marvelled, and yet more when in their presence the authors of the sacrilege were stricken blind. They only recovered their sight on making a pilgrimage to St. John's, where the holy relic was found in its case. Queen Ann, in the year 1506, sent for the finger to Morlaix; and the rector of Plongasnon and the master of St. John were in the act of bearing it thither on their shoulders, when no sooner had they gotten into the churchyard, that the litter gave a loud creak. Meanwhile the relic had vanished, and on the attendants returning into the church, after much intercession and prayer they discovered it in its case once more. The queen finding that the finger would not come to her, prudently resolved to wait upon it, and performed the latter part of her pilgrimage on foot. At the spot where she descended from her litter, is the cross of Lann-Festour, on whose pedestal is the imprint of her foot. It seems that the Maltese pretended to possess the identical forefinger; and so warm was the dispute, that a learned doctor of the Sorbonne was called upon to determine the matter, and he adjudicated in favour of the Bas-Bretons, and the Maltese relic was a middle finger. The learned and pious editor of the late edition of Le Grand, gives us to understand in a note that "The relic is evidently the last joint of a finger. It is black, the nail clearly distinguishable, and the flesh dissicated. It is impossible to determine by the shape to what finger or to which hand it had belonged, but it appears to be the point of a fore or middle finger. It is enveloped in parchment, with a handwriting of the fifteenth century." 66 The fire of St. Jean," says M. Souvestre, “is always lit, in the parish of St. Jean du Doigt, by an angel who descends from the steeple; but the mechanism of this ma chine is so rude, its apparel so visible, that the peasants are not duped by it, and never could have been. The object has evidently ever been to amuse the pilgrims by a scenic representation, and in nowise to deceive them." Keview. Smith's Book for a Rainy Day. untiring research, in which are described, in clear and explicit language, the various antiquities of London, intermixed with well-drawn sketches of character. Its variety is a decided recommendation, while its humour will admirably wile away a rainy day, or a few hours in a steam-boat. To all this work has its attractions, but more so to Londoners, because metropolitun life and London topography are more especially treated. The following passages must be doubly interesting to him who is acquainted with the north of Holborn and Oxford-street. *** TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD IN 1773. "As few persons possess so retentive a memory as myself, I make no doubt that many will be pleased with my recollections of the state of Tottenham-court-road at this time. The ground behind the north-west end of Russell-street was occupied by a farm, belonging to two old maiden sisters of the name of Capper. They wore riding-habits and men's hats; one rode an old grey mare, and it was her spiteful delight to ride with a large pair of shears after boys who were flying their kites, parposely to cut their strings; the other sister's business was to seize the clothes of the lads who trespassed on their premises to bathe. From Capper's farm were several straggling houses; but the principal part of the ground to the King's Head, at the end of the road, was unbuilt upon. The Old King's Head forms a side object in Hogarth's beautiful and celebrated picture of The March to Finchley,' which may be seen with other fine specimens of art in the Foundling Hospital, for the charitable donation of one shilling. I shall now recommence on the left-hand side of the road, noticing that on the front of the first house, No. 1 in Oxfordstreet, near the second-floor windows, is the following inscription cut in stone, Oxford Street, 1725. Hanway street, better known by the vulgar people under the name of 'Hanover Yard,' was at this time the resort of the highest fashion for mer. cery and other articles of dress. The public-house, the sign of the Blue Posts,' at the corner of Hanway-street, in Tottenhamcourt-road, was once kept by a man of the name of Sturges, deep in the knowledge of chess, upon which game he published a little work. From the Blue Posts, the houses were irregularly built to a large space called Gresse's Gardens; thence to Windmill-street, strongly recommended by physicians for the salubrity of the air. The premises occupied by the French charity children were held by the founders of the Middlesex Hospital, which was established in 1755, where the patients remained until the present building was erected in Charles-street. Colvill-court, parallel with Windmill-street, northward, was built in 1766; and Goodge-street, fur ther on, was, I conjecture, erected much about the same time. Mr. Whitfield's chapel was built in 1754, upon the site of an immense pond, called the Little Sea.' Beyond the chapel the four dwellings, then called Paradise Row,' almost terminated the houses on that side. A turn stile opened into Crab-tree Fields. They extended to the Adam and Eve publichouse, the original appearance of which Hogarth has also introduced into his