7 their intellectual ascendency over others into his own, which stamped him indelibly with the seal of genius. face, he would say, 'Oh, Mathews, you are a wonderful person; but it is wicked, it really is, to mock natur-you should not do it, 'pon my life.' Yet he himself was furious with Yates for taking the like liberty with him. The intrinsic worth of his character, the pu The old Duke of Richmond, the grandfather of the present, was very partial to Mathews, and so thoroughly appreciated this specialité of his, that during his Lord-Lieutenancy of Ire-rity of his life, his liberality to the necessitous, land, whenever he had him to dinner and wished to treat his guests to a specimen of his talent, as soon as the cloth was removed, he would propose his health, not in his own name, but now as Lord Erskine, now as Lord Ellenborough—at one time as Sheridan, at another as Curran ; and under whichever character, he would make a speech so closely after the manner of each as to electrify his hearers. It was not so much the alacrity with which he would spring to his feet and assume the countenance, voice, and gesticulation of the person he was expected to impersonate, as the similarity of thought and style of speech which recalled to his audience Erskine and Ellenborough, and the copia verborum and profusion of trope and metaphor, which made them fancy they were listening to the voice of Sheridan or Curran. In Lady Blessington's Conversations with Byron, she mentions that Walter Scott once asked Byron if he had ever heard Mathews imitate Curran; and, on his regretting that he never had, Scott added-'It was not an imitation, it was a continuation of the man.' So highly, too, did Coleridge estimate his powers, that on somebody, in his presence, calling him a mere mimic, he said, 'You call him a mimic: I define him as a comic poet acting his own poems.' He certainly was unique in his way, though full of incongruities. I never knew any man so alive to the eccentricities of others, so dead to his own. I never knew a man who made the world laugh so much, who so seldom laughed himself. I never knew a man who, when in society, could make the dullest merry, so melancholy out of it. I never knew a man so prompt to resent calumnious imputations on others, so ready to forgive those who had done him wrong. In his imitation of others, he was never actuated by malevolence; but too hasty in attributing unamiable motives to any who made him the subject of mimicry. He was very fond of imitating Dignum the singer, and used to tell how, when he took him off to his his simplicity, his untarnished integrity, his love for his wife and son, his fidelity to his friends, his loyalty to his patrons, his chivalrous defence of those he thought unjustly defamed, could not fail to win for him the thorough respect of all who knew him. On the other hand, genius and gentleman as he was, his nervous whimsicality, his irritability about trifles, his antipathies to particular people, places, and objects, rendered him justly vulnerable to ridicule and censure. I have seen him scratch his head, and grind his teeth, and assume a look of anguish, when a haunch of venison has been carved unskilfully in his presence. I have seen him, when in high feather and high talk, in a sunny chamber, if transferred to a badly-lighted room, withdraw into a corner and sit by himself in moody silence. He was strangely impressionable by externals. I have known him refuse permission to a royal Duke to see over his picture-gallery on Highgate Hill, because the day of his call was cloudy. He was such a passionate lover of sunshine, that I have seen him 'put out' for a whole day by the lady of a house at which he was calling pulling down the Venetian blinds. 'There are not many days in the year' he would say, 'when the sun shines at all in this country; and when he is disposed to be kindly, and to pay us a visit, down goes every blind in his face, to show him, I suppose, how little we value his presence.' Whenever he went out to dinner, in the good old days when moderator and sinumbra lamps were unknown, and wax-candles were in fashion, he was wont to carry in his breast-pocket a pair of small silver snuffers, so that, when the wicks were long and dull, he might be able to trim them, and brighten up the gloom that was gathering round the table. I have known him, without the slightest cause, appropriate remarks to himself which were intended for others, and fret his heart-strings over imaginary wrongs for hours. I have known him frenzied with rage, on discovering that a tidy housemaid had picked up from the floor of his bed-room a dirty pair of stockings which he had left there as a memorandum,' on the same principle on which people tie knots in their handkerchiefs. And yet, with