Which through the air in circling eddies play, The few hours we remained in this situation were passed in unbroken silence; every one was occupied with his own reflections, as if the reign of terror for bad communication. Its fury spent itself, like the storms of ocean, in sudden lulls and squalls; but it was not until the third or fourth interval that our fears were sufficiently conquered to address each other; nor shall I soon lose the recollection of the impressive manner in which that was done. "Allah kereem !" exclaimed the poor Bedouin, although habit had familiarized him with these resistless blasts. "Allah kereen!" repeated the Egyptians, with terrified sublimity; and both my servant and myself, as if by instinct, joined in the general exclamation. The bold imagery of the Eastern poets, describing the Deity as avenging in his anger, and terrible in his wrath, riding upon the wings of the wind, and breathing his fury in the storm, must have been inspired by scenes like these. It was now past sunset, and neither of us had yet broken our fast for the day; even the consoling pipe could not be lighted in the hurricane; and it was in vain to think of remaining in our present station, while the hope of finding some bush for shelter remained. We remounted, therefore, and departed; the young moon afforded us only a faint light, and all traces of the common road were completely obliterated; the stars were not even visible through so disturbed an atmosphere, and my compass was our only guide. The Arabs knew a spot near Sheick Amidid, where banks and trees were to be found; and confiding in my direction for the course thither, we resumed our journey. After a silent ride of five tedious hours this garden of repose appeared in sight; and bleak and barren as it was, in truth, fatigue and apprehension gave it the charms of Eden. There we alighted, fed our weary animals, and, like sailors escaped from shipwreck, regaled in that delight ful consciousness of security, which is known only in the safety that succeeds to danger. Extracted from the original MS. Journal of Mr. Buckingham.-London Weekly Review. double letter from Northamptonshire" excite a deeper and more awful sensation than the arrival of this wellknown invitation produces in my bosom, recurring, as it does, with the punctuality of a tailor's bill at Christmas. Imagine, my dear reader, imagine the mere horror of leaving town; the dreary hoarseness of the mail horn, the melancholy annunciation that "all's right," the pattering of the rain against the windows, with that sinking of the heart which follows the disappearance of the last gaslight! There is something quite awful in that most typical leave-taking with cheerfulness and civilization; and if it were not that I sleep in a coach like a top, I verily believe that I should have often got out at Barnet, or, at all events, should not have made up my mind to encounter the Downs of Dunstable. When first I embarked on one of these expeditions, I was as ignorant as any other native of the ban lieu of Bow bell. Every thing at starting was a source of delight: every duck-pond was a lake, and all the little cabbage-gardens of the hedge alehouses where we stopped to water the horses, were as many paradises. The hens and chickens, and pigs, were all matters of endless amusement, and the cock turkey employed my imagination during a whole morning, by his striking resemblance to a lord mayor. Picking my own gooseberries was enchanting, till my fingers, covered with scratches and dripping with blood, reminded me of the superior com, fort of buying them out of a pint pewter pot. Catching my own fish was delight. ful till the fish refused to take the hook, and my own nose did not; and above all things, doing nothing from morning till night but walk about, was pleasurable, until I discovered that my walks were without an object. This discovery was not long in making; I soon found out that nothing more closely resembles one green field than another; that rivers are all twin brothers; and that mountains possess the most astonishing family like. ness; that inanimate objects, however beautiful, like a French lady's husband, 66 ne savent pas remplir l'ame ;" and that the country bumpkins are at once less beautiful, and not more interesting. The first thing that convinced me that I was not singular in this disgust, but that the country really affords but a miserable sort of existence, was the frequency of the meals, and the anxiety with which the hour of their arrival is anticipated. Eating in the country is the business of every one in the house, and “is dinner almost ready ?" is a question repeated in as many different keys as was Sterne's never-to-be-forgotten "Alas! poor Yorick." If it were not for luncheon, more especially, time itself would be lost in eternity. Why else do the ladies tiredown their four stout coach-horses, in daily visits to their