SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY.-No. I. It is pleasant to reflect upon the imperishable quality of many of those things, apparently trifling, which have the power of contributing to innocent enjoyment. The sports of childhood are essentially ancient. The top and the hoop have outlived many generations. There is a famous picture by Lionardo da Vinci, in which a boy is playing with the pretty toy in which a number of flat boards are fastened by tapes-at once dissevered and united; and the toy is still sold for a halfpenny at the corner of every street. To ascend in the scale of enjoyment, the melody which was delightful in the days of Queen Elizabeth is forgotten, perhaps, for two hundred years, and it suddenly springs into popularity in the days of Queen Victoria. For a quarter of a century country-dances were out of fashion. They are reviving; and with them comes back one of the oldest and most beautiful, with its courteous advances, from the extremities of a long line, of the lady and the gentleman,-their turnings in the centre, their returnings, the chain figure in which the lady winds through a line of gentlemen, and the gentleman No. 691. through a line of ladies-and lastly, the arched hands under which every couple passes. This is Roger de Coverley, or Roger of Cowley. Cowley is a pretty village about two miles from Oxford; and here some one lived in the days of the Tudors who was famous enough to have his name linked with the pretty dance-tune that has once again become fashionable. But he had a higher honour. The popularity of the dance in the days of Queen Anne gave a name to the most famous character in The Spectator;' and ever afterwards the dance itself gathered an accession of dignity even in its name; and plain Roger of Cowley became Sir Roger de Coverley. The revival of the dance is propitious to our attempt to revive, for the general reader, those delightful papers of Addison and Steele which are devoted to the fictitious character of Sir Roger. Few people now read The Spectator' as a whole. Some of the more celebrated essays, such as The Vision of Mirza,' find their place in books of extract. The delicate humour of the delineation of Sir Roger de Coverley is always referred to as the highest effort of Addison's peculiar genius; but not many will take the pains to select VOL XII.-B these sixteen or seventeen papers from the six hundred and thirty which form the entire work. These papers have a completeness about them which show how thoroughly they were written upon a settled plan. Steele appears to have first conceived the character in the second number of The Spectator; but Addison very soon took it out of his friend's hands, who was scarcely able to carry on the portraiture with that refinement which belonged to Addison's conception of the character. Addison, it is said, killed Sir Roger in the fear that another hand would spoil him. | We hear little of Sir Roger, except an occasional opinion, till we reach the 106th number, when Addison takes up the man of whom he said "we are born for each other." "Having often received an invitation from my friend Sir Roger de Coverley, to pass away a month with him in the country, I last week accompanied him thither, and am settled with him for some time at his country-house, where I intend to form several of my ensuing speculations. Sir Roger, who is very well acquainted with my humour, lets me rise and go to bed when I please, dine at his own table or in my chamber, as I think fit, sit still and say nothing withthe country come to see him, he shows me at a distance. As I have been walking in his fields I have observed them stealing a sight of me over a hedge, and have heard the knight desiring them not to let me see them, for that I hated to be stared at. "I am the more at ease in Sir Roger's family, because consists of sober, staid persons; for as the knight is the best master in the world, he seldom changes nis servants; and as he is beloved by all about him, his servants never care for leaving him: by this means his domestics are all in years, and grown old with their master. You would take his valet-de-chambre for his brother; his butler is grey-headed, his groom is one of the gravest men that I have ever seen, and his coachman has the looks of a privy-councillor. You see the goodness of the master even in his old house-dog, and in a grey pad that is kept in the stable with great care and tenderness, out of regard to his past services, though he has been useless for several years. As a representation of manners a century and a half ago, the picture of Sir Roger de Coverley has a remarkable value. The good knight is thoroughly Eng-out bidding me be merry. When the gentlemen of lish; and in him we see a beautiful specimen of the oldfashioned gentleman, with a high soul of honour, real benevolence, acute sense, mixed up with the eccentricities which belong to a nation of humourists. The readers of The Spectator' are fast diminishing. No one now gives his days and nights to the volumes of Addison;" but his gentle graceful humour has never been ex-it celled, and nowhere is it more conspicuous than in the papers of which Sir Roger de Coverley is the hero. The plan of The Spectator' is founded upon the fiction of a club that assembles every Tuesday and Thursday to carry on the publication. Sir