the monkeys in Africa, might easily be supposed to be a race of men too idle to work, and holding their tongues to avoid it, would be sufficient to suggest the fancy to an imaginative people. The Satyr Islands of Pausanius are evidently islands frequented by apes, or rather baboons; unless indeed we are to believe with Monboddo, that men once had tails; which is hardly a greater distinction from some men without them, than a philosopher is from a savage. Oran Otan signifies a wild man; and Linnæus has called the Great Ape the Ape Satyr (Simia Satyrus.) Again, there have been real wild men; and a single one of these, such as Peter the Wild Boy, would people a country like Greece with Satyrs.

But it is not necessary to recur to palpable beings for a poetical stock. A sound, a shadow, a look of something in the dark, was enough to make them; and if this had not been found, they would still have been fancied. Satyrs, in an allegorical sense, are the animal spirits of the creation, its exuberance, its natural health and vigour, its headlong tendency to reproduction. In a superstitious and popular point of view, they were the spirits of the woods, a branch of the universal family of genii and fairies. Finally, in the great world of poetry, they partake, on both these accounts, of whatever has been said or done for them, that remains interesting to the imagination; and are still to be found there, immortal as their poets. As long as there is a mystery in the world, and men are unable to affirm what beings may not exist, so long poetry will have what existences it pleases, and the mind will have a corner in which to entertain them. Therefore, "the sage and serious Spenser" tells us wisely of

"The wood-god's breed which must for ever last."

So from the ground she fearelesse doth arise, And walketh forth without suspect of crime: They, all as glad as birdes of joyous pryme, Thence lead her forth, about her dauncing round, Shouting, and singing all a shepheard's ryme: And, with greene branches strowing all the ground, Do worship her as queene, with olive girlond cround. And all the way their merry pipes they sound, That all the woods with doubled eccho ring;

And with their horned feet doe weare the ground,
Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring.
So towards old Sylvanus her they bring;
Who, with the noyse awaked, commeth out
To meet the cause, his weak steps governing
And aged limbs on cypresse stadle stout;
And with an yvie twyne his waste is girt about.

The wood-born people fall before her flat,
And worship her as goddesse of the wood;
And old Sylvanus self bethinkes not, what
To think of wight so fayre: but gazing stood
In doubt to deeme her born of earthly brood.
The wooddy nymphes, faire Hamadryades,
Her to behold doe thether runne apace;
And all the troupe of light-foot Naiades
Flocke all about to see her lovely face."

Book 1, canto 6.

Spenser has a knight among his chivalry, who was the son of a Satyr by the wife of a country-gentleman, one Therion (or Brute) by name,-a severe insinuation on the part of the gentle poet ;

"A loose unruly swayne,

Who had more joy to raunge the forest wide And chase the salvage beast with busie payne, Than serve his ladie's love."

and thither shall he take us to meet them. Here they are, on a bright morning, in the thick of their glades. Una is in distress, and has cried out, so that her voice is heard throughout the woods.

"A troope of Faunes and Satyres, far away Within the wood, were dancing in a rownd,

Whiles old Sylvanus slept in shady arber sownd.

Who when they heard that piteous, strained voice,

In haste forsooke their rural merriment,

And ran towards the far rebownded noyse,

To meet what wight so loudly did lament.

Unto the place they come incontinent:

Whom when the raging Sarazin espide,

A rude, mishapen, monstrous rabblement, Whose like he never saw, he durst not byde; But got his ready steed, and fast away gan ryde.]

Such fearefull fitt assaid her trembling hart,
Ne word to speake, ne joynt to move, she had:
The salvage nation feele her secret smart,
And read her sorrow in her count'nance sad:
Their frowning forheads, with rough hornes yclad
And rustick horror, all asyde doe lay;
And, gently grenning, shew a semblance glad
To comfort her; and (feare to put away)
Their backward-bent knees teach, her humbly to obay.

The doubtfull damzell dare not yet committ
Her single person to their barbarous truth;
But still twixt feare and hope amazed does sitt,
Late learnd what harme to hasty truth ensu'th:
They in compassion of her tender youth

And wonder of her beautie soveraigne,
Are wonne with pitty and unwonted ruth:
And, all prostraite upon the lowly playne,
Doe kisse her feete, and fawne on her with count'-
nance fayne.

