tination; but, on mustering previous to her departure, it was ascertained that not less than one hundred and seventy had perished.

Infinite is the variety of these volumes, and they will fully support the popular reputation of their author.

THE LITERARY LADIES OF ENGLAND.*

THIS is the bluest of blue-books: all the "literary ladies" of England, collected, collated, and criticised by a literary lady, for the benefit of literary ladies all over the world, and the literary and all other ladies of England, Scotland, and Ireland in particular:-for though Mrs. Elwood's book is full of amusement and information that the ruder sex may with greater advantage avail themselves of, it is especially and emphatically a lady's book, devised and concocted for the honour and glory of ladies, and demanding and deserving their especial patronage and support accordingly, which if they fail to accord, they will be as wanting in justice as in esprit de corps-in itself "a sort of wild justice," which is sometimes even better than the tamer species.

We must be pardoned if we lay more stress than may at first seem needful on the foregoing point. The question, it may be said is, whether or not the book is a good and valuable book? And whether this question be answered in the affirmative or the negative, the matter is not mended by showing or alleging by or for whom it was written. But we repudiate this dry and hard mode of looking at and settling a question of this nature. These light and unpretending biographical notices of the literary ladies of England are good and valuable because, and in proportion as, they fulfil the good and valuable object they have in view, that of cultivating and disseminating literary tastes and habits among the writer's fellow-countrywomen, and of showing that those tastes and habits have never yet failed to render their possessors wiser and better, and consequently happier, than they would have been without them. And it will be no disparagement of such a work to allege that it tells only one-tenth part of what many may desire to know on the respective topics of which it treats. In fact, this would only be saying in other words that it is not in twenty volumes instead of two. It does all that its plan promises and its space allows; and it does this gracefully and well. In a word, that it gives us "an abstract and brief chronicle" of each life, instead of a life itself in the ordinary sense of the phrase, is precisǝly the merit which constitutes it a lady's book; and we are much mistaken in our estimate of the more cultivated portion of our country women if it will not find a place in every lady's library where such a book already exists, and form the nucleus of one where it does not.

The work opens very appropriately with Lady Mary Wortley Montague-the origin and glory of our English blues without being one,

The Literary Ladies of England; from the commencement of the last century to the present time. By Mrs. Elwood, author of “ An Overland Journey to India." 2 vols.

for the name as well as the thing was of later date; and, pursuing a chronological order, it closes with Miss Emma Roberts, the last of those losses so many of which our own immediate day has had to lament. Including these two, we have no less than twenty-nine memoirs, every one of which will be read with interest, and no one of which could with propriety have been dispensed with. The fund of literary anecdote and information thus gathered into the compass of two moderately sized volumes may readily be conceived, especially as the work is very closely printed, and comprises an amount of reading that might easily have been spread over thrice the space.

THE BOOK OF BEAUTY.*

If any evidence were required to satisfy foreigners of the superiority of Englishwomen in personal attractions, it surely might be found in the continued publication of this work; for what nation could produce such a series of "Beauties" as those Mr. Heath has published in his delightful annual? We may well be proud of our women, and regard with more than ordinary interest a work which gratifies our nationality so completely as the one before us. Lady Blessington, with her customary taste and judgment, has taken care that in the letterpress which illustrates the illustrations there should be an approach, as near as possible, to the grace and intelligence pervading the exquisitely fair faces that adorn the volume. Among many distinguished writers the names of Sir Lytton Bulwer, Barry Cornwall, the late Marquess Wellesley, Lord Leigh, Walter Savage Landor, Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, Lady Stepney, the Countess of Blessington, and Mrs. S. C. Hall, are evidence that the literary department is every thing that could be required. Of the portraits, we are in duty bound to admire most, the frontispiece, in which Mr. Drummond has represented her majesty, in one of the most honourable phases in which her character could appear-that of a matron, dandling the Prince of Wales, with the Princess Royal at her elbow, raised upon a cushion, fondling a favourite spaniel with one arm, and resting the other on the arm of the Queen. It is a very charming group. Another portrait, by the same artist, of the Princess Esterhazy, is also well worth studying. But, setting our loyalty aside, "the face that doth content us wondrous well," is that of Miss Meyer, whose eyes are full of an expression not easy to turn away from, and equally difficult to forget afterwards. From Miss Meyer we have at last succeeded in snatching a glance at Miss Ellen Power, and if any thing would obliterate the impression of the one, the powerful seductions with which the pencil of Edwin Landseer has clothed the other would go far towards it. He must be a veritable St. Kevin who can gaze on this delicious portrait without envying the position of the bird the artist has represented in such close contact with the lovely mouth of its fair mistress. From this it will readily be believed that "the Book of Beauty" for 1843, ably supports its high reputation.

* Heath's Book of Beauty for 1843. Edited by the Countess of Blessington.

PHINEAS QUIDDY.*

THOUGH it would be a work of supererogation to tell the readers of the New Monthly Magazine any thing in detail about Mr. Phineas Quiddy and his "Sheer Industry," it would, on the other hand, be doing injustice to this unique work as a whole, not to commend it to the reader's attention in that capacity. The vivid impressions made by its various individual features-particularly the personal ones. cannot have escaped even from the least impressible minds on which they have once been struck: for Mr. Poole is the Daguerre of his art, not merely in the power of striking a portrait or a picture at a blow, but of fixing it where it has been struck, by an intellectual chemistry quite his own. In these two particulars he stands alone; and there can be no question but that his "Phineas Quiddy" is incomparably the most remarkable specimen he has yet given us of his "so potent art." And it is as a whole even more remarkable than as a series of consecutive parts, which is our reason for now pointing the reader's attention to it in its completed state.

