Star.
London, England, 1826-11-18 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

his diping-room with three bottles of excellent claret in
his hold; does not care to be furively &Owed of a
book, hOwever trifling its ♦gine, has otirti manifested
the forbear:lnce of a martyr, for ye irs (at this Mash
ter of Arts) dead in Isis own delen e ; tor as he
once laconically observed to me that man's ho-
nesty who, whilst he robs you of all that is portable
which he does want, has scruples of conscience as it
regards theffisti acting of your chairs and tables, which
he does not want." The principal upon which Tira-
boschi accounts for the universal disposition even among
persons who really would not wrong you of a farthing
in any other way, to plunder you of your books is an
ingenious one. He says that people seem to glory in
'these thefts as much as the monks of the darker ages
used to emit in stealing the relics of a Saint, and for the
same reason. However, as this is a Protestant country,
it is time the custom was put a stop to. I have often
thought of imitating a systematic refuser of requests,
with whom I have the pleasure to be acquainted;
whenever any one asks a favour of him, with which he
does not care to comply, answers that he has made a
a rule against acceding to whatever you desire of him,
and adds, that for your sake, he deeply deplores the
circumstance, as he should otherwise have had the
greatest pleasure in doing you the kindness you seek at
his hands. But I fear that con•ideting the notoriety of
my geodnature in book lending, I should won be
quizzed out of this shabby kind of excuse. Something
I must decide upon, and that promptly, for my library
begins to look such an assemblage of maimed, muti-
lated, broken-backed, vagabond-looking subjects. that I
protest I sometimes fancy I am in an hospital, provided
by voluntary subscription, for lame and invalid authors.
The most feasible plan which suggests to me at this
moment, is to call a meeting of private book collectors
at Freemason;•-hall, to take into consideration the pro-
priety of passing the following resolutions :
Ist. Resolved—That the practice of lending books to one's friends
has become not only an intolerable nuisance, but has also proved ex-
tremely injurious to the best interests of literature, including those
of the trade, inasmuch as it has prevented many persons from pur-
chasing books who have it in their power to do se, and has been
moreover the means of depriving literary men and collectors of
limited incomes of volumes, which they have found it extremely
inconvenient to replace.
21. Resolved—That one half the books lent for the accommoda-
tion of friends, are destroyed for any subsequent useful ornamental
purpose; and that the other half is stolen, some by Ladies who rob
you per force, others by demure looking scoundrels who pillage
you per stratagem.
Sci. Resolved—That as there arc many persons in the world too
poor or too mean to subscribe to theCirculatingLibraries of Maur./
Hookbam, Andrews, Ebers, or the Public Library in Conduit-
street, each Collector shall open a Subscription, at his or her
expense, for the benefit of their poor stingy friends—provided
always those friends will consent to plead for the favour iu forma
ramrgriL
4th. Resolved—That book-lending be in future wholly abolished
among private collectors, and that the regulation subscribed to by
the undersigned possesiors of some of the most extensive and valu-
able collections about town, be considered a sufficient excuse for
the abandonment of this pernicious practice ; any collector infring-
ing on this edict, to undergo the penalty of being hung in effigy on
the gibbets or borders of Blackwood, the Monthly, New Monthly,
and London blagsaines.
It this plan, and these resolutions, do not produce the
desired effect, I shall consider the evil as insurmountable.

THE SABBATH ➢NUS6.-.A Pam

We were delighted with the first, and riot less pleased
with the second part of this little unassuming publica-
tion, whose sentiments, fraught with the putest spirit of
piety, and expressed in language worthy of their divine
chat acter, must come home to the hearts of all. The
Author has selected a theme well fitted, from its solemn
yet inspiring associations, for the higher purposes of
poetry, and has done it adequate justice. His apostrophe
to Virtue is ai beautiful as the following description of
its trials is forcible and true:.
Say where is virtue bred!
Ms not in courts or camps, the seats of fame,
Nor in the crowd where folly still is first,
Nor is it pinned to faghion's changing sleeve,
Where every colour takes its turn to shine;
Nor will its manly tune be echoed there
Where languid beaux address exhausted belles
In words that faint, and thoughts that will not form:
No! 'tis in humble and in troubled scenes
The hopeful nursling thrives. Adversity
Knows best to rear it; like the oak, it grows
Against the storm ; and, as the dawn awoke
In darkness, and creation from the fogs
Of chaos burst in glory—oftener climbs
Through cloud and tempest in the hills of light,
Than by the side of ease in safety strolls
O'er the wide campaign where the sun is free !

