maidens of a certain age, whose hopes of connubial felicity are not yet extinct; we mean, kind reader, the perruques, formerly called wigs. After seeing what is displayed here, and in a proper spirit of encouragement to that worthy body of industrials called garçons perruquiers, we would propose had we a seat in the legislative chamber-that all persons showing a bald pate or gray hairs, should in future be clapped up in the prefecture of police, and forthwith condemned as disaffected to the capital interest of the country. And, indeed, after looking at the phalanx of corset-manufacturers, or, as we vulgarly call them in England, stay-makers, who have taken up a formidable position in this gallery, we would also be particularly severe, if we could ever be so to the fair sex, against all ladies présuming henceforth to exceed from eight to twelve inches in diame. ter at the waist. No husband should take his wife down this part of the gallery, for, if he does, to a dead certainty he will have an extra stay-maker's bill in his pocket-book before the year is out. All Englishmen, and especially lovers of field sports, will have a high treat in examining the gunsmiths' stalls that stand at the bottom of this division of the gallery. The gun-manufacture is that in which, more perhaps than in any other of her hardware produces, England is supposed to exceed the rest of the world; and, therefore, the articles here exhibited deserve the more carefully to be inspected. We may at once remark, that the persons in charge of the guns are very intelligent and civil, and seem to take a pleasure in explaining, with the greatest patience, all the merits of their several inventions. The point at which French gunsmiths seem all to be aiming is, that of effecting the charging at the breach with safety and convenience: most of the new modeis relate to this desideratum, and, as far as we are capable of forming an opinion, highly ingenious as are the rest, the new fowling-piece of Messrs. Lepage, which works on the hinge principle, has no nipples for caps, and both fastens the breech back again to the stock -after loading, and cocks the hammer at the same time, is by far the best. Another ex-hibitor, Michel, No. 2,155, has a very ingenious horizontal piston applied to his locks, well worthy of examination, and, we think, of trial. At No. 616 the well-known gun. smith Lefaucheux, of the rue de la Bourse, has a large display of his fowling pieces. Just beyond this is No. 3,260, Cessier, of St. Etienne, the great gun-manufactory of France. Here the carved work of the stocks is particularly worthy of remark, as well as the lowness of the prices, 100f. seeming to be the average price of a very tolerable article; one is marked at only 12f, but we had rather be excused the honour of discharging any "murderous tube" of such a suspiciously low cipher. At Nos. 617 and 614 will be found some armes de luxe, the sculptured work of which is really beautiful; and one case in particular, a fowling-piece mounted in rhinoceros-horn, must make any sportsman long to possess so fine an object of art. At Lepage's, No. 618, may be seen, as we have before-mentioned, the newly-invented fowling. piece. In the glass cases will be observed a curious carbine, of two barrels, with only one trigger and four locks, together with a long rapier, of beautifully-chased steel and gold work; a damascened poniard, and various other exquisite products of his workshops. The chief object of this sub-division of the exhibition is a case of arms, made by Lepage for the Duke of Orleans, and, without any exception, it is the most splendid thing of the kind we ever saw. It contains a fowlingpiece, a pair of pistols, a sword, a couteau de chasse, powder-boxes, shot-cases, bulletmoulds, &e. The whole of the steel-work is sculptured or damascened in the most rich and masterly style; the wood-work is all sculptured, and inlaid with steel and ivory, all chased and engraved; the case itself is oak, of the finest quality, sculptured in high relief, the edges inlaid with chased steel, and the whole lined with the richest velvet. Such an exquisite piece of steel work we never saw before. There The other objects worthy of notice in this left-hand division of the gallery are the parasols, umbrellas, and ornamental canes of all kinds, the newest patterns of which are to be found here: we find nothing very remarkable among them, except a large gold-headed cane, fit for a dandy of the Tuileries or the Bois de Boulogne, the top of which opens, and displays a small parasol, which, when pulled out, the beau may have the pleasure of offering to the belle that graces his arm. is an interesting stall here of the works of the Blind Institution, some of the knitted articles being beautifully executed. Some wax-work figures, especially a Parisian Venus, in a gauze temple, will attract notice. Among other miscellaneous articles which we ought to have pointed out before to all brothers of the angle, is a monstrous fishing-rod, about 30 feet long; and a complete dress for lionhunting! think of that, ye Nimrods! An iron helmet and a leathern suit, all