vidual metropolitan experience and study -to call forth from the recesses of memory, some part of the world of associations respecting London, which such a residence and such an experience have necessarily accumulated; and to give them additional force and comprehensiveness, by the aid of passing observation and historical retrospect.

To the numerous country subscribers to this periodical, I conceive that little apology or explanation can be requisite in commencing a series of sketches and illustrations of a subject which must so constantly, so largely, and so variously impress their imaginations and excite their curiosity. But as it may be fairly presumed, that a large proportion of the readers of "The Parterre" are themselves metropolitan residents, it is possible that the question may be hastily asked by some, "What can Londoners be told about London that they do not already know?" My own experience and observation, and those of others whom I have consulted, must furnish my

answer.

In order to make this explanation the more clearly intelligible, I must be permitted to class the adult inhabitants of London, as regards the period and process of their acquaintance with it, under two distinct heads, viz., those who, having been born in the metropolis, or brought to it in their early infancy, have grown up within its precincts, and those who, having been brought up in the country, have been settled in London for some length of time. These two descriptions will be found to comprise, in nearly equal portions, the great bulk of those who may be properly denominated Londoners. Now, as regards the earlier associations contracted in their minds respecting the metropolis, there is one remarkable difference between these two classes. The former, brought up in close contact with such a variety of grand and momentous objects, find them, under certain aspects, for the most part superficial, so familiarly interwoven with the whole mass of their earliest-formed and most deeply impressed ideas, that they not only find nothing striking in those objects now, but they have no recollection that ever they were struck by them. If “familiarity,” in this case, has not "bred contempt," it has at least induced disregard, and lulled curiosity, or rather, perhaps, I should say, prevented it from ever being awakened.

But with the other class of residents, those bred in the country, the course of

the mind, as regards the forming an acquaintance with London, appears to be generally this:-Its first sensation, on coming into contact with such a complicated multiplicity of exciting objects, is a stunning one-a moral bewilderment, much resembling the physical one experienced on suddenly emerging from the long dark staircase upon the summit of the Monument or St. Paul's. In both cases, the first feeling on looking around you is, “ I shall never make all this out. But the discouragement of the eye in the one case, is more transitory than that of the mind is in the other; and I am persuaded that many a casual visitor of the metropolis has left it with feelings of disgust and disappointment, solely because he has not staid long enough to learn to understand it,— in which case it can appear little more to any visitor than "a piece of dry" though vast "machinery, noisy and wearisome." But when the mind has once begun to single out the various objects and relations, it takes courage, grows sanguine, and begins to think it shall soon embrace the mighty whole with perfect knowledge. After some time, however, the course of its experience undeceives it again of this mistake; and it settles down in the conviction, that all that it can ever attain by the longest and steadiest observation, is to know a great deal about London; but that to know all or nearly all which it would be interesting to know about this amazing epitome of the human world, is within the compass of no single capacity.

Such, then, being the case, even with those whose occupations lead, or whose leisure permits them to study a great variety of the objects that crowd this immense capital; can it be expected that they whose avocations confine them chiefly to one locality or to objects of one particular class, should acquire any general and comprehensive acquaintance with the overwhelming mass of other interesting objects around them? It cannot be it is morally, it is even physically impossible.

It is, therefore, mere thoughtlessness, or disingenuousness, to charge the great mass of Londoners, so intelligent in those matters which they have studied, with wilful ignorance respecting so many of the objects amongst which they are continually moving. It is not mere proximity to an object, that suffices to put a man in the way of becoming acquainted with it. It is stimulus and leisure to examine it, that are above all

things requisite. The busiest inhabitants and frequenters of the metropolis have abundant opportunities of seeing a great proportion of the objects of general interest which it contains. What they need is, to be prompted and instructed to read them-to penetrate their meaning -by those who possess the leisure, denied to the majority, for learning how to penetrate it by themselves.

This is not to be done by "Pictures of London"-by mere topographical sketches and external descriptions highly useful as such publications are. To become really acquainted with the metropolis, a person must be led (if I may be allowed the expression) to converse with the objects. They must not form a mere dead, painted panorama. They must take life and breath, and speak, in many voices, of the past as well as the present-of their remoter affinities as well as of their nearer relations.

A field of the best, as well as most entertaining instruction, would thus be found within the circuit of London and its environs, such as no other spot upon the globe can boast. The paucity of general ideas, which has been observed in so many of the habitual residents in London, not only as regards the world at large, but as regards that epitome of it, their own famed city, has led many to suppose that the multiplicity of objects in the metropolis was itself an obstacle to the acquisition of knowledge. But, however it may be with the knowledge of books, certain it is, that for the great study of all the study of man in all his various relations and his active exertions of his powers and his passions-his might and his weakness-his endless varieties of taste, habit, opinion, and pursuit -even his diversities of race, language, and costume-London presents, beyond all comparison, the most profitable school.

