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one, as he was in the highest spirits, and was not serious the whole evening for a minute-but it is strictly and faithfully my impression.

"I can imagine no style of conversation calculated to be more agreeable than B's. Gay, quick, various, half-satirical, and always fresh and different from every body else, he seemed to talk because he could not help it, and infected every body with his spirits. I cannot give even the substance of it in a letter, for it was in a great measure local or personal.

"B- -'s voice, like his brother's, is exceedingly lover-like and sweet. His playful tones are quite delicious, and his clear laugh is the soul of sincere and careless merriment."-(Vol. III., pp. 90-92.)

As we are now about to follow Mr. N. P. Willis into Scotland, we must go back to a remark in his preface, which perhaps accounts for certain descriptions being introduced-descriptions which would be inexplicable under any other hypothesis. "distance of America from these countries, and the ephemeral

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"The

nature and usual obscurity of periodical correspondence, were "a sufficient warrant to my mind that my descriptions would "die where they first saw the light, and fulfil only the trifling destiny for which they were intended. I indulged myself, "therefore, in a freedom of detail and topic, which is usual

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only in posthumous memoirs." The temptation to a little exaggeration we own to be great: and this temptation is infinitely strengthened when we are under no apprehension of its being discovered. And yet, even among our countrymen who are settled in America, there must be hundreds who see in a moment the portentous caricature of Scottish manners, held out to us in the account of his steam-boat adventures on his way to Leith. The distance and formality maintained by the cabin parties on board these vessels is proverbial; and we appeal to Captain Bain himself, so prominently introduced in the following incident, whether such a thing ever did occur, or in fact ever could occur, as is here related with an air of truth. The whole description is extremely improbable. Mr. N. P. Willis evidently supposes that the passengers in a steam-boat bound to Scotland must all be Scotch. This is so far from being the case that the chances are greatly in favour of the majority of them being English, particularly (as it was on this occasion) at the end of the London season.

"I found the drawing-room cabin quite crowded, cold supper on the two long tables, every body very busy with knife and fork, and whiskey-and-water and broad Scotch circulating merrily. All the world seemed acquainted, and each

man talked to his neighbour, and it was as unlike a ship's company of dumb English as could easily be conceived. I had dined too late to attack the solids, but, imitating my neighbour's potation of whiskey and hot water, I crowded in between two good-humoured Scotchmen, and took the happy colour of the spirits of the company. A small centre table was occupied by a party who afforded considerable amusement. An excessively fat old woman, with a tall scraggy daughter and a stubby little old fellow, whom they called 'Pa;' and a singular man, a Major Somebody, who seemed showing them up, composed the quartette. Noisier women I never saw, nor more hideous. They bullied the waiter, were facetious with the steward, and talked down all the united buzz of the cabin. Opposite me sat a pale, severe-looking Scotchman, who had addressed one or two remarks to me; and, upon an uncommon burst of uproariousness, he laughed with the rest, and remarked that the ladies were excusable, for they were doubtless Americans, and knew no better.

"It strikes me,' said I, ' that both in manners and accent they are particularly Scotch.'

"Sir!' said the pale gentleman.

"Sir!' said several of my neighbours on the right and left.

"I repeated the remark.

"Have you ever been in Scotland?' asked the pale gentleman, with rather a ferocious air.

"No Sir! Have you ever been in America?'

"No, Sir! but I have read Mrs. Trollope.'

“And I have read Cyril Thornton; and the manners delineated in Mrs. Trollope, I must say, are rather elegant in comparison.'

“ I particularized the descriptions I alluded to, which will occur immediately to those who have read the novel I have named; and then confessing I was an American, and withdrawing my illiberal remark, which I had only made to show the gentleman the injustice and absurdity of his own, we called for another tass of whiskey, and became very good friends.

"We got under weigh at eleven o'clock, and the passengers turned in. The next morning was Sunday. It was fortunately of a‘Sabbath stillness;' and the open sea through which we were driving, with an easy south wind in our favour, graciously permitted us to do honour to as substantial a breakfast as ever was set before a traveller, even in America. (Why we should be ridiculed for our breakfasts, I do not know.)

"The Monarch' is a superb boat, and, with the aid of sails and a wind right aft, we made twelve miles in the hour easily. I was pleased to see an observance of the Sabbath, which had not crossed my path before in three years' travel. Half the passengers at least took their Bibles after breakfast, and devoted an hour or two evidently to grave religious reading and reflection. With this exception, I have not seen a person with the Bible in his hand, in travelling over half the world.

"The weather continued fine, and smooth water tempted up to breakfast again on Monday. The wash room was full of half-clad men, but the week-day manners of the passengers were perceptibly gayer. The captain honoured us by taking the head of the table, which he had not done on the day previous, and his appearance was hailed by three general cheers. When the meats were removed, a gentleman rose, and, after a very long and parliamentary speech,

proposed the health of Captain B-- The company stood up, ladies and all, and it was drank with a tremendous hip-hip-hurrah,' in bumpers of whiskey!"-(Vol. III., pp. 124-127.)

This last incident of the "bumpers of whiskey," we will be bold to say exceeds the wildest flight of Mrs. Trollope's imagination—unless, indeed, Mr. N. P. Willis took his passage in the fore-cabin.

