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cussing the second edition of the Folio, | able if we were governed by the space it occuwhich had then been out of the press not pies in the volume before us; but Mr. Tuckermuch above twelve months." 66 Here," as man has treated the subject with such genOliver Goldsmith writes in his characteristic uine and hearty appreciation of the historReverie" at this very tavern, "by a pleas- ical and literary associations of our ancient ant fire, in the very room where old Sir hostelries, and in such a thoroughly English John Falstaff cracked his jokes, in the very tone, that we imagine it will be found the chair which was sometimes honoured by most attractive and readable paper of the Prince Henry, and sometimes polluted by collection. his immoral merry companions, I sat and ruminated on the follies of youth; wished to be young again, but was resolved to make the best of life while it lasted, and now and then compared past and present times together." Another Will, with a sweeter name, a Will Mead, kept the Mermaid," in Bread Street, which was a house of great repute among the gentlefolk, and also another historical and literary focus of attraction. Here "rare Ben Jonson" met his friends Shakespeare, Beaumont, and Fletcher; and Beaumont reminds us of the wit and humour which flowed there, when he says,

Boswell records Dr. Johnson's hearty praise of the solid comforts and unrestrained conviviality of a tavern. There in a cosy corner, with a blazing fire and well-cooked food, the learned sage who could abstain, but could not be moderate," was at liberty to make those inarticulate animal noises over his food," which seemed to yield him so much gratification. Mr. Tuckerman remarks that a man so organised might not inappropriately call a tavern-chair the throne of human felicity," and might repeat "Shenstone's praise of inns with rapture:

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The inner life of a man of genius, his likes and dislikes, his quips and quibbles, his pains and pleasures, have always exercised a strange fascination over the Essayist. The elder Disraeli in his Quarrels of Authors,' and 'Calamities of Authors,' has left behind a mine of anecdote on the subject; and Mr. Tuckerman might have made his Essay on "Authors" more complete by the judicious use of a few anecdotes from those valuable works. The prevailing faults in this Essay arise from the Author's fancy of just mentioning the name of each writer, in combination with his traditionary belongings. Thus we have a whole page written in this style: 66 -- Milton his head like that of a saint encircled with rays-seated at the organ, Landor standing in the ilex path of a Tuscan villa, Dryden seated in oracular dignity in his coffee-house armchair," and Camoens breasting the waves with the Lusiad between his teeth." These and many others Mr. Tuckerman characterises as the visions of his student life, which was little else than a boundless panorama that displayed scenes in the lives of his favourite authors." Too much of the earlier portion of this paper is occupied by mere names and epithets and fine writing, instead of good, wholesome criticism or valuable historical matter: indeed, some parts of the Essay read almost like the catalogue of a picture gallery. The author is more pleasing and natural in his account of his meeting and conversation with Sismondi and Silvio Pellico. He sees them in Italy: the former

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Beneath this jovial appreciation, however, there lurks a sad inference; it argues a homeless lot, for lonely or ungenial must be the residence, looked like a temperate country gentleman, or contrast with which renders an inn so attract- unambitious and well-to-do citizen. He then ive; and we must bear in mind that the win- spoke of the changes he observed upon each sucsome aspect they wear in English literature is cessive visit to Italy, of the climate of Switzerbased on their casual and temporary enjoyment; land, and the society of Geneva; then he reit is as recreative, not abiding places, that they ferred to America, divining at once that it was are usually introduced; and, in an imaginative my country, and exhibiting entire familiarity point of view, our sense of the appropriate is with all that had been accomplished there in litgratified by these landmarks of our precarious erature. He betrayed a keen sense of enjoydestiny, for we are but "pilgrims and sojournment, recognised a genial influence in the scene ers on the earth." Jeremy Taylor compared human life to an inn, and Archbishop Leighton used to say he would prefer to die in one.

We have given a longer notice of this" Essay on Inns" than is perhaps strictly justifi

before us, and gradually infected me with that agreeable feeling only to be derived from what poor Cowper used to call "comfortable people." I led him to speak of his own method of life, which was one of the most philosophical order. He considered occasional travel and prudent

billows of sound roll forth to awe and enchant ment has mostly great influence, where the the world.

