the late Sir Charles Barry, is 140 feet wide by 110 deep. There are two façades which have nine windows on a floor, and one which has eight. The style is of that Italian palazzo kind which does not depend upon porticoes, colonnades, arches, towers, pinnacles, or domes, but upon a bold mass of decorated windowed surface; and the general effect has met with marked approval. There is a beautiful cortile or covered court in the centre of the building, 56 feet long, 50 wide, and 54 high. The coffee-room, on the gardenfront, is a grand apartment, 112 feet by 28. The news-room, dining-room, drawing-room, library, card-rooms, are all handsome portions of the building. It was in the kitchen of the Reform Club-house that M. Soyer established his renown as a chef de cuisine.

THEATRES AND OPERA-HOUSES.

Instead of describing, in our limited space, any one of the numerous opera-houses and theatres of Europe, we will give in a condensed form some comparative figures, from Fergusson's History of Modern Architecture.

La Scala, at Milan, is the greatest in depth of audience part, and the Vienna the least; the Madrid opera-house is the greatest in width, and the Berlin and Vienna the least; the Madrid is the greatest in width of curtain, and Berlin the least; the Turin is the greatest in depth of stage, and our own opera-house in the Haymarket decidedly the least; the height over the pit varies from 84 feet in San Carlo at Naples, to 51 at Darmstadt.

Here we must close. It would be easy, if space allowed, to notice many other classes or groups of buildings which have something about them either of the wonderful or the curious. As a single room, of which the outside is scarcely visible at all, perhaps one of the most remarkable and original in Europe, and the most admirably adapted to the purpose for which it was constructed, is the new Reading-room at the British Museum. Circular in plan, and with a domed ceiling, it admits of being lighted both from the sides and from the top; it secures an effective interior; it affords unexampled accommodation to readers, with wall and press space for 100,000 volumes. The room is about 140 feet in diameter, and the height to the central skylight 108 feet. The dimensions nearly equal those of the Pantheon at Rome. Tables for about 300 readers are placed radially, like the spokes of a wheel, with an ample supply of room, light, chairs, pens, ink, paper, knives, &c. It is one of the few modern English buildings which every one praises. A beautiful new reading-room was opened at Paris in 1868, in the Imperial Library. It consists of a central square room, surrounded by semicircular arcades. The roof consists of nine cupolas of enamelled porcelain, resting on sixteen columns; the centre of each cupola having a circular skylight. There are 345 chairs, desks, and tables, for an equal number of readers. About 40,000 volumes are ranged round the room, in three balconies or galleries; and a large doorway gives access to a number of rooms in which the rest of the books are kept.

NE of the most amusing and acute persons I remember -and in my very early days I knew him well-was a white-headed lame old man, known in the neighbourhood of Kilbaggin by the name of BURNT EAGLE, or, as the Irish peasants called him, 'Burnt Aigle. His accent proclaimed him an Irishman, but some of his habits were not characteristic of the country, for he understood the value of money, and that which makes money-TIME. He certainly was not of the neighbourhood in which he resided, for he had no 'people,' no uncles, aunts, or cousins. What his real name was I never heard; but I remember him since I was a very little girl, just old enough to be placed by my nurse on the back of Burnt Eagle's donkey. At that time he lived in a neat pretty little cottage, about a mile from our house it contained two rooms; they were not only clean, but well furnished; that is to say, well furnished for an Irish cottage. During the latter years of his life, these rooms were kept in order by two sisters; what relationship they bore to my old friend, I will tell at the conclusion of my tale. They, too, always called him Burnt No. 64.