all these unhappy infirmities, I never knew a man more formed to inspire, and who succeeded more in inspiring, personal affection, or who, though exposed to many temptations, was so unsoiled by them. I have already implied, if I have not asserted, that he was liable to alternate fits of elation and depression. At one time he was so alarmed about himself, that he begged his razors might be always kept by his man, and never left in his room, lest, under some malign impulse, he might destroy himself. When the black cloud was on his spirit, he was taciturn: and, if addressed, laconic and sour in his replies. At such times he would speak as if he were a fatalist; he would vow that nothing ever went right with him; that he was the most ill-starred of men; and then, in confirmation of his assertion, would say 'I never, in my life, put on a new hat, that it did not rain and ruin it. I never went out in a shabby coat because it was raining, and thought that every one who had the choice would keep in doors, that the sun did not burst forth in its strength, and bring out with butterflies of fashion whom I I never con it all the knew, or who knew me. sented to accept a part I hated, out of kindness to an author, that I did not get hissed by the public and cut by the writer. I could not take a drive for a few minutes with Terry, without being overturned, and having my hip-bone broke, though my friend got off unharmed. I could not make a covenant with Arnold, which I thought was to make my fortune, without making his instead. In an incredible space of time (I think thirteen months) I earned for him twenty thousand pounds, and for myself one. I am persuaded, if I were to set up as baker, every one in my neighbourhood would leave off eating bread !' I mentioned how easily his equanimity was disturbed by trifles, such as bad carving, illlighted rooms, &c. The same feeling extended to other things, If he were paying a call, for the first time, on a new acquaintance, and saw a picture hanging out of the perpendicular, he would spring up to put it straight; if a lady, in her dress, showed a deficient sense of harmony in colour, it irritated him greatly, &c., &c. The following anecdote will further illustrate his morbid sensibility to things which most people would deem insignificant. He had an appointment with a solicitor. They were to meet at a particular hour at a small inn in the city, where they might hope to be quiet and undisturbed. Mathews arrived at the trysting-place a few minutes too soon. On entering the coffee-room, he found its sole tenant a commercial gentleman earnestly engaged on a round of boiled beef. Mathews sat himself down by the fire, and took up a newspaper, meaning to wile away the time till his friend arrived. Occasionally he glanced from the paper to the beef, and from the beef to the man, till he began to fidget and look about from the top of the right-hand page to the bottom of the left in a querulous manner. Then he turned the paper inside out, and, pretending to stop from reading, addressed the gentleman in a tone of illdisguised indignation, and with a ghastly smile upon his face-'I beg your pardon, Sir, but I don't think you are aware that you have no mustard.' The person addressed looked up at him with evident surprise, mentally resenting his gratuitous interference with his tastes, and coldly bowed. Mathews resumed his reading, and, curious to see if his well-meant hint would be acted on, furtively looked round the edge of his paper, and finding the plate to be still void of mustard, concluded that the man was deaf. So, raising his voice to a higher key, and accosting him with sarcastic acerbity, he bawled out, with syllabic precision-Are-you-a-ware Sir-that-you-have-been-eat-ing--boiled -beef-with-out-mus-tard?' Again a stiff bow and no reply. Once more Mathews affected to read, while he was really nursing his wrath to keep it warm.' At last, seeing the man's obstinate violation of conventionality and good taste, he jumped up, and, in the most arbitrary and defiant manner, snatched the mustard-pot out of the cruet-stand, banged it on the table, under the defaulter's nose, and shouted out-Confound it, Sir, you SHALL take mustard!' He then slapped his hat on his head, and ordered the waiter to show him into a private room, vowing that he had never before been under the roof with such a savage; that he had been made quite sick by the revolting sight which he had seen, and that he never would sit in the room with a man who could eat beef without mustard. Another of the plagues by which he deemed himself to be peculiarly beset, was the pestering offers of attention, from mercenary motives, of urchins in the streets. I met him one day in Regent Street, mounted on his pretty milk-white pony. Although