times stayed at Oatlands with the Duke and Duchess of York-both of them most amiable and agreeable persons. We were generally a company of about fifteen; and our being in. vited to remain there" another day" sometimes depended on the ability of our royal host and hostess to raise sufficient money for our enter. tainment. We used to have all sorts of ridicu. lous "fun" as we roamed about the grounds. The Duchess kept (besides a number of dogs, for which there was a regular burial place) a collection of monkeys, each of which had its own pole, with a house at top. One of the visitors (whose name I forget) would single out a particular monkey, and play to it on the fiddle with such fury and perseverance, that the poor animal, half distracted, would at last take refuge in the arms of Lord Alvanley. DR. JOHNSON. My friend Maltby and I, when we were very young men, had a strong desire to see Dr. Johnson; and we determined to call upon him and introduce ourselves. We accordingly proceeded to his house in Bolt-court; and I had my hand on the knocker, when our courage failed us, and we retreated. Many years afterwards, I mentioned this circumstance to Boswell, who said, "What a pity that you did not go boldly in! he would have received you with all kindness." LONDON AMUSEMENTS OF THE LAST CENTURY. THE HOUSEWIFE'S FRIEND. BY A. SOYER. PEA SOUP.-Have a quarter of a pound of fat bacon, if none, take leg of beef, veal, or pork, cut it into dice, peel and slice two good-sized onions, or three small ones, fry them with the meat until lightly brown, then add half a pound of vegetables, either carrots or turnips, well washed, but not peeled, also leeks or any other vegetables, which you try gently; then add one pound of yel low peas, previously soaked some hours, and eight quarts of water, three ounces of salt, half an ounce of brown sugar; let the whole boil gently for twe hours, stirring it now and then. Put into a stewpan half a pound of cominon flour, mixed into a liquid paste, quite smooth, with cold water, and wooden spoon so as to mix it well; boil again a pour it into your soup, stirring the contents with a quarter of an hour, and serve. Since I gave publication to my two first receipts, I found that all those soups, if made the day before, and warmed up the day following, they not only are much improved in quality, but also in quantity, merely rethen before using. quiring to be warmed slowly, and stirred now and TURBOT.-In my kitchen at home I should never think of cooking too large a turbot, but choose a middle-sized one, which, generally speakit well with a good handful of salt, then with the ing, is the best; cut an incision in the back, rub juice of a lemon, set it in a turbot-kettle, well covered with cold water, in which you have put a good handful of salt, place over the fire, and as bot of ten pounds. it will take an hour after it has soon as the water boils put it at the side; if a turboiled; if it should be allowed to more than simmer it will be very unsightly; take out of the water. leave a minute upon your drainer, serve upon a napkin garnished with fresh parsley, and lobster sauce in a boat. Before his going abroad, Garrick's attraction had much decreased'; Sir William Weller Pepys said that the pit was often almost empty. But, on his return to England, people were mad about seeing him; and Sir George Beaumont and several others used frequently to get admission into the pit, before the doors were open to the public, by means of bribing the attendants, who bade them" be sure, as soon as the crowd rushed in, to pretend to be in a great heat, and to wipe their faces, as if they had just been struggling for entrance." "At the sale of Dr. Johnsen's books, I met General Oglethorpe, then very, very old, the flesh of his face looking like parchment. He amused us youngsters by talking of the alterations that had been made in London, and of the great additions it had received within his recollection. He said that he had shot snipes in Conduit Street! By the by, General Fitzpatrick remembered the time when St. James's Street used to be crowded with the carriages of the ladies and gentlemen who were walking in the Mall,-the ladies with the heads in full dress, and the gentlemen carrying their hats under their arms. The proprietors of Ranelagh and Vauxhall used to send decoy-omitting the salt. ducks among them, that is, persons attired in the height of fashion, who every now and then would exclaim in a very audible tone, "What charming weather for Ranelagh" or "for Vauxhall?" I