bristling with sharp spikes, like the back of a porcupine. Dressed in this, a man might walk in safety through the thickest jungle in India, or might go across Africa, from Sennaar to Timbuctoo, without a single bone being broken-always barring the heat of the leathern cuticle, and the imminent danger of suffocation. New Books. THE GIFT FOR ALL SEASONS. (Continued from page 349.) THE CHARACTER AND POETRY OF SHELLEY. THE enigma in the character of Shelley is this, that his sense of virtue was high and delicate, while his principle was erratic; that the tone of his mind was evidently religious, while his creed was infidelity. What might have been the early treatment which his temper met with, we cannot say, so much depends upon such little things, and so difficult is it for man to manage the disposition of another, especially of untutored youth, so as to train up the early and generous aspirations after virtue, which rise in youthful minds, without disgusting them by the revolting idea that you are weaning the unsuspecting impulses of their unpractised hearts to the selfish purposes of age, and that you are, as it were, revelling in the delights of virtues, of which you leave to those on whom you enjoin them, only the self-denial and the restraint. Some such process as this, however, it would seem, or the susceptibility of it, occurred to the poet, whose character is at present passing under review. Like a high-mettled steed, in the first buoyancy of untrammelled youth, when he would range apart, and choose his pasture as suited best the bent of his genius, he brooked not imaginary restraint, but bounded with the vigour of an eagle's wing over the paling that encircled the fellows of his herd, back ward rolling his indignant eye, and swallowing the earth and air before him with elastic bound, his dishevelled main streaming in the wind: "Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce monad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon, to the zenith's height, The locks of the approaching storm." He dashed into the wild recesses of the forest, where he might compass, without limit or curtailment, regions of space forbid to others, and heights to which access had been denied; and there surely he cropped some of the sweetest morsels which fancy can ever picture, or energy possibly attain. It is most interesting to observe, with what care he cherished the highest aspirations of virtuous and noble sentiment, and what refinement of mind he carried into the solitude of nature, apart from the rules of society, which experience has established as essential to its coherence and consistency. Unhinged from connexion with the church, he could not throw off his own nature, or disembody the spirit which was in him; and with all the glory of man about him, and more than falls to the lot of most men, he renounced communion with the body whence that glory was derived! and his wandering spirit gleamed in the dark precincts of illu mination, like a lost comet on the borders of some collateral hemisphere. It was impossible for him to divest himself of the high chivalric sentiments, which the revelation of Christ has stamped upon the human mind; or to abandon the romance of nature, with which the God of nature has clothed the prolific energies of creation. And so, having quitted the Temple of Revelation, he would fain build himself another temple in the uncultured wilderness, and worship apart the object of his adoration, as he caught glimpses of the shifting light on the mountain side and in the retired glen. Any one conversant with his writings cannot but observe that his poetic faith gave birth to a wild theology of his own, which, fugitive and unsettled as it was, was forming itself into a system, we should say, of dog. matic doctrine, were it not that his ideas, as they came from his mind, were ever emanating from the higher faculties, and refined by the transforming passage through a tuneful and a noble spirit. He differed from other men who place themselves in the position of unbelievers, inasmuch as his was the poetry of philosophy, (I use the word as admitted by conventional license;) theirs, philosophy to the exclusion of imagination. Shelley aimed at Faith in Infidelity; other men have been too cold to do so. Lucretius was the poetical historian of self-taught notions, and a sceptic rather than an unbeliever; Shelley was more than either. Lucretius is indefinite; Shelley was ever figuring to himself an airy reality, and longing to believe something: he is an extraordinary anomaly in the variety of mind; his creed was the Pantheism of notion and of nature. This it is which forms the danger of his writings, because in this consists their fascination to the unwary. A more striking attestation, however, has perhaps never been given, the more powerful because unwitting, to the reality of the Christian religion, than the result of his experiment; for it has shown, side by side with the exhibition of divine truth, that if man has not revelation as his guide, he must have its image and reflection; if his eye daz zles at the rainbow's brightness, it must repose on