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that his "writing hand, first dedicated to the Muses, then with maturer judgment consecrated to the Nymphs of Solyma, should be led captive by the cruel foe." If Mr. West chanced not to know who or what the Nymphs of Solyma were, he had the intelligent pleasure of finding out. Miss Seward describes Mrs. Tighe's sprightly charms as "Aonian inspiration added to the cestus of Venus"; and speaks of the elderly "ladies of Llangollen" as, "in all but the voluptuous sense, Armidas of its bowers." Duelling is to her "the murderous punctilio of Luciferian honour." A Scotch gentleman who writes verse is "a Cambrian Orpheus"; a Lichfield gentleman who sketches is "our Lichfield Claude"; and a budding clerical writer is "our young sacerdotal Marcellus." When the "Swan" wished to apprise Scott of Dr. Darwin's death, it never occurred to her to write, as we in this dull age should do: "Dr. Darwin died last night," or, "Poor Dr. Darwin died last night." She wrote: "A bright luminary in this neighbourhood recently shot from his sphere with awful and deplorable suddenness";—thus pricking Sir Wal-