wigs and swords to the gentlemen of the tail, and demand thirteen and four pence. This would be bad enough, and hard enough to bear; but the reason they give adds insult to injury. They insist that they run some risk of their property being pawned or hypothecated by the hirers, and that there is almost a certainty of its being so pawned and soiled, as to cause a much more than ordinary expense for cleaning, even supposing it honestly returned. Application was then made by the tail to Mr. O'Connell's friend, Mr. Sheriff Raphael on the subject; but he informed them that being no longer a Jew, but a Papist, he had lost his influence in Hollywell-street, and could do nothing. As a last resource, therefore, to save their shillings, and be revenged on the Jew brokers, they got Mr. Hume to speak for the abolition of the costume altogether. I shall not pretend to decide which of all these reasons is the most correct one. Perhaps the fact is, after all, that the honorable member has some acquaintance sincere enough to tell him how shocking an appearance he makes in a court dress. knew a man skilled in such matters who used to say that nothing in out--they hurry on board again-get ward show was such a test of a real gentleman as a court dress. A gentleman, he said, looks more a gentleman in that costume, while a coarse vulgar fellow is sure to look like a footman. According to this canon, it is needless to say, which Mr. Hume would most resemble. all crushed into one mass-some fainting, some laughing, all sweating, and all more or less satisfied that they are taking their pleasure." The boat rolls, and almost pitches them into the river-the smoke, thick and black, is vomited forth from the iron chimney, and the flakes of falling soot settle on their melting visages, and soon dissolve into black paint. The steam puffs out, and its odour, mingled with that of heated grease and iron, regales the nostrils of the crowd; but what is that to them? they are "going a pleasuring"-they "niver seed such fun." They arrive at their destination, and awful then is the consumption of beer, considerable that of gin, and immense that of tobacco. Children, white and swollen, with excessive and unwholesome feeding, cry with indigestion, and are appeased with more greasy cakes. The parents seek a public house, and enter a room already crowded, where, to a natural nose, the fumes of beer and tobacco seem to have had possession ever since the flood: the man has his pipe and pot, the woman her gin and water-the children share both, and then get sick. The hour arrives for the boat to depart I once COCKNEY AMUSEMENTS IN HOT WEATHER. "The suffering eye, inverted nature sees," in all that regards cockneyism. Even in their pleasures they seem to cultivate what would give any unsophisticated human creature the most supreme disgust. It is now the Whitsun holidays, and the weather has suddenly become hot as that of the Tropics. What then do our worthy cockneys? They all "go a pleasuring," and a pleasant business they make of it, truly. Go down to the Thames wharfs, and look at the steam-boats starting for Greenwich, and Woolwich, and Gravesend. Look at the hundreds and thousands crammed together-men, women, children, provisions, drink, pipes, tobacco, He jambed, and crammed, and smoked, The ugliest, or the most beautiful country, is all the same to him he is busy talking of the minor theatres, and spouting the eulogy of his cigars, and telling how much they cost by the pound. He arrives at his inn, eats and is insolent, and applauds himself openly, and asks "what's to pay?" with an air that signifies his opinion that while he pays, he may do what he pleases. Having got drunk with brandy and water, the coachman advises him to go inside the coach in going home. There he commits some impertinence, is checked, gets worse, and is kicked. He grumbles something about the law, but does nothing, and so concludes his day of pleasuring. These I have sketched are the moderns-there are also plenty of persons of the good old school, who go decently in their one horse-chaise to see a friend in the country, or take their ease in their inn jocundly, but with discretion. It is pleasant to see them in these sultry evenings, jogging back to town, at a quiet trot of five miles an hour. I think I can tell by their looks that they say their prayers, and pay their bills regularly. Peace be with all such. St. Giles's, London, June 12, 1835. THE SONG OF NIGHT. FROM THE GERMAN. As once in boyhood David slept on Bethlehem's palmy height, Light is Jehovah's countenance! the sun spoke from the sky, He slakes our thirst at waterbrooks-so murmured forth the hind- We rest in peace-night sung, and sung, and held the lengthened note, Be ye lift up, ye heavenly gates, ye everlasting doors Awake, O man! and praise the Lord, who life with light restores! Arose the sun, and David sprung from sleep beneath the palms, June 10, 1835. ANSTER'S TRANSLATION OF Faust.