its refracted and attenuated likeness in adjacent air. We may say, therefore, with truth and reason, that this is the very essence of infidelity: I will be my own slave, rather than submit, that I may revel in fancied freedom. But our present object is not to convict, but to observe. The Poetry of Shelley, speaking of its clothing, and the nature of the materials whence it is fabricated-I might, perhaps, say his diction, but that this would be an inadequate expression for something so spiritual and imaginative-was a wild inspira tion, caught from the genius of the Greek language and the tints of an Italian sky; the graphic sculpture of the one and the ethereal expression of the other. His Gods are spirits, and his spirits are flames of fire. The admirers of his genius must reflect with painful anxiety upon his tragic and awful end; more particularly because melancholy, indeed, as is the non-humanity of his system, he has more the merit of consistency in acting up to it, than many who profess to receive the established doctrine. It is, therefore, that having closely watched the travail of his mind in disenthralling itself from the influence of the commonly-received and traditionary dogmas of infidelity-for in later years he evidently thought himself out of the errors of such of his earlier works, as are most repugnant to the sentiments of a Christian-we turn with eager anxiety to the last of his poetical productions, finished only ten days before the lamented catastrophe which hurried on his fate, to behold there, as in a glass, the state of his mind at the close of his career. Consistently with his natural character, nothing can be more interesting than the sympathies which it exhibits. The name itself, Epipsychidion, is one which indicates a sublimed and etherealized state of mind, in him who could choose it as the title of a poem, in behalf of such a subject as formed the burden of "Verses addressed to the noble and unfortunate Lady Emelia V- -, now imprisoned in the convent of At such a shrine Shelley seems unaffectedly to kneel for forgiveness, at any rate, for whatever pain and misery he had caused to the first object of his early passion. "I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song, From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through, There may be some who can see nothing but consummate vanity and conceit in this; I confess that I am not of the number. In unison with what better sentiments could a man, situated as Shelley, die, than those so feelingly expressed towards the saintly object of his sympathy: "Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound, As mountain-springs under the morning suu. In one another's substance finding food, Like flames too pure, and light, and unimbued, Seem to admit of but one commentary, that, so far as theory was concerned, Shelley had thought or poetized himself, at last, into disbelief in his own infidel system; and it seems as if, when it was a question whether, in default of something to fill and occupy his mind, he should not stumble upon pure Christianity, as it were, in the dark, Providence threw in his way, and exactly in the light in which he might be prepared to appreciate it, the crucificial altar." TAIT'S EDINBURGH JOURNAL, NO. LXVI. [MR. HOWITT has some highly-interesting papers in the above popular periodical, entitled "Visits to Remarkable Places," the second portion treating of Bolton Priory and its immediate vicinity, most romantically, pleasingly, and graphically told. While difating on the scenery of "The White Doe of Rylston," the author treats his readers with the following notice of the Barden Tower,* blending its history with interesting memoirs of the heroic and once celebrated family of the Cliffords.] It is a singular circumstance, says the talented author, out of what peaceful, profound, old-fashioned nooks, have gone forth some of the stormiest, sternest, and most ambitious characters in history. Whittaker says "The shattered remains of Barden Tower stand shrouded in ancient woods, and backed by the purple distances of the highest fells. An antiquarian eye rests with pleasure on a scene of thatched houses and barns, which, in the last two centuries, have undergone as little change as the simple and pastoral manners of the inhabitants." place, in fact, seems to belong to a past age of English history; to make no part of bustling, swarming, steam-engine, and railroad England; but of England in the days of solemn forests, far-off towns, and the most peaceful and rustic existence. The tower stands a mere shell; but the cottages about it are those which stood there in the days of its glory, and are peopled with a race as • Vide page 82 of the present volume. The primitive and quiet as they were then. We inquired for a public-house to get a lunch; there was no such thing; but we procured bread and butter, and milk, at one of the cottages; and, as we sate looking out of its door, the profound tranquillity of the scene was most impressive. It was a sultry and basking noon; around were lofty, ancient woods; on the opposite slope, a few cottages half-buried in