picture of The March to Finchley.' The whole of the ground north from Capper's Farm, at the back of the British Museum, so often mentioned as being frequented by duellists, was in irregular patches, many fields with turn-stiles. The pipes of the New River Company were propped up in several parts to the height of six and eight feet; so that persons walked under them to gather water-cresses, which grew in great abundance and perfection, or to visit The Brothers' Steps,' well known to the Londoners." STREET SPLENDOURS OF 1771. * * "The gaiety during the merry month of May was to me most delightful: my feet, though I knew nothing of the positions, kept pace with those of the blooming milkmaids, who danced round their garlands of massive plate, hired from the silversmiths to the amount of several hundreds of pounds, for the purpose of placing round an obelisk, covered with silk fixed upon a chairman's horse. The most showy flowers of the season were arranged so as to fill up the openings between the dishes, plates, butter-boats, cream-jugs, and tankards. This obelisk was carried by two chairmen in gold-laced hats; six or more handsome milkmaids in pink and blue gowns, drawn through the pocket-holes, for they had one on either side; yellow or scarlet petticoats, neatly quilted, highheeled shoes, mob-caps, with lappets of lace resting on their shoulders; nosegays in their bosoms, and flat Woffington hats, covered with ribands of every colour. But what crowned the whole of the display was a magnificent silver tea-urn which surmounted the obelisk, the stand of which was profusely decorated with scarlet tulips. A smart, slender fellow of a fiddler, commonly wearing a sky-blue coat, with his hat profusely covered with ribands, attended; and the master of the group was accompanied by a constable to protect the plate from too close a pressure of the crowd, when the maids danced before the doors of his customers." New London Magazine. The October number of this magazine is interesting, nor is it void of talent. The paper, entitled "The Bachelor's Encyclopodia of Practical Economy" is told with humour, and bids fair to be a highly popular paper. The prefatory remarks would induce any célebateur to seek eagerly a perusal, as they promise to guard the unmarried man against the numerous dangers that environ bachelorhood. The promise, too, is not without its performance, for in the first portion of the article several highly useful hints are thrown out, which, if observed, will add to the comforts of the man who boasts about his hat covering his family. 'Leaves from the Note Book of a Coroner," is a striking paper, and leaves upon the mind the true yet painful impression that, however joyful the day or hour, let it be a Christmas or a New Year, there are many whose hearts partake not of the general joy-poor creatures who, not from evil propensities, wander about forlorn, hungry, and shivering with cold, in a land of plenty. The subjoined is startling: A PEEP AT THE MODERN COFFEE-HOUSES. "Perhaps the most remarkable feature of a London thoroughfare is visible in the coffee and reading-rooms scattered about in every possible direction, and of every possible diversity of appearance. Like the tranquil intervals of a river when it glides over the level channels which intervene between the turmoil and agitation of its cataracts, the traffic of the vast metropolis has its dallying places in these pleasant regions of seclusion. Often is the city wayfarer tempted, from the tumult of out-of-door existence, by some seductive invitation to a dish of aromatic mocha, emblazoned in fat capitals and disposed with much symmetry amidst a map of flourishes. Now, the more fastidious multitude is decoyed by an exterior of plate glass and fluted corinthians, or an interior of gigantic mirrors and or-molu decoration; now, the more indifferent pedestrian is attracted to the dingy breakfast house by its primitive benches and a ventilator that reminds one of the Mexican republicans, who are always ready for a revolution at the slightest breath. In the former case, the gallant may fancy himself within the precincts of the Palais Royal while he slumbers over the columns of the Charivari, or may see upon the gorgeous papering of the saloon an illustration of the poem he was reading over night, while, at the same moment, he can render himself a very fashionable kind of vegetable blight, inasmuch as killing time will constitute his claim to the title. In the latter instance, the artizan may practise a very useful chapter in arithmetic by balancing accounts between a broiled rasher and an excellent appetite, a problem which consists in a subtle description of multiplication, the 'product' of which is easily discovered by the waiting-maid. One circumstance in connection with coffee-houses must strike the most superficial observer, namely, the wonderful variety of their external cha racter; some conspicuous from the absence of everything save a name, a scraper, and a wire-blind; others, from their extraordinary ostentation in the display of still more extraordinary viands behind the windowpanes-eggs, so spotted by blue-bottles that you might imagine them the production of some colossal blackbird; pies, so sickly in the