whew! drunk!-offensively, odiously, and odorously drunk! Rum, beer, gin, tobacco-ugh! Oh, horrible! horrible! This is the only case of garotting that has occurred in our road, and in this case, you see, the. victim had garotted himself. Potter, however, has been really garotted, and there is no doubt about it, for the fellows are taken, and confess it. For many nights he had gone to bed with his boots at the side of it, and his great-coat and hat in the room, for reasons that will be immediately apparent to fathers of families; and the other morning, at two o'clock A.M., had to run out a distance of three miles, in a dreadful fog, to invite an elderly female out of a court to come and take a bed in his house for a month, to partake of the best his house affords, and for whose entertainment he had previously laid in a stock of English spirits and the best tea. It may seem strange to my friends in chambers, but he did, and we all do it sometimes. They did not get much from him though, for he had not stopped to put his money in his pockets, only half-a-crown for a cab back, nor his watch in his fob, nor his ring on his finger; but they knocked him about (poor fellow, I often think he's used to that!), and, ever since, there have been mysterious cookings in our kitchen of jellies and subtle compounds-but they're not for Mr. Potter-and innumerable inquiries sent after the health-assuredly not of Mr. Potter! But all his cry, I am told, is, "Bother the children!" Silly fellow, as if it were children who garotted him! But the number of burglaries we have had!-counting alarms and all (for we have only had our washhouse door forced once-to be sure it didn't lock, so it didn't require much force, even if the servant had not left it open, which she may have done). About five nights in each week the alarm is raised after this manner: Mrs. Pickles-"Pickles, are you awake?" Mrs. Pickles (in a confidential whisper)—" There's somebody in the house!" Pickles-"God bless my soul, my dear, is there?" 66 I shuffle out of bed, shuffle on certain articles of clothing, and then we arm-arm heavily. I take my life-preserver in one hand and an old pistol in the other (it isn't loaded, for I don't like to handle the gentleman when he is, but the thieves don't know that), and my wife follows, with a poker, and a rattle, and the light. And thus we proceed cautiously and stealthily down stairs, peeping into empty rooms, looking behind curtains, poking into dark corners, and (so vigorous in her search has Mrs. Pickles become of late) opening the smallest cupboards, and even table-drawers, "for these fellows," she says, sometimes manage to introduce mere infants into the house in the daytime to let them in at night." And then, as sure as clock-work, when we are in the remotest and most suspicious lowest regions of the house, little Willy is heard screaming at the top of his voice, and away go mamma and light, leaving me to grope my way up again in the dark, with a most extraordinary noise on the stairs above me. I fall over the cat, who is coming down with a cold chicken in her mouth, rush up, and scramble into bed again, chilled to the marrow. And this is a Christian country, and I pay fourpence in the pound for police to protect me! It's really shameful, and I have written scores of letters to the Times about it, varying my signature from "Paterfamilias" to "Suburban," storming as "A Sufferer,' or claiming to be heard as "An Englishman;" but the editor refuses them insertion. He's either in league with the thieves, or don't know what it is to look over the house in the middle of a cold night in winter. cry We have caused great bolts to be put on the doors, bars to cross them, and iron to line them. The shutters are cased with iron: iron hooping here, sheet iron there; verily, it is the iron age with us! And yet the is "More iron! more iron!" We are the most ingenious and persevering inventors of fastenings-every one of them deserves a patent. Uneasy thoughts sometimes cross my mind as to how we should get out in case of fire; and, in addition to all, we have bells hung on to every door and shutter in the house. These are sometimes causes of vague apprehensions, and Mrs. Pickles will sometimes say in the middle of the night, "Hush, Pickles, I thought I heard a bell!" And then we lie, holding our breaths, till I am sure I for one am blue in the face, listening for the faintest tinkle-tinkle of an alarm. Little Willy has caught the infection, and gives us most terrible frights at most unseasonable hours. The other night, when I went up to bed, having been for some time seeing to the fastenings after Mrs. Pickles had retired, I found that good lady quite cataleptic up in the bedroom. "Oh, I'm so glad you've come, Pickles," said she; "I've had such a start!" "Why, what's the matter, my dear?" I ask, rather nervously. "There isn't any one there-behind the cheval glass-is there ?" she rejoins, without turning her head. "Lord bless me! I hope not. No, not a soul. Why?" "Oh, that stupid child! Do you know, when I came into the room, he was standing upright in his crib, and cried out, "Oh, mamma, there's a man in the corner!" " As soon as it gets dark, and when one wants to sit for a few minutes before the candles are lighted, looking into the fire, and ruminating, the little urchin is sure to begin: "What's that ?" "What's that noise?" "There's a black man coming in!" (A black man, of all others!) My eyes are for ever over my shoulders; and at last the candles have to be brought in. An especially luminous idea occurred to Mrs. Pickles lately, and we now have lights burning in every bedroom in the house where there are no shutters, for, she says, the thieves will think there's somebody in them the neighbours will think we keep dreadful hours, or a lodginghouse! Moreover, she has half a dozen of my old hats always on the hat-stand in the hall, to convey the impression abroad that there are as many male residents in the house. But this is not the worst. Once or twice she has said, in her most bewitching tones, "Wouldn't it be nice, now, when we can afford it, and the gas-pipes are laid down, to have a lamp in our front garden, and another in our back, so that we could see out of nights?" I have assented, with the variation on her sentence of "Yes, if we could afford it;" and so the alarming suggestion rests at present. Why, it would be preposterous! We should be knocked up at all hours of the night by such drunken revellers as were abroad, who would mistake Turtledove Villa for a house of public entertainment. If these burglaries increase, I'm afraid I shall hear more of it. And all this trouble, and anxiety, and alarm, is caused by the nonsupply of the half-dozen policemen whom we pay for! Mind, I do not complain of inattention on the part of the police: the single policeman who occasionally comes