learned what was in contemplation she had excited the enemy on the on either side; that those who se- night of the 20th of August to atcretly consulted her respecting tack the picket of our regiment. their future fortunes had confided From the conversation she had had many secrets to her, and that she with our officers, she learned that was under some obligation to two were to precede mes she had chance, As to what concerned me sold to the one adulterated wine, particularly, she had selected me which made him sick; as to the to make a striking example, for the other, at the very moment he was purpose of establishing her repu- about to set out, she approached as tation as a fortune-teller, by pre. if to sell him something, and had dicting so long beforehand the term contrived to introduce a bit of burnof my life. ing sponge into one of the nostrils

At the approach of this period of his horse.

[We believe it will gratify several of our most in- rational way of spending the eventelligent readers to mention, that the following is the first of a series of prose essays from the elegant pen ing." which has formerly enriched our poetical depart, ment with the verses entitled, "The Mossy Seat," "Melancholy," "Disappointinent," "Ode to the spirit of Kosciusko," and other pieces of a similar description; a continued series of which, also, we have no common pleasure in being now enabled to promise.-[Edit.

No. I.

Our immortal Burns, too, if he did not suggest, at least concurred in, the remark, that there could be no surer way of rendering one of our species miserable, than by endowing him with extraordinary sensibility, with appetencies of mind, which it

ON THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF would be difficult to supply, and with 1ú de VICHILDE HARold.

"Oh! what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!"

Hamlet.

passions and powers beyond the run of common mortality. The opinion is not merely hazarded; it is one I T is an undeniable fact, that there that is confirmed by melancholy exis no situation, among the varied perience, and attested by examples gradations of civilized society, that is in every age, and by the misfortunes not productive of some peculiar plea- and unhappiness so frequently atsures and disadvantages to its posses- tendant on the possession of genius. sor,-something, indeed, that favours We need scarcely substantiate our the moral axiom, that Nature is no statement by adverting to the latter stepdame, but equally kind and bene- days of Swift, and Collins, and Beatficent toall her children. For, really, tie,-to the gentle Otway, the melanwhen we often see, what we have al- choly Gray, or the unfortunate Chatways been accustomed to esteem the terton; for, except in the almost best gifts which heaven bequeaths to supernatural instance of Rousseau, man, productive of a restlessness and it never was exhibited in such strong dissatisfaction of spirit allied to me- and vivid lines, as in the illustrious lancholy itself, and beholding all the author of the work now before us. contingencies of life in their worst There seem to be melancholy ideas lights, we are forcibly reminded of for ever floating on his mind, and the comparative happiness of unam- overshadowing, with a sad and sombitious mediocrity, and turn with de- bre twilight, all his prospects, and light to the innocent and artless days, breathing, like the simoom, so faithfully delineated by Goldsmith, when we "thought cross purposes the highest stretch of human wit, and questions and commands the most

"the

most lone wind of the desert," destruction over all his happiness, and desolation over all his hopes, and which have often driven him from

the settled society of his fellow men, forward to explain its wonders, there "to breath the difficult air of the are some phenomena which have iced mountain top," to hold converse hitherto appeared incongruous and with the fountains and with the fo- inexplicable; and, as an example, rests, and keep up a proud communion with the mysteries and the majesty of nature.

66

we may cite the uncontroverted, yet apparently paradoxical, axiom of Rouchefoucault, that "there is alTo our more unimaginative rea- ways something in the misfortunes ders, we are conscious that these re- of our dearest friends not displeasflections will appear to savour of en- ing to us." It is not a barbarous thusiasm, and be reckoned as des- triumph over their unhappiness; and criptive not of the poet, but of his it does not arise from a want of symideal personage; not of Lord Byron, pathy for their sufferings; it is a far but of Childe Harold. It may be more noble and generous emotion; so; for we confess that we were it is allied to what Ossian has happinever able to discover the line of ly denominated "the joy of grief." distinction between them. The in- We are confident, that if Childe cidents by which the Childe is first Harold had been represented to us introduced to us, and the causes of in his feelings, and reflections, and the morbid melancholy of his heart, conduct, as a gay, an innocent, and may be different. We trust, at least, a happy being, more sinned athat the causes are so ; but, whatever gainst than sinning;" pleased with the excitements may have been, the all he beheld and with all he heard ; state of mind induced is unquestion- at peace with himself and every thing ably the same in both. Lord Byron around him, that neither his gaiety, has too much respect for himself, to innocence, nor happiness, could have yield to an overweening inclination, made such an impression on the mind. if its seductions led him to be suspect- It is remarkable, also, that the ed of egotism; and he has therefore Childe Harold, of the first and second adopted the most delicate mode of cantos, is not the Childe Harold of communicating to the world his own the third. In the space that elapses feelings, and reflections, and sor- between his pilgrimage through rows; and of displaying and awaken- Greece, and his reappearance on the ing into exertion the powers and plains of Waterloo, his moral conpassions of a mind, so richly endow- stitution seems to have undergone a ed, and so proudly elevated, as to have little sympathy for the pursuits and objects that agitate the minds and occupy the attention of his less gifted brethern of mankind.

