154 
ists aré sanctimonious, and filles de joie de- 
mure ; where the licensed porters and errand 
boys are also licensed pimps ; where the laws 
of quarantine extend to the merchandize of 
the Cyprian goddess, and her temples have 
their regular bills of health ; and the sages 
of.the gown and wig invoke the muses in 
the courts of justice ;—where congregations 
throng around the churches before the 
doors are opened, to chatter of politics and 
new publications, and collect and circu- 
Jate the charitable rumours of the vicinage ; 
and where, from the tea-table to the 
-bench, from the kirk to the secret chamber, 
rom the university to the pot-house, 
subtile disputation and poignant scandal 
conspire alike to relieve the tedium, or give 
zest to the amusement ; and the professor in 
his chair, and the caddy in the street, is 
alike an adept in the profound of meta- 
physics, and pregnant with genealogies and 
anecdotes of secret history. We shall not 
attempt to follow this compiler of scraps 
and traditions, which, among sucha popula- 
tion as we have described, have reached al- 
ready a third edition, through streets and 
lanes and wynds, and old houses, burnt 
down, or still standing; nor attempt to 
amuse our readers with extracts relative to 
old ladies who maintained the dignity of 
ancient lineage, and diffused around the 
blessings of a boundless charity, by means 
of “an income of £190 a year ;’’ but satisfy 
ourselves, and perhaps our English readers, 
by a single specimen of the kind of ingenuity 
by which anecdotic materials are occasion- 
ally brought within the professed bounda- 
ries of the gossip-sphere ; and of the vast 
and interesting importance of the authentic 
intelligenee thus pressed into the service. 
** The following brief characteristic traits of the 
Duchess of Buccleugh and Monmouth, who must 
have resided, at some period of her long life, in 
Edinburgh, are worthy of preservation, and may be 
relied upon as authentic. They are derived from a 
singularly pure and direct source of traditionary in- 
formation—our author having dined with a lady who 
had dined with her grace. ; 
Does the author mean that we should 
sneer at the mock gravity, or smile at the 
wit and irony of this remark ? 
The Duchess was very crooked, and had one leg 
shorter than the other. Yet she was an astonishingly 
dignified personage. As her husband had been in- 
vested with all the honours of a prince of the blood, 
she kept up her state to the last, having only one 
seat in her rooms (and that generally under a 
canopy) for herself; so her’ visitors were compelled 
to stand. When Lady Margaret Montgomery, 
daughter to Alexander, ninth Earl of Eglintoune, 
was at a boarding-school near London (previous to 
the year thirty), she was frequently invited by the 
Duchess to her house; and, because her great-grand- 
mother, Lady Mary Lesly, was sister to her grace’s 
mother, was allowed the extraordinary privilege of a 
chair. It is said that She made a rule of being served 
on the knee; but thisis not probable ; and, indeed, 
_ some of her letters, still extant, prove her to have 
been a shrewd, benevolent woman, and exhibit no 
traces whatever of a haughty princess of the’ 
blood.” 
3 
Mouthly Review of Literature, 
[Sept. F, 
Faustus: his Life, Death, and Descent 
into Hell. Translated from the German. 
12mo.—If epochs’ are to be characterized 
by their popular’ literature, this Must be 
called,the diabolical ‘age.’ Der Freischiitz 
and@his‘demons, the Deviland Dri Faustus, 
reign triumphant over “stage and press ; 
jingle in our verse, and hobble through our 
prose. Whether Faustus sold hiraself to 
the deyil or not, our authors seem, to'have 
done so ; and Germany, France, and Eng- 
land have gone hobgoblin mad... It.is in 
Germany, however, that the original com- 
pact has been made ; here we only imp it 
in translation. Weber’s incantations have 
been chaunted to us, in multiplied versions, 
at major, and at minor theatres; of Goéthe’s 
diabolisms, generally speaking, we, have 
been satisfied with names and scraps, and 
vehicles for scenic marvels, and splendours 
of pictorial embellishment. One feeble and 
mutilated translation, indeed, we have had, 
from the saintly pen of Lord Leyesor 
Gower ; who found it too loose and. unholy 
for faithful version, yet could not ‘let it 
alone, so played, with watering mouth, 
around the vice he longed for, but had not 
the courage to commit; and gave the Eng- 
lish public a version so partial and so dilut- 
ed, that, though the moral salubrity is not 
much improved, the spirit has at least eva- 
porated. Surely, if his lordship thought 
such a work unfit for faithful translation, he 
should not have defiled his pen with it at all. 
It is but a popish sort of casuistry, to com- 
mit a sin by halves, and leave others to fill 
up the hiatus. 
The prose Faustus, hewever; comes 
forth to us entire; and it is certainly a 
curiosity: full of the boldness, vigour, and, 
we may say, the audacity of an imagina- 
tion that can recklessly descend into the 
hell of hells, and expatiate on all the worst 
scenes of human atrocity. The'spirit that 
breathes through it ismorose and cynical, 
to an extreme that precludes the idea of 
all moral purpose. Vice is represented, it 
is true, or rather caricatured, in all its hide- 
ous abominations, till the heart sickens 
over thé picture; but it would be difficult 
to collect from it any very cogent lessons 
or inducements for virtue: and, most assu- 
redly, it is little caleulated to foster those 
feelings and habitudes of mind with which 
the practices of social virtue are most con- 
genial. The ethical argument that runs 
throughout, is—that men are worse than 
devils; and scarcely a glimpse of virtuous 
character is to be met with, throughout, to 
. mitigate the soul-dampingimpression. Des- 
pot and patriot are, here, just alike—the 
philosopher and the priest. Science, arts 
and literature are as much, and as exclu- 
sively, the instruments of the devil, as the 
frauds of superstition, the oppressio1 s_ of 
tyranny,* and the murders of BS 
_».«) losophy 
* Philosophy seems to be the very acme of “all 
that is infernal in the estimation of this author. 
4 , nis ty 
