tincture of selfishness. I will enlarge upon her qualities, poor, dear, dearest soul, in a future letter, for my own comfort, for I understand her thoroughly; and if I mistake not, in the most trying situation that a human being can be found in, she will be found, I trust, uniformly great and amiable.'

His great solicitude was to secure that profound quiet and retirement which should exclude excitement so dangerous to her. Coleridge wished him to send her for a while down to them, but Lamb knew very well that this would be the most foolish thing he could do. I consider her,' he said, 'as perpetually on the brink of madness. I think you would almost make her dance within an inch of the precipice; she must be with duller fancies and cooler intellects.' He thought they could be nowhere private, except in the midst of London; he therefore took lodgings at a friend's in Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane; afterwards in the Temple, then in Inner Temple Lane, then in Russell Street, Covent Garden. At these places, a company of the finest intellects gradually gathered about them, and were received by Lamb and his sister on Wednesday evenings, where Mary played the hostess with all sobriety, and with a kindness that endeared her to them all. From Coleridge, their only literary friend, they by degrees found their circle including Hazlitt, George Dyer, Wordsworth when in town, Godwin, Leigh Hunt, Thelwall, Barnes, the editor of the 'Times,' poor Haydon, Cary, the translator of 'Dante,' Admiral Burney, the brother of the celebrated novelist, Allan Cunningham, Hood, and many others.

But, perhaps, these meetings were too exciting, and they gradually removed farther and farther into the country-to Islington, Dalston, Enfield, and finally to Edmonton. Mary Lamb's disorder ever and anon returned, notwithstanding all care, and then she was for the time conducted by the kind brother to the friendly asylum. On one occasion they were met by Charles Lloyd, walking in the Hoxton Fields; their eyes were red with weeping, and their friend finally discovered that they were then on their way to the asylum, and were thus lingering awhile, affectionately, before they could make up their minds to part. Occasionally, as Lamb's income improved, they made a holiday excursion into the country, to visit their friends the Coleridges, or Hazlitts, or Wordsworths; but it was with fear and trembling that they did this, as the anticipation of such a pleasure more than once brought on Mary's complaint, and the journey was obliged to be given up. On all such occasions she used, in packing up her dresses, to put up amongst them a strait-jacket for herself, in case of a paroxysm coming on while they were out.

6

In her periods of mental health, she and her brother often pursued together intellectual labours; Lamb thought it was beneficial exercise for her, and the product of these labours was such as to justify his praises, not only of her faculties, but of her singular beauty and sweetness of spirit. Who has read these joint labours the Poetry for Children,' the Tales from Shakspeare,' and 'Mrs. Leicester's School'-and needs further evidence of the angelic tone and character of Mary Lamb's mind? That she possessed a portion of her brother's wit and love of fun, may be evidenced by the single instance of her brother, on receiving Wordsworth's Poems, and opening the book, asking her, on casually glancing at one of the titles'What is good for a bootless bene?' to which she replied, laughing, A shoeless pea.' 'Miss Lamb,' says Mr. Talfourd, 'would have been remarkable for the sweetness of her disposition, the clearness of her understanding, and the gentle wisdom of all her acts and words, even if these qualities had not been presented in marvellous contrast with the distraction under which she suffered for weeks, latterly for months, in every year. There was no tinge of insanity discernible in her manner to the most observant eye; not even in those distressful periods when the premonitory symptoms had apprised her of its approach, and she was making preparations for seclusion. In all its essential sweetness, her character was like her brother's; while, by a temper more placid, a spirit of enjoyment more serene, she was enabled to guide, to counsel, to cheer him ; and to protect him on the verge of the mysterious calamity, from the depths of which she rose, so often unruffled, to his side. To a friend in any difficulty she was the most comfortable of advisers, the wisest of consolers. Hazlitt used to say, that he never met with a woman who could reason, and had met with only one thoroughly-reasonable,-Mary Lamb.'

Such was the woman, most gentle and gentle-womanly in her sanity, and under the terrible force of her disease, flashing out evidences of the rarest intellect, over whom this kindest of brothers watched, till he was at length taken from her side, in December, 1834, at Edmonton, where he was buried, and where he was joined by her in May, 1847, having survived him upwards of thirteen years. For this survival, Lamb, with his small income, had taken care to provide; while the India House acted as became it to the memory of their inspired clerk,' and gave her the annuity to which a wife would have been entitled.

We need not here advert to the qualities of Charles Lamb as a writer. They are now familiar to all the readers of our genuine classics. Through their quaint humour, and the indomitable love of joke and comicality, there runs a glorious vein of the

finest humanity, of the spirit that will not willingly thinkill of anything or any one, but yet perceives, through the coarse outside of our nature, the inner gleams of the Divine. The sad and terrible realities of his life gave a depth to his feelings, which is expressed in short and pithy sentences, rather than in a continuous gravity of style; and even when he is most sorrowful, he is still on the verge of a strange fancy. He may be said never to weep but with a smile still playing amid his sadness.

His biographer has instituted an elaborate comparison between the Wednesday evenings of Charles and Mary Lamb, and the splendid dinners of Holland House, and has enumerated, as in contrasted array, the names and characters of the celebrated men who figured in each circle. There is only one more whom we shall draw from the acquaintances of Lamb, and that not from any genius which he possessed, except it were a genius for murder, but for the singularity of his story, some particulars of which we were previously aware of from other quarters. It is a remarkable example of the adventurers who sometimes insinuate themselves into literary circles, and impose upon the most gifted. This man was, with Lamb, De Quincy, and a brilliant group of the literati of the day, a contributor to the London Magazine, and used to meet them at the table of the publishers, Taylor and Hesse, in Fleet Street.

