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LXXXV.

"Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
With the wide world I dwelt in, is a thing
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing

To waft me from distraction; once I loved
Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring
Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved,

That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.
LXXXVI.

"It is the hush of night, and all between

Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear
Precipitously steep; and drawing near,
There breathes a living fragrance from the shore,
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,
Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more;
LXXXVII.

"He is an evening reveller, who makes
His life an infancy, and sings his fill;

At intervals, some bird from out the brakes,
Starts into voice a moment, then is still.
There seems a floating whisper on the hill,
But that is fancy, for the starlight dews
All silently their tears of love instil,
Weeping themselves away, till they infuse
Deep into nature's breast the spirit of her hues.

LXXXVIII.

"Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires,-'tis to be forgiven,
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
A beauty and a mystery, and create

In us such love and reverence from afar,

That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star." P.47.

The characters of Voltaire and Gibbon are drawn with more discrimination than we had reason to expect. What is the noble Lord's opinion of their success, he has not been pleased to impart. What his wishes are he has clearly shewn by his anathema against their conquerors.

"Lausanne!

CV.

"Lausanne! and Ferney! ye have been the abodes
Of names which unto you bequeath'd a name;
Mortals, who sought and found, by dangerous roads,
A path to perpetuity of fame:

They were gigantic minds, and their steep aim,
Was, Titan like, on daring doubts to pile

Thoughts which should call down thunder, and the flame
Of Heaven again assail'd, if Heaven the while

On man and man's research could deign do more than smile.
CVI.

"The one was fire and fickleness, a child,
Most mutable in wishes, but in mind,

A wit as various,-gay, grave, sage, or wild,-
Historian, bard, philosopher, combined;
He multiplied himself among mankind,
The Proteus of their talents: But his own
Breathed most in ridicule,-which, as the wind,
Blew where it listed, laying all things prone,―
Now to o'erthrow a fool, and now to shake a throne.
CVII.

"The other, deep and slow, exhausting thought,
And hiving wisdom with each studious year,
In meditation dwelt, with learning wrought,
And shaped his weapon with an edge severe,
Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer;
The lord of irony,-that master-spell,

Which stung his foes to wrath, which grew from fear,
And doom'd him to the zealot's ready Hell,

Which answers to all doubts so eloquently well.

CVIII.

"Yet, peace be with their ashes,-for by them,
If merited, the penalty is paid;

It is not ours to judge,-far less condemn ;

The hour must come when such things shall be made
Known unto all,--or hope and dread allay'd

By slumber, on one pillow,-in the dust,

Which, thus much we are sure, must lie decay'd;
And when it shall revive, as is our trust,

"Twill be to be forgiven, or suffer what is just." P. 57.

To the sentiments contained in the last stanza, if not to the poetry, we bow with unfeigued respect; but though we would not hastily condemn the frailties and the errors of others, yet we would not confound light and darkness, truth and falsehood in one undistinguished mass. The same hand which committed the sacred charge of truth to our care, will demand it again unpolluted at our hands. To condemn the error we are com

manded;

manded; to condemn the person we are forbidden. That final judgment rests in a higher tribunal, which we fear for the sake of the noble Lord and of ourselves, will too surely "deign do more than smile.”

The Prisoner of Chillon is the complaint of the survivor of three brothers confined within the Chateau of that name, which is situated between Clarens and Villeneuve. The verses are in the eight svilable metre, and occasionally display some pretty poetry; at all events there is little in them to offend. We do not find any passage of sufficient beauty or originality to warrant an extract, though the whole may be read, not without pleasure by the admirer of this style of versification.

The next poem that engages our notice is called DARKNESS, describing the probable state of things upon earth should the light and heat of the sun be withdrawn. To so strange and absurd an idea we must of course ascribe the credit of vast originality.

"The world was void,

The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless-
A lump of death-a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge―

The wayes were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon their mistress had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,

And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them-She was the universe." F.30.

