Is probably not equal to the adventures of "the Mulligan of Ballymulligan" as regards freshness of subject and Milesian richness; and it has not so continuous a story. In variety, general satire, the absence of an approach to dramatic exaggeration, and a description of London life in a newly-built region, with hits at passing occurrences "hot and hot," Our Street surpasses its predecessor. The outline or frame-work is as follows. On his return from study at Rome, Mr. M. A. Titmarsh took a second floor in Waddilove Street, which was then in the country, apparently near Tyburn; and there he has remained till the surrounding fields have been "covered in," squares erected in the vicinity, and Waddilove Street newly baptized "Pocklington Gardens"; while Mrs. Cammysole has raised the rent of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh, on the strength of this change of name, and her own addition of A to the 46 of the old house,-an usurpation at which the agent of Sir Thomas Pocklington, M. P. for the borough of Lathanplaster is furious. "Our Street" with its vicinity is the very type of new fashionable neighbourhoods under the given circumstances; and not described, as is often the case, with a touch of the past in the present, but the very "Cynthia of the minute" is caught. There is the parish-church with its rector, "old Slocum, of the good old tawny port-wine school." "In the centre of Pocklington Gardens rises St. Waltheofs's — a splendid Anglo-Norman edifice, vast, rich, elaborate, bran new, and intensely old." There is a Romish chapel, with a Dissenting chapel close at hand; and "Our Street" offers that intermixture of ranks, fortunes, unpretending gentility, with show of questionable fashion, which is only to be found in a new neighbourhood, or a new colony — which in some sense a new neighbourhood is.

The delineation of the common occurrences and characters of such a region is done by a mind thoroughly imbued with the reality, and throwing off its knowledge without the slightest effort. As a reflex of society as it is, Our Street is unrivalled; beating "all to nothing" the elaborated flimsiness of three-volumed novels, or the literal minuteness of Dickens. The natural "sorrow, joy, or pain," so far as a heated civilization allows such things to be the vanities, coarseness, follies, and trickeries of people is suing from the mere middle or tradesman class, yet not with a fixed position among the old families-look less like literature than very life. Yet, though much weakness and some roguery pass in review, there is no bitterness; but the

good-natured allowance of a man who is speaking, in Shaksperian phrase, of his "fellows." It may be objected that the outline and coloring are slight: but this is designed. Our Street is intended for holyday perusal, when the mind wants to be tickled, not tasked; and the reading, like the talking, is touch-and-go. It should, however, be observed, that much more is conveyed by this slightness of Mr. Titmarsh than by the ponderous laboring of others. "Multum in parvo" might be the motto of our English Michael Angelo.

Our Street is not exactly the book for extract, since it is hardly fair to draw upon so small a volume: but we will take two bits- and first, a mere sketch of Captain Bragg, retired from the Company's service.

"Bragg to this day wears anchor-buttons, and has a dress-coat with a gold strap for epaulets, in case he should have a fancy to sport them. His house is covered with portraits, busts, and miniatures of himself. His wife is made to wear one of the latter. On his sideboard are pieces Chunder to Captain Bragg. The Ram Chunof plate, presented by the passengers of the Ram der East Indiaman, in a gale off Table Bay'; The Outward-bound Fleet, under convoy of her Majesty's frigate Loblollyboy, Captain Gutch, beating off the French squadron, under Commodore Leloup (the Ram Chunder S. E. by E., is

6

represented engaged with the Mirliton corHooghly, with Captain Bragg, his telescope, and vette)'; 'The Ram Chunder standing into the speaking-trumpet, on the poop'; 'Captain Bragg presenting the Officers of the Ram Chunder to General Bonaparte at St. Helena'- TITMARSH (this fine piece was painted by me when I was in favor with Bragg); in a word, Bragg and the Ram Chunder are all over the house."

Besides its minute observation, this sketch of the landlady challenges remark for the spirit of good-nature which pervades it: lodginghousekeepers are commonly done in gall.

