morality and confound all our notions of right and wrong, by substituting certain silken phrases and taffeta terms precise for the most grave offences. Thus killing an innocent man in a duel is called—an affair of honour; violating the rights of wedlock-an affair of gallantry; adultery-a faux pas; defrauding honest tradesmen-outrunning the constable; reducing a family to beggary by gaming—shaking the elbows; a drunkard, that worst of all livers, is-a bon-vivant; disturbing a whole street, and breaking a watchman's head—a midnight frolic; exposing some harmless personage to insults, annoyances, and losses a good hoax; uttering deliberate falsehoods-shooting the long bow and various other polite epithets will occur to the Society, which, affecting to be used as synonymes for vice, not unfrequently assume the language of virtue. It is not beneficial to the monarchical principle that a female of bad character should be termed a courtesan ; nor to morality that she should be described as a woman of pleasure. Such lenient periphrases are of most injurious tendency; and if the Society for the Suppression of Vice have failed to interfere for their discontinuance, I am confident that the Institution which I have the honour to address will not shrink from the full performance of its duty.

Perhaps I may be subjecting myself to the imputation of a Hysteronproteron, if, after noticing the abuses and perversions of words, I proceed to those of individual letters; but the importance of the conclusions to which it leads induced me to reserve this subject for my own conclusion, and so end where most people begin-with the alphabet. So obscure and incomprehensible is the origin of letters, that many authors have been glad to solve the difficulty of their invention by referring it to divine inspiration. In that case, however, there would have been some conformity of character, number, and sequence; whereas there is a marked difference in all these constituents among the various nations of the earth. The learned author of Hermes informs us, that to about twenty plain elementary sounds we owe that variety of articulate voices which have been sufficient to explain the sentiments of such an innumerable multitude as all the past and present generations of men; and of course our alphabet, assuming this hypothesis to be true, might be much contracted. Yet there are others still more numerous, embracing all numbers up to the Chinese, which reckons by thousands, and assuming every variety of collocation without any one people being able to assign reasons for deviating from the order of its neighbours. An elucidation of this curious subject is well worth the most serious attention of the Society.

The Scholiasts upon that ode of Anacreon which describes Cupid's being stung by a bee, state him to have been at that moment learning his letters; and that in perpetual remembrance of the pain inflicted by his winged assailant, he decreed that the alphabet should ever after commence with A B. Others suppose the whole ode to be allegorical, expressing how much. Cupid felt stung and nettled at being compelled to undergo the drudgery of learning those letters. The precedence of B to C has been explained upon the principle that a man must be before he can see; but these, I apprehend, are plausible and ingenious conjectures, unsupported by any great philological or lexicographical

authorities. Many curious discoveries have already been made in the hidden properties of letters, and the number might be indefinitely increased by the stimulating patronage, and ingenious researches of the Society. But for the ingenuity of recent investigators, we should never have known that the letter S was of most essential service at the siege of Gibraltar, by making hot shot; that the letter N is like a little pig, because it makes a sty nasty; that the letters UV can never go out to dinner because they always come after T; that the letters oast are like toast without tea (T); and that a barber may be said to fetter the alphabet, because he ties up queues and puts toupees in irons. These most important additions to our philological science are a happy foretaste of what may be accomplished by a chartered company expressly instituted for the encouragement of letters.

My limits not allowing me to enter at length into the subject of our hawkers and pedlars literature, vulgarly denominated the London Cries, I shall content myself with hinting that much of it is so alarmingly dissonant and cacophonous, as to need a thorough emendation. The wretches who yell "Hi-aw-Marakrel!" and "Owld Clew!" should be compelled to articulate in a sweet and gracious voice-"Here are Mackarel”—and "Old Clothes." Our murderous dustmen's bells have converted many invalids, by depriving them of rest, into fit materials for their cart; and as their cry is at least as discordant as their clapper, I would have all these noisy nuisances converted into euphonious melodists by an immediate decree of the Society. The postman, as a man of letters, will of course receive a licence to bear the bell wherever he goes; and the muffin-man's tinkle is too inoffensive to require regulation. The great majority of our cries demand revision; but I would have no innovation upon the milkwoman's-'mi-eau! (probably handed down to us from the Norman times,) which is not only valuable as an antiquity, but as a frank confession that one-half of the commodity she vends is water.

