The austerity of his nature made him the
strictest of martinets.
A poet happily de-
scribes him as

the Mouse-killer, from his jealous hostility to our family; and there is good ground for believing that Marsyas, whom he persecuted so cruelly, was the direct lineal ancestor of the "Singing Mouse" who recently astonished and delighted London.

The mouse has been distinguished in a civil as well as a military capacity. In the Record departments of most countries our labors have been very considerable. We A stoic of the hole, a mouse without a tear. feast upon old papers and parchments with His despatches (strange to relate!) have a true antiquarian gusto. Some of our never been published; but the original pa- family are supposed to have devoured the pers are in the Mouseum, and it is hoped lost decades of Livy, which, if true, proves that Colonel Gurwood, when he has leisure, our appetite for polite literature; but this, will undertake to edit them. They will indeed, requires but little confirmation when be found as much superior to those of the it is recollected that the very name of the Duke of Wellington, as a mouse is to a man. Movoa, or the Muses, indicates the estimaThe early history of Rome teems with tion in which we were held by the ancient proofs of our renown in arms. Witness the world for our intellectual and literary atexploits of Decius Mus. Some have sup-tainments. It is well known that Apollo posed that Decius was a man, not a mouse; derived his Asiatic name of Zuidεvs, or but even were this true, it would follow that he was surnamed Mus, in compliment to his warlike prowess. Certain it is that the Romans had a particular kind of crown called mural, with which they were accustomed to honor distinguished soldiers, and that mural is derived from mus, muris, is too obvi- But to return to our public functions; ous to require a word in support of it. How that we have had a decided turn for the long we flourished in Rome is not very cer- church appears from the fact that the churchtain, but our destruction was in all likeli-mouse is a recognised order amongst us, hood the great object of the Catiline conspiracy. Some writers suppose that, driven from Italy at or about that period, we then first migrated westward, and made our appearance in England. There, at any rate, we settled in great numbers, chiefly in Gloucestershire and Cheshire, being much attracted by the excellence of the cheeses in those counties. A distinguished tribe fixed themselves at Stilton, where their descendants are found at this day. In our progress westward, however, several of our legions. took up their quarters at different places on the continent: some at Parma and Bologna (with a view to the sausages), others at La Gruyère, while many scattered themselves through Holland. The Souriquois were a French colony, but the name is now common to the entire race of mice all over the globe. That there was also a great movement at some time or another towards the north is clear, from the consequence we obtained in Russia, which was called from us Upon this principle will these corrupt and Muscovia, or Mouseland. It may be sup-secular church-mice seize on hole after hole, posed that the mice of Russia must have benefice upon benefice, and dignity upon been uncomfortable under a Czarina of the dignity, with a rapacity thoroughly and ominous name of Catherine; however, on frightfully human. Some will even creep the whole, we have had no great reason to into palaces, but there is one palace which complain of our lot in the Russian domin- no mouse was ever known to enter with ions, for our rights have been as much re- pleasure-namely, the gin-palace; and there spected as the rights of men; and at this is also one monkish order to which the hour we are infinitely freer and happier than Souriquois have invariably manifested the the unfortunate Poles. strongest antipathy-that of La Trappe.

and it is our just pride that we alone have
preserved the genuine character of the in-
stitution as founded by the Apostles, inas-
much as our poverty has passed into a pro-
verb-" as poor as a church-mouse.".
Amongst the human race, on the contrary,
the proverb runs- -"as rich as a church-
man." It was beautifully said of one of our
ecclesiastics-

A mouse he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich on forty crusts a year.

At the same time the mouse is subject to the promptings of avarice and worldly ambition, as well as the lower animals. We have pluralists amongst us, as there are amongst bipeds, and they are apt to quote in their justification the verses of Pope

The mouse that is content with one poor hole
Will never be a mouse of any soul.

