The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 552, June 16, 1832

"The form of the city is nearly circular, about ten miles in circumference, although perhaps the thickly built and more densely populated part may be confined to an area of half that size. There are several large and handsome squares, but the streets, with very few exceptions, are neither wide nor regular; the pavement is formed like that of Paris, of small, sharp pebbles, with occasionally a narrow footway on each side, and the addition of two (or in the wider streets four) strips of flat stones in the centre, forming a sort of railway, on which the carriage wheels run with great smoothness and very little noise. The churches, hospitals, establishments for the poor, and other public institutions, are numerous, and display all the richness and magnificence of Italian architecture, and are at the same time endowed on a most liberal scale; the ancient palaces of the nobles, vast and rude, bear stamp of the importance of the city in the middle ages, when they served as domestic fortresses and lodged well-appointed and numerous retinues; and although they cannot at present vie with those of Rome or Genoa, yet they display considerable architectural luxury, and contain fine collections of works of art; attached to many are large and well-stocked gardens, which add much to the beauty of the city. Very little regard is paid to regularity of appearance in the general buildings; they vary in height from two to five stories, and are built of brick, or granite from the Lago Maggiori, plastered, coloured, or ornamented, according to the taste of the owner; many are still without the luxury of glass in the windows; the shops are numerous and well furnished; their entrances, as well as those of the coffee-houses, are frequently defended only by a coloured drapery, which, with the silk tapestry hung at the church doors, and occasionally from the balconies, &c., has a gay and pleasing effect; indeed the whole appearance of the city is cheerful and flourishing."

The groupes and incidents in the streets will amuse the spectator. There is Policinel—the eternal Punch—with his audience, a short distance from the Cathedral. All over Europe, the most enlightened portion of the world, is this little Motley to be seen frolicking with flashes of satire; the motto for his proscenium should be hic et ubique.

One of the beauties of this Panorama is the masterly effect of the Italian sky. There are fewer cloudless days in Italy than the stranger may imagine, but Mr. Burford was fortunate in his season.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

CHIT CHAT OF THE DAY

There is a good share of pleasant patter in the following abridged from the Metropolitan.

"Every one says that I am an odd person; I presume I am, and so is every one else taken singly. I can prove that by Cocker. One and one make two—two is even, one is odd, I am but one. There's logic for you. I am also a rambler by temperament. I ramble my person at my own free will, and my mind rambles quite indifferent as to its intimate connexion with the former. I look at the stars, and my thoughts are of women—I look at the earth, and my thoughts run upon heaven—I frequent the opera, and moralize upon the world and its vanities—I sit in my pew at church, and my thoughts ramble every where in spite of my endeavours and those of the parson to boot—I live in town all the year, because it's the fashion to be here in the season, and because I prefer London most when I can walk about where there is nobody to interrupt me. In the season, I am allowed to walk into every body's house, very often get an invite to fill up an odd corner, and as there generally is an odd corner at every party, and I do not stand at a short notice, I eat more good dinners than most people. I am not a fool, and yet not too clever, so that poised in that happy medium, I hear all, see all, know a great deal of what is going on, and hold my tongue. When people inhabit their town houses, I spend the whole day going from one to the other. I consider a house the only safe part of the metropolis. Were I to frequent the street during the season, I am so apt to fall into a brown study, that I'm certain to be jostled until I am black and blue—I have found myself calculating an arithmetical problem at a crossing, and have not been aware of my danger until a pair of greys sixteen hands high in full trot have snorted in my face—I am an idler by profession, live at a club, sleep at chambers, and have just sufficient means to pay my way and indulge my disposition. But I've not stated why I particularly like town when it is empty. It is because I feel relieved of all the fashionable et ceteras. By the time the season is over I am tired of dinners, of wine, of the opera, the eternal announcement of visiters at parties and balls, the music, the exotics, the suppers, the rattling of carriages, and the rattling of tongues. I rejoice at last to find London en deshabille—I can then do as I please without any fear of losing my character as a fashionable man. I consider that I can in London extract more amusement in a given quantity of ground than at any other place. A street will occupy me for a whole day: with an indifferent coat, and nothing but silver in my waistcoat pocket, I stop at every shop-window and examine every thing. Should it so happen that the prices are affixed to every article displayed, I make it a rule to read every one of them. I know therefore when Urling's lace is remarkably cheap, the value of most articles of millinery, the relative demands for boots, shoes, and hats, and prices of 'reach-me-downs' at a ready-made warehouse. At a pawn-broker's shop-window I have passed two or three hours very agreeably in ascertaining the sums at which every variety of second-hand goods are 'remarkably cheap,' from a large folio Bible as divinity, flutes and flageolets as music, pictures and china as taste, gold and silver articles as luxury, wedding rings as happiness, and duelling pistols as death. I could not of course indulge in these peripatetic fancies during the season without losing caste, but there is a season for all things."

"Talking of pictures, by the way, what a marvellous falling off is there in Wilkie!—a misfortune arising, as I take it, from a struggle after novelty of style. There is a portrait of the King by him in Somerset House Exhibition, like nothing on earth but a White Lion on its hinder legs, and there was one a year or two since of George the Fourth in a Highland dress—a powerful representation of Lady Charlotte Bury, dressed for Norval. Look at that gem of art, his Blind Fiddler, now in the National Gallery, or at his Waterloo Gazette, or at the Rent Day, and compare any one of them with the senseless stuff he now produces, and grieve. His John Knox—ill placed for effect, as relates to its height from the ground, I admit; but look at that—flat as a teaboard—neither depth nor brilliancy. Knox himself strongly resembling in attitude the dragon weathercock on Bow steeple painted black. Has Wilkie become thus demented in compliment to Turner, the Prince of Orange (colour) of artists? Never did man suffer so severely under a yellow fever, and yet live so long. I dare say it is extremely bad taste to object to his efforts; but I am foolish enough to think that one of the chief ends of art is to imitate nature as closely as possible. Look, for instance, at Copley Fielding's splendid drawing in the Water Colour Exhibition, of vessels in a gale off Calshot; and certainly I have never yet seen any thing either animal or vegetable at all like the men, women, trees, grass, mountains, which appear in Mr. Turner's works.

