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and be delighted with its own operations. We would reject, with our author, the accuracy required by Bowles, from a descriptive poet; for the moment description becomes technically accurate, it ceases to be poetry at all. There can be no finer illustration of the power of a genuine poet, in throwing out by a few strong lines, a vivid combination of images, which the imagination instantly appropriates and fills up for itself, than the picture of eastern scenery in Lord Byron's "Dream," which our author has quoted. Again, in adapting the shows of things' to the desires of the mind, poetry takes no account of the practical difficulties and minutia which the writer of fiction that aims at vraisemblance, is obliged to avoid or overcome. The position is certainly correct that the poetry which appeals to the heart is more sure of general perusal and admiration, than that which merely plays round the fancy. And the more strong and universal the feelings are to which it addresses itself, the more certain is its success. All can weep for the sorrows of Medora; but there are few, we apprehend, who can sympathize with the emotion of Wordsworth, too profound to find relief in tears, at the sight of a daffodowndilly. When we have, however, ascertained all the essentials pro which constitute poetry, we must still, as was before remarked, add the requisite of a certain rhythm, or it will be impossible to exclude from its pale many works of imagination, in whole or in part, which have always past for simple prose.

Our remarks have been rambling and superficial. But we have little space to indulge in farther comment on the subjects started by Mr. Simmons. One, in particular, merits observation-the principle of self, or the incorporation of the writer's own original feelings with those of all his characters, and with the effect of all his descriptions, which runs through the works of Lord Byron. This has been more apparent to his readers, because his private history has been so long the subject of public conversation. To suppose, however, that when the incidents of his life have ceased to be the subject of curiosity, the interest of his poetry must also decline, is, as our author well observes, a most idle and inconsecutive mode of reasoning. The fancy of no poet has ever soared into the regions of invention, without carrying with it the mark and character of its possessor; as the falcon bears inscribed on its collar the name of him, to whom this goodly hawk belongeth.' And as the circumstances, which were once fresh in the knowledge of a cotemporary generation, become forgotten, or are dimly recalled by those who succeed, ideal associations occupy their places, and invest the embodied thoughts to which they origi

nally gave color, with a mysterious but perpetual interest. Were Lord Byron's history lost in oblivion, would Childe Harold's pilgrimage therefore be no longer read by posterity? "It will be of little importance for them to know where the noble suffer er was born,

To whom related or by whom begot;

What were the nature of the wrong he bore, or in what manner they were inflicted; it will be sufficient for them to know that he was a sufferer, and had wrongs to be forgiven

Hopes sapped-name blighted-life's life lied away.

It will be enough for them to feel and know this, in order to sympathize profoundly with those emotions of the soul which have thrown a melancholy gloom around the sublimest inspirations of the Bard."

We recommend the work we have been noticing, as an elegant and able exposition of the subjects at which we have glanced. The writer shows much judgment, taste and information. We hope the present pamphlet may be received with sufficient favor to induce him to enlarge his dissertation. We regret that it is very much disfigured by villainous typographical blunders.

: ORPHIC HYMN TO SLEEP.

Of gods and men almighty king,
Sole lord of every breathing thing
On earth, puissant sleep!

To all thy bland approach is known,
O'er all thy potent links are thrown,
While sorrow's hosts thy sceptre own,
And care forgets to weep.

The toil-worn limbs thine art renews,
The wo worn heart thy sacred dews
In healing balsam steep;

Image of death, thine opiate charm
Fraternal terrors can disarm,
Soothe sinking nature's wild alarm,
And bid life's pulses leap.

Brother, as ancient rhymes express,
Of death and of forgetfulness,
Attend my call, O sleep!
Around thy fragrant odors shed;
All redolent with perfume spread
Thy curtains; lap thy votary's head

In slumbers soft and deep.

105,

Westminister Review, No. III. July-October. London. 1824.

This Review has been vehemently lauded in this country for what are called its liberal doctrines and opinions. However we may feel inclined to rejoice at the accession of new advocates to the great cause of freedom and humanity, we cannot help expressing our apprehensions that the ultra-radical tone of this Review is calculated to do mischief to the cause it professes to espouse. There is a coarseness and an acrimony in its attacks against established prejudices, which indicate feelings of hostility too local and too interested to be steadily depended on. It is not enough to say that the adherents of legitimacy have shown the first example. Vulgar and brutal violence is to be expected from the champions of despotism; but surely they who undertake to investigate and to defend the interests of truth, are bound to give some evidence of their sincerity, not so liable to suspicion as the boisterous vehemeuce of their professions, or the angry bitterness of their attacks. Still, we are aware that many are disposed to consider the political or religious controversialist in the light of an advocate rather than in that of a judge; and on this presumption look upon the exercise of every artifice, and the employment of every weapon, as justified by the violence of an antagonist's assault. We think it probable enough, that as human nature seems at present to be constituted, truth, in all cases where men's interests and passions are engaged, can only be elicited by the forcible and opposite exertions of obstinate and even narrow-minded partisans. It may be necessary, for aught we know, to oppose one extreme to another, in order to prevent the unequal bias that unresisted prejudices cannot but create. But the office of resisting a positive religious or political excess, by a negative excess of equal quantity and force, is certainly not one very agreeable to the taste of the dispassionate searcher after truth. The indiscriminate defence of extravagant principles may be a useful and a necessary occupation; but to us it seems one of those salutary but discreditable functions which we are equally unwilling that we should be obliged, and that others should neglect, to perform.