Mice do not sit in Parliament, which is and absurdly applied to the miserable race not at all to be regretted, for they might of man. Our love of poetry, let me here probably soon earn the bad reputation of observe, is one of the attributes on which their friends the rats, who have had seats in we pique ourselves. Juvenal, a Latin poboth houses from time immemorial. We et, has done us justice in this respect have our politicians, nevertheless, as well where he tells of the Mures Opici, an anas other communities, and are often accus- cient Italian colony, that they actually deed of hole-and-corner proceedings, because voured (rodebant) the "divina carmina," we prefer holding little quiet meetings or immortal productions of the bards. within the wainscot, or behind the arras, to The author of this memoir has made a rerunning the risk of dispersion by their wor-markable discovery respecting the poet on ships Grimalkin and Bow-wow, who would whom the people of these countries pride be only too happy if they could get us to themselves most. He has ascertained beassemble on the hearth-rug. Mice have yond a doubt that Shakespeare was neither petitioned Parliament, although they have a swan nor a man, but a mouse, the "Singnot sat there. A petition of theirs in verse, ing Mouse" of his day. The proof is that drawn up by Mrs. Barbauld, is a composi-a mouse of the same name, that is importtion of great celebrity. They have also a ing the same meaning in the Greek lanvery active and extensive association, call-guage, is found amongs the heroes of the ed the Anti-Corn-Stack League, and it is Batrachyomachia. How interesting to find certain that had they a mouse-mote, and a Shake-spear celebrated by a Homer, and were they to legislate for the empire, they to trace the lineage of the greatest penwould make the trade in corn perfectly mouse of modern times up to a mouse of free, abolish mouse-traps, and make it felo- war in the romantic ages of Grecian histony in old maiden ladies, to keep cat or kit-ry! In corroboration of this discovery it may be remarked that Shakespeare speaks of mice invariably in respectful and handsome terms. In one place he apeaks of a Most magnanimous mouse,

ten.

where his paltry human editors have substi-
tuted the word man, and appropriated the
tribute to themselves. For instance,

I dare do all that may become a mouse
Who dares do more is none !

The philosophy of mice is a subject on which much remains to be written; their taste for Bacon is decided, and that they are Minute Philosophers is beyond all question. Esop and Horace have agreeably and we have already quoted a passage where recorded an ancient dispute among them, he bestows on his fellow-mouse the compli whether a country or town life is to be pre-mentary epithet of "monstrous." But he ferred. They seemed divided upon the really speaks of mice in twenty places subject, just as men are, with the exception of the field-mouse, who would not resign his hole in a corn-field for the most sumptuous mansion in Park-lane. All that mice ask-and it is not much-is to be let alone, and their favorite maxim is "live and let live." When was a mouse known to molest a cat, or set a trap for a cook or a housekeeper? As to terrifying ladies as they do, they protest they cannot help, and are exceedingly sorry for it; they did not create themselves; it is no fault of theirs that nature has made them such formidable beings, that the smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor would put to route all the women in England, though the Queen in person were at the head of the army.

The mouse is, in truth, the most amiable of creatures, a gentle-mouse every inch of him. In the domestic circle he shines with peculiar lustre, understanding the Hole duty of mouse perfectly, and firmly believing that an honest mouse is the "noblest work of God," a saying of one of our poets, which has been stolen by Mr. Pope,

And in "Henry VIII."
This is the state of Mouse; to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope, &c.

*

And when he hopes, good easy Mouse, &c. In the play of "Hamlet," there is that magnificent description of mouse which every mouseling has at the end of his paws. Fancy the presumption of applying the following to such a being as man!

What a piece of work is Mouse! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And again,

He was a Mouse, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again,-

which was an allusion to an ancestor of my own, a clergymouse of Mousechester, the most learned as well as the most virtuous

maxim that

The noblest study of mousekind is mouse.

anda overlooking the river, she gives vent to a paroxysm of grief and mortification

