Yates was exceedingly lively and clever throughout his part of the piece. In the trial before Lord Norbury, he was his lordship, Mr. Charles Phillips, Mr. Somebody else, on the other side, and two witnesses in a succession equally rapid and happy. The best thing, in this, was general nature also. We mean the male witness. It was one of the most skilful and characteristic exhibitions of an Irishman we ever beheld. We do not think Charles Phillips very like-but, indeed, his manner is not sufficiently peculiar to render imitation very easy. In the speech of his opponent, there are one or two passages which, we consider, might be softened with advantage.

As for the Harlequinade! Wheugh! We should like to see the person who would describe it! Go see it, and you will see one of the most animated, ludicrous, and extraordinary exhibitions mortal eyes ever lighted upon. Pray, Mr. Yates, have you the gift of ubiquity?

20th. Unless five other papers be wrong-The Times,' the 'Morning Chronicle,' the Morning Journal,' the Globe,' and the Courier,'-the 'Morning Herald,' of yesterday was guilty of a gross outrage against public decency, and of the foulest slander against a gentleman holding an official situation of considerable importance. We allude to the report of the inquest on the body of the girl lately murdered near Kensington. The circumstances, of the case are most singularly revolting altogether-but even this is not sufficient for the Herald.' In its report of yesterday, it puts into the mouth of Mr. Stirling the Corouer, in a case of life and death, two jests of a character so grossly and revoltingly filthy, that it is impossible for us to reprint them. Now we believe this to be an invention of the Morning Herald;' because there is a much more detailed report in the Times,' one quite as long as that in the 'Herald' in the 'Chronicle,' and moderately lengthy ones in the remainder. In these there is not one word of the kind, We cannot conceive a statement more calculated to injure Mr. Stirling, not only in his official capacity, but as a gentleman and a man. We have not the very slightest acquaintance with him, but we do not believe he acted in this shameful manner, for the reasons we have above stated. If be so, it is an additional reason for the giving a power to the magistrates, which we have heard hinted at, of punishing editorial, malefactors summarily. Why should pick-pockets be punished, if they are let off.

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25th. The papers again! In this instance, advantage is taken of a gentleman being in a profession which brings him personally before the public, to set his very dining-room before them also, as though it were a scene at his own theatre. We allude to a paragraph which appeared in the Sunday Times' of yesterday, concerning Mr. Yates, of a character such as we scarcely thought the papers had yet reached. For this contains nothing political or indecent; only a violation of the hospitality of a private gentleman of worth and respectability. It is needless to go into the details; but the conduct of the parties concerned during the transaction, was very much on a par with the act of sending an account of it to the newspaper afterwards. And why the paper should print it, we cannot for the life of us conceive. Really these people must be kept in order by some means or other.

29th. Two very remarkable circumstances occurred at the Review yesterday. The Duke of Wellington fell off his horse, at the head of the troops: we understand his Grace took it very good-humouredly. There was also, as we heard, one of the female “equestrians" from Astley's, in a dress resembling the uniform of the Tenth Hussars, and with a Bird of Paradise feather in her bonnet, who caracolled round the circle to the great entertainment of the crowd. There was a strangely absurd rumour spread that this was Lady Londonderry.

THE EDITOR'S ROOM.

No. XIV.

We have no time, this month, gentle reader, for any idle talk about things in general; for-witness these heaps of the new-born that cumber our table, and cry for criticism from the floor of this our sanctuary —we have more real business to go through, than the minutes we may spend with thee now would suffice for, were they ten times told. An author's period of gestation has not, we believe, been yet exactly determined by naturalists; and indeed, we are inclined to think, that nature is a little irregular here, and will be found not very much disposed to submit to any precise law; but be this as it may, it is certainly the fact, that a very unusual number of craniological conceptions generally contrive to come to maturity about this time. This makes the duties of criticism doubly severe in the dog-days-the very season when one is least disposed to work hard. There is something a little perplexing, it must be confessed, in this arrangement-so unlike the other beneficent ordinations of nature; but there is no help for it-we must just submit to what we cannot alter. Now then for business: and here, in the first place, are two dumpy, little volumes, yclept