His interview with Professor Wilson is, perhaps, the best of his descriptions, and, but for his petulant and ill-judged attack upon Mr. Lockhart, the least unpleasing. Of Wilson it may be said, as was said by Johnson of Burke, that nobody could stand with him under an archway, during a shower, without being convinced that he was a most extraordinary man. His conversation flows on without stop or stay; always new, always brilliant-his illustrations are highly poetical, and exact at the same time. "Like the waves of the "summer, as one rolls away, another as bright and as shining comes on." Wilson is the only celebrated writer we have met with, whose works do not raise higher ideas of his genius than are fulfilled by his conversation. The only thing which is new to us in Mr. N. P. Willis's account of him, is his obliviousness of breakfast, and his awkwardness at his own table.

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We have said that Mr. Willis's attack on Mr. Lockhart was petulant and ill-judged; but at the same time, we do not hold that gentleman vindicated from the charges brought against him, by the defence offered in his behalf by Professor Wilson. The accusation-a very weighty one-namely, that he uses the influence of his talents and situation, as Editor of a leading Review, to nourish a feeling of hatred and exasperation between America and England-is advanced more seriously, in the preface. Against this narrow spirit of criticism we are anxious to enter our protest; but at the same time, we must not allow Mr. N. P. Willis to lay the flattering unction to his soul-that the severity of the Quarterly can arise from no other cause than the fact of an author being an American. It may arise quite as naturally from the fact of an author being weak or conceited; but, however this may be, how does Mr. N. P. Willis reconcile his statement that "it is to the Quarterly we owe every spark of ill-feeling

"that has been kept alive between England and America "for the last twenty years; and that the sneers and oppro"brious epithets of this bravo in literature have been re"ceived in a country, where the machinery of reviewing was "not understood, as the voice of the English people; and an "animosity for which there was no other reason, has been thus periodically fed and exasperated ?" How does he reconcile this with his declaration, in the body of his work, that the feeling against America is universal in England? If the Quarterly Review be the sole cause of enmity between the two countries, and yet that feeling in one of them is universal, we confess that we had greatly underrated the influence of the Quarterly Review.

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?”

We trust that we have shown in our brief career, that we are animated by no contracted spirit of nationality; but we cannot allow our desire to be liberal to overcome our determination to be just. We shall neither praise a work merely because it is written by a foreigner, from a feeling of pseudo-liberality, nor shall we captiously condemn it because it is not written by one of "ourselves." It is in this spirit we have offered these remarks, on what may be called the home portion of Mr. N. P. Willis's volumes. The extracts which we have made, have been of those passages only which contain descriptions of persons who may be called public property-of ladies and gentlemen whose acquaintance with title pages has made them accustomed to the sight of their own names in print. We do not follow Mr. N. P. Willis into the recesses of private life. We see no reason, because a man happens to be a Duke, that he should be at the same time made a show. Nor, indeed, in this country, is any great curiosity excited to know the colour of a nobleman's gaiters, or the cut of his shooting jacket. Neither is it our intention to tell our readers that Mr. N. P. Willis had been. informed that one nobleman whom he met, and whom he names, had "the reputation of being the coldest and proudest aris"tocrat of England;" or that he saw at a glance that the lady he sat next to, at dinner, was the most beautiful woman in Scotland. These things we pass over: and having expressed, we hope in no rancorous or unbecoming terms, what we consider the faults of this portion of his work, we have great pleasure in saying that the "pencillings" he has given us of other scenes and

countries are frequently interesting and amusing. There is nothing new, nothing deep, nothing in short upon which the memory will be inclined to dwell; but there is a liveliness in the style which carries the reader on, and keeps up his attention in spite of occasional inaccuracy and the meagreness of details. After a diligent perusal of the book, we confess we consider his prose, judging merely of it as composition, to be superior to his poetry. Mr. N. P. Willis is destroyed as a poet by his facility of versification. He seems satisfied with his first expressions, and has still to learn the art of blotting. But his prose is natural and easy, and at the same time has a degree of correctness which, under his circumstances, can only have been acquired by a careful study of good English authors.

ARTICLE VII.

I Monumenti dell Egitto e della Nubia, disegnati della Spedizione scientifico-letteraria Toscana in Egitto. Distribuiti in ordine di Materie, interpretati ed illustrati dal Dottore Ippollito ROSELLINI, direttore della spedizione. Tom. I. II. Pisa, 1835, 8vo. With an Atlas and Plates, large folio, in livraisons.

THIS is decidedly the greatest and most important work which has appeared on Egyptian antiquities, since the report of the French commission to Egypt, collected under the title of

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Antiquités d'Egypte." A Tuscan commission of scientific inquiry, modelled on the foregoing, has given birth to the publication before us. Rosellini's work is unfinished; a portion only of the plates, which are however in considerable number, as well as of the volumes of text, explaining or commenting upon them, having reached this country. The author is an Italian of high scientific reputation, and was employed in his great / undertaking of taking drawings from the tombs and temples which line both sides of the Nile, from the Delta to the southern extremity of old Thebes, when Champollion paid his last visit to Egypt, for the purpose of making similar

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