as such exempt by law from such disgrace; and that what he had done was unimportant, and justified by common usage), being treated with contempt. He endured the punishment in the presence of a crowd of comrades and strangers, and swore (with a Spaniard's spirit) never to be satisfied but with his tyrant's blood. He waited patiently until Esquivel was no longer governor; refusing consolation; and declining, from fancied unworthiness, all honourable employment. But, when the governor put off his authority, then Aguirra commenced his revenge. He followed his victim from place to place-haunted him like a ghost-and filled him (though surrounded by friends and servants) with perpetual dread. No place, no distance could stop him. He has been known to track his enemy for three, four, five hundred leagues at a time! He continued pursuing him for three years and four months; and at last, after a journey of five hundred leagues, came upon him suddenly at Cuzco; found him, for the first time without his guards; and instantly stabbed him to the heart! Such is the story of Aguirra. It is believed to be a fact; and so is the story which I have recounted above. The circumstances are not only curious, as showing a strange coincidence, but they show also what a powerful effect a narrative of this kind may produce. For, there is little doubt, but that the South American tale, although it may not absolutely have generated the spirit of vengeance in Gordon's mind, so shaped and modified it, as to stimulate his flagging animosity; carried him through all impediments and reverses to the catastrophe; and enabled him to exhibit a perseverance, that is to be paralleled nowhere, except, perhaps, in the histories of fanatics and martyrs. ANECDOTES OF PORSON AND PARR.† ONCE, and only once, I had the honour of conversing with the illustrious Porson; and strange to say, it was at a ball at Bath, in the Lower Rooms, on an unusually crowded night. A very ingenious friend of mine, Dr. Davis, of Bath, who was "this same learned Theban's" chaperon on the occasion, did me the favour of introducing me to him. The professor appeared to be quite sea," and neither to understand, nor relish the scene before him. On separating from him, Mr. King, the master of the cere From the Rev. R. collections. 1830. at Warner's Literary Re monies, addressed me :-" Pray, Mr. W., who is the man you have been speaking to? I can't say, I much like his appearance:" and to own the truth, Porson, with lank uncombed locks, a loose neckcloth, and wrinkled stockings, exhibited a striking contrast to the gay and gorgeous crowd around. "Who is that gentleman, Mr. King," replied I," the greatest man that has visited your rooms, since their first erection. It is the celebrated Porson: the most profound scholar in Europe: who has more Greek under that mop of hair, than can be found in all the heads in the room; ay, if we even include those of the orchestra!" Two anecdotes were told me of this extraordinary man, by my brother-in-law, John Pearson, Esq., the present Advocate-General of Bengal. Mr. Pearson was one of the party, when Porson made the following witty answer to Dr. Parr:-" A great difficulty, Mr. Porson," said the doctor, addressing the professor, after the discharge of a more than usually dense cloud of tobacco smoke :-" a very great difficulty thatthe existence of evil in the world.""Why, I must confess," replied the professor, after returning the puff, "I never could see the good of it." The other incident was related to Mr. Pearson by James Perry, the late able proprietor of the "Morning Chronicle:" it occurred at his own house. Many of my readers will recollect the memorable night on which William Pitt and his ingenious friend and jovial compotator, Harry Dundas, went into the House of Commons, in a condition usually described by the phrase of "being half seas over." The minister tried to rise, in order to try to speak, but was, very benevolently, pulled down by his neighbours. Harry, I believe, sat discreetly silent. Perry, on his return from the House of Commons, related the extraordinary scene to the Greek professor, then supping at his house. Porson was delighted with the recital; called for pen and ink, and, ere the lark sang at Heaven's gates," manufactured, with the aid of pipe and tankard, one hundred and one epigrams on the amusing subject. They were printed in succession in the " Morning Chronicle," and all were pregnant with more or less point and wit. I recollect only the following one : 66 Pitt.-I cannot see the Speaker, Hal, can you? Harry-Not see the Speaker? D-e I see two." (Mr. Warner was an intimate friend of Dr. Parr. The following letter of the doctor to Mr. Cottle, affords a complete picture of his mind and habits). Dear Mr. Cottle.