MARCH OF INTELLECT. Every intelligent mind of right reflection accords its wishes for general enlightenment. It appears, from a fashionable miscellany, that a late distinguished writer expressed himself to that effect; the following are extracts from the article referred to. They contain, in the sequel, a forcible opinion on the tendency of the present general diffusion of literature. CONVERSATIONS OF MATURIN. Maturin's opinions of poetry, as of every thing else, were to be inferred rather than gathered. It was very difficult to draw him into literary conversation: like Congreve, he wished to be an author only in his study. Yet he courted the society of men of letters when it was to be had; but would at any time have sacrificed it to dally an hour in the drawing-room, or at the quadrille. Sometimes, however, amongst friends (particularly if he was in a splenetic mood) he freely entered into a discussion upon the living authors of England, and delivered his opinions rapidly, brilliantly, and with effect. On one occasión a conversation of this description took place, in which I had the pleasure of participating. I will recall the substance of it as well as I can. Do not expect from Maturin the turgidity of Boswell's great man, or the amiable philosophy of Franklin: you will be disappointed if you anticipate any thing profound or speculative from him; for at the best of times he was exceedingly fond of mixing up the frivolity of a fashionable conversazione with the most solid subjects. I met him in the county of Wicklow on a pedestrian excursion in the autumn; a relaxation he constantly indulged in, particularly at that season of the year. It was in that part of the vale of Avoca, where Moore is said to have composed his celebrated song: a green knoll forms a gradual declivity to the river, which flows through the vale, and in the centre of the knoll there is the trunk of an old oak, cut down to a seat. Upon that venerable trunk, say the peasants, Moore sat when he composed a song that, like the Rans de Vache of the Swiss, will be sung amidst those mountains and valleys as long as they are inhabited. Opposite to that spot I met Maturin, accompanied by a young gentleman carrying a fishing-rod. We were at the distance of thirty miles from Dublin; in the heart of the most beautiful valley in the island; surrounded by associations of history and poetry, with spirits subdued into tranquillity by the Italian skies above, and the peaceful gurgling of the waters below us. Never shall I forget Maturin's strange appearance amongst those romantic dells. He was dressed in a crazy and affectedly shabby suit of black, that had waxed into a "brilliant polish" by over zeal in the service of its master; he wore no cravat, for the heat obliged him to throw it off, and his delicate neck rising gracefully from his thrice-crested collar, gave him an appearance of great singularity. His raven hair, which he generally wore long, fell down luxuriantly without a breath to agitate it; and his head was crowned with a hat which I could sketch with a pencil, but not with a pen. His gait and manner were in perfect keeping; but his peculiarities excited no surprise in me, for I was accustomed to them. In a short time we were seated on the banks of the Avoca, the stream cooling our feet with its refreshing spray, and the green foliage protecting us from the sun. "Moore is said to have written his song in this place." "I don't believe a word of it," replied Maturin. "No man ever wrote poetry under a burning sun, or in the moonlight. I have often attempted a retired walk in the country at moonlight, when I had a madrigal in my head, and every gust of wind rang in my ears like the footsteps of a robber. One robber would put to flight a hundred tropes. You feel uneasy in a perfectly secluded place, and cannot collect your mind." "But Moore, who is a poet by inspiration, could write in any circumstances?" "There is no man of the age labours harder than Moore. He is often a month working out the fag-end of an epigram. 'Pon my honour, I would not be such a victim to literature for the reputation of Pope, the greatest man of them all." Don't you think that every man has his own peculiarity in writing, and can only write under particular excitements, and in a particular way?" "Certainly. Pope, who ridiculed such a caprice, practised it himself; for he never wrote well but at midnight. Gibbon dictated to his amanuensis, while he walked up and down the room in a terrible passion; Stephens wrote on horseback in a full gallop; Montaigne and Chateaubriand in the fields; Sheridan over a bottle of wine; Molière with his knees in the fire; and lord Bacon in a small room, which he said helped him to condense his thoughts. But Moore, whose peculiarity is retirement, would never come here to write a song he could write better elsewhere, merely because it related to the place." "Why omit yourself in the list? you have your own peculiarity." "I compose on a long walk; but then the day must neither be too hot, nor cold; it must be reduced to that medium from which you feel