Roger does not appear highly qualified for a literary colleague-a collaborateur, as the French style it, but he nevertheless is the foremost in 'The Spectator's' "account of those gentlemen who are concerned with me in the work." "The first of our society is a gentleman of Worcestershire, of an ancient descent, a baronet, his name Sir Roger de Coverley. His great-grandfather was inventor of that famous country-dance which is called after him. All who know that shire are very well acquainted with the parts and merits of Sir Roger. He is a gentleman that is very singular in his behaviour, but his singularities proceed from his good sense, and are contradictions to the manners of the world, only as he thinks the world is in the wrong. However, this humour creates him no enemies, for he does nothing with sourness or obstinacy, and his being unconfined to modes and forms makes him but the readier and more capable to please and oblige all who know him. When he is in town he lives in Soho Square. It is said he keeps himself a bachelor by reason he was crossed in love by a perverse beautiful widow of the next county to him. Before this disappointment, Sir Roger was what you call a fine gentleman, had often supped with my Lord Rochester and Sir George Etherege, fought a duel upon his first coming to town, and kicked bully Dawson in a public coffee-house for calling him youngster: but being ill used by the abovementioned widow, he was very serious for a year and a half; and though, his temper being naturally jovial, he at last got over it, he grew careless of himself, and never dressed afterward. He continues to wear a coat and doublet of the same cut that were in fashion at the time of his repulse, which, in his merry humours, he tells us has been in and out twelve times since he first wore it. He is now in his fifty-sixth year, cheerful, gay, and hearty; keeps a good house both in town and country; a great lover of mankind; but there is such a mirthful cast in his behaviour, that he is rather beloved than esteemed. "His tenants grow rich, his servants look satisfied, all the young women profess love to him, and the young men are glad of his company. When he comes into a house he calls the servants by their names, and talks all the way up stairs to a visit. I must not omit that Sir Roger is a justice of the quorum, that he fills the chair at a quarter-session with great abilities, and three months ago gained universal applause by explaining a passage in the Game Act." "I could not but observe with a great deal of pleasure the joy that appeared in the countenances of these ancient domestics upon my friend's arrival at his country-seat. Some of them could not refrain from tears at the sight of their old master; every one of them pressed forward to do something for him, and seemed discouraged if they were not employed. At the same time the good old knight, with a mixture of the father and the master of the family, tempered the inquiries after his own affairs with several kind questions relating to themselves. This humanity and goodnature engages everybody to him, so that when he is pleasant upon any of them, all his family are in good humour, and none so much as the person whom he diverts himself with: on the contrary, if he coughs, or betrays any infirmity of old age, it is easy for a stander-by to observe a secret concern in the looks of all his servants. "My worthy friend has put me under the particular care of his butler, who is a very prudent man, and, as well as the rest of his fellow-servants, wonderfully desirous of pleasing me, because they have often heard their master talk of me as of his particular friend." Such is the general outline of the character and position of Sir Roger de Coverley. In succeeding numbers we shall present his minuter features. PORTABLE DIORAMA.-DISSOLVING VIEWS. IN a former number we gave an outline of the principles on which chiefly depend the effects produced at the Colosseum, the Cosmorama, the Panorama, the Diorama, and other similar exhibitions. Since then we have met with a suggestion by a Mr. Tait of Edinburgh, for the construction of a portable Diorama, which seems worthy of a few further observations. Mr. Tait communicated to the Society of Arts of Scotland a description of a small apparatus by which the nature and effects of the dioraina could be exhibited in an instructing manner. But to understand this, it is necessary to advert to Daguerre's account of the mode of painting dioramic pictures, as divulged by | him to the French government. A dioramic picture is painted on both sides. It is a large piece of lawn or calico, if possible without a seam, or at least with seams as little perceptible as may be necessary. The colours laid on the front of the picture are viewed by reflected light coming from a point above and between the spectator and the picture; while those laid on the back of the picture are viewed by transmitted light, emanating from a window behind. In painting the front, the lights,' or white tints, are left out, so as to admit the passage of light through the picture from behind and even in the dark parts no body-colours are used; for though they would show well by reflected light, they would appear as mere black irregular masses by transmitted light. While painting the front, the painter works by reflected light; but