ments of our ancestors,-consols and reduced three per cents., and when the lending out money for hire was considered a disgraceful transaction, and almost confined to the Jews, such rich chattels, including plate and jewels, were employed as the most convenient, if not the only investments of spare funds, being convertible into cash, upon pledge or by sale, at will. Thus the 'world of wealth' accumulated by Wolsey, to gain the popedom, and fee his friends at Rome,' consisted in The several parcels of his plate, his treasure, And it may be, that a cypresse chest,' such as Mr. Hunt gives us the drawing of, filled with cloths of gold and silver, rich velvet hangings, and embroidered tapestries, or a cupboard of massive plate, such as chargers and goblets, and cups of gold set with rubies, sapphires, and other jewels-articles which were then met with in every wealthy establishment, according to Harrison,— were as substantial and secure representations of wealth, and as readily realized, in case of need, as a pocket-book of Mexican bonds or Columbian scrip in the present day. Although, however, in the furniture of an early English house we meet with no models for our imitation, and that we agree fully with Mr. Hunt in deprecating the abominations sometimes attempted by our tasteful upholsterers, as imaginary representations of ancient furniture, in portable buttresses, and chairs bristling with crockets and pinnacles,-yet in the age of Elizabeth and her immediate successors, we meet with a highly rich and elegant style of moveables, capable of easy adaptation to all the luxurious wants of our most fastidious Sybarites. The couches and settees of carved and twisted ebony, the velvet and damask cushions, piled upon one another like our Ottomans, the canopied hangings, the ebony and ivory, or inlaid cabinets, cypress or cedar coffers, elaborately carved oaken buffets, tables spread with velvet, or damask, or Turkie work' (Persian carpets), fringed with gold, the great folding screen covered with figured cloths, or stamped leather, or needlework, and the embossed andirons-these are all admissible in the present day; and the elegance of no modern boudoir would be disparaged, or its comforts diminished, by their introduction. And though there may appear some anachronism in the application of furniture of the style of the sixteenth century to buildings of the thirteenth or fourteenth, yet this is fairly excusable of such perishable articles, and the associations connected with the one harmonize sufficiently with the other. Such a style of furniture is, at all events, infinitely more appropriate than our modern upholstery. What a disagreeable rebuff have our highly-wrought feelings sometimes experienced, when, on entering the arched porch of Gothic abbey or embattled castle, and pene trating trating its vaulted galleries, we have found ourselves in a room fitted up in all the flimsy frippery of a Brighton or Cheltenham lodging-house, with marble chimney-pieces from Leghorn, spindleshanked rosewood chairs from Oxford Street, Grecian sofas, Italian cornices, and French chiffoniers! Mr. Hunt in one passage laments that the splendid bed-hangings of early times are gone out of use, and have given way to flimsy materials and tasteless handicraft. His list of gorgeous beds, extracted from ancient testamentary documents, such as, amongst others, the large bed of blue satin embroidered with silver lions and gold roses and escutcheons, of Edmund Earl of March, and the Duke of Norfolk's great hangede bedde, palyed (chequered) with cloth of gold, whyte damask, and black velvet, and powdered with the initials in gold of his name and his wife's,' are certainly dazzling; but it must be allowed that the cleanliness of washable bed-hangings carries with it a charm beyond the magnificence of the most gorgeous materials. We own our preference of fresh calico curtains, and snow-white counterpanes, to our beds, over the same articles in cloth of tapestry or velvet, embroidered with gold till they stand upright of themselves, and descending uncleaned, except by an occasional brushing, through half a dozen generations, of which they successively witness the births, bridals, and deaths. It is curious that Mr. Hunt recommends the latter style of furniture as benefiting society by affording employment to a vast number of persons of both sexes in respectable occupations,' since, he at the same time declares, that the flimsy but overwhelming draperies of modern times are at least equal in cost, though intrinsically almost valueless, to the sumptuous cloths of earlier days.' We presume, then, their fabrication must be admitted to afford equal, if not still greater, employment to our native industry. We are, however, ourselves pleased to be able to trace a growing improvement in the taste of the furniture of our living apartments, as well as of our domestic architecture, and a predilection for the rich and elegant designs of the Elizabethan age. Already there is a great and constant demand for its carved cabinets, scrolled chairs, tapestried hangings, and figured velvet cushions; and France and Germany are ransacked for these articles in order to restore to our ancient manor-houses and Tudor mansions their appropriate internal fashion of attire. Our upholsterers (or, rather, we beg their pardon, decorators) are already imitating the festooned canopies of Queen Bess; and many a carver is employed in framing seats after the model of the great Turkey leather elbow-chair, with the tapestried cushions,' which accommodated the person of his most sacred majesty' at the castle of Tillietudlem. In short, though the wisdom of our ancestors is rapidly going out of 2 L2 fashion, fashion, it is some consolation that we are becoming daily more and more alive to the correctness of their taste. Our readers, who take any interest in topics such as these, will do well to make themselves acquainted with all the works named at the head of this paper. That of Mr. Allan Cunningham will gratify not only them, but a much wider circle. It is a volume full of instruction and amusement—not only containing lively and spirited sketches of the lives of the most eminent architects of our country, but conveying, in an unpretending fashion, views concerning the history and progress of the art, such as will at once gratify general curiosity and reward critical examination. This remarkable man, as we all know, was bred a mason; and it will therefore be easily believed, that a work from his pen on such a subject abounds in shrewd practical hints and technical observations worthy of universal attention. We are far from subscribing to all his views; but the intelligent sympathy with which he records the fortunes and fates of such men as Wykeham, Jones, Wren, and Vanbrugh-the diligence of his researches -the generous candour of his sentiments-the unaffected ease and clearness, and, here and there, the picturesque strength and eloquence of his language-are more than enough to justify us in recommending his book as one of the best and most interesting that have as yet appeared in any of these Cabinet Libraries. ART. VII.