"Mrs. Cammysole, my landlady, will be rather surprised when she reads this, and finds that a of her impositions for fifteen years, understands good-natured tenant, who has never complained every one of her tricks, and treats them, not with anger, but with scorn - with silent scorn.

"On the 18th of December, 1837, for instance, coming gently down stairs, and before my usual wont, I saw you seated in my arm-chair, peeping into a letter that came from my aunt in the country, just as if it had been addressed to you, and not to 'M. A. Titmarsh, Esq.' Did I make any disturbance? far from it: I slunk back to my bedroom, (being enabled to walk silently in the beautiful pair of worsted slippers Miss Penel

ope

J s worked for me; they are worn out now, dear Penelope !) and then, rattling open the door with a great noise, descended the stairs, singing Son vergin vezzosa' at the top of my voice. You were not in my sitting-room, Mrs. Cammysole, when I entered that apartment.

6

"You have been reading all my letters, papers, manuscripts, brouillons of verses, inchoate articles for the Morning Post and Morning Chronicle, invitations to dinner and tea, all my family letters, all Eliza Townley's letters, from the first, in which she declared that to be the bride of her beloved Michelangelo was the fondest wish of her maiden heart, to the last, in which she announced that her Thomas was the best of husbands, and signed herself Eliza Slogger'; all Mary Farmer's letters, all Emily Delamere's, all that poor foolish old Miss Macwhirter's, whom I would as soon marry as ; in a word, I know that you, you hawk-beaked, keeneyed, sleepless, indefatigable, old Mrs. Cammysole, have read all my papers for these ten years. "I know that you cast your curious old eyes over all the manuscripts which you find in my coat-pockets, and those of my pantaloons, as they hang in a drapery over the door-handle of my bedroom.

"I know that you count the money in my green and gold purse, which Lucy Netterville gave me, and speculate on the manner in which I have laid out the difference between to-day and yesterday.

"I know that you have an understanding with the laundress, (to whom you say that you are all-powerful with me,) threatening to take away my practice from her, unless she gets up gratis some of your fine linen.

"I know that we both have a penny-worth of cream for breakfast, which is brought in in the

same little can; and I know who has the most for her share.

"I know how many lumps of sugar you take from each pound as it arrives. I have counted the lumps, you old thief, and for years have never said a word, except to Miss Clapperclaw, the first-floor lodger. Once I put a bottle of pale brandy into that cupboard, of which you and I only have the keys; and the liquor wasted and wasted away, until it was all gone. You drank the whole of it, you wicked old woman. You a lady, indeed!

"I know your rage when they did me the honor to elect me a member of the Poluphloisboiothalasses Club, and I ceased consequently to dine at home. When I did dine at home, on a beef-steak let us say, I should like to know what you had for supper? You first amputated portions of the meat when raw; you abstracted more when cooked. Do you think I was taken in by your flimsy pretences? I wonder how you could dare to do such things before your maids, (you, a clergyman's daughter and widow indeed!) whom you yourself were always charging with roguery."

The same general criticism applies to the pictured illustrations as to the text: they are not, perhaps, so rich as the portraits of the Mulligan ; but better representations of every day life. "Some of our Gentlemen". -a plate of heads and figures of grooms, flunkies, tigers, &c.— is capital; the mutes are portraits; but we think

that which has most of the essence of character, Street"- Mr. Oriel, the Tractarian divine, we will not say satire, is "the Dove of our surrounded by his fair disciples at an evening party. - Spectator.

We thought, we 'll be careful where we tread,
And avoid him where he 's lying:

For if we should tumble over his head,
'T would certainly send us flying.

Lightly they'll talk of him when they 're gone,
And p'rhaps for his folly upbraid him;
But little he 'll care, and again try it on,

Till the Serjeant-at-arms shall have stayed him.
But half of us asked, "What's now to be done?"
When the time arrived for retiring,
And we heard the door-keeper say, "It's no fun
Our attendance to watch him requiring."

Slowly and softly they shut the door,

After Radical, Whig, and Tory;

And muttering out, "We'll stop here no more," They left him alone in his glory.

