SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY,

TRAVELS.

Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home. By Miss Sedgwick, Author of' Hope

Leslie."" Poor Rich Man," &c. In two volumes Maros.

MEDICINE,

The Mineral Springs of F:14Iaud, and their Curative Efficacy; with (Remarks on Bathing, and on Artificial Mineral Waters. By Edwin Lee, Esq.. M.R.C.S. Author of "An Account of the Watering-places and Mineral Springs ou the Con- tinent," &c. &c fVhittaker and CO. The Principal Baths of Germany considered with Reference to their Remedial Efficacy In Chronic Disease. By Edwiu Lee, Esq., M.R.C.S. &c. Tile Second Part— Central sod Southern Germany. With au Appendix on the Cold Water Cure. FORENSIC ORATORY, Whittaker and Co. Speech for the Defendant in the Prosecution of the Queen e. Mason, for the Publica- tion of Shelley's Works. Delivered in the Court of Queen's Bench, 2.3d June 1841, and revised, by T. N. Talfourd, Sergeant-at-law. Moses. FINE Asia,

The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture, set forth in Two Lectures delivered at St. Marie's, Oscott. By A. Welby Pugin, Architect, and Professor of

Ecclesiastical Antiquities in that College. Weak.

MISS SEDGWICK'S LETTERS FROM ABROAD TO KINDRED Al' HOME.

MISS SEDGWICK occupies a high position in the American mind as a novelist and moralist ; combining the character of Miss AUSTEN or of the author of Marriage with that of a secular HANNAH Moss, and varying her labours from the regular three-volume fiction to the child's story or the tale for an annual. Judging from her best productions, she seems to belong to the stock of New England gentry; some of whom say they are more English than John Bull, and reminded an experienced and somewhat critical traveller of the staid and respectable gentry of the old school at home. In one of the best of Miss SEDGW1CK'S novels, The Linwoods, she has admirably described two classes of this race. The one, Mr. Linwood, represented the old Tory proprietor of large means and aristocratical bearings ; specimens of which class were not rare, we believe, at New York in the earlier part of the cen- tury, though probably well nigh extinct now. The family of the Lees embodied the humbler race of "gentlemen farmers," whose fortunes were less and whose opinions were democratical, but who possessed, equally with the other, that true ease and refine- ment of manners which result from simplicity and good sense, coupled with a knowledge of one's own position and a tole- rance towards that of others. This regard to one's own rights or status, and respect to those which other people claimed, was not of American growth, but derived its origin from the strongly- marked system of English classes, with their respective rights, legal or moral. The system of manners we speak of seems still to be preserved in the Eastern parts of America ; but the conjoint spirit of independence and tolerance appears to have been shaken by the overwhelming influence of the majority. 'Miss SEDG■ WICK has no doubt the simplicity of manners which marks the gentlewoman, and her amiable feelings induce her to find excuses for European differences in religion and so forth; but in some sense her mind is Yankee or colonial. She makes her home notions too- much of a standard: she has little of that tolerant philosophy that characterized WASHINGTON, who when a great clamour was raised about the forms of courts, remarked, that if those forms were inves- tigated, they would mostly be found to have originated in con- venience.

