faculty. The distinction of character is strongly kept up, and the little amiable sparrings which are occasionally introduced, are well managed. The scene shifts as widely as the changeful stage of Shakspeare himself. The first exhibits the party symposiacally engaged in London; the second, transfers them to the banks of the Colne; the third, exhibits them navigating Loch Marre in Ross-shire; the fourth, opens near Ludlow; the fifth, is at Downton; and the sixth, displays the falls of the Traun, in Upper Austria. Small but well-engraved representations of this scenery occur in six plates, by Finden, and, with the descriptive sketches, add much to the interest of the volume. The first dialogue is merely introductory, and after some preliminary comment on the defencibility of angling on the score of humanity, ends with an engagement to meet at Denham, on the Colne, for a day's fishing. In vindication of his favourite recreation from the charge of inhumanity, Sir Humphrey Davy uses no evasion; he would never, but in great emergency, resort to other than artificial bait; he stipulates for the immediate destruction of life; and he adverts to_the_probable deficiency of sensibility in cold-blooded animals. The hook usually fixes in the cartilaginous parts of the mouth, where no nerves are found, and fish are observed, after having broken loose from the line, to seize the natural fly, and feed with apparent indifference; while pike have been caught with four or five hooks in their mouths, to all appearance without pain or inconvenience. It is, at the same time, frankly admitted, that there is danger in analysing too closely, the moral character ' of any of our field sports.' 6 The second and third days contain much interesting information on miscellaneous subjects; the different kinds of salmon, the various rivers of England that are attractive to the angler, the habits and natural history of fish, the varieties and seasons of the insect-tribes which frequent the water: on all these, the details are valuable and pleasantly communicated, though not in a shape suited to our purpose. Passing by, then, these desultory observations, we shall cite a curious anecdote that occurs in this part of the volume. ‹ A manufacturer of carmine, who was aware of the superiority of the French colour, went to Lyons for the purpose of improving his process, and bargained with the most celebrated manufacturer in that capital, for the acquisition of his secret, for which he was to pay a thousand pounds. He was shown all the processes, and saw a beautiful colour produced, yet he found not the least difference in the French mode of fabrication, and that which he had constantly adopted. He appealed to the manufacturer, and insisted that he must have concealed something. The manufacturer assured him that he had not, and invited him to see the process a second time. He minutely examined the water and the materials, which were the same as his own, and, very much surprised, said, "I have lost my labour and my money, for the air of England does not permit us to make good carmine.' "Stay," said the Frenchman, "do not deceive yourself, what kind of weather is it now?" "A bright sunny day," said the Englishman. "And such are the days," said the Frenchman, "on which I make my colour. Were I to attempt to manufacture it on a dark or cloudy day, my result would be the same as yours. Let me advise you, my friend, always to make carmine on bright and sunny days." "I will," says the Englishman, "but I fear I shall make very little in London." The ostensible subject of the fourth, fifth, and sixth days, is fishing for salmon and sea trout'; but, as usual, the excursive dialogists are wandering in their talk to all points of the compass. It may be worth noticing, for the benefit of culinary amateurs, that the true epicurean way of eating fresh salmon, is without any other sauce than the water in which he was boiled'; and that the only fit condiment for trout is vinegar and mustard. The seventh and following days are of the same character with a changed text-grayling-fishing. The ninth and last day presents the same party fishing for the salmo hucho in the Austrian river Traun, and the varied interest of the dialogue is kept up to the end. Krakens, cockneys, and craniology, fish and frogs, fat and flesh, waterfalls and Benjamin West, are all laid under contribution and criticism. The Journal of a Naturalist' is a pleasing and instructive book, though we should have been gratified by the occasional introduction of a more vigorous cast of thought and expression. The principal value of the work consists in the illustrations which it affords of the advantages and accessibility of physical