ought to have taken better care of my pupil; and that the family wished to hear no further mention of my name.

A deeper humiliation soon fell on my professional career than even that of a toadying tutorship. One day, having been idle enough to attend a meeting of the Geographical Society, I was pitched upon by a gallant Captain Dareall, with whom I had made acquaintance at Malta, to accompany him in an expedition of African discovery. My meek forbearing countenance inspired him with interest. He swore I was the man for his money; promised that I should share his glory-share his gains; baptize the whole kingdom of Dahomey, throw down the islands of half a continent, and write a quarter of his own quarto. The captain was a bold man. He talked with plausibility, -I listened with enthusiasm. Having secured the necessary firmans, and a specific against the plague and the cholera, we embarked with a cargo of blue beads, tin-tacks, caoutchouc-sheets, oilsilk parasols, and a patent freezing. apparatus; and in the course of three years from our landing, confronted stripes, imprisonments, the cheating of consuls, and barbarity of beys, four fevers, two dysenteries, one coup-de-soleil, and a variety of cutaneous abominations, too tedious to enumerate; all the plagues of Pharaoh, and, in short, a hundred more! Not, however, to dwell too painfully on my excruciations, suffice it that in the sequel I returned sole survivor of the expedition; having, as I have since been assured, eaten the surgeon of the party baked in a Hottentot anthill, and leaving all that the musquitos had left of the gallant captain, inhumed in the sands of Willah-mallah-assiboo, two thousand miles beyond Timbuctoo! Nothing remained to me on my arrival in town, but the ragged shirt whereon, with a pin and lampblack, I had inscribed the notes of my African discoveries; which, when transferred to hotpress, the world derided as lies and impositions. The frontispiece to my work, representing the favorite idol of the King of Dahomey, the Quarterly Review held up to shame, as a satire upon the Right Honorable the Lady Helena O'Donoghue.

Meanwhile, as I scudded along the by-ways of the metropolis, bearing my inky dishonors thick upon me, I was one day splashed by a fashionable cab, and hailed by its owner.

"Hallo! Delphic, my fine fellow!" cried a most dandified edition of my old chum, Ned Ormond; "where have you been making it out for the last hundred years?-Can't talk to you in this cursed place, get in. We've a couple of miles between this and Belgrave Square."

I obeyed; and with the perspicuous brevity attained by having had to condense my tale of wo into one or more memorials to government, I related my strange eventful history.

But

"Sad business, indeed!" replied Ned, as we dashed along. “Cleaned out, turned out, kicked about the world, like fortune's football. never mind! the tables are turning! I'll see what I can do for you. I'll speak to the Board of Control. I'll mention you to the Colonial Office. They're always wanting a Bishop for India, or a Governor for Sierra-Leone."

"Thankye, thankye!" cried I, "I have had enough of elephantine climates. I should prefer the merest trifle at home; the romance of life is over. Mrs. Centlivre the dramatist, you know, who eloped with

VOL. I.

27

a poet at sixteen, espoused at six-and-thirty the head cook of Queen Anne! Couldn't you recommend me, my dear Ormond, as chaplain to the Lord Mayor?"

"To be sure I could; my interest is universal. You have no notion how I have got on in the world, since we parted."

"You have had an increase of fortune?"

"Not a stiver!"

"But how do you manage to keep up such appearances on an income of three hundred a year ??

"By living at the rate of three thousand."

"And running in debt."

"Pho, pho, pho!"

"You must have taken up money."

"Laid it down, you mean."

"You have positively borrowed nothing?"

"Not I! I know better! My plan to get on in the world is by lending. I began, you know, with six thousand pounds. Four thousand are at this moment lodged in my banker's hands, one thousand of which will be transferred to-morrow morning, to the account of my friend, the Duke of Outatelbows, at Coutts's, as I am now on my road to inform him."

"And the remaining two thousand are lost to you for ever?"

