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My hopes of being remembered in my line
With my land's language: if too fond and far
These aspirations in their scope incline,—
If my fame should be, as my fortunes are,
Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar

"My name from out the temple where the dead
Are honoured by the nations-let it be-
And light the laurels on a loftier head!
And be the Spartan's epitaph on me-
'Sparta bath many a worthier son than he.*
Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need;
The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree
I planted, they have torn, me,- and I bleed :

I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.”

The fall of Britain, predicted in stanza xvii., we hope is still far, very far distant though it must be confessed it would be well for us to take warning from the sudden depression which other states have experienced We have, perhaps, arrived at the ze nith of our grandeur, and have enjoyed a period of greatness scarcely exceeded by the most celebrated nations of antiquity: we still stand unrivalled for the degree of liberty we enjoy, and the almost uninterrupted pleasures we experience; and we are induced to hope and trust that the measures adopted by our present and future legislators, will secure to our descendants, for numerous generations, that pre-eminence as a nation which we ourselves so happily enjoy.

The twenty-first, twenty-second, twenty-third, and twenty-fourth stanzas, bearing an analogy which the reader cannot misinterpret, we here present to his notice, for the extreme beauty of their language, and the undoubted justness of the remarks which they contain:

"Existence may be borne, and the deep root

Of life and sufferance make its firm abode

In bare and desolate bosoms: mute
The camel labours with the heaviest load,
And the wolf dies in silence,-not bestow'd
In vain should such example be; if they,
Things of ignoble or of savage mood,
Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay
May temper it to bear,—it is but for a day.

"All suffering doth destroy, or is destroy'd,
Even by the sufferer; and, in each event

Ends: some, with hope replenish'd and rebuoy'd,
Return to whence they came-with like intent,
And weave their web again; some, bow'd and bent,
Wax gray and ghastly, withering ere their time,
And perish with the reed on which they leant;
Some seek devotion, toil, war, good or crime,
According as their souls were form'd to sink or climb:

"But ever and anon of griefs subdued

There comes a token like a scorpion's sting,
Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued;
And slight withal may be the things which bring
Back on the heart the weight which it would fling
Aside for ever: it may be a sonud-

A tone of music,-summer's eve,- or spring,

A flower-the wind-the ocean- which shall wound,
Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound;

"And how and why we know not, nor can trace
Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind,
But feel the shock renewed, nor can efface
The blight and blackening which it leaves behind,
Which out of things familiar, undesigned,

When least we deem of such, calls up to view

The spectres whom no exorcism can bind,

The cold-the changed-perchance the dead- anew,

The mourned, the loved, the lost-too many!-yet how few!"

The following are the concluding lines of a description of evening, the whole of which we regret that our confined pages will not allow us to extract:

"Fill'd with the face of heaven, which, from afar,

Comes down upon the waters; all its hues,

From the rich sunset to the rising star,

Their magical variety diffuse :

And now they change; a paler shadow strews

Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day

Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues

With a new colour as it gasps away,

The last still loveliest, till-'tis gone-and all is gray."

The thirtieth, and following stanzas, contain a tribute to the memory of Petrarch; a long and learned note being supplied at the end of the volume on the subject of his attachment to Laura, which would seem to reflect more criminality on their mutual affection than many admirers of the celebrated poet are willing to allow that it deserves. That a purely Platonic love did in any instance ever subsist, the author of this note seems very much to question; but he is decidedly of opinion that the conduct of Petrarch to the dear idol of his affections exhibited none of that super-human forbearance which has generally been attributed to it. That he was seriously and deeply enamoured of real flesh and blood, and not with a mere creature, of his imagination, is clearly and plainly demonstrated from innumerable passages in his sonnets; and whether it was even that pure and exalted passion which it has sometimes been denominated, and which the talents of many eminent characters have been exerted to prove that it was, will at least admit of a doubt. There are implanted by nature in our breasts certain feelings, which, however bridled by habit or restrained by prudence, will now and then disdain control and assert their prerogative, and it was in moments like these, we may presume, that Petrarch, shrinking as he is known generally to have done, at the very idea of any thing bordering upon crimî

nality, composed those more than ardent lines which are occasionally interspersed amongst his compositions. Love, indeed, as we all know, is a passion which will admit of control as little as the raging wind or the flowing tide; and even Petrarch himself, indulging bis passion as hé unquestionably did, must have been under its almighty influence.

." è che non puote

Amor, che non catena il cielo unisce ?
Egli giù trahe de le celesti roté

Di terrena belta Diana ácéèsa

E d' Ida il bel fanciullo al ciel rapisce."