crust as to imply the fact of their having been merely sun-baked, and strange little saucers of something, which you at first mistake for pickled currants, but which, on closer examination, prove to be poison-traps for the flies. Others appear to be constructed for the direct purpose of playing facetious tricks with the customer -ducking him down two unexpected steps on his entrance, almost snapping his wrist with the violent pulley of the door-way, or crashing his hat off, with a distressing rasp against his forehead, by coming into collision with the knob of the gas-burner. Scarcely a single street of any pretension in this enormous city is without its atten. dant coffee-house: even in those eccentric little passages which sprout from the larger thoroughfares, and which frequently seem as though they were the main road itself, poking its head between the houses to have a peep at its own back-even up those remarkable nooks and crevices may be discovered some astounding parlour, fraught with all sorts of comfort, squeezed up in some preposterous corner, yet blinking a roguish welcome withal from its chintz curtains. Debarred by custom from attracting observation, as of yore, by some emblematic sign or symbol, these places of refreshment are compelled to satisfy themselves with merely a local habitation and a name;' they respire an atmosphere peculiar to their class, an atmosphere compounded of a gush from a printing-office, the odorous ghost of a coffee-pot, bees'-wax, French varnish, and bird's sand. These present a direct contrast to their renowned predecessors. Formerly, the coffee-house re-echoed with laughter and bon-mots; the gentleman in the powdered scratch talked clean across the apartment to the gentleman in the fullbottomed wig, notwithstanding they had never encountered each other before that interview; the proprietor appeared a gene rous and hospitable host, who invited you to partake of his refreshments for the beevolence of the thing-and a considera tion;' the customers were generally allied to one another by sympathy and frequent intercourse, and a stranger was morally, though not virtually, regarded as a guest; the habitué of fashion and society carried his country-cousin thither to introduce him to the wits and characters of his generation; here, the principal literary personages of the age, the dramatist, the bard, the orator, the novelist, the painter, the historian, resorted as to their mental home, and extracted at once a stimulus and a recompense for their capacities by this undisguised familiarity. Nor were their choicest repartees confined within the oak panelling of the coffee-house, since those delicate fribbles and loungers by whom they were constantly surrounded speedily disseminated such jewels of conversation about the purlieus of St. James's and the Mall: insomuch so, that Fielding hath been often startled by receiving back as original from the coral lips of my lady Tinsel the identical jeu d'esprit which he called into existence only twenty minutes before, when seated on one of the green-baize chairs at Hogarth's club. Could a gallery of portraits be collected of these disciples of lord Chesterfield, Beau Nash, and Roche. foucault, it might be not inaptly designated a New Whispering Gallery. Society has, however, undergone a thorough transformation; men have become too universal in their speculations-both monetary and intellectual-to rest satisfied with the random arrows of the humourist; they are too ambitious of joining in the communion of sentiments to sit agape during an entire evening ready to swallow every stray wit ticism uttered by the more illustrious visitor, and retail it to their acquaintances. Thoughts, though as plentiful, must be selected with as much caution and discrimination as blackberries-the mere green crudities must be neglected as indigestible, and the over-ripe spurned in like manner from their exceeding antiquity. Such circumspection requires in this railroad era more time and assiduity than can be devoted to such a matter by the majority of citizens; the consequence, therefore, is— the wit is himself necessitated to cull and collate his own brilliant reflections, and reduce them to a vendible reality; he portions them out in parts or numbers, like a shilling pottle of mulberries; and thus, from the marvellous increase of readers, and the singular diminution of listeners, authors have been driven to print their exuberant opinions, and hence the origin of Periodical Literature. As in the primitive instance, we are indebted to the olden coftee-houses for those inimitable anecdotes which are still extant in such profusion relative to the Augustan age in England, so, in like manner, are we mainly indebted to modern coffee-houses for those astonishing outpourings of the press-the magazines, the reviews, the serial romances, and the prodigious bulk of newspapers; which form, at once, the chronicle and the phenomenon of our own immediate times. Through their medium at least, the doctrines promulgated in those publications obtain the widest circulation; and frequently, amidst the tranquillity of these apartments, a mind is awakened to its destined impulse, as with a flash of electricity, at the beck of the wand of