The Sun.
London, England, 1829-08-01 00:00:00

NEW MONTHLY AND LONDON MAGAZINE.

This is a very excellent number, and the
literary and critical matter of which it is made
up, is of a bea' and more intellectual order
than usual. " Schoolboy Recollections of. the
Jesuits," gives some amusing details respecting
an Order of Ecclesiastics once of paramount
importance in Europe, and still influential in
many 'countries of the Continent, though that
influence is of a more covert character than of
yore. We know not who is the author of these
amusing and peculiar reminiscences, but judging
from a felicitous sarcasm thrown here and there,
as well as from the occasional florid and copious
flow of diction, we should feel inclined to ascribe
it to IVIr. Sheil. " Sporting Sceres in India,"
is light and entertaining, and will be read with
much interest by that numerous class of his
Majesty's subjects to whom our East India pos-
sessions are the very centre of all moral
and intellectual civilization. " Liberality" is a
smart, peppery analysis of that spurious sort
of feeling which the world, in its indiscriminating
charity, is pleased to designate as such. " Lord
King's Life and Correspondence of Locke," is
a sensible digest of the biographical portions of
that delightful volume, which we are anxiously
waiting to see reprinted in the commodious aiid
acceptable form of an octavo. The world can-
not be too well acquainted with the works of one
who, in his private, no less than his public cha-
racter, came as near to what a real philosopher
should be, but seldom or never has been, as it
is possible for our imperfect nature to conceive.
" Travellers' Tales" is a grotesque collection of
many of the rhodomontade anecdotes that have
been put forth from time to time by this much
calumniated class of writers. It is ingeniously
and amusingly put together. " Sketches from
the Portfolio of a Sexagenarian" details some
pleasant anecdotes of Sir W. Scott and Lord
Byron, when residing, a short time subsequent
to the battle of Waterloo, at Brussels. The
following account of his Lordship's mother will
be found worth reading
" I was intimately acquainted with Lord Byron's mother
from her childhood. She lost both her parents before she
was ten years old, and lived occasionally with the family
of General Abercromby, of Glassaugh, to whom she was
nearly related. I passed some weeks in her company
there, when she came from school, a romping, comely,
good-humoured girl of sixteen, inclined to corpulency.
She was fowl of running races, and swinging between two
trees on the lawn ; but from this last exercise she was at
last interdicted, for one of the ropes gave way, and she
had so severe a fall that she fainted, and I carried her in
my arms into the house, but no injury occurred except that
she was obliged to submit to the lancet, and a temporary
confinement.

" One of her nearest relations, Mrs. D—, the wife
of the Admiral, was about this time residing at Bath ; and
this lady undertook the charge of the young heiress, and
of introducing her into the world. She had been too long
in Scotland, fur she had acquired a confirmed Scotch ac-
cent. Now it was to be feared that some northern ad-
venturer might entice her into a clandestine marriage, for
she had no mother or good aunt to look after her. How
Bath was chosen as an eligible residence for a young and
giddy heiress, seems rather surprising; but thither she
went, and was introduced. It was soon known that she
had an estate worth sixty thousand pounds, and she con-
sequently attracted many admirers : among others, Capt.
Byron, a guardsman (or lately one), paid his court to the
northern constellation. A young man of address and in-
sinuating manners, he got into the lady's good graces, and
persuaded her to take a trip to Gretna Green with him.—
This clandestine step placed her entirely at his mercy in
respect to settlements, and entailed on her, in a few years,
the misery of dependence.
" It was with some difficulty that the noble Captain
was prevailed on to settle two hundred a-year out of her
two thousand. Crippled with debts, which he had pre-
viously contracted, his extravagance continued, and, after
cutting down the timber, he disposed of the estate to the
Earl of Aberdeen, much under its value, and within three
years he had squandered every shilling. Fortunately death
put a stop to his career, and the poor widow (just out of
her teens) had no other provision left for herself and son,
but the pitiful pittance which had, by the kind intercession
of a friend, been saved to her. _ _

" She retired to obscurity, but in the midst of her
friends, to Banff, to educate her child. It is a singular
circumstance that, at the birth of this boy, there were five
males between him and the title, yet, before he had reached
his seventh year, he succeeded to it. On this subject his
nurse was prophetic ; for on his mother's asking this
woman, who had been thirty years in the family, if he
was a fine child ? ' Ay, Madam,' said she, he's a
bonny bairn, and he has got a clubbed foot, and he'll
surely be Lord Byron, for a' the Lord Byrons ha' a
clubbed foot.' This I have heard Mrs. Byron tell when
her son was an infant ; and it was certainly true that two
of the family had been born with this defect.
" She removed to Aberdeen, when he was five years
old, for the advantage of better masters than Banff afford-
ed, where she continued until his succession to the title
and estates of his relation enabled her, with the Lord
Chancellor's permission, to carry her ward to England.
" He was sent to Harrow ; and that she might be near
the idol of her affections, she took a small house in London."