* THE Connection of this visible with an invisible system of things, as it is one of the most awful, so is it one of the most interesting subjects of human contemplation. In every country and age, the existence of intelligent beings-inhabitants of some unseen world, yet holding mysterious intercourse with the tenants of this dim spot-has formed a part of the creed even of the rudest and most illiterate. Fancy has exhausted herself in devising the shapes and occupations of unencumbered spirits, and kindled in love or shrunk in fear from the images of beauty or of terror thus fashioned in her own secret chambers, and after models which seem like the relics of some past existence. From the Word of truth is known the occasion of all this busy toil, and the true original of those half-effaced forms which man's fallen spirit makes such bewildering efforts to regain. The angels of Light and the angels of Darkness engaged in a fearful conflict, on which man's eternal destiny depends, and in which he, too, has his side to choose, and must choose, these constitute the two real classes under which may be ranged all those lovely or fearful creations of the mind in its ever-repeated and ever-baffled, while unaided, efforts to exhibit their dim ideas still lingering within. When the general diffusion of Christianity had made public the secrets of the spiritual world, this mass of truth mingling with the fantastic matter of popular superstition easily amalgamated with what were, in fact, only imperfect representations of its own forms: but, while it modified these vanities, itself underwent various modifications. Truth was run into the mould of opinions already existing, and took their shape while it altered their character. The existence of One evil spirit, mighty in power and terrible in hate-the sublimest, perhaps, of all conceptions, save that of God himself-was among the most important of these secrets; and it would be curious to trace the various forms which, in different countries and at different times, it has assumed. No minute inquiry of this kind is here intended: it may, however, be observed, that in those countries where Philosophy had already busied herself about the great question of moral evil, and the connexion between virtue and happiness-vice and misery was theoretically understood--men's conception of the Adversary represented him more evidently as using sin for the great instrument of assailing the happiness of mankind, and while its prevalence readily suggested the power of the being who wielded it so as in some cases to produce an awe almost approaching to worship, this was mingled with anything like familiarity or affection. With our barbarous ancestors of the North the case was different. Of the miseries and hardships of our fallen race they had indeed their fair share, and on the Enemy, when acquainted with his existence, they were not slow in charging them: but their connexion with moral evil was little thought of by these rude men; so that one great element of measuring the power, and of moving their own hatred of the evil one was wanting. By degrees he came to be thought of as mischievous rather than wicked-a doubtful and dangerous, rather than a hateful object. un Poetry whose business is with truth, as it exists in the Fancy, on its passage from Sense to Reason, when stripped of its gross material clothing, and not yet spiritualized, so moulding it that it may affect the Intellect through our emotions, as in the hands of Philosophy it does through our reasoning faculties-Poetry, as might be expected, soon availed herself of the popular conceptions of the fallen Archangel; and, adapting by her magic power, this creature of opinion to the passions of men and the laws by which those passions affect the mind, brought it in all the startling reality of truth before that part of man's nature of * Faustus, a Dramatic Mystery; the Bride of Corinth; the First Walpurgis Night. Translated from the German of Goethe, and illustrated with Notes, by John Anster, LL.D. Crown 8vo. pp. 491. London, 1835. which truth, in its reality, is the proper object. That this, as well as every other manifestation of truth, has been attended with beneficial effects, cannot, we think, be doubted; and we not only agree with Mr. Auster that it is too late to inquire whether the fallen angel be a fitting subject for poetry; but we do think it never ought to have been matter of question at all. On the genius of the poet-on the circumstances of the time and country in which he lives, must depend the mode in which he will exhibit characters whose exhibition is required in the exercise of his art. That the present age is preeminent in knowledge is the boast of its philosophers-that it is an age of light without love is the complaint of its divines. Each views the progress of intellect with different feelings, but both are agreed as to its progress. That the divine should trace in the empire of intellect—we speak, of course, of mere intellect-the work of man's Enemy, is but natural; and, so far as the philosopher admits that popular system of religion which represents this world as a world "lying in the Wicked One," to form a proper machinery for poetry, so far he must admit the propriety of attributing to the poetic god of this world the sway of his favourite principle; while his admiration of the principle itself must incline him to view with favour any striking exhibition of its mighty workings. It is, we believe, Lord Shaftesbury who has observed, with no less truth than elegance, that true wisdom comes more from the heart than the head: but Knowledge, as distinct from this wisdom, and unregulated by it, is an engine of tremendous efficacy, and a sublime object of contemplation. A Being, then, all but omniscient, yet without heart, is a proper subject for poetry; and, as the Enemy of mankind is such a being, the exhibition of him under this character is what the circumstances of our time might well suggest to a great poet. Under this character he is exhibited in the noble poem before us; and the wayward bearing, and grim and grotesque buffoonery of the Northern Demon are used by the poet for the purpose of this exhibition. To this his northern