that invisible but potent and terrible magician, the Press; that mighty engine, whose silent but indomitable voice penetrates the uttermost limits of the globe, vivifying with its inexorable eloquence the germs of integrity and independence; at one moment branding some petty charlatan with its playful, but irksome scorn; at another, warning a despot in some distant land of the epoch of his doom. Much, indeed, would our predecessors marvel at the vigour, the copiousness, the diffusion, and the inexhaustible energies of this new creation. Summoned into being by man's instinctive thirst for regeneration, the press is simultaneously sustained by, and sustaining, the liberty of intellect and action-it is at once the tyrant and the embodiment of republicanism, the tyrant over individual domination, the fosterer of universal freedom. With its emissaries ever on the alert, and scattered throughout the various territories of the earth, stimulated to novel exertions by an ever-present spirit of competition, roused into new development by the ceaseless alterations of society, the press, as a monitor of the populace, is ever increasing in its influence and strengthening in its strength.' But that such should be the case cannot create astonishment, when it is remembered that its vitals are the amassment of many thousand minds, that it stands forth the representative of human intelligence, that it is the creature of the logician, the analyst, the politician, and the philosopher. Occasionally, without question, this being rebels against its own creator, as in the instance of America, where, nourished in its malice by the moral turpitude of the social system, and given up to the most licentious abandonment, it pollutes the commonwealth by its baleful presence, and rules it only as a very demon would. There, a great nation is at length becoming conscious that, like another Frankenstein, it has warmed into existence a creature of hideous aspect and of horrible capacity-a monster which now constitutes its greatest misery-one that, unless annihilated, may ultimately prove its downfall. Within the coffee-houses, however, the characteristic which is most conspicuously visible in the newspapers is that of their rapidity in giving information; nothing is 6 more significant of the present age than this quality in our daily literature. A volume, yet damp from the pressure of the type, is elaborately dissected on the very evening after publication; before the bandage is yet adjusted over a broken limb at the hospital, the accident is detailed in every journal; while the actress is still engaged in removing the rouge from her countenance, a criticism on her performance is being set up' by the compositor; the orator at a public assembly, on resuming his seat, has the first portion of his address thrust into his hands already printed, with the intimation 'left speaking,' at its conclusion. These circumstances would have savoured of black magic to our progenitors, but society has become habituated to their recurrence, and no longer regards them as miraculous. For our own part, however, we can never enter a coffee house, and perceive the broad sheets of our newspapers, yet reeking after their passage through the labyrinth of the printing machine, without an internal exclamation of Honour to the Press !' 'Honour to the manes of Guttenberg!' After this somewhat protracted digression-of which the subject-matter is a sufficient apology-we cannot but award to the beverage consumed during the perusal of the literary effusions alluded to, some portion of those emollient sensations experienced by the frequenter of the coffeehouse. Clearing the brain of all dulness or apathy, stimulating the minute ramifications of the nerves, and thus calling the imagination, as it were, into healthy action, the decoction of the Arabian berry demands some token of our gratitude. Alas! we cannot illustrate thy excellent qualities as Elia' apostrophised the unctuous merits of mere sassafras; we cannot, without deterioration, attempt a catalogue of thy beauties, or even of thy subtle insinuations upon the palate through the medium of our senses, whether of sight, of touch, of taste, or of perfume. Enough for us, that, like a cannibal, we can merely testify our affection with the most wanton barbarity, by obtaining thee, first to roast, then to grind, then to boil, then to devour. In truth, coffee requires no celebration from us, since it has received such magnificent honours from the hands of royalty itself; when the burgomasters of Amsterdam, desirous of testifying their loyalty to Louis XIV in the most remarkable manner, despatched to him, as the richest present at their disposal, a beautiful specimen of this plant, then regarded as a prodigious rarity. On a balmy evening in August, in the year of grace 1714, the watermen upon the river Seine observed a grotesque-looking structure conveyed with much caution and difficulty from the cushions of a barge up the stairs of the quay, adjacent to the Tuile ries, and then ensconced with considerable nicety upon a vehicle which stood there in readiness for its reception. Several carriages, emblazoned with armorial bearings, and drawn by horses richly caparisoned, were ranged along