I was a favourite, I saw that my stopping him was not altogether acceptable. It was soon explained. The young Arabs of the street were round him, and at each side of his bridle, with 'Please, want your 'orse 'olded;' and, with the sort of expression on his face which one would have expected, perhaps, to see, if he had been on the plains of Egypt, with a swarm of Bedouin's swooping down upon him, he shook himself off from me, with the words, 'The plague's begun,' uttered in a tone of dispair, and galloped off as fast as intervening cabs and carriages would allow him. During the entire period of his stay with us he was delightful: always ready to fall in with our quiet and monotonous mode of life, and appearing pleased with everthing and everybody with whom he was thrown in contact. At the termination of his night's performance at Andover, I was made aware of one of his whims, of which I had, till then, been quite unconscious. I mean his singular and inexplicable aversion to the touch of money. A certain man, who, for prudential reasons, I will not name, always travelled with him, as his secretary and checktaker. He received all the money taken at the doors. On leaving the Town Hall with Mathews, I asked him if he were content with the receipts. 'Oh, 'said he, 'I don't know what they are: I leave it to all to B. I am quite at his mercy. I never know what really is taken at the doors. I only know what I receive. I hope and believe B―is honest; but even if he is not, I could not wrangle about money. I do so hate the very touch of it.' 'What!' I exclaimed, with genuine incredulity, hate money!' 'I did not say I hated money, but that I hated the touch of money-I mean coin. It makes my skin goosey.' One more of his oddities I must mention. He used often to declare that he could never understand why it was that, when other people so frequently had cause to complain that they could not find things they lost, he never could lose anything he wished to get rid of. I must plead guilty to having twice ministered, with malice prepense, to this superstition of his. On leaving any house where I may have been staying, I have a confirmed habit of looking into every drawer, washstand, table, &c., so as to ensure myself against leaving anything behind me. Mathews once left me at a country inn, where we had been staying together. When I was about to take my departure, with my usual precaution, I took care to ransack every possi ble and impossible nook or cranny, behind which any article of mine might have fallen; and, in doing so, observed, secreted behind a huge old mahogany dining-table, with deep flaps, which was placed against the wall of our sitting-room, a dress-shoe, so dapper in shape, and so diminutive in size, that I had no difficulty in recognizing it as one of my friend's. Rejoiced at the opportunity of having a bit of fun, I enclosed it in a brown-paper parcel, and despatched it after him. Instead of thanking me for my trouble, he wrote to me, and told me that I was 'his evil genius; that, having worn out the companion pump, which was that of the foot of his lame leg, the one I had forwarded to him was of no earthly use to him; that, in the faint hope of getting rid of it, he had placed it where I had found it; and that in consequence of my inquisitive and officious disposition, he had been compelled to pay for the recovery of this useless article as much as would have purchased an entirely new pair.' About a month after he had left us, at Amport, I happened to go to my wardrobe in search of an old pair of trowsers which I reserved for gardening purposes. As I was putting them on, I felt that there was something in them. My first impression was, that, when I had last worn them, I had left my purse in them. But, on inserting my hand into the pocket, I drew out an oddly-shaped object, neatly wrapped up in Bath note paper, with these words inscribed on the outside, in the quaint but vigorous handwriting I knew so well, 'To be lost, if possible.' On opening the little packet, I found inside it a circular nail-brush, worn to the bone. It would seem that, on looking over the articles of my wardrobe, he thought the trowsers he had selected were too shabby for me ever to put on again, and therefore chose them for a hidingplace. But he was deceived. I made up another neat parcel for him, and directed it to his house in London. Unfortunately he was on a professional tour in the provinces, where it followed him; till, by the time it reached him, the 'carriage' had amounted to some shillings. I was not long in receiving a letter of ironical thanks 'for my kind and dear attention.' I was penitent for having put him to such expense, and I confessed my sin to him. think and then limped off in an agitated and guilty manner, as though