peared to pity my ignorance. He assured me it was all right, and just as the fashion had always been.

Duke of York's Column.

After visiting another similar court, I left.

Going by a tall

"What's the

monument, with a marble statue on the summit

object of this high shaft?" I inquired.

"That is the duke of York's monument," replied some one. "What duke of York ?"

"Oh! I can't tell that -I never heard."

As I started on, my intelligent informant came tagging after, demanding a small sum for his service.

Visit to the Tower.

On visiting the Tower of London, the porter sold me a ticket for twelve cents.

The showman is a rare sight himself, wearing red apparel, trimmed with shining tinsel stuff, and having a string of ragged poppy-flowers round his tarpaulin.

The first room we entered, called the Horse Armory, is 150 feet long, being filled with finely carved horses, bearing mailed knights and kings of the old school.

Henry the Eighth is the largest of the lot. Gen. Monk has monstrous crooked legs. Queen Elizabeth looks like the personification of vanity, riding out to dazzle the eyes of fools with strings of pearls and diamonds.

Oliver Cromwell is the most sensible looking man of all. The best armor was made in Italy.

In another room, they have an immense collection of war implements. It is truly shocking to see what labor and ingenuity have been spent on such manufactures in past times. There was an arrow head, picked up on the field of Marathon. They exhibited the block, on which some were beheaded in the Tower, and the ugly, old axe, used to cut off heads.

The oldest muskets were without locks, being touched off by matches. Some of them terminated at the butt end in lances. Some of the shields have pistols inserted in their

centre.

I saw many instruments of torture, intended to pinch, gall, and cramp the bodies of men and women.

There is one collar, weighing fifteen pounds, with knobs on the inside to gall the neck. A person fond of horrors can be satisfied in the Tower, England's proud fortress of antiquity.

LONDON, England,}

March 8, 1850.

British Museum and National Gallery.

THE National Gallery of Paintings and the British Museum are the most splendid institutions in this country. There is no defect in them. People are permitted to visit them whenever they choose, free of charge; and truly such lessons as may there be learned are worth a voyage across the ocean.

The amount paid for the pictures is enormous, but well expended; for every nation needs such a collection as models to ambitious artists, and the refining of popular taste in painting.

I believe Benjamin West, a native of the United States, is allowed to be the greatest English painter. Of course his pictures are not equal to those of the best Italian and Flemish masters. His invention was perhaps as good but not his execution. There are some fine paintings by Reynolds in the Gallery.

The Museum consists of a vast collection of specimens from the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, antiquities, fossils, Greek, Roman and Egyptian statues, and a great library containing many original manuscripts from the most celebrated writers of many ages.

In winter the Museum is open only Monday, Wednesday and Friday; but the Reading Room is accessible at any time to those who have obtained tickets, which are free, for all applicants able to prove themselves honest men or women. Hundreds are constantly present inspecting the rare, old books. Quite a number of ladies may generally be seen among the literati. No one speaks aloud. When a book is wanted you have only to hand an order to the librarian, and the volume is brought in a twinkling. None can be carried out of the The attendants are the most gentlemanly persons

room.

have seen in England.

I

Looking over a volume of old newspapers I met with the following curious communications in the London Morning Post, Monday, Aug. 19, 1776:

History of one Arnold, one of the American Generals. General Arnold was born at a small village in Warwickshire, called Ouseley, two miles distant from Coventry. His education was suited to the circumstances of his parents, and he was bred up to a profession if not honorable, at least honest; the general served seven years apprenticeship to his father, who was by trade a blacksmith; at the expiration of his servitude, disliking the laborious employment of blowing the forge, and scraping horses hoofs, he enlisted as a grenadier into a marching regiment, where he continued some years. It is now, however, that history becomes obscure; and as we wish not to give the reader any dubious facts of this exalted personage, suffice it to inform them, that the general made a tour to Virginia; whether voluntarily and to better his fortune, or for the amendment of his morals, we are not authorized to determine; we are told that during part of the last war he served in a Provincial corps, his conspicuous era commenced last winter by being announced in the Gazette, the leader of a banditti, who invaded Canada. The event is universally known; the general and his followers

disappointed of the plunder and riches of Quebec, which in all probability was the chief object of their expedition, are now retreating with the quickest steps before Carleton; trusting that nimble heels and impenetrable forests will conceal them from justice. Should our hero be overtaken, it is likely his services will be finally rewarded with a certain collar, instituted by law, for men of such distinguished characters. To Newgate biographers, therefore, and composers of dying speeches, we resign the honorable task of recording General Arnold's public exploits and exit; they may shortly have occasion to make use of these materials, and we vouch for their authenticity.

Yours,

A Man of Warwickshire."

"Common Sense."

No less than 46,000 of the pamphlet called "Common Sense," have been printed and dispersed in different parts of America, which has been attended with a greater effect than any other public performance of the kind that ever appeared in any country, and gave the decisive spirit for independency.

The Queen once found the Prince of Wales reading Dr. Franklin's pamphlet, Common Sense, she expressed her disapprobation, and asked him who put it into his hands: He answered, "Nobody." "Where did you get it?" "I don't know." "When did you see it first?" "I can't tell." "Who has seen you reading it?" "I know nothing at all of the matter." It seems clearly from hence, no easy task to get anything out of his Royal Highness, that he does not wish to communicate.

Works of Art.

IN the Townley Gallery there is a beautiful collection of ancient Egyptian, Grecian and Roman statues. The ease and grace of some of them can never be surpassed; but many

bear the marks of a more barbarous taste than exists at the present time in some enlightened countries.

By comparing the Greek mythological figures with the Egyptian, it seems evident, that the one was only a modification of the other, in the same manner as the Protestant is an improved form of the Roman Catholic religion, and this is a modification of the Jewish theology. Where the reptile worship originated is difficult to tell; but doubtless it was received from the ancestors of the Egyptians, and highly exalted by that advanced nation.

Whether human beings at first had tails, horns or wings, has not yet been discovered; nevertheless there was surely a time when such animal features were greatly admired by the best artists. The Greek gods appear far more human than those of their predecessors, but not so dignified and formal.

The licentious Greek sculptors turned ram-headed " Amenra" into Jupiter with horns not bigger than those which grew grew out of the head of Mary Davis, whose portrait hangs in the National Gallery, and of whom you have perhaps heard.

66 Ra," a man's body with a hawk's head, in Greece, became the symmetrical Apollo, that is, the sun personified. "Thoth," a man ibis-headed, became Mercury.

It is no wonder to me, that the Jews while in Egypt making bricks for the pyramids, should have become disgusted with pantheism, when they were liable to capital punishment for stepping on a lizzard's tail. I can't help thinking the Devil is in reality Pharaoh's Amen-ra with his horns and hoofs; but let no one on this account charge me with irreverence for his Satanic majesty. I am willing to follow the fashions of the age and nation in which I happen to live.

The ancients were more disposed to worship in their way than we are, and the Oriental world more than the Western.

I heard some one the other day, say that the East India plebeians were so given to adoration, that when one of our common ploughs was first carried among some agricultural