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a shoulder of mutton; but then you are not to forget the onion-sauce." I mention this to show, that Parr, though fond of good eating, was not an epicure; for a shoulder of mutton, with its perpetual adjunct, onion sauce, was for many years among his household divinities.

Mrs. Linley, several years after the death of her husband, was desirous of publishing a volume of the posthumcus music of that eminent composer. Sheridan undertook to procure the Prince of Wales's permission to dedicate it to his Royal Highness, at the same time promising to write the dedication himself. The subscription was filled, the engraving struck off; weeks and weeks glided away, and no dedication. Her perplexity was mentioned to Parr, who instantly dictated the following, at least as near as I can recollect it.

"To His Royal Highness George Prince of Wales, &c. &c.

"Sir, It is the natural wish of one, from whom death has taken the best and tenderest of friends, to seek a laudable solace of her sorrows, by carrying into effect the wishes, that lay the nearest to his heart, whilst living. It was one of the most cherished purposes of my deceased husband, to place this volume at the feet of your Royal Highness, whom he reverenced as the skilful judge, and loved as the munificent patron, of his favourite art. Under the authority of such an example, and the auspices of such a protection, may I be permitted to hope, that Music in this island will vindicate her rank, not merely among the idle amusements, which minister to our pleasures, but among the salutary influences, which soften and amend the heart? I have the honour to be, &c. &c.

M. LINLEY."

This dedication was not adopted; for not long after it had been sent to Mrs. Linley, Sheridan's arrived. Talking once with him on the subject of dedications in a friend's library, he desired me to take down the first volume of Burney's History of Music, and to read to him the dedication of that work to the Queen. "There," said he, "there is the true refinement of compliment without adulation. In the short compass of a few lines are comprised no small degree of the force, and nearly all the graces, and the harmonies of the English Language. But Burney did not write it. Johnson wrote it; and on this, as on other occasions, showed himself an accomplished courtier. Jemmy Boswell ought to have known that Johnson wrote it. I had it from good authority; besides it is Johnson's internally." It is singular that Boswell, who exerted so much industry in tracing all the papers of this kind which Johnson wrote for his friends, should have omitted this dedication. How truly Johnsonian is the following passage:

"The science of musical sounds has been depreciated as appealing only to the ear, and affording nothing more than a fugitive and temporary delight; but it may justly be considered as the art, which unites corporal with intellectual pleasure, by a species of enjoyment, which gratifies sense, without weakening reason; and which, therefore, the Great may cultivate without de- basement, and the Good may enjoy without depravation."

THE PAST.

THE Visions of the buried time come thronging dearer far
Than joys the present hour can give, than present objects are ;-
I love to dwell among their shades, unfolding to my view
The dreams of perish'd men and years, and by-gone glory too.
For though such retrospect is sad, it is a sadness sweet,
The forms of those whom we revere in inemory to greet,
Since nothing in this changing world is constant but decay,
And early flowers but bloom the first, to pass the first away!

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A YEAR IN HUNGARY.

A Tale founded in fact, and translated from the Spanish of the Rev. Joseph Blanco White.

In the season of youth, when the spirits mount like new wine into the head, the country in general disposes to a joyousness of feeling that overflows the whole heart; but in the soberer days of middle age the beauties of the rural scene produce a pleasure, which, in its outward effects, might almost be mistaken for melancholy.

Friends of my youth! (whithersoever the dreadful storm in which Spain has been sunk may have tossed you) Oh, if these lines should ever reach you, and recall the pleasant memory of the days in which, upon the banks of the Guadalquivir and the Manzanares, we dissipated in the delights of friendship, and of the fields, the bitter sense of our Country's slavery; know that at the end of many years, and in the repose of that period of life which borders on old age, and in the sobriety of that experience which narrows the range to the flights of hope,-your friend can never spend a spring-day upon the delightful banks of the Thames without mingling his tears with the remembrance of the companions of his youth. Why are they not here? I say within myselfwhy have not they too broken in time, as I have done, the political chains wherewith the name of country rivets them to a soil to which freedom of thought and of opinion are unknown? Alas! those chains

are doubled upon them by the generous hope of being of service to a people whom the poison of superstition has worked into delirium, and over whom ignorance and despotism lord it as they will. But where is the remedy for ills like those of Spain? Where is the probable cure for a superstition that has rooted itself there for ages?