SHREDS AND PATCHES OF HISTORY, IN THE FORM OF RIDDles. This is no bad riddle of a title-page to begin with, at all events. Indeed, when we first opened the book, we were ourselves, we confess, fairly pozed by the mysterious announcement. We recollect very well when at school accidentally making the discovery that one of our classfellows laboured under a slight misapprehension as to the import of the term ænigma, which happened to stand among a list of Latin vocables set us to get by heart-and that we were malicious enough to leave him in his error till he had an opportunity of being set right by the universal shout that followed his solemn repetition to the master of "ænigma, a riddle for riddling corn!!" This was, after all, only a proper punishment to our erudite friend for his conceit of being wise above what was written; for, to do the book justice, it said not a word about corn; and if Tom had confined himself to speaking what was set down for him, he might have retained his peculiar notion touching the meaning of the term for years to come, without any one

knowing any thing about it. And this has always been the application we have been wont to make of the incident-calling it to mind as a warning and check to ourselves whenever we have felt tempted to take in the same way, in our oratorical displays, a leap in the dark. But on this occasion it occurred to us in our perplexity, that these same Shreds and Patches of History might possibly be some how or other disposed in the form of corn-riddles, or sieves. Some of the old Greek poets were wont to amuse themselves by the composition of odes in the shape of eggs, hatchets, and pigeons' wings-and our author, we supposed, might have taken it into his head to attempt a revival of this classic practice. We were confirmed in this idea when we cast our eye upon his motto, "I have gleaned an ear from every harvest," which had so agricultural an aspect, that we really no longer doubted what sort of riddles it was he dealt in.

However, upon further inspection, we found we were quite in the wrong. The Shreds and Patches are, or are intended to be, disposed in the form of ænigmas, not sieves. In short, the work is merely a pair of volumes of historical anecdote, in the first of which the narratives are given without the names of the actors being mentioned, and are therefore called riddles, while in the second they are repeated, with the blanks filled up, or the generalities appropriated and explained, and are thus transformed into solutions. There is not much wit, it may be conceived, in ænigmas of this construction; but the scheme is nevertheless a contrivance for giving something of the air of a game to the study of history, and may not be without its use in stimulating the curiosity of juvenile readers. We may remark, too, that in as far as we have looked into the work, it appears to be executed with judgmdnt and taste, and to display considerable reading on the part of the author. The volumes are handsomely printed, and in outward shew, at least, well calculated to prove attractive to the young scholar.

Along with this performance we may notice another little volume of historical selections, the Rev. Alexander Stewart's

STORIES FROM THE HISTORY OF SCOTLAND,

of which the second edition lies on our table. This is a series of plain and direct narratives addressed also to the rising generation, and written in so simple and perspicuous a style as to be well calculated to engage their attention. We greatly rejoice in these different attempts to make the interesting and most instructive lessons of history an important part of early education. Mr. Stewart's volume is intended as a companion to Mr. Croker's Stories selected from the History of England. It embraces the whole range of the Scottish annals from the reign of Macbeth to the Revolution; and the author has been happy, we think, in gleaning the most striking incidents from that extended drama. The stories, as we have said, are related throughout without embellishment, and according to the most authentic sources of information. We miss, certainly, the graphic sketches of Sir Walter Scott's Tales of a Grandfather, which refer in part to the same subjects; but Mr. Stewart's volume will be found, we believe, JUNE, 1829.

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at least a very safe and trustworthy guide for the young enquirer over the ground whereon the mighty enchanter has since scattered his more animating light.

These works, it will be observed, relate principally to our own species but the next we have to notice, is history of another sort. It is a handsome volume, embellished with wood cuts, and entitled

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF DOGS.

