No XXXIII.

VOL. VI.

THIS is the very age of wonders; so not to be outdone by any of our contemporaries, we propose now doing a truly wonderful thing-namely, in good earnest to laud a production of Mr Leigh Hunt's. That ingenious person has got frequent trimmings from "gruff old General Izzard," all of which, we verily believe, were intended for his good-and during the absence of the General from this country, (he is now at Vienna with Lord Byron and Mr Moore) it gives us pleasure to notify the amendment both in morals and manners of his protegée. Our present Number, too, will appear in London on New Year's Day-and we cannot suffer a single snarl to disturb, on that auspicious morning, the serenity of our metropolitan subscribers. Mr Hunt, we understand, does not take in our Magazine, but he generally contrives to get a peep at it at our friend Ollier's or elsewhere, and whatever he may sometimes hint to the contrary in the Examiner, he knows very well that it is the very best Magazine he ever saw or can hope to see in this world. Stolen pleasures are sweet, so are smuggled goods-and we cannot help envying Mr Hunt those secret snatches of delight which once a month he enjoys within the sheets of our Miscellany. We think we see him left alone with it in a room for a few moments. He ogles it—he leers upon it -he "siddles" up to it with deep and burning blushes, like a turkey-cock at a bit of scarlet-he encircles it a

gain and again in rotatory and amatory motion-till at last he bounces upon it, and rifles all its sweetness. Afraid of being seen by mortal eye, he then "flings it like a noisome weed away," hurries to Hampstead—and when city and suburbs are all ringing with her praises-Mr Hunt alone, false and faithless ingrate, (is there no punishment on earth for perjured lovers?) slights the peerless beauty of the North.

All this is exceedingly absurd-but we are of a truly forgiving disposition, and cheerfully pardon all Mr Hunt's manifold transgressions against ourselves. His other sins of immorality, sedition, and impiety, we leave for the present to those dread twins, REMORSE and REPENTANCE.

But now for the Literary PocketBook. Many people are in the habit of jotting down little memoranda of their daily thoughts, occurrences, and engagements some on the backs of calling cards-and some on scraps of letters-while the wiser part of mankind carry about on their persons, for that especial purpose, a little natty clasped 24mo, something about the bulk and shape of a medium whig snuff-box. For our own parts we do not now venture on such sort of autobiography. There is something very fearful in the thought of losing the table of contents of one's brain for a whole year. To drop such a synopsis into a lake or the sea, would be all very well, for it would amuse Neptune and the mermaids-but we could not suspect and live, that it had been picked up by some old fierce tab

VOL. VI.

2 G

by-some greedy gossip of threescore -who would introduce it to the shrivelled sisterhood with the second cup of tea, and reads aloud, in a sour voice, choice passages, with a direful caterwauling accompaniment. "Where was the vile vretch on Thursday night ?" "What can the fulsome fellow mean by past 9. Di: Lu: call on M. S. 3 pair of stairs -left hand-knocker-Mrs L.-brass plate-Little's Po: Rimini-Play Tick: oysters-Mull: P?” Suppose that our diary should fall into the hands of some popular preacher. What comfort could there be in sitting in church to hear Sunday after Sunday the most pointed allusions made to the most secret transactions of our lives? What if the Rev. Mr Terrot, for example, should all at once find himself in possession of the whole annual income of the brain of the Editor of this Magazine? A twenty thousand pound prize in the lottery would be nothing to such a treasure. He would huddle it into his bosom he would sleep with it below his pillow-he would rise at midnight and gloat over it by rush light-scraps of it would slip into his sermons it would colour the whole style of his epistolary correspondence he would throw aside for ever his "Common Sense"- he would set Constable's Magazines on fire.

In short, we should feel as useless and unhappy with such a diary in our pocket, as a country gentleman in the pit of Drury Lane with bills to a vast amount. Our uneasiness would increase from day to day. We could endure the month of January,-in February our trepidation would be visible to our friends—in March our looks would be wild-April would see us in sore distress-in May we would make a desperate effort to get rid of the cause of our distemper-and in June we would send our Literary Pocket-Book to slumber for ever in oblivion, with seventeen pamphlets of James Grahame, and one old snoring number of my grandmother's Review. The truth is, that we have such good memories we do not require memoranda. We absolutely forget nothing. Will the public believe us

when we say, that we recollect more than one sentence of Macvey Napier's Essay on Lord Bacon? We offer to bet fifty pounds that we commit to memory, in three days, the leading article in Colburn's last Magazine, without omitting a single word of bad grammar! We will undertake three pages of Johnny Keates' Endymion within the week-and that Julius Cæsar Scaliger may for ever hide his head, we offer to bet a series of Blackwood against a series of the Edinburgh Review (immense odds), that we commit to memory, in a single afternoon, that part of Mr Brougham's very statesman-like speech on the sharpening of the swords of the Manchester yeomanry! One human being alone has ever triumphed over the power of our memory, and that is Sir Robert Wilson. A speech of his is beyond retention. At the very moment that we think we have him, away go his words like shelving sand on every side, and all is lost. We know not what this elusive quality of his eloquence can be, but we grant that to him it is invaluable. One speech may serve him all his life;-a hundred times delivered, still seems it to be a maiden speech. Alas! it is all the while an old battered oration out of all keeping.