Their harts she guesseth by their humble guise, And yieldes her to extremitie of time:

his time. He tells us of another wife, who had a considerable acquaintance among the wood-gods. It is not so easy to relate her story; but she would be a charming person by the time she was thirty, and make a delicate heart content! His account of her is certainly intended as a lesson to old gentlemen.

"The gentle lady, loose at random left,

The greenwood long did walke, and wander wide
At wilde adventure, like a forlorne wefte;
Till on a daye the Satyres her espide
Straying alone withouten groome or guide:
Her up they took, and with them home her ledd,
With them as housewife ever to abide,

To milk their goats, and make them cheese and bredd."

"The silly man, that in the thickett lay
Saw all this goodly sport; and grieved sore;
Yet durst he not against it do or say,
But did his hart with bitter thoughts engore,
To see th' unkindness of his Hellenore.
All day they daunced with great lustyhedd,
And with their horned feet the greene grass wore;
The wiles their gotes upon the brouzes fedd,
Till drouping Phœbus gan to hyde his golden hedd.

Tho up they gan their merry pypes to trusse,
And all their goodly heardes did gather rownde."

The old gentleman creeps to his wife's bed's-head at night, and endeavours to persuade her to go away with him; but she is deaf to all he can say; so in the passion of his misery, and supernatural strength of his very weakness, he runs away, "runs with himself away,"-till, under the most appalling circumstances, he undergoes a transformation into Jealousy itself! a poetical flight, the daringness of which can only be equalled (and vindicated, as it is) by the mastery of its execution. See the passage; which, through a half-allegory, is calculated to affect the feelings of the poetical reader, almost as much as Burley and his cavern in Old Mortality' do readers in general. It is at the end of Canto xi, Book 3.

Spenser has a story of Foolish god Faunus,' who comes on Diana when she is bathing; for which he is put into a deer-skin, and she and her nymphs hunt him through wood and dale. Fauns and Satyrs, it is to be observed, are represented as wise or foolish, according as the poet allegorizes the elements of a country life, and the reflections, or clownish impulses, of sequestered people. The Faun, in particular, who was the more oracular of the two, might be supposed either to speak from his own knowledge, or to be merely the channel of a higher one, and so to partake of that reverend character of fatuity, which is ascribed in some countries to idiots. The Satyr was more conscious and petulant: he waited more especially upon Bacchus; was loud and saucy; may easily be supposed to have been noisiest and most abusive at the time of grapes; and it is to him, we think, and him alone (whatever learned distinctions have been made between satyri and saturæ, or the fruit which he got together, and him who got them), that the origin of the word Satire is to be traced; that is to say, Satire was such free and abusive speech, as the vintagers pelted peo.. ple with, just as they might with the contents of their baskets.

To make Satyr, therefore, clever or clownish, or both, just as it suits the writer's purpose, is in good keeping. To make him revengeful for not having

"And eke Sir Paridell, all were he deare, Who from her went to seek another lott, And now by fortune was arrived here.

Soon as the old man saw Sir Paridell, (who was the person that had taken his wife from him,)

He fainted, and was almost dead with feare; Ne word he had to speake, his griefe to tell, But to him louted low, and greeted goodly well : And, after, asked him for Hellenore : 'I take no keepe of her,' sayd Paridell; 'She wonneth in the forest, there before.' So forth he rode as his adventure fell."

A great noise is afterwards heard in the woods, of bagpipes and "shrieking hubbubs;" the old man hides in a bush; and after a while

"The jolly Satyres full of fresh delight
Came dancing forth, and with them nimbly ledd
Faire Hellenore, with girlonds all bespredd,
Whom their May-lady they had newly made:

She, proud of that new honour which they radd,
And of their lovely fellowship full glade,
Daunst lively, and her face did with a lawrell shade."
What a sunny picture is in this line!

'Aminta.' To make him old, and scorned by a young mistress, is warrantable, as Guarini has done in the Pastor Fido'; and even a touch of sentiment may not be refused him, if visited by a painful sense of the difference of his shape; which is an imitation of the beautiful Polyphemic invention of Theocritus, and was introduced into modern poetry by the precur. sor of those poets, the inventor of the Sylvan Drama, Beccari. But we cannot say so much for another great poet of ours, Fletcher, who, spoilt by his town breeding, and thinking he could not make out a case for chastity, and the admiration of it, but by carrying it to a pitch of the improbable, introduces into his Faithful Shepherdess,' a Satyr thoroughly divested of his nature, the most sentimental and Platonical of lovers, and absolute guardian of what he exists only to oppose. The clipping of hedges into peacocks was nothing to this. It was like changing warmth into cold, and taking the fertility out of the earth. Elegance was another affair. The rudest things natural contain a principle of that. You may show even a Satyr in his graces, as you may a goat in a graceful attitude, or the turns and blossoms of a thorn. But to make the shaggy and impetuous wood-god, with his veins full of the sap of the vine, a polished and retiring lover, all for the metaphysics of the passion, and bowing and backing himself out of doors like a "sweet Signior," was to strike barrenness into the spring, and make the "swift and

