684 



MoJithh/ Review cf Lileralure, 



[Pec, 



«altl, by I>t>bbs, to keep to. If one begins 

 with a daisy, it will continue loading from 

 daisies, to the neglect of clover, honey- 

 suckles, and violets, though these abound 

 and the other be scarce. In this observa- 

 tion, he adds, he is confirmed by seeing each 

 load on the legs of a bee of one colour. The 

 ■writer does not confirm tliis, and we our- 

 selves seem to have observed the contrary 

 fact — still it may be so. 



When describing the enemies of the 

 apliides, he speaks of the lady-bird. The 

 French call it Bete de la Vicrge, or Vache 

 a Dieu — the word larh/, of course, refers to 

 the Virgin. It is difficult to trace the 

 origin of popular favour towards this insect ; 

 but it atleast deserves that of the hop-grower. 

 In 1827, the writer observes, the shore at 

 Brighton, and all the watering-places on the 

 south coast, were literal;/ covered with them, 

 to the terror of the inhabitants — they being 

 ignorant that these insects were emigrating 

 after having cleared the neighbouring hop- 

 grounds of the destructive aphis. 



Among our personal tonnentOTS is the 

 luff, which the author describes as not 

 having been long known in this island. 

 " Had it been common," he is quoting 

 Kirby, " the two noble ladies, mentioned 

 by AlauflPet, woidd have scarcely mistaken 

 their bites for plague-spots." This, by the 

 way, is very poor evidence — many a lady 

 probably never saw or felt one — the bug 

 associates onlywith Jilth. " They were first 

 known," he adds, " by the name of wall- 

 louse. It was not till the middle of last 

 century that they began to be styled bugs, 

 or goblins, tlie word being of Ccftic origin, 

 and used in old versions of the Bible, in 

 the sense of spirit ; thus, in Mathew's 

 Bible, Ps. xci. 5, the passage translated in 

 our modern version, ' Thou shalt not be 

 afraid for the terror by night,' is rendered, 

 ' Thou shalt not nede to be afraide of any 

 bugs by night.' The very name bespeaks a 

 much older residence among us. 



Spiders, disgusting as they pretty gene- 

 rally seem to be, are, however, sometimes 

 eaten, and not only by remote savages. 

 The author has an amusing passage on this 

 matter. 



Reaumur relates, on the authority of M. dc la 

 Hire, that a young French lady could never re- 

 sist the temptation of eating a spider, whenever 

 she mot with one in her walks. They are said to 

 tiiste like nuts ; at least this was the opinion of 

 the celebrated Maria Schurman, who not only 

 ate them, but justified her taste by saying, that 

 she was born under Scorpio. Latreille informs 

 us that the astronomer Lalande was equally fond 

 of this offensive morsel. Man is truly an omni- 

 vorous animal ; for there is nothing which is dis- 

 gusting to one nation, that is not the choice food 

 of another. Flesh, fish, fowl, insects, even the 

 gigantic centipedes of Brazil, many of them a foot 

 and a half long, and half an inch broad, were seen 

 by Humboldt to be dragged out of their holes, and 

 crunched alive by the children. Serpents of all 

 sorts have been consumed as food ; and the host 

 oftlie celebrated inn at Tcrracina frequently ac- 



cobIb his gHCtts by politely requesting to knuw 

 whether Ihey prefer the " eel of the hedge or tl>8 

 eel of the ditch." To evince their attaeliinent to 

 their favouiite pursuit, nsost naturalists seem to 

 consider it indispensable ta taste and recommend 

 some insect or other. Darwin assures us that 

 the caterpillar of She bawk-molh is delicious ; 

 Kirby and Spence (both of them?) think the ani 

 good eating, and push their entomological zeai 

 so far, as to distinguish between the tiavour of 

 the abdomen and the thorax ; ilud Reaaraur re- 

 commends the caterpillar of the plasia gamma 

 as a delicate dish. 



Tlie book is very well got up, and the 

 cats, upon the whole, represent the subjects 

 adequately, though here and there there is a 

 want of distinctness. 



Tales of a Bride^ ly the Author of the 

 Mummy, 3 vols. 12»io. ; 182y. — Notwith- 

 standing the same flash and dash of man- 

 ner, visible in the iVlummy — the same 

 adventurousness in pitching upon topics too 

 mighty for the writer's grasp — the same 

 pretension to familiarity with the world and 

 its ways, and all that it contains, the 

 " Stories of a Bride" is an amendment. 

 There is some sobriety. Any thing and 

 every thing out of the high-road of esta- 

 blished conceptions is, with the writer, food 

 for severity or caricature. In the Blummy, 

 the anticipations of science, and plebeian 

 education, were the butts into which, por- 

 cupine-like, she shot her fretful quills; 

 and now, with the like good will, but as 

 little force, she darts them at German phi- 

 losophy and Italian politics. By and by, 

 not unlikely, she will find out German phi- 

 losophers — even Kant and Fichte — are not 

 the fools she now thinks them, and, more- 

 over, discover, that the Carbonari did not, 

 and do not, consist, Uke David's associates^ 

 exclusively of those that are in debt, or dis- 

 tress, or discontented — of none but the 

 rogues and rafts of the country. 



The bride of the title is an English lady 

 — a peeress in her own right, with every 

 tiling the world can give at command, and 

 as wayward as self-indulgence can make 

 her. Admirers, of coiurse, abound, but 

 power makes her fastidious, tiU she en- 

 counters a gentleman as fastidious as her- 

 self, and him, of course, she resolves to 

 subdue, and subdue him she does. In the 

 pride of bridal authority she insists on going 

 to Hungary, of all places in the world, be- 

 cause travelling difficulties there are repre- 

 sented as insurmountable for a fine lady ; 

 and, in tlieir journey, they meet with an 

 old man, a great scholar and a great roamer, 

 whose distress she reUeves, and who, in re- 

 turn, presents her ladyship with a bundle of 

 stories, the gatherings up of his long wan- 

 derings. These serve to relieve the tedi- 

 ousness of a Hungarian hut, to which she 

 is confined, in attendance on the bride- 

 groom, with a broken leg — fractured by a 

 carriage-overturn on the precious roads of 

 the country. 



The first story is that of the " Mystic," 

 and is a tale of Carbonari. The " Mystic" 