The impressions of such a person with regard to England and Europe were perhaps not absolutely wanted, but being here they are welcome. They are interesting in themselves; and though not going over any new ground, and dealing only with the superficies of things, (for Miss SEDGW1CK was as hasty a "go-ahead" kind of traveller as any of her countrymen,) they serve to complete our portrait as others see us. Mr. COOPER'S IS too critical a mind to go deeply into externals, and a person of too large experience in the habits of many peoples to have had the freshness of first im- pressions. Mr. WILLIS was a trading litterateur, writing for effect, and "calculating" on his description of an hotel to go towards payment of his bill ; so that, now we know him better, we know not how much is believable. Mr. DEWEY was a traveller of a higher stamp ; but he 'wanted the feminine character of Miss SEDGWICK, her poetical mind, and perhaps her professional habit of looking at things to describe them with broad and general truth. It is the personal circumstances of the Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home which give them value or interest ; for the ground travelled over by the writer has been so beaten, that to English readers, at all events, it can have no novelty. From Portsmouth to London ; from London to Antwerp, Brussels, and Waterloo ; a short stay at one or two spas ; a flying turn through Switzer- land and Italy, with a brief residence at Milan, Rome, Naples, Florence, and Venice,—these journeyings and sojournings wane attraction here, even had the traveller better opportunities than Miss SEDGWICK, and a more practical mind. In one sense, too, the Letters are incomplete, though properly so—many of the Sights and curiosities in well-known places being only touched upon. Some of the book, therefore, approaches the tedium of the twice-told tale : we only care for impressions when we take some interest in the original. The party with which Miss SEDGWICK travelled landed at Ports- mouth : and her first impression was the sober hue of the old brick edifices, apparently contrasting with the staring garishness of the wooden painted houses in the new country. The cleanliness and care both in person and dress, even when the dress was rags, was also an early object of surprise, and continued to the last: we should imagine the Americans are like navigators or blacksmiths, covered with industrial marks, and too busy to get rid of them daily. The perfect cultivation of England, the beauty of the winding lanes and hedgerows, and the antique and solemn appearance of the old churches, struck her with pleasure ; but she seems to have been above all attracted by the neatness with which the poorest cottage and cottage-garden were kept, and the beauty of the flowers. Her exclamations are frequent as to the grace and effect that might be given to the gardens orthe rich in America even by a little care bestowed upon their native flowers, many of which she saw blooming here. The sight of a cathedral, especially the first cathedral, was an excitement, not only for itself but for its bodily chronicle of the past. Here she is at

AN ENGLISH "LODGE."

I cannot follow the rule I would fain have adopted, and compare what I see here to what is familiar to you at home. There is, for instance, in this place of Mrs. —, a neatness, completeness, and perfection* of which we have but the beginning and faint shadowing. Our grounds are like our society, where you meet every degree of civilization. Here, every tree, shrub, and little flower is in its right place ; and nothing present that should not be here. On one side of the house the garden is laid out in the fantastical French style, in the form of hearts and whimsical figures, but elsewhere it is completely Eng- lish, with noble trees that grow as Nature bids them ; hot-houses, with grapes and pines ; and a lawn that for hundreds of years, probably, has had its grass cropped every week through the growing-months.

The house is, I fancy, rather a favourable specimen of the residences of the English gentry—spacious, and arranged with comfort and elegance ; but not surpassing, in these respects, the first class of gentlemen's country-houses in America. But there are luxuries here that we have not, and shall not have for many a day. The walls are painted by the master of the house with views on the Rhine, from sketches of his own ; and very beautiful they are. This is, to he sure, very attainable to us, for a taste and a certain facility in paint- ing is common enough among us ; but when shall we see on our walls an un- questionable Titian, or a Carlo Dolce ? or when, in a gentleman's country- house, an apartment filled with casts from the best antiques ? Certainly not till our people cease to demand drapery for the chanting-cherubs and such like innocents. • • After lunch, Miss — took us in her carriage, stowing the girls in the ramble, through Lord Ashdown's and Mr. Fleming's parks. We drove a mile through the latter, with thick borderings and plantations of shrubbery on each side of us, so matted and with such a profusion of rhododendron as to remind me of passages in the wilds of Western Virginia. This, you know, is a plant not native to this country, but brought with much pains and expense from ours. We have not English wealth to lavish on parks and gardens, but with taste and industry we might bring to our homes, and gratefully cherish, the beautiful plants that God has sown at broadcast in our forests. I declare to you, when I remember how seldom I have seen our azaleas, kalmias, &c. in cultivated grounds, while I meet them here in such abundance, it seems like finding a neglected child housed and gently entertained by strangers.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON.

