courage enough to become a suitor to any one of them.

Drum. Well, well!-I dare say he would not. Come, fill your cup. Here is a fresh bottle of your favourite old wine.

Jons. Thanks, my worthy friend. That is excellent. Now, I'll tell you what I like among the pleasures of your country-house; to hear the never-ceasing murmurs of the river, and the winds of night in blended music around us, (when we have leisure to listen to them), only to make us enjoy a blazing fire and a can of sack with the greater zest. I perceive clearly, that in your Italian humour you are most absolute. But it is only for your benefit that I have spoken. What! am I not your countryman? We have other bonds of sympathy besides those woven by the muses. I'll tell you a story of my grandfather, who was a native of Annandale, and served under King Henry VIII

Drum. I have heard it before. Instruct me rather once more what are the sources of your antipathy to Sidney and to Spenser? To me both their manner and matter are as acceptable as those of any leading wits of our age.

Jons. I cannot be reconciled either to the one or the other. Sidney has made up a story indeed, but it displays not a trace of that knowledge of humour and passion by which only the attention of a wise reader can be gained. He cannot even conceive a character, or if conceived, it is never by him brought forth into real existence. A large volume is filled up, yet his personages never speak, or if they do, there is not even the shadow of real intellect in what they say.

Drum. But as to Spenser, we never came to the reckoning of your objections to him.

Jons. His works dislike me, even as much as those of Petrarch, if it were only for his Italian versification; a foppery, in which those fools, Drayton and Daniel, have imitated him. The king also endeavours to set that fashion; but under favour (I know that you are a loyal man, Mr Drummond), the king is in such matters no wiser than he should be. His Majesty loves a cup of canary, however, as well as we do. We have drank his health already. VOL. IV.

Here is success to poetry, sir, to sonnets also, if you will insist on it!

Drum. My excellent friend, I pledge you heartily. But to return to Spenser. You have judged his manner only. His matter is yet to be considered.

Jons. There is an absence, sir, of all substance, sinews, muscles, and strength, even in the Fairy Queen. There is nothing, as I just now said, of Sidney, to engage or kindle, bý sympathy, the passions of men. Besides, to make any sense of it, we must have recourse to his letter to Sir Walter Raleigh for the allegory. Devil take him and his allegory, and his absurd rhymes altogether!

Drum. I am well advised, sir, of your preference for the real employments and humours of men in the busy world, as the fittest subjects for poetry, but

Jons. Aye, marry, even if I took to king Arthur's story (as it hath frequently been mine intention) where the ground work may be all a fiction, yet I would have my characters speak and act, and think like to living men and women.

Drum. I doubt it not, sir; yet I continue, with submission, to indulge somewhat of a different opinion. I enjoy mirth and good cheer and the society of friends. But on returning to my books, I love, for variety's sake, to change to an ideal world, to speak an artificial language, to move in the sphere of dreams and fantasy. In truth, what is there more shadowy, more subject to change, than that life which we term real? If we retire for a space to the quietness of fields and woods, and by reflection loosen the bonds of ordinary habit, how much then are we disposed to wonder at the dominion which this daily life has over us! We then become willing to enter on a new course of thoughtto believe that we hear unearthly voices, and voluntarily to cherish a waking dream, of which the utterance differs wholly from the usual language of men! I love Shakspeare because he exemplified both styles of composition.

Jons. I grant that he did so, and, between ourselves, he will be a long liver with posterity. But the prevailing defect of Shakspeare is his want of learning. It would almost

4 E

make the great white owl in your old tower laugh to hear of his blunders.

Drum. In my judgment, sir, Shakspeare will be praised even for his sonnets alone, long after the most learned of our present writers are forgotten. I would say something in favour of Sir William Alexander; but I do not, because friendship would make me partial.

Jons. I say nothing of him, because he is your friend. And to your observation about Shakspeare, especially touching his sonnets, I have scarcely patience to answer. He! he be celebrated when men of learning are forgotten! But "De mortuis nil nisi bonum."

Drum. Cry you mercy, sir! You know that you have yourself allowed

Jons. I know very well all that you would say. He wrote sonnets, and that is enough for you. But let me proceed. Can works that have no

solid foundations to rest upon live longer than others-than mine own for example, that are built on the rock of knowledge;-on a philosophy drawn from all the worthies of antiquity, with plots, and narratives, and characters which are purely original ? Wait, I pray you, until I have returned to mine old study within the city walls. I have no green fields, no singing birds, no purling streams there Master Drummond! Yet shall I celebrate your Loch Lomond in such manner that my poem shall flourish as long as there is water in the lake, or a tree in the forest. Wait until you have seen my Chorologiamy worthies of England-the worthies of Scotland too!--I shall not forget your Wallace nor your Brucenor yourself Master Drummond. The impressions of your kindness, your friendship and hospitality, will never from my heart !

