giving a lighter yellow to the topaz, a more celestial blue to the sapphire, and a deeper crimson to the ruby, it imparts a higher brilliance to the diamond, and a more transparent purple to the amethyst.

Bearing a price, which only the heart and the imagination can estimate, and being the mother of a thousand chaste desires and a thousand secret hopes, Taste strews flowers in the paths of literature and science; and, breathing inexpressive sounds, and picturing celestial forms, qualifies the hour of sorrow, by inducing that secret sense of cheerfulness, which, in its operation,

Refines the soft, and swells the strong;

And joining nature's general song,

Through many a varying tone unfolds

The harmony of human souls.-MRS. CHAPONE.

THE GRAVE.

I LOVE to muse when none are nigh,
Where yew-tree branches wave,
And hear the winds, with softest sigh,
Sweep o'er the grassy grave.

It seems a mournful music, meet
To soothe a lonely hour;
Sad though it be, it is more sweet
Than that from Pleasure's bower.

I know not why it should be sad,
Or seem a mournful tone,
Unless by man the spot be clad
With terrors not its own.

To nature it seems just as dear
As earth's most cheerful sight;
The dew-drops glitter there as clear,
The sun-beams shine as bright.

The showers descend as softly there
As on the loveliest flowers:

Nor does the moonlight seem more fair
On beauty's sweetest bowers.

"Ay, but within-within there sleeps

One, whose mouldering clay

The loathsome earth-worm winds and creeps,

And wastes that form away."

And what of that?-the frame that feeds

The reptile tribe below,

As little of their banquet heeds

As of the winds that blow.-B. BARTON,

A CHARACTER;

OR, THE TREATMENT DUE TO THE INFERIOR CREATION.

THERE is a happy medium between the extremes of stoical apathy and morbid sensibility, which promotes the wellbeing of our own species and that of other creatures. Absolute cruelty is so monstrous a perversion of humanity, and withal so abhorrent to all our sympathies, that it is never practised without drawing down upon the delinquent loud and universal reprobation. But many who would shrink from the imputation of unkindness, by a constitutional indifference to the wants and sufferings of the beings around them, are really chargeable with all the wretchedness which it is in their power to prevent or alleviate. There is another class, very different indeed from the former, who are yet their unintentional coadjutors: their extreme anxiety for the luxurious accommodation of domestic animals; their emotions, expressed in shrill and piercing cries, when an insect is drowned in the goblet, or a moth expires in the taper's flame; their tears shed over hapless kittens and blind puppies consigned to an early and watery grave, and their exquisite delight—

66

Quick rapture sparkling in the eye,
When from the spider's web they save a fly,"

discover an excess of humanity, bordering on the ridiculous, which furnishes the sportsman, who derives his pleasures and jollities from the sacrifice of animal enjoyment, and the satirist who loves to apply his indiscriminate scourge to lash both man and beast, with their most effective arguments against all solicitude for any other life or enjoyment besides their own. The inferior creatures, by the conduct of individuals of this morbid temperament, are raised to an elevation far beyond their natural destiny, and are thus rendered miserable by the pampering fondness which lifts them out of their sphere, and by the reaction of a just or envious indignation, which subjects the whole race to severe ill-usage or inhuman neglect. A wise and considerate humanity, in its direct operation, is most beneficial to universal happiness; and in its indirect influence, as an example, fails not to deter many an incipient offender from the premeditated act of cruelty, while it gently diffuses its own benignant spirit through the circle in which it unostentatiously moves, protecting, saving, and blessing all. I have some acquaintance with an individual, who, among other peculiarities, is distinguished for his extreme solicitude

for the felicity of every thing that lives, and moves, and has a being. A sketch of his character will perhaps redeem this weakness, and induce us to envy rather than to censure it. In all respects, indeed, he is any thing but a creature of this world. He lives on fine abstractions: while walking on the earth his mind is in the air, the sea, the fields, the vallies, and the mountains; and though he is "the observed of all observers," he observes nothing. While in this happy state, the world forgetting, he is perfectly insensible to all that passes around him; you might pay him the first instalment of a horse whipping which he never deserved, and I doubt whether he would stop to give you a receipt, or be nice enough to count the change; you might invite him to half a gooseberry, and ask him to hold the iron ladle while you pumped, and I fear he would not be acreontic enough to toast" the founder of the feast;" or you might tread on his toes, and he would politely beg your pardon. Ask him where he goes, and he believes Thomson was very well; ask where he has been, and he has not seen Brown for a month. His body is parading the streets of the town, but his mind is abroad, on a venture, far as the Hesperides, or wandering in the golden vales of Arcady, or basking its whole length on sunny banks by trickling rills, "with shepherds chatting in a rustic row." This humour, however, continues no longer than the circumstances of recent success in some literary project which induced it, remain in all their power of excitement; it generally subsides in a shower of sonnets, fragmental bits of epics, essays, &c. without end, so that you might be led to fear that Mount Helicon had published a volcano in one volume, and intended to smother the public in general by private subscription, with its long gathering magazine of contributions; together with drawings of ground plans of very capacious and desirable air-built castles, done in smoke on the passing clouds which formed its canopy. He is most excellent company, if you gather him to your garner in due season, and save him from himself, and from the blight of selfdisappointment and the mildew of despondency; for his high fantasies usually end, else, in the lowest grade of melancholy. Time the invitation well, and you may get him home with you to dinner and chat; and considering he has been pampering his mind's appetite with the ambrosia and the nectar of immortality, and enjoying the dainties of Apollo's board on a grand gala day of the Muses, he shows no extravagance of demand, or nicety of palate. Imagine not, however, he is to be had for a dinner; he

