LYING IN STATE OF GEORGE IV.
THE genius of wax-work departed with dear Mrs. SaLatox, rest her bones ! and its glories now bloom only in the dummies of TRUEFITT and MACALPINE. We remember the time when We used annually to "sup full of horrors" at her ghastly gallery of waxen figures, in Fleet Street, opposite Chancery Lane, and quaff a" Tewahdiddle" of terror at the blood-freezing fount of Mrs. RADCLIFFE. But Mrs. SALMON is no more, and the wax-work of the old women at Westminster Abbey is shown no longer. Mrs. SALMON was a mighty lover of death-shows —we believe she married an undertaker, or one of his mutes. She re. veiled in white crape, wore a cap bordered with coffin-trimmings, slept in a winding-sheet every night of her life, laid on a mattress, under a " canopy of costly state," while a shroud served her for a night-dress, and a pall for a coverlid. Her face was like one of her waxen images, and her eye-brows white and thatchy like theirs. She also waxed old and infirm—her taper was almost burnt out ; and it seemed likely that the funeral pomp which constituted a considerable part of her stock in trade would soon be employed to deck her remains. It was on one of those intensely hot days—more than dog-days—in a broiling summer, that the old lady walked into her exhibition-room to be out of the sun, and for the purposes of meditation ; for she was of a warm con- stitution, and seriously inclined. Whether the mournful tone of her mind, or the solemn hues of her dumb regiment affected her fancy, I can't say, but she thought the mutes who attended the lying-in-state of the Princess Amelia looked unusually melancholy ; and was surprised at observing tears upon every cheek—not those of the spectators, but of the performers. She approached, with the corner of her white lawn apron upraised, to wipe the drops away—they were tears of war. Hence the favourite phrase of Mr. Newsraw's novelists and the penny-a-liners, "melted into tears." Her dummies were in a state of profuse perspiration, and dissolved to the back-bone (generally a mop- stick), while the wax candles shed burning drops of sympathy. It broke the poor old lady and her heart at once ; and it was remarked that not a waxen figure was ever known to hold up its head after.
These melancholy reflections rushed like a crowd of undertaker's men into our thoughts, as we viewed the poor attempt to get up a "lying in state" at the Western Exchange. It is a cosmorama-like exhibition of four views of Windsor Castle and the Long Walk, Virginia Water, the Fishing Temple, and the Ruins ; an interior of the Royal Vault, and the Lying in State. They are bad and ineffective paintings, from better prints ; and the only resemblance that the scene bears to the ori- ginal, consists in the closeness and blackness of the room. Shade of Mrs. SALMON ! be satisfied. Your fame is unimpaired. No one but Mr. MASH can hope to become your rival.
The mezzotint° Engravings from Mr. I. M. W. TURNER'S Pic- tures, with other New Prints, will be noticed in our next.
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