鑒

B. E. S.

THE architectural magnificence of Paris is much impaired by so many of its edifices being unfinished.

It seems to be the disposition of the French people, to undertake works with a vigour which is seldom strong enough to surmount difficulties, and never lasting enough to survive delays. The church of St. Sulpice is a striking instance of this. It was begun in 1646, and is still unfinished; which is the more remarkable, because one of the towers, which remains in its rude and incomplete state, is not only a prominent part of the edifice itself, but a most remarkable feature in the general view of Paris.

In 1719, the slow progress of the building scandalized the rector of the parish, M. Languet de Gergy, and with a praise-worthy assiuuity, he einployed all the time he could spare from his strictly clerical duties, in endeavouring, for forty years, by appeals to the zeal and charity of the public, to raise funds for completing the edifice. At the time when M. Languet began to dedicate himself to the pastoral cares of his great parish, and to the construction of its church, he was barely twenty-five years old. His age was ascertained by an anecdote so curious as to be worth relating

His father, M. Languet de Gergy, was, in the reign of Louis XIV. confined in the Bastile for some offence. He was married, but had no issue; and, by some particulars of his marriage settlement, it so happened that it was of great importance to him to have children. He found means to represent the case so forcibly to the ministry, that one day in the year 1684, his wife was allowed to pay him a single visit in the Bastile; and about nine months after the lady lay in of twins, one of whom was afterwards archbishop of Sens, and the other was M. Languet, the pastor of St. Sulpice.

To this event, says St. Foix, we owe the construction of the most magnificent church of the French capital.

If a new Le Sage were to give tongues to the walls and chimneys of the houses of Paris, their conversations would be still more curious than those which his predecessor has given us of Madrid; but even without this supernatural gift, some of the houses do speak in pretty strong terms of the state of society to which they owed their erection or their establishment.

The celebrated Elysée Bourbon, so much the object of curiosity under the name of Elysée Napoleon, and which has lately resumed the former title,

though built originally for the Count D'Evreux, is indebted for its completion and embellishments to Madame de Pompadour, the celebrated mistress of Louis XV. It after her death passed into the hands of Beaujou, a financier, who, by extraordinary wealth, and above all, a most luxurious table, assembled about him the best company of Paris. His health was very delicate, and he could take but a limited share in the luxuries which his house afforded to others, but enjoyed one most extraordinary and agreeable accommodation. Obliged to retire very early to bed, the most amiable women of Paris did not scruple to attend him at his bed side, and to endeavour, by their conversation, to amuse the valetudinarian, until sleep should seal at once his ears and his eyes It is hardly necessary to say, that the gay malignity of the Parisians found much subject for observation in these clinical

conversations.

M. Beaujou had formed a determined resolution, to live not only as happily, but as long as possible, and for this purpose, settled a handsome annuity for his own life, upon his physician, whose care of his patient, we can easily believe, was very exemplary; it did not, however, prevent M. Beau jou's dying in 1786.

It was he who enclosed the space where the Montagnes Russes have been lately erected, and which perpetuates his name, though not his honour, in the title of Folie Beaujou.

The fine hotel of the banker Perrigeaux, in the Rue du Mont Blanc, so

well known to English travellers, belonged to an opera girl. She had a theatre attached to it, to which, in spite of the complaints of the public, she contrived to draw the best actors of the great theatres, while the second rates were left to amuse the town.

In 1786 she determined to part with this house by a lottery, which consisted of 2500 tickets, at 5 louis d'or each, a large price even for so handsome a house. This woman, after exhausting all that gallantry, pleasure, magnificence, and wealth could bestow, survived her beauty and her riches, and was still alive in obscurity in 1805, and, for ought we know, may be so still.

The finest house of the Rue deChantereine (which, in honour of Bonaparte who lived there, was afterwards named Rue de la Victoire), was occupied when Napoleon first ascended the throne, by his brother Lewis, the great constable of the empire. This mansion had also belonged to a theatrical heroine, a Miss Dervieux, who made her reputation, and consequently her fortune, by her success in the part of Collette in Rousseau's Divin du Village.