We therefore-that is Editor and Contributors-have no need of memoranda; but all people are not Editors and Contributors-(though at the same time we believe in this literary age that the greater part of mankind are in that predicament)-and for such as are not, Mr Leigh Hunt's Literary Pocket-Book is a very clever and cunning contrivance. A common almanack is most shockingly vulgar, and cannot be worn by a gentleman in the evening. But the Literary PocketBook, though a sort of almanack, is quite dressy-looking with its scarlet coat, and when you unbutton it, it exhibits a white waistcoat and clean linen. We wear one ourselves, merely for shew, and have detected ourselves more than once, in our fine absent way, tapping it, as if it were our gold snuff-box. It is the intention of the proprietors to publish one annually.

huts. In the gardens and hedges beautiful colours are still peeping for the eye that seeks them: among flowers,-the cyclamen, hazel-wort, the crocus or saffron flower that died the garments of Aurora and Hymen, the perriwinkle, the polyanthus, yellowaconite, Alpine alysson, anemone, hellebore, the fiery glow of the wall-flower, the snowdrop, with its little tints of green, and the primrose or rose of the prime :-among trees and shrubs, the Glastonbury-thorn, whose flourishing at Christmas used to be counted miraculous, laurustinus with its delicate clumps of white, laureola or spurgelaurel, pyracantha, arbutus or strawberrytree, a favourite with Virgil, which looks like strawberries growing on a bay, and the alaternus, which Englishmen in gratitude should call the Evelyn, after that excellent rural patriot who first had the honour,' he says, to bring it into use and reputation in this kingdom, and propagated it from Cornwall even to Cumberland.' Then, as to berries, what can be desired beyond the holly alone, which made this friend of Cowley burst out into a poetical rapture. We still dress up both our churches and houses,' says he, on Christmas and other festival days, with its cheerful green, and rutilant berries. Is there under heaven a more glo rious and refreshing object of the kind, than an impregnable hedge of about four hundred foot in length, nine foot high, and five in diameter, which I can now shew in my ruined gardens at Say's Court (thanks to the Czar of Muscovy) at any time of the year, glittering with its armed and varnished leaves, the taller standards at orderly distances, blushing with their natural coral ?'

"But what was thought enchantment in old times, may be practised now by every body who chuses to force flowers. These may be had all the winter-time, though they are best in every respect where they can be taken care of in a green-house, or seen through a glass partition at the end of a large room, as in some of the houses of the rich. The truth is, that many flowers in a room are not wholesome, unless they can have air and light to enable them to give out properly that oxygen or vital air, which they exhale in genial situations during the day-time. During the night, they are always unwholesome, as they throw out hydrogen and absorb the oxygen. And yet perhaps our excessively artificial and in-door habits, in helping to enervate us, render unwholesome what would be otherwise perceptible only as a pleasure. At all events, a few flowers on a shelf, such as hyacinths and jonquils, can do no harm, and are very beautiful with their curling or down-looking buds, and their ivory roots seen through the water. The rest of the flowers that may be forced in winter are lilacs, lilies of the valley (an exquisite intermixture of leaves and bells), mignonette or the little darling, pinks, polyanthus narcissus, roses, tulips, and violets; in fact, a whole summer an

ticipated. It is worth adding, that artificial flowers were never, perhaps, so well made as they are now, and that they may be put in pots and glasses like real ones, or hung up in wreaths and crowns over pictures, doorways, or the middle of a pier, where they form at once a summer picture of their own, a memorial of classical times, and a beautiful contrast to the squareness of the compartment. It was pleasantly said by somebody, on seeing a real rose after one of these manufactured ones,- Very lovely, indeed! It is almost as good as artificial.'

"Those who cultivate a few flowers for their particular amusement (we do not of course address ourselves to gardeners) should now occasionally take in their best ranunculuses, and protect their choice carnations, hyacinths, and tulips, with hoops, mats, or glasses. It is time also, in mild dry weather, to plant ranunculuses, anemones, tulips, and bulbous flowers; and for early blowing, crocuses and snow-drops. The bulbous flowers in glasses within doors should have their water kept clean; and it is better for all flowers in a house to have as much light and sunshine as possible, which some of them seem absolutely to yearn and strain after.

"But the very frost itself is a world of pleasure and fairy beauty. The snow dances down to earth, filling all the airy vacancy with a giddy whiteness; and minutely inspected, every particle is a chrystal star, the delight perhaps of myriads of invisible eyes. The ice (hereafter destined to temper dulcet creams for us in the heat of summer) affords a new and rare pastime for the skaiter, almost next to flying; or suddenly succeeding to rain, strikes the trees and the grasses into silver. But what can be more delicately beautiful than the spectacle which sometimes salutes the eye at the breakfastroom window, occasioned by the hoar-frost or frozen dew? If a jeweller had come to dress every plant over night to surprise an Eastern sultan, he could not produce any thing like the pearly drops,' or the 'silvery plumage.' An ordinary bed of greens, to those who are not at the mercy of their own vulgar associations, will sometimes look like crisp and corrugated emerald, powdered with diamonds.

"Under the apparent coldness of the snow, the herbaceous plants, which die down to the root in autumn, lie nourishing their shoots for the spring. Nor is much done by the animal creation, man included, during this period. Many birds and reptiles make a long night-time of the hard season, and are awake only in finer weather. The domestic cattle are mostly lodged in the homestead. The farmer lops and cuts timber, mends thorn hedges, and draws manure to his fields. Many trades, especially those connected with water, are at a stand during the frost. The thresher's time is the merriest as well as most industrious, for he works away his flail in