he were trying to evade the emissaries of justice. So eager was he to get off the bridge, and thread his way unobserved through the crowd, that he outstripped his son; Many years after, I was telling his son Charles and just as he was waiting for him, and was of these amusing incidents, when he said, 'I can congratulating himself on having, for once, got rid of an obnoxious article, a breathless watercap your story.' He then told me, that once he and his father had an engagement with one of man ran up to him, tapped him on the shoulder, the East India Directors at the India Office. and said, 'I beg your honour's pardon, but I As they were approaching Blackfriars Bridge, you dropped this here glove in the river.' the father said to the son, 'We must stop a How-how, Sir, do you know it to be my minute at the first draper's shop we come to, glove?' 'Why, Sir, I was a sculling, and was as I want to buy myself a new pair of gloves; just giving my boat a spurt under the arch of for I have mislaid the fellow to the one I have the bridge, when this here glove fell; and on on my right hand.' As soon as he had effected looking up I se'ed that the gentleman from his purchase, they proceeded on their way; and, whose hand it dropped had a white hat on with on reaching the bridge, the son observed his a black crape round it; so I pulled with all my father looking before him and behind him, as if, might and main after you, and ran up the steps having some felonious purpose in his mind, he from the river-side, and I thought I never wished to see that the coast was clear before he should have catched you',-wiping his forehead executed it. At last, when the traffic seemed with his sleeve as he spoke. Of course such for a moment to diminish, he leaned over the disinterested civility had to be rewarded with a parapet of the bridge—as if to notice the wher- shilling, and the impoverished donor, like Lord ries and steamers on the river-hurled over the | Ullin for his daughter, was 'left lamenting !' odious glove, which was disturbing his serenity, To be continued. BOOK REVIEWS. NIAGARA Its History and Geology, Incidents and We believe the remark has been already made, but it may certainly be made with truth, that in nothing are the increase of general intelligence and the growing love of science more visible than in the improvement of guide-books. Written for pleasure seekers, these works used to be level with the intellects of the lowest of that class. They were made up of exaggerated descriptions of scenery, fiction, declamation, apocryphal stories, and advertisements of hotels. Nothing in them indicated the slightest demand on the part of their readers for literary culture, much less of science. But now, in opening a new guide-book to Niagara, what do we see? First a history of the Falls and their vicinity, written with care, sobriety, and intelligence, a little tinged per- "Owing to some change in her appointments, which confined her to the Canadian shore for the reception of passengers, she became unprofitable. Her owner having decided to leave the place wished to sell her as she lay at her dock. This he could not do, but had an offer of something more than half of her cost, if he would deliver her at Niagara, opposite the Fort. This he decided to do, after consultation with Robinson, who had acted as her captain and pilot on her trips under the Falls. The boat required for her navigation an engineer, who also acted as fireman, and a pilot. On her pleasure trips she had a clerk in addition to these. Mr. Robinson agreed to act as pilot for the fearful voyage, and the engineer, Mr. Jones consented to go with him. A courageous machinist, Mr. McIntyre, volunteered to share the risk with them. They put her in complete trim, removing from deck and hold all superfluous articles. Notice was given of the time for starting, and a large number of people assembled to see the fearful plunge, no one expecting to see either boat or crew again, after they should leave the dock. This dock, as has been before stated, was just above the Railway Suspension Bridge, at the place where she was built, and where she was laid up in the winter; that, too, being the only place where she could lie without danger of being crushed by the ice. Twenty rods below this eddy the water plunges sharply down into the head of the crooked, tumultuous rapid which we have before noticed, as reaching from the bridge to the Whirlpool. At the Whirlpool the danger of being drawn under was most to be apprehended; in the Rapids of being turned over or knocked to pieces. From the Whirlpool to Lewiston is one wild, turbulent rush and whirl of water without a square foot of smooth surface in the whole distance. "About three o'clock in the afternoon of June 15, 1867, the