'No voice could then have been welcome to mouse of his age, and the author of many had ever spoken peace and joy to my heart, me, (for the voice I loved best, the voice that inimitable works, including "the Mouse of I had just heard utter words that had destroyFeeling," the "Mouse's Book," the "Mir-ed at one blow the fabric of bliss which my ror of Mice," and a play called "The heart had so long framed for itself;) no voice, Good-natured Mouse," which was plagiar- I say, could have been welcome to me: but ised by a two-legged penny-a-liner of the when I heard the sharp and querulous tones of name of Goldsmith. To this wisest and Julia, God in mercy forgive me for what I felt. best of mice we are indebted for the great stone steps that I have described as forming She was again standing at the head of the one of the extremities of the veranda; and, as she placed her foot on one of the mosscovered, slippery steps, she called out, "I'm going down-I'll have my own way now." I seized her hand, and drawing her back, exclaimed-"Don't Julia;" on which she said -You had better not tease me; you are to be sent away if you tease me." I felt as if a viper had stung me, the blood rushed to my head, and I struck her; she reeled under the blow, her foot slipped, and she fell headlong down the stone steps. A voice near me said -"She has killed her!" There was a plunge in the water below; her white frock rose to the surface-sank-rose again-and sank to rise no more. Two men rushed wildly down the bank, and one of them turned and looked up as he passed. I heard a piercing scream -a mother's cry of despair.-Nobody said I did not go mad; for I had not an instant's again" she has killed her." I did not die;

But as I propose shortly to publish his life and times in three volumes, with notices of the most celebrated clergymice and statesmice of the sixteenth century, enough has been said for the present occasion.

ELLEN MIDDLETON.

From the Edinburgh Review.

Ellen Middleton. A Tale. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton. 3 vols. 8vo. London:

1844.

THIS tale has excited great interest among an influential class of readers in the great metropolis, and its reputation is, we are told, spreading widely. The writer is just the kind of writer who may do harm by her influence or example, and to whom criticism may do good. It struck us, therefore, that the very limited space we had left, on the appearance of her Tale, could not be employed better than in pointing out her merits and demerits as a novelist-her fine spirit of observation and analysis, with the veins of thought and feeling, that ought to be worked assiduously -and her fondness for overstrained sentiment, and melodramatic situation that must be suppressed.

The plot is soon told. Ellen Middleton has been bred up by a high-principled, cold-mannered uncle, and an indulgent, imaginative aunt. They are people of fortune, residing at a country house situate on the bank of a river. When the story opens, Ellen is between fifteen and sixteen. Their only child, Julia, a cross, unamiable girl, is eight. Edward Middleton, a nephew of the uncle, and Henry Lovell, a younger brother of the aunt -young men of two or three and twenty-are staying with them. Julia takes every opportunity of quarrelling with her cousin; and at length Ellen overhears her aunt discussing the propriety of separating them, by sending her (Ellen) to school. Hurrying to a ver

delusion-I never doubted the reality of what had happened; but those words-"She has killed her!"-"She has killed her!"-were written as with a fiery pencil on my brain, and day and night they rang in my ears. Who had spoken them? The seeret of my fate was in those words.'

The secret of her fate was in these words, and the chief interest of the story is in that secret; which she keeps until she herself and every body connected with her have been made irretrievably wretched. In the first paroxysm of remorse and terror, she could not speak, and afterwards she would not; but goes on receiving the caresses of her relations, and enjoying the advantages of her new position (for Julia's death makes her an heiress) with unfaltering resolution; though racked by the fear of discovery, and haunted by the phantoms of remorse. Both Edward and Henry are in love with her. Edward is highminded, true-hearted, and good; she returns his affection, and eventually marries him. Henry is unprincipled and selfish, and she knows it; but he posesses extraordinary powers of fascination; he holds the key of her destiny, having been an eyewitness of Julia's death; and by the aid of influence thus acquired induces her to to suppress the truth, tolerate his attentions, and keep up a confidential communication with him, until her husband, to whom she is all along devotedly attached, casts her off, under the belief that