while painting the back, by transmitted light; because the effects intended to be produced can only thus be tested. Generally speaking, when a dioramic scene is represented by day, and then by evening or moonlight, the day effect is painted on the front of the picture, and the night effect on the back; and the admission of light is regulated according as the picture is to be viewed by reflected or transmitted light; in other words, according as it is to be a picture or a transparency. But in other cases a subject more or less different from the first is represented on the back, by which many of those startling effects have been produced which are so familiar to the visitors at the exhibition in the Regent's Park. The exhibition-room, be it large or small, is provided with shutters, by which the amount of light to be admitted can always be regulated, from broad daylight to total exclusion. If fog is to be represented, as it has been in many exhibited dioramas, the picture is placed at a greater or less distance behind a transparent screen; the greater the distance, the more dim and foggy will the scene necessarily appear. All these arrangements, in order to produce the desired effect to the eye of a spectator, must be so managed that the picture may be at a distance from the eye, in a kind of room or recess; and it is probable that this circumstance led Mr. Tait to the suggestion of a portable diorama. The machine may be a small oblong box, of any dimensions, to be viewed at one end. Small stretching-frames are prepared, over which pieces of transparent paper or linen are stretched to form the pictures. Any one of these, when painted and about to be used, is inserted in a groove in the interior of the box, at a distance equal to two-thirds of the length of the box from the end at which the eye is applied. The eye-hole is not simply a circular or square hole cut in the end of the box, but is a small tube two or three inches in length, placed opposite the point of sight' in the picture. The tube projects a little from the box, in order to assist the adjustment of the eye; and the inner end is expanded sufficiently to expose to view the whole of the picture in the box. As a means of adınitting light to act upon both sides of the picture at pleasure, two hinged covers are used, one at the top of the box, and the other at the end remote from the eye. Each cover, by a small pulley and balance weight, or any similar contrivance, is made to remain stationary in any required position. When the top cover is closed and the end one open, light falls on the back, but not on the front of the picture, and a person applying his eye at the tube would see the picture only by transmitted light. When the top cover is open and the ends are closed, the reverse of that occurs, and a spectator views the picture by reflected light. When any medium arrangement is adopted, such as one cover being open and the other partially closed, one closed and the other partially closed, or both partially closed, numerous variations of light and shade and tint in the picture are observed. Passing gleams of sunshine, day melting into night, and this into moonlight—and all similar changes, may be imitated with some approach to completeness. The inside of the eye-tube, and everything which could distract the eye from the picture, is painted black; while the inner surfaces of the covers which may aid in reflecting light upon the picture are painted white. Screens of fine tissue-paper, Persian silk, or some other thin substance, are placed across the openings when the covers are raised, if a subdued light be required; and remarkable modifications of the effect may be produced by having these media coloured. The pictures may be viewed by the naked eye through the tube, or a lens might be employed to alter the effect. It is not difficult to see that such a contrivance is an exact copy of the large diorama, in all its essential features. The construction of the box is a matter involving no great mechanical difficulties. The painting of the pictures is the feature which calls for most talent; for here attention must be paid to the different character or tone which reflected light and transmitted light throw over a picture, to the degree of opacity or transparency which different pigments will present, to the hues which natural scenery exhibits at different hours of the day, and to the character of the shadows produced by objects. The more carefully these matters are attended to, the better will be the miniature diorama. There has been, within the last year or two, a kind of pictorial exhibition in London, called "Dissolving Views.' These views are examples of a superior kind of phantasmagoric exhibition, or "magic-lantern," in which striking effects are produced by simple but very ingenious means. The phenomenon of a "dissolving" view consists in the adjustment of two views, or two lantern slides, in such a manner that one shall gradually disappear while the other comes in sight, the images of both! occupying the same spot on the screen or wall. It is said that a German named Philipsthal, who introduced the phantasmagoria about sixty years ago, also gave the first rough idea of the "dissolving" views. He was in the habit of representing, among other subjects, the raising of the ghost of Samuel by the Witch of Endor, in