Bolivar were both present at the last fatal earthquake in Caraccas, and they both assert that this, of which I have now given a description, was at least as powerful, although the suffering in the town of Caraccas was much greater; and they attribute the happy escape of thousands of lives to the difference in the construction of houses in the two places.  General Bolivar, as well as myself and others, were affected with sickness at the stomach after the shock.  During the night of the earthquake in Bogota, on the 16th of November, 1827, tremulous motions of the earth were continually felt, and the following day, and every other since; and even whilst I am now writing, slight undulating motions are perceptible.

Every person is still in the greatest alarm, dreading a second severe shock, which happened last year at the distance of four days from the first grand shock; should this happen now, scarcely one stone will remain upon another in Bogota.

* * * * *

THE DRAUGHTSMAN;[3] OR, HINTS ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING.

[Footnote 3:  Vide MIRROR, vol. iv. pp 2, 22, 61, 102.]

OBSERVATIONS ON, AND RULES FOR, SKETCHING.

The following hints, tending to further the tyro’s progress in the delightful art of drawing, will not I trust prove unacceptable to such of your readers as are interested in the subject.  For my own use I epitomized various directions relative to sketching, when I met with them in Gilpin’s “Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty,” and I shall feel particularly happy should my attempt at condensing much artistical matter from that interesting volume prove useful to the amateur:  the professor undergoes a regular, severe, but essential course of study in that beautiful art, which is to purchase for him fame and emolument; but he who takes up his pencil merely for pastime, will do well to regulate its movements by a few rules, not cumbrous to the memory, and of easy application.—­It is my intention briefly to state the object of Gilpin’s first and second essays; from the third I have deduced those rules for sketching which appeared most obviously to result from the tenour of his observations:—­

Essay 1st discusses the difference between actual and picturesque beauty; smoothness is usually allowed to enter into our ideas of the former, but roughness, or ruggedness is decidedly essential to the latter:  for example—­The smooth shaven lawn, the neatly turned walk, the classic marble portico, &c. &c. are beautiful; but the ruined castle, the chasmed mountain, the tempestuous ocean, &c. are picturesque, i.e. with appropriate accompaniments; for, after remarking that the sublime and beautiful are, with many persons, the divisions of the picturesque, our acute observer of nature adds, “sublimity alone cannot