tioned in town, to which their chef de brigade often invited me. This worthy man, Colonel Le Fort, whose kindness 1 shall ever remember with gratitude, gave me a protection to pass through the whole army of Moreau."

After this he visited different parts of Germany, in the course of which he paid one of the casual taxes on travelling, being plundered among the Tyrolese mountains, by a scoundrel croat, of his clothes, his books, and thirty ducats in gold. About midwinter he returned to Hamburgh, where he remained four months, in the expectation of accompanying a young gentleman of Edinburgh in a tour to Constantinople. His unceasing thirst for knowledge, and his habits of industrious application, prevented these months from passing heavily or unprofitably. "My time at Hamburgh," he observes, in one of his letters, "was chiefly employed in reading German, and, I am almost ashamed to confess it, for twelve successive weeks in the study of Kant's Philosophy. I had heard so much of it in Germany, its language was so new to me, and the possibility of its application to so many purposes in the different theories of science and belles-lettres was so constantly maintained, that I began to suspect Kant might be another Bacon, and blamed myself for not perceiving his merit. Distrusting my own imperfect acquaintance with the German, I took a disciple of Kant's for a guide through his philosophy, but found, even with all this fair play, nothing to reward my labour. His metaphysics are mere innovations upon the received meaning of words, and the coinage of new ones convey no more instruction than the distinction of Dun Scotus and Thomas Aquinas. In belles-lettres, the German language opens a richer field than in their philosophy. I cannot conceive a more perfect poet than their favourite Wieland."

While in Germany an edition of his Pleasures of Hope was proposed for publication in Vienna, but was forbidden by the

court, in consequence of those passages which relate to Kosciusko, and the partition of Poland. Being disappointed in his projected visit to Constantinople, he returned to England in 1801, after nearly a year's absence, which had been passed much to his satisfaction and improvement, and had stored his mind with grand and awful images. "I remember," says he, "how little I valued the art of painting before I got into the heart of such impressive scenes; but in Germany, I would have given anything to have possessed an art capable of conveying ideas inaccessible to speech and writing. Some particular scenes were indeed rather overcharged with that degree of the terrific which oversteps the sublime, and I own my flesh yet creeps at the recollection of spring wagons and hospitals-but the sight of Ingolstadt in ruins, or Hohenlinden covered with fire, seven miles in circumference, were spectacles never to be forgotten."

On returning to England, he visited London for the first time, where, though unprovided with a single letter of introduction, the celebrity of his writings procured him the immediate notice and attentions of the best society. The following brief sketch which he gives of a literary club in London, will be gratifying to those who have felt an interest in the anecdotes of Addison and his knot of beaux esprits at Button's coffee house, and Johnson and his learned fraternity at the Turk's head." Mackintosh, the Vindicia Gallica was particularly attentive to me, and took me with him to his convivial parties at the King of Clubs, a place dedicated to the meetings of the reigning wits of London, and, in fact, a lineal descendant of the Johnson, Burke, and Goldsmith society, constituted for literary conversations. The dining table of these knights of literature was an arena of very keen conversational rivalship, maintained, to be sure, with perfect good nature, but in which the gladiators contended as hardly as ever the French and Austrians in the scenes I had just witnessed,

B*

Much, however, as the wit and erudition of these men pleases an auditor at the first or second visit, this trial of minds becomes at last fatiguing, because it is unnatural and unsatisfactory. Every one of these brilliants goes there to shine; for conversational powers are so much the rage in London, that no reputation is higher than his who exhibits them. Where every one tries to instruct, there is in fact but little instruction: wit, paradox, eccentricity, even absurdity, if delivered rapidly and facetiously, takes priority in these societies of sound reasonings and delicate taste. I have watched sometimes the devious tide of conversation, guided by accidental associations, turning from topic to topic and satisfactory upon none. What has one learned? has been my general question. The mind, it is true, is electrified and quickened, and the spirits finely exhilarated, but one grand fault pervades the whole institution; their inquiries are desultory, and all improvements to be reaped must be accidental."