Henry is her favored lover. He does not learn |sibility; to have been capable of high enthuthe real state of the facts until they are nar- siasm, warm gratitude, and passionate love. rated by her (dying of a broken heart) on How would such a being have acted? Why, her deathbed; Henry having died of a brain rushed wildly through the house shrieking out fever a few days before, and most of the other that she had killed her cousin; or started from prominent characters being similarly disposed the first stupor, to give way to an agony of of, about the same time. self-accusation; or dragged herself to her This story, apparently so simple, is kept up aunt's feet, imploring, not asking, forgiveness; through the three volumes principally by El-or flown from her to the stern uncle, and relen's struggles to avoid discovery, and Henry's | ceived his sentence of banishment as a boonexpedients to retain her in his toils. any thing, or every thing but remain enduring Now our objection to the plot is twofold-the caresses of Mrs. Middleton, the insulting the inadequacy of the alleged motives, and the improbability of the facts. We assert, confidently, that Ellen neither could nor would have kept the secret. In the first place, she could not. There are such things as coroner's inquests-though ladies of quality are not bound to know of them and others besides the housekeeper would have asked, 'Where were you when the poor thing fell?' Two persons are eyewitnesses of the deed; a third hears it from one of them; dark hints are scattered; dire threats thrown out; all sorts of rumors are abroad; she herself pursues a line of conduct that must necessarily excite suspicion; and tears, faintings, changes of voice, changes of color, and whisperings with Henry, would assuredly have precipitated the crisis before the end of the

first volume.

attentions of Henry and the daily, hourly indications of the coming crisis. It is said that the most stringent of all tortures is the falling of water, drop by drop, upon the head-the brain maddens, and the tongue speaks. Much of the same kind is the mental torture Ellen is made to undergo for months, by the surpassing ingenuity of the contrivances for turning incident after incident, and conversation after conversation, into a sting. She loves, too-loves passionately, devotedly; her whole soul is wrapped up in Edward; and, in the fine scene, where she risks her life to save his, she pours it all out in an irresistible burst. With one reserve, however, the black secret is kept back, and with an intensity of selfishness (though perhaps the author never viewed it in that light) she keeps it still, when not only her own reputation, and the life of Alice, but her This, however, is a comparatively immate-husband's happiness, might be secured by a rial objection: few novelists or dramatists frank and full confession. Sir Walter Scott could get on if they were tied down to strict managed these things better. Finella is proof matter-of-fact probability. In some of the most against every other trial; but the moment the admired fictions, we are compelled to take for talismanic influence of love is brought to bear granted that no one sees or hears what no one upon her, she betrays herself.* could help seeing or hearing; and we readily Judging simply from internal evidence, it is grant their writers, what Archimedes asked in impossible to doubt the purity of the author's vain-a place beyond our living, actual, every-mind and the goodness of her intentions; but day world to stand on, and suffer them to the tendency or moral is often, at the best, move it, or turn it topsy-turvy, if they can. In doubtful. We do not much mind her reversshort, they may do any thing short of reversing the good old maxim already mentioned, ing the laws of gravitation, provided they do of murder will out; but it is surely hardly alnot neglect the higher principles of art; and our main ground of difference with Lady Georgiana Fullerton is, not that the secret would have been discovered in Ellen's despite, but that she herself would infallibly have revealed it.

Persons conversant with the history of crime are aware, that the most hardened criminals scarcely ever keep their own counsel, even when there is no hope of sympathy, and communication may be death: 'murder will out' is no mere vulgar error; nor is there probably one' of our readers who, in minor cases of transgression, has not felt an irresistible impulse to tell and know the worst, merely to get rid of the torture of uncertainty, though under no immediate apprehension of being found out. But let us set aside the fact, that Ellen knew of one witness at the least; and let us say nothing of the line of conduct a cunning, calculating girl would consequently have pursued. We take her, on her own showing, to have been possessed of understanding, imagination, and sen

lowable to paint Ellen endowed with so many estimable qualities, without permitting them to bear fruit. Falsehood, habitual dissimulation, and selfishness, are not the natural products of a religious turn of mind, a frank disposition, genius, enthusiasm, and sensibility. Ellen's mode of thinking, compared with her mode of acting, constantly tempts us to exclaim (saving the lady's presence) with Sir Peter Teazle, 'Oh, d-n your sentiments!' or reminds us of Charles Lamb's character of Coleridge: He was a good man, an excellent man; but, somehow or other, whenever any thing presented itself in the shape of a duty, he could not perform it!'

Again, Ellen is too clever a creature to be imposed on by Henry Lovell, (who is commonplace enough in the first volume,) and she is too much in love with another to be fascinated by him. Such an interest might easily

* See the concluding chapter of Peveril of the Peak.

From the Westminster Review for September.