But

We must confess that criticism is unable to reach a strain so sublime as this. If this be called genius, as we suppose it must, we are of opinion that the madness of that aforesaid quality is much more conspicuous than its inspiration. after the noble Lord has carried us with him in his air balloon to so high an eminence in the sublime, on a sudden he discharges the gas, and down we drop to the lowest depth of the bathos below.

"I stood beside the grave of him who blazed

The comet of a season, and I saw

The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed
With not less of sorrow and of awe

On that neglected turf and quiet stone,

With name no clearer than the names unknown,

Which lay unread around it; and I ask'd
The Gardener of that ground, why it might be
That for this plant strangers his memory task'd
Through the thick deaths of half a century;
And thus he answered- Well, I do not know
Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so;
He died before my day of Sextonship,
And I had not the digging of this grave."
And is this all? I thought,-and do we rip
The veil of Immortality? and crave

I know not what of honour and of light
Through unborn ages, to endure this blight?
So soon and so successless? As I said,
The Architect of all on which we tread,
For Earth is but a tombstone, did essay
To extricate remembrance from the clay,
Whose minglings might confuse a Newton's thought
Were it not that all life must end in one,
Of which we are but dreamers;--as he caught
As 'twere the twilight of a former Sun,

Thus spoke he, I believe the man of whom
You wot, who lies in this selected tomb,
Was a most famous writer in his day,

And therefore travellers step from out their way
To pay him honour,-and myself whate'er

Your honour pleases,'-then most pleased I shook
From out my pocket's avaricious nook

Some certain coins of silver, which as 'twere
Perforce I gave this man, though I could spare
So much but inconveniently ;-Ye smile
I see ye, ye profane ones! all the while,
Because my homely phrase the truth would tell.
You are the fools, not I-for I did dwell
With a deep thought, and with a soften'd eye,
On that Old Sexton's natural homily,

In which there was Obscurity and Fame,

The Glory and the Nothing of a Name." P. 32.

The noble Lord seems to be in the humour of Timon, to invite his friends to a course of empty dishes, which are finally to be discharged at their heads. Profane enough we must own ourselves, for never did we more heartily laugh than at the conclusion of this burlesque; in which we think the noble Lord has shewn no ordinary talents. So much for the "Visit to Churchill's grave.

The next poem, called "The Dream," contains as usual a long history of "my own maguificent self." At the conclusion we are told

"The

The Wanderer was alone as heretofore,
The beings which surrounded him were gone,
Or were at war with him; he was a mark
For blight and desolation, compass'd round
With Hatred and Contention; Pain was mix'd
In all which was served up to him, until
Like to the Pontic monarch of old days,
He fed on poisons, and they had no power,
But were a kind of nutriment; he lived

Through that which had been death to many men,
And made him friends of mountains: with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the Universe

He held his dialogue; and they did teach
To him the magic of their mysteries;
To him the book of Night was opened wide,
And voices from the deep abyss reveal'd

A marvel and a secret-Be it so." P. 44.

Amen, say also we; for till these dialogues are somewhat more intelligible than many of the verses in this volume, we trust that our philosophy neither of intellect nor of temper will be put to the test by any attempt to interpret them. The next poem is a Chorus in an unfinished Witch Drama, which as it consists wholly of curses upon some devoted victim, the reader will take for granted that the noble Lord has excelled.

We fear that the noble Lord will gain very little credit by the volumes before us. The first is decidedly the best, and contains some very good lines, plentifully interspersed with his accustomed crudities, but not without a considerable share of poetic merit. The Night Thoughts appear to be the objects of his imitation, but the copy falls very far short of the original. His Lordship's philosophy is at times of the sect of the "unintelligibles," at least to us ordinary mortals, who have been bred up in the schools of common sense. We do earnestly hope that the noble Lord will at last take his promised repose, and' write no more, till he can cease to write about himself. The address to his daughter, with which the Childe Harold concludes, under all those circumstances with which the public are too well acquainted, is written in bad taste, and worse morality. "The English nation is not so easily to be whined out of its just and honourable feelings.

ART. VII. The Colonial Policy of Great Britain, considered with Relation to the North American Provinces, and West

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