The public report, representing Mr. Lockhart to be actively and constantly engaged, for hire, or salary, or pecuniary profit of some sort, in the management of BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, is sufficiently general and notorious to warrant his being called upon to avow or deny the fact, by any one to whom he may prefer an application for the privilege of receiving gentlemanly satisfaction.

The Editor of the LONDON MAGAZINE has given himself a peculiar title to make this demand, by his prompt acknowledgment of the situation in which he stands towards the publication in which the articles, complained of by Mr. Lockhart, have appeared; and by admitting his personal responsibility as Editor, and his liability to be called upon to give satisfaction for injuries committed by him in his public capacity.

It cannot be permitted to a person, who has taken advantage of concealment in making attacks on feeling and character, so long as concealment could be continued by evasion and denial, suddenly to turn necessity into a virtue, when he has been forcibly, and against his will, drawn forth into exposure.

Nor can it be permitted to any one to time, so as to suit his conve nience, the avowal of his own actions, affecting the interests or feelings of his neighbours.

For these reasons, a gentleman's privilege could not have been conceded to Mr. Lockhart had he avowed, on the present occasion, that he was engaged in conducting BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE-for this avowal has been evaded by him, when, if such be really his situation, it was due from him to injured and inquiring parties.

Nothing, therefore, but Mr. Lockhart's disavowal of the connection in question, could have been considered as establishing his title to the privilege he claimed. If he had made it, on his word of honour, he would have received the satisfaction he desired. His pretension of being withheld by pride and delicacy from denying what there was no ground for charging him with, is calculated to excite contempt; preferred, as it is, in the face of a long-standing public report, and the conviction of thousands in Edinburgh and elsewhere. If, in fine, he is unable to make the disavowal required, his attempt now to play the part of a gentleman touched in the point of honour, because the press, which he has abused as an instrument of injury, has been at length turned against him as one of justice, must be considered to be quite as impudent as it is desperate. The interests of society demand, that such an attempt should be firmly repelled. It is proper that the individual who sits down to write or plan outrages on private feeling and character, with the chances of concealment in his favour, and the profits which fraud and hypocrisy are calculated to ensure in this world, tempting his cupidity, should be aware, that he runs some risk in return for these advantagesthe risk of being repulsed with indignant scorn, should his complete exposure as knave, leave him no other resource but that of claiming, with affected brevity, to receive satisfaction as a man of honour!

C. Baldwin, Printer,

New Bridge-Street, London.

IT is well known, that there were two statues of Memnon: a smaller one, commonly called the young Memnon, whose bust, by the skill and perseverance of Belzoni, has been safely deposited in the British Museum ; and a larger and more celebrated one, from which, when touched by the rays of the morning sun, harmonious sounds were reported to have issued. Cambyses, suspecting that the music proceeded from magic, ordered this statue to be broken up, from the head to the middle of the body; and its prodigious fragments now lie buried amid the ruins of the Memnonium.Strabo, who states himself to have been a witness of the miracle, attributes it either to the quality of the stone, or to some deception of the priests; while Pausanias suspects that some musical instrument was concealed within, whose strings, relaxed by the moisture of the night, resumed their tension from the heat of the sun, and broke with a sonorous sound. Ancient writers vary so much, not only as to the cause of this mysterious music, but even as to the existence of the fact itself, that we should hardly know what to believe, were it not for the authority of Strabo, a grave geographer, and an eye-witness, who, without any apparent wish to impose upon his readers, declares that he stood beside the statue, and heard the sounds which proceeded from it:-" Standing," he says, "with Elius Gallus, and a party of friends, examining the colossus, we heard a certain sound, without being exactly able to determine whether it proceeded from the statue itself, or its base; or whether it had been occasioned by any of the assistants, for I would rather believe any thing than imagine that stones, arranged in any particular manner, could elicit similar noises."