recollect when it was still the fashion for gentlemen to wear swords. I have seen Haydn play at a concert in a tie-wig, with a sword at his side. I have gone to Ranelagh in a coach with a lady who was obliged to sit upon a stool placed at the bottom of the coach, the height of her head-dress not allowing her to occupy the regular seat. CURRY FISH-Put into a stewpan one onion, a small bunch of bay-leaf, thyme, and savory; two apples, if convenient, with a quarter of a pound of fat, three ounces of salt, and a quarter of an ounce of sugar, and fry for fifteen minutes. Put one pound of rice, and four quarts of water, and boil till tender: add one ounce of curry powder, mixed in a little water. Cut up six pounds of cheap fish into pieces the size of an egg; add to the above, and boil for twenty or thirty minutes, according to the kind of fish. Salt and dried fish, previously soaked, cooked in this way is excellent, RED MULLETS.-Procure two red mullets, which place upon a strong dish, not too large; sprinkle some chopped onions, parsley, a little pepper and salt, and a little salad oil over, and put them into a warm oven for half an hour; then put a tablespoonful of chopped onions into a stewpan, with a teaspoonful of salad oil, stir over a moderate fire until getting rather yellowish, then add a tablespoonful of sherry, half a pint of melted butter, with a little chopped mushrooms and parsley; reduce quickly over a sharp fire, keeping it stirred until becoming rather thick; when the mullets are done, sauce over and serve. And lightly stept about, like one in fear; And where she trod, the flowers began to peep." THE winds may blow, but the gardener's operations must not stand still, for all that. Trees must be pruned, flowers protected, and vegetables be sown. The work of the present month calls for great earnestness and attention, perhaps more than any other. All the winter's damages should be carefully repaired, such as shrubs parted from their stakes, broken palings, damaged hedges, or branches of trees loosened from their fastenings. FLOWERS. This is the month for preparing and planting chrysanthemums out in beds. Look out, also, for the auriculas, which will now begin to grow fast: by taking off the small side-shoots, you will strengthen the bloom. A thing not reasonably to be expected this month-but if there are any warm showers, let them have the benefit of it. Sow tender annuals in heat in pots. Picotees, carnations, pansies, pinks, hyacinths, and tulips, the soil they are in should be as carefully kept from frost as possible, and not allowed to crust on the top. Auriculas require no water, and must be cleansed from dead leaves: they are not tender, but frosty checks do not improve them, nor any of the flowers enumerated. Carnations, for hardy flowers, are exceedingly impatient of wet or confinement: they suffer from mildew, and therefore cannot have too little wet, or too much air. The bottom of the frame they are in should be cemented, and made waterproof. If they are in beds, they require little care; but the beds should be drained from moisture. Picotees must be treated the same as carnations. Pinks, should the weather be frosty, ought to be covered loosely with any kind of litter; but they cannot have too much air in mild weather. Heartsease should experience similar treatment. Hyacinths and tulips should have plenty of air, but they must be carefully kept from frost: waterproof transparent cloth is an excellent covering for this purpose. If the former are in borders, cover them with hoops and mats; or if in patches, an inverted flower-pot should be placed on each patch, Hardy annuals and autumnsown annuals: the first may be sown in borders, and the latter planted out, Dahlias-keep off the sun, and particu larly water the foliage; cut them close up to a joint, with two joints, and put a cutting into the smallest pots (No. 60). Dig and clear borders in which bulbs are, as soon as they show over-ground; this will save all damage from the digging. Forcing flowers are better in a warm greenhouse. Finish planting all ranunculuses and anemonies, after the early-planted ones are out of bloom; they will make a fine appearance. Sow the seeds of hollyhock, French honeysuckle, hellebore, tree-primrose, shrubby mallow, broad-leaved campanula, and fox-gloves, with seeds of most other sorts of perennial and biennial plants. Dig such parts of the garden as are not yet done, and rake them smooth, ready to receive seeds. The carnations raised from layers last year, and which are not yet planted into the borders, where you intend them to flower, should be now moved. Mr. Glenny remarks in his Almanack, "That whenever an operation directed for one month is left undone, do it as soon after as possible; it is a penalty for delay, if it turn out worse than you wish; but it is often better to have a worse thing, than none at all." Amateurs, while cherishing this sensible observation, should endeavour to be under no obligation to it, by doing things in their right season. "LOOKING BACK."