by his want of candour or of observation, in his celebrated critique upon the legs of the Irish ladies: the day was singularly favourable, for the wind was fresh and the atmosphere was clear, and the belles of Dublin were enjoying the beauty of the weather. With all the solemnity due to the subject, I am ready to swear, upon the altar of Cupid, or any other altar, that the ancles and feet which I saw were as tapering and as pretty as the ancles and feet of the belles of London, or even of Stockholm, although not so numerous as in the latter city, where they are to be found in great perfection; and that the assertion of the writer alluded to is a most foul and slanderous libel upon those beautiful portions of the female frame, and which, if time has not chilled the feelings of the libeller, ought for ever to be withheld from his sight. If pretty feet do not abound in Ireland, it is only because they do not abound in any other country: being a part of female beauty, it partakes of its rarity. Had this writer been making the tour of a county in England which I well know, and had he been present at the following scene which occurred there, he would, with equal precision, have made a memorandum, that all the women of England had thick legs. An English young lady just married, being much oppressed by the heat of a ball-room, fainted; a gentleman offered to assist her husband, who held her in his arms, to remove her into the open air, and stooped to raise her legs from the ground; upon which the husband, with much truth and great calmness of consideration, said, ' My dear sir, let me recommend you to leave them alone, for you will find them very heavy.'

"The same writer has charged the Irish ladies with being naturally addicted to the forgery of franks: this accusation enlarges the sphere of genius to an extent unknown before. I have heard of a rich Hamburgher, of whom, having been very successful in trade, it was said that he was most happily organised by nature for a sugar-refiner; but this predisposition will, I am sure, be confessed to be far short of the natural bias towards an imitation of the hand-writing of a member of parliament. I understand that this wonderful discovery originated from the writer having made, several years since, an unsuccessful application for a frank to an Irish lady of fashion, who used frequently to be the amanuensis of her husband, who was in parliament, and occasionally, by his direction, to write his covers: a custom which, without any felonious intent, I do assure this irritable tourist, is practised in the families of several members in England at this day. This knight errant against for whom the sword of chivalry has hitherto been unsheathed, has also charged the Irish ladies with being so naturally bacchanalian, that at dinner, if a gentleman only accidentally glances his eye upon one of them, she converts the look into a convivial challenge, and with a true jolly Anacreontic smile, and cordial seizure of the decanter, exclaims, 'Port,

that sex,

if you please.' To defend them from such an imputation would be like hurling a rock at a fly, and as ridiculous as the accusation. How far they merit such sarcasm, will appear in my remarks upon the present state of society in Ireland. This writer, well knowing that the love of ridicule is a predominant passion with most of us, has feathered his arrow with falshood, to wound the purest bosom which truth, as well as gallantry, is bound to protect. If we suffer from satire, it is but a requital for indulging in ourselves the weakness which is gratified with it. To such an extent is that imbecility permitted to range, that the happiest efforts of genius have been frequently shaken by the most contemptible occurrence. Not many years since, in the middle of one of the finest effusions of eloquence ever heard within the walls of the Irish house of commons, every avenue of which was filled; whilst the crowded assembly were listening in mute astonishment to the orator, the cork of a bottle of porter, which had been conveyed into the gallery, suddenly flew; its sound immediately withdrew the public attention, a titter ran round the room, and the speaker abruptly closed a most brilliant oration in chagrin, to find all the attention which his oratory had excited, dissolved by this ridiculous explosion of fermenting beer."

The last anecdote brings to our recollection a remark of Quintilian, Risus rerum sæpe maximarum momenta vertit.

This tour is not without a tolerable portion of the utile, but it must be confessed that the dulce prevails in a vast degree. Considering this circumstance, we quarrel with the shape of the book, and recommend that the new edition, which we are sure will soon be called for, should be in octavo. The rambles of our pleasant and ingenious traveller will then become more accessible to the public, and few modern books of light reading will be found to deserve a preference.

The drawings, by Sir John, are creditable to his talent, and afford a very desirable accompaniment,

The Pastor's Daughter, with other Romances, from the German of Augustus Von Kotzebue, In 4 Vols. 12mo. pp. 18s. Dutton.

Ir has been, though punningly, yet truly, said that every thing loses by translation except a bishop. These little stories are full of ingenuity and interest, but so abominably translated that it is impossible to say how the modicum of sense preserved is conveyed to the understanding.

"Alas all was still, only the SEE growled under her window, and the pendulum of the convent clock beat uniformly tick-tack-tick-tuck— hark! now the wheel of the clock rattles, the midnight hour strikes a

hollow, dreadful sound-the spirits hear it, mount up, and mingle their lamentations with the growling storm." "The subterraneous Passage."

Is it not shameful that Kotzebue should be thus libelled? We understand that there is another translation, which is better and cheaper; we defy it to be worse or dearer, for this is worth nothing.

Kotzebue here introduces the Maid of Orleans in a new light— as a mother! We are not at all inclined to dispute the point with him-nothing more natural, or less uncommon, than one long thought to be a maid, to turn out a mother.

:

The Pantheon or Ancient History of the Gods of Greece and Rome. Intended to facilitate the Understanding of the classical Authors, and of the Poets in general. For the Use of Schools, and young Persons of both Sexes. By Edward Baldwin, Esq. With Engravings of the principal Gods, chiefly taken from the Remains of ancient Statuary. Crown 8vo. pp. 360. 6s. Hodgkins.

