with a resolution, not to be changed by power, circumstance, or time.

There is, in the contemplation of change, one great general fear, of which insidious ministers amply avail themselves :-the fear, lest in repairing the walls, the fabric should fall to the ground. This ought, assuredly, to be guarded against; and with the utmost solicitude. But liberty is worth any price, and any hazard. Lord Kaims says, and says justly, what Tacitus had said before him, that it is far better to have a government liable to storms, than to breathe the dead repose of despotism. But such outrages have been committed in the name of liberty, that it has almost become necessary to invent some new word to express its excellencies and beauties. Robespierre, odious and detestable, as he assuredly was, is less to be abhorred for his ignorance and cruelty, than for the disgrace, which he brought upon the name of freedom: License being even a greater insult to liberty, than the Inquisition is to the science of legislation: both being, in fact, a terror and a persecution to all the faculties of the soul.1

There are, I am ashamed to acknowledge, many men in this country, fully qualified to act the parts of Robespierre and Danton. They are bringing disgrace upon our sacred cause; and, therefore, ought to be despised and shunned by every friend to freedom. It is an insult to the understandings of men to suppose, that the disorders of our constitution can be healed by men, as deficient in rank, wealth, and education, as they are in manners, morals, and ability.

Nor is this all; it is not the full measure of our disgrace! A more transcendant nation than this never yet appeared upon the face of the globe. And yet, some we have amongst us, so lost to every great and noble sentiment, that they would not only barter their own liberties, but even those of the whole universe, for a peerage, an appointment, a pre

If, from the liberty of nations, we recur to the freedom of individuals, we may safely pronounce that man to be the most free, and consequently the most happy, who has learned to consider genius the only rightful claimant of prerogative, and virtue the only symbol of nobility: who, smiling at the caprice of fashion, disregarding the idle opinions of the weak, and despising the notions of the worldly, has formed his plan in temperate independence of common customs and of common society. Whose resources centre in himself: whose mind contains the riches of exalted precepts and whose soul is superior to his fortune. -Master, as it were, of his own destiny, esteeming content the synonyma of happiness, and bearing ever in his mind that noble axiom, which teaches, that the fewer are our wants, the greater are our pleasures, he despises the oppressor; he ridicules the proud; and pities the ignorance and folly of malevolence. Beholding Nature with a lover's eye, and reading in her sacred volume the transcript of the Deity, his mind is to him as a kingdom: And fixing his habitation at the foot of a high mountain, surrounded by all, that is graceful or magnificent in Nature, he enjoys the sublimity of the scene with a tranquillity, which neither the smiles nor the frowns of fortune can exalt or depress.

Creation's heir! the world, the world is his!

lacy, a vicarage, a colonelcy; nay—even for the puerile consequence of appearing at a great man's table!-there to be the butt of the master, the lapdog of the mistress, the playfellow of the sons, and the contempt of the servants.

CHAPTER IV.

WHILE a love of Nature engenders and fosters the highest regard for public and private liberty, it calls forth many of the latent resources of the mind, and adds proportionably to its strength. It confirms us in the habits of virtue; leads us to desire a more intimate knowledge of ourselves; and produces a decided contempt, for the unlawful pleasures of an idle world. By virtue of association it excites, too, that ardent love of greatness, in action and sentiment, which characterises a liberal and heroic spirit. Innumerable are the instances, in which the highlanders of Scotland have evinced the power of scenery to excite to noble deeds: and who will doubt, but that the landscapes in the Peloponesus and in the neighbourhood of Athens, Rome, and Florence, have had a decided effect upon those illustrious cities? Many a man, who has been censured for idleness, or cashiered for inattention, among the dull swamps of Holland and Flanders, would have felt himself equal to 'the command of armies in Italy, Switzerland, or Greece.

The bold character of the scenery, by which the Monks of St. Bernard are surrounded, gives an important stimulus to their benevolence, activity, and fortitude. These holy men,' at the risk of their per

There are not more than ten or twelve of these Ecclesiastics. They have two farms; but their principal subsistence is derived from the contributions of those districts of France, Switzerland, and Italy, that lie in their neighbourhood. Seven thousand persons are said to travel up their mountain every year.

sonal safety, will encounter the greatest vicissitudes of toil and danger; in order to assist those unfortunate travellers, who sink into the gulphs of ice and snow, which render the passes of the Alps of St. Bernard, so difficult and dangerous. Animated by benevolence, kept alive by those characters of sublimity, which, in the strongest language, declare the actual presence of a Deity, in the dead of night they will quit their convent, and, accompanied by dogs, and lighted only by lanthorns, they will grope their way over immense masses of ice, to rescue a human creature from the danger of perishing with cold; or from the more dreadful fate of sinking into gulphs, from which it were impossible ever to rescue them.

II.

Gunilda, sister to Hardicanute, and wife to the Emperor Henry, being accused of incontinence by her husband, resented it so highly, that she retired to a monastery, and there ended her days; though the Emperor frequently solicited her return. A similar fate distinguished those beautiful and injured queens,. Matilda of Denmark, and Sophia, wife of George the First, while Elector of Hanover: both of whom were distinguished by a regard for the charms and graces of Nature. Matilda, accused of crimes, her soul detested, was banished to the electorate of Hanover. Looking back with tranquillity, and true dignity of soul, upon those pleasures, she had never perfectly enjoyed; and regretting not the splendour Mathew of Westminster.

and magnificence, she had lost; her principal resources, in the absence of her children, were her garden and her shrubberies. Thus occupied, she was an object of love, admiration, and pity, to all the Electorate. Sophia, charged with a crime, as illfounded as those of the virtuous Matilda, and confined in the castle of Alden in the duchy of Zell, for the space of thirty years, derived the same consolation in the culture of her flower-garden. Her husband, by whom she had been unjustly accused, offered to be reconciled to her, but she would not. In the page of history a reply, more admirable than hers, is no where to be found :-" If the accusation be just," said she, "I am unworthy of his bed: if it be false, he is unworthy of mine."

III.

If scenes, so common and simple, as shrubberies and gardens, have power to strengthen the mind, and to secure it against the turbulent emotions, caused by the intrigues and tumults of the world; much greater effect in weaning us from its follies and vices, may nobler scenes be supposed to produce. Colonna, accompanied by Blanche, one evening in the month of April, ascended a high mountain in the neighbourhood of Llangollen. The sun was shooting its evening rays along the vale, embellishing every thing they touched. It having rained all the morning, the

ness, with which spring had clad every object, gave additional impulse to all their feelings. Arrived at the summit, the scene became truly captivating :