To acquire comprehensiveness of knowledge, solidity of judgment, and soundness of taste, the examination and comparison of a multiplicity of objects is absolutely necessary; and the smaller the territorial limits within which they are included, the more conveniently can this examination and comparison be made. Let the man, then - let the Englishman, at least-who would acquire the truest knowledge-that derived from men and things-study LONDON. Let him contemplate the vast city and its inhabitants, under every view-physical, moral, and picturesque. Let him frequent its marts of trade and its haunts

-

of fashion-its temples and its theatres -its repositories of science, and its galleries of art-its courts of justice, its houses of legislature, and, if permitted, its abodes of royalty. Nor, when dazzled by the splendour of its thousand palaces and its ten thousand equipages, on the one hand, or elated, on the other, by contemplating around him the vast and countless monuments of industry, wealth, and power, let him shrink from examining the unprosperous side of the picture from visiting the homes of squalid misery, of unwilling idleness, and of careless or hopeless guilt. Nor let his steps recoil from the threshold even of the hospital or the madhouse. He who would know mankind-he who would know himself-should see something of all these.

Not that I propose to add myself to the number of those who have preferred to dwell on the unfavourable view of the subject. Far from it. There is more good than evil in London after all. And it has advantages, attractions for every cultivated mind, for every mind desirous of cultivation, which no other locality in the empire affords. It is not in anger, but in sorrow, that I shall have to advert to the more painful class of associations regarding it—not in gloomy despairingness, but in confident hope that this majestic city will amply share in-as the steady exertions of its growing intelligence are importantly contributing to-the general advancement of human happiness.

Far be that species of licensed falsehood, called satire, from my pen. Far be it from me to see, like Johnson, in his true imitation of Juvenal, nothing in "London" but

"The needy villain's general home,

The common sewer of Paris and of Rome."

I could better reconcile myself to the sentiment of Thomson, in his verses on Solitude, where he says

"Perhaps, from Norwood's oak-clad hill,

When meditation has her fill,
I just may cast my careless eyes
Where London's spiry turrets rise,
Think of its cares, its woes, its pain,
Then shield me in the woods again."

But better still I like the feeling expressed in the following lines of one of my living countrywomen, conveying the gentlest, but at the same time, the most decisive reproof to the spirit of satire,

"They who love on faults to dwell, And tales of dull unkindness tell, Are like that one, if such there be, Who loves not sun but clouds to see; Who, when he walks in Nature's bowers,

Will choose the weeds and leave the flowers."

If, then, in the course of my rambles, I do not always throw aside the weeds as even from weeds some wholesome distilment is sometimes to be made-at least, I promise not to "leave the flow

ers.

No-I promise to gather them, notwithstanding the gravity of the foregoing preamble-and all introductions are proverbially stupid affairs,-I promise to gather them with a free and often a sportive hand; for, moralist as I may seem disposed to be, I heartily concur in the sentiment expressed in a recent publication, that "philosophy is at best but a meagre skeleton, when unfed and unwarmed by poetry." Loving what I understand to be genuine poetry, I am a lover of strong but not forced contrast, of rapid but natural transition. I am therefore resolved that these metropolitan rambles on paper shall be as unconfined as the bodily rambles of the writer, who, when he has a specific point to reach, likes a straight, well-trodden road, as well as any man; but who, when recreation is his object, to use the mild expression of a gentle friend of his, "hates, detests, and abhors a rectilinear, beaten track.

So that, although, when some object or some contemplation of absorbing or continuous interest presents itself, it will be dwelt upon at length, but he trusts not lengthily; yet when such shall not be the case, the reader must not be surprised should he find himself, by some sudden freak of the writer's fancy, plunged headlong from the upper gallery of St. Paul's, or some other elevated point, "inundated with light and air," into the damp, close cavern of the Rotherhithe tunnel, with the Thames and its ships rolling over him, and threatening him with an inundation of a more substantial kind-or haply hurried away from a crowded soirée, or from a full Italian Opera-house, blazing, dazzling, jewelled, plumed, and melodious-to some lone, silent, heathy spot, in a dark, moonless night, where some half-dozen savage figures glare upon you with supernatural aspect, by the red light of a gipsies' fire. If it be true, in gene

larly so in a mind that has once been led to study contrast. This habit renders transitions quite natural to a writer, which the reader may be apt to think violent, until he has this key to the ope rations of the writer's mind. In the present case, therefore, he thinks it as well to give the key beforehand.