I

Aigle; all his neighbours knew about them—and the old man would not be questioned-was, that he once left home suddenly, and, after a prolonged absence, returned, sitting as usual between the panniers on a gray pony, which was young then, and, instead of his usual merchandise, the panniers contained these two little girls, one of whom could walk, the other could not: he called them Bess and Bell; and till they were in a great degree able to take care of themselves, Burnt Eagle remained entirely at home, paying great attention to his young charges, and exciting a great deal of astonishment as to 'how he managed to keep so comfortable, and rear the children :' his neighbours had no idea what a valuable freehold the old man possessed-in his time. When Burnt Eagle first came to Kilbaggin, he came with a load of fresh heather-brooms, in a little cart drawn by a donkey; but besides the brooms, he carried a store of sally switches, a good many short planks of wood, hoops large and small, bee-hives, and the tools which are used by coopers and carpenters these were few, and of the commonest kind, yet Burnt Eagle would sit on a sort of driving-box, which raised him a great deal above the level of the car, into which he elevated himself by the aid of a long crutch that always rested on his knees: there he would sit; and as the donkey jogged quietly, as donkeys always do, through the wild and picturesque scenery of hill and dale, the old man's hands were busily employed either in weaving kishes or baskets, or forming noggins, or little tubs, and his voice would at times break into snatches of songs, half-English, half-Irish; for though sharpmannered, and of a sallow complexion that tells of melancholy, he was cheerful-hearted; and his voice, strong and clear, woke the echoes of the hills, though his melodies were generally sad or serious.

I never heard what attached him to our particular neighbourhood, but I have since thought he chose it for its seclusion. He took a fancy to a cottage, which, seated between two sand-hills covered by soft green grass and moss, was well sheltered from the sea-breeze that swept along the cockle-strand, and had been the habitation of Corney the crab-catcher, who, poor fellow, was overtaken by a spring-tide one windy evening in March, and drowned. For a long time Crab Hall,' as it was jestingly called, was untenanted, and when Burnt Eagle fell in love with it, it was nearly in ruins. Some said it was not safe to live in it; but my old friend entered the dwelling, together with the donkey and a gray cat, and certainly were never disturbed by anything worse than their neighbours, or a high storm. It did not, however, suit Burnt Eagle's ideas of propriety to suffer the donkey to inhabit any portion of his cottage dwelling; and accordingly, after repairing it, he built him a stable, and wove a door for it out of the sally switches. His neighbours looked upon this as a work of supererogation, and wondered what Burnt Eagle could be thinking of, to go on slaving himself for

nothing. What would ail a lone man to live in our town?-wasn't that enough for him? It would be 'time enough' to be building a house when he had some one to live in it. But he went on his own way, replying to their remonstrances with a low chuckling laugh, and darting one glance of his keen piercing eyes upon them, in return for the stare of lazy astonishment with which they regarded his proceedings.

Burnt Eagle was, as I have said, an admirable economist of time; when he took his little car about the neighbourhood with brooms, or noggins, or baskets, or cockles, or anything else, in fact, that might be wanted, he never brought it home empty; when he had disposed of all his small merchandise, he would fill it with manure or straw, which the gentry or farmers gave him, or he gathered on the roads. If he could bring nothing else, he would bring earth or weeds; suffering the latter to decay, preparatory to the formation of a garden, with which he proposed to beautify his dwelling; the neighbours said it would be 'time enough' to think of getting the enrichment for the ground when the place was laid out for it. But Burnt Eagle would not be stayed in his progress by want of materials. So, not until he had everything ready, even a sty built for the pig, and a fence placed round the sty to prevent the pig from destroying his bit of land when it was made and cropped, not until then did he commence: and though the neighbours again said 'it would be "time enough to deprive the pig, the craythur, of his liberty when the garden was to the fore,' Burnt Eagle went on his own way, and then every one in the parish was astonished at what he had accomplished.

The little patch of ground this industrious old man had, after incredible labour, succeeded in forming over the coat of sward that covered the sand, was in front of Crab Hall. The donkey had done his best to assist a master who had never given him an unjust blow : the fence was formed round the little enclosure of gray granite, which some convulsion of nature had strewn abundantly on the strand; these stones the donkey drew up when his day's work was ended, three or four at a time. Even this enclosure was perfected, and a very neat gate of basket-work, with a latch outside and a bolt in, hung opposite the cottage door, before Burnt Eagle had laid down either the earth or manure on his plot of ground.

'Why, thin, Burnt Aigle dear,' said Mrs Radford, the net-maker's wife, as, followed by seven lazy, dirty, healthy children, she strolled over the sand-hills one evening to see what the poor bocher* was doing at the place, 'that was good enough for Corney the crabcatcher without alteration, dacent man! for twenty years. Why, thin, Burnt Aigle dear, what are ye slaving and fencing at?'

"Why, I thought I tould ye, Mrs Radford, whin I taught ye the tight stitch for a shrimp-net, that I meant to make a garden here;

* A lame man.