It causes, almost insensibly, an affinity between the objects so familiarized to them and the symmetry of thought (if I may so express myself), independently of forming a correct taste. The region of fancy will be filled with more correct images; and a distorted or ill-proportioned object will be more immediately perceived by those who have been always accustomed to have the beautiful before them. In this sense, natural flowers are far better than embroidery, and the tapestry roses of our starched ancestors.

The infinite variety of roses, including the Guelder Rose; the Rhododendron, and other plants of similar growth, are fitted for the saloon, but they please best in the library. They should be intermingled with the book-cases, and stands filled with them should be placed wherever practicable. They are a wonderful relief to the student. There is always about them a something that infuses a sensation of placid joy, cheering and refreshing. Perhaps they were first introduced at festivals, in consequence of their possessing this quality. A flower-garden is the scene of pleasurable feelings of innocence and elegance. The introduction of flowers into our rooms infuses the same sensations, but intermingles them more with our domestic comforts; so that we feel, as it were, in closer contact with them. The succession might be kept up for the greater part of the year; and even in winter, evergreens will supply their places, and, in some respects, contrast well with the season. Many fail in preserving the beauty of plants in their apartments, because they do not give them sufficient light. Some species do well with much less light than others. Light is as necessary to them as air. They should not be too often shifted from one place to another. Those who will take the trouble, may quicken the growth of some plants, so as to have spring flowers in winter. Thus Autumn and Spring might be connected; and flowers blooming in the Winter of our gloomy climate possess double attraction.

The presence of flowers is a source of beauty to the mind; for the meanest of them is lovely. To any of the Floral world, the terms, disproportion and ugliness, are inapplicable. Unbounded in variety, they are all charming to the sight, their race is essentially beautiful. It is imbued with the elements of perfect gracefulness. One flower may appear preferable to another in colour, size, and shape, but in the humblest there is the stamp of elegance. They are all pleasing, all attractive. Those who are distinguished by a fondness for them and their cultivation, are persons of elegant minds. To the fair sex, in particu lar, they offer a charming study, and the decoration of their rooms with every fresh succession sets off their own attractions; while the attending them harmonizes well with our ideas of female occupation. A lovely girl in a flower-garden is a far preferable object to the eye, to one in a ball-room. In the midst of the luxuries of a rich vegetation, the female figure is set off better; and the colours of the parterre make out what the painters call a fore and back-ground, that administers admirably to the exhibition of the "fairest flower" of all. How desirable is it that fashion should be kept on the route of true taste, and made to go hand in hand with the simple and natural!

In the flower-garden alcove, books are doubly grateful. As in the library ornamented with flowers they seem to be more enjoyed, so their union there is irresistibly attracting. To enjoy reading under such cir

cumstances, most, works of imagination are preferable to abstract subjects. Poetry and romance-" De Vere" and "Pelham"-lighter history-the lively letters of the French school, like those of Sevigné and others or natural history-these are best adapted to peruse amidst sweets and flowers in short, any species of writing that does not keep the mind too intently fixed to allow the senses to wander occasionally over the scene around, and catchthe beauty of the rich vegetation. To me the enjoyment derived from the union of books and flowers is of the very highest value among pleasurable sensations.

For my own part, I manage very well without the advantage of a green-house. The evergreens serve me in winter. Then the Lilacs come in, followed by the Guelder Rose and Woodbine, the latter trained in a pot upon circular trellis-work. After this there can be no difficulty in choosing, as the open air offers every variety. I arrange all my library and parlour-plants in a room in my dwelling-house facing the south, having a full portion of light, and a fire-place. I promote the growth of my flowers for the early part of the year by steam-warmth, and having large tubs and boxes of earth, I am at no loss, in my humble conservatory, for flowers of many kinds when our climate offers none. The trouble attending them is all my own, and is one of those employments which never appear laborious. Those who have better conveniences may proceed on a larger scale; but I contrive to keep up a due succession, which to a floral epicure is every thing. To be a day in the year without seeing a flower is a novelty to me, and I am persuaded much more might be done with my humble means than I have effected, had I sufficient leisure to attend to the retarding or forcing them. I cover every space in my sitting-rooms with these beautiful fairy things of creation, and take so much delight in the sight of them, that I cannot help recommending those of limited incomes, like myself, to follow my example and be their own nurserymen. The rich might easily obtain them without; but what they procure by gold, the individual of small means must obtain by industry. I know there are persons to whom the flowers of Paradise would be objects of indifference: but who can imitate, or envy such? They are grovellers, whose coarseness of taste is only fitted for the grossest food of life. The pleasures "des Fleurs et des Livres " are, as Henry IV. observed of his child, "the property of all the world."

