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retiring footsteps of the language of
signs. They are the traces which this
first invention of the human race has
left of its influence on the great fabric
of spoken language. To extend the
olive branch of peace, to take up the
hatchet of war, to sit down in the
chair of friendship, are all (along with
many others which will be familiar
to most readers) expressions common
in the language of early nations. It
is from this circumstance that even
the common conversation, and still
more the harangues of these nations,
are so highly poetical, and it is to this
cause, the lingering of the language
of signs in the language of expression,
that we ought to ascribe much of the
vigour and of the beautiful imagery
of early poetry. This language of
signs would, it is evident, be adopted
more extensively by those nations
whose passions were most easily rou-
sed, and the most violent in their ef-
fects. The more agitated the mind
of the speaker is, the more impatient
is he of the control of language, and
the more naturally has he recourse to
gesticulation. The nations of the
East (from whatever cause, whether
the heat of the climate, or some pecu-
liarities in their physical organization)
have always been observed to be more
violently moved by their passions, by
love, hate, revenge, than those of the
South. In proportion to this difference,
they must have resorted more naturally
at first to this language of gesture, and
have continued it longer than the na-
tions inhabiting colder climates; and
we accordingly find, that one of the
most prominent features in the East-
ern languages, is that plenitude of
metaphor which gives so characteristic
an air of beauty and brilliancy to their
poetry, a circumstance which may
be explained by the fact, that this
language of gesticulation was more
easily adopted, more commonly used,
and retained for a longer time by
them, than by their southern neigh-
bours. This early prevalence of me-
taphor will be found in the first poet-
ry even of the most northern na-
tions. What can be finer than these
words which were sung, as we may
believe, in a low plaintive voice, by
a Finland mother when rocking her
child to sleep?-

"Sleep on, sleep on, sweet bird of the meadow, take thy rest, little redbreast, take thy rest. God shall a

wake thee in his own good time, and he has made thee a little bough to repose thee on, a bough canopied with the leaves of the birch tree. Sleep stands at the door, and says, Is there not a little child here asleep in the cradle-a little child wrapt up in swaddling clothes-a child reposing under a coverlet of wool?" Many examples might be given to illustrate the same subject. The speech of Logan, the American Indian, whose whole family had been murdered by the British. "There flows not one drop of Logan's blood in the veins of any human being." The song of the African woman in Mungo Park's Travels, the bold expressions and magnificent imagery which pervades the early Runic poetry, all point the same way, and prove the same thing. To accumulate examples would tend to fatigue rather than to convince. Here then we close this subject, but we shall proceed, in a second Essay, to consider the early connection which took place between Poetry and Music, the marriage of Music to immortal Verse, and the effects which resulted from this noble alliance.

W.

REMARKS ON MARCIAN COLONNA.

It

THE poetry of Barry Cornwall has already been duly appreciated. seldom aims at any high flights, and is constructed of no very sturdy materials; but it is extremely perfect within its own range: it expresses with excellent effect all the particulars of the softer passions, and yet it is chiefly in the repose of passion, when it can look back upon itself, either from the point of satisfaction or of despair, that the genius of this elegant poet is

most at home. He is admirable in his
the love that is agitated by every va-
but it is not, so much,
pictures of love;
ried emotion of hope, or jealousy,
the passion when lovers are making
or alarm, it is rather that state of
their mutual confessions, and forgetting
all their past pains and doubts, in the
blessed assurance of united hearts and
favouring fortune, or when death
has put an end to every hope at once,

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and solitary melancholy is all that remains to the survivor. We think it is in sketches of this kind that Mr Cornwall's forte lies, and in these, indeed, he is, probably, unrivalled.

He dallies with the innocence of love
Like the old time;

and the fine antique air of his versification and expression, borrowed from the tenderer parts of our old dramatists, and reflecting, at times, the glow of classical or Italian imagery, is admirably adapted to the simple pathos of his conceptions. We will own, therefore, that it is on such passages of his present poem, although an attempt of a higher kind, and aiming at a wider range of emotion, than any of his former productions, that we still delight to pause. We are not particularly attached to his mad hero, or to his more laboured descriptions, which are introduced with somewhat too evident an ambition. We are much better pleased with his Julia, and her natural tenderness-and it is rather to her than to her lover that

we shall call the attention of our

readers.

Marcian, the second son of a noble Italian family, was confined in a convent by his parents, who cared for nothing but their first-born, and who were very happy, from Marcian's evident tendency to insanity, to find a pretext for putting him out of the

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-She dwelt upon that night till pity grew Into a wilder passion: the sweet dew That linger'd in her eye for pity's sake,’ Was (like an exhalation in the sun) Dried and absorbed by love. Oh ! love can take

What shape he pleases, and when once begun

His fiery inroad in the soul, how vain
The after-knowledge which his presence
We weep or rave, but still he lives and
gives!

lives,

Master and lord, 'midst pride and tears and pain.

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This is remarkably soft and beautiful, and although the poet immediately subjoins, now may we seek Colonna," -we are really not disposed to seek him, nor have we any satisfaction in his maniac extravagantimes visits and soothes him; it arose cies. A heavenly vision, indeed, somefrom the dim recollection of Julia, but his own vivid imagination embodied these faint traces of remembrance, almost, into a living image. His brother, meanwhile, died, and he is sent for to cheer the solitude of his de

spairing parents, his mind having gradually resumed a calmer and firmer tone. His chief delight now, was in wandering about the ruins of Rome. -One morning, as he lay half listlessly Within the shadow of a column, where His forehead met such gusts of cooling air As the bright summer knows in Italy, A gorgeous cavalcade went thundering by, Dusty and worn with travel: As it passed Some said the great Count had returned, at last,

From his long absence upon foreign lands: 'Twas told that many countries he had

seen,

(He and his lady daughter,) and had been A long time journeying on the Syrian sands, And visited holy spots, and places where The Christian roused the Pagan from his lair,

And taught him charity and creeds divine, By spilling his bright blood in Palestine.