-The superstition of the ill-luck of looking back or returning, is nearly as old as the world itself, having doubtless originated in Lot's wife having looked back from behind him when he was led, with his family and cattle, by an angel, outside the doomed City of the Plain (Gen. xix. 26). Whether walking or riding, the wife was behind the husband, according to a usage still prevalent in the East, where no woman goes beside her husband. In Robert's Oriental Illustrations, it is stated to be "considered exceedingly unfortunate in Hindostan for men or women to look back when they leave their house. Accordingly, if a man goes out and leaves something behind him which his wife knows he will want, she does not call him to turn or look back, but takes or sends it after him; and, if some great emergency obliges him to look back, he will not then proceed on the business he was about to transact. If we mistake not, a similar feeling is entertained in some parts of England, though not carried so far into operation." MODELLING IN LEATHER, AND ITS And, lastly, she has reared at Sydenham a temple to enshrine the mighty ark of her commercial greatness and inventive capa MOST RECENT DEVELOPMENT. city, forming at once a monument of IT is one of the marked characteristics of intellect, that it is never stationary, nor is the variety of its tendencies less boundless than the fertility of its source. Though the fountain may arise amid the shades of solitude, its streamlets ultimately become numerous, and as they go forth to sparkle and dance in the sunbeams, they carry health and fertility along the verdure of their joyous track. It is thus with art. Not satisfied with the appliances of early civilization, nor even the magnificent mechanism of our era, by which the powers of man have been multiplied a thousandfold, and his own endued with a fabulous momentum, art has asserted her prerogative of elevating to her own exalted rank these utilitarian inventions by associating herself as the presiding genius in the busy regions of commerce-fashioning, elevating, and ever giving birth. to a progeny of graceful existences; she even stamps her image on whole nationalities, and determines how far these shall be the children of imagination or of dull reality; whether such shall be a nation of poets, of painters, of sculptors, or a race living only in the grosser materialism of the present. Italy and France are cases essentially in point. If the former presented, amid the darkness of the middle ages, the magnificence of ecclesiastical architecture, and the glories of statuary and painting, it was reserved for the polished genius of the latter to lend to commerce the graces of art and the perfection of decorative taste. The precious relics of Greece, Etruria, and of Pompeii, and the beauties of Indian skill, demonstrate still farther this happy union of genius and utility. England has, at length, joined the circle of these artistic nationalities. If she cannot boast centuries of calisthenic training-if she has been deficient in richness of models, she has yet displayed a singular freedom from servile copyism-a freshness of invention, and a vigour of design, unrivalled by more southern climes. Confiding in her native energy, she has boldly stepped out of the beaten tracks of science, and, by a happy hardihood, has emancipated her genius from the thraldom of her insular position. daring, of ingenuity, and of grace. Nor, meanwhile, have decorative refinements slumbered in inglorious sloth; but an era of fruitful activity has been inaugurated. Even those arts which had been considered declining or lost in the lapse of agessuch, for instance, as the painting on glass, carving in wood, and ornamental working in leather-have been again revived, with a freshness and beauty unexampled, save in the best ages of their respective cultivation. The exquisite wood carvings of Gibbons in our own country, and those of eminent artists in Belgium, are well known, but it is not so generally known that the vast