Would you know what struck me as we drove from the depot of the Western Railroad to our lodgings? The familiar names of the streets, the neutral tint of the houses, the great superiority of the pavements to ours, and, having last seen New York, the superior cleanliness of the streets. I have all my life heard London spoken of as dismal and dark. It may be so in winter; it is not now. The smoke-colour of the houses is soft and healthy to the eye ; so unlike our flame-coloured cities, that seem surely to typify their destiny, which is, you know, to be burned up sooner or later—sooner, in most cases. And having had nothing to do today but gaze from our windows, what think you has struck us as quite different from a relative position in our own city ?—The groups of ballad-singers, consisting usually of a man and woman and one or two chil- dren. I have seen such in New York half-a-dozen times in my life and they are always people from the Continent of Europe. Here, not half an hour passes without a procession of these licensed musical, and to us novices irre- sistible beggars. Then there are the hawkers of flowers as irresistible, lovely bouquets of moss-rosebuds, geraniums, heliotropes, and what not. As we are in the neighbourhoods of Piccadilly and the Parks, our street is quite a tho- roughfare, and we are every moment exclaiming at the superb equipages that pass our window. Nothing, I presume, of the kind in the world exceeds the luxury of an English carriage with all its appointments; and yet, shall I con- fess to you, that after my admiration of their superb horses was somewhat abated, I have felt, in looking at them, much as I have at seeing a poor little child made a fad of by the useless and glittering trappings of his bobby-horse. What would our labouring men, who work up the time and strength God gives them into independence, domestic happiness, and political existence— what would they, what should they say, at seeing three—four servau.s—strong, tall, well-made young men, (for such are selected,) attached to a coach, one Coachman and three footmen, two of course perfect supernumeraries ? We "moralize the spectacle," too: observe the vacant countenance and flippant air of these men, chained to the circle of half-a-dozen ideas, and end with a laugh at their fantastical liveries, some in white turned with red, and some in red turned with white. Fancy a man driving with a militia general's hat, feathers and all, with three footmen, one seated beside him and two behind, all with white coats, scarlet plush breeches, white silk stockings, rosettes on their shoes, and gold-headed batons in their white gloved hands. There must be some- thing "rotten in the state," when God's creatures, "possible angels," as our friend Doctor T. calls all human kind, look up to a station behind a lord's Coach as a privileged place. "Possible angels" they may be ; but, alas, their path is hedged about with huge improbabilities Coming to the cities of the Old World, as we do, with our national vanities WINCHESTER can:termer..

What think you of our New World eyes seeing the sarcophagi containing the bones of the old Saxon Kings—the Ethelreds and Ethelwolfs, and of Canute the Dane ; the tombs of William Rufus and of William Wickham ; the chair in which Bloody Mary sat at her nuptial ceremony ; besides unnumbered monuments and chapels built by Kings and Bishops ; to say nothing of some of the best art of our own time, sculpture by Flaxman and Chantrey ? Their details were lost upon us in the effect of the great whole; the long-drawn aisles, the windows with their exquisite colouring, the lofty vault, the carved stones, the pillars and arches—those beautiful Gothic arches. We had some compensation for the unconsciousness of a lifetime, of the power of architecture, in our overwhelming emotions. They cannot be repeated. We cannot see a cathedral twice for the first time—that is very clear.

I was not prepared for the sensations to be excited by visiting these old places of the Old World. There is nothing in our land to aid the imperfect lights of history. Here it seems suddenly verified. Its long-buried dead, or rather its dim spectres, appear with all the freshness of actual life. A miracle is wrought on poetry and painting. While they represented what we had never seen, they were but shadows to us—a kind of magic mirrors, showing false wages: now they seem a divine form for the perpetual preservation of the beautiful creations of nature and art.