Tussó.

The stanzas relating to Tasso, Ariosto, Angelo, Alfieri, Galileo, Machiavelli, Dante, and Boccacio, are extremely fine; nor are those which contain the description of lake Thrasimene, and the allusion to the celebrated battle which took place near it, when "An earthquake reel❜d unheededly away,"

less beautiful. After having appropriated three stanzas to a concise description of the engagement, he proceeds,→

"Far other scene is Thrasimene now;

Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain
Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;

Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain

Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en-

A little rill of scanty stream and bed—

A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain;

And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead

Made the earth wet, and turn'd the unwilling waters red."

The Cascate del Marmore of Terni is alluded to in the following sublime stanzas:

"The roar of waters!--from the headlong height

Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;

The fall of waters! rapid as the light

The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;
The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,
And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
Of their great agony, wrung out from this
Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

"And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,

Is an eternal April to the ground,
Making it all one emerald :- how profound

The gulf! and how the giant element

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,

Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent
With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent

"To the broad column which rolla on, and shows
More like the fountain of an infant sea

Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes
Of a new world, than only thus to be
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,

With many windings, through the vale :-Look back!
Lo; where it comes like an eternity,

As if to sweep down all things in its track,

Charming the eye with dread,—a matchless cataract,

"Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,

From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,

An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge,

Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn

Its steady dyes, while all around is torn

By the distracted waters, bears serene

Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn :

Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene,

Love watching Madness with unalterable mien."

We were not prepared, we must confess, after having discovered so many decisive proofs of profound classical attainments in this and the other productions of the noble author, to meet with so poor a compliment to his youthful application as the following lines contain:

"I abhorr'd

Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake,

The drill'd dull lesson, forc'd down word for word

In my repugnant youth.”—

And we scarcely know how to reconcile the exalted opinion we had formed of his literary acquirements, with the candid acknowledgment contained in stanza Ixxvi.

"Though time bath taught

My mind to meditate what then it learned,

Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought

By the impatience of my early thought,

That, with the freshness wearing out before

My mind could relish what it might have sought,
If free to choose, I cannot now restore

Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor."

We are informed in a note which does honour to the author's feeliugs, that this aversion was not produced by the conduct of his preceptor Dr. Joseph Drury, of whom he speaks in the warmest terms of gratitude, but was purely the result of his own desultory habits; for though he was not " a slow," he confesses that he was "an idle boy."

The stanzas relating to Rome and her heroes, contained between lxxviii. and clxiii. we very much admire; and we think the digression to our Cromwell in stanzas lxxxv. and lxxxvi. particularly beautiful and just. Nor must we altogether pass over the apostrophe on love from cxx. to cxxv., although we cannot perfectly acquiesce in the decided opinions expressed by the author on this subjeet. He may indeed be convinced

from lamentable experience that "love is no habitant of earth” for him, but we hope and trust that there still remain a sacred few whose hearts are alive to this pure and exalted feeling, and who love without "raving." As a specimen of the whole, we present the reader with the last stanza on the subject :—

"Few-none-find what they love or could have loved,

Though accident, blind contact, and the strong
Necessity of loving, have removed
Antipathies-but to recar, ere long,
Envenomed with irrevocable wrong;
And Circumstance, that unspiritual god
And miscreator, makes and helps along

Our coming evils with a crutch-like rod,

Whose touch turns Hope to dust, the dust we all have trod.”

We must indeed lament the unhappy condition of one who has once, perhaps, tasted of the cup of bliss, but whose heart has since been so seared by misfortunes as almost to banish the remembrance of the happiness he then enjoyed. There was a time when his own feelings would have belied the assertion contained in these harsh stanzas, and we cordially hope he may yet again experience at no very distant period that dearest of earthly enjoyments, connubial felicity.

The lines on the melancholy death of the Princess Charlotte, an event which will be ever memorable in the page of British history and the history of the world, contain many feeling and melancholy passages. We have only room to quote stanza clxviii,

"Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou?

Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?
Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low
Some less majestic, less beloved head?

In the sad midnight, while the heart still bled,

The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy,

Death hushed that pang for ever: with thee filed

The present happiness and promised joy

Which filled the imperial isles so full it seem'd to cloy."

But all the beauties we have selected or met with in this exquisite poem, sink into obscurity when contrasted with the concluding stanzas, in which the author touches upon a subject on which he never fails to be eloquent :

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"Oh! that the Desart were my dwelling-place,
With one fair Spirit for my minister,

That I might all forget the human race,

And, hating no one, love but only her!

Ye Elements!-in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted-Can ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err

In deeming such inhabit many a spot ?
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

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