the Earl of Shrewsbury nearly the whole of Salop, and the Earl of Chester all the rich and powerful districts in Cheshire.

"Nor were the establishments of his great prelates upon a scale of power less extended and grand, combining, as they did, both temporal and spiritual dignities. Bishop Odo had immense possessions in different counties, and Longchamps, Bishop of Ely, had 1,500 horsemen to form his retinue, while his open house and table exhibited all the abundance and luxury that art or nature could supply- every delicacy that a Roman emperor or pontiff could have desired.

"The Conqueror set the example for this studied magnificence and show, by his stated progresses, and the royal feasts which he held at the recurring seasons of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide; as if preparatory to ushering in the dawn of the gorgeous tournament, the holy festivals, and the magnificent array of the first Crusades.

"Still the interior of this gay, chivalric, and truly baronial life, could lay claim to few of the polished refinements, or even the accommodations, enjoyed by the middle ranks in modern times. Several estates, for instanec, were held in England upon the tenure of finding clean straw for the King's dormitory, and litter for his rooms, as often as he had occasion to lodge out of his own residences. Even at a subsequent period it is alluded to, as a proof of the growth of luxurious manners, in the case of Thomas á Becket, that he commanded his servants to cover the floor of his dining room with clean straw, or hay, every morning in winter; with fresh bulrushes and branches of trees every day in summer; that such of the knights and small gentry as came to dine with him, and could not find room on the benches, might sit upon the floor comfortably, without spoiling their clothes.'"-pp. 312-3.8.

SHELLEY'S MINOR POEMS.*

SHELLEY is no more; and with the flight of years, the spirit of rancour or of blind idolatry with which his poems were once received has merged into a calm and due appreciation of his merits, and a softened regret that so much of true beauty and excellence should have been marred by the exhibition of that unregulated feeling and freedom of expression which ever excited the disapprobation of the wise and the good. To the fame of no modern poet, perhaps, has the lapse of years been more beneficial: when the productions of his meteor-like genius burst upon the world, men shuddered at the daring recklessness of isolated passages, and laid his whole works uuder an interdict; or (not less falsely), adopted his creed with his poetry, and made him at once their priest and their muse. He died ere the fierce and untamed feelings of ardent youth had had time to calm themselves under the sobering influence of

The Minor Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley. A new Edition. Moxon.

maturer years; but he left us a legacy which we can, at length duly appreciate,-a legacy which, with all its faults, demands for him an honoured niche in the temple of fame.

Shelley was pre-eminently born a poet. Every page of his works teems with evidence of true poetic spirit, while the wild and sometimes rude melody of his verse, uncramped by critics' laws, harmonizes wonderfully with the brilliant and glowing conceptions it embodies. His soaring genius exhibits itself in the themes of his most elaborate productions, wherein he dares to grapple with subjects of fearful and terrific interest, in a style of grandeur which disarms criticism, and leaves us lost in wonder. To enumerate his finished compositions, were but to point out so many examples of the powers of a great, ay, and a good mind, unhinged by casual circumstances: good; for all his sympathies lie with goodness; all his eloquence is exerted in the cause of oppressed innocence; and (unlike many of our moral writers), Shelley never paints vice in a form resembling virtue; he never throws a halo around the evil deeds of the wicked, because they happen to rank among the great. But, though the Cenci, Queen Mab, and other works, command our admiration, it is in his minor poems we learn to love the writer. It is impossible to dwell on the beauties even of one short piece without feeling the chords of our own hearts echo to his descriptions-without being convinced that nature, in its best and purest forms, was familiar to his mind. No wonder, then, that his poems, in striking contrast to those of his friend Byron, breathe the very spirit of purity; that with all his depth of passionate feeling, he never outrages or wounds the heart-he himself was too sensitive to be capable of violating the feelings of others. He gives the secret of this in his Julian and Maddalo, where he observes,

"Most wretched meu

Are cradled into poetry by wrong;

They learn in suffering what they teach in song."

This will perhaps in part account for the striking variety which Shelley's poems present to the reader. Like nature itself, they exhibit burning volcanoes, stern and rugged mountains, and terrific cataracts; but there are also sweet gardens, green and animated valleys, and limped streams. The "Ode to the Skylark" alone, contains a fund of brilliant poetic thought and feeling, sufficient to rescue the name of Shelley from cblivion. It is almost invidious from such a poem to select any part; yet we can only present the following stanzas to the

reader: :

"Waking or asleep.

Thou of death must dream

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream;

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not,

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught.

Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought."

To speak more immediately of the little volume before us; it is greatly superior to previous editions of "selected poems" -presenting many which did not enrich their pages; the type, too, is exceedingly good and clear, and the price moderate. All lovers of poetry are therefore indebted to the spirited pubisher, who makes these gems of literature so easily attainable.

SCHLEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.*

THE public are much indebted to Mr. Bohn, for presenting them, in so excellent a form, and at a price so very moderate, (3s. 6d.) with a work of the striking and valuable character of the one before us.

Schlegel's works are already too well known to require much comment, but we owe it especially to our scholastic friends to give the Philosophy of History' all the recommendation in

our power.

The translator has admirably done his part in transfusing the spirit as well as the substance of the great original: and we should be glad to see this valuable book in more general circulation.