"By no means! I have good security for every guinea; bills or I. O. Ú. from some of the first fellows in town. My popularity is immense. Every man of a certain standing knows me to have at my command a floating sum in ready money. It has been my fortune to save the credit of many a fine fellow, hard up after a heavy settling-day. It was I who helped young Sir Winham Scamp to carry off his heiress; it was I who lent old Harbottle the twentypound note with which he won his quaterne in the French lottery; I assisted Sir John to buy the winner of the St. Leger; I enabled Lord William to present that omnipotent pair of diamond ear-rings to Zephyrine; in short, I am the universal friend in need. What follows? That I have dinner invitations for every day in the season, and half a dozen balls per night!" I am on the list of four patronesses for Almack's; and it rains opera-tickets on my head. More haunches of venison cross my threshold than that of Birch; and I might stock the Clarendon and Albion with game. My li brary-table groans with Annuals and presentation copies; my dinner-table with cards, far more to the purpose. So much for London! but when the country-season sets in, show me the county in England in which I may not quarter myself for six weeks, in acceptance of pressing invitations! Dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, lords, and commons, are my obligatees; and burning to throw off the obligation, load me with hospitalities. A single thousand pounds of mine once changed hands so many times in the course of a year, that I conceive it has ever since returned me, in value, an income of two hundred a year. No, no! my dear Delphic! talk no more of borrowing as a source of prosperity. Trust me, that one of the best trades going in the fashionable world, is that of a judicious lender. Such is the charm which has made my ugly face beautiful in the eyes of society, my pertness pass for wit, my vul. garity, for the frankness of a good fellow. Don't offend Ned Ormond," they say, "he's such a devilish useful acquaintance.

"Ormond is always ready at a pinch;" "Ormond's a friend in

need."

I sighed a deep sigh in response; for we had just attained the lordly purlieus of Belgrave Square. In passing Tattersall's, I had seen the hands of half the sporting peerage kissed to Ned; and, in taking off the Stanhope angle of the park, perceived the hats of all the double-lacqueyed ladyship chariots, doffed to his cab. Thanks to his notes, he had become a man of note; thanks to his guineas, he had won golden opinions from all sorts of men and women. A gold-beater could not have hammered out his substance to cover a greater extent of popularity; a wire-drawer could not have drawn out finer, his means and appliances. Instead of being worshipped as was once the Golden Ball, he was worshipped as three golden balls. Nevertheless, I was ashamed of him. I fancied that "Money Lent" was inscribed on the front of his cab; and murmuring between my teeth

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,"

I took leave of my thriving friend; and, mounted cheerfully to my attic, to earn the price of a dinner by dedicating to the public this brief sketch of the money-lender and his friend.

THE VILLAGE BRIDE'S FAREWELL.

My village home! my village friends! farewell!
For proud domains I quit your lowly bow'rs;
But, oh! I feel that memory will dwell

Upon the scenes where pass'd my childhood's hours!
The flowery wreath that here so oft I've worn

As Queen of May, is chang'd for costly pearl:

I leave my walks to be in carriage borne,
But still I am the simple cottage girl!

I know not how I came to be allied

To one of wealth and proudest dignity-
He might have found a richer, fairer bride,-
But where could I find such a love as He?
He sav'd my life, when no one else would dare
To snatch me from the rude waves' stormy whirl-
And is it strange that I his heart should share,
Though I was but a simple cottage girl?

My mother dear! my father's soul above!
My little sisters, yet too young to know
The easy change from gratitude to love,
Come kiss me all, and bless me 'ere I go!
Oh! think not 'tis for grandeur that I leave,

To be the lady of a lordly earl;—
'Tis for the riches his dear heart can give-
For still I am the simple cottage girl.

W.

CRITIQUES ON CRITICS;

OR, A WORD TO THE WOULD BE SUCH.

Κριτής : Judex.

In turning over the leaves of any old lexicon, we cannot but be struck by the anomalies that exist between our modern, degenerate, and loose application of many words said to have been adopted from the Ancients, and the purely simple and descriptive meanings they carried in the time of those worthies. For instance :-no profession or calling was more honored formerly than that of schoolmaster; and deservedly so: for he to whom was intrusted not only the intellectual but the moral instruction of youth, must of necessity have been a person entitled to esteem and respect.

"Hence 'twas a master in those ancient days,

When men sought knowledge first, and by it praise,
Was a thing full of reverence, profit, fame;
Father itself was but a second name!"

