hurried over and unequal. It is curious to observe, that CUMBERLAND attributes the excellence of his comedy, _The West Indian_, to the peculiarly happy situation in which he found himself at the time of its composition, free from the incessant avocations which had crossed him in the writing of _The Brothers._ "I was master of my time, my mind was free, and I was happy in the society of the dearest friends I had on earth. The calls of office, the cavillings of angry rivals, and the gibings of newspaper critics, could not reach me on the banks of the Shannon, where all within-doors was love and affection. In no other period of my life have the same happy circumstances combined to cheer me in any of my literary labours." The best years of MENGS' life were embittered by his father, a poor artist, and who, with poorer feelings, converted his home into a prison-house, forced his son into the slavery of stipulated task-work, while bread and water were the only fruits of the fine arts. In this domestic persecution, the son contracted those morose and saturnine habits which in after-life marked the character of the ungenial MENGS. ALONSO CANO, a celebrated Spanish painter, would have carried his art to perfection, had not the unceasing persecution of the Inquisitors entirely deprived him of that tranquillity so necessary to the very existence of art. OVID, in exile on the barren shores of Tomos, deserted by his genius, in his copious _Tristia_ loses much of the luxuriance of his fancy.