Our brief limits prevent us from doing more than glancing over the contents of the Lectures before us. Beginning with the primitive history of mankind, the records of the principal nations that have from the earliest ages held a conspicuous place on the theatre of the world, are discussed separately, and with that profound knowledge and minuteness of detail which characterize so peculiarly the deep thinking of the German School. The Chinese Empire--its history-its moral and po

A course of Lectures, delivered at Vienna, by F. Von Schlegel. Translated from the German, with a memoir of the Author, by James Baron Robertson, Esq. Second edition, revised. London, Bohn.

litical condition-its literature and science-takes the first rank, and is followed by equally elaborate notices of the other ancient nations. Greece and Rome take the next place, and terminate with the commencement of the Christian era; and thence we are led to the various species of Christianity, which have from time to time appeared to the wars between the Eastern and Western Empires- the Saracenian and Christian Potentatesuntil in the final lecture, we have a most clear and luminou} dissertation on the 'Spirit of the Age,' and the universal regeneration of society.

Among the most interesting topics to the student, will be found a critical examination of the origin of the Chinese characters, and those of other Eastern nations. The following passage is to curious to be omitted.

"The celebrated French orientalist, Abel Remusat, who in our times has infused a new life into the study of Chinese literature, and espécially thrown on the whole subject a much greater degree of clearness than originally belonged to it, has, in his examination of this first very meagre outline of the infant civilisation of China, wherein he discovers the then very contracted circle of Chinese ideas, passed many intellectual observations, and drawn many historical deductions. And if, as he conjectures, the discovery of Chinese writing must date its origin from four thousand years back, this would bring it within three or four generations from the Deluge, according to vulgar era-an estimate which certainly is not exaggerated. If this European scholar, intimately conversant as he is with Chinese antiquities and science, is at a loss adequately to describe his astonishment at the extreme poverty of these first symbols of Chinese writing, so no one, doubtless, possesses in a higher degree than himself, all the necessary attainments to enable him to appreciate the immeasur able distance between this first extreme jejuneness of ideas, and the boundless wealth displayed in the latter artificial and complex writing of the Chinese.

“But when, among other things, he calls our attention to the fact that, in this primitive writing, even the sign or symbol of a priest is wanting a symbol which together with the class itself must exist among the very rudest nations-I cannot concur in the truth of the remark; for he himself adduces, among other characters, one which must repre sent a magician. Now among the heathen nations of the primitive age, the one personage was certainly identical with the other, as even among the Cainites was very probably the case. Even the combination of seve ral of those simple characters, which generally serves to denote the more abstract ideas, seems often, or at least originally, not to have been regu lated by any profound principle of symbolism, but to have arisen merely out of the vulgar perceptions or impressions of every-day life. For instance, the character denoting happiness is composed of two signs, of which one represents an open mouth, and the other a hand full of rice, or rice by itself. Here we see no allusion is made to any very lofty or chimerical idea of happiness, or to any mystic or spiritual conception of the same subject; but, as this written character well evinces, the Chinese

notion of happiness is simply represented by a mouth filled and saturated with good rice. Another example of nearly the same kind, is given by Remusat with something of shyness and reserve;-the character designating woman, when doubled, signifies strife and contention, and when tripled, immoral and disorderly conduct. How widely removed are all these coarse and trivial combinations of ideas from an exquisite sensea deep symbolism of nature-from those spiritual emblems the Egyptian hieroglyphics, so far as they have been deciphered; although these emblems may have been, and were in fact, applied to the purpose of alphabetic usage. In the hieroglyphics there is, beside the bare literal meaning, a high symbolical inspiration, like a soul of life-like the breathing of a high indwelling spirit-a deeply felt significancy-a lofty and beautiful design apparent through the dead character denoting any particular name or fact."

Among the most striking merits of the work before us, we would notice that every subject discussed is proved to be in accordance with divine revelation; it is the production of a mind deeply imbued with piety as well as learning, and sincerely desirous of benefiting the hearts as well as the heads of the readers.

SISMONDI'S LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH.*

THIS is another of the valuable re-publications issued by Mr. Bohn in his Standard Library, and we can scarcely conceive any work more aceeptable, either to the student or the general reader. The high price at which former editions of this work have been published, has confined it almost exclusively to the libraries of the wealthy; but the present translation is brought within the reach of all book-buyers; and is positively the cheapest work we ever remember to have seen published. Each volume contains an elegant illustration, and nearly six-hundred pages of closely printed letter-press, for Three and Sixpence ! The work contains an exceedingly interesting life of the Author by Mr. Roscoe, (by whom it has been translated,) and includes all the notes from the last Paris edition.

LETTERS OF THE KINGS OF ENGLAND. †

THE general reader, quite as much as the historical scholar, owes an infinite debt of gratitude to the enterprising publisher

Historical View of the Literature of the South of Europe. By J. H. J. Sis

monde de Sismondi. 2 vols.

Bohn.

† Letters of the Kings of England, now first collected from the Originals in Royal Archives, and from other sources, private as well as public, edited, with an Historica! Introduction and Notes, by J. O. Halliwell, Esq., F.R.S. 2 vols. Colburn.