which is hid from a superficial glance. That which, though gone by, is
still remembered, is in his view more genuine, and has given more signs
that it will live, than a thing of yesterday, which may be forgotten to-
morrow. Death has in this sense the spirit of life in it; and the shadowy
has to our author something substantial.

Mr. Lamb has a distaste to new faces, to new books, to new buildings, to
new customs. He is shy of all imposing appearances, of all assumptions of
self-importance, of all adventitious ornaments, of all mechanical
advantages, even to a nervous excess. It is not merely that he does not
rely upon, or ordinarily avail himself of them; he holds them in
abhorrence: he utterly abjures and discards them. He disdains all the
vulgar artifices of authorship, all the cant of criticism and helps of
notoriety.

His affections revert to and settle on the past; but then even this must
have something personal and local in it to interest him deeply and
thoroughly. He pitches his tent in the suburbs of existing manners, and
brings down his account of character to the few straggling remains of the
last generation. No one makes the tour of our southern metropolis, or
describes the manners of the last age, so well as Mr. Lamb,--with so fine,
and yet so formal an air. How admirably he has sketched the former inmates
of the South Sea House; what "fine fretwork he makes of their double and
single entries!"

With what a firm yet subtle pencil he has embodied Mrs. Battle's opinions
on Whist! With what well-disguised humor he introduces us to his
relations, and how freely he serves up his friends!

The streets of London are his fairy-land, teeming with wonder, with life