From words, which are the signs of ideas, the Society may turn their attention to the signs of our public-houses, in which a very barbarous taste and a Gothic predilection for gorgons, and monsters and chimæ. ras dire, is still but too visible. Since the recent discoveries in the interior of Asia, we are warranted in retaining the unicorn for our national arms; but the good taste of the Society will induce them to visit our public-houses, and procure the suppression of all such preposterous symbols as the Phoenix, the Griffin, the Green-Dragon, the Blue-boar, the Red, Silver, and Golden Lions, with a hundred others; nor will they allow the continuance of such anomalous conjunctions as the Green Man and Still, which a recent French traveller has very excusably translated "L'homme vert et tranquille."

Presuming that my former letter has secured the first gold medal of fifty guineas, I have merely to hint in conclusion of my second communication, that my name is left with the publisher, and that the two me dals may now be sent together to No. 50, Conduit-street.

H.

PENSHURST CASTLE, AND SIR PHILIP SYDNEY.

DOES the reader, perchance not yet arrived at "years of discretion," love to sigh forth sweet breath over the sorrows of old romance, or feel his heart's blood dance in unison with its joys?-or does he yearn to act those joys and sorrows over again in fancy-to melt his soul into bright thoughts, and coin those thoughts into burning words, and pour them forth, clothed in the purple hue of love, into the reluctant or not reluctant ear of some ideal lady, with a Greek visage and mellifluous name, beneath the shade of "Arcadian forests old," or in some rich glade of Tempé, where he may lie at her feet on the green turf by the hour together, without the previous precaution of wrapping himself up in lamb's wool?-Or is he albeit a year or two older, but still in the rear of those "years of discretion" aforesaid, smitten with the love of the chase-not as it is pursued in these base and degenerate times, when the hunters and not the hunted are the beasts of prey-but when there was glory in the sport, because there was good in the end of it and danger in the means? Or, best of all, perhaps, does he believe and exult in those times-whether imaginary or not, no matter when men held their lives but "at a pin's fee," and were content to see their best blood flow from them like water, in search of " that bubble reputation"—not indeed "in the cannon's mouth,"-for the cannon and its cursed kindred had not then blown courage into the air, and made skill a mockery-but when nothing but courage might cope with courage, and nothing but skill could hope to overthrow skill?-Does the reader, I say, chance to possess any or all of these propensities, and seeing that they are proscribed and exploded in practice, would fain practise them in idea? Then let him forthwith close his eyes to all things about him, and plunge headlong into that sea of sweet words in which are floating, like flowers in a crystal fountain, all high thoughts and beautiful imaginations-" the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia."

But perhaps the majority of my readers have arrived at "the years of discretion" just referred to; in which case they neither possess nor desire to possess the above-named amiable weaknesses: so that I must not urge them even to embark on the ocean I have named; lest, having neither "youth at the prow," nor "pleasure at the helm,"-neither Passion to fill the sails of their vessel, nor Fancy to endure it with a self-moving power within itself-they may presently chance to find themselves becalmed and lying like a log upon the water, unable either to proceed or to return. But even these persons, though they may have outlived the sentiment of intellectual beauty, which was born and lies buried within their breasts-though they may have ceased to consider mental love as any thing more than a subject of belief, or honour as any thing else than a word made up of mortal breath, or beauty as any thing less than "an association of ideas”—still they may like to recall the time when "nothing was but what was not,"-as the grown man loves to remember when he was a schoolboy, not because he liked to be what he then was, but because he dis-likes to be what he now is-still they may not object to look upon the express images of what cannot be, by "the light that never was," rather than remain for ever the discontented denizens of that darkness which they believe to exist because they feel it, though they refuse to believe in the brightness that

is passed away from them, for the same reason. If, I say, the above class of persons choose to renew their intercourse with these "airy nothings" in default of those substantial somethings which cannot fill their place, let them fly to the Astrophel and Stella-to the songs and sonnets-and above all, to the Defence of Poesy, of Sir Philip Sydney.

