Our readers must remember a very spirited account of an ascent of Mont Blanc by Mr Albert Smith. Very spirited, and very interesting it was; but you should go and hear the author give his _vivâ voce_ version of it, illustrated by Beverley’s views. When we say the descriptions are funny, we are not correct; though certainly there is a great deal of whim and fun in the course of his address. When we say the narrative is grave, startling, entrancing, we are not correct; though, undoubtedly, there are passages that take away the auditor’s breath, and hair-breadth ’scapes that make him shudder;—but the true description of the whole two hours’ entertainment is, that it is a remarkable combination of talent, humour, lucid narrative, and personal adventure, which everybody ought to go and hear, and a succession of scenes and paintings which everybody ought to go and see. The deaf man will be delighted; the blind man will be amazingly pleased; but people in the full enjoyment of eyes and ears will be inexcusable, if they refuse them so great a treat as the united efforts of two such artists will afford. Saturday—and the week’s inspection has come to a close. A cold east wind is howling along Oxford Street, evidently in search of snow, and rather disappointed at not finding the Serpentine covered with ice. The Almanac tells us it is April; but our extremities have private information that it is December. As we go shivering home, we will diverge for a moment into the most curious repository of nick-nacks the world contains—being the gatherings of thirty years, at a cost of thirty thousand pounds. We call in Argyll Street, and are civilly received by Mr Hertz, the proprietor of the collection. He is a little, round, oily-faced German, evidently of the Jewish persuasion, and remarkably fond of tobacco. His room is like a pawnbroker’s shop; only all his customers must have been possessors of picture galleries, and have brought themselves into difficulties by cultivating a “taste.” There are wardrobes richly inlaid, with a genealogy as carefully kept as the pedigree of a race-horse. He will tell you how it came into the hands of Louis XIV., and how it ornamented a chamber in the Tuileries during the Empire; or a ring will be shown you, with the hair of Julius Cæsar under the glass. Beautiful miniatures are pointed out, of great value as works of art, but far more valuable from their being undoubted likenesses of their fair and famous originals. Beauties of the reign of Francis; eyes that looked kindly on Henry IV.; cheeks that flushed in vain to win a transient smile from the Grand Monarque, are all there. Then there are little ivory cabinets, and screens magnificently embroidered, all with their respective stories—there being no article that depends entirely on its intrinsic merits, but borrows a great part of its interest from the adventures it has gone through. Finally, he gives you a key, and sends