There is not an original thought from the beginning of the book to the end; and yet it is not dull. The characters are all imitated-and servilely. The incidents are those of an harlequinade. The situations are weak and ineffective; the wit below par; the common dialogue often feeble to vulgarity; and the description-except one point the approach to a castle in the Low Countries-always failing. And yet, in spite of all this, the variety of topic makes the work light and entertain ing. It could not have been written by a clumsy man; it is the best imi tation of Sir Walter Scott that I have seen; and I believe that it will be popular.

Two new pictures brought to the Diorama; and a town view of " Cobbett trying for a subscription," in the course of the last month. The sub scription won't do; it is not in London that Cobbett's popularity lies. The" true believers" in his politics are the people of the provinces, who know very little (generally) of the subjects which he discusses; and who naturally like that bold, broad, posi❤ tive, easily-comprehended statement of a question, which, taking notice only of one side of the matter in dispute, spares them any perplexity which might arise from a consideration of the other. But, with a London populace, Cobbett will never do anything.

He

has too much pretence, and too much ill-temper, for an orator; Hunt, with out a tithe of his talent, would beat him out of the field-in fact, as a speaker, Hunt is very greatly his su perior. But people of this order are always great-until they get into Parliament. Two or three individuals may buy our friend a borough-he will never get two hundred pounds towards it from the public-but, if he comes in, he will be very noisy for a fortnight, and then-like the rest of his kind-silent for ever after. No man-whatever his talent may be→→ unless he has some character or connexion, can force his way in Parliament. Cobbett will make violent harangues, to which no one will reply. Give notices of motions-but it takes forty members to make a House. If he is answered, it will be civilly, and in a few words; but those words will be listened to-which will be inconvenient. Then comes a division-and

this upon all occasions of 76 to 4. Meantime, he will have failed in Par liament, which will shake the hold he has upon the heads of the lower classes. He will print his own speeches in the Register; which will then be exceedingly dull-which it is not now. If Cobbett seriously desires to show his face in the House of Commons, his vanity misleads him most egregiously.

The Diorama pictures, opened only about a week since, are interesting. One of them-a view of the interior of Roslin Chapel, by Daqueue-deci dedly the best that has been exhibited. Independent, indeed, of any aid from mechanical contrivance, it is a most finished and extraordinary painting. The effect of the trees, seen through the windows on the right hand of the chapel, sparkling when the sun bursts out upon them, is absolutely magical. And yet, perhaps, this is inferior as a work of art as everything I ever recollect to have seen is in execution-except Rembrandt-to the side opposite, where the building is in shade; the eye absolutely, upon deliberation, seems to penetrate into the darkness; and to discover objects, after a time, which at first were not visible. The view, altogether, is decidedly better even than the first picture of Canterbury Cathedral. From your acquaintance with the reality, I am sure you will be delighted when you see it.

Bouton's picture this time-a view of Rouen from Mont St Catherine'sI don't like so well as some things that he has done before. It is not very judiciously designed, nor very happily executed; not at all equal to the Valley of Sarnen.

A new exhibition, called the Poeci lorama-a sort of compound of the arrangements of the Diorama and the Cosmorama-has opened. The paintings are by Stanfield; and there are bits of merit-mixed with a good deal of what is tawdry—about them.

Weber, the Freischutz composer, has arrived in England, and presided at the Oratorio at Covent Garden last Wednesday night. He is one of the gravest-looking men-and one of the saddest-I ever saw; but extremely modest and inobtrusive in his demean

our.

A French giant, and two Lapland

dwarfs, have been brought over; but I hate monsters, and have not been to trouble myself with either.

And, over and above all monsters, better than the newest news-better than the madman who has been found with a beard five feet long somewhere locked up in a garret in Staffordshire! Surpassing the hackney coach and horses which walked into the Thames last Thursday night, at Milbank; and swam up to Vauxhall bridge, with the coachman crying" Murder!" before it was drowned-effacing all recollection of the burning down of the patent-shot manufactory, and all thought even of Mr Hayne's seven thousand pound shaving-box-all dread from bankruptcies, past or to come, in town or country, and almost all delight that we are to have French silks to wear, instead of English ones, in July-it is the death of the Elephant-the great Elephant-beyond all this, which occupies the attention of the town!

The editor of the Monthly Obituary enters his name with deep regret:"At his lodgings, over Exeter Change, inhis 24th year, Chuny!"-The Cockney poets write both elegies and epitaphs on his death; and all the threepenny publications will live for these six months upon his acts and his biography.