no inconvenience one way or the other; and then when I am perfectly free from the city, and experience no annoyance from the weather, my mind becomes lighted by sunshine, and I arrange my plan perfectly to my own satisfaction." "From the quantity of works our living poets have given to the public, I would be disposed to say that they write with great facility, and without any nervous whim." "But lord Byron-he must write with great ease and rapidity?" "That I don't know; I never could finish the perusal of any of his long poems. There is something in them excessively at variance with my notions of poetry. He is too fond of the obsolete; but that I do not quarrel with so much as his system of converting it into a kind of modern antique, by superadding tinsel to gold. It is a sort of mixed mode, neither old nor new, but incessantly hovering between both." "What do you think of Childe Harold?" "I do not know what to think of it, nor can I give you definitively my reasons for disliking his poems generally." "You have taken up a prejudice, perhaps, from a passage you have forgotten, and never allowed yourself patience to examine it." "Perhaps so; but I am not conscious of a prejudice." "No man is." "And which of the living poets fulfils your ideal standard of excellence?" "Crabbe. He is all nature without pomp or parade, and exhibits at times deep pathos and feeling. His characters are certainly homely, and his scenes rather unpoetical; but then he invests his subject with so much genuine tenderness and sweetness, that you care not who are the actors, or in what situations they are placed, but pause to recollect where it was you met something similar in real life. Do you remember the little story Delay is Danger? I'll recite you a few lines describing my favourite scene, an autumn-evening landscape : "On the right side the youth a wood survey'd, With all its dark intensity of shade; Where the rough wind alone was heard to move, In this, the pause of nature and of love, When now the young are rear'd, and when the old, Far to the left he saw the huts of men "Some ran to the cords, some kneel'd at the shrine, But all the wild elements seem'd to combine; 'Twas just but one moment of stir and commotion, And down went the ship like a bird of the ocean!" "But do not altogether take me at my word in what I say of Crabbe and Hogg. They have struck the chord of my taste; but they are not, perhaps, the first men of the day. Moore is a writer for whom I feel a strong affection, because he has done that which I would have done if I could: but after him it would be vain to try any thing." "Is it your opinion that the swarm of minor poets and writers advance the cause of literature, or that the public taste would be more refined and informed, if those who administered to it were fewer and better?"? "I object to prescribing laws to the republic of letters. It is a free republic, in which every man is entitled to publicity if he chooses it. The effect unquestionably of a swarm of minor poets is the creation of a false taste amongst a certain class; but then that is a class that otherwise would have no taste at all, and it is well to draw their attention to literature by any agency. In the next age their moral culture will improve, and we shall go on gradually diminishing the contagion."* New Monthly Magazine. We have here a print of the cherry woman of a hundred years ago, when cherries were so little grown, that the popular street cry was double the price of the present day. Readers of the Every-Day Book may remember the engraving of the "London barrow-woman," with her cherrycry-"round and sound". the cherrywoman (that was) of our own times-the recollection of whose fine person, and melodious voice, must recur to every one who saw and heard her-a real picture to the mind's eye, discoursing "most excellent music." The man blowing a trumpet, "Troop, every one!" was a street seller of hobbyhorses-toys for the children of a hundred years ago. He carried them, as represented in the engraving, arranged in a partitioned frame on his shoulder, and to each horse's head was a small flag with two bills at tached. The crier and his ware are wholly extinct. Now-a-days we give a boy the first stick at hand to thrust between his legs as a Bucephalus--the shadow of a shade:- our forefathers were better natured, for they presented him with something of the semblance of the generous animal. Is a horse now less popular with boys than then? or did they, at that time, rather imitate the galloping of the real hobby-horse in the pageants and mummeries that passed along the streets, or pranced in the shows at fairs and on the stage? Be that as it may, this is a pretty plaything for "little master;" and toymakers would find account in reviving the manufacture for the rising generation. They have improved the little girl's doll, and baby-house: are they ignorant that boys, as soon as they can walk, demand a whip and a horse? MR. HOBDAY'S GALLERY. No. 54, PALL-MALī. In addition to the associations for the exhibition and sale of pictures by living artists, Mr. Hobday