342 NOTES OF THE MONTH. 



vinces being lately projected, the Court Newsman announced that a 

 magnificent suit of armour had left town for the Earl of Hillsborough. 



AGRICULTURAL BULLETIN. In last month's report, it will be re r 

 membered, perhaps, that RYE was said to be in danger of a decline, 

 and that BARLEY was in a most languid state ; another bulletin has 

 since been issued to the following effect : 



" BARLEY is now totally neglected; but a few inquiries are still made for 

 RYE. Last market-day, SMALL BRISK PORKERS were much depressed, and 

 LARGE COARSE CALVES, as usual, remarkably dull." 







AFFECTED INEXPERIENCE OF AUTHORS AND ACTORS AS TO BAI- 

 LIFFS. A weekly paper is horror-struck at some petty anachronisms 

 of costume in Don Juan it opens its jaws like an earthquake and its 

 best columns totter with the shock : somebody's inexpressibbles are 

 erroneous! The tailor has not seen Seville; hence the weekly 

 paper's convulsion its Vesuvian irruption of verbal lava its shower 

 of cinders on the devoted head of Drury. For our own part we have 

 lived long enough not to be astonished at any dramatic delinquency, 

 however gross. We are perfectly prepared by past experience of 

 the close adherence to nature of dramatists and actors to see Mac- 

 beth hop in on one leg and gesticulate with the other. It would be 

 difficult to amaze us. Some people " affect a virtue if they have it 

 not :" this is not the case with theatricals ; they are not only parti- 

 cularly ignorant, but they affect a degree of ignorance which they 

 really have not yet attained. It is foolish to abuse them for not pro- 

 perly dressing an alguazil, while such capital errors as their British 

 bailiffs are suffered to pass uncorrected. They dress a serjeant-at- 

 mace up to this hour as they do a prize-fighter or a modern Mr. 

 Gibbet; thus delicately imputing to themselves, by inference, an 

 enviable inexperience as to the costume of their catchpole cotempo- 

 raries. 







METROPOLITAN ARCHITECTURE. A daily paper has recently edi- 

 fied its readers by amusing extracts from Loudon's last number of 

 " Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture," in which the droll atroci- 

 ties of bumpkin builders are held up to ridicule. This is all very 

 well so far as it goes ; but, while we expose the motes in other folk's 

 eyes, let us see if there be not a beam or so in our own. When 

 Loudon has completed his rural architecture, he should, in justice to 

 his country, at least attempt to ameliorate that of the metropolis ; for 

 truely, it is " brimful of offence." Our architects possess every thing 

 but taste, genius, invention, and common sense. They are classical, 

 composite, and comical beyond endurance. Their style is imposing ; 

 but they give us no comforts. If permitted to go on with impunity, 

 they will change the character of the English. We shall cease to be 

 a domestic people. A modern house is a structure of bare walls, 

 ornamented and divided into compartments : it contains no family 

 parlour ; no social snuggery ; no cupboards ! A man who lives in it 

 is to be pitied he is without a home. The stairs creak beneath his 

 feet the floor of his drawing-room shrieks with agony as he steps 