Pausanias, in his Egyptian travels, saw the ruins of the statue, after it had been demolished by Cambyses, when the pedestal of the colossus remained standing; the rest of the body, prostrated upon the ground, still continued at sun-rise, to emit its unaccountable melody. Pliny and Tacitus, without having been eye-witnesses, report the same fact; and Lucian informs us, that Demetrius went to Egypt, for the sole purpose of seeing the Pyramids, and the statue of Memnon, from which a voice always issued at sun-rise. What the same author adds, in his Dialogue of the False Prophet, appears to be only raillery: "When (he writes) I went in VOL. III.

M

my youth to Egypt, I was anxious to witness the miracle attributed to Memnon's statue, and I heard this sound, not like others who distinguish only a vain noise; but Memnon himself uttered an oracle, which I could relate, if I thought it worth while."-Most of the moderns affect to discredit this relation altogether, but I cannot enrol myself among them; for, if properties, even more marvellous, can be proved to exist in the head of the young Memnon, it would be pushing scepticism too far, to deny that there was any thing supernatural in the larger and more celebrated statue. Unless I have been grossly deceived by imagination, I have good grounds for maintaining, that the Head, now in the British Museum, is endued with qualities quite as inexplicable, as any that have been attributed to its more enormous namesake.—I had taken my seat before it yesterday afternoon, for the purpose of drawing a sketch, occasionally pursuing my work, and occasionally lost in reveries upon the vicissitudes of fate this mighty monument had experienced, until I became unconscious of the lapse of time, and, just as the shades of evening began to gather round the room, I discovered that every visitor had retired, and that I was left quite alone with the gigantic Head! There was something awful, if not alarming, in the first surprise excited by this discovery; and I must confess, that I felt a slight inclination to quicken my steps to the door. Shame, however, withheld me ;-and as I made a point of proving to myself, that I was superior to such childish impressions, I resumed my seat, and examined my sketch, with an affectation of nonchalance. On again looking up to the Bust, it appeared to me that an air of living animation had spread over its Nubian features, which had obviously arranged themselves into a smile. Belzoni says, that it seemed to smile on him, when he first discovered it amid the ruins; and I was endeavouring to persuade myself, that I had been deceived by the recollection of this assertion, when I saw its broad granite eyelids slowly descend over its eyes, and again deliberately lift themselves up, as if the Giant were striving to awaken himself from his long sleep!-I rubbed my own eyes, and, again fixing them, with a sort of desperate incredulity, upon the figure before me, I clearly beheld its lips moving in silence, as if making faint efforts to speak,—and, after several ineffectual endeavours, a low whispering voice, of melancholy tone, but sweet withal, distinctly uttered the following

STANZAS.

In Egypt's centre, when the world was young,
My statue soar'd aloft,-a man-shaped tower,
O'er hundred-gated Thebes, by Homer sung,
And built by Apis' and Osiris' power.

When the sun's infant eye more brightly blazed,
I mark'd the labours of unwearied time;

And saw, by patient centuries up-raised,
Stupendous temples, obelisks sublime.

Hewn from the rooted rock, some mightier mound,
Some new colossus more enormous springs,

So vast, so firm, that, as I gazed around,
I thought them, like myself, eternal things.

Then did I mark in sacerdotal state,

Psammis the king, whose alabaster tomb, (Such the inscrutable decrees of fate,)

Now floats athwart the sea to share my doom.

O Thebes, I cried, thou wonder of the world!
Still shalt thou soar, its everlasting boast;
When lo! the Persian standards were unfurl'd,
And fierce Cambyses led th' invading host.
Where from the East a cloud of dust proceeds,
A thousand banner'd suns at once appear;
Nought else was seen-but sound of neighing steeds,
And faint barbaric music met mine ear.

Onward they march, and foremost I descried
A cuirass'd Grecian band, in phalanx dense,
Around them throng'd, in oriental pride,
Commingled tribes-a wild magnificence.

Dogs, cats, and monkeys in their van they show,
Which Egypt's children worship and obey;
They fear to strike a sacrilegious blow,
And fall-a pious, unresisting prey.
Then, Havoc leaguing with enfuriate Zeal,
Palaces, temples, cities are o'erthrown;
Apis is stab'd!-Cambyses thrust the steel,
And shuddering Egypt heaved a general groan.
The firm Memnonium mock'd their feeble power,
Flames round its granite columns hiss'd in vain,—
The head of Isis frowning o'er each tower,

Look'd down with indestructible disdain.