engineer took his place in the hold, and knowing that their flitting would be short at the longest, and might be only the preface to a swift destruction, set his steam-valve at the proper gauge, and awaited-not without anxiety-the tinkling signal that should start them on their flying voyage. McIntyre joined Robinson at the wheel on the upper deck. Self-possessed, and with the calmness which results from undoubting courage and confidence, yet with the humility which recognizes all possibilities, with downcast eyes and firm hands, Robinson took his place at the wheel and pulled the starting bell. With a shriek from her whistle and a white puff from her escape pipe to take leave, as it were, of the multitude gathered on the shores and on the bridge, the boat ran up the eddy a short distance, then swung around to the right, cleared the smooth water and shot like an arrow into the rapid under the bridge. She took the outside curve of the rapid, and when a third of the way down it a jet of water struck against her rudder, a column dashed up under her starboard side, heeled her over, carried away her smoke-stack, started her overhang on that side, threw Robinson flat on his back, and thrust McIntyre against her starboard wheel-house with such force as to break it through. Every eye was fixed; every tongue was silent, and every looker-on breathed freer as she emerged from the fearful baptism, shook her wounded sides, slid into the whirlpool and for a moment rode again on an even keel. Robinson rose at once, seized the helm, set her to the right of the large pot in the pool, then turned her directly through the neck of it. Thence, after receiving another drenching from its combing waves, she dashed on without further accident to the quiet bosom of the river below Lewiston. "Thus was accomplished the most remarkable and perilous voyage ever made by men. To look at the boat and the navigation she was to undertake no one would have predicted for it any other than a fatal termination. The boat was seventy-two feet long with seventeen feet breadth of beam and eight feet depth of hold, and carried an engine of an hundred horse power. In conversation with Robinson after the voyage, he stated that the greater part of it was like what he had always imagined must be the swift sailing of a large bird in a downward flight; that when the accident occurred the boat seemed to be struck from all directions at once; that she trembled like a fiddle-string and felt as if she would crumble away and drop into atoms; that both he and McIntyre were holding to the wheel with all their strength but produced no more effect than they had been two flies; that he had no fear of striking the rocks, for he knew that the strongest suction must be in the deepest channel and that the boat must remain in that. Finding that McIntyre was somewhat bewildered by excitement or by his fall as he rolled up by his side but did not rise, he quietly put his foot on his breast to keep him from rolling around the deck, and thus finished the voyage. "Poor Jones, imprisoned beneath the hatches before the glowing furnace, went down on his knees, as he related afterward, and although a more earnest prayer was never uttered and few that were shorter, still it seemed to him prodigiously long. To that prayer he thought they owed their salvation. "The effect of this trip upon Robinson was decidedly marked. To it, as he lived but a few years afterward, his death was commonly attributed. But this was incorrect, since the disease which terminated his life was contracted at New Orleans at a later day. 'He was,' said Mrs. Robinson to the writer, 'twenty years older when he came home that day than when he went out.' He sank into his chair like a person overcome with weariness. He decided to abandon the water and advised his sons to venture no more about the rapids. Both his manner and appearance were changed. Calm and deliberate before, he be came thoughtful and serious afterward. He had been borne, as it were, in the arms of a power so mighty that its impress was stamped on his features and on his mind. Through a slightly opened door he had seen a vision which awed and subdued him. He became reverent in a moment. He grew venerable in an hour." The style of the book throughout is pleasant, and the touch light, with a good vein of humour. The illustrations also are a marvellous improvement upon the guide-book illustrations of former days. Upon the whole, we do not remember to have ever read a better work of its class. CASSELL'S HISTORY OF THE WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND GERMANY, 1870-71, Vol. 1., London, Paris and New York: Cassell, Petter & Galpin. This work will, no doubt, become one of the most popular, as it is one of the most attractive, of the |