-Mr. Warner will tell you of the blunder which I made with and which will throw me back a week. I shall still strive, strive, strive, to reach Bath on Monday se'nnight, and to reach it by five o'clock in the afternoon, so as to dine with you. And now, dear sir, I must desire you and Mrs. C. to attend to what I am going to say. Keep yourselves quite at ease; let me be quite at my own ease; and these two important ends are to be attained by your permitting me to take just the same food, and no other, which you are accustomed to take yourselves. Many people talk this; but I do really mean it: and indeed, my old pupil, you would make me wretched, very wretched, by admitting the slightest alteration in your way of living on my account. Believe me, this is the only way of making me comfortable; and it is the very best way in which you can show your regard for me. I certainly shall take the liberty of telling your good lady one or two luxuries to which I am addicted the first is a shoulder of mutton, not over-roasted nor under-roasted, and richly encrusted with flour and salt; the second is a plain suet-pudding; the third is a plain farmerly plumb-pudding; the fourth is a kind of high-festival dish, adapted to the stomach of a pampered priest, and consists in hot boiled lobsters, with a profusion of shrimp sauce; and the catalogue of dainties will be closed, with a request to be one day indulged with a cranberry-tart; and when I dine with my brother Warner, he is to treat with soles, which are excellent in your part of the world;-and I charge you, to charge him, to charge and I believe that Bath is the very last place in the world where I could be prevailed upon to mount a pulpit. If Fox, Pitt, and Burke were to employ their eloquence in English; if it were to be enforced by Cicero in Latin, and by Demosthenes in Greek; if Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus, assailed me with all the subtleties of their logic; if the pope of Rome, the patriarch of Constantinople, and the primates of England and Ireland, were to hold up the terrors of ecclesiastical authority; if the three furies were to try the force of their angry menace; if the three graces were to address me, with the soft and sweet allurements of persuasion; all these contrivances and efforts, conjointly and separately, would be insufficient to vanquish my reluctance to preach a sermon at Bath. I am an old-fashioned and long-winded preacher: the old would fall asleep; the young would titter; the middleaged would be listless and weary; and some witlings would scribble epigrams in your Bath newspapers upon the length, and the dulness, and pedantry of my discourse. Woe be to that crafty priest, Richard Warner, for drawing you into a snare. He knows my habitual unwillingness to preach, except in my own church; and he also knows my opinion about the popular pulpiteers in your town; and I desire you to bid him to prepare himself for a most tremendous castigation from me. Parr, contrary as it might seem to his general character, acknowledged, in a convivial moment, that he was extremely partial to bull-baiting; for which practice, he candidly confessed, he had ever a secret but unconquerable predilection. "You see," said he, pulling up his loose coat-sleeve above his elbow, and exposing his vast, muscular, and hirsute arm to the gaze of the company, and my favourite, to receive me in a plain way. Show me your faith by your deeds. Now, my dear Mr. Cottle, I am going to Bath, solely for the friendly purpose of shaking you once more by the hand before I die; and I do assure you, with my wonted sincerity, that, having such a purpose before me, I shall undertake my journey with great and peculiar satisfaction: and 1 beg leave to add, that Mrs. Parr, entertain- you see that I am a kind of taurine man, ing for you the same regard which I do, is and must, therefore, be naturally addicted extremely bent upon this my expedition, to the sport." A baiting had occurred at and would have accompanied me, if her Cambridge, during one of his latter visits to presence at Hatton had not been necessary the University. His anxiety to witness it to attend her only remaining daughter, who was uncontrollable; but, as his personal apexpects every hour to lie in. This is the pearance on the arena could not he thought plain truth. I am coming to see Mr. and of, he hired a garret near the place of exMrs. Cottle-I am not coming to diffuse my-hibition; disrobed himself of his academical self among the belles or the beaus; nor among the grandees; nor among the scholars of Bath. I must live quietly and privately; and Mr. W.'s very good sense will enable him to enter thoroughly into my views. Oh! he is a naughty varlet, and has secretly goaded you to employ your influence for carrying a point, of which he would himself have despaired. I never preach except at the call of duty; and that call I hear in my own parish church, and in the churches of neighbouring villages, when my clerical neighbours are ill, or when they go out for their amusement. But I preach volunteers neither in towns, nor cities, nor villages; dress; put a nightcap on his head in the lieu of his notorious wig; and thus disguised, enjoyed, from the elevated window, his favourite amusement in secrecy and solitude. NULLA NISI ARDUA VIRTUS. NOT without toil is Fame's bright palace won, EXTENT, POPULATION, REVENUE, AND DEBT, OF THE PRINCIPAL STATES IN EUROPE, 1829. CHANGES OF THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.† INDICATED BY THE TITLE-PAGES OF THEIR BOOKS. POOR Scott, the editor of the "London Magazine," who lost his life in a duel with Mr. Christie, has some entertaining obser vations, in his latter "Tour to Paris," on the fickleness of the Parisians, and the various changes that fickleness has produced in the inscriptions on public monuments, the decorations of public buildings, and so forth. He does not notice, however, the singular effects of the various changes of the French government, on the title-pages of French books. Perhaps a volume of dissertation on this subject would be less instructive This table is founded, as far as possible, upon official documents; and probably no individual can have enjoyed better sources of correct information than one who was sucessively minister of finance to the former King of Westphalia and the present sovereign of Wurtemberg. From the Spirit of Literature.