Nearly fifty years after the publication of “Vathek,” in 1835, Mr. Beckford published his “Recollections of an Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcobaca and Batalha,” which he had taken in 1795, together with an epistolatory record of his observations in Italy, Spain and Portugal, between the years 1780 and 1794. These are marked, as he himself intimates, “with the bloom and heyday of youthful spirits and youthful confidence, at a period when the older order of things existed with all its picturesque pomps and absurdities; when Venice enjoyed her Piombi and sub-marine dungeons; Prance her Bastille; the Peninsula her Holy Inquisition.” With none of those subjects, however, are the letters occupied—but with delineations of landscape, and the effects of natural phenomena. These literary efforts appear to have exhausted their author’s productive powers; in a word, he seems soon to have been “used-up,” and then to have discontinued his search after new sensations, or to have been content to live without them. After the sale of Fonthill, our author lived a considerable time in Portugal, and hence Lord Byron, who was fond of casting the shadow of his own imagination over every object, penned the well-known lines at Cintra: “There thou, too, Vathek, England’s wealthiest son, Once formed thy paradise; as not aware Where wanton wealth her mightiest deeds hath done, Meek peace, voluptuous lures, was ever wont to shun. Here didst thou dwell; here scenes of pleasure plan, Beneath yon mountain’s ever beauteous brow; But now, as if a thing unblest by man, Thy fairy dwelling is as lone as thou! Here giant weeds a passage scarce allow To halls deserted; portals gaping wide Fresh lessons to the thinking bosom; how Vain are the pleasaunces on earth supplied, Swept into wrecks anon by time’s ungentle tide.” These sombre verses contrast strangely with Beckford’s saying to Mr. Cyrus Redding, in his seventy-sixth year, “that he had never felt a moments’ ennui in his life.” Beckford was in person scarcely above the middle height, slender, and well formed, with features indicating great intellectual power. He was exactly one year younger than Pitt, the companion of his minority. His political principles were popular, though it is recorded, that at a court ball on the Queen’s birth-day, in 1782, he, with Miss North, led up a country dance. He sat in parliament, in his early years, both for Wells and Hendon, but retired on account of bad health. This, however, he overcame by careful diet and exercise, as testified by his great bodily activity almost to the last. He was a man of most extensive reading, and cultivated taste.