which he made the phantom appear to rise from the ground; but he conceived that if he employed two lanterns and slides, making the wick of one rise while he lowered that of the other, and directing both images to one spot, a more aerial and supernatural effect might be produced. This method succeeded, and Philipsthal was led to the adoption of similar arrangements for representing landscape scenery. The improvements which have been made within the last few years have brought this plan to a point of great excellence. Two sliders or painted glasses are used, illuminated by one intense jet, having their devices represented on a screen, the focalization to one spot being effected by optical means. While one picture is being exhibited, the other is hidden by a cover or shutter; and the effect of "dissolving," which is very remarkable, is produced by the gradual and simultaneous closing of one picture and opening of another. If, while one picture is being exhibited, the other is being changed for a third, and if while this third picture is under exhibition the second be ex changed for a fourth, and so on, an extensive series may be exhibited, each one apparently melting or dissolving into the succeeding one. This, like many other contrivances, appears simple enough when known; but the simplicity does not detract from the merit of the artists who contrived the arrangement. a, Common Bat (Vespertilio pipistrellus); b, Great Bat (V. noctula); c, Long-eared Bat (V. auritus).] CURIOSITIES OF BRITISH NATURAL HISTORY. BATS. Ir may surprise some of our readers to be informed that sixteen or seventeen distinct species of bats are natives of the British Islands. Of these, however, several are extremely rare, and restricted to certain localities; but some, as the Pipistrelle, or common bat, and the long-eared bat (Vespertilio auritus), are everywhere abundant; nor is the great bat (V. Noctula) of unfrequent occurrence. the surface as they play over pools and streams. They love to frequent waters, not only for the sake of drinking, but also on account of the insects, which are found over them in the greatest plenty." Often during a warm summer evening have we seen numbers, perhaps several scores, of the common bat (V. Pipistrellus) flitting over pools, in chase of gnats and similar insects, or gambolling with each other in a mazy dance, ever and anon uttering sharp shrill cries of exultation and delight; an interesting spectacle to such as love to "trace the woods and lawns and living stream at eve." The bat is a twilight and nocturnal rambler: it passes the day in its retreat suspended head downwards, clinging to any roughness or projection by the claws of its hinder feet. In this position it hybernates in a state of lethargy; numbers congregating together. Church steeples, hollow trees, old barns, caverns, and similar retreats are its lurking-places; and vast numbers are often found crowded closely together and forming a compact mass. Pennant states that on one occasion, as he was informed by the Rev. Dr. Backhouse, one hundred and eighty-five were taken from under the eaves of Queen's College, Cambridge, and on the next night sixty-three more; all in a torpid condition. They were all of one species, viz., the Noctule, or great bat (V. Noctula), the largest of our British bats, measuring fourteen or fifteen inches in the extent of the wings. The great horse-shoe bat haunts the deepest recesses of caverns, where no rays of light can Of all the mammalia the bats alone emulate in their aërial endowments the feathered tenants of the sky; they are essentially flying insectivora. In the air they pass the active periods of their existence, and revel in the exercise of their faculties. Their organs of flight, admirably adapted for their destined purpose, do not consist, as in the bird, of stiff feathers based upon the bones of the fore-arm, but of a membranous expansion stretched over and between the limbs, and to which the bones of the limbs, especially those of the elongated fingers, serve the same purpose as the strips of whalebone in an umbrella. This apparatus can be folded up, and the limbs employed in progression on the ground; on a level surface, however, the bat shuffles awkwardly but quickly along. In the hollows of decayed trees, in the crevices of mouldering masonry, or in rough chinks and fissures, it can crawl and climb about with tolerable rapidity, as also about the wire-enter. It is found in the caverns at Clifton, and in work of a cage, a circumstance we have often witnessed. It is a smooth and level surface that most embarrasses the bat, but even then it can easily take wing. In the air the bat is all alertness, it is here that these singular creatures pursue their insect prey-uttering their short sharp cry as they wheel in circling flights, or perform their abrupt and zigzag evolutions. Bats, says White, "drink on the wing like swallows, by sipping Kent's Hole near Torquay, a dark and gloomy cavern, where the lesser horse-shoe bat also takes up its abode. It has been suspected that some of our British bats may possibly inigrate, and pass the winter, like the swallow, in some genial region where their insect prey is abundant. For this supposition there is not the slightest foundation: all our bats hybernate; but the period at which they become torpid in their retreats, |