BETWEEN the Pantheon of Tooke, and the Polymetis of Spence, an abridgment of the heathen mythology, adapted to general use, has long been wanting. Tooke's elementary volume on this subject (which was derived from the Latin of Father Porney, a Jesuit), has a coarseness and vulgarity of style little calculated for the improvement of juvenile readers; yet has it formed the vade mecum of every school-boy for near a century; while the polished work of Spence, from its size and its costliness, has been inaccessible to all but the rich and the learned. Mr. Baldwin, therefore, has performed an acceptable service to schoolmasters, as well as pupils, by presenting them with an abstract of the poetical religion of the Greeks: and he merits the thanks of every parent, for endeavouring to divest his book of those licentious colourings which administer libertinism to the fancy of the stripling, and sully the purity of the virgin mind. Some articles of the superior deities seem to be rather too concise; but we highly approve the plan of giving their representations from ancient statues, instead of what is exhibited in the modern editions of Tooke. An alphabetical index of names would still be an advantage. Mr. B. has entered into a definition of the uses of the study of mythology; but we think the late erudite Mr. Bryant did this with forcible brevity, when he termed it "the basis of history, the standard of criticism, and the guide to the studies of youth."

Observations on English Architecture, Military, Ecclesiastical, and Civil, compared with similar Buildings on the Continent : including a critical Itinerary of Oxford and Cambridge; also historical Notices of Stained Glass, Ornamental Gardening, &c. with chronological Tables, and Dimensions of Cathedral and Conventical Churches. By the Rev. James Dallaway, M. B. F.S. A. Taylor. 1806.

THIS is but the transcript of Mr. Dallaway's common-place book, but it is a very entertaining and useful work. To fami liarise the principles of science, and reduce the stinted technicali ties of art to general understandings, is to do real service to literature and the arts. It has been too much the practice of antiquaries to involve the principles of their pursuits in terms unintelligible; to withhold their knowledge from the vulgar by involving it in the shroud of an archaelogical vocabulary, as physicians are mysterious by Latin prescriptions; and they seem to wish to appear great by adventitious assumption, as Jack-thegiant-killer was fearful in his invisible garment. With the words Gothic, Saracenic, Saxon, and the rest, even the journeymanbricklayer is acquainted; and many of his superiors have the terms "familiar in their mouths as household words," with as little knowledge of the gradual rise, progression, and decay of the styles of architecture, which those titles denominate.

The first section of the volume before us treats of the origin and distinguishing features of that sort of architecture known in England by the epithet Gothic, with the invention of which the Goths had no more to do than the Chinese, and which viturperative term applied to the most impressive style of buildings, was unknown in this country till the time of Jones and Wren.

After some historical remarks on the ancient evidences of Gothic architecture, Mr. Dallaway adds:

"The æra of Charlemagne gave rise to many grand edifices dedicated to Christianity, the architects of which are not recorded. If we thus fix the epocha of Gothic architecture, though we cannot ascertain the first and most ancient specimen of it, we possess nearly all the rest of its history, when we know that it was adopted, with certain variaestions, all over Europe; that great cities contended for the honour of having the largest and the richest church; that the same style of architecture employed in the ecclesiastic, passed to other edifices, and to A A-VOL. I.*

the palaces of kings; and, finally, that till the end of the fifteenth cen tury, the Gothic reigned with a more extensive dominion than the most graceful or magnificent of the Grecian orders." P. 8.

To this extract succeed various remarks on the distinctive features of Gothic architecture in the principal buildings on the continent, as contrasted with others of the same style in England: these remarks, made from personal observation, are alike valuable and interesting. From these comparisons we are led to an examination of Saxon remains in England, from this to the Norman æra, that from the conquest (1066), to the death of Stephen (1154).

Before we proceed farther, we shall be free enough to remark that, without pretending to very extensive knowledge of the subject, beyond what a love of the venerable remains of art may induce private gentlemen to enquire, we cannot help thinking Mr. Dallaway has here depended more upon imperfect drawings, or the information of former writers, than he should have done, and that he is consequently occasionally erroneous in his examples. In a work which is itself a review, it is not easy to make extracts and examine minutely; we shall therefore state, towards the con clusion of this article, some of the errors into which he has fallen, from thus relying upon others.

Of Norman erections 15 out of the 22 English cathedrals re tain considerable parts, the several dates of which are ascertained, From this style of building, to that of the pointed arch, the tran sition appears to have taken place towards the end of King Ste phen's reign (1135).

“Whether this early Gothic originated in Palestine, or was bor rowed from the Moors in Spain, has given rise to conjecture, but a bold deviation from the established style could have been scarcely made. The Gothic, or pointed arch (as it has been well observed), took its rise from the variations attendant upon all scientific pursuits. The principal feature of the first style was a combination of the circular with the pointed, an intermixture of ornaments, and a kind of contention between the two styles which should prevail. To the enormous round pillar succeeded the slender shaft, insulated, or clustered into a single column, with narrow lancet windows, and roofs upon simple cross springers. The arches were now sharply pointed, the window increased to three lights instead of one, and with small columns as mullions; and all the pillars, when of disproportionate length, broken into parts by