froid_ of the
_croupier_, who seems to treat all the world as a ball. Other persons are
seeking fresh excitement at the hands of a liveried waiter. But we must
leave the rest, which it would take a column or two to describe,
especially as to our mind, a gaming-house furnishes an epitome of all the
bad passions that rankle in the human breast.

301. _The Reform Question_. Thomas Clater. A pleasanter scene than the
preceding picture. A village blacksmith is reading the newspaper, by a
candle held by a boy, to a listening neighbour. The puzzling of the reader,
the vacant stare of the candle-holder, and the intent expression of the
absorbed listener, are excellent. Perhaps the light of the candle is
objectionable.

311. _Love in the Dairy_. H.H. Hobday. A ticklish village amour: a young
fellow importuning a buxom dairy-maid, and apparently on the verge of
conquest; in the distant door-way stands a mar-loving, wrinkled old woman,
whose crabbed face ought not to be trusted in a dairy.

466. _The Lord Chancellor_, seated in a chair, in his official robes, by
J. Lonsdale. The likeness is excellent, as are the robes, wig, ruffles, &c.
but the great seal and mace are even dingier than the orignals. We could
have spared the books thrown on the floor, though the paper register in
one of them almost _comes out_.

We reserve a few pictures for another visit. The Portraits, as might be
expected, are numerous. The King's supporters are two ex-sheriffs: by the
way, how many good turns does _office_ yield to art; there is nothing like
a portrait to perpetuate your brief authority. Works of imagination are
scarce, especially as empainting the ideas of poets and passion-writers
has become fashionable.

* * * * *

NOTES OF A READER.

THE VEGETABLE WORLD.

We pencil a few passages, at random, from Part 14 of _Knowledge for the
People_--(Botany, concluded.)

_Why does snow, when in contact with leaves and stems, melt more speedily
than when lodged upon dead substances?_

Because of the internal heat of the plants, heat being a production of the
vegetable as well as animal body, though in a much lower degree in the
former than the latter. Mr. Hunter appears to have detected this heat by a
thermometer applied in frosty weather to the internal parts of vegetables
newly opened. It is evident that a certain appropriate portion of heat is
a necessary stimulus to the constitution of every plant, wi