neighbours, which have no other discoverable motive but the cold meat and remainder of yesterday's bottle of sherry. Then, by the by, when the hour of eating does come, how inferior is the best-supplied country table, to that which is furnished from Leadenhall market! Your fish, but don't mention that. If you live on the coast, you have the pleasure of seeing delicious turbots and mackerel with the hues of the rainbow, packed up at your very door and sent to town; and if your residence be inland, you may indulge in the luxuries of muddy tench and eels, with now and then, for a change, a stale lobster or a stinking barrel of oysters, per coach from London. Then what are the best desserts and ices, which the country affords, to those of Gunter? or the best country inn to the London tavern? And it is notorious that a real cook will not live permanently out of town, if you would give him the pay of a lieutenant-general. The country, we are told, is the place for contemplative minds, for sentimentalists, and those to whom their own ideas are a sufficient world, and who find in the presence of nature themes for endless reflection, and ever new delight. The man who candidly admits his preference for a sea-coal fire, and the society of cultivated companions, is reproached as a shallow-pated blockhead, who cannot bear to be alone, nor exist without a ball or a play. You may tell this to the marines, if you will, but I know full well that there never was a proposition more unfounded. In the first place, the country stands convicted of irretrievable dulness from the mere fact that every one hurries to London during the finest months of the year, when an out-of-door life is alone enjoyable, and when nature offers in her fondest prodigality, sights, sounds, and odours to delight the senses, and intoxicate the imagination. Then it is, if ever, that the country possesses an especial charm. Yet ask the warmest devotee of rural life, which is the pleasantest time of the year, and he will tell you the shooting and hunting season. So then the truth comes out at last that the contemplative inan, the sentimentalist, the communer with the Deity rendered visible in his works, leaves the fade amusements of the town, to employ his superior intellect, his awfully solemn emotions, in worrying hares, foundering horses, and bringing murder and carnage to the haunts of the partridge; that animal of all others claiming our tenderest sympathies, as the most closely shadowing forth in its habits, domestic affection and human society. Without these innocent amusements, the country gentleman is a man of ennui, and all the charms of summer 66 as tedi. ous as a twice-told tale." Surely it is no arrogance to say that the man whose soul is filled and saturated with field sports, is a man "of very little soul indeed." and in the scale of beings not much more elevated than his own pointers. Oh! but then you forget husbandry, gardening, natural history, study, and a thousand other agreeable pastimes of a country life :-not in the least. Husbandry (of course not meaning the trade of agriculture, but gentlemen farming, as it is called) is one of the idlest of all men's methods of killing time. If practised for gain, it is a sordid and unworthy occupation of a gentleman's hours, defiling the mind as it does the person, and degrading him to the level of a ploughboy. If practised at a loss, and as a mere pastime, it is a shameful waste of the powers of the soil, in a country which does not produce sufficient food for its own population. The notion of gentlemen's agriculture being beneficial to the community in the way of experiment, is altogether a sham plea. The real farmer, who lives by his labour, alone makes useful experiments, because he alone undertakes them at a heavy personal risk. Gentleman-farming is the refuge of those who can neither think nor read: and who prefer doing mischief, and injuring their property, to enduring the load of an existence which they know not how to enjoy. As for gardening, there is something, I grant, in that. Of all the modes of passing the heavy hours of a country life, gardening is certainly the most interesting and agreeable. Yet the story of our first parents exemplifies how little it is to be depended upon as a resource against ennui. Adam had never been introduced at Crockford's, nor Eve admitted at Almack's; yet amidst all this ignorance of life, they fell, notwithstanding that they cultivated the finest garden of which history makes mention. Besides, the florist may have, if he chose, a hundred times more pleasure in London, than can be obtained in the country. The productions of every clime are there laid at his feet, collected within the small space of a nursery ground; and there is scarcely a hundred square yards in the suburbs of the metropolis, without its specimens of rarities, any one of which the rich country gardener might be