The sums which it was the fashion in the latter years of Louis XV. to lavish on opera dancers and singers are almost past belief, and if we had not the palaces in which they are known to have resided, in a splendour corresponding with the architecture before our eyes, we should not credit the tradition of such prodigal and scandalous

excesses.

Dec. 26, 1818.

MR EDITOR, BEING the other day on business at Plymouth, I went to see what every one who visits that port ought not to neglect seeing, that great national work the BREAKWATER, under the shelter of which a whole fleet of ships of war, besides many hundred of smaller vessels, may now find safe protection, where, heretofore, a gale of wind from the south or south-west brought with it certain destruction to every ship and vessel which might happen to be at anchor in Plymouth Sound.

I visited, likewise, the quarries of Oreston, from whence are drawn those

vast blocks of marble, from one to ten tons each block, of which the breakwater is formed; and it is truly astonishing to behold the immense space now levelled to a plain surface, which a very few years ago was one solid mountain of rock; not less surprising is the skill and ingenuity of the workmen in blasting off pieces of the marble rock, nearly of the size and shape they wish for, by means of a very small quantity of gunpowder; to such perfection has experience brought the art of blasting stone. From the quarries, these huge blocks are transported on trucks, along iron railways, to the water side, where, by means of quays

built for the purpose, they are at once run down an inclined plane into the hold of the vessel which is to carry them out into the Sound, each vessel taking, at one trip, from 70 to 80

tons.

On the arrival of these vessels at the line of the breakwater, they are made fast to a chain buoyed up, by means of which, and poles placed on shore, they know precisely where it is required to drop the blocks of stone, either at the base, or on the sloping sides, or on the summit; and this is done with great facility, by means of a trap-door, moveable on hinges, at the stern of each vessel.

The length of this enormous dyke or artificial island, when finished, will be just one mile; its perpendicular height varying from 45 to 20 feet, the width of its base from 370 to 250 feet, according to the depth of water, and the width of the top about 60 feet. When I visited it in October last, there was about 1300 feet at the top quite finished; that is to say, the breakwater to this extent was brought up to the high-water mark of spring-tides; at that time the quantity of stone deposited was 1,340,000 tons.

The first stone was thrown down on the 12th of August 1812, the birthday of the Prince Regent; so that, on an average, 223,000 tons have annually been deposited on this great work; and, I understand, if the necessary supplies had been voted by Parliament, it could with ease have been finished long before this. The estimated quantity of stone required for the whole, was two million tons.

The retardation of the work, however, has had its utility, by giving the great stones time to settle, and the rubble stones to work themselves into the crevices, and render the others immoveable. For such is the force of the action of the sea upon the side of the dyke opposed to it, that in a violent gale of wind which happened two years ago, a stone of nine tons weight on the top is said to have been carried, by the force of the waves, from the side next the sea, to the opposite slope facing the harbour. On mentioning this national undertaking to a friend, on my return to Edinburgh, he ob

served, that the ancients were perfectly well acquainted with the art of making good harbours on the coast of the Mediterranean, by means of artificial dykes or islands, and that the mode pursued by them was very little different from that adopted in Plymouth Sound, though theirs must have been infinitely more difficult and laborious, from the want of machinery to save and expedite human labour; and more particularly from the want of iron railways; and he instanced the insulated mole or breakwater of Civita Vecchia, as described by Pliny to Cornelianus, which I think your readers may not be displeased to see, and compare with what I have written regarding the breakwater of Plymouth Sound. It is as follows:

*

"I received lately the most exquisite entertainment imaginable at Centumcellæ † (as it is now called), being summoned thither by Cæsar, to attend him as one of his assessors.This delightful villa is surrounded by most verdant meadows, and commands a fine view of the sea, which forms itself here into a spacious harbour, in the figure of an amphitheatre. The left hand of this port is defended by exceeding strong works, as they are now actually employed in carrying on the same on the opposite side. An artificial island, which is rising in the mouth of the harbour, will break the force of the waves, and afford a safe passage to the ships on each side. In order for the construction of this wonderful instance of art, stones of a most enormous size are transported hither in a sort of pontoons; and being thrown one upon the other, are fixed by their own weight, gradually accumulating in the manner, as it were, of a sand-bank. It already lifts its rocky back above the ocean, while the waves which beat upon it, being lifted to an immense height, foam with a prodigious noise. To these stones are added piles, which, in time, will give it the appearance of a natural island."

* Letter 31, Pliny to Cornelianus. Supposed to be Civita Vecchia.