-Friendly Advice to the Lords on the Reform Bill London. 1831. WE E endeavoured in our two last numbers to show the constitutional, and, as it were, theoretical objections to the ministerial project of Parliamentary Reform; and we cannot refrain from expressing some degree of satisfaction at the general concurrence with which our observations have been received by the vast majority (as far as we have the means of judging) of that class of persons to which literary discussion addresses itself. Indeed it is a fact too remarkable to be overlooked, that not only are the men of property, the men of business, and all those who are concerned in the actual workings of the social system, opposed to the pretended Reform, but that nearly all the Literature of the country (with the exception of the daily press-if that may be called a branch of literature) has ranged itself on the same side. The classes of society too which are more especially connected with literature, show the same spirit-the clergy unanimously-a great majority, including the most influential men, of the bar-the three universities-and, generally speaking, the educated youth of the country, are all hostile to this Revolutionary Reform.* It is singular, that, inundated * Our readers will smile at a complaint said to have been made by one of the Cabinet inundated as we have been with anti-reform publications of all shapes and shades, there has not appeared one single work in support of the ministerial measure which has seemed to the public deserving of notice. The short and slight pamphlet, entitled 'Friendly Advice to the Lords,' recently put forth, has obtained some notoriety from being attributed to the pen of the Lord Chancellor; but it-wholly avoiding the merits of the general question-applies itself to the single object of schooling their Lordships, and does not, therefore, make any exception to the truth of the foregoing proposition. The theory of the question, both as relates to the general balance of power in the constitution, and the particular mode in which the Bill may be expected to affect that balance, having been thus, we say, victoriously decided against the Reformers, who make, and have made, no other answer than the vociferations of the mob, or the insane Billingsgate of some daily journal,—we are now anxious to consider the matter more practically, and to examine the immediate and tangible causes and consequences of the Revolution with which we are so imminently threatened. To some persons it may, at first sight, seem superfluous to inquire into the causes of the present crisis. We are in it,' say they, no matter how-the useful inquiry is, how we are to get out of it.' But we beg leave to observe, that we cannot understand our true position, or the real nature of our danger, nor whether that danger can be best avoided by turning back or by going forward, till we have carefully examined the road which has brought us to this pass; and why Parliamentary Reform should have become more formidable in the last few months than it had been for so long a period preceding. The first question to be resolved is the meaning of the term Reform. Is it intended to restore our constitution to some former state of purity, or to recast it in the theoretic hope of some future perfection? On this primary question-the basis, indeed, of a rational investigation-the two chief advocates of the Reform Bill -Lord John Russell and Mr. Jeffrey-have fallen into the most direct and (if the case had been less important) the most ludicrous contradictions and inconsistencies,-Lord John Russell, with elaborate absurdity, placing the foundations of his Bill in the days of the Henries and Edwards, on the charta de forestá, and the statute de tallagio non concedendo;' while the Lord Advocate, with national indifference to the old statutes of England, and with rational indifference to the arguments of his leader, laughed at Cabinet-that' THE WOMEN were all against them.' We smile at the silly confession, but we confirm with deep pleasure the important fact. If good sense, honour, piety, and ancient morals were banished from the rest of the earth, they would be found in the hearts of the women of England! How could they be otherwise than against a Revolution? such such antiquarian nonsense, and confessed the intended or pretended Reform to be a reconstruction of the constitution, made 'in the spirit of the times,' and under the experience, if not after the example, of America and France. The smaller fry of orators, (for infinite are the descending gradations of littleness in these times,) and the two or three obscure penmen who have appeared in the ministerial cause, have united in their respective productions the contradictory arguments of Lord John and the Lord Advocate; which, ludicrous as we have said they were from two persons on the same side, become farcical, when, like the two voices of the Monster in the Tempest, they are heard from under one gaberdine. But of these two contradictory assertions it unluckily happens that neither is true. Lord John's pretence that he is restoring the constitution to any former shape is notoriously unfounded; and Mr. Jeffrey's imagination that those who affect to guide their conduct by what they call the spirit of the age will be satisfied by this Reform, is egregiously puerile. We will not attempt to repeat the exposure which has been so frequently and so forcibly made of both these theoretical fallacies. We shall leave them to defeat each other, and shall apply ourselves to examine the practical conclusions, on which the ministers now rest the question—namely, that an immediate and urgent necessity for the Bill is created by the state of public opinion, and that since the general election all argument is idle; for the sovereign people has expressed its omni potent will! In November, 1830, say they, 'public opinion rendered some attempt at Reform highly expedient; but in June, 1831, the public voice pronounces it inevitable; the hour is come when it can be no longer delayed; and the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill, is the precise measure which policy and justice, and, above all, the irresistible vox populi, dictate.' Now all these propositions we deny the first, as to the state of public opinion a few months ago, boldly and unhesitatingly; the latter, as to the present state of the public mind, more doubtfully. Shakspeare, that greatest observer of human nature, who illustrates the most profound truths by the most familiar allusions, warns us of the uncertain and disputable value of opinion,' which every man may represent as best suits his own purpose,' A plague of OPINION! a man may wear it on both sides like a leathern jerkin.' We certainly will not venture to say which side of the jerkin is at this moment in most extensive wear; but every hour that passes confirms our original impression, that the popular insanity was never so general as it appeared, nor is now at anything like the same heat and height to which it boiled a month ago. If indeed this fever had been the result of natural or spontaneous causes—had there been any real complaint of a system of misgovernment. |