NOTES OF THE MONTH. 



NUTS FOR THE SENTIMENTALISTS. One of the most prevailing 

 cants of the day is the notion that the progress of correct knowledge 

 has almost completely effected the ruin of feeling and enthusiasm, 

 so utterly subversive of all that is poetic. Let any one take even a 

 very cursory retrospect of the last month, and then say \vhether the 

 dog-days are favourable for the development of the milk of human 

 kindness. On the first day of the late festival at Westminster Abbey, 

 no sooner did the sons of harmony in the orchestra make note of 

 dreadful preparation for the performance of certain harmonious 

 polyglots, than (as a morning journal tells us) the more sensible 

 portion of the audience swooned, fainted, and wept. Such was the 

 effect of the concussion between horse-hair and catgut, that the 

 nerves of the dillitanti, by some mysterious sympathy we don't pre- 

 tend to comprehend, responded in truly edifying unison, and a 

 general defluxion of tears forthwith ensued ; our defunct friends in 

 the Poet's Corner were all but rising. On the same occasion the 

 prima-donna of the Opera House, Mademoiselle Grisi, was " so 

 overcome by her feelings" that she could scarcely execute a note ; 

 as if " scared at the sounds herself had made," and fled from 

 amongst her sister vocalists the moment the music she had in- 

 effectually attempted to accompany ceased. While his Majesty was 

 delivering the church and state oration (upon which we commented 

 last month), his ghostly auditors say the royal speaker was " visibly 

 affected." The resignation scene in the House of Lords was accom- 

 panied by a similar effusion of the sentimental ; the feelings of Earl 

 Grey so wrought upon the noble Speaker, as to render him totally in- 

 capable of saying any thing, and it was only by repeated cheers that 

 he at last found words. As for the affair of her Majesty's embarka- 

 tion for Germany the other day, it was, in all conscience, enough to 

 melt the hearts of half the civic dignitaries, from St. Paul's to the 

 Minories. What with wading through the mud of the Tower 

 Hamlets, and the effects of a July sun, to say nothing of their in- 

 tensely calorific loyalty, the livers of sundry turtle-eaters must have 

 been in a state of incipient liquifaction. So deeply impressed was. 

 the queen by a compassionate consideration of their manifold and 

 chivalric sufferings, that she rained a perfect torrent of grief. Now, 

 in the name of Lord Eldon, and all that is lachrymose, who will con- 

 tend, in the face of these facts, that we are a race of stern utilitarians, 

 or that all that's romantic in nature has evaporated ? Let things but 

 go on at this rate, and the most sceptical as to the justness of our 

 claims to the " most thinking people," will have little hesitation in 

 awarding us the title of the " most lackadasical," beyond all dispute. 



THE ADMIRATION AND ENVY OF SURROUNDING NATIONS. The 

 Exeter Flying Post gives an account of an unfortunate circumstance 

 that occurred lately in Devonshire. A young man and his paramour 



