LITERATURE OF THE ANNUALS.

THE present volume of the Landscape Annual is very favourably distinguished from all the rest of its compeers, by its reality. The- country, indeed, through which Mr. ROSCOE journeyed, has been often described of late, both by military and literary travellers; and the tourist himself has a staid sobriety, which does not contrast advantageously with the animated and sparkling qualities of some of his predecessors. Still, the book has a general impress of spontaneity and truth. It is not raw, crude, and commonplace, like some of the Annuals ; nor it forced and cleverly vamped-up affair, like others; but the narrative of an actual tour by a gen- tleman whose solidity at times touches upon ponderosity, made in a romantic land, abounding with remains of departed greatness and present strife,—although, sooth to say, our tourist seems to have had no desire to mingle in the frays of Christinos and Carl ists.

The route was along leading lines of road, for the combined advantages, as the travelling-advertisements have it, of comfort and safety. Starting from Bayonne, Mr. RoscoE reached Madrid by Vittoria, Burgos, Valladolid, and Segovia; just peeping at the palace of St. Ildefonso, and tarrying at the Escurial ; the account of which last pile forms one of the f!atures of the book. In the capital, he appears to have seen a good deal more than he describes, or he found he had been forestalled by others ; and, after wearying himself sirth the sights of Madrid, he closed his present Tour in Spain with a trip to Toledo, once the Birmingham of the world for sword- blades, but now so reduced that it is almost a personal affront to ask an inhabitant the population of the city. " What is the use of asking what it is now ? Ask what it was, when two hundred thousand individuals crowded its streets and its marts." Yet the alleged cause of its decline may point a moral. When CHARLES the Fifth ascended the throne, the French fashion in the shape of the sword-blade was introduced ; but the manufac- turers of Toledo obstinately stuck to their old forms, and their trade gradually died away. A lesson for all who persist in lagging behind the mode of their age, whether in wit or weapons. The subjects which Mr. RoscoE handles in his Tour have no lack of variety. Besides descriptions of scenery, the incidents of travel, and the characters pretty certain to be encountered in a country like Spain, he gives the reader touches of history and

biography, suggested by the localities he is visiting ; criticisms on works of art ; verbal pictures of buildings and their accessories, with the impressions they produce ; facts and speculations on agriculture ; morsels of antiquity, and political economy ; pieces of criticism on Spanish authors, and quotations from their works, that might have been spared ; with occasional disquisitions on any thing and every thing, that might have been spared too. The nature of the book has of course forbidden much allusion to politics, but there are a few indications which seem to have more truth than the partisan-like statements that have hitherto

been put forth by both sides. With much, very much, that is obvious to censure, Mr. RoscoE seems to think that there are signs of dawning improvement in Spain—traces here and there of the formation of a public; and that the intelligent few, when they have no sinister purposes to serve, look with equal Indifference upon the cause of' Don and Donna. The following sketch of an inn group introduces us to a representative of Young Spain.

Its spacious kitchen was, as usual, the place of general rendezvous fir the travellers who patronized the establishment, and whose numbers, on the pre- sent occasion, were so considerable, and their costume, stature, and complexion so various, that, but for the roof and the female attendants, I might almost have fancied myself in the court of an Eastern caravanserai. Close to me, on the high-backed wooden seat, fixed for greater comfort in the chimney-corner, where I enjoyed the genial warmth of the fire, at a tall Aragonese in his capu- say, not unlike the Moorish haik or Grecian capate. The hood, thrown back on the shoulders, exhibited to view his small sheep-skin cap, from beneath which escaped, in matted flakes, a profusion of black greasy hair. His coun- tenance, though disfigured by several cicatrices, beamed cheerfully on all around ; and his tongue moved quicker than the flappers of Dori Quixote's windmills. His neighbour, who received this volley of vivacity, was an Andalusian mer- chant, in travelling costume,—a sheep-skin jacket, with silver clasps, tight breeches, buskins of leather, large silver spurs, and a guacho hat. They were both smoking paper cigars, and had engaged in argument oil general polities, occa- sionally glancing more or less adroitly at the contest going on in the province. Clustering round the fire in front was a motley group, composed of indivi- duals from almost every part of time country—Castilians, Bisrayans, Navarrese, Galician% all puffing forth smoke like furnaces, and bandying, in the midst of the cloud thus created, arguments somewhat infected by the mistiness of the atmosphere. My attention was by degrees fixed upon a young student from Salamanca. His robe, which had doubtless once been new, now displayed sundry unseemly rents, and was altogether so threadbare and brittle, that the first storm that should overtake him out of doors would certainly carry the better part of it to the crows. With regard to his cap, it was in some- what better condition ; for, not having been endued with the faculty of growing with his head, it had long been reduced to an article of mere show, and was carried under the arm, to prove that in rainy weather his locks had once skulked under cover.