In our own country Milton made but "slow way," not merely with the general but with the educated public. Dryden supposed he wrote 'Paradise Lost' in blank verse because he was unable to do it in rhyme! Johnson depreciated him by asserting that if he could cut a colossus out of the rock he could not carve heads upon cherry-stones; as if Milton's briefer poems and sonnets were unworthy of the author of the great epic! Hannah More united with Johnson, not only in thinking these briefer poems bad, but in critically examining why they were so! But there is no end to the vagaries of authors when judging of other writers.

We should like to transfer to our columns much more of Dr. Doran's pleasant gossip on "Authors" and other subjects treated in the volume before us. Mr. Tuckerman's Essay on "Doctors," where he jokes and tells us anecdotes of the medical profession from Hippocrates down to Hahnemann; that on Lawyers, where he is both grave and gay, and the papers on Holidays, Actors, Newspapers, and Preachers, must all be read to be appreciated. We can recommend the volume to our readers as an amusing and instructive contribution to the light literature of England, by an author who, while he is not forgetful of the poets and authors of his native country, shows a large acquaintance with our old English writers, and a genuine love of the great works they have bequeathed to the Anglo-Saxon race.

From The Economist, 19 Sept.

WHY THE FRENCH EMPIRE IS BECOMING

UNPOPULAR.

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commonplace wish to keep the peace and to maintain property on which the Empire at first rested, and to which it has appealed so often, is stronger than any other political idea. What is the cause of this and what are to be its effects?

The most common accusation against the failure." M. Theirs Empire is that it is a says "There is no new blunder left for it to commit; it has already committed all which are possible," — and though this is the rhetorical exaggeration of a professional assailant, yet in fairness it must be owned that looked at with the eyes of a Frenchplain as it was only a year or two ago. man the success of the Empire is not so Frenchman cares much, unreasonably much, - about upprobably, about foreign policy holding the power and the dignity of his country among other nations. But the policy of the Emperor, though successful, has not been successful for France; though wise, it has not been wise for France.

A

He

introduced into practical diplomacy the principle of nationalities; he first made a term of use and authority out of what was before a vague and fanatical expression; he said

"It is well that great nations with common speech, and similar character, and strong sympathies, should have a common Government; the ancient boundaries which separate such nations are but inherited difficulties; they keep apart those whom nature has made similar and whom God has joined." But in consequence Italy has been made, and Germany is being made. France, instead of being the one compact nation on the Continent, is becoming only one of several compact nations. The creation of GerTHE most important recent change in many is the creation of a counterweight; politics is that the French Empire is becom- and the rise of Italy is the rise of an oppoing unpopular. There is a light in the nent. In history, France prospered because eyes" of its opponents which there never she was more prosperous and more equal was before; they feel not only that they than these two competing countries which are men who are right, but that they are men are conterminous with her, but now they who may succeed; they begin to think not will soon be as compact as she is. And only that their cause may prosper, but that this is the plain result of Louis Napoleon's it may prosper in their time. The news characteristic policy. It is the best thing papers discuss whether the present form of he has done for Europe; it is that by which Government is the best or not, somewhat in after ages he will be remembered for as in 1852, before the Empire, they dis- good if by anything. But it has been alessed whether a Republic was the best or ready, and manifestly in future must be, not. Prosecutions against the press are disadvantageous to France, and therefore incessant; elections are carried against the the French do not like it. Government not only in large cities where anti-Imperialists were always strong, and In domestic policy, again, Frenchmen where Liberal ideas are always to be found say “ No doubt the Emperor is successif anywhere, but in remote country districts ful, but then we have to pay for his success. Fke the Jura where Liberalism does not He makes great improvements; he alters abound, where a Government as Govern- our towns; he makes a nineteenth century

habits the best hygiene for a man of sedentary pursuits; and the great secret both of health and successful industry the absolute yielding up of one's consciousness to the business and the diversion of the hour -never permitting the one to infringe in the least degree upon the other. I felt an instinctive respect toward him, but at the same time entirely at home in his company; the gentleman and the scholar appeared to me admirably fused in, without overlaying, the man. Presently the friend we mutually expected came in, and introduced me to Sismondi. I was fresh from his Italian Republics and Literature of the South of Europe,' and he realised my

.

ideal of a humane and earnest historian.

ing expression when I told him of the deep sympathy his book had excited in America, and he grasped my hand with momentary ardour; but the man too plainly reflected the martyr.