I am giving, however, I am sensible, but a bad proof of the repose of which I spoke at first; but when a mournful idea suddenly presents itself to the mind, cold and rude of soul must that writer be, who through fear of a digression can forbear to give free course for a moment to the affections excited in his heart. As the story, moreover, which I am about to relate is of a melancholy nature, the mournful recollections which have visited me may serve, by the similarity of their tone, to prepare the ear, like a prelude in music, for what is to follow. Return we then to the banks of the Thames.

On a lovely spring-day, in which the earth appeared canopied with one of those delicious skies, which are occasionally seen in the uncertain climate of England, I felt disposed to make an excursion in the steamvessel, which at this season of the year daily ascends the river from the Tower of London as far as the beautiful town of Richmond. A light breeze from the South-west stirred the waters and the leaves with just the degree of motion necessary to dissipate the sense of that heavy stillness, which, by reason of the moisture wherewith the atmosphere abounds in calm and sunny days, hangs over the rural scene in England.

After I had waited for a while by the river-side, diverted by the bustling scene which the neighbourhood of London presents at all hours, I descried at a distance the moving column of smoke which indicated the approach of the vessel. In a short time the vessel itself appeared, cutting its way majestically through the water, and dashed on

all sides with the foam wrought by the wheels, that, like wings, bore it onward in its course. It looked, in short, more like a sea-monster moving itself according to its own pleasure, than like an inanimate machine that derived its impulse from the ingenuity of man.

I immediately got into a little boat, and rowed towards the vessel, which in a moment stopped its course, as though ready, of its own accord, to receive a fresh cargo. The entrance to the vessel, so commodious and secure, the convenient breadth of the deck, and the variety of passengers, some seated, others pacing up and down as in a large hall, and all well-dressed, all in good humour and all quiet, present to a person, new to such a scene, a picture of no slight interest. Nothing, however, can equal the beautiful variety which delights the eye, as the vessel during its course gradually leaves London in the distance. Indeed the sight of that city alone is sufficient to excite in the mind ideas without number, and strongly to affect the heart with every variety of feeling. What grandeur! what power! how many virtues and how many vices,-what an accumulation of pleasures, and what an overwhelming mass of sorrow and of pain, are contained in that sea of houses, of which I can now perceive but the shore!

The thread, however, of thoughts like these is broken, upon approaching the great bridge of Waterloo, to which Europe can present no equal. The imagination is astounded upon finding oneself cutting free way beneath its magnificent arches, through which the river smoothly passes; and in observing the massiveness of the structure, the size of the stones of grey granite with which it is built, and, above all, the appearance of lightness and facility of execution, in a work so solid and erected with such labour. The other bridges, particularly the iron bridge at Vauxhall, though they lose something of their effect, when seen after that of Waterloo, add nevertheless by their number and variety to the spectator's admiration.

Upon passing the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, which affords a magnificent asylum to soldiers worn out in their Country's service, the landscape assumes that mixed appearance of town and country, so peculiar to England. On each side of the river are scattered houses, and even small towns-small, I mean, in comparison with London: for Hammersmith would elsewhere be considered as a town of the first rate. Many are the country residences belonging to the higher ranks which ornament the banks of the noble river, near which they stand, and which, as it gradually becomes shallower, gains in repose and beauty what it loses in rapidity. The Royal Gardens of Kew, the elegant stone-bridge which takes its name from the town near which those gardens are situated, the edifices which rise here and there in every direction, and appear to move with the boat itself, as you glide along these with the number of trees, particularly willows, which line the banks, and give to the transparent waters of the river an emerald green of the purest tint, transport the imagination into a sort of fairyland, surpassing the boldest flights of its creative power. But who can describe the feelings occasioned in the midst of such a scene by a band of music, which breaks upon the ear in sounds that in the free expanse of air lose all their roughness and dissonance of tone? A complete and well-regulated orchestra will, no doubt, give to those who are fond of music a pleasure of a higher description-one more closely connected

with the understanding, and more deeply tinted with the strong colouring of the passions; but it will aspire in vain to excite the lively yet gentle transport which the wandering vibrations of a harp, accompanied by three or four wind instruments, produce beneath a calm sky, hung with light clouds, and in a vessel, which, moving without sail or oar, glides over a thousand images of trees, houses, clouds, and sun, that dance before the eye, as pictured in the bottom of the stream.