Punch.

THE แ HAERLEMMER MEER."

In the lately published number of the Edinburgh Review will be found an instructive article on that social and physical phenomenon Holland. We refer to it more particularly for the account which it presents of the plans now in course of operation for draining the Lake of Haerlem, as it is called in our English maps, but which is known among the Dutch as the Haerlemmer Meer, or Haerlem Sea. We well remember the sight of this vast sheet of water, when, going along the road from Haerlem to Amsterdam, we found it stretching far away to the right, and covering, as we were told, an area of seventy square miles. A broad mound or dike, on which the highway was extended, may be said to have been the boundary which prevented still further encroachments of the ocean. It is, however, on all sides carefully banked; and the annual expense incurred for these defences amounts to from L.4000 to L.5000.

The meer of Haerlem originated in a series of inundations of the sea about three hundred years ago. Numerous schemes were subsequently devised to expel the ocean, but they were either not attended to, or failed in execution. The boldest of these projects was devised by a most ingenious mechanician, Jan Leeghwater; but we believe it only went the length of employing a vast army of windmills, each working a pump; and at any rate it was never properly entertained. The serious difficulty in the way of expelling and permanently keeping out the meer was the expense; latterly, however, since the discovery of steam power, it has been made apparent to the minds of the Hollanders, "that to keep dry, and to maintain the dikes around this large area, when brought into the state of a polder (dry patch of land), would not exceed in yearly expense the cost of maintaining the existing barrier dikes." As soon as this fact was satisfactorily established, the expulsion of the meer was determined on by the Dutch government.

"A navigable ring canal was begun," proceeds the reviewer, "in 1840. At three distant points on the borders of the lake as many monster engines are to be erected. These, it is calculated, will exhaust the waters, and lay the bed of the lake dry, by fourteen months of incessant pumping; at a total cost, for machines and labor, of L.140,000. The expense of maintaining the dikes and engines afterwards will be nearly L.5000 a year. The cost of maintaining the old

barrier dikes amounted, as we have already stated, to about the same sum. The land to be laid dry is variously estimated at from fifty to seventy thousand acres. Taking the lowest of these estimates, the cost of reclaiming amounts to L.3 sterling per imperial acre, and that of subsequently maintaining to two shillings per acre. Independently, therefore, of the other advantages which will attend it, there will be an actual money profit from the undertaking. The quantity of water to be lifted is calculated at about a thousand millions of tons. This would have required a hundred and fourteen windmills of the largest size stationed at intervals round the lake, and working for four years, at a total cost of upwards of L.300,000; while at the same time, after the first exhaustion of the waters was completed, the greater number of these mills would have been perfectly useless. How wonderful appears the progress of mechanical art! Three steam-engines to do the work of one hundred and fourteen huge mills, in one third of the time, and at less than one half the cost! One of these monster engines of English manufacture

working, polypus-like, eleven huge suckers at the extremity of as many formidable arms, has been already erected, and tried at the southern extremity of the lake in the neighbourhood of Leyden. The annual drainage of the lake is calculated at fifty-four millions of tons, of which twenty millions will require in some seasons to be lifted in the course of one or two months. Had our railway undertakings not sprung up to rival or excel it, we should have unhesitatingly claimed for this work the praise of being the boldest effort of civil engineering in modern times."

We learn for the first time, from the Review, that as Holland produces no coal, the natives have finally resorted to steam-power, with some degree of fear as to the consequences. Should they go to war with England and other coal-producing countries, how is fuel to be procured? It is to be trusted that our good friends the Dutch will keep themselves quite easy on this score; and we wish them cordially to unite with us in the following sentiments:-"Let Holland depend upon England and Belgium for the coal which is to dry her polders. Let Norway, and Russia, and Belgium, and the United States of America, depend upon the English market for the sale of their timber, their hemp, and flax, and cotton. Let England depend upon Russia, and Germany, and America for her deficient corn, and upon the world at large for outlets to