old orchards and gardens, with their rows of bee-hives; and an old man at work in one of them, as slowly and gravely as an object in a dream, or a hermit in his unpartaken seclusion. Yet, from this place, and such as this, issued "The stout Lord Cliffords that did fight in France"ay, and in Scotland and England too conspicuous in all the wars, from the time of the Conqueror to that of Cromwell; the "Old Clifford," and the "Bloody Clifford," who slew the young Duke of Rutland, and afterwards the Duke of York, his father-of Shakspeare's "Henry VI." Thence, too, went out the great seafaring Lord Clifford, George, third Earl of Cumberland, of Elizabeth's time, who made eleven expeditions, chiefly against the Spaniards and Dutch, and chiefly, too, at his own expense, to the West Indies, Spanish America, and Sierra Leone. But the most remarkable characters connected with this place are, the Shep herd Lord Clifford; the heroic Countess of Derby, daughter of Henry, second Earl of Cumberland, and grand-daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and the Dowa. ger Queen of France, sister of Henry the Seventh, whose romantic history is known to all readers of English history; and especially Anne Clifford, Dowager Countess of Pembroke and Montgomery, of famous memory; for the others made only occa sional visits hither, from their more frequent residence of Skipton Castle, to enjoy field sports at their lodge here; but Anne Clifford has placed her memorial on the very front of the house, as its restorer; and the Shepherd Lord constituted it his principal abode. Anne Clifford has justly been termed one of the most extraordinary women which this country has produced. She was a woman of a high spirit, a determined will, of many good and magnificent qualities, and of a very commensurate consciousness of them. She did great works, and took good care to commemorate them. Two such builders of houses and of families, perhaps no noble. man of the present day can reckon amongst his female ancestry, as the Duke of Devonshire-Anne Clifford, and Bess of Hardwicke. The first thing which strikes your attention in front of Barden Tower, is this singular inscription : THIS BARDEN TOWER WAS REPAYRED BY THE LADIE ANNE CLIFFORD COUNTE SSE DOWAGER OF PEMBROKEE DORSETT AND MONTGOMERY BARONESS CLIFFORD WESTMERLAND AND VERCIE LADY OF THE HONOR OF SKIPTON IN CRAVEN AND HIGH SHERIFESSE BY INHERITANCE OF THE COUNTIE OF WESTMERLAND IN THE YEARSS 1658 AND 1659 AFTER IT HAD LAYNE RUINOUS EVER SINCE ABOUT 1589 WHEN HER MOTHER THEN LAY IN ITT AND WAS GREAT WITH CHILD WITH HER TILL NOWE THAT IT WAS REPAYRED BY THE SAID LADY. IS. CHAPT. 58. v. 12.* GOD'S NAME BE PRAISED! When she came to her ancestral estates, she found six castles in ruins, and the church of Skipton in a similar condition, from the ravages of the Civil War. She restored them all; and upon all set this emblazonment of the fact. One of the first things which she built was a work of filial piety-a pillar in the highway, at the place where she and her unhappy mother last parted, and took their final farewell. She erected monuments to her tutor, Daniell, the poetic historian, and to Spenser-the latter in Westminster Abbey. She wrote her own life-of which the title-page is indeed a title-page, being a whole page of the most vain-glorious enumeration of the titles and honours derived from her ancestors. Spite of her vain-glory, she was, nevertheless, a fine old creature. She had been an independent courtier in the court of Queen Elizabeth, possessing a spirit as lofty and daring as old Bess herself, She personally resisted a most iniquitous award of her family property by King James, and suffered grievously on that account. She rebuilt her dismantled castles in defiance of Cromwell, and repelled with disdain the assumption of the minister of Charles II. "She patronised," says her historian, "the poets of her youth, and the distressed loyalists of her maturer age; she enabled her aged ser vants to end their days in ease and independence; and, above all, she educated and portioned the illegitimate children of her first husband, the Earl of Dorset. Removing from castle to castle, she diffused plenty and happiness around her, by consuming on the spot the produce of her vast domains in hospitality and charity. Equally remote from the undistinguishing profusion of ancient times, and the parsimonious elegance of modern habits, her house was a school for the young and a retreat for the aged; an asylum for the persecuted; a college for the learned; and a pattern for all." To this it should be added, that, during that age when such firmness was most meritorious, she withstood all the arts, persuasions, and all but actual compulsion, of her two husbands, to oblige her to change the course, and injure the pro • "Thou shalt build up the foundations of many generatious, and thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, and the restorer of paths to dwell in,” perty of her descendants; and, therefore, it must be confessed, that she was a brave woman, and one whose like does not often appear. It is, however, her celebrated letter to Sir Joseph Williamson, the secretary of Charles II., who had written to name a candidate for her borough of Appleby, that has given her name a Spartan immortality : "I have been bullied by an usurper; I have been neglected by a court; but I will not be dictated to by a subject-your man shan't ANNE, DORSET, PEMBROKE, AND MONTGOMERY." stand. 