overlooked, who abhors flesh, and whose brain lies chiefly behind? But, on the other hand, the whole of the brain of the shark, an animal sufficiently voracious, is situated anterior to the ears. Consequently the organ of destructiveness is entirely wanting in this gentle fish: but, to compensate him, he has a prominent brow on which the organ of benevolence is most manifest. osudio ) to inte? odt mi,budoiras de a It is unquestionable that the Professors Gall and Spurzheim are men of great knowledge, of profound research, and possessed of very considerable inventive powers; but they appear to have been too confident in their great capacities. The expectation of discovering men's characters by prominences on their heads, is too like that of discerning their fortunes by the lines on their hands. And an attempt to advance a single step across that gulph which separates mind from matter was too daring Such paradoxical systems afford to the world transitory amusement, until by a cross wind they are whirled aloft to that limbo large and broad, to which all abortive and visionary schemes tend. Age 6 MILUČEBNAJU (brils 62) ty robiva rietdo ct zi [Some of the Brazilians pay great veneration to a certain bird that sings mournfully in the night-time. They say it is a messenger which their deceased friends and relations have sent, and that it brings them news from the other world. Picart's Ceremonies and Religious Customs.] + THOU art come from the Spirits' land, thou bird'! Through the dark pine-grove let thy voice be heard, We know that the bowers are green and fair In the light of that distant shore, And we know that the friends we have lost are there,— They are there-and they weep no more. And we know they have quench'd their fever's thirst For there must the stream in its gladness burst, And we know that they will not be lured to earth 1 By the feast, or dance, or song of mirth, sofbrose b ́s, Though their hearts were once with ours. Though they sat with us by the night-fire's blaze, ་་ ་་་ And bent with us the bow, And heard the tales of our Fathers' days, Then tell us, thou bird of the solemn strain! We call, and they answer not again- Doth the warrior think of his brother there, And the chief, of those that were wont to share ang so as to His wanderings o'er the wild?... 1 We call them far through the silent night, F. I. A ་་་ › busded zfando qui THE SUFFOLK PAPERS. q'ue lemne po brede sil We have here another of those "Godsends," (thanks to our new Chancellor of the Exchequer, the word is likely to come in fashion again) by which the minor literature of the present day has been so much enriched, in the form of Collections of Letters passing between persons who have figured, more or less conspicuously, in the circles from which emanate those acts, and on which depend those events, that are to form the subject of our future historical annals. For this alone, and setting aside all considerations of general talent and information, these volumes can scarcely fail to excite the most active curiosity; and they are pretty sure to gratify that curiosity, of whatever nature it may be whether of that desirable and estimable species which applies itself, in a kindly spirit, and with a wise end in view, to seek for knowdedge of human nature and of society, wherever it is likely to be found -or that less praiseworthy but not less prevalent species which is not unmixed with a spice of malice, and the chief, if not sole aim of which is to obtain evidence in proof of the proposition, that the (so called) great, and wise, and good, are, if the truth were known, very little better, and what is still more gratifying to such speculators-very little happier, than other people. But when it is added that these Letters are from and to the Countess of Suffolk, who was for many years prime favourite of George the Second, and who remained the favourite of courtiers till the day of her death in the early part of George the Third's reign, the interest and curiosity respecting them will be increased tenfold for there is no relative period of time (not even the present) about the events of which mankind, in a highly civilized state, feel so much interest as that which is, to them, the last age, and no persons (not even living ones) into whose secret thoughts and sentiments they so much desire to penetrate, as those who formed the leading spirits of that particular age. We of the present day had rather peruse a private letter of Pope or of Prior, than even of or of and there are no" Confessions,"-not even those of the "great Unknown" himself—that could fix and repay our attention like those of Rousseau. The truth is, we have always a certain feeling of equality in regard to our contemporaries, even the most distinguished. That, to the possession of which all men, whatever they may say or think to the contrary, attach the highest value, and for which they would sacrifice any and all other things namely, Life we enjoy in common with them. And, to say nothing of a secret and unconscious feeling of envy being apt to intrude itself into our contemplations of living merit, we are disposed to feel that the conscious possession of intellectual or any other superiority is enough in itself, without the additional gratification of witnessing its effects on other people. But in regard to the distinguished dead, our feelings are very different. Nobody envies an abstraction, which the reputation of a deceased person must always be, to the generality of mankind; in addition to which, when no feelings whatever interfere to disturb the natural bias of the human mind, it