between egotism and disinterested humanity.  No one makes the tour of our southern metropolis, or describes the manners of the last age, so well as Mr. Lamb—­with so fine, and yet so formal an air—­with such vivid obscurity, with such arch piquancy, such picturesque quaintness, such smiling pathos.  How admirably he has sketched the former inmates of the South-Sea House; what “fine fretwork he makes of their double and single entries!” With what a firm, yet subtle pencil he has embodied Mrs. Battle’s Opinions on Whist!  How notably he embalms a battered beau; how delightfully an amour, that was cold forty years ago, revives in his pages!  With what well-disguised humour he introduces us to his relations, and how freely he serves up his friends!  Certainly, some of his portraits are fixtures, and will do to hang up as lasting and lively emblems of human infirmity.  Then there is no one who has so sure an ear for “the chimes at midnight”, not even excepting Mr. Justice Shallow; nor could Master Silence himself take his “cheese and pippins” with a more significant and satisfactory air.  With what a gusto Mr. Lamb describes the inns and courts of law, the Temple and Gray’s-Inn, as if he had been a student there for the last two hundred years, and had been as well acquainted with the person of Sir Francis Bacon as he is with his portrait or writings!  It is hard to say whether St. John’s Gate is connected with more intense and authentic associations in his mind, as a part of old London Wall, or as the frontispiece (time out of mind) of the Gentleman’s Magazine.  He haunts Watling-street like a gentle spirit; the avenues to the play-houses are thick with panting recollections, and Christ’s-Hospital still breathes the balmy breath of infancy in his description of it!  Whittington and his Cat are a fine hallucination for Mr. Lamb’s historic Muse, and we believe he never heartily forgave a certain writer who took the subject of Guy Faux out of his hands.  The streets of London are his fairy-land, teeming with wonder, with life and interest to his retrospective glance, as it did to the eager eye of childhood; he has contrived to weave its tritest traditions into a bright and endless romance!

Mr. Lamb’s taste in books is also fine, and it is peculiar.  It is not the worse for a little idiosyncrasy.  He does not go deep into the Scotch novels, but he is at home in Smollett and Fielding.  He is little read in Junius or Gibbon, but no man can give a better account of Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, or Sir Thomas Brown’s Urn-Burial, or Fuller’s Worthies, or John Bunyan’s Holy War.  No one is more unimpressible to a specious declamation; no one relishes a recondite beauty more.  His admiration of Shakespear and Milton does not make him despise Pope; and he can read Parnell with patience, and Gay with delight.  His taste in French and German literature is somewhat defective:  nor has he made much progress in the science of Political