A CONVENTUAL KITCHEN AT AMARANTHE.-Previously to quitting the kitchen, where such substantial preparations were going forward as fully asserted the claim of its hospitable inmates to the title of bons vivans. Through the centre of the kitchen flowed a stream of water, grated at both ends, in which some fine carp were enjoying themselves, during the short time they had to live. The cooks were all friars of subordinate degree, and the effect of seeing these unshod sons of St. Domingo go through the manual exercise of the culinary art, was irresistibly comic. As I mounted my horse, the waiting friar above mentioned stood at the portal, and softly ejaculated, "Pel' amor de Deos." The hint was necessary, as I should never have presumed to insult the dignity of the order, by depositing my mite with one of the meanest of its I slipped a dollar into the friars's hand, received a flood of benedictions, and rode forwards.-Adventures in the Peninsula.

sons.

A ROMAN PREACHER. At physical existences, even at the Colosseum, one casts a glance, or takes one's good look, and can no more; but moral existences attract and detain the attention. My regards were soon drawn away from the stone walls, which, however wonderful, are but stone walls, and addressed to a crowd collected by the preaching of a capuchin. I joined in the throng, and listened to his discourse. He spoke most fluently, without pause or stop, and gave a strangely acute accent to the last syllable of every word; the stuff he uttered was not so bad as might have been expected. He was not in a pulpit, but on a stage, like a mountebank's, upon which he walked backwards and forwards in the manner of a wild beast in its cage at Exeter 'Change; nor did he resemble one of these creatures less in aspect than in his action. A man kept clinking a box of halfpence all the time, as an instrumental accompaniment to the preacher's vocal performance; it was also meant as a gentle hint to the pocket; but the faithful thought it less earthly to be contrite than generous-less painful to grunt than to give; the ghostly father got more groans than halfpence. When the discourse was concluded they knelt down to pray, the monk said a prayer, and the people repeated it after him; they then got up and walked in procession to the several stations, singing and making the same loud and doleful noise that is heard in England in the vicinity of a meeting-house, where the methodists, or other serious persons within are in full operation. A large wooden cross is planted in the middle of the arena; from time to time, women walked up to it and kissed it with a rapturous fervour; I felt curious to know how far the cross was to be envied, supposing it to be sensible of their caresses; I therefore approached it; and of the many ladies who kissed it, I cannot say that any one was fit to kiss any thing but wood; nevertheless the old ladies may be very lovely-I speak only of the impressions they made upon me.-Hogg's Two Hundred and Nine Days on the Continent.

HONEY-HUNTING.-At the end of a path we discovered a rude but very ingenious scaffolding made by the Hottentots to obtain honey from the hive. The rock overhung its base so much that very great labour and skill were required, and risk incurred, in fixing and tying with strips of bark, the poles and branches of trees. Their reward may literally be said to be sweet. The manner of finding it is very singular, as related to us by one of our party, who had accompanied a Hottentot in search of some. The Ilottentot went to a place that he thought likely to contain the hives, and immediately whistled with a sort of call that the honey bird or indicator is accustomed to, when the little feathered attendant made its appearance, chirping loudly and hovering about them; it then flew forward, still chirping and watching to see if they followed. It tried twice to lead them across a kloof, flying back and again forward to entice them to follow; they, however, not liking to go that way, and the Hottentot continuing to whistle the call, the bird at length flew back, and led another way, still watching and chirping to them to follow him, which they now did, and very soon it hovered over a place in the rock, where, on searching, they found a hive full of honey; the bird immediately perched in a bush over them, and waited patiently till they had taken the honey, when it flew down, and took possession of the nest, and eat what was left for it. The honey-bird is rather larger than a sparow, with brown feathers. The quantity of honey taken every year is immense, and its flavour is very delicious. The bees seldom or never sting if they are not hurt. The Hottentot is very particular in his manner of leaving the honey for the bird, as he says that it will then rememeber him, and lead him another time in preference to any other person. When the bird has eaten the honey, the young bees are carefully closed up with stones to prevent the ratel* from taking them out, and as there are always a quantity of flowers, the bees never want nourishment.-Scenes and Occurrences in Caffer Land.

A kind of badger.

