pulpit; its momentum priestly ascendancy, and the grease which keeps it clear of rust, passages from the Bible, " corrupted to their ends that select them."

What a

How I have flown off from the subject of my letter! length of tangent! and I have so much to say, and so little space to say it in; but when the string was touched by a reference to the necessities of Gibraltar as an instance in proof that one man's damage is another man's gain, as we are now fixed in society's frame-it would vibrate, I could not help it and you will forgive it. There are features in the degraded character of the Spaniards-for it is but too true that they are miserably degraded-which one would be happy to find in England. There (i. e. England) you can scarcely look over a man's gate, or peep through his hedge, without a gruff warning to "be off," and a particular care to impress on your mind the very important fact that his leave must be asked before you set your foot on "his grounds," or "his premises;" notice to trespassers and threats of "prosecution with the utmost rigour of the law" meet you at every turn. Here you may enter freely, unquestioned,-walk about freely-look where you will about the grounds, gardens, and buildings without exciting the least offence, or surprise at your daring to intrude. You break no law of courtesy by so doing, nor turn the owner out of his current of kindliness. The more I see and observe, the more evidences do I obtain that in the whole civilized world there are no "gentry”—i. e., gentlefolks, aristocracy, and its offshoots, so insolent, overbearing, selfish, and tyrannical, where their sports are interfered with, as our "true born Englishman." The legality of a matter they will regard; but the moral justice or humanity of sympathy that may be disturbed by their enjoyments, touches them not, or if so, but in few instances of not-yetkilled beauty of Nature.

Gibraltar, January 12th, 1838.

I HAVE lived six weeks among the Andalusians, at Compomento and San Roque; and I have had one trip over to Africa-to Tangier. Gibraltar itself is a wonder; the more I see it the more I like, what I like in or about it. From the Terrace, through the window at which I am writing, I have a view unmatched, I verily believe, for grandeur and impressive beauty of magnificence, in the wide world. Besides, my dear friend, I have Shakespeared here to some purpose:-by only two courses of lectures I shall earn sufficient to provide board, lodging, &c. here for twelve months, if it were within my arrangements to sit down quietly so long-but that must not be-I must be going and going and this "going" is a very expensive affair. A week ago, if I had written, I should have spoken despairingly of my health-for I was then worse than I remember to have been since May last. Now—oh, how I rejoice to say it! I am rapidly recovering. The improvement was sudden and magical. Laborious as my lectures are— physically as well as mentally so I really feel heartier, livelier,

and (which are the best evidences of returning soundness) hungrier and more elastic after them. Before I began, I was somewhat apprehensive that I should break down ere I had reached half through the first one. I have, in addition to health and cash, earned no little kindness and honest courtesy by lecturing. My lectures are delivered at mid-day. I have some notion of going on to Egypt, &c.: but if my health continue this rapid improvement, I shall be in England by the end of May or the beginning of June.

Sheffield Iris, March 27, 1838.

Gibraltar, 6th Feb., 1838.

I AM sure you need something to alleviate your wintry misery. The newspapers make me shiver with cold as I read them. They tell me of the dismality of your "fine, sharp, seasonable" weather. I do not read of noses and toes bitten off by the frost, it is true; but the aforesaid papers say enough to justify the belief that you all walk or ride in dread of such a catastrophe: that there is scarcely a nose in England that is not as red as raw beef; and has its tip decorated with a succession of single, little, shaking, shuddering wet beads: that nose napkins have more work to do than they can well manage; that every toe is aching and every finger tingling; that the noisy and dirt making coal scuttle, and shovel and tongs, and poker, are rattling and racketting and clanging and clattering all day long, and more than half the night; that you are simmering roasts on one side and cakes of ice on the other that if you dare thrust your head out o fdoor or window for an instant, you are cut to the bone by the "beautiful fresh air," which comes at you, villanously keen and cold, as if it were the stroke of a scythe: that men, women, and children seem to be all puffing out of their stomachs huge whiffs of tobacco smoke as they walk along-while in fact they are not so fortunately warm; but are, by their very breath, making tassels and radiations of icicles for brows and eyes and noses and chins : that you are all obliged to coax the pump with a little hot water before it can be persuaded into the charity of yielding you a little cold to drink, or to cook the "taties" and turnips, which, when cooked, you throw away-you can't eat them: the frost has nipped into their hearts: that every thing, which three or four or five months ago, was a smart, inviting, verdant, and flowery, smiling-aye, laughingly gay, garden, looks now like a filthy, dirty lot of old rags-which beggars and bonepickers have scrambled for and rejected, and left to be scattered by the winds that the hedges which were once leafy and green, and full of fret-work lights and shadows, and turfy lanes under them, so dreamy and fairy-like and fascinating-Oh! God bless the beloved English lanes and hedges!-are all now shivering and black and stumpy; or like millions of confused, ragged, jagged, jangled, and tangled bristles, trying to stand on end with horrid fright at the cold weather, &c. &c.

