The old man's look grew stern and sterner,
The maiden seemed to swoon:

"So ho!" thought I, "'t is time to spurn herDoes she think me such a spoon?

Good bye-good bye-both child and parent, Your cash is gone; and I

To nothing being heir-apparent,

Will wifeless live and die !"

WILLIS'S PENCILLINGS.*

if

any body There is not

THIS is really and truly, a goose of a book—or, wishes the idiom to be changed, a book of a goose. a single idea in it, from the first page to the last, beyond what might germinate in the brain of a washerwoman. Willis tells us that he was an attaché to some American embassy; and, for any thing we know to the contrary-being perfectly ignorant of what are the materials composing the lower, or, indeed, the higher orders of American diplomacy-he may in this instance have spoken the truth. If it be the case, we are happy to find that

Pencillings by the Way. By N. P. Willis, Esq., Author of "Melanie," the "Slingsby Papers," &c. 3 vols. London, 1835. Macrone. [This critique, too entirely in Maginn's most reckless and bitter vein to be omitted here, appeared in Fraser for February, 1836. In conjunction with Lockhart's scathing article in the Quarterly, it did serious injury to Mr. Willis's very amusing book. It appears, on his own showing, that Mr. Willis visited only at Gore House and Gordon Castle (the respective residences of the demirep Countess of Blessington and that hearty old gentleman the Duke of Gordon). Had his acquaintance been with a score, instead of a brace of the British nobility, we probably should have had almost a library of lively chit-chat about them!-M.]

†The last number of the Metropolitan Magazine throws some light on the business.

66

Although we are well acquainted with the birth, parentage, and history of Mr. Willis, previous to his making his continental tour, we will pass them over in silence; and we think that Mr. Willis will acknowledge that we are generous in so doing. Mr. Willis shall first make his appearance as an attaché to the American Legation at Paris. And here we must tell our friends in America, that they must be more circumspect on this point. Letters of recommendation are certainly necessary to procure admission into the best English society; for there is one inconvenience attending a democratic form of government, which is, that where all assume equality, it is not easy to

the lickspittle spirit of the red-tape school-the school of lickspittleism all over the world-breaks out so gloriously in his very first volume (p. 208), as to make him declare the man on whose patronage he depended for his position, General Jackson, to be superior to any monarch of Europe he (Willis) had ever seen. Such is the true tact of all attachés; and it will be, of course, swallowed by that most open-throated of flummery gulpers, old Hickory. But if the "grey old chieftain," as he is called in these foolish books, be deprived of his presidential chair, and of political influence in the States, at the next election, we are tolerably sure that the freespoken penciller will be prepared to denounce him as a mixture of the blusterer and the sneak, with as much readiness know who people are: but the American government have committed a very great error in allowing the travelling part of their community to hoist what in England would be considered as false colors. We presume that this mistake arises from their form of government, which very much affects opinions upon certain points. In England, being attached to an embassy implies that the parties so employed are of high connexion, or of acknowledged talent. The very circumstance, therefore, of presenting your card with attaché engraved on it, is sufficient, in England, to serve as a passport to the highest circles. Now, with the Americans the case is very different; they have their real attachés, who receive the salary and perform the duty. Washington Irving was one in this country; and every one who was acquainted with him is ready to acknowledge that, in every point, no better selection could have been made. But the American government allows what may be termed spurious attachés; that is the permission to their countrymen so to call themsclves, for the 'convenience of travelling.' This is the American phrase used; and, to give the English reader some idea of the carelessness with which these passports to society have been granted, we are credibly informed that Mr. M'Lean, the former American ambassador at Paris, had granted not less than twenty-five to different persons. The French authorities took umbrage at this, and as all the attachés of every description were considered as dismissed when the ambassador was recalled, his successor, Mr. Livingston, has been much more particular. Mr. Willis, however, obtained a renewal of his, for the convenience of travel. But we again repeat, that this system is unfair. The old world is left to suppose that Mr. Willis, who presents his flourishing card, is a person selected by the American government for his abilities or consequence in their country, who is receiving their pay, and is intrusted with diplomatic secrets, when, in fact, he is only a traveller, paying his own way by his Pencillings on the Way in the New York Mirror."