We do not agree with his Lordship, that Childe Harold is a repulsive personage; we think him wholly the reverse, though we cannot well define the nameless something that induces us to sympathize in all the loathings, and sicknesses, and melancholy of his heart, and seduces us to admire the daring pride, and the dangerous precepts of his cheerless and gloomy philosophy. Notwith standing all our researches in the labyrinth of mind, and all the ingenious theories that have been brought

remarkable change. It is true, that his curses on the despot are as long and loud, and his disdain of the slave as deep and rooted, and his admiration of patriotism as warm and fervent on the field of Morat, as on the plains of Marathon;-that his tenderness for female beauty, and female fidelity, is equally great; and that his affection for the innocence of childhood remains unabated. In these feelings there is no change; but it is not to these that we allude. The Childe is introduced to us as one who is satiated with the luxuries of life, and disgusted with the selfishness of the world ;-one, who considers all his kind as faithless and unfeeling beings, divested of

gratitude for good offices, and sym-
pathy for affliction; and he forsakes
his native land

Pained, and pining in the dearth,
And darkness of his spirits view-

to traverse the ocean waves, and
make the wide world his country. It
is not to form new friendships, for
he abjures his kind, and despises
their companionship ;-he is aware
that human life consists of agitation,
and feels that the mind must be
employed;-yet he has no object to
place on the pedestal of the image he
has torn from its niche;-though the
world presents him with nothing ca-
pable of arresting his attachment, like
the St. Leon of Godwin, or the La-
durlad of Southey, he feels endowed
with a supernatural portion of vital
energy and though surrounded by
human beings, he is conscious that
his curse is solitude.

ed with the mystical philosophy of Wordsworth, and feels himself to exist less as an individual of a particular species, than as a portion of an eternal spirit, that animates and pervades every thing within the dominions of Nature.

"Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends;

Where roll'd the ocean, thereon was his home;

Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends,
The desert, forest cavern, breaker's foam,
He had the passion and the power to ream;
Were unto him companionship; they spake
A mutual language, clearer than the tome
of his land's tongue which he would oft forsake

For Nature's pages glass'd by sunbeams on the lake.”

Whether these emotions have spontaneously arisen within him, and the beautiful and variegated banks of the Rhine, and the shores of Lake Leman, and the sublime and lonely regions of the Alps, were esteemed It is natural for the mourner to the most fit places for their developeshut his ears to the shouts of mirth, ment and indulgence; or whether it yet to turn his heart to the retrospec- was the scenery itself that kindled tive contemplation of hapiness, and these emotions, we do not know,take delight only in what coincides though we rather imagine that the and associates with his own feelings. latter is the case. At all events, it is The Childe, as it were instictively, evident, that his Lordship had been looks towards Greece, where he be- studying Wordsworth; that he was holds the reflected image of himself; captivated with the delirating tone -the smiles of happiness turned into that pervades his compositions; and, mourning,and the garden of existence that he was himself smitten with an into a desolate wilderness. It is with enthusiastick admiration of all natuthese feelings of loathing, loneliness, ral objects; and with the desire of and disgust, that he traverses the defining aspirations to others, which lovely but degraded regions of the are, in fact, mysterious, and inexpliNotwithstanding Morea, contrasts its present abject cable to himself.

state with its former dignity, gran- this great and inherent deformity, deur, and elevation; wandering a- there is a majesty and commanding mong the ivied colunins" which force, a dignity of thought, and a Time and Turk have spared," and depth of pathos, in the delineation, heaving many a sigh, as he perceives and in the dissection of these feel

"The fiery souls, that might have led

Her sons to deeds sublime,
Now crawl from cradel to the grave,
Slaves-pay the bondsmen of a slave,

And callous-save to crime !",

At length a new era opens in his mind. He seems to be impregnat

ings, which we have never seen equalled elsewhere; and which, we have little doubt, will place the third canto of Childe Harold in the eyes of posterity, among the most noble and successful efforts of this sombre, but truly sublime genius.

M.

That is, been at Venice, which was much visited by the young English gentlemen of those times, and was then what Paris is now the seat of all dissoluteness. S. A..

'TIS known, at least it should be, that throughout,
All countries of the Catholic persuasion,
Some weeks before Shrove Tuesday comes about,
The people take their fill of recreation,
And buy repentance, ere they grow devout,

However high their rank, or low their station,
With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masquing,
And other things which may be bad for asking.
II.

