"Behold that seraph in the robes of white, "Though frowning labyrinths of earth and sky, Excels the tints of Autumn's cloudless sky, "Behold the breast of Nature clothed again With flowery Carmels, and with Bactrian grain ;6 Its current stainless, and its banks undyed, Through bloomy vales rolls on the silvery tide; Perennial music, floating on the air Of summer noontide, charms away despair; He who had borne the sword now bears the crook,7 To desolate the earth, volcanoes rise; But rural sounds and sights, ordain'd to blind "Look to the habitants of earth, behold There is no joy like that which owes its birth Spirit of Wisdom! haste, descend, and bear She bids the tempest fruit and fragrance bring, Reigns o'er each realm, and stills the stormy wave. And thou, Religion, though through fire and flood 'Mid burning sands, where verdure is unknown, And lifts, in holy dread, his mental eye While, lo! the voice of psalms, the tones of praise, Though Day upon the waste and wildering scene Glooms o'er their world, and saddens half the year, In the blue sky, and each revolving star And knows that He, who formed this rolling ball, Oh happy time, when crimeless all shall be, Shall leave their dwellings, and, with meekness bland, Proclaim him Lord, and own the loved of Heaven! Advancing glory, hail! although the day, VOL. XVI. 20 The first to come, the latest to depart, NOTES. 1 Abderas new uprise to glad the sight. At Abdera, in Thrace, (Andromeda, one of the tragedies of Euripides being played,) the spectators were so much moved with the object, and those pathetical love speeches of Perseus, among the rest, O Cupid, prince of gods and men, &c. that every man, almost, a good while after, spake pure iambics, and raved still on Perseus' speech, O Cupid, prince of gods and men. As carmen, boyes, and prentises, when a new song is published with us, go singing that new tune still in the streets; they continually acted that tragicall part of Perseus, and in every man's mouth was, O Cupid; in every street, O Cupid; in every house, almost, O Cupid, prince of gods and men.-BURTON's Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III. Sect. 2. Much has been said, and justly, concerning the exquisiteness of Sterne's genius; as to its disdain of plagiarism, the reader of the above passage may turn to Sentimental Journey, vol. I. Fragment commencing-" The town of Abdera, notwithstanding Democritus lived there;" and to Dr Ferriar's Illustrations, passim. See the story of Spectator, No. 171. 2 As Herod's heart to Mariamne turn'd. Herod and Mariamne, collected from the historian, Josephus, in Oh, Mariamne, now for thee The heart for which thou bledst is bleeding? 'Twas she amid Dahomey's groves of blood. How incredible are the acts of atrocity to which the unbridled passions of man subject him! even Fancy must fail to communicate half the horrors which but too accurate history has supplied us with. Without adverting to the lamented Bowdich's Mission to Ashantee, and other voyages or travels, we refer, as more immediately connected with the text, to Dalzel's History of Dahomey, and the particulars contained therein. 4 'Twas she mid Bramah's wilds of awful gloom. About the year 1798, twenty-eight Hindoos were reported to have been crushed to death at this very place, Ishera, under the wheels of Juggernaut, impelled by sympathetic religious phrenzy. The fact of their deaths was notorious, and was recorded in the Calcutta papers; but so little impression did it make on the public mind, and so little inquiry was made by individuals into the subject, that it became doubtful at last whether the men perished by accident, or, as usual, by self-devotement; for it was said, that to qualify the enormity of the deed in the view of the English, some of the Hindoos gave out that the men fell under the wheels by accident.-DR BUCHANAN's Journal, p. 35, in Christian Researches in Asia. "At Lahor," says Bernier," I saw a very handsome, and a very young woman burnt; I believe she was not above twelve years of age. This poor unhappy creature appeared rather dead than alive when she came near the pile; she shook and wept bitterly. Meanwhile three or four of these executioners, the Bramins, together with an old hag that held her under the arm, thrust her on, and made her sit down upon the wood; and, lest she should run away, they tied her legs and hands; and so they burnt her alive. I had enough to do to contain myself for indignation." Under the delusion of what sophism, such a learned and enlightened man as Colonel Mark Wilks, can come to defend such a practice, I know not, but behold it written in Historical Sketches of the South of India, Vol. I. p. 499. 