Encyclopédie du Dix Neuvième Siècle.
Répertoire Universel des Sciences, des
Letters, et des Arts; avec la Biographie
des Hommes Célèbres. Paris. 1843.

have found place in an unoccupied heart or | BEAUMARCHAIS AND SOPHIE ARNOULD. mind; but she had paramount objects, and in her peculiar position, "that most insidious of poisons, the constant homage of a blind and passionate admiration," would have had no charms for her. As a woman of spirit, too, she would have been more likely to contract aversion for a man who persevered in compelling her to listen to him by a threat. But we hazard this opinion with diffidence; a woman must be the best judge how fara woman might be led by a demon of coquetry; and as to threats, we remember reading a French novel, alleged in the preface to be founded upon fact, in which the gentleman (a practised duellist) tells the lady that she had better accept him at once, as he is resolved to shoot every other pretender to her hand. He shoots four of her adorers, and she marries him.

We are going to present our readers with two brief and graphic memoirs of two celebrated persons of the last century. We select these memoirs from the Encyclopédie mentioned at the head of this article; and we select them because the work in which they appear is by its nature not likely to fall into the hands of the generality of our readers. Cyclopædias are of recognized utility; but their very size prevents their being in the libraries of ordinary readers. To such of our subscribers whose purses and shelves render cyclopædias available, we will address a few words of criticism on the present work; to the others, we trust we shall be affording some harmless amusement by the biographies of Beaumarchais and Sophie Arnould, from the sparkling pen of the indefatigable, inimitable Jules Janin.

་

It is a common subject of complaint among Lady Georgiana's most partial readers, that the general impression produced throughout by her book is a disagreeable one; and the reason is plain. It is disagreeable to see people acting foolishly without a motive; the interest, though sustained and high wrought, is always of a painful kind; there is too much mental anatomy à la Godwin; the introductory chapter, like an overture of church music, predisposes to melancholy; and we constaetly feel a want of relief from scenes of characters of a lighter order. This is the more provoking, because the charming sketch of Rosa Moore (worth a It must be confessed that France, though hundred Alices) shows how well the author the first to start an Encyclopædia, has not could have supplied the deficiency, had it sug-produced one worthy of rivalling those pubgested itself. Indeed, these volumes teem lished in England. In the Britannica' with proof that Lady Georgiana Fullerton could produce a work capable of standing the and Metropolitana,' the majority of articles severest ordeal of criticism; and it is the high on important subjects have been laborious estimate we have formed of her powers, that treatises. No French cyclopædia can stand induces us to dwell so much on the errors of a comparison with them; nay, not even her plan. It matters little what mode of with the Penny Cyclopædia,' for learning thought or style of composition is adopted by and accuracy. The Encyclopédie started any ephemeral novelist, though he or she may by D'Alembert contained some striking arhappen to stimulate the jaded appetite of the London world of fashion, or afford them a to- ticles, but as a whole it is ill digested, ill pic for a week; but we feel bound to take care written, and deficient in accuracy. The that ne wrong notions of art, or false theories Encyclopédie Méthodique,' which came of conduct, are sanctioned by a writer so well afterwards, did little more than re-arrange qualified as this lady to make sterling addi- its predecessor. The 'Encyclopédie Noutions to our light literature, and influence velle,' now publishing under the editorship opinion in more extended circles than her of Pierre Leroux and Jean Reynaud, is valuable for many of its articles and general arrangement. We have heard it highly praised, and such papers as we have consulted seemed to warrant the reputation of the work. One obstacle, however, is that it is made a vehicle for the doctrines of Pierre Leroux, which, though accepted as gospel by "les humanitaires," will receive little attention here.

own.

ANCIENT COINS.-The sale of the late Mr Thomas's collection by Mr. Sotheby has realised no less than £17,000, and some of the rarest coins brought immense prices: ex. gr. a unique medal of Commodus relating to Britain, £75; a unique and unpublished silver coin of Alexander, £112; a gold coin of Ephesus, £101; a gold Nicocles, £71; gold didrachm of Antiochus, £60; Ptolemy IV., gold, £175; and a gold Berenice with a unique symbol, £165.-Lit. Gaz.

The present work has a similar drawback to its success in England. It is Catholic. This, which is of course in its favor as regards Catholics, will prevent the generality