would dine on an acorn, and pick his teeth with a bramble first. Neither hope, if you are merely a man of the world, to have him at your board. I have heard him say he would as soon sit for a day and ogle a dead wall, or support the chair at an overseer's dinner, and eat up the bread of the poor, as contemplate the pounds-shillings-and-pence-table face of a mere worldling, and meet his dull intellect half way across the table, with an intellect lowered down to the altitude of his comprehension. But if you have a literary taste, or a gusto for higher matters, for the bettering the condition of your fellow-men, or at least a sympathy with them and for them,-you may command him to "an egg and a radish ;” or if you prefer cracking innocent and lively jokes, poignant yet playful, to cracking walnuts over your glass of wine, you shall find him the soundest nut in your dessert. His wit comes in with the salt, and does not go out with the table-cloth. Flash follows flash, sparkle follows sparkle, till all the board is brightened by a quick succession of lambent corruscations. If you have a quieter feeling for literary remarks, and a fire-side tête-à-tête, he is the very man to your taste, and you will find him the profoundest poker of “a sea-coal fire" between this and Newcastle. Here he will prove himself no dull or cynical commentator on the exuberance of imagination, or the daring flight of a free and noble intellect; but a critic as benevolent in spirit as he is acute in judgment—as liberal in praise, as he is discriminating in censure.

There is, however, a slight vein of whim running through that rich mine, his mind, which I merely point out honestly (as Mr. Piazza Robins would do) in going over this "estate of man." He will not, for one thing, take snuff; nor does he much care to converse with any one who does: it is the only thing in which he is intolerant. You may frank him the freedom of the Gentleman* in a gold box, and he betrays no gratitude of nose; you may insinuate the Blackguard* in very elegant French papier machée, and you will not mistake him for the "politest man of the age.' He will perhaps say, half tetchily,-"Sir, I am obliged, but I do not talk snuff:" for he maintains that there are a certain set of conversation common-places that he terms snuff-box ideas; and he asserts, moreover, that generally the ideas of snuff-takers are the inverse of the snuff they take; the taker of the Gentleman being the best talker of the Blackguard, and vice versa.

*Snuffs so named.

According to him, Brown Rappeeists are plain minds, muddled and confused.

On political subjects he cares not to be drawn out. He will perhaps say, if you push him to it, that he never plays politics, for it is, in his opinion, a card-like game, in which the very best players shuffle the usual number of fifty-two ideas instead of cards, and cut their nearest neighbours and dearest friends. He has left off politics since he discovered that they heated his head but cooled his heart. Therefore, unless you would pull his ears for wearing his wig on one side, ask him not the news of the day; but if you will put such a question, look for some such answer as he gave to a political quidnunc, who was empty of intelligence, but full of inquiries after it,-"Why, sir," said he, exchanging buttons with him in his own manner, "it is reported on 'Change, that, in consequence of the repeated complaints of certain idle, aristocratical, nothing-doing, but poor-compelling-tohard-labour persons, against my Lady Lily of the Valley, that she neither sowed nor spun,' she has been induced to open a day-school for a limited number of pupils, where the young Dandelions are taught decency, and the Daisies, and other children of the sun, are educated to get up their own vandyke frills. I have not a card of the terms; but a prospectus is coming out in the spring."

His humour is high, relishing, and perfectly innoxious, though occasionally a little freakish, rampant, and irrestrainable. His laugh is long, cordial, and heart-quaking, though he has a tendency, in his weaker moments, to wire-draw a pretty broad laugh into a thin gradual titter. But he deserves pity, and not the unfeeling surprise of the vulgar, when he falls into this slight infirmity; for I have reason to believe that his heart is then struggling with feelings which have nothing to do with the laughs or the smiles. Humour is the light of his character-melancholy the shade of it.

:

Yet is there an occasional gleam of humour, even in the deepest gloom of his moodiest melancholy which, however dense it may appear, only requires a kind look, or a kindred one, to come in collision with it, to break it into smiles; like the dark fogs of the present season, through which the sun bursts, making his brightness the more beautiful, warm, and welcome, by its contrast with the gloom which had so lately surrounded him. Leave him to himself, and these nervous vapours will veil the brilliancy of his mind; but throw yourself, like a true friend, in his way, and you win him back to social cheerfulness and heartfelt joy.

He is in his merry moments the best maker of a bad pun I have ever known. Good and bad shower from him "thick