He had engaged in conversation with a Catalan merchant, to whom he was recounting the brief story of his life. He then descanted on his studies with much earnestness and some complacency; and I discovered that, if his robe was somewhat antiquated, his ideas were of the newest stamp, full of lively and benevolent tendencies, and far more enlarged than I should have supposed it possible for a man to have picked up in a Salamanca education. With such

notions he was not likely to be an enthusiastic Christina, still less a Carlist. He evidently disliked both parties. He considered them as old tide- marks, over which the waves of a much higher flood must very shortly break, to sweep away and conceal for ever all trace of their existence. He met, however, with but little sympathy in his hearers, who, altogether absorbed by the interest of pass- ing events, heard with impatience all reference to a state of things, possible perhaps, but remote, equally from their experience and their hopes.

Here is a rather sensible disquisition on the rationale of manners.

Vitoria has always excited the admiration of foreigners, whether they have merely paid it a passing visit, or have enjoyed the experience of a longer resi- dence. Provisions are plentiful and cheap, and the climate, notwithstanding the vicinity of the mountains, which bound the horizon towards the north, is extremely mild and temperate, excepting perhaps a few days in the depth of winter. We may, perhaps, seek in vain for that Arcadian simplicity and inna cence of manners celebrated with credulous enthusiasm by former travellers,— and for this the civil war may charitably be called into account ; but one feature of the national character, observable here and everywhere, cannot fail to strike you as you sit with one leg over the other in the arcade of the great square,—I mean the tone of repose, of calm, unanxioua reliance for the future, which pervades every group around you. Doubtless the climate may lay claim to something of this, but not to all. Other causes must cooperate. And of these, perhaps, the chief is the absence of the commercial and specu- lating spirit, and the reliance of the majority upon. the more certain, though more moderate returns of agriculture and of unambitious trade. Here, as in the East, the cobler is as agriculture to be a colder as the duke to be a duke. His pride consists in being a Spaniard ; and for this he knows no other reason upon earth than that his father before him indulged the same pride, and transmitted it, as a sort of heir-loom, to him. There is, moreover, a sort of equality, which is not that of freedom. On the contrary, it derives its source from despotic rule ; for, where the sovereign is regarded as every man's master, those who share in the feeling of inferiority thus engendered, and from the cradle accustom themselves to look up to him as to a being above the ordinary level of humanity, naturally view all below that level as little or nothing better than themselves. That such is the case, any man may convince himself who will be at the pains to examine the structure of society in countries where the most rigid despotism prevails,—in the Ottoman empire, or in Persia, for example. He will there find precisely the same equality as in Spain, accom- panied necessarily by the same slovenly ease of manners, which, wherever it appears, is based on the most profound ignorance that in the economy of human actions there is such a thing as good-breeding. The uneducated and untutored Englishman is awkward, because his active aspiring mind has obtained some glimpse of a system of manners more beautiful than his own ; and though ignorant of the means, he would fain appropriate something of this enviable possession to himself—a wish which almost necessarily involves him in affectation. In one word, every Englishman would, without precisely knowing how, be a gentleman ; and, thanks to the finer and more free element of his government, the desire, accompanied by industry and good fortune, may be realized. But in Spain, and every other country under a purely monarchical government, men, to adopt a common phrase, know their place ; they are under the influence of a modification of the system of castes : such as is the father, such must be the son ; there is no jostling for precedence. A traditionary acquiescence in the wisdom of established institutions has grown up among them ; and hence that contentment and animal satisfaction which delude the superficial observer—the man who can envy the felicity of a sloth—into a belief that beings so gross, so unprovided with mental resources, can be consi- dered really happy.

The character of the Picturesque Annual is the reverse of the Landscape. It is pointed, striking, ingenious, forceful, but unreal. Something of this is chargeable upon the author, something upon his subject. Mr. RITCHIE is a man of talent, almost of genius; but he delights in exaggerated forms, strong contrasts, and violent efforts, indifferent whether the effects he produces resemble the simplicity of nature or the distortions of the phantasmagoria, so that an effect there be. He is also a practised observer and a skilful litterateur ; but both of these accomplishments sometimes injure him, from the obvious complacency with which they are paraded. He seems frequently to delight in saying—"See what I can see, where there is nothing worth seeing. Lo, how I spin a chapter, where few besides myself would write a sentence.' And a field so thoroughly exhausted as Ireland, was the last place favourable to the exercise of such qualities as these. Hence, though a certain degree of praise must be awarded to the book, it is a very unsatisfactory volume. It reminds us of those people met in life who are popularly characterized as being "too clever ;" or it resembles imitative articles in the jewellery line, which the skilful detect at once, and the purchasers as soon as they begin to wear them.