science, the appearances and operations of nature, the qualities of animate and inanimate things. The Writer is a keen observer, and he describes well; but we shall be sparing in our extracts from a volume which is likely to be in the hands of so many of our readers. In the description of an autumnal walk, there is, with a little sentimentality not much to our taste, some reasonably good description. We shall leave out the first, and extract part of the last. There is a silence in which we hear every thing, a beauty that will be observed. The stump of an old oak is a very landscape, with rugged alpine steeps bursting through forests of verdant mosses, with some pale, denuded, branchless, lichen, like a scathed oak, creeping up the sides, or crowning the summit. Rambling with unfettered grace, the tendrils of the briony (tamus communis) festoon with its brilliant berries, green, yellow, red, the slender sprigs of the hazel or the thorn; it ornaments their plainness, and receives a support its own feebleness denies. The agaric, with all its hues, its shades, its elegant varieties of form, expands its cone sprinkled with the freshness of the morning, a transient fair, a child of decay, that "sprung up in a night and will perish in a night." The squirrel, agile with life and timidity, gambling round the root of an ancient beech, its base overgrown with the dewberry, (rubus cæsius,) blue with unsullied fruit, impeded in his frolic sports, half angry, darts up the silver bole, again to peep and wonder at the strange intruder on his haunts. The jay springs up, and, screaming, tells of danger to her brood; the noisy tribe repeat the call, are hushed, and leave us; the loud laugh of the woodpecker, joyous and vacant; the hammering of the nuthach (sitta europaea) cleaving its prize in the chink of some dry bough; the humble bee torpid on the disc of the purple thistle, just lifts a limb to pray forbearance of injury, to ask for peace and bid us Leave him, leave him, to repose'. The Author's residence, near the Severn, amid the fine scenery of the tract lying between Gloucester and Bristol, is highly favourable to such pursuits, and he has been diligent in improving the advantages of his situation. He has left untouched few subjects connected with natural history; and we can recommend his book as pure in sentiment, attractive in subject, and valuable in matter. Art. VII.-1. The Forget me Not; a Christmas, New Year's, and 3.-Friendship's Offering: a Literary Album, &c., for 1830. pp. 384. 13 plates. Price 12s. bound. 4.-The Amulet; a Christian and Literary Remembrancer for 1830. pp. 392. 12 plates. Price 12s. in silk. 5.-The Winter's Wreath for MDCCCXXX. A Collection of Original Contributions in prose and verse. pp. 384. 13 plates. Price 12s. in silk. Edited by the Price 12s. in silk. Edited by Mrs. 6. The Iris; a Literary and Religious Offering. Rev. Thomas Dale, M.A, pp. 332. 11 plates. 7.-The New Year's Gift and Juvenile Souvenir. Alaric Watts. pp. 240. 11 plates. Price 8s. half-bound, 8.-The Juvenile Forget me Not; a Christmas and New Year's Gift, or Birth-day Present for the year 1830. Hall. pp. 230. 11 plates and tail-piece. 9.-The Juvenile Keepsake. MDCCCXXX. Edited by Mrs. S. C. Edited by Thomas Roscoe. pp. xvi, 232. 8 plates. Price 8s. in paper, gilt edges. 10.-Ackermann's Juvenile Forget me Not. Edited by Frederick Shoberl. pp. 274. 9 plates. Price 8s. in paper. WE had determined to look very grave upon the Annuals of this year, and to submit their contents to a sober criticism. We had resolved not to be dazzled by their silk attire and the lustre of their embellishments, but to examine their pretensions, unbiassed by fear or favour. Our reasons for this intention were chiefly two-fold; first, the apprehension that the literary or better part of these seductive little volumes was becoming far too subordinate to the extrinsic and subsidiary, the mere dress and jewelry; and, secondly, the opinion, that, as presents to young persons more especially, the high-seasoned olio of tales and trifles, is of doubtful tendency. But the general character of these publications is now so well understood, that any observations of this nature would, perhaps, be regarded as alike cynical and superfluous, and our voice would be drowned in the soft clamour we should be in danger of exciting from the young and the fair. "We are not made of stone." We have been young ourselves; and can fully enter into the delicious joy spread among a brighteyed groupe by the arrival of an assortment of these splendid little tomes as presents to the respective members of the circle,-the triumph with which each would bear off his own possession, and then the after pleasure of comparing