No wonder!-for we have seen pumpkins in France, that would "make Ossa like a wart !" There is a wildness of fancy about this one, like the hight-mare. What an overwhelming idea in the last line !-- We're all in the dumps, for Diamonds is trumps, And the kittens are gone to St. Paul's : But yet there is another, finer than all, of which we can only recollect a few words. The rest is gone with other visions of our youth! We often sit and think of these lines by the hour together, till our hearts melt with their beauty, and our eyes fill with tears. We could probably find the rest in some of Mr Godwin's twopenny books; but we would not dissolve the charm. that is round the mysterious words. The " gay ladye" is more gorgeous to our fancy than Mr. Coleridge's "dark ladye!" London bridge is broken down— How shall we build it up again? The following is "perplexed in the extreme"-a pantomime of confusion! Cock-a-doodle-doo, my dame has lost her shoe; The cat has lost her fiddle-stick-I know not what to do. There is "infinite variety" in this one: the rush in the first line is like the burst of an overture at the Philharmonic Society. Who can read the second line without thinking of Sancho and his celestial goats-"sky-tinctured ?”1⁄2 Hey diddle, diddle, a cat and a fiddle, The goats jump'd over the moon; And the little dogs bark'd to see such sport, And the cat ran away with the spoon. But if what we have quoted is fine, the next is still finer. What are all these things to Jack Horner and his Christmas-pye? What infinite keeping and gusto there is in it !(we use keeping and gusto in the sense of painters, and not merely to mean that he kept all the pye to himself, like a Tory,) or that he liked the taste of it-which Mr. Hunt tells us is the meaning of gusto.) What quiet enjoyment! what serene repose! There he sits, teres et rotundus, in the chiar oscuro, with his finger in the pye! All is satisfying, delicious, secure from intrusion, "solitary bliss!" Little Jack Horner sat in a corner, Eating his Christmas-pye : He put in his thumb, and he pull'd out a plum, What a pity that Rembrandt did not paint this subject! But perhaps he did not know it. If he had painted it, the picture would have been worth any money. He would have smeared all the canvass over with some rich, honeyed, dark, bright, unctuous oilcolour; and, in the corner, you would have seen, (obscurely radiant) the figure of Jack; then there would have been the pye, flashing out of the picture in a blaze of golden light, and the green plum held up over it, dropping sweets!-We think we could paint it ourselves! * We are unwilling that anything from our friend, C. P., Esquire, should come in at the fag-end of an article; but, for the sake of enriching this one, we add a few lines from one of the Early French Poets, communicated to C. P., by his friend Victoire, Vicomte de Soligny, whom he met in Paris at the Caffée des Milles Colonnes * Alias Wictoire, Wicomte de Soligny. This Cockney wrote (as few but Mr. Colburn the bookseller have the misfortune to remember) Letters on England, under this title, which we demolished. We had then occasion to show that this impostor did not even know how French noblemen signed their names; and we might have added, that his title-page proved he did not know a man's name from a woman's-Victor being evidently the word which C. P. Esq. was vainly endeavouring to spell. Victoire, Vicomte de Soligny, sounds to a French ear just as Sally Lord Holland, would to an English one. GEOFFREY CRAYON, alias Washington Irving, is a popular writer, and some of his papers have been so highly estimated as to cause his name to be mentioned along with those of Britain's most distinguished essayists. The Sketch Book and Bracebridge Hall are the foundations of this celebrity; and the former especially continues to be read with undiminished pleasure; while the latter hardly sustains its ground, and Knickerbocker's history (with all its quaint humour) is, we fancy, oftener dipped into than thoroughly perused. The present publication, though light and agreeable, certainly falls short of our expectations. There are indeed many sparks of talent scattered over its pages, and the diction generally is felicitous. But some of the tales are strangely destitute of interest; and we find that a neat style and occasional touches of fancy are insufficient to bear us unflagging through two octavo volumes. Having stated thus much in candour and justice, we shall nevertheless endeavour to exhibit as much of the merits of the Tales of a Traveller as the reputation of Mr. I. claims, and our limits will admit. The Introduction is playful and amusing. Confined by sickness at Mentz, unsuceptible of any enjoyment, and even incapable of reading, Geoffrey Crayon at length exclaims in despair "Well, if I cannot read a book, I † Quære, antic.-Printer's devil. will write one." Never was there a more lucky idea; it at once gave me occupation and amusement. "The writing of a book was considered, in old times, as an enterprise of toil and difficulty, insomuch that the most trifling lucubration was denominated a work, and the world talked with awe and reverence of 'the labours of the learned.' These matters are better understood nowadays. Thanks to the improvements in all kinds of manufactures, the art of book-making has been made familiar to the meanest capacity. Every body is an author. The scribbling of a quarto is the mere pastime of the idle; the young gentleman throws off his brace of duodecimos in the intervals of the sporting season, and the young lady produces her set of volumes with the same facility that her great-grandmother worked at a set of chair-bottoms. "The idea having struck me, therefore, to write a book, the reader will easily perceive that the execution of it was no difficult matter. I rummaged my portfolio, and cast about, in my recollectton, for those floating materials which a man naturally collects in travelling; and here I have arranged them in this little work. "As