round is particularly attentive. He is always requesting to be allowed to look at the back, as he saw a suspicious character in the field, or making us feel remarkably comfortable on foggy nights, by advising us to be "on the listen ;" or calling to caution us that the clothes were stolen yesterday at a house up the road; or inquiring whether our windows are all secure-and Mrs. Pickles always rewards him with a glass of gin. Sometimes he, too, knocks us up, and when I go down in my dressing-gown and open the door, his lantern nearly blinds my half-shut eyes, as he informs me that he found our gate open. I wish he could shut it without bringing me down stairs. But of what avail is one policeman with an area of fifty acres, full of hiding-places, to traverse? It is in these outlying, half-finished settlements that the aggressive tribes of the night make forcible entry, not in the blazing high-streets, where you meet Z from 1 to 207 at every step. And yet they pay no greater police-rate in the High-street, or in Prickleton proper, than we do away among the brick-fields and the gravel-pits. I wish the District Parochial Reform Association would take that up-or the policeman take it up, as it staggers out of the Turtledove Arms at night. HORATIAN LYRICS AND PATRICIAN TRANSLATORS. BORN in an age of poets and philosophers, enriched with the divine gift of genius, and trained in the desire of honour, Horace acquired early in his lifetime that esteem of the great and gifted which has been throughout succeeding ages continued to his works. Gratitude to an emperor and to a patron, no less than ambition to win enduring fame, inspired him, from the first, to seek his laurels in the field of lyric poetry, in which among the Romans he had but one predecessor; and so successfully did he invoke the muse, that writings which were admired in the court of Augustus are studied in that of Victoria, and have for ages helped to form our statesmen and grace our speech, insomuch that Horace, it has been said, may be regarded as a kind of honorary member of the British constitution. His poems show that he had great knowledge of the world, they afford maxims for conduct, and teach contentment and virtue. Embracing an immense variety of subjects, we find those of the lighter kind treated with appropriate gaiety and grace, and those of the graver character recommended by a lofty dignity and strength. Statesmen, prelates and scholars, poets, and men of no poetic temperament, have all endeavoured to naturalise him in our tongue. Milton bent from his Christian sanctities to an ode of Horace; Dryden employed his masculine vigour on Horatian verse; and now we are indebted to an English nobleman for a most attractive and polished translation of his Odes. Books relating to Horace fill of themselves one of the two thousand folio volumes into which the British Museum catalogue is now growing such is the extent of Horatian literature. Nearly three hundred years have elapsed since the first attempt was made to translate any of the works of Horace. Forgetting that the translation of such an author should itself be classical, like an antique or a gem," we have had him clothed in Elizabethan ruffles and in Georgian tie-wig; and as his unrivalled felicity of expression renders the difficulty of imitating the form even greater than that of finding an equivalent for the sense, we have still had to desiderate a translation which should "convey to the English reader," to use the words of Lord Ravensworth, "a just idea of the grace and beauty of composition which are almost faultless in the original Latin." At this object Lord Ravensworth has aimed in the translations contained in the volume now before us, and we congratulate the noble author on his success. Horace, when wearied with the public life of Rome, sought refreshment in "the still land of truth and fancy," and his latest translator, who was long known in parliament before his accession to the peerage, must have devoted to this labour of love no small part of the leisure hours of a not inactive life. Lord Ravensworth has produced a translation that can be read with pleasure, and has given another proof that true poetry may be transfused from one language into another. If the enormous difficulty of conveying in an English form the felicity, the dignity and music, of the polished verse of Horace has necessitated some indulgence in paraphrase, and prevented, except in the case of one noble ode, a translation stanza for stanza of the original, Lord Ravensworth's translations, at all events, show that the full spirit and meaning of the original may be caught, and even its grace of expression preserved, by a translator of kindred mind. We should like to give some extracts for the purpose of enabling our readers to judge of the extent to which these translations" convey a just idea of the grace and beauty of composition" of Horace's Odes, but to do this adequately we must fill more pages than can be devoted to the present notice. We must be content, therefore, to select a few translations which at once afford fine examples of the poet's philosophy and style of moralising, and show that the curiosa felicitas has not eluded Lord Ravensworth's pursuit. For their fidelity we must refer our readers to the original Latin, the text of which luxuriously faces each translation in this elegant volume. One of the lyrics which show that Horace was essentially a philosopher, is that eighteenth ode of the Second Book, in which he reproves the luxury and avarice of some of his countrymen, their rapacity and pride, and from his own example commends Contentment, of which pleasing ode Lord Ravensworth gives the following version, the latter part of which is confessedly a paraphrase rather than in the strict sense a translation: My humble dwelling boasts no rich arcade, *The Odes of Horace. In Four Books. Translated into English Lyric Verse by Lord Ravensworth. Dedicated to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales. London: Upham and Beet. 1858. Nor Libyan columns prop the architraves To beg the succour that they gave before ;- Death strikes the wise, the wealthy, and the bold, In the same spirit are the following stanzas from the tenth ode of the Second Book, which one can imagine the poet writing under the pinetree sacred to Diana that waved above his villa: Whoe'er observes the golden mean, Enjoys a quiet home In sweet security, between The stately pine or giant ash Most feel the tempest's shock, The lofty towers with direr crash Fall down, and oft the lightning's flash Shivers the highest rock. We are much pleased with the noble translator's version of the wellknown admonitory ode, "Equam memento"-the third ode of the Second Book: Dellius! since all are born to die, Remember, in adversity, To show thyself resigned; Nor less when Fortune's favouring gale |