The articles, however, are, many of them, written with unquestionable talent, and are well calculated to command the attention of readers both in England and America. The first Essay in the third number discusses in extenso the policy of religious prosecutions, and goes the full length of condemning all restraints whatever on the freedom of discussion. It is

very evident that the writer founds his opinions on the principle that the right of argument is one of man's unalienable rights, and that it cannot be displaced even by the rights of christianity. Yet his ostensible defence of unlimited freedom of opinions, is an anxious regard (real or affected, it is hard for us to say) for the interests of the orthodox faith. Without undertaking here to analyse his motives, or to speculate upon the style of the discussion, we must candidly acknowledge, that if the facts he states can be depended on, infidelity has made greater progress in Great Britain than we had any reason to believe. The embers of unbelief, which were dying fast away, before the first prosecution of Carlisle, have been blown into dangerous and still extending flame, by the indiscreet violence of the guardians of the faith. According to an estimate of the amount of copies of Paine's Age of Reason sold, from December, 1817, up to the present day, it appears that more than 20,000 copies of this obnoxious publication. have found their way into the hands of all classes of readers in Great Britain. Of these, one hundred were sold in the month before the determination to prosecute became known, and nine hundred in the month which followed; and from that time to the present the sale has averaged four thousand per annum. Beside this, the preposterous severities of punishment have enlisted in the cause of infidelity some of the most operative sympathies of human nature, and the sacred truths of scripture have been made the theme of loud, vulgar and in-. temperate discussion. Nothing can more amply demonstrate the wisdom of our own political institutions; which, by leaving the sceptic and the unbeliever to the chilling influence of neglect, or to the salutary discipline of argument and reason, check the growth of that delusion, which is sure to be confirmed by a forcible endeavor to remove it.

Article II. is a well written refutation of an oft-exploded error, committed by the earlier political economists, and recently revived in some observations on the effects produced by the expenditure of the British government during the restriction of cash payments, by William Blake, Esq. F. R. S. The object of this pamphlet is to prove, in the first place, that the high price of gold and the low exchanges in England from 1809 to 1816 were owing to the large foreign expenditure of government; and in the second, that the general rise in the price of all consumable produce, was the necessary effect of circumstances connected with the war, and the increased internal expenditure of government. The reviewer very properly asks, why, if the high price of gold was real and not re

lative, did not the enhanced premium on foreign bills occasion the transmission of bullion abroad? That it could not arise from a sudden absorption of bullion from any cause whatever, is easily shown, by demonstrating (by a well-known process of argument) that this absorption can only produce a very temporary rise in the real price of bullion; in consequence of the necessary increase of exported goods, or, at least, of the decrease of imported goods which always results from the high price of gold. The only ground which Mr. Blake can thus resort to, is to insist on the obstacles thrown in the way of exportation by the anti-commercial decrees of the French government; and from this position he is driven by the reviewer, who shows, in the first place, that the expense, unless profits are reduced, does not diminish exportation, and secondly, that even if the Milan decrees had this effect, they could not certainly prevent the diminution of importations.

In combating the second division of Mr. Blake's doctrine, viz. that the high range of general prices resulted from the internal war expenditure, (an erroneous opinion, by the way, not confined to Great Britain) the reviewer has exhibited all the clearness of a sound, and all the skill of a practised philosopher. If we were not every day and every hour convinced, that the strongest and most lamentable heresies in the science of public economy are openly avowed, and for aught we know, honestly believed by men whose opportunities of education should better have secured them from deception, we should regard as superfluous any serious attempt to confute such palpable absurdities as those against which the arguments of the author of this article are directed. But the truth is, that recurrence to first principles is as useful in science as in politics. We cannot help thinking, indeed, that the prevalence of unsound opinions in almost every department of political economy, arises, in this country, less from incapacity to comprehend, or unwillingness to learn, on the part of the ignorant, than from a culpable reluctance on the part of the instructed, to promulgate the plain elementary truths of this useful but much-neglected science. There seems to prevail among our men of letters a very censurable pride, which prevents them from disseminating, by their writings, the fundamental maxims of this science, as if they were ashamed of uttering or publishing what they improperly regard as self-evident propositions. The consequences of this lamentable apathy must necessarily be, a gradual establishment of the old restrictive system, in all its most offensive and arbitrary features. Error, stimulated by perpetual interest, will silently and imperceptibly infect the

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