&c. &c. &c. &c. and every &c. a dismality, an ugliness, a misery maker, a pang giver. I must shew you something to make you understand -perceive, conceive, guess what "comfort" is-not your "comfort”— "fireside comfort!"-that phrase "exclusively English." Ugh! that thing "exclusively English," called "comfort!" Examine it without your English spectacles :-look at it through some other medium than the contorting one of my granny's habits and prejudices-through some other glass than a dingy-blanketty fog, or a blinking sleet, and, assuredly, you will see that this "peculiarly English" blessing (mind ye, I don't assert that England is more comfortless than any other country) is nothing else than a partial neutralization of atmospheric misery. Partial, mark me-partial, only, I say-for in spite of all which will be, in selfish triumph, pointed at as proof against my assertion, by individuals with the people-with the millions-the "bigger half" of the misery remains in tact: aye, and with many of those who scorn to be thought of the people, it is but partial, in spite of all your baizings, listings, and leatherings; your carpetings and ruggings, and draperies and knackeries. "Fire-side comfort!" Pooh! pooh! nonsense! Don't tell me! Fire-side comforts, indeed! There! how the blast comes fiercely whistling through the key-hole-shrill and sharp as a hungry hawk's pouncing scream; and cold-hooh! ugh! piercingly cold-slicing ear, cheek, and skull, through and through—no razor, no, not one of Rodgers' best, half so keen: or you have it swishing and whining, roaring and howling under the door.-Don't you see how it sets the carpet all of a wobble? and every hair and thread in the rug is quivering in the pain of chill misery. How it shrieks and whizzes, and plains and groans in all the corners and round the window frames! Fire-side comforts! Humbug! None of your fire-side comforts for me! Give me a country to live in-aye, and die in too-for I should catch an ague in an English grave. Give me, I say, the country in which fire-side comforts are unknown, and unknown only because there is no occasion for other fire-sides than the cook's or the blacksmith'syet I have an old, silly, foolish fondness,—a childish prejudice for this half comfortless England, that I can never away with-it sticks in the linings of my heart like birdlime: it is glued, as it were, to the soul: wedged and dovetailed in the spirit. There are here-here in this Gibraltar-some spectacle-eyed English, who ape their "home comforts" of England, and flare up a bit with their "fire-side;" and a pretty mess they make of it! but even so, I declare—(I am quite severely serious at this point, not bantering a bit)--it is much better, every way more "comfortable," really, than your fire-side in England. Off again into the checked strain, now, and-that country for me which gives and receives atmospheric comforts from January to December, through the glorious warm sun-(aye, though for the last three weeks the atmosphere has been thickened and mistified by rain clouds)—the vaulted heavens for a canopy-rocks, hills, and mountains, plains, and valley sides for my parlour floor and walls and ceilings. Oh! such rich carpets-such gorgeous hangings-such magnificent curtains-such splendid windows

by day, and such intensely brilliant and sumptuously ornamented, sublimely suspended lamps by night, have I here! In England your moon is a greased cheese hung up to shine: here it is "the bright and beauteous orb"-aye, or crescent either: a sleeping gem, floating on a deep blue, serenely calm and sparkled sea;—a golden coloured crystal; bright!-oh! how beautifully bright!—and no fire-no coal scuttleno hideous cinders-no suffocating ashes. Daily, more and more, do I find occasion to rejoice and be gratefully glad that I did leave England for a while and glad, indeed, am I that I came to this place. I am every way better, body and mind, or, at least, heart, are mended by my visit and sojourn. I have more strength, stamina, capability of endurance-and for appetite! beware of your beefsteaks when I return! I eat a pound thereof, good stuff, too, per diem-a letter from bright minded, clear minded, and strong hearted Junius Redivivus, contained advice to prefer that food, with bread, to any other—and he bade me ride horses, mules, donkies, dromedaries, camels, as much as I could; and, oh! to be sure, I have obeyed him as far as horse, camel, and dromedary riding is in posse. My cough is not quite gone; but I am pretty confident I shall, "can" that is, be able to write from Malta, "it is gone." Yes, I daily find, and feel cause to rejoice; and while I am enjoying, to sympathise with those who cannot and do not enjoy as I do.

