble through the streets, or such walks as may be in the vicinity, provided the weather is favourable; after which the procession proceeds with the same regularity towards home, where dinner is generally served up between two and three. After digestion has been allowed some time to go on in quiet, the family set themselves again in motion between four and five o'clock to attend the evening service in another church, generally in some more distant part of the town, in order both to pass away the time and to have an opportunity of taking exercise. Between six and seven, the stiff and formal procession again returns, and drawls away the remainder of the evening in a most noiseless and motionless manner. For, theatrical representations and balls never take place on a Sunday and sporting and gambling parties are not at all thought of by most of the citizens of London. If an inexperienced stranger should be bold enough to call upon his acquaintance on Sundays, he is either not admitted, or is received as an intruder, so coldly and repulsively, that he is glad to make his escape again. All this, however, can only be said of the bourgeois: the higher and more cultivated of both sexes, who have spent any time on the Continent, make parties of pleasure by land and by water on Sundays, which accounts for the streets from mid-day, being as

choked up with carriages of all kinds, as the canals and rivers are with pleasure-boats. He who is indisposed for a trip into the country, seeks amusement in the hotels, taverns, and numberless coffee-rooms; and thence it happens that the places of public resort, whenever the weather is not very unfavourable, are crammed full of joyous guests. Moreover we found that from eleven o'clock St. James's Park-where a few detachments of the guards at this hour perform their evolutions to music-is, like Hyde Park, until evening, crowded with people of all classes. From six to ten we saw many entire families pass up and down the long streets, the Strand, Cornhill, Oxford Street, and Holborn.-pp. 150-152.

The nature of the society into which our free-thinking librarian had the good fortune to fall during his residence in London, is here humorously betrayed. The cockney pursuit of the suburban festivities of Sunday, he has mistaken for a national taste; and he has confounded the manners of our most vulgar mechanics, with those of the higher and more cultivated of both sexes, to whom he ascribes the superior illumination of Continental habits. With polished English society he must have had scarcely any intercourse : nor has he apparently gained an introduction into the pure and quiet domestic life of our well-educated middle classes.

Quitting London, Mr. Jäck proceeds to Oxford, where he makes his perambulation of all the public libraries and colleges, and renders, for a foreigner, a pretty correct report of the objects which he has visited. The secret of his accurate knowledge, however, lies very near the surface: he has consulted, and palpably copied, local histories and guide books wherever he has gone; and the transcription of their matter into his journal is broken by very few original remarks of his own. At Oxford, he appears to have been well received; and there at least he caught a few glimpses of good society. He had introductions to many of the most respectable members of the university; and he mentions having been invited, with others of his countrymen, to the house of professor Nicholls. Here he is in great ecstasy at the refinements of an English gentleman's-table, and breaks forth into particular raptures at the strange custom of changing the knife and fork after each dish! From Oxford, he journeys to Cambridge, passing through Bedfordshire, which he describes in glowing terms as offering the highest example of extraordinary culture and rural beauty. He states fairly what he has seen at Cambridge, and appreciates especially the architectural magnificence of king's college chapel. He confesses that none of the great Continental towns can boast of any relic of past ages so noble in itself, or preserved in such perfection and splendour. His general reflections upon our two universities, are curiosities in their way, and shall form our last extract from his volume.

'The many novelties that presented themselves to us, on our visit to the two English universities, left us hardly leisure to weigh the advantages of our own institutions with the disadvantages of these. It was not before we