I know this to be a story-telling and a story-reading age, and that the world is fond of being taught by apologue, I have digested the instruction I would convey into a number of tales. They may not possess the power of amusement which the tales told by ma ny of my contemporaries possess; but then I value myself on the sound moral which each of them contains. This may not be apparent at first, but the reader will be sure to find it out in the end. I am for curing the world by gentle alteratives, not by violent doses; indeed the patient should never be conscious that he is taking a dose. I have learnt this much from my experience under the hands of the worthy Hippocrates of Mentz. "I am not, therefore, for those barefaced tales which carry their moral on the surface, staring one in the face; they are enough to deter the squeamish reader. On the contrary, I have often hid my moral from sight, and disguised it as much as possible by sweets and spices, so that while the simple reader is listening with open mouth to a ghost or a love story, he may have a bolus of sound morality popped down his throat, and be never the wiser for the fraud." "These matters being premised, fall to, worthy reader, with good appetite, and, above all, with good humour, to what is here set before thee. If the tales I have furnished should prove to be bad, they will at least be found short; so that no one will be wearied long on the same theme. "Variety is charming,' as some poet observes. There is a certain relief in in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in travelling in a stage coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place." The Tales are divided into four parts: 1st, ghost stories, entitled "Strange Stories, by a Nervous Gentleman;" 2d, literary and common life stories, headed "Buckthorne and his Friends;" 3d," Stories of Italian Banditti ;" and 4th, "Stories of American Money-diggers." The ghost stories are neither very novel nor very good: some of them are complete baulks, an offence to the lovers of real unrealities not to be forgiven. The following picture of a French chateau, the scene of one of them, is, however, cleverly sketched: "You have no doubt all seen French chateaus, as every body travels in France nowadays. This was one of the oldest; standing naked and alone in the midst of a desert of gravel walks and cold stone terraces; with a coldlooking formal garden, cut into angles and rhomboids; and a cold leafless park, divided geometrically by straight alleys; and two or three cold looking noseless statues; and fountains spouting cold water enough to make one's teeth chatter. At least such was the feeling they imparted on the wintry day of my uncle's visit; tho', in hot summer weather, I'll warrant therewas glare enough to scorch one's eyes out." But it may be more agreeable to our readers, and generally more fair in the way of review, if we select, for our first Notice, the best tale of this division. THE ADVENTURES OF A GERMAN STUDENT. "On a stormy night, in the tempestuous times of the French revolution, a young German was returning to his lodgings, at a late hour, across the old part of Paris. The lightning gleamed, and the loud claps of thunder rattled through the lofty narrow streets-but I should first tell you something about this young German. "Gottfried Wolfgang was a young man of good family. He had studied for some time at Göttingen, but being of a visionary and enthusiastic character, he had wandered into those wild and speculative doctrines which have 11 ATHENEUM VOL. 2. 2d series. so often bewildered German students. His secluded life, his intense application, and the singular nature of his studies, had an effect on both mind and body. His health was impaired : his imagination diseased. He had been indulging in fanciful speculations on spiritual essences, until, like Swedenborg, he had an ideal world of his own around him. He took up a notion, I do not know from what cause, that there was an evil influence hanging over him; an evil genius or a spirit seeking to ensnare him and ensure his perdition. Such an idea working on his melancholy temperament produced the most gloomy effects. He became haggard and desponding. His friends discovered the mental malady that was preying upon him, and determined that the best cure was a change of scene; he was sent, therefore, to finish his studies amidst the splendours and gaieties of Paris. "Wolfgang arrived at Paris at the breaking out of the revolution. The popular delirium at first caught his enthusiastic mind, and he was captivated by the political and philosophical theories of the day: but the scenes of blood which followed shocked his sensitive nature; disgusted him with society and the world, and made him more than ever a recluse. He shut himself up in a solitary apartment in the Pays Latin, the quarter of students. There in a gloomy street not far from the monastic walls of the Sorbonne, he pursued his favourite speculations. Sometimes he spent hours together in the great libraries of Paris, those catacombs of departed authors, rummaging among their hoards of dusty and obsolete works in quest of food for his unhealthy appetite. He was, in a manner, a literary goul, feeding in the charnel-house of decayed literature. "Wolfgang, though solitary and recluse, was of an ardent temperament, but for a time it operated merely upon his imagination. He was too shy and ignorant of the world to make any advances to the fair, but he was a passionate admirer of female beauty, and in his lonely chamber would often lose himself in reveries on forms and faces which he had seen, and his fancy would deck out images of loveliness far surpassing the reality. "While his mind was in this excited and sublimated state, he had a dream which produced an extraordinary effect upon him. It was of a female face of transcendent beauty. So strong was the impression it made, that he dreamt of it again and again. It haunted his thoughts by day, his slumbers by night; in fine