The bead of hell, the bough, the branch, the tree;
From which do spring and sprout such fleshly seeds,
As nothing else but moans and mischief breeds.
G. GASCOIGNE.

* * * * *

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

* * * * *

NOTES FROM THE LONDON REVIEW,

NO. 1.

ANCIENT AND MODERN LUXURIES.

As a learned doctor, a passionate admirer of the Nicotian plant, was not
long since regaling himself with a pinch of snuff, in the study of an old
college friend, his classical recollections suddenly mixed with his
present sensation, and suggested the following question:--"If a Greek or
a Roman were to rise from the grave, how would you explain to him the
three successive enjoyments which we have had to-day after dinner,--tea,
coffee, and snuff? By what perception or sensation familiar to them,
would you account for the modern use of the three vulgar elements, which
we see notified on every huckster's stall?--or paint the more refined
beatitude of a young barrister comfortably niched in one of our London
divans, concentrating his ruminations over a new Quarterly, by the aid of
a highly-flavoured Havannah?" The doctor's friend, whose ingenuity is not
easily taken at fault, answered, "By friction, which was performed so
consummately in their baths. It is no new propensity of animal nature, to
find pleasure from the combination of a _stimulant_, and a _sedative_.
The ancients chafed their skins, and we chafe our stomachs, exactly for
that same double purpose of excitement and repose (let physiologists
explain their union) which these vegetable substances procure now so
extensively to mankind. In a word, I would tell the ancient Greeks or
Romans, that the dealer in tea, coffee, tobacco, and snuff, is to us what
the experienced practioner of the _strigil_ was to them; with this
difference, however, that while we spare our skins, our stomachs are in
danger of being tanned into leather."

* * * * *

THE STAGE.

We may compare _tragedy_ to a martyrdom by one of the old masters; which,
whatever be its merit, represents persons, emotions, and events so remote
from the experience of the spectator, that he feels the grounds of his
approbation and blame to be in a great measure conjectural. The
_romance_, such as we generally have seen it, resembles a Gothic
window-piece, where monarchs and b