proud to possess. Then as the labour and difficulty of rearing a plant to a healthy maturity, are far greater in the smoke of London, there is proportionably a greater excite ment in the process; and a few hyacinths in glasses over a metropolitan chimneypiece, may be pitted against the finest bed of carnations that the country ever produced. Natural history, again, as it is generally pursued, what is it but a most pompous inanity; a substitution of sounds of ideas, of nomenclature for knowledge? With the exception of a very few men of real science, almost uniformly inhabiting great cities, your observers of the loves of the cockchafers, the Paul Prys into the mysteries of the cryptogameic hymen, are for the most part the heaviest mortals that breathe. Aye, but what say you to books? Why, truly, I say that you may read books in the country as well as in town,-if you can get them to read; but even when that is the case, I do not see why a man should be obliged to go into banishment for the sake of reading, while he may do it with much less abstraction in a two-pair of stairs back lodging in Lincoln's-inn or the Temple. There is one conclusive answer to all the preceding argument of the intellectuality of a close intercourse with Nature. Pray, sir, did you ever pass an evening with a knot of mere country gentlemen? because, if not, I have; and I promise you, a greater set of bores " my conversation never coped withal." Their talk is ever of bullocks, and dogs, of grandjury jobs, of poachers, of impossible Munchausen leaps, and shots by rural parsons and squires, of election squabbies, and of all the personalities, births, deaths, and marriages, disputes for precedence, and warnings off preserves, for ten miles round. A stranger who drops into such a company, is as completely thrown out of all conversation or understanding, as a New Zealander at a lecture on the atomic theory, or a man of sense at the readings of the Royal Literary Society. How wearisome existence really is, to these unfortunates, may be seen, in the dullness of their houses, in the heaviness of their looks, in their early going to bed, and their "sleepings on benches in the afternoon:" to say nothing of the relief they experience from two sermons, and an evening lecture on Sundays, with the long commentary on their accompanying events. "Mr. A. sat in the Q's pew; I wonder what that means.". The W's are all in deep mourning; another legacy, no doubt!"-" Doubletext has preached that sermon till I am tired of hearing it. It has served for a charity sermon, a funeral, and a general fast, with the sole alteration of the citation from scripture. That slut Sally Seagrim is again with- But enough. If this is intellectual life, give me a city feast, or a meeting of creditors. It was observed in France, that a nobleman could not spend six months on his estate, without losing much of the polish and refinement of the court; and I solemnly declare, that when my neighbours, old Cash and his wife and daughters, return from their trip to Worthing, (it is not altogether so bad with Brighton,) they seem to be quite another sort of creatures. Not a trace of the beaux esprits of Finsbury remains on their persons. Their ideas are as sun-burnt as their faces; and I should not be surprised to hear of their being beset by the pickpockets in Fleet-street, as so many country puts. What can be more conclusive against a country life, than the pains universally taken to make all the summer retreats of our banished citizens as like the town as possible, and to banish by every imaginable device, all chance of an intrusion of rural ideas? Go to Cheltenham and Leamington, to Brighton or Margate, no two peas are more alike, than these are to London. There you will find balls, promenades, theatres; and hackney-coaches and pastry-cooks, and methodist meetings, and jewellers, and news-rooms, and hair dressers; and I am heartily convinced, that ere long we shall hear even of a stock exchange. If this does not convince, nothing on earth will. In leaving London, country is the last thing folks think about. Cœlum non animum mutant. By a sort of common consent, while the common folks are thus imitating the capital, the Londoners are building London out of town. In a short time we shall see these extremes, like most others, meet. The whole island will be covered with dingy bricks and mortar, till not a green field will be left; and the landed interest will be driven to confine their efforts at legislation to the protection of their mignonette pots, ana the preservation of the sparrows on their chimney tops. A consummation, 1 say, most devoutly to be wished; and the sooner it is completed, the better I shall like it. Neither is this, after all, so selfish a wish. Every one to his liking, say I: but if, after the perusal of this paper, there should yet remain any advocates for a country life, can't they go to Switzerland, and pass their summers in making a pathway over Mont Blanc, and scribbling nonsense in the inkeeper's police books? or if they are tired of that, there is very picturesque scenery in New South Wales.