The

as are usually included in presents to African chiefs. sultan, however, appears to have been civil, and even friendly, in his remonstrances; which poor Clapperton returned by a sulky doggedness, which doubtless he mistook for proper firmness. A man of any talent would have surmounted the difficulty easily enough; but diplomacy was not the traveller's forte, and he did not even attempt to negociate. The most singular thing is, that when Bello, at the time he made his acquaintance first, requested him to bring his presents by way of Bornou, Clapperton ridiculed the idea of a man of prudence like the sheik permitting them to pass! Bello only did now, what the traveller had predicted the sheik would have done, as a man of common prudence, in similar circumstances. He seized his rival's presents; and, if we may believe Lander, Clapperton was brought to the grave principally by chagrin and disappointment. Those who knew Clapperton however, or who read his journal with attention, will come to a very different conclusion. His death was caused by a series of the most extraordinary imprudences which an officer ever was guilty of, who felt his life to be the property of his country; and the depression apparent in his manner, was nothing but the result of disease.

At his master's death, Richard Lander, his servant, a very intelligent young man, left in the heart of Africa, with little money, no presents, and encumbered with Clapperton's effects, made his way in safety to the sea coast. His journal is appended, and will be read with interest.

On the whole, the travels of Clapperton add one more to the numerous evidences, that the interior of Africa presents a scene of much greater civilization than has been assigned to it by the opinion of Europe, and that communication is to be effected with it by the same efforts and precautions that have been successful in other cases. Two or three hundred years ago, it was about as difficult to go to Delhi, as now to Timbuctoo; and if the appliances and means of travelling were at this moment as defective on the Delhi road, it is probable that as small a proportion of the adventurers would return. A French traveller, M. Caillé, appears to have broken through the prestige which existed on the subject of the reported African metropolis; and it is understood, that he intends to return. His successful enterprise will probably have removed some of what may be termed the superstitious obstacles to African discovery; and when missionary tracts and patent blacking shall be sold in the streets of Timbuctoo, posterity will wonder at the awkward zeal with which their fathers made their approaches to the mysterious mart.

The fact of the Arabic language being spread through the interior of Africa, is in itself an assurance that at no very remote period, this hidden country must be laid open to the intelligence of Europeans. A country possessed, to a very considerable extent, of one of the finest languages in the world, cannot continue much longer a sealed book to the remainder of mankind. There seems to be little doubt, that for half the expense at which a palace is built and pulled down again, the Foreign Office might open an epistolary correspondence direct, with all the courts in the Terra Incognita; and a flotilla on the Tchad might probably have been established, for a little more than it cost to beat the Americans upon the Serpentine. When the baby governments have tried their hands, the time will perhaps come that grown men beyond the Atlantic will apply themselves to the task. The apparition of an Anglo-American interest in Africa, would be a new phenomenon in the history of the world; and one which, though the governments might perhaps dislike, the people of Europe would hail with satisfaction and with hope.

ART. VII.-The Village Patriarch. A Poem. pp. 198. Bull. WHEN despotism puts an end to the expression of public

opinion, it closes up its own safety-valve, and flings away that most valuable of all the sources of legislation, a thorough knowledge of the facts with which legislation has to occupy itself. Here is a book, full to the brim of boiling indignation, into which a wise statesman might put his thermometer, and learn how the thoughts of the people are burning, on account of one monstrous abuse; the English Corn-laws. Far from complaining of that eloquent honesty which unveils all that is passing within, an able and a good government would rejoice at the opportunity of discovering the intense and deeplyseated agitation of minds, whose influence is felt, however it may be scorned; and whose intelligence works its mighty way, however it may be deprecated. Thought here has been awakened by the contemplation of a gigantic wrong; and, in its bitterness and its boldness, it communicates such imposing facts as that the labouring classes are beginning rightly to feel, and powerfully to express, their feelings, respecting the confederation of the land-owners; that the poor, by their own contemplation are dissipating the delusion and fallacies with which country gentlemen have sought to mistify a very simple question; and that the time cannot be far distant, in which the landed monopoly

will have to lower its pretensions, and to yield something, at least, if not all, to the public weal. The better part of wisdom is promptitude. Here is the little cloud; it is gathering, it is blackening; let those whom it concerns take care that it does not cover the earth.

The sublimest lesson which the people have to learn is the last which has been taught them. It is this; that there is a power which cannot be reached either by force or by law; the power of thought: and that our thoughts, enforcing and strengthening themselves by communication with the thoughts of other men, become a part of that irresistible influence which creates the futurity of ourselves and our children. Excess and violence can be met, can be subdued, by arms and armies; but opinion (the duke of Wellington has told us so, and he, better than any man, knows what wars and weapons can, and what they cannot do)--opinion presents no front to the attack of physical force. A sword can only silence an inquiry by smiting the inquirer; a dilemma rather too awful to be applied to inquiring millions. And millions are now inquiring; this little volume is one of their voices. Will such a state of things continue, and the many be for ever sacrificed to the few?