5 That drenched in Moslem blood the Christian sword. Innumerable are the anecdotes of enormity and atrocity ascribed to the Crusaders, by travellers and annalists, as if the misfortune of being Mahometans took from their enemies all title of being treated like men. "The valour of Richard (Cœur de Lion) struck such terror into his enemies," says Chateaubriand, "that, long after his death, when a horse trembled without a visible cause, the Saracens were accustomed to say that he had seen the ghost of the English monarch."-Travels, Vol. II. With flowery Carmels, and with Bactrian grain. "Bactriana, a country between Parthia and India, celebrated for the largeness of the grain of its wheat."—Note on a passage in Sotheby's admirable translation of the Georgics. 7 He, who had borne the sword, now bears the crook. "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."—Isaiah, chap. 2, ver. 2. • With doubled bliss returns the age of gold. he sang Saturnian rule Return'd, a progeny of golden years, Permitted to descend, and bless mankind.-Excursion. While Science from her hill walks forth. When we look back to the discoveries of the last half century, perhaps it is no exaggeration to say, that Science has been making more rapid strides towards perfection, however far distant that may yet be-than in any previous age of the world. Every day introduces some new improvement, whereby the invaluable art of printing is rendered more diffusive in its operation, and consequently more extensively blessed in its effects. Chemistry has established itself as one of the most brilliant and useful of the sciences, and in the hands of a Davy, a Thomson, and a Dalton, who will be bold enough to set a limit to its operation? But, above all, the mighty power of steam, subjecting itself to science, has put into the possession of man an engine, alike applicable on land and ocean, and which may come in time to render the boast of Archimedes scarcely a hyperbolical exaggeration. LETTERS OF MR MULLION TO THE LEADING POETS OF THE AGE. No. I. To Bryan W. Proctor, Esq., alias Barry Cornwall. MY DEAR PROCTOR, You see I write quite familiarly to you, though I never have had the pleasure of beholding the light of your countenance. You are a man for whom, as ODoherty says, I have a particular regard, and therefore do not stand upon matters of mere ceremony. As for styling you Barry Cornwall, for God's sake, drop that horrid humbug. Everybody is laughing at you about it; and in reality it is not right or creditable to have an alias. Write as Cobbett and I do, always with your real name. It would be much more sensible, and less pick-pocket like. I cannot charge my memory, or my conscience, with having read any of your poetry. I occasionally see scraps of it in periodical works, of which you know I am a most ardent and constant reader, but I regularly skip them. I understand that you have a fancy that you can write after the manner of "those old, down-looking Grecks;" but do give up the idea. It is fudge at this time of the day-mere fudge and more particularly in you, who know nothing of the language or the ideas of the people. When Quintus Horatius Flaccus, of whom you may have heard under the name of Francis's Horace, botched it, though he had lived in the country-spoken the language-wrote in it-knew the people thoroughly-professed the creed of its mythology-you may take it for granted that you cannot do any good in the line. In like manner, I am told, you are vainly at work on Italian literature, writing about Colonnas, Mirandolas, &c. Let me beg of you to give up that too. You are aware that you do not know as much Italian as would suffice you to call for a mouthful of bread, and if you were left alone in any town of Italy, you would be compelled to open your mouth, and point to it, whenever your nether guts grumbled for their mess of pottage. In this state of things, you can never be a Boccace-[by the by, an Italian scholar like you, ought to know that his name is Boccaccio]-in rhyme. In a word, let me inform you, that it is always as well to let writing on subjects which have engaged master minds altogether alone; and that a know |