I had remained for some time rapt in silent enjoyment of the scene before me, when I perceived amongst the passengers an acquaintance, who, recognizing me almost at the same moment, advanced towards me. He was an officer, who having served, though a foreigner, in the English army during several long campaigns, and with much honour, had risen in it by his merit to a high rank. Spaniards, who are accustomed to the constant use of uniforms and external marks of distinction, will feel surprised that an officer of such high rank should be so confounded with the passengers in a boat, as to remain for some time without exciting any attention; but they must be informed that the custom of England allows to no class of its people the odious affectation of appearing in public with any distinction of dress, except on court-days when a levee or drawing-room is held at the King's palace, or when officers are on duty.

My acquaintance (for our intercourse had hitherto been too slight to make us friends) seated himself beside me, and we passed a considerable part of the day in very agreeable conversation. Upon our return home, we had scarcely got into the boat, when he informed me that, as his house was situated so near the river and the metropolis, it would give him great pleasure if I would land with him in his neighbourhood, and take my tea with him. I readily accepted the invitation, and before sunset found myself in a house adorned with a taste free from ostentation; the asylum, in fact, in which the good general, depressed by infirmities contracted in his campaigns more than by years, passed in honourable repose the evening of his days. We seated ourselves at once in the principal room, having no compliments to pay at our entrance, for my host, who was a bachelor, and without relatives in England, lived by himself. The room, which was a large one, was ornamented with pictures and with a variety of curiosities, of which many had been made by the general himself,--a man of talent and ingenuity. I found, too, that he was a lover of music,—a circumstance which quickly contributed to confirm our intimacy: for having myself been early initiated in the mysteries of that enchanting art, I have always found a sort of freemasonry to prevail amongst those who are really fond of it. I amused myself for a time in gazing at the pictures, at plans of fortifications, of which I understood nothing, and at sabres and insignias of honour gained in the field of battle, which made my heart beat within me. But what completely riveted my attention was a glass frame, containing a sort of map in relievo of houses, mountains, and woods. I admired the dexterity with which it was contrived, and the agreeable effect produced by the illusion: for, with a little help from the imagination, one might suppose oneself on the top of a high hill, and from thence discovering afar off the scene marked out by the map, and reduced by distance to the size in which it was there represented.

The ground thus represented might be about a league in circum

ference. In the centre was a spacious country-house, with a small lake at the foot of the eminence upon which the house was built. Hills rose in every direction, some of them crowned with wood. The whole, in short, had the appearance of a valley belonging to some mountainous country,

When my friend (for, in consequence of the increase of our mutual regard, that title may now be used without impropriety) perceived how much I was interested in the rural scene before me, he said to me,"If you knew the history of that picture, you would regard it, I think, with still deeper interest." I replied, that "I should be glad to know the history to which he alluded." The General answered," Though it may appear affectation in an old man to talk of the days of his early love, I will relate it to you. Indeed, so many years are now passed, and misfortune has so completely destroyed every trace of the family which inhabited that house, that I can feel no objection to tell you the history of the mournful adventure which binds my heart to the spot which you have been contemplating. Be seated, therefore, and now listen to The Story of a Year in Hungary.'

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My father, who was a major in the Austrian service, took me with him, when only six years old, to Malines. The archbishop of that city, the Count of F- , seeing me there at different times, took a fancy to me, and offered to send me to Vienna to be educated in the house of his sister, the Countess of S-, until there should be a vacancy for me in the Military Academy. My father joyfully accepted the proposal, knowing that under such auspices I could not fail to rise in the profession. I was accordingly taken to Vienna, where I was brought up with the nephew of the Archbishop; who, together with his relations, all persons of great influence, showed me the strongest marks of affection, and promoted to the utmost my education at the academy.

"At the time when I held only the rank of a lieutenant, I was selected by the Government for the purpose of making some trigonometrical surveys in Hungary. I set out accordingly, with an escort of soldiers, appointed for the management of the mathematical instruments. On the road I found myself treated like a prince by all the post-masters, who, at the very sound of the name of an officer commissioned by the Court, will almost lick the ground to serve him. No recommendation, however, of this kind is required to induce the upper classes of the country to give an officer a frank and hospitable reception. The hospitality, indeed, which reigns through Hungary, together with the primitive simplicity and purity of manners, which at the period I speak of prevailed amongst the females of the country, will fully appear in the course of my narrative. It must be observed, however, at the same time, that amongst the men a want of knowledge and refinement was very perceptible, in consequence of the retirement in which, from the situation of the country, the greatest part of their lives was passed. The variety of languages, moreover, which separates the inhabitants from each other, may have contributed to check the progress of civilization. Not more than a third part of the population of the country speak the Hungarian language: the rest use either the German or the Illyrian. Amongst those who have any tincture of education, Latin is very commonly spoken; so that a foreigner, accustomed to the fami

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