302 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 259. 



pion:" he has no comprehension of what he has 

 to do, no aptitude to learn or do it. 



Gut, a nari'ow passage of any kind. Video. 



MRS. STOWe's " SUNNY MEMOKIES IN FOREIGN 

 LANDS." 



Your correspondent Juverna, who amuses him- 

 self with noting Mr. Thackeray's slovenly syntax, 

 would find, I think, better sport in ticking off the 

 elegancies of style in Mrs. Beecher Stowe's Fo- 

 reign Lands. One or two, which I have marked 

 during a partial perusal of that work, will serve 

 as specimens. 



1. The cabin (aboard the steamboat) is de- 

 scribed as being " as much in order as if you were 

 going to be hanged." 



2. " Knotted strings (when you are sea-sick) 

 look disgustingly impracticable." 



3. " Mrs. A. is sick, and Miss B. sicker. You'll 

 never catch them going to sea again ; that's what 

 you won't." 



4. " Where in the world the soul goes to [during 

 soa-sickness] nobody knows : one would really 

 think the sea tipped it all out of a man ; just as it 



does the water out of his washbasi?i It [the 



soul] rises (wliether before or after being tipped 

 out of a man does not appear) like a pillar of 

 cloud, Sind floats over land and sea, buoyant, many- 

 hued, and glorious ; again it goes down, down," &c. 



5. " Then the steward comes along at twelve 

 o'clock, and puts out your light; ajid there you 

 are!" 



6. After this you feel " as if you were ' headed 

 up ' in a barrel." 



7. Scotch ballads (when a child) " seemed al- 

 most to melt the soul out of me." 



8. " It is so stimulating to be [on the Clyde] 

 where every name is a poem." 



9. " Two of the most beautiful children I ever 

 saw, whose little hands literally deluged us with 

 flowers." 



10. " The drao dresses and pure white bonnets of 

 many Friends were conspicuous among the dense 

 moving crowd [on the platform at the railway 

 station], as white doves seen against a dark clouds 



11. "Well, of course I did not sleep any all 

 night." 



12. "The most splendid of England's palaces 

 {[Stafford House] has this day opened its doors to 

 the slave." 



13. Apropos of the Hon. and Rev. Baptist I^oel 

 (who has " one of the most harmonious heads " 

 Mrs. Stowe ever saw), slie remarks, " Born of a 

 noble family, naturally endowed with sensitiveness 

 and ideality to appreciate all the amenities and 

 suavities of that brilliant sphere, the sacrifice must 

 have been inconceivably great to renounce" &c. 



14. The hon. and rev. gentleman's style ^'■flowed 

 over one like a calm and clear strain of music." 



15. "The poet Gray seems to have been sent 

 into the world for nothing but to be a poem" 



16. '■'■One likes to see a. person identifying ones 

 self vi'ith a country." 



17. "No ATords have hitherto made their way 

 to my inner soul with such force," &c. 



18. " I was introduced to .... Mrs. Jameson, 

 whose works on art and artists were, for years, 

 almost my only food for a certain class of long- 

 ings." 



19. "I could not but think what a loss to art is 

 the enslaving of a race (the negroes) which might 

 produce so much musical talent." 



20. " Some of Shakspeare's finest passages ex- 

 plode all grammar and rhetoric ; like skyrockets, 

 the thought blows the language to shivers .'" 



21. "The ne.xt popular upset tipped it [the 

 Pantheon in Paris] back to the great men again." 



22. A French mechanic, an enthusiast for the 

 poet Beranger, is reported to have exclaimed, 

 " Could I live to see his funeral ! Quelle spectacle ! 

 Quelle grand emotion ! " 



23. A guide exclaims, enraptured with the fine- 

 ness of the weather, " Qu'il fait tres beau !" 



24. " Ceci," cries an enthusiastic admirer of 

 Uncle Tom's Cabin (I beg pardon, of Uncle Tom), 

 " ceci est la vrnie Christianisme I " 



25. "Ah! ah!" says M. Alfred de Musee (M. 

 Alfred de Mussett), " the first intelligence of the 

 age." " Say nothing about this book \ Uncle Tom's 

 Cabin"]. There is nothing like it. This leaves us 

 all behind, — all, all, miles behind." 



Mrs. Stowe's meditations on the " old masters " 

 in art, — which, together with old customs, and 

 the Greek and Roman classics, seem to her an- 

 tagonistic to the go-ahead spirit of young Ame- 

 rica, — are of a similar character. I cannot, how- 

 ever, find the passage on Rubens, which a critic 

 in The Athenaum quotes as follows : — " His pic- 

 tures [Rubens's] I detest with all the energy of 

 my soul." 



If these words are to be found in the book, they 

 are quite irreconcilable with the following pas- 

 sage in Letter XXXI. :-^" But Rubens, the great, 

 joyous, full-souled, all-powerful Rubens, there he 

 teas, full as ever, of abounding life," &c. 



If I may join a Query with a Note, I would ask 

 if any of your correspondents caii remember the 

 words which the reviewer quotes, and which j. 

 presume he did not invent. I have read the re- 

 view since looking into the book, and they have 

 probably escaped my memory. W. M. T. 



I find the following passage in Mrs. Stowe's 

 recent work, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands,, 

 Low's 2nd edit., p. 256. : 



" Stoke Ncwhigton is also celebrated as the residence of 

 De Foe. . . . The New River, which passes through 

 the grounds of our host, is an artiiicial stream, which is 