Mine was a deeper and more quick disgrace :

Beneath my shade a wondering army flock'd, With force combined, they wrench'd me from my base, And earth beneath the dread concussion rock'd.

Nile from his banks receded with afright,

The startled Sphinx, long trembled at the sound; While from each pyramid's astounded height,

The loosen'd stones slid rattling to the ground.

I watch'd, as in the dust supine I lay,

The fall of Thebes,-as I had mark'd its fame,Till crumbling down, as ages roll'd away,

Its site a lonely wilderness became.

The throngs that choak'd its hundred gates of yore ;
Its fleets, its armies, were no longer seen ;
Its priesthood's pomp,-its Pharaohs were no more,—
All-all were gone-as if they ne'er had been.

Deep was the silence now, unless some vast

And time-worn fragment thunder'd to its base;
Whose sullen echoes, o'er the desert cast,
Died in the distant solitudes of space.

Or haply in the palaces of kings,

Some stray jackal sate howling on the throne:
Or, on the temple's holiest altar, springs
Some gaunt hyæna, laughing all alone.
Nature o'erwhelms the relics left by time ;-
By slow degrees entombing all the land;
She buries every monument sublime,

Beneath a mighty winding-sheet of sand.
Vain is each monarch's unremitting pains,
Who in the rock his place of burial delves;
Behold! their proudest palaces and fanes,
Are subterraneous sepulchres themselves.

Twenty-three centuries unmoved I lay,
And saw the tide of sand around me rise;
Quickly it threaten'd to engulph its prey,
And close in everlasting night mine eyes.
Snatch'd in this crisis from my yawning grave,
Belzoni roll'd me to the banks of Nile,
And slowly heaving o'er the western wave,
This massy fragment reach'd th' imperial isle.
In London, now with face erect I gaze

On England's pallid sons, whose eyes up-cast,
View my colossal features with amaze,
And deeply ponder on my glories past.
But who my future destiny shall guess?

Saint Paul's may lie-like Memnon's temple-low;
London, like Thebes, may be a wilderness;

And Thames, like Nile, through silent ruins flow.

Then haply may my travels be renew'd:-
Some Transatlantic hand may break my rest,

And bear me from Augusta's solitude,

To some new seat of empire in the west.

Mortal!-since human grandeur ends in dust,
And proudest piles must crumble to decay ;
Build up the tower of thy final trust

In those blest realms-where nought shall pass away!

H.

TABLE TALK.
No. VII.

ON READING OLD BOOKS.

I HATE to read new books. There are twenty or thirty volumes that I have read over and over again, and these are the only ones that I have any desire ever to read at all. It was a long time before I could bring myself to sit down to the Tales of My Landlord, but now that author's works have made a considerable addition to my scanty library. I am told that some of Lady Morgan's are good, and have been recommended to look into Anastasius; but I have not yet ventured upon that task. A lady, the other day, could not refrain from expressing her surprise to a friend, who said he had been reading Delphine: she asked,—If it had not been published some time back? Women judge of books as they do of fashions or complexions, which are admired only in their newest gloss." That is not my way. I am not one of those who trouble the circulating libraries much, or pester the booksellers for mail-coach copies of standard periodical publications. I cannot say, that I am greatly ad

dicted to black-letter, but I profess myself well-versed in the marble bindings of Andrew Millar, in the middle of the last century; nor does my taste revolt at Thurloe's State Papers, in Russia leather; or an ample impression of Sir W. Temple's Essays, with a portrait after Sir Godfrey Kneller, in front. I do not think, altogether, the worse of a book for having survived the author a generation or two. I have more confidence in the dead than the living. Contemporary writers may generally be divided into two classes

Of

one's friends, or one's foes. the first we are compelled to think too well, and of the last we are disposed to think too ill, to receive much genuine pleasure from the perusal, or to judge fairly of the merits of either. One candidate for literary fame, who happens to be of our acquaintance, writes finely and like a man of genius; but unfortunately has a foolish face, which spoils a delicate passage:-another inspires us with the highest respect for his