country may have inclined him, the difficulty of exhibiting sin as such, without passion, was got over, by using as the representative of its author the creature whom popular superstition had learned to regard without moral hatred-and the creed of the poet, which, as to moral distinctions, seem to have been of the laxest, offered at least no difficulty. The story selected for the display of this wonderful Being, and in which he is introduced as using his passionless and boundless craft to effect the degradation of human nature,* in one of its most exalted forms, is the old nursery tale of Faustus; and all the wild and strange mysteries in which the Philosophy of the dark ages wrapped her scanty store of truths, perplexing the mind with that "darkness visible" of half-conjectured reason veiled in grotesque absurdity, are employed with consummate art to aid and give effect to the display; while the light thus poured upon these darkling elements, is, with harmonious order, proportioned to the intelligence of ordinary minds by a power and variety of rhythmical expression altogether unrivalled. The drama opens with a scene in Heaven, and the Hymn of the Archangels is a strain of such magnificence as half to justify the poet's boldness. RAPHAEL. The sun, as in the ancient days, According to Goethe's philosophy, the happiness of the Spirits of Light appears to consist in the enjoyment of Truth and Beauty, to which they have correspondent desires. The Spirits of Darkness have no such desires, and, consequently, no such happiness-but, as it would seem, no uneasiness in its absence. Man's mind lies between the two, having the desires without the adequate objects. From this want arises his error and misery. His attainable perfection consists in the acquisition of the objects, his degradation in the extinction of the desires: nothing further! VOL. VI. H GABRIEL. Swift, unimaginably swift, moan, And chide the rocks with insult hoarse, And wave and rock are hurried on, And suns and stars in endless course. MICHAEL. And winds with winds mad war maintain, ALL New strength and full beatitude Our first acquaintance with this noble passage, was in the Fragments from Faust, published in the posthumous works of the late Byshe Shelley-but spirited as is the version of Shelley, and spite of the prejudices of a first love, we think that Mr. Anster has surpassed him. The poetry is indeed to be found in Shelley, and it is poetry powerfully expressed, but this expression is the result of great effort, and bears the mark of being so; it wants the magic sweetness and melody of Mr. Anster's numbers; the combination of which, with the sublimity and rapid succession of the thoughts, appeared to Shelley unattainable, but which, to judge from the multiplied display of it in the volume before us, seems in Mr. Anster the result of a power of adapting the harmony of words to that of the thoughts which they express, with a truth almost approaching to the natural concord between the harmony of thoughts and that of the emotions to which they give birth; this power does not, we think, exist to the same extent in any other living poet, and nothing but the publication of the present work could have convinced us that it had not died with Coleridge, The Hymn is followed by a dialogue between the Supreme Being and Mephistopheles the demon of the drama. In this dialogue there is much that is offensive to a Christian's feelings, and the rather that the hint of the dialogue itself is probably taken from Scripture. On this head Mr. Anster has very naturally and with great ingenuity, though we think vainly, endeavoured to justify his author, for his argument at least goes the length of justification. Admitting, and we are not prepared to deny it, that the introduction of the Supreme Being is as justifiable as that of the Adversary, and that the exhibition of his daring and rebellious spirit unrestrained even by the Highest Presence is too essential a part of his character to be omitted; still, what the offence mainly consistsin is, the misrepresentation of the real relation between God and the Evil One, and in the sentiments which He, who cannot behold sin with allowance, is made to express towards its author. In the way of excuse of his author, and in justification of the making this scene a part of his own translation, Mr. Anster is more successful; we wish that we could find room for his argument, but we feel that we have already detained our readers too long from the poem itself. In the dialogue already noticed, Faustus has been delivered over into the Dæmon's power for a season. The next scene exhibits him in his closet wearied of intellectual pursuits, and of the vanity and vexation of spirit which wait on them; feeling those boundless desires to which faith alone can, in our sphere, give even an ideal object, and without that faith to rest on; in this state he has turned to the forbidden arts of magic, and summons the unseen dwellers of the air to his assistance. The changes which come over the spirit of the restless child of clay, and the effects of the mysterious presence of his unearthly visitants, are expressed in powerful and original poetry. This awful converse is interrupted by the entrance of a pupil, and Faustus thereby recalled to earthly cares, resumes his desponding thoughts as at first. The shifting of his attention to each of the objects about him, the eagerness with which he follows for a while the train of feelings which they suggest, and the disgust with which he turns from them one after another, are displayed with matchless |