Vitelli and his child returned at last, After some years of wandering. Julia Had been betrothed and widow'd

Her husband Orsini, to whom she had been given much against her will, was a brute and a tyrant, but, to the great delight of all connected with him, was drowned, one fine day, when he was sailing along the sea in his pleasure barge. At least, as our poet says, "This was the tale."

And Julia saw the youth she loved

again :

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Her figure came before him like a dream
Revealed at morning, and a sunny gleam
Broke in upon his soul and lit his eye
With something of a tender prophecy.
And was she then the shape he oft had seen,
By day and night,-she who had such
strange power

Over the terrors of his wildest hour?
And was it not a phantom that had been
Wandering about him? Oh with what deep
fear

He listened now, to mark if he could hear The voice that lulled him,-but she never spoke ;

For in her heart her own young love awoke From its long slumber, and chained down

her tongue,

And she sate mute before him: he, the while,

Stood feasting on her melancholy smile
Till o'er his eyes a dizzy vapour hung,

VOL. VII.

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There is nothing more tremendously difficult, than to get lovers in certain circumstances to speak out. They will fly from one another to the most than secure their happiness by a simple distant points of the compass, rather meeting, and one or two little words. There is certainly in the magnetic virtue, which draws them together, a great repelling power likewise,-feelings of the most extraordinary nature, which commonly occur, too, on the most mal-a-propos occasions, are for ever throwing them out, and particu larly, if there is, on one side, a vein of insanity to manage, as was the case with poor Marcian, it is almost impossible to bring them to the point. and, being a widow, we may suppose, Julia, no doubt, was nothing loath, she had no maiden bashfulness to give her lover unnecessary trouble; but Colonna would rather muse upon her image in his old odd way, in his favourite walks, than venture into her company, which he might have done, any day, merely by crossing the street.

the flame

Of love burned brightly in Colonna's breast, But while it filled it robbed his soul of rest: At home, abroad, at morning, and at noon, In the hot sultry hours, and when the moon Shone in the cool fresh sky, and shaped

those dim

And shadowy figures once so dear to him,Where'er he wandered, she would come

upon

His mind, a phantom like companion; Yet, with that idle dread with which the

heart

Stifles its pleasures, he would ever depart And loiter long amongst the streets of

Rome,

When she, he feared, might visit at his home.

A strange and sad perverseness; he did fear To part with that pale hope which shone at

last

Glimmering upon his fortunes.

B

There was no moral obstacle to prevent them being together as much as they pleased. Marcian had no wife, and Julia supposed her husband at the bottom of the sea. Had there been any objection of this serious nature, we cannot but say that it would have been Marcian's duty to have carried his self-denial still farther, and to have driven her from his thoughts as well as from his eyes. It was a mere accident at last which broke the ice, and we advise all young ladies who have such beings as a Marcian to deal with, (though, if they do not wish to run ultimately the risk of being poisoned, they had much better chuse among a different class of lovers,) just to throw loose the reins, and let fortune order for them as she will. We must give our readers the scene of this eclaircissement, though somewhat long, as it is written in our poet's best manner. It is at the beginning of the second canto, and opens with a fine invocation to love.

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And aid me as I try gently to tell
The story of that young Italian pair,
Who loved so lucklessly, yet ah! so well.
How long Colonna in his gloomier mood
Remained, it matters not: I will not brood
On evil themes; but, leaving grief and
crime,

At once I pass unto a blyther time.
-One night-one summer night he wan-
dered far

Into the Roman suburbs; Many a star Shone out above upon the silent hours, Save when, awakening the sweet infant flowers,

The breezes travell'd from the west, and then

A small cloud came abroad and fled again.

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Sent up in homage to the quiet moon.

He mused, 'till from a garden, near whose

wall

He leant, a melancholy voice was heard Singing alone, like some poor widow bird That casts unto the woods her desert call. It was the voice-the very voice that rung Long in his brain that now so sweetly sung. He passed the garden bounds, and lightly trod,

Checking his breath, along the grassy sod, (By buds and blooms half-hidden, which the breeze

Had ravished from the clustering orange

trees,)

Until he reached a low pavilion, where
He saw a lady pale, with radiant hair
Over her forehead, and in garments white;
A harp was by her, and her fingers light
Carelessly o'er the golden strings were
flung;

Then, shaking back her locks, with upward eye,

And lips that dumbly moved, she seemed to try

To catch an old disused melody-
A sad Italian air it was, which I
Remember in my boyhood to have heard,
And still-(though here and there, per-
haps, a word

Be now forgot)-I recollect the song,
Which might to any lovelorn tale belong.

SONG.

Whither, ah! whither is my lost love straying

Upon what pleasant land beyond the sea?
Oh! ye winds now playing
Like airy spirits 'round my temples free,
Fly and tell him this from me:

Tell him, sweet winds, that in my woman's bosom

My young love still retains its perfect power,

Or, like the summer blossom,

That changes still from bud to the fullblown flower,

Grows with every passing hour.

Say, (and say gently,) that, since we two parted,

How little joy-much sorrow-I have known:

Only not broken-hearted,

Because I muse upon bright moments gone, And dream and think of him alone.

The lady ended, and Colonna knelt Before her with outstretched arms: He felt

That she, whom in the mountains far away

His heart had loved so much, at last was his.

"Is there, oh! is there in a world like this"

(He spoke) "such joy for me? Oh! Julia,

Art thou indeed no phantom which my brain

Has conjured out of grief and desperate pain

And shall I then from day to day behold Thee again, and still again? Oh! speak

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