Passing from the author's merits, to the matter of his book, Mr. RITCHIE commences his tour with the entrance into the Bay of Dublin ; and this suggesting the comparison that has often been made between it and the Bay of Naples, furnishes him with an opportunity of examining the truth of the opinion ; which he does with apparent truth and exactness, and ends by proving that tl:e resemblance is very Irish after all. Landing, he gives the reader his impressions of Erin's beggars, the first object that a stranger encounters. He institutes a comparison between Dublin and Lon- don ; perambulates the splendid but small part of the capital—the amusement of a morning for a delicate lady ; plunges into the more remote and larger districts, the abode of wretchedness and Irish poverty,—for, traveller as he is, Mr. RITCHIE has met nothing like it in other lands; sketches the manners and habits of the citi-

zens; and personifies in " characters," though somewhat forcedly, the leading traits of the more obvious classes of Irish life. He then wanders into the country, and loses himself: what is real is old, what is new is fanciful ; and the novelty itself is only in- dividual—a fresh person, not a new species. The author, how- ever, tries his best. He gleans the field of local superstition ;

he picks up a tale or two connected with the Rebellion ; he cor- rects the impression made by those tourists who see only with the

eyes of others, and who, if a scene has been celebrated by genius or common fame, reecho praise without regard to time, change, or truth. He also brings his historical reading into the field, and has something to say of CROMWELL, Round Towers, RALEIGH,

and the conquest of Ireland ; while, though expressly disclaiming politics as alien to himself and his book, he has his own panaceas for Ireland and the Irish. Amid such variety, there is choice of matter, and no lack of amusement; but to us, whose eyes per- haps are sharpened by habit. there is a want of something which is best expressed by the word congenial. One feels or fancies that the writer is writing task-work. Having already mentioned the comparison between the rival Bays of Beauty, we will now quote it.

It is the fashion to liken the Bay of Dublin to the Bay of Naples; but net two objects can be more dissimilar. Even if the outline of the soil were not absolutely different, which it is, there are other circumstances which put com- parison out of the question. The utter lifelessness of the Southern wave give., at first view, its character to the picture. A preternatural stiline,s appears to reign in the air ; and the eye of the voyager turns unconsciously to the dusky form of Vesuvius, as if seeking an explanation of the mystery. But as the bark pursues her way through the dead water, and the terraced city, with its lines of palaces and hanging gardens, comes distinctly into view, another power assumes sway over the scene. This is the sun. The calmness of lie sea is no- longer death, but sleep ; all is bright, all is beautiful—even tombs and ruins ;. and, under the influence of the most delicious climate in the world. we do not wonder that the Neapolitans dance and sing and make love, or find it ready made, even in the lap of a volcano. In the Bay of Dublin, on the other hand, the waters are almost always in a state of commotion. In general, the white-crested billows of the Irish Sea sweep in towards the land in regular lines; and the roaring of the North and South Bulls, as the waves rush over the sands at the opposite ends of the semi- circle, bids ominous welcome to the stranger. The sun is seldom visible more than an instant. The sky is constantly traversed by heavy watery clouds. A dark shadow broods over the city, sometimes lessening and sometimes increas- ing, according to its density, the effect of the spires and towers. The two pictures, I have said, are very different ; yet both are admirable in their several kinds. This was my first approach to Ireland by the Bay of Dublin ; and after having explored a considerable portion of Continental Europe in search of the picturesque, I certainly did not expect to find at home a scene of such splendid beauty on so great a scale. The state of the atmo- sphere was far from being Italian, but I imagined that the varieties of our Northern clime were still better ; and the bright green colour of the land com- pensated for the presence of those water-clouds which keep vegetation fresh in the Emerald Isle, when even the garden of England is an arid waste.

The peninsula of Howth, on the right hand, appeared through the watery

air, like an island, only its bold front and lighthouse rising distinctly out of the deep. The annexed view, although taken in asomewhat more favourable state of the atmosphere, conveys an admirable idea of the scene. Across the low isthmus of Howth, the island called Ireland's Eye, boomed full out of the mist; and, further still, in the momentary changes of the atmosphere, that of Lam- bay looked like a cloud resting on the horizon. On the left band, or southern point of the bay, lay the island of Dalkey, crowned with a marten() tower ; while before me the whole shore was studded with villas and villages, behind which, but verging southward, the woods and fields rose gradually up till they mingled with the Wicklow hills.

DUBLIN HABITS.