In the next weekly number of "The Parterre," with the editor's permission, I shall commence my rambles by drag. ging the reader with me, "in spite of wind and weather," or of frost and fog, to the top of St. Paul's, in order to take a cursory survey of the vast field which we are proposing to explore. Being no demon, I cannot promise to unroof the buildings, as Asmodeus did those of Madrid for the entertainment and edification of his Spanish friend Don Cleofas, although I may venture to hazard, here and there, a mere human conjecture as to what the people are doing within.Being no genius, I shall not exhibit so animated and picturesque a panorama as Victor Hugo has shewn us from the towers of Notre-Dame. But the writer will do what he can, and the reader "shall see what he shall see!"

THERE was an old miser of Flanders, who carried his passion so far, as to deny himself sufficient food for the cravings of nature. He used to lie in a truss of straw, well bound together with osier thongs; and in the middle of this he made a hole, into which he crept like a badger. Time was to him little better than a pause; for his hopes had scarcely any progression, his chief purpose in life now being to take care of what he had got. His house contained his world; his bundle of straw was his only luxury. And here in this grub-like state he lay naked all the day; but when the dusk of evening came on, he would slowly crawl from his musty nest, and, huddling on a few ragged clothes, stalk out into the fields at bottom of his weed-grown garden, or into the roads and lanes, to see what he could find. Dry leaves to make tea with, bits of turf or rotten wood for his seldom-kindled fire, were the chief object of these rambles; and he was once seen carrying home a dead crow for his Christmas dinner.

He had been originally a tradesman of middling degree, and even these circumstances he was only just able to maintain by the most incessant attention both early and late. Yet somehow it happened, that beyond this he could never rise, though he pursued the same course upwards of fifty years. Perhaps this was occasioned by his whole attention and endeavours being employed upon the minutest points of gain, so that when any great opportunity, or one beyond his ordinary habit of mind, occurred, he either let it slip unobserved, by never raising his eyes from the dust, or else stood wavering between astonishment and fear, till fortune had flown her kite over his head.

At length a change occurred in the current of trade, whereby, without the necessity of making any venture, his profits began rapidly to increase. This very circumstance, instead of giving him a real sense of pleasure, only served to redouble his avarice and his cares. He grew silent, absorbed, distrustful, and meanly suspicious of every body around him; from that moment, becoming also so penurious in his domestic habits, that his son was obliged to quit the house, and travel to France, in order to engage in some business apart from him.

The old man continued the same course till he grew so infirm, as to be unable to give the requisite attention; and being too distrustful quietly to suffer any one else to manage his affairs, would have died in the alternation of the two agonizing endeavours, when a relative chancing to leave him a small house near Ghent, he disposed of his business advantageously, and repaired thither forthwith.

He sold the furniture, and he sold the fixtures; he sold the fruit trees, and he sold the garden tools; he sold the yarddog, with his kennel, collar, chain, and water-pan. The house he could not sell, because it was to go to his son after his decease; but he did what he could with it: he sold his chance of the house in case his son happened to die first; for this he got something.

and

All these preliminaries of desolation being settled, he installed himself in the innermost apartment of the house, and let every thing fall to ruin about him.

Having stalked about several years in the miserable way of life described above, he at length became conscious that his worn-out frame must shortly give way to ́old age and constant privations. So he

took his gold, by a piece at a time, to the bottom of his garden, where a long cave had been constructed many years ago, in the time of warfare, and deposited it in a large earthen jar. When the jar was at length full, he stood gazing at it immoveably several hours; then, with a heavy heart and inward groans, he buried it as a man would bury all he loved, and with it all his hopes! This done, he felt death coming fast upon him, and closing the trap-door of the cave, and casting earth over it, he crawled back to his room, and got into his truss of straw to await his last moment, and be buried also.

Thrice he extended his long fleshless arm over the floor, with a bit of chalk in his bony fingers, as though to write a few words to his son; and as often withdrew it.

