onnoisseur, and we think the artist. The former, in
this country, will be surprised to find names of artists, whose works
will not be found in our collections, at least with their titles. The
artist will find some useful information, and will always find his
flame of enthusiasm fed by reading works upon the subject of art,
though they should be very inferior to the present useful volume. We
recommend it as not unamusing to all who wish to think upon art, and
to acquire the now almost necessary accomplishment of a taste for
pictures.

MANNER AND MATTER.

A TALE.

CHAPTER I.

Along the dusty highway, and underneath a July sun, a man about fifty,
tending somewhat to the corpulent, and dressed in heavy parsonic
black, might have been seen treading slowly--treading with all that
quiet caution which one uses who, conscious of fat, trusts his person
to the influence of a summer sky. Mr Simpson, such was the name of
this worthy pedestrian, passed under the denomination of a
mathematical tutor, though it was now some time since he had been
known to have any pupil. He was now bent from the village of ------ to
the country-seat of Sir John Steventon, which lay in its
neighbourhood. He had received the unusual honour of an invitation to
dinner at the great man's house, and it was evidently necessary that
he should present himself, both his visage and his toilet, in a state
of as much composure as possible. The dust upon his very shining boot,
this a touch from his pocket-handkerchief, before entering the house,
could remove, and so far all traces of the road would be obliterated;
but should this wicked perspiration once fairly break its bounds, he
well knew that nothing but the lapse of time, and the fall of night,
would recover him from this palpable disorder. Therefore it was that
he walked with wonderful placidity, making no one movement of body or
mind that was not absolutely necessary to the task of progression, and
holding himself up, so to speak, _within_ his habiliments as if he and
they, though unavoidably companions on the same journey, were by no
means intimate or willing associates. There was a narrow strip of
shade from the hedge that ran beside the road, and although the shadow
still left the nobler half of his person exposed to the rays of the
sun, he kept carefully within such shelter as it afforded. If he
encountered any one, he stood still and examined the foliage of the
hedge. To dispute the path in