On the subject of Hope, the painting is brilliant, and
the spirit is sustained throughout without the least di-
minution :

But Hope can never fail: By this inspired,
The captive, though for life condemned, looks up
To see the smiling shadow rend in twain
His prison gates, and ope' them wide as air:
By this the solitary, left to starve
On some lone island, in his fancy bears
The voice of succour rising from the deep,
And strikes his breast to see the signal ay ;
By this the wretch, who to the galley grows,
Some respite finds, as in the evening wave
His oar, in dripping spangles melts away,
And for a while, in spite of fate, is free s
By this does Aide,' rushing from her place,
The chains of Nature broken round her waist,
Dash seas and climes aside, her chief to meet
And crown him on her blazing promontory,
Though distant and a slave. The sick, the faint,
The bankrupt fortune, and the broken heart,
The dying, nay, the very dead, lie down
In hope. _ _ _

ANGERS.
The Cathedral of Angers is remarkable for throe very
high steeples, built on its portico, of which that in the
middle seems to be suspended in the air ; it merely rests
upon the foundations of the other two. The roof is high,
large, and bold, not being supported by any pilLars.—
The wall here is nearly a mile in length : there are five
alleys, well kept and'entirely shaded with very high
elms; handsome seats are on the sides. The tiding
school is an elegant building : many English Noblemen
and Gentlemen have belonged to this Academy : the
arms of each are painted on vellum and framed, and
the names are written unties them.—Cradock's Miscet
laneous Memoirs.

Since writing the above, my elegantly bound copy
(India paper proofs) of 13atlye's Italy, lent by my
eldest daughter to one of her schoolfellows, who is said
to draw sweetly, has been put into my bands, with the
young Lady's compliments and thankiron turning
over its pager, I find.that the fair borrower must be an
admirer of Turner, for she has slobbered gamboge over
every other leaf, spilled a saucer of vermilion over the
Leman, thus-converting it into a red sea, and so marred
and indented the prints in her attempts to trace them
through tissue paper, that the backs of them look ex-
actly like pasteboards pricked into holes to decorate
drawing-room grates. As for the Morocco binding it
is so bedaubed and besmeared with every variety of
opposite colour, that it presents as striking a combina-
tion of hues as a dying dolphin or a summer rainbow.
The book, befo►e it got into the clutches of this
boarding school minx (1 abomina'e boarding school
girls), was honestly worth ten guineas, and would now
be no bargain at
.a price of as many shillings. Oh,
that Job had been a b 'ok-lender! I see clearly that I
have only one alteroative, and that is, to set fire to my
house, and claim compensation for the loss of my li-
brary at the rate at which it was insured.
" Egad L'U do it r Lavery Magnet.