66 The history of the Shepherd Lord is one of the most singular in the peerage. When his father, Lord John Clifford the bloody or black-faced Clifford-fell at the battle of Towton, which overthrew the house of Lancaster, and placed Edward IV. on the throne, his mother was obliged to fly with him for safety into the wildest recesses of Yorkshire and Cumberland. She afterwards married Sir Launcelot Threlkeld, of the latter county, who assisted to keep him concealed from the knowledge of the York family-to whom the Clifford blood was, for notorious reasons, most especially odious; but, to effect this, he was obliged to be brought up as a shepherd, and so lived for twenty-four years. On the ascension of Henry VII. to the throne, the attainder against his father was reversed, and he succeeded to his ancestral honours and estates. At this period, it appears that he was as uneducated as his fellow shepherds; but he was a man of strong natural understanding, and had, it would seem, learned much true wisdom in his lowly habit, up amongst the hills. Some of his verses allude to the studies for which he became remarkable; for he resorted to this Barden Tower, and put himself under the tuition of some of the monks of Bolton. With these he appears to have contracted a strong friendship, and to have passed a life of what must have been a very delightful prosecution of the popular studies of the time. They applied themselves to astronomy; and, it seems equally certain, to astrology. In the archives of the Cliffords have been found manuscripts of this period, and supposed to belong to the Shepherd, which make it more than probable that alchemy was another of the fascinating pursuits of Lord Henry and his monkish companions. Some of these verses conclude with the usual declaration, that the writer could not disclose the grand secret. There is matter for a fine romance in the life of this Lord; the stirring nature of the times when he was born; the flight of his family; his concealment; his life on the mountains; his restoration; his secluded mode of existence, and mysterious labours; and then, his emerging as he did, after he had so spent the whole of the reign of Henry the Seventh, and the first years of Henry the Eighth, at the age of nearly sixty, as a principal commander of the victorious. army of Flodden; showing, that the military genius of the Cliffords merely slumbered beneath the philosophic gown. There is something very picturesque in the description of his followers, in the old metrical history of Flodden Field. Before leaving Barden Tower, we must just notice the singular old chapel which bounds one corner of the court-yard. You enter at a door from the court, and find yourself in a dwelling-house; another door is opened, and you find yourself in the loft of a very old chapel, which remains in the state in which it was centuries ago, except for the effects of time, and where service is still performed by the clergyman of Bolton. The Gatherer. "I was much delighted," says Pratt, in his Gleanings, 1794, "on walking over these grounds with the generous master of them, (Howard the philanthropist,) to see twenty in perfect freedom from labour, and in full or thirty worn-out horses enjoying themselves, supply of all that old age requires. Each of the fields has a comfortable shed, where the inhabitants can resort to in hard weather, and are sure of finding the rigours of the the best hay, and a manger either of bran or season softened by a well furnished crib of corn ground, or some other nourishing food. Chelsea Hospital is not better accommodated; the day on which I made the circuit of the pastures was one of the finest of August; the sun, others reposing in the shade; but some of the pensioners were renovating in on the approach of their benefactor, all of them, actuated by a feeling of gratitude worthy of admiration, that could move with ease, came towards him, invited his attention, and seemed very sensible of their situation. Some, whose limbs almost refused their offices, put themselves to no small difficulties to limp towards him, and even those, who being confined to their hovels, might be fairly said to be bed-ridden, turned their languid eyes to him and appeared sensible of his pity and caressings." H. M. Liquid Leather-A Dr. Bernland, of Larria, in Germany, is said to have discovered a method of making leather out of certain refuse and waste animal substances. A manufactory of this nature has been established near Vienna. No part of the process is explained, only it is said that the substance is at one time in a complete state of fluidity, and may then be cast into shoes, boots, &c.—Bristol Mirror. Count Potoeki, in his travels in Lower Saxony, had a manuscript of the Lord's Prayer, such as it was used in the early times |