The completeness of nearly every thing in England, especially of the houses and concomitants of the wealthy, also struck the strangers mightily.

thick upon us, with our scale of measurement graduated by Broadway, the City- hall, the Battery, and the Boston Common, we are confounded by the extent of London, by its magnificent parks, its immense structures, by its docks and warehouses, and by all its details of convenience and comfort, and its aggregate of incalculable wealth. We begin with comforting ourselves with the thought, "Why, these people have been at it these two thousand years, and Heaven knows how much longer." By degrees envy melts into self-complacency, and we say, "they are our relations ;" " our fathers had a hand in it ; " we are of the same race, "as our new-planned cities and unfinished towers" shall hereafter prove. Mr. Webster said to me after we had both been two or three weeks here, "What is your impression now of London ? my feeling is yet amazement."

There are yet ties to be broken before America and Great Britain can become national, or, as it used to be said with regard to France, "natural enemies."

Miss SEDGWICK remarks on the Contineht have less of attraction, from their furnishing fewer points of comparison between ourselves and the Americans ; but there are many passages of considerable in- terest in various ways. Partly as an American, partly perhaps from her own genial manners and mind, Miss SEDGWICK was able to gain the confidence of foreigners more readily than the reserved and somewhat supercilious English. From this it would appear that there is an under-current of dissatisfaction abroad, ready to break out on the first opportunity, and realize CANNING'S prophetic warning to the Continental despots that the next European war will be a war of principles. Here is an example in the stronghold of paternal despotism-

" There is a captain in the Austrian army at Krontbal for his health, a man about fifty, with a most melancholy expression of countenance. Ever since he knew we were Americans, he has manifested an interest in us. He has asked many questions about the country, and let fall on various occasions, in an under tone, his respect for our free institutions. His extreme despondency affected me, and I took an opportunity to endeavour to inspire him with the hope in the efficacy of the waters. I repeated to him every instance I had heard of benefit in cases similar to his. At each he shook his head mournfully, and then explained why the amen stuck in the throat.' 'It is not my disease,' he said, that may be cured, but it is my incurable position. What am I but a mere tool in the hands of the men of power employed to watch every generous movement, and support the wrong against the right ?'"

ITALIAN FEELING TOWARDS THE AUSTRIANS.

The Emperor pays a large sum annually to support the opera at La Scala, considering it an efficient instrument for tranquillizing the political pulse of Italy. No wonder that syrens must be employed to sing lullabies to those who have a master's cannon pointed at their homes. Among other proofs which the Emperor has that the love of freedom, that divine and inextinguishable essence, is at work in the hearts of the Milanese, is the fact that no Italian .lady receives an Austrian officer in her box with impunity. It matters not what rank he holds, if she receives him she is put into Coventry by her coun- trymen. Is there not hope of a people who, while their chains are clanking, dare thus openly to disdain their masters ? Some remarks have been made upon the private disclosures which Miss SEDGWICK has been guilty of. In the first volume we see nothing very censurable in this respect, except some remarks upon an ill-bred or rather awkward host, when she got herself into a di- lemma by mistaking the time ; and this is only censurable (for names are suppressed) as it conveys a public notice of a gaucherie which no one would have remarked upon privately to the party concerned. Miss MITFORD, JOANNA BAILLIE, and ROGERS, are the only persona whose domesticity is at all touched upon ; and perhaps Miss Mrr- FORD, though all is compliment, may be a shade too close, but not much closer than she herself has gone in Our Village. All the rest is nought—people who throw open their rooms to reporters, to have an account of their parties paraded to the world, are not so thin-skinned. In the second volume, which was not printed last week, there is an indiscretion, however, which should have been avoided, for it may lead to serious consequences. Some Italian exiles have found refuge in America, and been hospitably enter- tained by the friends of Miss SEDGWICK: her party was naturally furnished with letters to their connexions in Italy ; and probably the attentions they procured them, and the remarks made by the outpourings of' feeling, are repeated too fully and thoughtlessly. It is true, initials only are given, but there is quite enough to iden- tify the parties to the Austrians : it is also true that we see nothing in all that is said, but the Austrian authorities may think differ- ently, especially as one of the persons appears to fill some office. All this has, no doubt, been done by Miss SEDGWICK without consideration ; but people should be considerate where the welfare of others is concerned.