MILITARY THEATRICALS.-I spent a pleasant day or two with Captain whose brigade is quartered at Galleges, a few leagues on the Portuguese side of Ciudad Rodrigo. A large barn in this village has been converted into a temporary theatre, and the company has had the honour, during the winter, of exhibiting a number of pieces to "overflowing and brilliant houses." Captain is their chief man, stage-manager, and actor of first parts. A few weeks ago he appeared in Zanga." Lord Wellington and his staff were present. On the next day his Lordship took the field with his-fox-hounds, and in the ardour of the chase, Captain was thrown from his horse into a river. Lord Wellington witnessed the catastrophe, and asked who it was. "It's only Zanga washing his face, my lord," said Colonel who was riding by.-Adventures in the Peninsula.

66

A GERMAN LITERARY CHARACTER.-Hoffmann could not do without society, without excitement, and now not well without exclusive admiration. His old friends he had not forsaken, for he seidom, and with difficulty, got intimate with a stranger; but their quiet life could not content him it was clear that the enjoyment he sought was only to be found among gay laughter-loving topers, as a guest at their table, or still better, as their sovereign in the wine-house. "The order of his life, from 1816, downwards," says his Biographer, "was this:-On Mondays and Thursdays he passed his forenoon at his post in the Kammergericht; on other days at home, in working; the afternoons he regularly spent in sleep, to which, in summer, perhaps he added walking: the evenings and nights were devoted to the tavern. Even when out in company, while the other guests went home, he retired to the tavern to await the morning, before which time it was next to impossible to bring him home." Strangers who came to Berlin went to see him in the tavern; the tavern was his study, and his pulpit, and his throne; here his wit flashed and flamed like an Aurora Borealis, and the table was for ever in a roar; and thus, amid tobacco-smoke, and over coarse earthly liquor, was Hoffmann wasting faculties which might have seasoned the nectar of the gods.

Poor Hoffmann was on the highway to ruin; and the only wonder is, that with such fatal speed, he did not reach the goal even more balefully and sooner. His official duties were, to the last, punctually and irreproachably performed. He wrote more abundantly than ever; no magazine editor was contented without his contributions; the Nachtstücke (Night-pieces) were published in 1817; two years afterwards, Klein Zaches, regarded (it would seem falsely) as a local satire; and at last, between 1819 and 1821, appeared in four successive volumes, the Serapionsbrüder, containing most of his smaller. tales, collected from various fugitive publications, and combined together by dialogues of the Serapion-brethren, a little club of friends, which for some time met weekly in Hoffmann's house. The Prinzessin Brambilla, (1821) is properly another Fantasypiece: The Lebensaussichten des Kater Murr (Tom-cat Murr's Philosophy of Life), published in 1820 and 1821, was meant by the author as his master-work; but the third volume is wanting; and the wild anarchy, musical and moral, said to reign in the first two, may for ever remain unreconciled.

Meanwhile, Hoffmann's tavern orgies continued unabated, and his health at last sank under them. In 1819, he had suffered a renewed attack of gout; from which, however, he had recovered by a journey to the Silesian baths. On his forty-fifth birth-day, the 24th of January, 1822, he saw his best and oldest friends, including Hitzig and Hippel, assembled round his table; but he himself was sick : no longer hurrying to and fro in hospitable assiduity, as was his custom, but confined to his chair, and drinking bath water, while his guests were enjoying wine. It was his death that lay upon him, and a mournful lingering death. The disease was a tabes dorsalis; limb by limb, from his feet upwards, for five months, his body stiffened and died. Hoffmann bore his sufferings with inconceivable gaiety; so long as his hands had power, he kept writing; afterwards, he dictated to an amanuensis; and four of his tales, the last, Der Fiend (The Enemy,) discontinued only some few days before his death, were composed in this melancholy season, He would not believe that he was dying, and he longed for life with inexpressible desire. On the evening of the 24th of June, his whole body to the neck had become stiff and powerless; no longer feeling pain, he said to his doctor," I shall soon be through it now."-" Yes," said the doctor, "you will soon be through it." Next morning he was evidently dying; yet about eleven o'clock he awoke from his stupor, cried that he was well, and would go on with dictating the Fiend that night; at the same time calling on his wife to read him the passage where he had stopt. She spoke to him in kind dissuasion; he was silent; he motioned to be turned towards the wall; and scarcely had this been done, when the fatal sound was heard in his throat, and in a few minutes Hoffmann was no more.-Carlisle's Specimens of German Romance.

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