AND why should not dogs have their biographers, as well as others who have made a noise in the world? This volume does honour to Captain Brown's sense of justice and fair dealing. All eminence, good and bad, is not biped. We will not say that a mighty conqueror is merely a fighting mastiff, or a great orator nothing but a barking curbut there is, nevertheless, a good deal in common between the two characters in each case, so much, at all events, as ought to prevent the admirers of the one from altogether despising the other. Captain Brown seems to have felt this-and hence the present amusing, instructive, and useful little volume. Every dog, says the old proverb, has his day-the insinuation being, we suppose, that he has nothing more than his day, the night of death extinguishing him, body, soul, and memory, at once. It is the old proverb's turn now, to submit to fate-it must die like a dog-it has had its day. Captain Brown has boldly set about the business of giving immortality to quadruped genius and worth. We rejoice, we confess, in this new note which has been added to the trump of fame, the blast of which has hitherto been too monotonous: this variety will improve its music. We see in these pages a great many stories, shewing how easily dogs, by a proper method, may be taught almost anything; may it not be pos

sible to make them understand what has here been done for them, that so they may rise in their own esteem, and aspire to something still higher than they have yet reached, when they feel that they have a reputation to hand down to future ages s? Would it not contribute to elevate the character of a dog, if he could be induced to ask himself occasionally, What will posterity think of me? What figure shall I cut in history? How shall I be reported of in the Biographia? Meantime Iwe wish all success to Mr. Brown's book, which seems to be compiled with great industry both from reading and the original communications of his friends, and is really full of interesting matter. sketch of the game laws in the Appendix, also, appears to be very accurately drawn up, and his suggestions for their improvement are judicious and liberal.

His

From History to Housekeeping, is no great step-by the Dictionary at least; and notwithstanding the common talk as to the dignity of the former, many of our readers, we doubt not, deem the latter the more interesting subject of the two. And even in respect of dignity, why should History carry it over Domestic Economy? The former is merely a collection of matters of fact; the latter is one of the sciences, founded upon certain established principles like Ethics or Astronomy,

and not to be mastered, except by the exercise of the reason on a concatenation of propositions and demonstrations. To study history is merely to read, or at most to get by heart; the student of house-keeping must ponder and calculate at every step he takes-as in all the other sciences. We must say, however, the subject is not quite so methodically treated as it might have been in the work now before us,

THE HOUSEKEEPER'S ORACLE.

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THIS is the last speech and dying words of Dr. Kitchiner, and a strange farrago it is. It is really not doing the work justice to call it simply, "The Housekeeper's Oracle;" it ought to have been entitled a treatise on the omne scibile at least. The head of man," says the learned author, "is like a Pudding; and whence have all Rhymes, Poems, Plots, and Inventions, sprang but from that same Pudding? What is Poetry but a Pudding of Words?" But of all "Puddings of words "since that must be the phrase-certainly the most miscellaneous it has ever been our chance to partake of, is the "Housekeeper's Oracle." The worthy doctor must certainly have been in an amazingly excited state during its composition. The work deserves, indeed, in some respects, to be ranked with the highest effusions of the lyric muse. Its transitions are quite Pindaric; indeed in sudden starts and skips "from grave to gay, from lively to severe "-from the concerns of this world to those of the next, and back again, perhaps, from an epistle of St. Paul to fresh sturgeon or roasted pig-we venture to say there is nothing either in Pindar or any other poet to come near to it. Let us just open the book and go over a few pages of it. Passing over the author's picture, the title-page, and the preface, we find ourselves, after getting over a page about "the cage of matrimony," "the net of courtship," and other such matters, up to the ears, before we are aware, in a rambling dissertation about Cookery, Achilles, and the Jewish Patriarchs-from which we are landed amid a series of extracts from the Northumberland Housebook-all leading (most naturally it will be allowed) to a sort of sermon on the duty of order, enforced by a quotation from the 14th chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians. Then comes a set of tables and observations on the annual expenses of a family of three persons, with "two maids and a man servant, who have a dinner party once a month "-followed by "The Genuine Golden Rules of Economy "-which give way, in their turn, to "a true story (of three pages and a half in a small type) about a linen draper" who went into business with better than a thousand pounds," and, by over feeding, became first corpulent and then bankrupt, and so was reduced at last "to live upon a chop and a draught of porter." It is the same thing if we open the book any where else. Towards the end, for instance, we find receipts for varnishing oil paintings, preventing the freezing of water in pipes, &c., succeeded by hints relative to beds and bedclothes-a direction for making common paste-a mode of preventing hats being damaged after a shower of rain-the proper way of cleaning knives-and a pair of short disquisitions on cosmetics and wounds of the skin. Cleopatra herself could boast of no such "infinite

* Page 267.

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