-No. XV. than a look at a certain work, well known to those who take interest in Oriental literature, which is published in Paris, in occasional quarto volumes, at pretty distant intervals. The title-page of the first volume runs (literally translated) thus :— "Notices and Extracts from the Manuscripts of the King's Library, read at the Committee established by his Majesty, in the Royal Academy of Inscriptions and Polite Literature. Volume First. Paris. From the Royal Printing-office. M.D.CCLXXXVII." An ominous change appears in the title page of the fourth volume. "Notices and Extracts from the Manu scripts of the National Library. Read at the Committee established in the former Academy of Inscriptions and Polite Literature. Volume Fourth. Paris. From the Printing-office of the Republic. In the year 7." The Bourbons would hardly have been more surprised if, when the first volume was published, some magician had revealed volume four, than the early republicans to their astonished eyes the title-page of would have been to read that of vol. 8. "Notices and Extracts from the Manuscripts of the Imperial Library, and other Libraries. Published by the Institute of France. In continuation of the Notices and Extracts read at the Committee esblished in the Academy of Inscriptions and Polite Literature. Volume Eighth. Paris. From the Imperial Printing-office. M.D.CCCX." How different vol. 10! "Notices and Extracts from the Manuscripts of the King's Library, and other Libraries. Published by the Royal Institute of France. In continuation of the Notices and Extracts read at the Committee established in the Academy of Inscriptions and Polite Literature. Volume Tenth. Paris. From the Royal Printing-office. 1818." Such was also the title-page to the 11th volume, which was published no later than 1827, the Bourbons being much more sluggish, apparently, in the cause of Oriental literature than the republicans, who sent out two volumes in one year. But how will the title-page of vol. 12 be couched? Perhaps, very differently from that of vol. 13. However dynasties may rise and fall, it seems, nevertheless, certain that the imperturbable "Notices and Extracts" will advance in their course to delight the hearts of all true Orientalists. It should be mentioned that, in the first three volumes the title-pages are adorned with an emblematical device of intervening laurels, surmounted with a crown. Those of vols. 4, 5, 6, and 7, appear in all the nakedness of republican simplicity. Vols. 8 and 9 bear the imperial eagle: and vols. 10 and 11 the three lilies, surmounted with a crown. SIX WEEKS OF A NEW REIGN.+ THERE is no transformation in the whole of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" comparable to that which a man undergoes, who passes from the expectancy of a crown to the possession of it. Before he is a king, he challenges no more observation than the sun, so common-hackneyed in the eyes of men;" the moment he ascends a throne, he is the comet, at which the amazed vulgar gaze with mingled awe and astonishment. He no longer eats, or drinks, or walks, as he was wont; at least, it must be presumed so, because then, for the first time, during a life of more than threescore years, perhaps, circumstances are discovered connected with each of those operations deemed worthy of special record. Above all, the change wrought in the words he utters is most This article from Blackwood's Magazine (No. CLXXI.) is a curiosity in its way. remarkable, and resembles the gift bestowed by the good fairy upon some deserving little girl, whose name we really forget, so that whenever she opened her mouth to speak, nothing but pearls and diamonds fell from it. If such august personages were to reason upon their two states of being, their surprise must sometimes partake of that which was felt by Christophero Sly, when he had to forget he ever knew "Cicely Halket," and "old John Naps of Greece;" or ever said he would " present Marian Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot," at "the leet, because she brought stone jugs, and no sealed quarts." Somewhat of these strong contrasts may be found in every accession; but it is hardly possible for any monarch to present them in a more striking degree, than our beloved sovereign, William IV. The transformation seems to have been alike sudden and perfect. Sudden, because it took place in a few hours only (those which elapsed between going to bed on Friday night, June 25, as Duke of Clarence, and getting up at six o'clock the next morning, no longer Duke of Clarence, but King William); and perfect, because from that same moment it appears to have struck every one with a concurrent and unanimous conviction of its reality. We know what his royal highness was during the fifty years, or thereabouts, that his many princely virtues, his affable demeanour, and his intellectual qualities, attracted public attention; we might consequently give a shrewd guess as to what he would have continued to be, so long as he remained Duke of Clarence; but it was beyond all human calculation to foresee what William IV. was to prove. Nevertheless, although the fact be now indisputable, it is not a whit the less mysterious or incomprehensible; for it would be at once peevish and illiberal to call it delusion, or, with the poet, ascribe it to the influence of station : "Tis from high life high characters are drawn: More wise, more learn'd, more just, MORE EVERY THING!" their own