Three days since-no, two-I scrambled up to the summit of this mountain, in all the rich and gracious warmth of a summer day. I saw the wide, blue, deep blue glory of the Mediterranean-the Atlas chain, and Mons Abyla in Africa; the Sierra Ronda and Sierra Nevada on the European side; and, on the culminating point of the Rock, 1,439 feet above the sea's level, I sat, for a heavenly hour, basking in the hot sun; and in ascending and descending I inhaled pure, health-giving oxygen, or snuffed up wreathing volumes of perfume from the wild lavender-here so abundant, and so beautiful in leaf and flower :-bees humming over and diving into the blue coronals :-then, also, there are many other richly aromatic plants; and marigolds, wild, in millionsNarcissi-squills-"periwinkles"-daisies, &c. sat smiling into me at every step. The trees are green again; some had been naked only for a week or two; others have put on their fresh, new dresses-oh! so very clean and neat-before the old green is gone brown. All these things are on the "rough and ragged rock of Gibraltar”—all these I saw and felt on the 4th of February.

Here, fresh out of my lodgings' garden,-which is all a hushed flood of green, and buddy, leafy, and blady and perfumy as any lawn in England after a soft shower in June-here on my table are now sitting, or reclining on the rim of a glass, with their feet in the water, a pair of exquisite, young, but full blown roses-a rich scented Narcissus-a Gemini of scented violets, blue as the sky over the portals of heaven-a crop of mignionette-a bunch of thyme-and a little yellow flower, the name of which I do not know-but he has thousands and tens of thousands of brothers and sisters here, all alive and merry now, and is

the prettiest, softly smiling, delicate beauty that ever was crowned in golden petal. This is February; I could have said as much in January; -here they are in all their loveliness and liveliness of fresh purity and beauty, like graceful, innocent, unsophisticated, frank, and confiding boys and girls ; or as blooming little-little children that have been permitted to be, not taught to be, good: little children that have never been whipped, nor scolded-never coaxed nor cheated-neither have they been cantingly prated into "being good," and "behaving properly," and being "submissive to their betters;" nor have their " tempers been conquered," nor" their wills broken :"--(all and each of which are of the Devil's creed and its articles ;)-like little children that have not imbibed, nor have been parrotted into a squirting out of, any of that nasty scum-that dirty dish-slop-that rank reek of foul garbage-foh! and pooh! and phoo-pho-0-0-0-phoophoo!--which the petty or malignant craft of soulless hypocrites gives and takes as a practice of piety, and blasphemingly calls Religion. Such "being good," means being sillily sulky, and cunning and suspicious, and decorously spiteful; and is early indicative of a future prudently swindling, and cautiously lying knack, and capability of" getting on in the world," and "becoming respectable," or "supporting the dignity of their birth and station." No, these flowers are like little children who have not, by the folly or knavery of their teachers in making them "good," according to their notions ;have not had the Angel squeezed out, and the Devil thrust and rammed and jammed in. And yonder is Apis hill (Mons Abyla.) I see in it the shelves, crags, streaks, &c. as clearly as you can see the trees on Sparken Hills, from the Bridge over the Canal as you enter Worksop. Let any English-mere English-eye look towards it, and to measure the distance-it would swear the distance was not a mile, and stare in derision of the madness or idiocy that would say "it is fifteen miles.”— Five or six weeks ago-(there is snow on many tops of mountains now, there was not then)-I saw the Sierra Nevada, beyond Grenada, a hundred and thirty miles distant, and this with naked, unaided eye, and without hunting through space and atmosphere for it; the mountain stood staring at me with a fine full countenance. The separation of snow from rock, and the dark streaks of mountain ravine, gushing through the snow, were quite distinct. How many "mere English" can you persuade to swallow this hundred and thirty mile matter? Very few, I'm sure it is, nevertheless, true. The clear medium-the sharp shadows-the brilliant and glowing lights-the wondrous and glorious colouring which is thrown over earth and water-verdant and billowy undulations of ground, over the bold and majestic hills, and rugged and precipitous walls and crags of rock, produce effects to the eye which are bewildering and bewitching to the senses; and cannot be conceived, cannot be conjectured, not guessed at, though aided by the most skilful effort of the painter, or ablest tact and talent of a descriptive writer, by one who has never seen other than English scenic effects. Yet in England are exquisite bits, which cannot be matched here. Here the characteristics and features are altogether different.