FROM THE ROMAIC.

WHEN We were last, my gentle Maid,
In love's embraces twining,

'Twas Night, who saw, and then betray'd!
"Who saw ?" Yon Moon was shining,
A gossip Star shot down, and he

First told our secret to the Sea.

The Sea, who never secret kept,
The peevish, blustering railer!
Told it the Oar, as on he swept;

The Oar informed the Sailor.
The Sailor whisper'd it to his fair,
And she-she told it everywhere!

G.

Oct.-VOL. XXIII. NO. XCIV.

2 B

TRAVELLING ODDITIES, NO. 1.

THERE is nothing that more particularly distinguishes an Englishman from the various Continental people he deigns to visit, than the peculiar manners he adopts in regard to himself, his countrymen, and foreigners, when on his travels. I say peculiar, because in England he adheres to some standard rule of conduct in relation to others, as to himself; he feels himself bound by the received laws of society at home, which he might not presume to infringe without being subjected to remonstrance, reproach, or punishment: but, no sooner does he tread a stranger soil, than the admiration of England as a nation, yet so largely accorded by foreigners, and which induces respect to an individual belonging to it-their generous and patient indulgence of British bizarrerie-or their willingness to be amused at our expense-are received by our compatriots as tokens of the submission of the natives in general, and the superiority of the traveller in particular. A boy in Eton School plodding at his exercise, and a boy boating it up to the hospitable hall of old Townley; Mr. Edward Law, and Edward Lord Ellenborough; Mr. Sugden poetically descanting on the green waters and green fields of Weymouth, and Mr. Sugden pleading before Lord Lyndhurst-in short, Mr. Herries the obedient Treasury Clerk, and Mr. Herries the fastidious and thin-skinned Chancellor of the Exchequer, is or was not so distinct as an Englishman at home and an Englishman abroad; abroad he is at home, and at home often displays any thing but the consciousness of being chez lui.

That this freedom from the observances to which he has been forced to submit in his native land, and to which it might have been presumed habit and education had rendered him partial, is not derived from the difference of national manners, to which, despairing of conformity in regard to foreigners, he determines to evince his disrespect, must be admitted, when we reflect that true politeness and good breeding own higher and more fixed principles than those which direct local fashions or ephemeral modes; and that we exhibit no less (if not a greater) distinction of character and conduct in our proper Colonies, than we do in France, Switzerland, and Italy. In Great Britain we feel and proudly own that we are a free people, governed by equal laws to which the highest as the lowest must submit ;-beyond its shores we are -Not to be offensive, I would ask what are we not? A Quarterly reviewer with a friendless, unpatronized, and humble anti-Tory author under his unsparing hand;-Mr. Murray, when a self-flattering village-rhymer whispers in his ear "one thousand" for his first and maiden verse ;-Mr. Serjeant Arabin, when he directs the liberation of some unconvicted sinner;-Irving himself, when he thunders forth anathema upon anathema against Metropolitan vice ;-Justice Park and his sealed impurities, are not more self-possessed in the imperiousness of their bearing, in the awful consciousness of their moral grandeur, than in too many instances is an Englishman inflicted upon our Colonies, or sent to annoy or amuse our Continental neighbours. I refer not to that class of society which birth and education conjointly have rendered as little capable of anticipating offence or insult to themselves as of offering it to others, but of the mass;-of those who go forth, armed to the very teeth against presumed hostility, from every quarter;

and who, seeing nothing but swindling in France, robbery in Switzerland, assassination in Italy, and Metternich in Germany, prepare themselves with a determined and death-despising look in their encounter with the mere ordinary civilities of foreigners; call for dinner with the air of a Bobadil; make the fille de chambre walk before them to their room, that they may have premeditated murder at least in their front; or who, when the light-hearted and song-loving postboy turns, with a grin of exultation, as he puts his horses to their speed, fumble rapidly for their pistols; and at the unforeseen offer of a stranger's tabatière start back with horror and dismay at having been taken unprepared for such alarming tactics.

Is the picture exaggerated? We have had a late traveller in the quiet and peaceful land of Switzerland, who gravely assures us that at Lausanne, the well-ordered and well-governed capital of the lovely Canton de Vaud, where less of crime (certainly of sanguinary crime) is known than in any other district of equal extent and population in the world, he dared not enter a café without having his hand upon his dagger. "The Halps is before us, and the Halps is behind us: and God be good to us!" was the melancholy observation a bulky, but faint-hearted English female made me, as, on a morning of September, we crowded round a blazing fire in the snow-covered and elevated village of Saint Laurent, at the hospitable hotel of old Besson (the warmest-hearted Frenchman who ever breathed; and who has now breathed his last to my sorrow-for he was ever kind, most disinterestedly kind, to the traveller and wayfarer.) "We gets, Sir, as Crookback says, into the bowels of the land: and here we is, exposed to French, and Swish, and wolves, and wind." She continued, Oh, if ever I gets back to Lunnun-if I goes a travelling again" I will not conclude with the Fitz Hannibal asseveration of the affrighted dame: but, at length, my assurances did something-the goutte of brandy with which she flavoured her coffee, did more, far more-in appeasing the troubles of her spirit.