The "Globe and Traveller" newspaper, first announcing his decease, which was brought on partly by a sudden amorousness, and partly from irritation excited by long captivity, speaks of the medicines given to repress this heat of temperament, and relates that a hundred weight of Epsom salts was administered as an ordinary dose. As a pound of these salts will not dissolve in less than about two pounds and a half or three pounds of water, it follows that the patient must have been in the habit of swallowing never less than fifty gallons of water at a draught—a circumstance which accounts now for (but does not justify) the emptiness of the fire "mains" in the neighbourhood of the Strand, so much complained of at several of the late conflagrations. The fifty-two gallons of salts producing no effect, it was proposed, I understand, to try what could be done by a remedy of entirely an opposite character; but this was abandoned, from an apprehension of what the consequences

might be-looking to the prodigious extent of the necessary applicationin so confined an area as that of Exeter Change.

So, help for poor Chuny there was none-although the fire-engine of the Hand-in-Hand Insurance Company had been borrowed to carry this last project into execution. And he died to the inexpressible delight of all the ballad-singers, and "flying intelligence" newspaper men. The "Herald," all the while he lay dead, inserted comparative notices of the deaths of all the elephants who had distinguished themselves since the time of Noah. The "Chronicle" sent a gentleman, "exclusively," to attend the dissection, and had an idea, it is said, (only the thing could not be done in time,) to have given a woodcut of the ceremony. Pictures-of "The shooting of the Elephant,"taken at different moments, and exhibiting different details of the process, are still crowding the shop windows, for the benefit (of the pick-pockets, and) of the curious. The proprietor is a gainer by the affair every way; for he will have two elephants out of one

the skeleton, and the stuffed skinwithout counting the show of the den in which the deceased did livewhich people are actually paying their money to go and see. The Sunday Pulpit Thumper, and many of the other saintly publications, contained warnings to youth, generally, against the fault that led to Chuny's death. One weekly paper, the name I don't recollect, devoted a whole columnwhen everybody fancied the business was over-to the smell that he made four days after his dissection. And, if a living elephant could pop up at this moment, his fortune would be secure, and he might buy a house in Portland Place to morrow, out of the excitement produced upon the subject of elephants generally, by all this discussion about the dead one.

I think myself there was a little mismanagement in poor Chuny's case; if the thing were to happen over again, I doubt whether something would not be done for him. One radical error, certainly, was the ever having carried him, when he was little, into a room up two pair of stairs; and there let him go on growing larger and larger, without recollecting that he might possibly

some day or other want to come down again. As he stood, it was not merely to be apprehended that he might break loose, and being loose, liberate -which he would no doubt have done instantly the lions and tigers in all the adjoining apartments; but the truth is, that the very first step he took from his den-which had been from time to time propped up to bear his weight, and otherwise secured would have been-through the floorlike a mountain tumbling out of the 'moon-into Exeter Change, all among the Jews who were selling shoe-strings and pocket-books beneath! Imagine only the skippings and hoppings of these infidels the exclainations of"Oh Chrisht, mo!"-And the tumbling about of the braces and knee buckles, in such a scene!

So, to prevent such a consummation, they were compelled to dispatch him; and it took a hundred and fifty bullets, as all accounts agreed, to do the work. For an animal who swallowed a hundred weight of salts at a dose, a hundred and fifty bullets was not indeed very much; and I recol lect seeing an ox fired at, under circumstances of necessity, who received nineteen before he fell. Coming through Spain in the beginning of the retreat with Sir John Moore, a baggage mule that I had knocked up, and, as mules on a retreat are not to be had when you please, an Irish serjeant hit upon the idea of transferring the load, pack-saddle and all, to the back of a bullock, taken extemporally from the fields by the road-side. The novelty of this proceeding probably astonished the animal at first into submission, and he walked excellently well, tied to the tail of a cart, with the rest of the train, for about an hour; but at length, coming over a beath-either he had been used to feed in that quarter, and had associations, or on a sudden he questioned, the legality of his detention, for he hung back, broke his halter, and was off (with my property) on the road to the mountains, as nimble as a deer. The packsaddle, which had been put on firmly, to meet any casual kicking, held as if by miracle-but this only made the matter worse. The last shirt I had was entering a pine forest of about twenty miles extent. The half dozen dollars in my portmanteau

I heard them distinctly ringing out "Farewell!" as the portmanteau bumped along, at the fugitive's full gallop, up and down. Through the brush-wood my horse had no chance in point of speed; and I was compelled to cry out to some light infantry men to fire. But though the balls rattled out from half a dozen muskets, we had a chase of more than two miles; and my poor deserter, who might have gone free if he could have shaken off his burthen, had nineteen shots in him before he fell.