But if Mr. Poole is the Daguerre of literary portrait painters in the instantaneous impressions he stamps, and the startling truth of his delineations, the comparison (as indeed it necessarily must) holds equally good in regard to the general effects he produces. On his pallet there is no couleur de rose. His portraits are things to swear by "the truth-the whole truth-and nothing but the truth." He is no Sir Thomas Lawrence, to paint ladies and gentlemen as they wish to be. The consequence is, that his gallery of portraits is the most piquant and amusing place imaginable, to all but those who happen to find themselves hung up in it-or fancy they do-which answers all the purpose.

Nor does this (in his way) exquisite artist betray any disposition to place his sitters in "unbecoming" lights, or ungraceful attitudes. Like his scientific prototype, as he catches people and things, so he depicts them so that those who make up their mind to sit to him, must look to their p's and q's; for every portrait he paints might have written above it, for at least one person in the world, "know thyself!" Deformities or perfections-pimples or dimples-the bloom and freshness of youth and health, or the paint and blotches of age and disease, all go down alike, and all in their due proportions. That he has no exclusive eye for blemishes, witness the admirable portrait of Miss Honoria St. Egremont in the work which has called forth these remarks. With every temptation on the side of worldly cant, and the prevailing tone of the time to make her what all "good" people wish to find, or to make all people who are not "good" in their sense of the phrase,-she has many generous and noble qualities, and not a single fault but that which is in effect her greatest virtue-that of being the scourge to inflict" poetical justice" on the hideous Quiddy-a character, by the by, not inferior in force and spirit to Quilp himself, and certainly more natural.

* Phineas Quiddy; or, Sheer Industry. By John Poole, Esq. 3 vols.

NORWAY AND HER LAPLANDS IN 1841.

To those adventurous travellers who are not disheartened at the prospect of toilsome paths, and a climate a few degrees colder than their own, Norway presents many attractions; not the least remarkable of which are the primitive virtues which distinguish the inhabitants generally, but particularly those of the rural districts; and the peculiarly wild but not unpleasing features of the country. Mr. Milford appears to have made a tour in this direction, as much for health as from curiosity; and having furnished himself with the requisites for combining amusement with observation, he passed his time with no less satisfaction than profit. In the volume he has produced as the result of his travels, he mingles in a very agreeable manner the tourist with the sportsman, enlivening his sketches of the picturesque people among whom he dwelt, with notices of the sporting capabilities of the forests and lakes among which he fished and shot. His account of the Norwegians is both lively and interesting, and the glimpses he affords us of the Lapps only make the reader regret that he sees so little of them. We offer one of his sporting memoranda as a fair specimen of

the author's style.

On Friday and Saturday the 13th and 14th we had glorious sport in fishing in the far-famed Namsen, killing upwards of 100 lbs. of salmon. We greatly enjoyed, for the first time, the excitement this delightful sport affords. One of the fish Ikilled, after playing with him for some minutes, weighed 23lb. ; another, after I had hooked him, leaped twice out of the water in the middle of the stream, ran down a rapid, and then returning, went under our boat, when I thought I had lost him, but he again took to the open river, and showed much play before he was brought to the gaff, when, not a little fatigued with the exertion, which is considerable, I was glad to rest.

In the midst of this magnificent sport, sometimes an audacious poacher interferes, who mars your enjoyment. The awful sound of "cobbe" still rings in my Devonian ears. I had at first associated the well-known name with those mud-built but peaceful abodes in which the happy peasantry of my native and beautiful county pass their tranquil lives from one generation to another. Judge, then, of my horror, gentle reader, at beholding the grizzly head of a villanous seal emerging above the waters, and like myself, looking out for the finny tribe. He races up, in an incredibly short space of time, from the mouth of the Namsen to the Fiskum Foss, beyond which neither he nor the salmon can go; and when he is once in the river all your sport is at an end, and you may as well lay down your rod in despair, and go home to your dinner and siesta-"Othello's occupation's o'er!"-for although there may be hundreds of salmon in the river, not one will rise at a fly, be it never so tempting; they have an instinctive feeling of the presence of their deadliest enemy, which entirely takes away their appetites; young and old, large and small, all alike dread the seal; they plunge into holes and corners, and hide themselves like a squandered cowering covey,

"Which cuddles closer to the brake,
Afraid to move, afraid to fly,"

when a hawk hovers over them. A glimpse of a seal clears the river; the salmon are stupified with fear, or occupied too much with self-preservation, to allow even Izaac Walton to catch them. I arrived at this conviction by frequent disappointments, and gave up all hope of sport at the appearance of this unwelcome and uninvited visitor. These aquatic monsters are to the salmon what the otter is to the trout; and as they roll by his boat the angler should always have his double-barrel and swan-shot at hand, as the only effectual method of warning them off. He and the cobbes are too much of the same trade ever to agree.

INDEX

TO THE

PART OF 1842.