Mr. Willis has caught a Tartar in Marryat; but we do not think the author of Peter Simple and Jacob Faithful should have troubled his head about such small deer.

as is at present daily done by the liberal journals of the liberal Louis Philippe.

Two and a half more useless volumes than the opening portions of Willis's work can not be conceived. The most commonplace road-book has told us every thing of the picture-galleries in Italy, the wonders of Pompeii, the glories of Naples, the splendors of Constantinople, the cafes of the various towns of the Continent, the Simplon, the Domo D'Ossola, &c. &c.; and all these hacked and hashed matters of all manner and kinds of tourists, are here again narrated in a style as creeping as a guide-book, and, at the same time, as affected as that of a namby-pamby writer in twaddling albums, kept by the mustachoed and strong-smelling widows or bony matrons of Portland Place or Curry Row. Pleasant it is to know that Bonconvento is "the place where Henry VII. of Germany (not of England, be it observed) was poisoned by a monk, on his way to Rome" (vol. i. p. 47)—that the ancient Volscinium was the capital of the Volscians (p. 49) — that Montefiascone contains the epitaph of Est, Est, Est—that the tomb of Nero is one side of the road before crossing the Tiber-that Cicero arrested the Catilinarian conspirators on the Pons Æmilius on their way to join Catiline-that Constantine saw his famous vision on the same spot-that- And so forth, through page after page of wearisome drivelling

"Nota magis nulli domus."

We have had all these things told us over and over again. We have had every picture described, every museum catalogued, every point of scenery sketched every spot where famous or remarkable deed was done depicted, long before Willis was born, in all the countries where his pedlar course was cast, by poets, by sages, by critics, by scholars-by men of genius, of taste, of learning, of research. His chambermaid gabble is tedious to the last degree. It has not even the piquancy of personal adventure to relieve it. He appears to have shown off as a ninny of the first magnitude throughout all his tour, and to have been treated accordingly. We request any reader who has the patience. nay, we request Willis himselfto count up how often he has used the words "noble” and “beautiful," as applied to what he has seen, and to wonder at his utter sum

phishness. There are two ways in which egregious folly may be displayed. One is, that of contemning what all the world admires, or passing over with lacklustre eye what rivets the glance of genius. The other, equally odious, is the affectation of being penetrated with admiration of what are long recognized as productions of art or nature worthy of worship; and worshiping them, accordingly, with an idolatry as stupid and unreasoning as that which old Polonius affects for the vagaries of Hamlet when depicting the appearances of the clouds. Look, for instance, in Willis's second volume (p. 12, &c.), at the critiques on the pictures of Guido, Giorgione, Correggio, &c., in the Leuchstenstein gallery. They are extolled in a trumpery swell of penny-trumpet eloquence as the finest things in the world-but so extolled as to prove that the writer had never bestowed more than a cursory survey on the most brilliant among them. "Alike to him is time and tide❞—there hangs a picture, said by the catalogue to be painted by Correggio, and it is noble, beautiful, and so forth. He would have said the same if it had been executed by West. He honestly confesses that he was heartily tired of looking over galleries of pictures—the foolish fellow never seems to have dreamt that time, study, knowledge, patience, are requisite for the due understanding of any one of those famous pictures to which he shouts "Bravo!" with a bray as void of sense as the ejaculation of a jackass. The jackass, in fact, is the superior animal, because his bray is elicited in general by something that calls forth his appetites or instincts. Willis's bray is that of nothing better than mere affectation a paltry parody on the musical intonation of

the hero of Peter Bell. Enough of this:

We leave all foreign lands alone,
And turn our eyes upon our own.

About two-thirds of the third volume relate to the doings and seeings of Willis in England. The Quarterly has already done justice to this part of the performance, and Willis is mortified at soul. Sir Fretful Plagiary was never more serene under infliction.