When the above-named classes of persons have followed this first part of my counsel, I shall probably have little occasion to urge upon them that to which it is intended to lead-namely, that they pay a visit, either by themselves or with me, to Penshurst Castle. But there is still another class for whom imaginary realities, so to speak, are not enough -but they must have tangible ones in addition; they are not satisfied with Mr. Coleridge for having written the Ancient Mariner, and the Stanzas to Love, but they would have had him distinguish himself at the Battle of Waterloo! To them, the most convincing proof that Lord Byron has written poetry is, that he has swam across the Hellespont. And they did not believe that Mr. Kean could play Lear till they heard that he could play Harlequin! But as my charity somewhat exceedeth, and as moreover I hold that our reason is never better employed than when it is accounting for the unreasonableness of others, I can excuse even these persons, and would willingly entice them to perform a pilgrimage with me through the desolate courts, the deserted halls, and the mouldering chambers of Penshurst Castle. I must therefore remind them, that the distinguished person in virtue of whose birth these halls have become sacred enclosures, and these courts classical ground, was not only one of the most accomplished scholars and writers of his day (of which day the like has not been seen, either before or since) -but that he was "the observed of all observers" in all other things "that may become a man:"-that he not only wrote a story that young hearts may alternately sigh and smile over till they grow old, and old ones till they grow young again, but that his whole life was employed in acting such an one-that whether in the court or the camp, in hall or in bower, in the council or the field, Sir Philip Sydney bore the palm from all competitors--or rather all competition, for it ceased to be so when he came among them, and waived their claims in token of his undisputed supremacy;—that, in fact, if it were asked, by an enquirer into that most brilliant period of our English annals, who was the most finished courtier and gentleman of the day? who was the wisest counsellor? who was the bravest soldier? who the pink of knighthood and the flower of chivalry? who the favourite of a monarch whose favourites were her friends?—In short, who was par excellence the glory of England, and the admiration of surrounding nations?— The answer to all must be-SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. Let us then pay a visit to his birth-place with the same reverence that we should feel in standing beside his grave; but without a tinge of that melancholy which his grave, however triumphant a one, might inspire.

Penshurst Castle is situated in a lovely valley lying at the foot of a range of the Kentish hills, near Tunbridge Wells, and forms one of those delightful morning rides, with which the neighbourhood of that most romantic of English villages abounds. But the approach to Penshurst from the London road is even still more beautiful than the above; and it has the additional merit of being the one by which, in all proba

bility, Sir Philip Sydney himself passed in his passages between his paternal walls and that court of which he was the brightest ornament and the best support. This road turns to the right out of the great London road, about three miles on this side of Tunbridge Wells, and lies the whole way along the topmost edge of that range of high ground at the foot of which is the valley I have just named; so that the lovely valley itself lies within the traveller's view at every point where the road-side trees open to admit the sight of it. Nothing can be more charming than these various vistas that salute you through each opening; and what on the present occasion adds to the charm of them is, that they are all purely and exclusively English in their character; as all ought to be, that in any way connects itself with one, who, with all the variety of his accomplishments, made it his boast and glory to be an Englishman in them all.

Passing along for about three miles of this almost private road, (for it leads only to the little village of Penshurst,) the views that present themselves from time to time, though varying in detail, are all of a similar kind, consisting of, first, the delicious declivity of the hill in the summit of which the road is situated,-sweeping down abruptly for a space, and then gently, till it meets the meadows that lie at its feet, and everywhere clothed with a rich garment of trees of every variety of hue, interspersed at intervals with bright spots of pasture, or rich corn-fields; and then the valley itself, presenting one wide flush of cultivation, studded here and there with little villages embosomed in groves of trees, and looking, at a distance, like summer-houses erected in a rich garden.

Passing along this lovely road for about three miles, at the end of that distance the little village of Penshurst is seen terminating the prospect of the valley, and in the midst of it the Castle rises, overlooking all around it with an air of modest superiority, as if, like its once illustrious inhabitant, it were anxious to be above those about it, not that it might look down upon, but only beyond them. Beside, and as if forming a part of it, the village church lifts its unpresuming walls; as if to remind us that he, whose fame has attracted us here, was no less good than great-no less pious than wise and kind and brave.

The building is of an irregular construction, and presents no particular points for description, or even for admiration. Neither does it, from the distance that we are now contemplating it, present any marks of decay. It may, for any thing we can see to the contrary, be exactly in the state that it was at the period we are now connecting it with; for it was then an antique building, and was granted to the Sydneys by Edward VI.-having been forfeited to the crown by its former possessors. This being the case, we may do well, now that the road before us begins to descend and wind down towards the castle, to think of it as it was when he inhabited it who would have equally illustrated it to the imagination, whether it had been the humblest cottage that it now overlooks, or the palace of a prince. We shall thus, on reaching it, add a zest to our visit, which nothing but contrast is capable of producing. Let us think of it, then, at the period when it stood here alone, the lord of the rich valley which its topmost windows overlook; when its courts were thronged with gay attendants and pampered menials, and its halls were alive with the noise of the ban