-New Monthly Magazine. The Selector; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS. DIBDIN'S INTERVIEW WITH THE MARGATE MANAGER. "YOUNG DIBDIN" had selected Margate for the scene of his first dramatic attempt; and having a letter from Booth, of Covent-garden, he presented himself to the manager, whom he found on the stage alone, "a very comical, good-natured looking man, in a jacket and trousers, busily employed in painting a scene to he exhibited that evening in Mrs. Inchbald's new play of Such Things Are.' I presented him the already opened letter, which he graciously took with one hand, and a pretty ample pinch of snuff with the other; and having glanced his eye over the billet, he said I'm sorry, my son!' (his usual address to all his younger actors) very sorry, my son! that Booth did not write to me before he put you to the trouble of a journey; it so happens, we are full, very full, full to an overflow, behind the scenes; and I would to Heaven I could say we were ever so before the curtain! What would you have me do, sir?' I asked. The best you possibly can, my son! And what is that, sir?' I never give advice, and don't, in future, mean to take it; look at that scene, my son! I began it yesterday at rehearsal-the actors crowded round each advised me how to improve it-I bowed to every opinion, adopted every hint; I had begun it as a grove; and if you'll have the goodness to look at it now, you'll find it is a street.' " 6 Reminiscences of Thomas Dibdin. A "LADY" MANAGER. THE following little sketch of a most eccentric personage-Mrs. Baker, of the Canterbury, Rochester, Tunbridge Wells, Maidstone, Faversham, and other theatres, and to which company Dibdin en gaged himself in his early days, is amusing and characteristic :— Mrs. Baker, on my first announcing my name in her presence, asked, without waiting a reply, whether I was not very young on the stage, whether I had got a lodging, and whether, after my journey, I did not want some money; adding, with her usual rapidity of utterance, “I am sure you do, and I won't have my young men get in debt in the town; here is a week's salary in advance, all in silver: show the Deal people a little of this, and they will be sure to be civil to you in hopes of seeing the rest of it.”—*' This good lady, who read but little, and had learned no more of writing than to sign her name, had been left a widow without any resources but her own praiseworthy (and I am happy to add, profitable) stock of industry; she was at this time beginning to realize the very considerable property she since died possessed of.— * and Melpomene went every morning to The indefatigable priestess of Thalia market, and kept the box-book, on which always lay a massy silver inkstand, which, with a superb pair of silver trumpets, several cups, tankards, and candlesticks of the same pure metal, it was the lady's honest pride to say she had paid for with her own hard earnings; she next manu factured the daily play-bill, by the help of scissors, needle, thread, and a collection of old bills; cutting a play from one, an interlude from another, a farce from a third, and sewed them neatly together; and thus precluded the necessity of pen and ink, except where the name of a former actor was to make way for a successor, and then a blank was left for the first performer who happened to call in, and who could write, to fill up. A sort of levee for those of her establishment who had business with her, while others were rehearsing on the stage, (for her dwelling was generally in the theatre,) filled up the remainder of the morning. Her family, consisting of a son, two daughters, (one of the young ladies being the Siddons and Jordan, and the other the Crouch and Billington of the company,) together with her sister, and Mr. Gardner the manager, and sometimes a favourite actress or actor, were added to the dinner party, which no sooner separated, than Mrs. B. prepared for the important five hours' station of money-taker at box, pit, and gallery doors, which she very cleverly united in one careful focus, and saved by it as much money in her lifetime as I lost at the Surrey theatre in six or seven years. When the curtain dropped, she immediately retired to her bed-chamber, with the receipts of the evening in a large front pocket, leaving always a supper-table substantially covered for the rest of the family. Twice a week, when the theatre was not open, a pleasant little tea and card-party, concluding at an early hour, filled up the time, which, on other evenings, was allotted to the business of the theatre. When Mrs. Baker (who had many years previously only employed actors and actresses of cherry-wood, holly, oak, or ebony, and