BOOK BORROWICKS. •
They steal and steal—ye gods how they do steal.
There is not a more pestilent class of nuisances on
the wide surface of the globe than book borrosiers.—
Virious are the tribes or orders into which these de-
structive animals are divided and subdivided ; but how-
ever they may differ in their minor characteristic,, they
are all beasts of prey, whose appetites are insatiable as
tire grave.
They have the eye of a lynx for all scarce volumes
of Elizabethan poetry, plays, faeetiz, &c. in short for
copies of all descriptions of rare books, of which they
have ever caught a glimpse through the glass doors of
your library bookcase, and of these they " venture to
request the loan" with the calmest and most imperturb-
able assurance, always prefacing their application with
(4,1 would not trespass upon your kindness, could I
borrow the work at any cost from a circulating library."
Accordingly having selected some twenty or thirty in-
valuable tames from your shelves, they inform you with
the most provoking nonchalance, that they will carry
the books, and thereby save you the trouble.of sending
them to their house, thus depriving you of the oppor-
tunity of here and there substituting an inferior copy. or
of omitting, as if accidentally, some unique gem. It is
a melancholy fact, that persons who would not wrong you
of a sixpence in hard cash, will have no scruple whatever
tit Accounts from Naples state that a considerable clan-
in plundering you of your books whenever they have an
y of Indian corn was shipping for this country.
opportunity of doing so. lam acquainted with a Tuesday, the Colchester True Blue, or Pitt Club, ce-
" grave and reverend Seignor," who, barring this little lebrated their twentieth Anniversary, at the Three Cups
failing, is one of the worthiest and best principled men I!rn, in that town. The attendance of Members, and of
breathing ; yet this otherwise unexceptionable character, friends from Chelmsford, Harwich, Maldon, Mersea,
has actually formed a complete library from the dere- &c. was numerous and highly respectable.
dations he has committed upon the learned repositories The Committee formed at Amsterdam for the relief
of his friends and neighbours. All his predatory incur- of the Greeks lately sent 3000 florins to redeem Greeks
:ions are however carried on in the character of a book who had been sold as slaves by the Turks.
borrower; and truth to say, he is one of the most irre- The last American Papers contain a copy of the
sistible of his tribe, for although you are morally ter- Treaty concluded last Spring between the Uni ed States
Lain you will never see any thing he thinks proper to and Denmark, by Mr. Clay and the Chevalier Peder-
borrow again, he does the thing in so cavalier a planner, son. Its leading provisions are founded on fair and
that one does not know what the deuce to say to him. liberal principles of reciprocity.
—No sooner does he learn that you have received a Yesterday, a General Meeting of the Proprietors of
fresh importation, than he stalks with a gait as stiff and the London Hibernian Corn and Flour Company, was
stately as the Ghost in Haslet into your library, and held at the Freemasons' Tavern, for the purpose of con-
having taken up a favourable position for his purpose, firming the Resolutions which the Shareholders had
bins disinterring the illustrious dead, (for he has, or passed on the 24th ult. for its dissolution. The former
affect: to have, a most profound contempt for the proceedings were unanimously confirmed. A Board of
writings of all modern authors save himself,) with the Directors was afterwards held at the same place, when
silence and rapidity ci a General marching under cover it was resolved that the dissolution be advertised in the
of the night, to surprise his unconscious enemy. Hints, London Gazette.
be they ever so broad, he refuses to take; gentle expos- EXTRAORDINARY ACCIDENT.—On Wednesday after-
tulations he will not hear ; and convulsive entreaties he noon as a party of young soldiers, of the 32d Regiment
ridicules. Ter, with all his assurance, he looks so con-- of Foot, was practising firing in Vle barrack yard of this
foundedly honest, that you cannot for the life of you town, a front rank man, in consequence of his piece mis-
muster resolution enough to affront him. ' sing fire, had occasion to advance several paces in front
When his appetite cur plunder, under the guise of to reprime and discharge it, when the barrel burst, and
borrowing, is pretty well sated, he turns round with a part of it was driven into the eye of a man in the rear,
look which seems to say-- so far as not to be perceived without opening the
See, I have culled the " Boer that promised best, wound. Mr. Lacey. in the absence of Mr. Bellott, the,
And where not sure, perplexed but pleased, I've guessed
attending surgeon, was sent for, and with much difficulty
At such m secmed the fairest.
extracted the piece of the barrel, which measured op-
And having given the preconcerted signal, a brawny
wards of two inches and a half, and weighed nearly
maid-servant waddles into the room, and before you
three quarters of an ounce. It was so impacted in the
can recover your surprise at his unparalleled audacity,
bone of the skull, at the back of the eyeball, as to re-'
you hear the street door slammed after them, and see
quire as much force as two persons could well exert.—
him marching in advance of his plunder, with all the
We are sorry to learn that the brain is much injured,
consequence of a Knight returning from the field of
and that the man's recovery is very doubtful.--.Stock-
conquest, attended by his Esquire bearing with him
port Advertiser, November 17.
the spoils of war, the par apherualia of his discomfited
Ecuesz.—Tuesday.evening being clear and serene,
opponent. A friend and neighbour of mine, who has
the Lunar Eclipse was seen at Glasgow to much advantage. The
a great regard for this Jonathan Wilde, but who, height of the Eclipse WAS at half past four e.u. About one-fourth
although be will allow as acquaintance to clear out of of Ilia Mown surface was obscured as her western limb.

A Satirical Novel, in Three Volumes, bearing in
seine measure upOn the late Mettles, and other matters connected
with the upper circles, is to the press, entitled " Truekleborough
Hall." Something of its character may be inferred from the
motto the Author has chosen from the Farceof " The Padlock."
Dteno.—Mungo, can you be ►onest ?
Moutio.—Vat you give me, Massa?