expenditure of time and money, demanded by a grand scale of interior decoration, early led to the substitution of a material far more plastic than that of wood:-of such a nature was leather. In the ornamental restitution of several ancient mansions in this country, the bold and elaborate tracery of their interior decorations was discovered to be skilful imitations of wood carving in the latter medium-here, then, was suddenly revealed an ancient mine of taste, a wealth of art inexhaustible. While a stubborn material and a lifetime of patient toil barred the progress of the old wood carver, here was a beautiful substitute for the antique. Pliant in texture, yet firm as its rival, easily moulded and exquisitely impressionable beneath the most delicate manipulation, it rapidly embodied the graces of imagination and of individual taste; henceforward it seemed destined to become the peculiar appanage of female grace, dexterity, and skill. But we turn our attention from the capabilities of the agent to that which has actually been accomplished by persevering industry, of which our readers are here presented with a single transcript. After multiplied essays on the varied properties of the material, and of the adjuncts by which firmness, durability, and uniformity of texture were ensured, the style became so far elaborated as to admit of a sound and rapid progress; hence the art of "Modelling in Leather' may now be pronounced to be emancipated from the insignificance of mere fragmentary grouping, and to have taken an honourable stand amongst the highest class of artistic ornamentation, embracing comprehensiveness of design, and gracefulness in detail; unlike the limited range of the moulder's art, it is capable of an infinity of outline, and while no tedious repetitions clog the graceful vitality of its forms, it gives the highest scope to pictorial variety. It is impossible to state, in this brief outline, all the applications to which the art is adapted. Medieval antiquities, cathedral and ecclesiastical decorations, oaken carved panelling of the richest and most massive character by central groups, admirably adapted for rooms of grand proportions, or baronial halls, where GAUNTLET CUFF, IN TATTING. GAUNTLET CUFF. Materials.-The Royal Tatting cotton, No. 3 of Messrs. W. Evans & Co., of Derby; with their Boar's-head sewing cotton, No. 70, and patent glacé thread, No. 40. THE tatting, which forms the edge and medallions of this cuff, is done separately, and in the following manner: MEDALLION.-1st loop (at the point).4 double stitches, 1 picot, 12 double, 1 picot, 4 double. Draw the loop up quite tight. 2nd loop.-4 double, join to the last picot, 10 double, 1 picot, 3 double. Draw it up, but not quite tight. 3rd loop.-3 double, join, 10 double, picot, 3 double. Draw it up, but not so tight as the last. 4th loop.-Like 3rd. 5th loop.-3 double, join, 10 double, picot, 4 double. Draw it up nearly tight. 6th loop (at the other point).-4 double, join, 12 double, picot, 4 double. Draw it up quite tight. 7th.-Like 2nd. 8th & 9th.-Like 3rd. 10th.-Like 5th, only instead of making a picot, join to the first loop. Knot the two ends together, and cut the thread. Four of these medallions will be required for each cuff. BORDER-1st loop.-7 double, picot, 2 double, picot, 2 double. Draw it up, but not tight. 2nd loop.-2 double, join, 2 double, join, 7 double, picot, 2 double, picot, 2 double. Draw it up as before. 3rd loop.-2 double, join, 2 double, join, 3 double, picot, 2 double, picot, 2 double. 4th.-Like 3rd. Repeat these 3-namely, the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th-alternately, until enough is done for the cuff. The best way is to cut out the shape of the cuff in toile ciré, and make your edging to fit it. The number of loops seen in the engraving ought to be enough; but, of course, this must depend on the size of the hand. The long loops at the corners should be drawn quite tight, and those on each side tighter than usual, to form the points. When finished, tack both these and the medallions on the toile ciré; fill each medallion with English lace, done with the Boar's Head cotton; then run a line of braid along the inner edge of the cuff, to form a foundation, and with the glacé thread work a ground of English lace, done precisely in the same manner as the fine, but with the bars of thread nearly half an inch apart. Finish the cuff by covering the threads at the base of the loops of tatting with close button-hole stitch, for which also the glacé thread may be used. |