The Author calls his book " A Poor Man's Poem." A poem it scarcely is; but a succession of pictures, not very happy in their groupings, nor equal in their deservings; but they are each painted in the dark colourings of dejection, relieved by sharp touches of indignant genius: his poetical philosophy is borrowed from Wordsworth; his personalities from Crabbe. Every now and then there are expatiations, some of them highly poetical, into other regions than those of his habitual thoughts; but those thoughts have bound his spirit in fetters of iron, and continually drag him back to the domains where all things are associated with the memories of insult, despotism, monopoly, and wrong. The story can hardly be called a story. There is no link of continuity: it is a volume of digressions, loose, disjointed; a journey made of wanderings. An interesting tale would have supported and recommended the didactic moralizings. The writer was not dreaming of poetry, but of the corn-laws, and from "the highest heaven of imagination," is pulled down incontinently to the landlord's clod of earth. But the book is full of merit, and of mind. With the exceptions of those parts where there are attempts at humour, which are little congenial to the wounded and smarting spirit, there are few pages in it which do not contain some or other passage remarkable for its poetry or its power. It is, however, as an indication of what is passing among the labouring classes that the value of the volume is doubly

raised; it is a sample of those convictions alluded to, which cannot be put down; cannot be reached by the interference of force; convictions which will overthrow the enormous abuse, against which they are specially directed; and every other, too, in

time.

The exordium of the book tells the temper in which it is written; in "fear and hate;" with the machinery of " toil, and grief and tears," repeating histories of "sad, silent changes, burning wrongs." And so the patriarch of a century is introduced," blind and near his end," yet hearing, in the very tread of oppressing man, the cruel language of despotism:

'Yet sweet to him, ye stream-lov'd vallies lone,
Leafless, or blossoming fragrant, sweet are ye;
For he can hear the wintry forest groan,
And feel the beauty which he cannot see,
And drink the breath of nature, blowing free!

*

*

He finds in every moss-grown tree a guide,

To every time-dark rock he seems allied,

Calls the stream, Sister, and is not disown'd.'-p. 7.

A few passages will enable the reader to form an accurate estimate of this poor man's measure of mind; and they may be almost chosen at random. In p. 30, apropos of Napoleon, is this remarkable passage:

He built on multitudinous graves

A tyrant's power, and strove to bind with cords

Thought; for she mock'd him with her wing of words,
That withers armies. Who shall credit thee,
Genius? still treacherous, or unfortunate,
Victim, or wronger! Why must hope still see
Thy pinions, plum'd with light divine, abate
Their speed when nearest heav'n, to uncreate
Her glorious visions ?—p. 30.

*

-Woodbine wreaths are twin'd

*

Round thorns; and praise, to merit due, is paid
To vulgar dust, best liked when earthy most.
While Milton grew, self-nourish'd in the shade,
Ten Wallers bask'd in day. Misrule can boast
Of many Alvas; Freedom, oft betrayed,
Found her sole Washington. To shine unseen,
Or, only seen, to blast the gazer's eye;
Or struggle in eclipse, with vapours mean,
That quench your brightness, and usurp the sky;
Such, meteor Spirits! are your destinies,

Mourn'd in times past, and still deplor'd in these.'-p. 31.

Here is a touching description of the influence of the village

To the heart the solemn sweetness steals,
Like the heart's voice, unfelt by none who feels
That God is love, that man is living dust;
Unfelt by none, whom ties of brotherhood
Link to his kind; by none who puts his trust
In nought of earth that hath surviv'd the flood,
Save those mute charities, by which the good

Strengthen poor worms, and serve their Maker best.'-p. 37.

In what follows may be seen a specimen of that tone which pervades the volume. The description of an artisan runs thus: ' In smoke and dust, from hopeless day to day, He sweats, to bloat the harpies of the soil, Who jail no victim, while his pangs can pay. Untaxing rent, and trebly taxing toil, They make the labour of his hands their spoil, And grind him fiercely; but he still can get A crust of wheaten bread, despite their frowns; They have not sent him like a pauper yet For workhouse wages, as they send their clowns; Such tactics do not answer yet, in towns.

Again,

Nor have they gorg'd his soul. Thrall though he be
Of brutes who bite him while he feeds them, still
He feels his intellectual dignity,

Works hard, reads usefully, with no mean skill
Writes, and can reason well of good and ill:
He hoards his weekly groat. His tear is shed
For sorrows which his hard-worn hand relieves.
Too poor, too proud, too just, too wise to wed,
(For slaves enough already toil for thieves)
How gratefully his growing mind receives

The food which tyrants struggle to withhold !'-p. 47.

Marble is less enduring than the flower

That wither'd ages hence, and withers now.

Where, black as night, th' unalter'd mountains tower,
And baffled Time sees things that mock his power.

I thank ye, billows of a granite sea,

That the brib'd Plough, defeated, halts below!

And thanks, majestic Barrenness, to thee,

For one grim region in a land of woe,

Where tax-sown wheat, and paupers, will not grow!'—76-77.

The seventh book is the narrative of a dream of the patriarch; the apparition of Bradshaw,