The moment night with dusky mantle covers
The skies (and the more duskily the better,)
The time less liked by husbands than by lovers,
Begins, and prudery flings aside her fetter;
And gayety on restless tiptoe hovers,

Giggling with all the gallants who beset her;
And there are songs and quavers, roaring, humming,
Guitars, and every other sort of strumming."
III.

And there are dresses splendid, but fantastical,

Masks of all times and nations, Turks and Jews,

(Or if set out beforehand, these may send
By any means least liable to loss,)
Ketchup, Soy, Chili-vinegar, and Harvey,
Or, by the Lord! a Lent will well nigh starve ye;
That is to say, if your Religion's Roman,
IX.

According to the proverb, although no man,
And you at Rome would do as Romans do,
protestant, or sickly, or a woman,
If foreign, is oblig'd to fast. and you,

If

Would rather die in sin on a ragout-
Dine, and be d-d! I don't mean to be coarse,
But that's the penalty, to say no worse.

X.

Of all the places where the Carnival

Was most facetious in the days of yore,
For dance, and song, and serenade, and ball,

And masque, and mine, and mystery, and more
Than I have time to tell now, or at all,

Venice the bell from every city bore,
Aud at the moment when I fix my story,
That sea-born city was in all her glory.
XI.

They've pretty faces yet, those same Venetians,
Black eyes, arch'd brows, and sweet expressions still,
Such as of old were copied from the Grecians,
In ancient arts by moderns mimick'd ill,
And like so many Venuses of Titian's

(The best's at Florence-see it, if ye will,
They look when leaning over the balcony,
Or stepping from a picture by Giorgione,
XII.

Whose tints are truth and beauty at their best;
And when you to Manfrini's palace go,
That picture (howsoever fine the rest)
Is lovliest to my mind of all the show;
It may perhaps be also to your zest,
And that's the cause I rhyme upon it so.

And harlequins and clowns, whith feats gymnastical, Tis but a portrait of his son, and wife,

Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and Hindoos;
All kinds of dress, except the ecclesiastical,
All people, as their fancies hit, may choose,
But no one in these parts may quiz the clergy,
Therefore take heed, ye Freethinkers! I charge ye.

IV.

You'd better walk about begirt with briars

Instead of coat and smallclothes, than put on
A single stitch reflecting upon friars,

Although you swore it only was in fun;
They'd haul you o'er the coals, and stir the fires
Of Phlegethon with every mother's son,
Nor say one mass to cool the cauldron's bubble
That boild your bones, unless you paid them double.

V.

And thus they bid farewell to carnal dishes,

And solid meats, and highly spic'd ragouts,

To live for forty day's on ill-dress'd fishes,
Because they have no sauces to their stews,

A thing which causes many" poohs" and "pishes,"
And several oaths (which would not suit the Muse,)
From travellers accustom'd from a boy

To eat their salmon, at the least, with soy;
VIII.

And therefore humbly I would recommend
"The curious in fish-sauce," before they cross
The sea, to bid their cook, or wife, or friend,
Walk or ride to the Strand, and buy in gross

And self; but such a woman! love in life!
XIII.

I

Love in full life and length, not love ideal,
No, nor ideal beauty, that fine name,
But something better still, so very real,
That the sweet model must have been the same;
A thing that you would purchase, beg, or steal,
Wer't not impossible, besides a shame:
The face recals some face, as 'twere with pain,
You once have seen, but ne'er will see again;
XIV.

One of those forms which flit by us, when we
Are young, and fix our eyes on every face;"
And, oh! the loveliness at times we see

In momentary gliding, the soft grace,
The youth, the bloom, the beauty which agree,

In many a nameless being we retrace,
Whose course and home we knew not, nor shall know
Like the lost Pleiad* seen no more below.

XV.

I said that like a picture by Giorgione
Venetian women were, and so they are,
Particularly seen from a balcony,

(For beauty's sometimes best set off afar)
And there, just like a heroine of Goldoni,

They peep from out the blind, or o'er the bar;
And, truth to say, they're mostly very pretty,
And rather like to show it, more's the pity!
XVI.

For glances beget ogles, ogles sighs,

Sighs wishes, wishes word, and words a letter,
Which flies on wings of light-heeled Mercuries,
Who do such things because they know no better;
And then, God knows, what mischief may arise,
When love links too young people in one fetter,
Vile assignations, and adulterous beds,
Elopements, broken vows and hearts and heads.
XVII.

Shakspeare described the sex in Desdemona
As very fair, but yet suspect in fame,
And to this day from Venice to Verona
Such matters may be probably the same,

Except that since those times was never known s
Husband whom mere suspicion could inflame

"Que septem dici sex tamen esse solent," Ovill.