It seems to me that the gentry of Dublin are too small and unimportant a body to present that almost impassable barrier of caste which they do else- where. The attempts at encroachment by the lower ranks are constant, be- cause they are successful ; and, with a still greater expectation of what is called gentility than in other large towns, we find here a very extraordinary de- gree of republicanism in the constitution of society. Some persons imagine that Lord Mulgrave is at the bottom of this mischief, as they term it ; but in reality it existed long befine his time, and all that should be attributed to him is the discovery, which it did not require much sagacity to make, that the little court of the Viceroy was quite unable of itself to stem a tide that had already set in. There must be upper classes everywhere ; and, on the withdrawal of those of Dublin, the next rank would insensibly take their place. A like change would go on through the whole mass of society, and a general struggle of castes would commence.

To "keep a carriage," which in general means a car, is no distinction, for almost every body does this. Some years ago, the inside car was the genteelest, now it is the outside which is "the time of day." This is a machine, as every body knows, in which the company sit dos a dos, with a space between resembling an open coffin, for luggage. Vehicles of this description answer the purpose also of hackney-coaches, of which there are very few in Dublin ; and there is also a still smaller public carriage, resembling a very little covered cart, with no aperture except the door, which is behind. A person who keeps a car goes in state to a party ; the next in wealth appears in a hackney-coach, and next in a hackney-car ; and I have seen ladies dressed like princesses com- ing out of the little covered cart. Dress, however, is no more than carriage- keeping a distinction. In a very small country town, (which because it is very small shall be nameless,) while wandering in a grove appertaining to the castle, I met a young lady in an elegant and fashionable morning dress. A novel was in one hand and a parasol in the other ; and a serving maiden walked demurely behind, with her eyes fixed upon the ground. This was doubtless the lady of the land ; and, for a moment, I hesitated whether or not I should make an arm- logy for my intrusion, having "dropped in" without the ceremony of asking leave. She passed loftily on, however, absorbed in the fate of Lord Augustus and Lady Wilhelinina ; and I did not presume to disturb the meditations even of her maid, in order .o give that fair vision a local habitation and a name. But this, as it fortunately happened, was of no consequence ; for in an hour after, I met her in one of the very few shops of the town, and had the honour of receiving from her own beautiful hands a pair of boot-hose in exchange for one shilling and tenpence, or, as site more laconically expressed it, one and ten.

In Dublin you may descend as far as you please in the scale of shopkeeping,

or, indeed, of any ostensible business at all; and you will find the same wish to do the genteel in dress and every thing else. This, however, is only at the hours when the ladies of the family go abroad ; at home they are as humbly clad as may be, and in the article of food are satisfied with what Londoners of the same class would turn away from with indignation. These ladies will tell you, and with perfect truth, that they went last evening to a party at Mr.Maloonie's in a car- riage, and they will add an anecdote of something which occurred to them as they were taking tkeir tay. Here the possessive pronoun gives you to under- stand that they are accustomed to a luxury which in fact they taste only on very tare occasions indeed.

The Juvenile Forget Me Not opens with an Introduction which almost precludes the necessity of stranger notice; for it contains a summary of the contents, and a character of the contributors, in which something kindly is said of all. From the same paper we learn, too, that Mrs. HALL has wisdom enough to withdraw in time, and enough of her sex's discernment to see that the time is come. The present, we are told, is most probably the last sea- son in which the Juvenile Forget Me Not will appear ; and, judg- ing from the character of the production, much trouble and pains have been necessary to achieve its last advent. The writers seem as if heart and matter were gone. They have neither the shrewd buoyancy of childhood nor the pregnant solidity of age. Their topics are for the young, but the treatment for the elders ; they write for not to children. Nor is this a fault, but a law of nature. The soil requires fallow, manure, or various cropping. Animals degenerate if bred in and in. Fruit-trees must be grafted to bear. Grasses get dry and harsh in the lapse of time. We know from the geologists, that worlds themselves are broken up when they -get old and worn-out. And why should Annuals escape a univer-

• eal law ?

Of the papers in the Juvenile, perhaps the best is the editor's " Little Ears," although addressed to parents rather than children. The most appropriate is Miss LESLIE'S " Week of Idleness;" but this is an American reprint. " Jane Dudley " is a pleasant story; but with nothing juvenile about it, save its shortness and slight- ness; and Dr. WALSH'S " Rose of Jericho" is an agreeable med- ley of botanical, historical, and superstitious facts.

The marked quality of the English Annual is its cheapness ; which is effected by the engravings and literature being both se- lected from the Court Magazine. The only original things about it are the elegant morocco binding, of some indescribable colour, and its gold-edged leaves. Part of the contents do not well bear once reading, and none except a few rare tit-bits require a second. But to those who have never seen the plates or letter- press before, this Annual may serve its turn, perhaps as well as many others.