and interchanging them. The idea of these juvenile Annuals was a happy one; for otherwise, the said arrival must have been kept secret from the younger ones, whose envy and impatience might be stirred, unless in very well regulated families, by the sight of so brilliant a possession in the hands of their seniors. Besides, we are warm friends to good old customs, such as the Weihnachts geschenke, which we are told still prevails throughout Germany, and the interchange of tokens of remembrance between distant friends. We are by no means willing that the honoured practice of Christmas bakshish, (vulg. dict. Christmas boxes,) obviously of Oriental origin, and concerning which we intend some day to write a dissertation for some one of these Annuals,-should be confined to the doling out of a few half crowns, shillings, and sixpences, to the watchman, postman, butcher's boy, and other such humble claimants who pester you on the 26th of December and the next few days ensuing. We know that the times are very bad, as they have been, to our certain knowledge, for the last fifty years; but still, we rejoice to think, that the public can af ford to lay out some fifty thousand pounds a-year in this one article of literary luxury; and we are proud too, that, in this sort of production, neither our continental neighbours nor the Americans can compete with us either as to price or quality. We are credibly informed, that a very large quantity of these Forget me Nots, Souvenirs, Amulets, &c., find their way to foreign markets. And but for this widely extended demand, we can tell our readers, they could not have so cheap a bargain presented to them, as regards the beauty and cost of the embellishments. The low price at which these tasteful little volumes are brought out, is VOL. II.-N.S. Y Y really astonishing, as it is obvious that a very small profit upon each copy must remain, after the artists, the engravers, the writers, the editor, the printer, the stationer, and the binder have been paid. This consideration may weigh little with our readers, but it has great force with us, inducing us to look very leniently upon these publications. And the obvious and increased pains that have been bestowed upon getting up the Annuals now before us, under the stimulus of excessive, and, we fear, injurious competition, would of itself have disarmed criticism of its severity, even had their contents been of less respectable merit. Of the prints, we shall speak hereafter, and merely remark, therefore, at present, that they are, upon the average, superior, both in interest and execution, to those of the preceding year. With regard to the literary merits of the several competitors, we are fortunately precluded from the delicate task of comparison, inasmuch as the names of pretty nearly the same writers occur in each of the volumes, and the editors appear to have made, in several instances, an amicable interchange of contributions. This is as it should be-emulation without jealousy; and we heartily wish that it may be rewarded with a general success, that shall leave no room for illnatured envy. We trust that we have made out a strong case in favour of the claims of the respective editors to critical indulgence and public patronage. And if the contents of these publications are not altogether of that sterling, solid character that we grave reviewers might have wished, we must candidly avow our conviction, that as large a portion of the utile is mixed with the dulce as could well be admitted without spoiling the flavour to the general taste, and so endangering the sale of the article. We should, indeed, be sorry to think that these Annuals would usurp, in the library or on the table, the place of the perennials of our literature, or that the demand for our standard poets and classic writers would be permanently trenched upon by these more attractive publications. But of such a result we have no apprehension. Let the artists, and engravers, and all others engaged in the decoration and composition of these elegant wares, make hay while the sun shines: we will not be the shadow of a cloud in their way. We should not be surprised at finding that many persons, swayed by the natural fickleness of fashion, or actuated by the nil admirari propensity incident to a languid temper, the patrician inaptitude to be easily pleased, or seized with a fit of economy, should, from these several causes, unite in pronouncing that, this year, there is a great falling off in the character of these volumes. The charm of novelty, alas, can never be renewed, any more than the exquisite effect of unexpectedness' in picturesque horticulture. We cannot have, every year, a new set of contributors. |