After a pause he dropped it, and broke into the following soliloquy:—

:

66 - No-let him work for his own gold-he shall not know of mine! With unceasing pain and care, and by slow gradations, did I acquire it; and shall it be dispersed away with ease and pleasure, and rapid as a summer shower? He would not endure the privations which I, though less able by reason of my years, did most constantly sustain; and he left me to contend alone against the trading and rapacious world, to pursue his private interest in another country. Be it so if he is industrious, he may do well; if the opposite, he shall not come here to play the spendthrift with my groans. Has not my thrift been close attended with pangs of body and mind? Have I not denied sleep to my age-warmth to my infirmity-medicine to my ailments and have I not continually endured the slow and gnawing pangs of hunger? Ay, ay, beyond words-they can convey no tangible idea of it; and if they did, it would be beyond belief. No matter--it suffices for my conscience.—

"Yet wherefore this extreme endurance?' say the world; was it not thine own will? Then no compassion can be given; more especially as it was without purpose or rational end, since you now die without making any use of that which has cost you such extremities to acquire.'-True; and if men never fell into any engrossing passion without first finding reasonable grounds for it, then do I deserve to be condemned as an exception. Let philosophers shew that the cravings of avarice, and the hoarding up of wealth, is mistaking the means for

the end. I admit it. But does this apply to me alone? Is it not comparatively universal? Is ambition-hopeor love, ever satisfied or happy? Is glory -rank-power, ever satisfied or happy? Is malice satisfied? Is revenge-remorse-despair? Death alone sets a limit to real passion. But if all this reasoning be no better than the sophistry of self-love, and that I have indeed mistaken the right end of life's efforts, which others find, then have I discovered the error too late. Man's will, long implicated in any cause, cannot return and face wisdom with a humble bow. My last page is now being scanned by the rapid moments!-I am upon the edge of time!-the abyss of thought and confused imaginings are before me-all this stage and scene are fast vanishing into nought! My only object of life is buried; I care no longer for myself. Men will execrate my memory according to their own poverty. Let them. A wretch-a rag-a starved dog-a creeping thing-a miser!-No matter. my son come to my house and say, like an ogre, Where is his gold?' He shall but find the tools that worked for it my bones!

Let

Let all posterity, or any pinch of human dust, rail at my life, and at this last act; I would say to them from my grave, if wretchedness has been my means of gain, it was my choice and my sufferance-which injured no one. If my gain was no real end or enjoyed object to me, the grieved or care-worn getter,-why should it be to you, the mere open-mouthed? If desolation has been my companion, I so willed it; if starvation has been my day-fiend and my long night's vulture, I bore it for my passion; and, therefore, have I hidden my gold, for ye shall not riot with my life's misery !"

So saying, the miser sank down into his straw, and, after a few gasps, died without a struggle. His demise being discovered in a few weeks, he was buried at the expense of the parish.

It is shewn in the above soliloquy how he justified his conduct to himself. As he was all-enduring and entire in his devotedness to his passion, however mean a one it was, we have not, after the fashion of modern novelists, compromised him in his last moments to a conventional moral. The real moral, in all cases of misdirected passion, must be looked for in the most generous and disinterested feelings of our unbiassed nature, which, with that sense of benevolence implanted in the heart (a thing

either above reason, or else the highest degree of it), convinces us the more strongly, by beholding a true picture of evil or pure selfishness, that nothing is really good for us which does not in some way conduce to the good of another. R. H. H.

MISCELLANIES.

THE WAR OF THE PINS.

In the anecdote which Bourrienne tells us of the conception of Marengo, there is felicity of combination as well as felicity of execution. This is the story which Bourrienne calls the guerre des epingles: the picture is admirable. "The 17th of March, in a moment of gaiety and humour, he (Buonaparte) told me to unrol the great map of Italy, by Chauchard. He stretched himself upon it, and made me put myself by his side. He then, with great seriousness, began to prick here and there numerous pins, with heads of black and red sealing wax. I observed him in silence, and waited the result of his inoffensive campaign. When he had finished placing the enemy's troops, and arranged his own in the positions in which he hoped to lead them, he said to me,' Now, where do you think I intend to beat Melas?' (the Austrian general). 'The devil take me,' said I, if I understand any thing about it.' You are an ass,' said Buonaparte, look here a little. Melas is at Alexandria, his head-quarters; he will remain there till Genoa surrenders. At Alexandria, he has magazines, his hospitals, his artillery, his reserves. Passing the Alps here (pointing out the great St. Bernard), I fall upon MelasI cut off his communications with Austria, and I meet him here in the plains of Scrivia,' (placing a red-headed pin at San Juliano.) Observing that I considered this manœuvre of pins as a pastime, he commenced his round of little abusive apostrophes (such as nais, nigand, béte, imbecile, &c. &c.) which were with him nothing but a kind of affectionate familiarity, and then set to work again with his pins. We rose from the map after about a quarter of an hour-I rolled it up, and thought no more of the matter. But when, four months after, I found myself at San Juliano, with his portfolio and his dispatches, which I was obliged to gather up in the confusion of the day; and when, the same evening, at Torre-di-Galifolio, which is but a league thence, I wrote, under his dictation, the bulletin of the battle-I frankly