cious partiality in woman, that loves to lend to its venerated object the perfections and the prospects of supernatural intelligence; and nothing can be truer to the character of love than Bianca's firm conviction, that Ottavio was fitted and even destined to become the favourite of kings and the pride and boast of nations.' The effect of the succeeding incidents upon the conduct of Ottavio, is perfectly in character. His mingled feelings on hearing of the illness of his father, his parting with! his mistress, the conflict between the affection of the son and the impatience of the lover, his intense anxiety and eagerness in returning to Bianca, the painful thrillings of his frame and the fearful workings of his fancy, as he approached the pavilion, are all so many circumstances, the natural effects of what precedes, and the natural causes of what follows. The catastrophe is compelled by the motives, and this is the true test and evidence of the possession of the powers of invention. Nothing but unquestionable talent is capable of disposing with given agents, given circumstances, and given objects, the rest of the materials of story, with such justness and exactness, that the issue must result from the action of the motives on the passions of the agents. It is always so in nature; the last act of a drama in real life, is (in the language of mathematics) the function of the circumstances; but the poet has very seldom the opportunity to copy an entire scene from nature, for the truth of the picturing is only a small part of the properties of the ideal beautiful.' The action must be stripped of what is useless or obtrusive, and invested with the attributes of interest and value. The means and the purposes must authorize each other, and this arrangement is the work of inspiration alone. The ungifted may attempt it, and display the most admirable skill in their contrivances; but the work of their hands, like the manufactured man of the modern Prometheus,' will be but a melancholy mass of unsuccessful ingenuity; while he who possesses the genuine fire of heaven, forms his beautiful creations without art, and without labour, and almost without effort. All the parts of a perfect picture with their relations, their harmonies and their dependences, can only be discerned by the coup d'œil of genius. The fictions of the legitimate inventor are neither contrived nor elaborated, but conceived and imagined; or rather, to borrow from the German a word which finely expresses the effortless activity of creative imagination, they are gedichtet, by a faculty whose springs and modes of action are too mysterious for philosophy to detect, or for any other power of the mind to supersede. But we must retura to our author.

Is the mysterious and unsoothable melancholy of the young Italian perfectly explained by his story? We confess we hardly think it is. There was much in the circumstances of the case to extenuate, and almost to justify his violence. Filippo had been guilty of the grossest violation of the most sacred obligations. The crime he had committed was perhaps the greatest which one man can commit against another. He had basely and fraudulently robbed, of an inestimable treasure, the man who depended on his friendship for its safety and security. Surely, it is in nature to be consoled, amid the sorrows of repentence, with the reflection of the enormity of the outrage which drove us to the commission of the crime. It is true, all the early education of Ottavio had rendered him morbidly alive to every impression, and a venial offence would be followed, in such a being, by the deepest regrets. But the victim of feelings so acute, would also exaggerate and dwell upon the provocation he had received, and the embittered recollection of his wrongs would soften very much the anguish of remorse. Might not the exquisite sufferings of Ottavio have been better accounted for, if Filippo had been made innocent of treachery? This might easily have been done, by so disposing of his friend, that there might be just ground for Filippo to believe in his death. The dreadful reflections that result from the discovery that the victim of revenge is guiltless of the crime that was imputed to him, are as bitter as the keenest remorse, and when added to the anguish of penitence, must almost realise the torments mflicted by the fabled Eumenides. Whether the timorous glancing over the shoulder is one of the effects of the guilty and agitated conscience of a murderer, we are utterly unable to determine; not being able, by the most vigorous efforts of our fancy, to comprehend the sufferings of the penitent assassin. We presume the incident is borrowed from the confessions of some actual criminal; for we do not see how, a priori, this symptom of remorse could well have been anticipated.

The second part of the Tales of a Traveller contains no serious story; but we are presented in the third, with one of deep and fearful interest. The Story of the Young Robber is to the tale of the Bandit Chieftain, what that of the Young Italian is to the Mysterious Stranger. The young brigand is introduced to the notice of the reader very much as Ottavio is brought forward. But there is a specific difference in the exhibition of their remorseful feelings, precisely such as is called for by their characters. The sufferings of the former are the stern self-condemnations of a strong and stubborn spirit; the sorrows of the latter are the sharp and keen regrets of a

sensitive and kindly moulded heart. Their very attitudes distinguish their remorses, and are described with the true aud graphic pencil of a master. Ottavio is found lying with his face upon the sofa; his hands in his fine hair, and his whole countenance bearing traces of the convulsions of his mind.' The young robber sits on the ground; his elbows on his knees, his head resting between his clenched fists, and his eyes fixed on the earth with an expression of sad and bitter rumination.' There is a stretch of probability in the readiness of the Robber's confidence, which the writer seems to be aware of, and attempts to explain; but the fact is, that in story telling, there are many minor improbabilities which must of necessity be tolerated, for the sake of the opportunities that they bring along with them. In the Robber's story, there is a tragic action and dramatic unity perfectly sustained. The incidents are finely associated and proportioned. The rage of the jealous lover and the murder of the bridegroom; the impassioned interview of the robber with Rosetta in the vineyard; her resistance and capture by the troop; the brutal violence offered by the captain; the condemnation of the unransomed victim to immediate death, and the voluntary execution of the sentence by the girl's own lover, are so many links in a chain of poetical fatalities powerfully conceived. The stoicism of the father, in refusing to purchase the reicase of his violated daughter is somewhat unnatural; and some will object to the strange perversity of feeling which urges the robber to solicit the dreadful privilege of becoming he executioner of his mistress. Yet this, we doubt not, would be the natural and necessary result of all the previous circumstances. The death of the girl is inevitable; and to a soul of stern temper, heated by impetuous affections, and stung by the sense of his mistress's. dishonour, it must be a painful consolation, to have converted, by an act of self-devotion, a murder to a sacrifice. However this may be, we cannot here avoid inserting the whole passage which describes, with great power, the catastrophe of the

story.