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"the

Dr. Doran's introductory notes to this Essay are full of suggestions condensed into a few pages, and will be preferred by many of our readers to the Essay itself. He remarks on the fact of Congreve being ashamed of acknowledging that he was an author, although he had so little cause for it. When Voltaire called to see him, French writer expressly stated that the compliment was addressed to the author, and not merely to Mr. Congreve. The latter remarked that he was a gentleman and not an author. The rejoinder of the witty Frenchman was that if Congreve had been only a gentleman, he, the French author, would never have thought of calling upon him at all." Upwards of a century since, a satirical writer in the pages of "Sylvanus Urban" gave some statistics of English authors. Those surviving he set down as 3,000, and they had written in the year preceding 7,000 abortive works: 3,000 born dead, and not a single one that out-lived the Three hundred and twenty year itself. perished of sudden death, and a few thousands went to line trunks, make sky-rocket cases, hold pills, or were consumed by worms." Of the authors themselves, a thousand died of lunacy, a larger number were starved, "seventeen were hanged, fifteen committed suicide, five pastoral poets died of fistula, others in various ways." Dr. Doran speaks, too, of Milton and his alleged Use and Imitation of the Moderns," and of plagiarism; of Landor's Essay on " the Frenchman's charge that his epic was taken from an old Italian mystery, the Adamo' by Andréivi. Cædmon, the AngloSaxon poet, and St. Avitus both wrote on the Creation of man and the Fall, at a period long anterior to Milton:

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Quite in contrast with this tranquil and robust votary of letters was the appearance and manner of Silvio Pellico. No one who has ever read the chronicle of his imprisonments can forget the gentle and aspiring nature just blooming into poetic development, which, by the relentless fiat of Austrian tyranny, was cut off in a moment from home, intelligent companionship, and graceful activity, and subjected to the loneliness, privation, and torments of long and solitary confinement; nor is the spirit in which he met the bitter reverse less memorable than its tragic detail-recorded with so much simplicity, and borne with such loving faith. When I arrived in Turin he was still an object of espionage, and it was needful to seek him with caution. Agree ably to instructions previously received, I went to a café near the Strada Alfieri, just at nightfall, and watched for the arrival of an abbé remarkable for his manly beauty. I handed him the card of a mutual friend, and made known my wishes. The next day he conducted me through several arcades, and by many a group of noble-looking Piedmontese soldiers, to a gateway, thence up a long flight of steps to a door, at which he gave a significant knock. In a few moments it was quietly opened. He whispered to the old serva, and we tarried in an ante-chamber until a diminutive figure in black appeared, who received me with a pensive kindliness that, to one acquainted with Le Mie Prigioni,' was fraught with pathos. I beheld in the pallor of that mild face and expanded brow, and the purblind eyes, the blight of a dungeon. His manner was subdued and nervous, and his very tones melancholy. I was unprepared to find, after But, as another French author, M. Guizot, years of liberty, the effects of his experience so has remarked, "It is of little importance to Milvisible, and felt almost guilty of profane curios- ton's glory whether he was acquainted with them ity in having thus intruded upon his cherished or not. He was one of those who imitate when seclusion. I had known other victims of the they please, for they invent when they choose, same infernal tyranny; but they were men of and they invent even while imitating." True sterner mould, who had resisted their cruel fate authorship could not be more happily defined by the force of will rather than the patience of than under those words; and they may be apresignation. Pellico's very delicacy of organisa-plied in reference to another attempt to question tion barbed the arrows of persecution; and when at length he was released, loneliness, hope deferred, and mental torture had crushed the energy of his nature. The sweetness of his autobiography was but the fragrance of the trampled flower-too unelastic ever again to rise up in its early beauty. A smile lighted up his brood

Milton's

Milton's originality, in the statement that he founded his epic on the old drama Adomo Caduto by Salandra. Moreover, there is nothing more in common between Milton and his predecessors than that he selected a subject which they had sung before. Their tune is on an oaten reed; but Milton sits down to the organ, and