My hopes of being remembered in my line "My name from out the temple where the dead 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 "All suffering doth destroy, or is destroy'd, Ends: some, with hope replenish'd and rebuoy'd, "But ever and anon of griefs subdued There comes a token like a scorpion's sting, A tone of music,-summer's eve,- or spring, A flower-the wind-the ocean- which shall wound, "And how and why we know not, nor can trace 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 ? 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 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; "And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again Is an eternal April to the ground, The gulf! and how the giant element From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent "To the broad column which rolla on, and shows Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes With many windings, through the vale :-Look back! 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, 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 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? 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 : "Oh! that the Desart were my dwelling-place, That I might all forget the human race, And, hating no one, love but only her! Ye Elements!-in whose ennobling stir In deeming such inhabit many a spot ? "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, |