is always prone to award praise, or to hear it awarded, rather than blame. Perhaps the necessary consequences of the above truths (if such they * "Letters to and from Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk, and her second Husband, the Hon. George Berkeley: from 1712 to 1767 With Historical, Biographical, and Explanatory Notes." In two Volumes. be) were never so conspicuously evident as in the general critical awards of the present most critical of all ages; for never before did our estimates of the claims of the distinguished dead take so exclusively the form of panegyrie, and never before did the distinguished living meet with such unmerited condemnation as certain of ours have received at the hands of their examiners. iot ses bisheroinfty but bad at The letters before us, to which we now willingly turn our more im mediate attention, are in fact fraught with interest on various accounts; chiefly, however, we must say, collateral and indirect for as specimens of epistolary composition, they are, with a few individual exceptions, inferior to most collections of a similar kind that have preceded them. Though, for our own parts, being anxious to extract good out of every thing, we are disposed to prize them even for that reason; since they thus prove (what every lover of his country must be glad to learn) with how very mediocre a share of talent and acquirement the intrigues of a polished court, and even the affairs of a great nation, may be conducted. The principal of these letters, in point of number, are written by the Countess of Suffolk herself, partly while she was Mrs. Howard, and the chief favourite of the king; and partly after she had in a great measure retired from the court itself, and become the wife of the Hon. George Berkeley. But besides these, we have specimens from many, if not most of the distinguished literary and political characters of the day-from "Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Gay, and Young; the Duchesses of Buckingham, Marlborough, and Queensbury; Ladies Orkney, Mohun, Hervey, Vere, and Temple; Misses Bellenden, Blount, Howe, and Pitt; Lords Peterborough, Bolingbroke, Chesterfield, Lansdowne, Mansfield, and Bathurst; Messrs. Fortescue, Pulteney, Pelham, Pitt, Grenville, and Horace Walpole !" The very mention of these names is sure to excite, in those who recollect the characters of their owners, and the circumstances in which they were placed, a curiosity which nothing but the perusal of the letters themselves can gratify: nor, indeed, can that-for, as we have hinted above, the letters are, generally speaking, and with reference to their own intrinsic merits, very far below what might have been expected from the reputations of the writers; and it is only those of Lady Suffolk herself, of Swift and Gay, of the Duchess of Queensbury and Lady Hervey, of Lord ChesH terfield and Horace Walpole-it is these, and a few other individual letters only, that are at all worth preserving as sources of direct amusement, or as specimens of epistolary composition. There is not one, however, of these letters, that is not curious or valuable for some reason or other; and if for nothing else, for proving how dull or how silly an epistle may proceed from the pen of how distinguished a perAnd there is one thing which they all conspire to prove most unequivocally; namely, that never, since the invention of favourites and of monarchs, was the favour of a monarch bestowed upon a more amiable and deserving person, or used to less selfish or mischievous ends, than in the instance before us. In short, whatever may have been the kind of liaison that subsisted between the Countess of Suffolk and George the Second (and that it was ever of a criminal nature there seems good reason to doubt), the results of it unquestionably evinced great prudence and penetration on the one hand, and unexampled modesty and moderation on the other. son. Of the letters written by Lady Suffolk herself, we shall present our readers with but one specimen for that easy and unaffected good sense which is their chief and almost exclusive quality, and which seems to have been the characteristic of their amiable writer's mind, is not of a nature to furnish very brilliant results, or such as will tell as printed effusions. The following is in answer to one of a series of most stiff and laboured effusions, under the form of “love-letters,” which Lady Suffolk (when Mrs. Howard) received from no less a person than the celebrated Lord Peterborough ; he being at the time about sixty-five years of age, and she not less than forty jena: 98, porowoń „7ford) I HAVE been extremely ill ever since I received your lordship's last letter, which has prevented me from answering it sooner. golfos 120in 53 10 Your lordship is at last in the right; for certainly the most agreeable compliment to a woman is to persuade her she is a very fine woman. No reason able woman desires more, and we all know no reasonable man desires she should any thing else; and therefore let us leave the goddesses and angels, to enjoy their heaven in quiet; for since none of our present lovers can bring cre ditable witnesses that they ever saw a goddess or an angel, how can they tell but the comparison may do their ladies an injustice? Your song does the very thing which all along I have been endeavouring to expose which is, the ridiculous cant of love. A person that is in real distress expresses his wants and desires naturally: similes and studied expres sions savour more of affectation than of real passion. Tod moa? I fancy the man who first treated the ladies