My surprise was rather, about Chuny, that, after the first fire (which affected him very little), he did not break out of his den, and run up Fleet Street. If he had done this, the sight (to have seen from a two pair of stairs window) would certainly have been one of the finest in the world. His immense weight, which was very nearly equal to that of a loaded coalwaggon, the least it could have done, would have been to overthrow and bear down every object it came near. He would have switched all the shop windows in, about the narrow part of the Strand, with a lash of his tail on one side of the way; and overturned the whole stand of hackney-coaches in the broad part, with a flying kick out as he passed, on the other. And against such an enemy, too, there was no casual weapon which could have been laid hold of with any chance of success! All the spits of the London tavern charged in flank at once, would only have tickled him; and to have tried to knock him down with anything lighter than the Monument, would have been a waste of labour.

An affair of this kind, by the way, was very near actually happening, some years since, at Geneva. An elephant who was exhibited there, and who was in the habit of performing his journeys about the country on foot, was carried away very quietly, after having been shown for some three weeks; and, two days after, at a distance of about twelve miles from the city, he became furious, broke loose from his keepers, and ran back to Geneva. Fortunately for the inhabitants, he reached the town at night, when the gates were shut, so that the rushing in was prevented. And, before morning, they contrived to get him secured among the fortifi

4

cations, where he did not afterwards meet with quite fair play; for the town council had long been desirous to have the skeleton of an elephant in their museum. So, as a living ele phant was obviously capable of being converted into the skeleton of an elephant, and the proprietors of the show, who probably were astray as to the course the beast had taken, did not arrive, it was resolved that an elephant in the fortifications was very danger ous; and sentence was passed, that he should be destroyed. The physicians of the place, then, desiring to make the most of a godsend, request ed to be allowed to poison the intruder in the way of experiment; and, the quantity of poisons that he swallowed without mischief-I can't venture upon that part of the story-they surpass the hundred weight doses of salts given by my friend of the "Globe and Traveller!" In two days dosing, however, they were unable to kill him; and the council apprehending, probably, the arrival of the keepers, then called in a couple of six-pounders, which did the business.

I rather suspect that, like our un→ happy Chuny, this Genevese elephant omitted to swallow the poisons which were served up to him. But the shooting business answered our Exeter Change man's purpose much better; for it is inconceivable what a fuss the firing a hundred and fifty shotsclose to the public street, and the fact afterwards of the poor fellow's destruction-one part of the affair and the other-made. Like all eminent characters we never know a blessing

until we lose it-hundreds who never thought about him while he was alive, as soon as he was dead, came breaking their necks to see him. The day after the death was a sad rainy dayheavy and gloomy; but the doors of Exeter Change were blockaded with dripping hackney coaches, and some carriages, and a great many cabriolets, in waiting. A great mob of common people, too, were collected about the building; not at all meaning to go in themselves, but anxious, as the rabble always is, to choke up the passage for those who did mean to do so. Presently the crowd gave way for an immense lady in deep black, who came down the menagerie stairs. She got into a carriage, but I don't know who she was; some said that it was Mrs Coutts-others, that it was the elephant's widow. While this was argued, there came a cry that the monkeys had broken loose; and then I went away, for I thought I felt one of them with his fingers in my pocket.

But enough of Chuny-and of all other subjects for this letter has run to an intolerable length. Farewell! The Chancellor of the Exchequer opens his "Budget" on MondayHeaven grant it be not very terribly liberal! Farewell-great " Chuny" of politics and literature! The Maga zine-men call it now the Elephant Periodical-seems to delight people more and more here every day. Adieu, Christopher! for I am tired of writing; and, until our great festival at Easter, believe me, yours,

TITUS.

ded. The public endured it, and the party whom it was meant to conciliate approved. How the public have so long endured this growing evil, which increases by toleration, I can best understand by analysing my own feelings. A profound admiration of the works of the poet, (his early works be it understood,) so much personal acquaintance as was sufficient to strengthen the partiality created by his genius; and, perhaps, more than all, by the sympathy excited by his struggles with adversity in early life, made me very reluctant to impute to him the delinquencies of his inferior