dressed and undressed both ladies and gentlemen herself,) first engaged a living company, she not only used to beat the drum behind the scenes, in Richard, and other martial plays, but was occasionally her own prompter, or rather that of her actors. As has before been hinted, her practice in reading had not been very extensive; and one evening, when her manager, Mr. Gardner, was playing Gradus, in the farce of "Who's the Dupe," and imposing on Old Doiley, by affecting to speak Greek, his memory unfortunately failed him, and he cast an anxious eye towards the prompteress for assistance. Mrs. B. having never met with so many syllables combined in one word, or so many such words in one page as the fictitious Greek afforded, was puzzled, and hesitated a moment; when Gardner's distress increasing by the delay, he rather angrily, in a loud whisper, exclaimed, "Give me the word, madam.' The lady replied, "It's a hard word, Jem."" Then give me the next. "That's harder.". "The next ?". "Harder still." Gardner became furious; and the manageress, no less so, threw the book on the stage, and left it saying, "There, now you have 'em all, you may take your choice." * * * I remember one very crowded night, patronised by a royal duke at TunbridgeWells, when Mrs. Baker was taking money for three doors at once,-her anxiety, and very proper tact, led her, while receiving cash from one customer, to keep an eye in perspective on the next, to save time; as thus:-" Little girl! get, your money all ready while this gentleman pays. My lord! I'm sure your lordship has silver; and let that little bay go in while I give his lordship change.-Shan't count after your ladyship.-Here comes the duke make haste! His Royal Highness will please to get his ticket ready while my lady-now, sir! now, your Royal Highness !"-"O dear, Mrs. Baker! I've left my ticket in another coat pocket." "To be sure you have! take your Royal Highness's word; let his Royal Highness pass: his Royal Highness has left his ticket in his other coat pocket." Eclats de rire followed; and I believe the rank and fashion of the evening found more entertainment in the lobby than from the stage." AN IRISH DUEL.. * * Ibid. AT an election for Queen's County, between General Walsh and Mr. Warburton, of Garryhinch, about the year 1783, took place the most curious duel of any which have occurred within my recollection. A Mr. Frank Skelton, a bois terous, joking, fat young fellow-was prevailed on, much against his grain, to challenge the exciseman of the town for running the butt-end of a horsewhip down his throat the night before, whilst he lay drunk and sleeping with his mouth open. The exciseman insisted that snoring at a dinner-table was a personal offence to every gentleman in company, and would therefore make no apology. Frank, though he had been nearly choked, was very reluctant to fight; he said, "he was sure to die if he did, as the exciseman could snuff a candle with his pistol-ball; and as he himself was as big as a hundred dozen of candles, what chance could he have?" We told him jocosely, to give the exciseman no time to take aim at him, by which means he might perhaps hit his adversary first, and thus survive the contest. He seemed somewhat encouraged and consoled by the hint, and most strictly did he adhere to it. Hundreds of the town's-people went to see the fight on the green of Maryborough. The ground was regularly measured, and the friends of each party pitched a ragged tent on the green, where whiskey and salt beef were consumed in abundance. Skelton having taken his ground, and at the same time two heavy drams from a bottle his foster-brother had brought, appeared quite stout till he saw the balls entering the mouths of the exciseman's pistols, which shone as bright as silver, and were nearly as long as fusils. This vision made a palpable alteration in Skelton's sentiments; he changed colour, and looked about him as if he wanted some assistance. However, their seconds, who were of the same rank and description, handed to each party his case of pistols, and halfbellowed to them, " blaze away, boys!" Skelton now recollected his instructions, and lost no time; he cocked both his pistols at once; and as the exciseman was deliberately and most scientifically coming to his "dead level," as he called it, Skelton let fly. "Holloa!" said the exciseman, dropping his level," I'm battered, by Jasus!" "The devil's cure to you!" said Skelton, instantly firing his second pistol. One of the exciseman's legs then gave way, and down he came on his knee, exclaiming, "Holloa! holloa! you bloodthirsty villain! do you want to take my life ?" 66 Why, to be sure I do!" said Skel ton. "Ha! ha have I stiffened you, my lad ?" Wisely judging, however, that if he staid till the exciseman reco vered his legs, he might have a couple of shots to stand, he wheeled about, took to his heels, and got away as fast as possible. |