"Ihastened to seize my prey. There was a forlorn kind of triumph at having at length become her exclusive possessor. I bore her off into the thickness of the forest. She remained in the same state of insensibility and stupor. I was thankful that she did not recollect me; for had she once murmured my name, I should have been overcome. She slept at length in the arms of him who was to poniard her. Many were the conflicts I underwent before I could bring myself to strike the blow. My heart had became sore by the recent conflicts it had undergone, and I dreaded lest, by procrastination, some other should become her executioner. When ber repose bad continued for some time, I separated myself gently from her, that I might not disturb her sleep, and seizing suddenly her poniard, plung

ed it into her bosom. A painful and concentrated murmur, but without any convulsive movement, accompanied her last sigh.-So perished this unfortunate."

A notice of the humorous or mixed articles, particularly of those in the fourth part, which contains several admirable tales in a style of genuine Knickerbockerism, we reserve for a future opportunity. on which occasion, we shall freely enter our objections to some of the lighter stories in the three first parts.

HORACE. EPODE 2.

Pleasures of a Country Life.

Happy the man, remote from toil and care,
As in the golden age men were;

Who ploughs his native field with his own team,
And hath no debts of which to dream!
Who starts not to the trump's shrill reveillée,
Nor views with fright the raging sea;
Shuns the hoarse forum and the haughty gate
Of wealth, and of the vulgar great:
Well pleased around his poplars tall to twine
The tendrils of the wedded vine;

To prune the useless shoots, and in their place
Engraft a more prolific race.

In the far deepening vale, wandering at ease,
Joyous his lowing herds he sees,

In shining jars the clear pressed honey pours,
Or gathers in his fleecy stores;

Or when dame Autumn rears her honoured head,

With her ripe fruitage garlanded,

Large drooping from the boughs, the yellow pear
And purple grape reward his care;

Thy votive gift, Priapus! Sylvan, thine,

Protector of the bounding line!

How sweet to lie, neath some old oak reclining,
Or where the tall grass round is twining;

Through its tall banks the still stream glides along,
Birds wake their sadly pleasing song,

And fountains near their murmuring descant keep,
Inviting calm and holy sleep!

But winter comes, at thundering Jove's command,
With storms and snows in either hand :

Then on the savage boar the dogs are set,
And drive him to the entangling net;

Or for the glutton thrush he lays his snares,
And light extended gins prepares;

Here caught, the trembling puss, the stranger crane

Give sport in hoary winter's reign.

Who thus employed, has time or wish to prove

The pangs and cares of cruel love?

ર્

Poetry.

But ah! should some chaste dame adorn his hall,
Whose home and children were her all,
(Like fair Sabina, or the browner bride,
Gracing the swift Apulian's side.)

Who bids the sacred hearth more brightly burn,
Against the weary man's return,—

Folds up the herd right glad her cares to meet,
And drains each well distended teat,-

Then from the well loved cask the wine draws forth,
Cheering, though of little worth,—

And joyous, for her lord, with active zeal,
Prepares the frugal, unhought meal-
With such, nor Lucrine oysters more I'd prize,
Nor turbot of majestic size,

Nor scarcer fish, if any. winter bore,

From eastern waters near our shore.
Not Afric's fowl could prove a daintier treat,
Nor Asia's partridge seem more sweet,
Than the ripe olives hanging thick and low,
Plucked from the most luxuriant bough;
Or wholesome mallows, or green sorrel, still
Wandering o'er the meads at will;
Or the kid rescued from the wolf's fell bite,
Or victim lamb at festal rite.

And at the feast, how pleasant to behold
The flocks swift bounding to the fold;
To mark the weary oxen dragging slow,
With drooping necks the inverted plough;
And all the household slaves, a swarming band,
Around the glittering lares stand.

Thus spoke the usurer Alphius, in his thought
His house and farm already bought,
He called in all his funds in the Ides; but when
The Calends came-he loaned them out again.

LIBRAR

X.

Nov

OGIE We have this moment been favoured, by the kindness of a friend, with the London Edition of the Tales of a Traveller, in which to our surprise we find a preface, and four tales not contained in the American Edition. In the preface, (which is dated from the Hotel de Darmstadt, cidevant Hotel de Paris, Mayence,) we are informed that the circumstances in the Adventure of the Mysterious Picture, and in the Story of the Young Italian, are vague recollections of anecdotes related to the author some years since, and that the Adventure of the Young Painter among the banditti, is taken almost entirely from an authentic narrative in manuscript.

The four tales are, the Adventure of the German Student, related by the old gentleman with the haunted head-Noto