seldom see a volume of poems published without its containing some piece which the superscription tells us was "written in an Album." A fashion has lately crept in to have to the Album, in addition to all possible magnificence of binding, a gilt lock. We conclude this must be to keep the gatherings of the fair Albumist from unlicensed eyes; we trust it can be for no other reason. The real interest, however, of an Album, is to look back to the collections of former years. There are not many things more touching than to turn to these tokens of by-gone social enjoyment. The outpourings of buoyant gaiety, the playful allusions to local and temporary jests, and the occasional touch of softer and more tender feeling, are preserved in these books, the fresh and living traces of fellowship long broken through, of. re-unions which can never again be brought together. Death will have swept away some, and circumstance have divided us from many; but here we find the sentiments of those we have loved, or at least in whom we have felt interest, traced by their own hand, and bearing the impress of character which is always so apparent in unpremeditated composition. These relics, though perhaps, trifling in themselves, under these circumstances become inexpressibly dear to us, and we are inclined to bless the means by which we have gathered and preserved them.

Last in the list of Albums comes our own :-and it may not be improper to say, in this place, a few words concerning its nature and the manner in which it will be conducted. The plan which we have chosen, is one hitherto untried. It is to establish a Quarterly Journal, wholly excluding politics, which shall embrace original papers on all literary subjects, and a Review. The Re

view will include only works of interest; but those which we do notice, will be discussed in the full manner usual in the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews.

We have been induced to devote a certain number of our pages to the head which we have called " Scraps, original and selected," by the great interest which literary fragments and anecdotes excite. We have occasionally seen manuscript books of scraps collected in this miscellaneous manner, and they have invariably caused the greatest amusement to readers of all tastes. It is with this view that we have gathered our scrapsthey will, of course, be on all subjects, and from authors of all descriptions; some of them also will be original.

Our pages will be open to the discussion of all literary subjects, and of all matters connected with the Fine Arts.

We have, as we have said, totally excluded Politics. We have done this from the conviction, that a journal wholly literary is, at this time, much wanted and wished for. Complaints are daily made, that no literary disquisition is now free from a mingling of political feeling. Politics are in truth, in these days, mixed up with every thing. The bitter spirit of political ill-will infects and poisons our enjoyments of all kinds. It gives an acrimonious turn to all discussion-it aggravates an argument into a dispute, and a difference into a quarrel. Politics are the very apple of discord of this age-they generate every unamiable and rancorous feeling-envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. Formerly

literature at least was free from their contagion, and we were accustomed to turn to it for relief from the bad taste and bad passions of politics; but now it is their chief vehicle--the principal means by which they are disseminated and discussed. Literary journals are fast

sinking into periodical pamphlets, and even poetry abounds with the allusions and declamations of political party. It is our object, therefore, to establish a journal in which every species of politics will be scrupulously avoided, and where our readers shall be certain of finding literary subjects wholly unaffected by their warping influence.

A MORNING AT BOW-STREET.

I WAS awakened yesterday morning by a note being delivered to me from a young friend of mine, telling me that he was in trouble-i. e., in St. Martin's watchhouse-and requesting me to come down to Bow-street to be his bail, if need were; and, at all events, to give him my advice and assistance to get out of the scrape. Now I am one of those persons who, like the beau in Gil Blas, "would not rise before noon for the best party of pleasure which could be proposed:" it therefore gave me no particular delight to turn out before nine o'clock on a cold morning on an errand like this. Go, however, I did and I arrived at Bow-street just in time to see my friend alight from a hackney-coach, with five companions in misfortune. "Sa toilette du soir, un peu fanée ce matin," added to his dim sunken eye, his pale cheek, and matted hair, made his appearance sufficiently forlorn; which was not improved by the shame which he very visibly felt of his situation. He had no sort of inclination, I soon perceived, to figure in the Police Report of the Morning Herald. His story was, that he had been foolish enough the night before to go to a gaming-house-usually and most appropriately called a Hell; and that after losing fifty pounds, he was

bagged, as he phrased it, by an irruption of Bow-street officers, and had the satisfaction of passing the remainder of the night in the watch-house. There was nothing very formidable in all this; and I thought it scarcely sufficient cause for me to have been dragged out of my bed at owl-light in the morning. My young friend, however, felt somewhat less than comfortable in his novel situation, and wished me to remain with him to see him through the business. In the mean time as our case was not the first to be gone through, I had leisure to take a survey of the place which I was in, and the people by whom I was surrounded.

This was the first time I had ever been at Bow-street, and the scene was sufficiently striking. The low illlighted room, with its dingy walls and barred windows, was a locale well adapted to the figures of want, vice, and wretchedness with which it was filled, Some few, like my friend, seemed to be there for some slight offence, and their appearance evinced only the desire to escape from observation in such a place. Others, with looks of shame far greater, and with the air of the deepest depression, seemed to àwait their turn of hearing with the most anxious fear, rarely and slightly varied by a faint degree of hope. But by far the greatest number had that look of hardened reckless vice, which is perhaps the most degraded and revolting aspect in which humanity ever appears: these faces bespoke the total absence of shame, and the callous indifference to consequence, which habitual wickedness gives, and which seem to regard detection and punishment as but the adverse chances of a game, in which they must sometimes necessarily occur. But what was chiefly jarring to my feelings, was the matter-of-course air, with which the officers and even the magistrate looked on a scene

from which I shrank with disgust and loathing. The various shades and degrees of folly, of error and of crime, which the figures around spoke so plainly, appeared to be regarded by them as the usual occupants of the place the natural subjects of a day's duty. See, said I to myself, the hardening effects of habit! That magistrate is, I doubt not, a man of humanity, and once had the feelings natural to one of his station in life; but now from the constantly witnessing misery and guilt, he has come to look unmoved on these the most degraded appearances of human nature-the very dregs and offal of misfortune and of crime!

The first case which was called was not of a nature calculated to remove the impressions to which the scene before me gave rise. It was that of a young man accused of forgery. Like many of those guilty of this crime, he seemed to be of superior manners and talents. His appearance was very interesting: he was not more than three or four and twenty, and his countenance, like that of the fallen Eblis, betokened energies and capabilities, which should have led to far different results. He was one of those instances of misdirected powers, and advantages perverted to evil, which, though so frequent, do not the less excite compassion and regret. It was his second examination; and, since the last, his friends had been informed of his perilous situation. His father had hurried from the country to console and to assist his son. The old man was now present—and I have seldom seen grief more pitiable. He seemed to be between sixty and seventy. His white hair was thinly scattered on his forehead; over which and his sunken cheek the most deadly paleness was spread. The furrows of his aged face appeared deepened and contracted with grief. His eye, which was becoming dim