he became passionately enamoured of this shadow of a dream. This lasted so long, that it became one of those fixed ideas which haunt the minds of melancholy men, and are at times mistaken for madness. "Such was Gottfried Wolfgang, aud such his situation at the time I mentioned. He was returning home late one stormy night, through some of the old and gloomy streets of the Marais, the ancient part of Paris. The lond claps of thunder rattled among the high houses of the narrow streets. He came to the Place de Grève, the square where public executions are performed. The lightning quivered about the pinnacles of the ancient Hôtel de Ville, and shed flickering gleams over the open space in front. As Wolfgang was crossing the square, he shrunk back with horror at finding himself close by the guillotine. It was the height of the reign of terror, when this dreadful instrument of death stood ever ready, and its scaffold was continually running with the blood of the virtuous and the brave. It had that very day been actively employed in the work of carnage, and there it stood in grim array amidst a silent and sleeping city, waiting for fresh victims. "Wolfgang's heart sickened within him, and he was turning shuddering from the horrible engine, when he beheld a shadowy form cowering as it were at the foot of the steps which led up to the scaffold. A succession of vivid flashes of lightning revealed it more distinctly. It was a female figure, dressed in black. She was seated on one of the lower steps of the scaffold, leaning forward, her face hid in her lap, and her long dishevelled tresses hanging to the ground, streaming with the rain which fell in torrents. Wolfgang paused. There was something awful in this solitary monument of wo. The female had the appearance of be ing above the common order. He knew the times to be full of vicissitude, and that many a fair head, which had once been pillowed on down, now wandered houseless. Perhaps this was some poor mourner whom the dreadful axé had rendered desolate, and who sat here heartbroken on the strand of existence, from which all that was dear to her had been launched into eternity. "He approached, and addressed her in the accents of sympathy. She raised her head and gazed wildly at him. What was his astonishment at beholding, by the bright glare of the lightning, the very face which had haunted him in his dreams. It was pale and disconsolate, but ravishingly beautiful. "Trembling with violent and conflicting emotions, Wolfgang again accosted her. He spoke something of her being exposed at such a hour of the night, and to the fury of such a storm, and offered to conduct her to her friends. She pointed to the guillotine with a gesture of dreadful signifi cation. "I have no friend on earth!' said she. "But you have a home,' said Wolfgang. "Yes-in the grave!' "The heart of the student melted at the words. "If a stranger dare make an offer,' said he,' without danger of being misunderstood, I would offer my humble dwelling as a shelter; myself as a devoted friend. I am friendless myself in Paris, and a stranger in the land; but if my life could be of service, it is at your disposal, and should be sacrificed before harm or indignity should come to you.'. "There was an honest earnestness in the young man's manner that had its effect. His foreign accent, too, was in his favour; it showed him not to be a hackneyed inhabitant of Paris. Indeed there is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted. The homeless stranger confided herself implicitly to the protection of the student. "He supported her faltering steps across the Pont Neuf, and by the place where the statue of Henry the Fourth had been overthrown by the populace. The storm had abated, and the thunder rumbled at a distance. All Paris was quiet; that great volcano of human passion slumbered for a while, to gather fresh strength for the next day's eruption. The student conducted his charge through the ancient streets of the Pays Latin, and by the dusky walls of the Sorbonne to the great, dingy hotel which he inhabited. The old portress who admitted them stared with surprise at the unusual sight of the melancholy Wolfgang with a female companion. "On entering his apartment, the student, for the first time, blushed at the scantiness and indifference of his dwelling. He had but one chamberan old fashioned saloon-heavily carved and fantastically furnished with the remains of former magnificence, for it was one of those hotels in the quarter of the Luxembourg palace which had once belonged to nobility. It was lumbered with books and papers, and all the usual apparatus of a student, and his bed stood in a recess at one end. "When lights were brought, and Wolfgang had a better opportunity of contemplating the stranger, he was more than ever intoxicated by her beauty. Her face was pale, but of a dazzling fairness, set off by a profusion of raven hair that hung clustering about it. Her eyes were large and brilliant, with a singular expression that approached almost to wildness. As far as her black dress permitted her shape to be seen, it was of perfect symmetry. Her whole appearance was highly striking, though she was dressed in the simplest style. The only thing approaching to an ornament which she wore was a broad black band round her neck, clasped by diamonds. "The perplexity now commenced with the student how to dispose of the helpless being thus thrown upon his protection. He thought of abandoning his chamber to her, and seeking shelter for himself elsewhere. Still he was so fascinated by her charms, there seemed to be such a spell upon his thoughts and senses, that he could not tear himself from her presence. Her manner, too, was singular and unaccountable. She spoke no more of the guillotine. Her grief had abated. The attentions of the student had first won her confidence, and then, apparently, her heart. She was evidently an enthusiast like himself, and enthusiasts soon understand each other. "In the infatuation of the moment |