So said COWLEY. Now-a-days we alliterate "poor pedagogue," with pity and contempt.

TYRANT, too, is another term that has fallen from its "high estate;" for, instead of being applied to Father Jupiter himself, as of old, it serves at present only to designate a despot or a villain in either public or private life. I could mention many more; but, above all, (to come to my point at once,) there is no word so much abused by its modern application as that of CRITIC; which, as the motto to this paper showeth, is, or ought to be, synonymous with JUDGE! Eheu! how many critics do we now see, and how very few judges! Every publication, from a morning to a quarterly, teems with the mighty fiat of WE in praise or censure of some. thing or other which they, in nine cases out of ten do not understand. Poetry, painting, music, and the pretensions of their professors, are treated with the grossest familiarity by critics who know not the difference between prose and metre, daubing and coloring, noise and harmony; or, if by chance they should be so far discriminating, they are not aware how a great artist may occasionally substitute a little of one for the other, and produce the happiest effects by his whim! But, the worst of it is, that the mighty wE, after all, generally consists in nothing more than some diminutive I-by whom were the aforesaid fiat issued, not one for every hundred that now fear and respect would be found to regard at all. Were a man in a public room (where most of these ephemeral criticisms are written) to read aloud the dictatorial opinions of his pen, it is a million to that they would be rejected as impertinent and egotistical assumptions. But the moment they appear in print they are treated with blind idolatry.

Tom Snooks is ready to quarrel over a glass of grog with his friend, Jim Dobbs, about some vital affair of the nation.

"You're wrong, my dear fellow!" says Snooks. "I read it, as I state it to you, at full length in the Morning Paper."

"In the Morning Paper?" quoth Dobbs chuckling; "in the

Morning Paper, forsooth! Why, I wrote the article myself; all in the way of business, you know; but, what's that to do with the plain truth?" Snooks shakes his head, doubts his friend, and still sticks to the print!

A few imitations of the modern critical style may not be amiss here.

แ

"COVENT-GARDEN.

"ON Monday night a new opera, as the bills announced, was produced at this theatre; author and composer (!!) unknown to the public and to fame also, as we shall presently show. The plots of operas now-a-days are such abortions that we will not fatigue our readers with a detail of the present attempt: suffice it to say, that it contains no incident or development of character worthy of notice. There is, to be sure, the usual display of expensive costume, scenery, &c.; but a most plentiful lack' of drama, in the true sense of that almost forgotten word. One of the songs, however, pleased us. We insert it for its touching simplicity.

·

"Mute and soundless is her harp,

Cold and frozen every finger

That had such pow'r o'er flat and sharp,
And did accord so well with singer!

"Motionless is that sweet voice,
Silent are her auburn tresses;

Nothing can my heart rejoice,

Or wake it till it sleeps with Bessy's!"

"As to the music, the first coup d'archet by the military band behind the curtain convinced us that the overture was not original: one of Mozart's symphonies (we think, to Prometheus) terminating with the same chord, if we except a sharp 4 which is introduced by the aspirant as a cover for his plagiary. The great drum and triangle were as usual out of tune, time, and, we may add, place; and, moreover, as we seated ourselves close to the orchestra that we might hear every thing to the best advantage, what was our astonishment to find the clarionetts playing in a key one whole tone above the rest of the band! This fact we can safely assert, inasmuch as the overture was in E flat, and they were in F, one flat! WE advise Mr. C. to look to this, and reform it altogether.' The opera contains some pretty bits here and there; but we must decidedly set our faces against that prevalent vice of foisting in old favorites of other pieces as novelties in new ones. WE have heard at least two morceaux of this opera upwards of twenty times in Cinderella. This is an insult upon public confidence, and should meet with unqualified

censure.

"Since writing the above, we have learned that the opera is a version of Rossini's celebrated Armida, from the able pen of Mr. Benjamin Borrow-brains, who surpasses all his contemporaries in the tact and judgment with which he adapts the productions of foreign authors to the English stage. The piece, no doubt, will improve on further acquaintance."

So much for the critical acumen (generally speaking) of those who attempt to review musical productions. Now for a sample-a taste of their quality whose business it is to give a brief notice of the