66

"I have it ready," observed a friend of mine to me once, as our voiture slowly toiled up the wood-covered hills leading to Poggibonzi in Tuscany, as the rich and cheering glow of evening filled an Italian sky-"I have it ready." "What?" I exclaimed. "It is cocked; and, as you know the country better than I do, tell me when to fire." "Fire! at what?" "At the postilion, to be sure; he shall go first, that I swear: the confounded villain!" "In Heaven's name, what has he done?" "He has been making signals with his whip, for the last half-hour, to his accomplices; he has us, that is clear: but I am resolved to die game." The postilion, wearied with a hard day's toil (for the Emperor of Austria's being on the road had prevented our procuring a relay of horses) had, as he slowly paced by the carriage, been cracking his whip at the fire-flies which had begun to appear, and his sport was construed thus into indications of murder and assassination. He was thinking of his wearied beasts and their expected provender, and his own homely supper, and his glass of purple Ronciglione, and a kiss from his brunetta; and about as much of ourselves as we of Lord Londonderry, or the Lord knows who.

It was at the commencement of the peace of 1814, that a young Englishman (the clerk in a counting-house abroad) resolved to cross

the Continent to Great Britain; and, having procured (haply at quarter-price) the faded coat and epaulettes of one of our General officers, armed with a huge cocked hat, a pair of pistols, and the quantum sufficit of his employer's doubloons to complete his mercantile mission, resolved, in a fit of ardour inspired by his investiture in military harness, to post it alone through Switzerland and France. He was tall, lanky, thin, pale, and effeminate; but had taken up the idea that he was the prototype of the "Great Captain," in so far as Nature was concerned in his form and features; the said "Great Captain" being the humble copy of this singularly favoured original. Sash and sword, and spurs, and stock, and long boots, not forgetting the Prussian plume, were all enlisted as aids to the traveller's free passage through the unmilitary nations of the Continent. It was in vain that his pointed beaver broke the front glass of the vehicle at intervals; that his Prussian plume was broken, or reduced to half-pay; that the spurs made most inhuman havoc about the ankle bones; that the stock nearly choked him beneath a burning sun; that the epaulettes most awkwardly imitated the attempts of a well-fed crow to leave this world; and that the insinuations of the sword produced frequent and fearful greetings of him and his armour with mother earth;-on he went, self-satisfied and exulting - Mi-Lord-ed and Mon-General-ed, quizzed, laughed at, sneered at, and mocked at,-swearing and puffing, and paying as he went, the self-imagined representative of Britain's glory, the future conqueror of Bonaparte,-until he resigned his pride and dignity in the delivery of protested bills, invoices, and the orders of his principals to their bale-concocting correspondents in London.

These are, with the exception of the female, your determined but distrustful travellers; but there is another class-the dandy voyageurs. of Britain, who, teeming with the proud consciousness of their excellence in comparison with the rest of human kind, swoln with self-sufficiency, float like empty bubbles on the water's surface, and who seem as if they would break and be dissolved by contact with a vulgar touch. They contrive to swim by means of their air-blown vanity until they come into concussion with some material object, and are at once reduced to their proper level, and for ever annihilated. Their country is London; their domicile Regent-street; thence they would never travel, had they their wills, not but that they would like to see Paris, and move at Longschamps, or admire its beauties in an equipage à D'Aumont; but the horrors attendant upon such an enterprise are too formidable gratuitously to be encountered. It is only when a dip at the Fishmongers has been rather too often tried, or Stultz's billets-dour have been repeated with increasing ardour on the part of the Tailor-lover until he delegates the maintenance of his baronial purse to some dandy-detesting attorney, that they feel it expedient to brave the dangers of sea and land, and, unscrewing their brass spurs, folding up their mustachios in a portefeuille, they hasten them from life, and love, and London, and set them down at Meurice's, the creatures of another element: not less new to all things around them, than all things there are new to them. There let me leave my dandy for a moment, to return, ere I am too distant from the shores of England, to his spurs of brass. It was Colonel O'S, as honest an Irishman and as brave a soldier as ever trod the earth, who, returning from the Continent after having seen hard and unremitted service in Portugal, Spain, France,