Amongst the contributors who partook of their professional festivities, was a gentleman whose subsequent career has invested the recollection of his appearance in the familiarity of social life with fearful interest,-Mr. Thomas Griffiths Wainwright. He was then a young man, on the bright side of thirty, with a sort of undress military air, and the conversation of a smart, lively, clever, heartless, voluptuary.

It was whispered, that he had been an officer in the Dragoons; had spent more than one fortune; and he now condescended to take a part in periodical literature, with the careless grace of an amateur who felt himself above it. He was an artist also; sketched boldly and graphically; exhibited a portfolio of his own drawings of female beauty, in which the voluptuous trembled on the borders of the indelicate, and seized on the critical department of the fine arts, both in and out of the Magazine, undisturbed by the presence or pretensions of the finest critic on art who ever wrote,-William Hazlitt. On this subject, he composed for the Magazine, under the signature of Janus Weathercock,' articles of flashy assumption, in which disdainful notices of living artists were set off by fascinating references to the personal appearance, accomplishments, and luxurious appliances of the writer, ever the first hero of his essay. He created a new sensation in the sedate circle, not only by his braided

surtouts, jewelled fingers, and various neck-handkerchiefs, but by ostentatious contempt for everything in the world but elegant enjoyment. Lamb, who delighted to find sympathy in dissimilitude, fancied that he really liked him; took, as he ever did, the genial side of the character; and, instead of disliking the rake in the critic, thought it pleasant to discover so much taste and good-nature in a fashionable roué, and regarded all his vapid gaiety, which to severer observers looked like impertinence, as the playful effusion of a remarkably guileless nature. Thus, when expatiating on his list of choicest friends, in Elia's letter to Southey, he reckons, W- the light, and warm as light-hearted Janus' of the London ;" and two years afterwards, adverting to the decline of the Magazine, in a letter to Mr. Barton, he persists in his belief of Wainwright's lightheartedness as pertinaciously as all the half-conscious dupes in Othello do in the assertion of Iago's honesty; They have pulled down Hazlitt, P-, and their best stay, kind, lighthearted W, their 'Janus !'

Mr. Talfourd traces at length this strange man's history, observing, that 'surely no contrast presented by the wildest romance, between a gay cavalier fascinating Naples or Palermo, and the same hero, detected as the bandit or demon of the forest, equals that which time has unveiled between what Mr. Wainwright seemed, and what he was.

Wainwright was, in fact, a wholesale murderer, a murderer by subtle poison of his friends and relations, one after another, for the sake of their property, or the sums for which he had prevailed on them to insure their lives. He is the person whom Bulwer has introduced into his story of Lucretia,' in such a character. Before he fell under suspicion, his uncle, and his wife's mother, had died suddenly, and he had succeeded to their property, and spent it. He was on a visit to his uncle, at whose residence, Linden House, Turnham Green, his wife had been confined, when the uncle suddenly died, and Wainwright continued to live in the house so long as his extravagant habits would let him. In this very house, however, his wife's mother died suddenly too, having just executed a will in his favour. This will was drawn up by Barry Cornwall, then practising as a solicitor, and we have heard him express the sort of startle he felt, when in a few days afterwards he heard the news of the lady's death.

The mother being gone, Wainwright invited her two daughters by her second husband, Mr. Abercrombie. In 1830, they were residing with him at Linden House. He now formed the scheme of assuring the life of the elder Miss Abercrombie, for large sums for the period of two or three years. Miss Abercrombie was remarkably

handsome, and not quite twenty-one. He assured her life for this term, on the plea that it was to enable her to procure some property to which she was entitled; the fact being that no such property existed, and both the young lady, and Wainwright, at whose instigation the thing was done, being nearly penniless. Her life was thus assured, in the Palladium Office for £3,000. for three years; in the Eagle Office for £3,000. for two years; in the Provident for £2,000.; the Hope for £2,000,; the Imperial for £3,000.; and the Pelican for £5,000.; each for two years: in all £18,000. Further attempts were made to insure at the Eagle and Globe Offices for £7,000. more, but these offices declined, and suspicions were aroused. Money, in the shape of premiums and stamps was paid to about £220., which, if Miss Abercrombie survived the short period of assurance, was lost. But Wainwright took care that she did not survive. He was sold up for debt at Linden House, and had gone into lodgings in Conduit Street. Here the poison, supposed to be strychnine, was given to the unhappy victim, and Wainwright and his wife coolly took a walk while it operated.

The payment of these assurances was resisted, and much litigation ensued. Wainwright fled to France, where he continued for some time to reside, and at Boulogne he acquired the confidence and enjoyed the hospitality of an English officer. Here also he induced his host to assure his life for £5,000, with a similar design upon it; and the officer, almost immediately on the completion of the assurance, died. Wainwright became a wanderer in France for some time, but returning to London, was arrested, on a charge of forging the names of his own trustees to five successive powers of attorney, to sell out stock settled on himself and his wife on their marriage. He was transported, and it is believed still survives in Australia.

With this extraordinary history of a member of the once brilliant intellectual circle of Lamb, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Southey, and such men, we close our notice. The work is deeply interesting, from the new and nobler light in which it places the character of its subject; at the same time, we must confess, that it would, in our opinion, have lost nothing by being, through a more careful selection, condensed into one volume; nor can we think the learned serjeant's style the happiest for that of a biographer. It strikes us, as remarkably hard and laboured, and as presenting a perfect patchwork of quoted phrases.