The friendship of Mrs. Siddons was another acquisition, of which Mr. Campbell spoke with great pleasure; and what rendered it more gratifying was its being unsought for. It was the means of introducing him to much excellent society in London. “The character of that great woman,” he observes, "is but little understood, and more misrepresented than any living character I know, by those who envy her reputation, or by those of the aristocracy, whom her irresistible dignity obliges to pay their homage at a respectable distance. The reserve of her demeanour is banished toward those who show neither meanness in flattering her, nor forwardness in approaching her too familiarly. The friends of her fireside are only such as she talks to and talks of with affection and respect.

The recent visit of Mr. Campbell to the continent had increased rather than gratified his desire to travel. He now

contemplated another tour, for the purpose of improving himself in the knowledge of foreign languages and foreign manners, in the course of which he intended to visit Italy and pass some time at Rome. From this plan he was diverted, most probably by an attachment he formed to a Miss Sinclair, a distant relation, whom he married in 1803. This change in his situation naturally put an end to all his wandering propensities, and he established himself at Sydenham in Kent, near London, where he devoted himself to literature. Not long afterward he received a solid and flattering token of the royal approbation of his poem of the Pleasures of Hope in a pension of 2007. What made this mark of royal favour the more gratifying was, that it was granted for no political services rendered or expected. Mr. Campbell was not of the court party, but of the constitutional whigs. He has uniformly, both before and since, been independent in his opinions and writings; a sincere and enthusiastic lover of liberty, and advocate for popular rights.

Though withdrawn from the busy world in his retirement at Sydenham, yet the genius of Mr. Campbell, like a true brilliant, occasionally flashed upon the public eye in a number of exquisite little poems, which appeared occasionally in the periodical works of the day. Among these were Hohenlenden and Lochiel, exquisite gems, sufficient of themselves to establish his title to the sacred name of poet and the Mariners of England and the Battle of the Baltic, two of the noblest national songs ever written, fraught with sublime imagery and lofty sentiments, and delivered in a gallant swelling vein, that lifts the soul into heroics.

In the beginning of 1809, he gave to the public his Gertrude of Wyoming, connected with the fortunes of one of our little patriarchal villages on the banks of the Susquehanna, laid desolate by the Indians during our revolutionary war. There is no great scope in the story of this poem, nor any very

skilful development of the plan, but it contains passages of exquisite grace, and tenderness, and others of spirit and grandeur; and the character of Outalissi is a classic delineation of one of our native savages:

A stoic of the woods, a man without a tear.

What gave this poem especial interest in our eyes at the time of its appearance, and awakened a strong feeling of good-will toward the author, was, that it related to our own country, and was calculated to give a classic charm to some of our own home scenery. The following remarks were elicited from us at the time, though the subsequent lapse of thirty years has improved the cogency of many of them.

"We have so long been accustomed to experience little else than contumely, misrepresentation, and very witless ridicule from the British press; and we have had such repeated proofs of the extreme ignorance and absurd errors that prevail in Great Britain respecting our country and its inhabitants, that we confess, we were both surprised and gratified to meet with a poet, sufficiently unprejudiced to conceive an idea of moral excellence and natural beauty on this side of the Atlantic. Indeed even this simple show of liberality has drawn on the poet the censures and revilings of a host of narrowminded writers, with whom liberality to this country is a crime. We are sorry to see such pitiful manifestations of hostility towards us. Indeed we must say, that we consider the constant acrimony and traduction indulged in by the British press, toward this country, to be as opposite to the interest as it is derogatory to the candour and magnanimity of the nation. It is operating to widen the difference between two nations, which, if left to the impulse of their own feelings, would naturally grow together, and among the sad changes of this disastrous world, be mutual supports and comforts to each other.

"Whatever may be the occasional collisions of etiquette