"This is of course an individual opinion, but I think it may be expressed without any fear of incurring a charge of ill-nature, when one thing is recollected. Copley Fielding cannot be a bad artist; Prout cannot be a bad artist; Nash cannot be a bad artist; De Vint, Stanfield, Reinagle, Calcott, none of these can be called bad artists; yet not one of these gentlemen, eminent as they are, produce any thing like Turner's drawings. Now if they are all wrong, Mr. Turner is quite right; but it is utterly impossible he should be so, if they are.

"Everybody knows the story of the sign-painter in the country, who could paint nothing but a red lion; and accordingly he advised every inn-keeper and alehouse-keeper in the neighbouring village, who applied to him, to have the sign of the Red Lion. This did very well for a considerable time, and the painter practised so successfully that not a hamlet or town, for ten miles round, that had not its red lion; until at length a new-comer, who, like Daniel of old, thought there were quite as many lions round him as were wanted, suggested to the artist that he should like to have a swan for the sign of his small concern. In vain the painter protested, Boniface was resolute. 'Well,' said the rural Apelles, 'if you will have a swan you must, but you may rely upon it when it is finished, it will be so like a red lion, you would not know the difference.' So Turner, if he were to paint a blackbird, it would be so like a canary when it was finished, you would not know one from the other.

"Among other sights, I was induced to go and visit the 'Fleas,' last Saturday. Never was there such an imposition; instead of being harnessed, they were tied by the hind legs, and the combatants, poor wretches! were pinched by the tails in tweezers, and of course moved their legs in their agony. Well, thought I, as I went out, I have been in Spain, and Portugal, and Italy, and have passed many a restless night, but hang me if ever I was so flea bitten in my life as I have been to day; and I thought of my shilling and the old proverb.

"There is a picture of Lord Mulgrave in the Somerset House exhibition, very like, painted by Briggs. The best portrait there, is Pickersgill's Lord Hill; as a likeness, it is identity; and I admire it the more, from the total absence of what the painters call accessories. It is simple, and though honourably decorated, is unadorned by what is considered 'groscape' drapery; and yet Mr. Pickersgill was at one time an unqualified admirer of cloaks; every hawbuck of a fellow who sat to him, was wrapped up in a cloak: this he has conquered, and we rejoice at it. The portrait of Lady Coote is a good picture; it is a pity that her ladyship had not sat a few years earlier; but that is no affair of the painter. A picture of Lady Londonderry, in the costume of Queen Elizabeth, by a Frenchman is amazingly like. There is a story about this dress which only proves the advantages of making experiments before any grand display. The petticoat of the Virgin Queen, as personated by her ladyship, was so thickly covered with diamonds, that the substratum of material could scarcely be seen; and nothing could be more splendid than the effect; but the diamonds glittered all round the dress, behind and before, and at the side; and so long as her ladyship paraded the magnificent suite of her apartments, all was well, and all shone brilliantly; but lo and behold, when her ladyship threw herself gracefully on her mimic throne, she found that she might as well be sitting in her robe de chambre on a pebbly pavement, or a heap of flints just prepared for Macadamization. Stones, though precious, are still stones, and the jump the Marchioness gave when she first felt the full effect of her jewels, is described as something prodigious. So handsome a person, however, might easily dispense with such ornaments. A queen of hearts may always look down upon a mere queen of diamonds.

"And what are we to say of other representations? What a sensation (at any other period how much greater would it have been!) Mr. Sheridan Knowles' Hunchback has made: why Mr. Sheridan Knowles made his hero a Hunchback I cannot imagine. The play is an admirable play; and what is as strange a part of the affair as any, is the acting of the author. To say it is finished, or fine, would be to talk nonsense; but it is plain, straightforward, common-scene acting, which very much surprised us, more especially from an author, still more from an Irish author; and more still from an author, who in private life is a perfect enthusiast, and a fine phrenzied-eye orator. Fanny Kemble never appeared to greater advantage in public—in private, her charming conduct with regard to her brother, the young soldier, speaks volumes for her. They say she is going to marry a son of Keppell Craven's, Lord Craven's uncle. They met first, I believe, at the acting of Lord Leveson Gower's play of Hernani, at Bridgewater House, when Mr. Craven reaped much histrionic fame as an amateur. Of one thing we are quite sure, Miss Kemble will act well wherever she may be placed in the world.

"One of the best conundrums I have heard for a long time, is attributed to that excellent and agreeable fellow, Yates, who is amongst those who do credit to the stage. Whether it is his own, or not, is a question to rest upon his veracity. It is this—'When does an alderman look like a ghost?' Answer. 'When he's a gobbling.' This is surely a jeu d'esprit. By the way, Rogers begins to whistle now; not in fear, or harmony, or for amusement, but I am afraid from the effects produced by advanced age. I regret this—he is an excellent person, and a gentlemanly poet; and I never shall forget the patience with which he bore a most unintentional misquotation, made from his works, and in his presence, by a man of the name of Barton, who wanted to compliment him, by recollecting his verses. The story that he quoted was Rogers' pretty song of