spleen, "though it do split them," I most fervently hope and most dutifully pray. At the same time, as there is nothing which so surely tends to discomfit an enemy, as to fathom his plans and cripple his means, I shall avail myself of my knowledge of both, to throw a timely shield between our new king and his old friends. I have seen it stated, for example, in several of the daily papers, with a sort of insidious ostentation, and I have heard the circumstance animadverted upon in private society with fastidious reprobation, that the Fitzclarences, male and female, are obtruded upon public notice; that they are brought within the circle of the court; that Colonel Fitzclarence was despatched on a special mission to the continent;" that "the barony of De Lisle will be conferred on Mr. Sidney, son-in-law to his majesty;" that, "in a private interview with Captain Adolphus Fitzclarence of the royal navy, his majesty stated his intention of dining on board his ship" (the Pallas), adding, “here, my boy, is a 500l. note to defray your expenses;" that "Colonel Fitzclarence has been nominated by his majesty deputy ranger of Bushy Park;" that "his majesty, accompanied by the queen, Miss Fitzclarence, &c., left Frogmore, &c., in a pony phaeton ;" that "his majesty, when Duke of Clarence, often expressed his determination, if ever it were in his power, to bestow a peerage upon Colonel Fitzclarence," &c. &c. &c. Heaven knows whether any, or all, or none of these statements, be true: but the purpose for which they are so indefatigably made, is not only too obvious, but too successful. There are some who already talk of the immoralities of the reign of Charles II., when his natural children were elevated to the rank of peers, and whose descendants still sit in Parliament as hereditary legislators; and of the appointments, in the gift of the crown, which were lavished upon them. Others injuriously contrast the alleged conduct of his majesty with that of our late sovereign, who studiously abstained from parading his illegitimate offspring in the eyes of his subjects, though it is well known he never neglected his paternal duties towards them. These are among the mischievous consequences of assertions made by those who pretend to be his majesty's friends. I know it is mere hypocritical cant, overstrained prudery, in those who affect to be scandalized; and that nothing would be easier to prove the difference between Charles II. and his majesty in this respect, independently of the strong ground of defence which may be taken in reference to the parental affections of the latter, as compared with the profligate sensuality of the former. It is an old proverb, that " the king's chaff is better than other folk's corn." VOL. V. 2 N This may be true for aught I know; but it cannot be true that kings deal in nothing but chaff; and it is neither just nor politic, consequently, in his majesty's friends, to invent for his majesty such speeches as it is quite impossible that his majesty could have made. Is it to be supposed, for example, that when his majesty went down to Woolwich, to review the artillery and engineers, and happened to go into one of the rooms in the barracks, where a party of soldiers' wives were taking their tea, who were frightened out of their wits at the royal intrusion, he would, after calling to them in the kindest and most affable manner to remain, finish by observing, "that if there were no women, there could be no good soldiers!" It is not to the physical truth, or the philosophical acumen, of this assertion that I object. They are beyond all dispute. But will it be contended, that if his majesty designed to say something appropriate to the occasion, he would have baulked his own design by saying that which was absurdly inappropriate? Impossible! Again. When Sir John Sinclair was introduced to kiss hands at the first court held by his majesty (a few hours after his brother's death), it is pretended that he said to him, in the most emphatic manner, “Be assured, Sir John, I shall ever be friendly to the Land of Cakes and agriculture." I know there are some who affect to admire the frank, unceremonious simplicity of this style of address; and it is simple enough, I admit. But it is too far removed from that dignity which is associated with our ideas of a king, and therefore incompatible with the known character and habits of our beloved monarch. I would as soon believe, if Sir Watkin Williams Wynne, or Sir John Newport, had kissed hands, that his majesty would have said to the former," Be assured I shall ever be friendly to the Land of Leeks;" or to the latter, "Be assured I shall ever be friendly to the Land of Praties and Shillelahs." I am equally incredulous, thank God, and from the same loyal reasons, with regard to the statements, that our gracious monarch takes a walk by himself now and then, through the streets," attired in a black coat and white trowsers;" that he "prefers riding on the dicky of his carriage to boxing himself within;" that instead of signifying his royal commands, desiring the attendance of the friends whom he honours with his intimacy, he invites them after this fashion, “Gand dine with me to-day, if you have nothing better to do with yourself;" that he " chats with the guard in the stable-yard:" that when the loyal acclamations of his people are heard at his presence, he by no means whispers his acknowledgments;' " and that he wrote to Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, the Usher of the Black Rod, "Dear Sir Tom-I am ', come |