the neighbouring road; and from these vehicles descended the solemn and stately figures of some thirty members of the Academy of Sciences. Throwing back their state cloaks, sump tuously powdered with silver fleurs-de-lis and edged with miniver, the erudite officials clustered round the package which had just been landed, and one of them, M. de Jussieu, the king's professor of botany, stepped forward with a mincing gait, twirling his agate cane between his delicate fingers, and, producing a small key, unlocked the outer enclosure of the box. The hinges flew back, and disclosed, beneath a curious frame-work of glass, an exquisite little tree, some five feet in height, its slender boughs drooping under the weight of its glossy leaves, the hue of which was of a brilliant evergreen, while the verdure of the foliage was relieved by the whiteness of its jasmine-like blossoms and the cherry hue of its red berries. Nothing but expressions of amazement and admiration burst from the lips of the French sages at the sight of this extraordinary novelty-a trumpery little coffee-plant-when a young man, of skinny proportions, startled them with a violent outburst of laughter-the cause of their extreme rapture appeared to him so extravagantly contemptible. M. de Jussieu cast a supercilious glance at the youth, ordered the present from Amsterdam to be conveyed to the Royal Garden at Marly, bowed with a dainty grace to his colleagues, and withdrew. Little did the inquisitive lookerson conjecture that the meagre youth who shuffled past, still smiling at such sedate fooleries, was afterwards to attach his name permanently to that quay, that he was destined by his writings to annul such shallow mockeries by his wit, and rouse a revolution by his philosophy-little did they imagine he would become so celebrated as Voltaire. Possibly, this courtly pomp in the reception of a simple coffee-plant, confirmed that great free-thinker in his animosity against kingcraft. Howbeit, in the abstract, the berry of Mocha is of a soothing nature, and, with its pungent sweetness, softens down the more bitter feelings of humanity; though when taken in excess, it not only disorganises the nervous system throughout, but is productive of some ludicrous consequences, amongst which it repeatedly causes a twitching of the upper eyelid. This peculiarity it was that brought such incessant mishaps upon our acquaintance, little Andrew Meek: if he visited a ball-room, twitch! twitch! went his eyelid, and the gentlemen present kicked him over the door-mat for winking at their wives and sisters; if he entered a religious edifice, twitch twitch! went his eyelid, and the beadle pushed him out, before the entire congregation, for indecorous behaviour; if he dropped in at an auction-mart, twitch! twitch! went his eyelid, and everything was knocked down to him by the auctioneer, and finally he was knocked down himself for declaring he had'nt bid once. Andrew Meek at last discontinued drinking coffee; the affection in his eyelid departed, and he continued to dance and visit public sales without molestation until the period of his decease. Notwithstanding these rather comical results of the coffee-nut as a beverage, its average operation upon the more susceptible portions of the constitution is decidedly beneficial. By some inscrutable property, it acts simultaneously as a burnisher to the reflective faculties and a queller of the harsher passions-a circumstance that may appear rather anomalous, but which is founded upon absolute experience. Ply an irascible person with full-flavoured Mocha, and he not only subsides into amiability, but actually becomes hilarious, forgetting even the grounds of his annoyance as his lips approach the grounds of the coffee. Indeed, our Arabian berry may almost vie, in these excellent consequences, with the genial efficacy of a newspaper, and that the latter is an unrivalled kind of peace-maker, we regard as a matter beyond dispute. As a testimony of this, we refer to that traditional anecdote of the two draymen who encountered each other, team, cart, brewers' barrels and all, in one of those narrow bypassages which intersect the outskirts of the City, and which admit only one vehicle at a time. Of course, both of these redoubtable bruisers refused to budge one jot, and each demanded priority of progress with quite a miniature dictionary of maledictions. But the upshot of the disturbance is, that one gentleman, exhausted with the quarrel, coolly stretches his burly limbs along the shaft of his dray, and, drawing a copy of Bell's Life from his scarlet night-cap, begins dipping into the news with much relish. What does his opponent do on this display of resignation?Trounce him within an inch of his life? Nothing of the sort-he leans across his wheeler with a polite bow, and observes, 'Beg your pardon, sir, but I'll engage that paper after you, if you please!' After this authentic narrative, who shall deny that coffee-houses are not aids in the advancement of civilisation? Fully confirmed in this last opinion, we derive vast satisfaction from the prodigious patronage accorded to these inimitable establishments; and ofttimes, too, we amuse ourself by a calculation of the nourishment consumed therein, |