with that celestial complaisance used it in contempt of their understandings. It pleases a little miss to be called a queen; and I think the woman must be still a little miss in her of thinking, who can be taken with being called a goddess or an angel. - Way Your lordship going into warmer climates to pay adoration to the sun is something of the same strain. But I will make no more objections; for I would not endeavour to dissuade you from a sort of eloquence which you must have experienced to be the most powerful to engage the hearts of women. In the preliminaries of our correspondence we were to declare our thoughts with freedom: but all this time I have forgot that I am labouring to advise a person in matters which he must know much better than myself; for I am very certain that no person whatever understands a woman so little as a woman. ال I We shall not treat the reader with any of the effusions to 'one of which the above is a reply: for it gives us no pleasure to see so deservedly distinguished a person as Lord Peterborough in a ridiculous point of view. But we shall not lose the opportunity which these volumes afford us of showing this person in a light more consistent with the extraordinary character which he, generally speaking, maintained. The following was written after he had desisted from his suit to Lady Suffolk, and married a public singer, Mrs. Anastasia Robinson; and at the time of its date he may be considered to have been in a dying state, and to have known that he was so. Parts of it are finely consistent with his truly romantic character : MADAM, ناز I RETURN you a thousand thanks for your obliging inquiry after my health, I struggle on with doubtful success: one of my strongest motives to do șo is, the hopes of seeing you at my cottage before I die, when you either go to the Bath or to Mrs. Herbert's. In my most uneasy moments, I find amusement in a book, which I there No doubt the Life of Julian the AP, by the Abbé de la Bléterie, published in 1735 2014 fore send you; It is one of the most interesting I ever read. I had gathered to myself some notions of the character from pieces of history written in both extremes, but I never expected so agreeable and so fair an account from a priest. In one quarter of an hour we love and hate the same person without inconstancy. One moment the emperor is in possession of our whole heart, and the philosopher fully possessed of our soul; within four or five pages we blush for our hero, and are ashamed of our philosopher. What courage, what presence of mind in danger the first and bravest man in a Roman army; sharing with every soldier the fatigue and danger! The same animal hunting after fortune-tellers, gazing upon the flight of birds, looking into the entrails of beasts with vain curiosity; seeking for cunning women (as we call them) and silly men to give him an account of his destiny, and, if it can be believed, consenting to the highest inhumanities in pursuit of magical experiments. Yet, when we come to the last scene, the most prejudiced heart must be softened. With what majesty does the emperor meet his fate! showing how a soldier, how a philosopher, how a friend of Lady Suffolk's ought (only with juster notions of the Deity) to die. The lady, the book, or both together, have brought me almost into a raving way; I want to make an appointment with you, Mr. Pope, and a few friends more, to meet upon the summit of my Bevis hill, and thence, after a specch and a tender farewell, I shall take my leap towards the clouds (as Julian presses it), to mix amongst the stars; but I make my bargain for a very fine day, that you may see my last amusements to advantage. ex Wherever be the place, or whenever the time, this I can assure you with great sincerity, I shall remain to the utmost possibility, &c. you to ment PETERBOROUGH. It is worth mentioning, that this singular person's behaviour during the fatal illness which was now acting upon him, was in every respect consistent with the above professions. It may be seen described by Pope, who was an eye-witness to it, in two of his letters (not in this collection) dated about this time (August 1735), one addressed to Swift and the other to Mrs. Blount. Of Gay's Letters we are, not able to fix upon any extract that would prove particularly interesting, since they are most of them written in conjunction with the eccentric Duchess of Queensbury, in whose family he was domesticated. "But many of them, written in this manner, offer an agreeable evidence of the delightfully easy and familiar terms on which he was living with the distinguished persons of that day. Lady Suffolk always calls him "John and he and the duchess write paragraphs of pleasant nonsense by turns, like two children at play. The greater part of Swift's letters have been printed before; so that, highly characteristic as some of them are, we pass them over without further notice, solidnob blow sal 8 Perhaps the cleverest and certainly the most agreeable letters in this collection-not excepting those of Horace Walpole-are the celebrated Lord Chesterfield's. Most of these are easy, agreeable, and gentlemanly in a high degree; and many of them are very witty and amusing. The only example that we can afford is a kind of journal which he sends Lady Suffolk from Bath. In the way of tittle-tattle of this kind, nothing can be pleasanter : MADAM, sad Azamar bort ends ta lexw a moitas elit | A GENERAL history of the Bath since you left it, together with the particu lar memoirs of Amoretto's life and conversation, are matters of too great The Hon. Robert Sawyer Herbert, |