opened an establishment on the 21st of May for the same purpose, adjoining the British Institution. This gentleman is known to the public as a respectable portrait painter, with a taste for art entitled to consideration for his present spirited endeavour in its behalf. In this exhibition there are performances of distinguished merit by several eminent artists. The Upas, or poison-tree of Java, by Mr. Danby, in illustration of the legend in Darwin's Loves of the Plants, is a fine picture, already known. Another by Mr. Danby-is a wood on the sea-shore, with figures, Ulysses and Nausicaa, from Homer. A Fête Champêtre, by Mr. Stothard, is one of a class of subjects, which its venerable painter has distinguished by his magic pencil; Mr. Edwin Landseer's Lion disturbed at his repast, a forcible and well-remembered effort of his genius, stands near it. Mr. Charles Landseer's Merchant, with Slaves and Merchandise, reposing in a Brazilian Rancho; the Entombing of Christ, by Mr. Westall; landscapes, by Messrs. Daniel, Glover, Hoffland, Laporte, Linnell, W. Westall, &c.; pictures by sir W. Beechey, Messrs. Chalon, Kidd, Heaphy, Rigaud, Singleton, Stephanoff, J. Ward, &c., grace the walls of the establishment. Every picture in this gallery is for sale; and, under Mr. Hobday's management, it promises to be a means of introducing the public to an acquaintance with distinguished works of art still remaining open to the selection of its patrons. the pictures of the Manners and the Villiers, Fairfax's ancestors, and out of good will towards them he desisted. It, however, was afterwards unfortunately destroyed by the carelessness of a maid servant, who dropping asleep at the time she was picking feathers, the candle fell into the feathers and burnt the house to the ground. In a few years afterwards, it was rebuilt by the father of sir Henry Ibbetson, bart. in the year 1721, and has this remarkable motto in the pediment : "Quod nec Jovis ira nec ignis nec poterit ferrum." VERSES To the memory of Denzil Ibbetson, fourth son of sir Henry Ibbetson, bart., who unfortunately lost his life by an accidental discharge of his gun when shooting at Cocken, near Durham, the seat of his aunt, lady Mary Carr, sister of Henry earl of Darlington 1774. 1. Thy fate, lamented Ibbetson, we weep, With an unfeign'd and sympathetic tear; Thy virtues, on our mem'ries graven deep, Recall the painful thought of what was dear 2. Yet 'tis not for thy sufferings, but our own, That heaves the heartfelt melancholy sigh, That death, which haply cost thee not a groan, Leaves us to mourn with what we ne'er can vie. 3. That life, good humour, and that manly sense, Those ever-pleasing ties, that friendly heart, Which but unwittingly could give offence, Disarm'd ev❜n Death's grim tyrant of his dart. 4. Without one pang or agonizing groan, Thy soul reliev'd forsook its vile abode, For joys more worthy of the good alone"The bosom of thy Father and thy God.” Topography. ORIGINAL NOTICE. For the Table Book. Denton-castle, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and on the north-west side of Otley, was once the seat of the parliament's general, Fairfax, and came to the present family of Ibbetson by relationship. Prince Rupert in passing by it on his march into Lancashire, in order to assist the king's troops in that quarter, was about to raze it, but going into the house, he observed PRONUNCIATION. The difficulty of applying rules to the pronunciation of our language may be illustrated in two lines, where the combina. tion of the letters ough, is pronounced in no less than seven different ways, viz. as o, uf, of, up, aw, oo, and ock. Though the tough cough and hiccough plough me through; O'er life's dark lough my course I still pursue. For the Table Book. EMIGRATION OF THE ROOKS FROM CARLTON GARDENS, 1827. "I shall not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau, If birds confabulate or no :'Tis certain they were always able, To hold discourse, at least in fable." Cowper. The mandate pass'd, the axe applied, Remote from court and courtly strife, O'er head the Rooks, in circles flew, The chairman, far advanc'd in age, Continued to adjudicate ; So tardily his judgments came, What, though they were unting'd by bribe, Or fear; the sad impatient tribe, Who fed on Hope's expectancies, : Were ruin'd-by his just decrees ! But to our tale:-the speaker now, Perch'd on an elm tree's topmost bough, Had hush'd the multitude in awe, You might not hear a single "caw;" He then in pride of conscious pow'r, Commenc'd the bus'ness of the hour. "Ye rooks and daws in senate met;" He said, and smooth'd his breast of jet: "What crimes, among our sable band, Have brought this ruin on our land? Has murder mark'd our noonday flight? Or depredation in the night? Why, then, ye advocates of taste, Man lacketh not a host of pleas, Than Grecian plinth and column yield! They cheer the sons of penury, Who sicken in the breeze of health! And starve, amid a nation's wealth! Oh! may we hope, in Britain's school, That this, our sable parliament, Come bright Improvement on the car of Time, |