fiery sun," which the poet so finely speaks of, halt, and become a thing deliberate. Pan, at the sight, should have cut off his universal beard. Certainly, the Satyr ought to have clipped his coat, and with drawn into the urbanities of a suit of clothes. He should have "walked gowned."

However, there is a ruddy and rough side of the apple still left; and with this we proceed to indulge ourselves, cutting away the rest. Fletcher is a true poet, and could not speak of woods and wood-gods, without finding means to give us a proper taste of them. His Satyr comes in well.

"ENTER A SATYR' WITH A BASKET OF FRUIT.

SAT. Thorough yon same bending plain,"

That flings his arms down to the main,
And through these thick woods have I run,
Whose bottom never kiss'd the sun

Since the lusty spring began:

All to please my master Pan
Have I trotted without rest
To get him fruit: for at a feast
He entertains, this coming night,
His paramour, the Syrinx bright.

Here be grapes, whose lusty blood

Is the learned poet's good;
Sweeter yet did never crown

The head of Bacchus: nuts more brown
Than the squirrel's teeth, that crack them:
Deign, oh fairest fair, to take them.
For these, black-eyed Dryope

Hath oftentimes commanded me

With my clasped knee to climb:
See how well the lusty time

Hath deck'd their rising cheeks in red,
Such as on your lips is spread.

Here be berries for a queen ;`
Some be red, some be green.

(How much better than if he had said "Some be red and some be green." He is like a great boy, poking over the basket, and pointing out the finest things in it with rustic fervour.)

These are of that luscious meat,
The great god Pan himself doth eat:
All these, and what the woods can yield,
The hanging mountain or the field,
I freely offer; and ere long :

Will bring you more, more sweet and strong :
Till when humbly leave I take,
Lest the great Pan do awake,
That sleeping lies in a deep glade,
Under a broad beech's shade.
I must go, I must run,
Swifter than the fiery sun."

In this passage, Mr Seward, in his edition of 'Beaumont and Fletcher,' has a note containing an extract from Theocritus, so happily rendered, that, as it suits our purpose, we will repeat it. It is seldom that a writer not professedly a poet, and an eminent one too, has struck forth so masterly a bit of translation. The verb in the last line even surpasses the original. We will put the Greek first, both in justice to it, and because (to own a whim of ours) the glimmering and thorny look of the Greek characters gives, in our eyes, something of a boskiness to one's pages. A page of a Greek pastoral is the next thing with us to a wood-side, or a landscape of Gasper Poussin :

t.

ever,

:

might have defended his straying in the air, but it
must have been upon very abstract and etherial
grounds, foreign to the substantial part which he
plays in this drama; and the fine allusion to Orpheus
lute is equally learned and out of its place. How
the whole passage is so beautiful, that we can
not help repeating it. Our Platonical friend is
taking leave of the lady :
"SAT. Thou divinest, fairest, brightest,
Thou most pow'rful maid, and whitest,
Thou most virtuous and most blessed,
Eyes of stars, and golden tressed
Like Apollo! tell me, sweetest,
What new service now is meetest
For the Satyr? Shall I stray
In the middle air, and stay
The sailing rack, or nimbly take
Hold by the moon, and gently make
Suit to the pale queen of night
For a beam to give thee light?
Shall I dive into the sea,

And bring thee coral, making way
Through the rising waves, that fall
In snowy fleeces? Dearest, shall

I catch thee wanton fawns, or flies,
Whose woven wings the summer dyes
Of many colours? Get thee fruit?

It is a

But a curious subject of inquiry may possibly suggest itself to the mind of the Reader in this place; which it may be worth while to notice. subject that has often haunted me; flitting before me like a ghost, when I have been directing my view to some relative point; constituting a sort of side-scene in many a dreamy speculation, but never before subjecting itself in a palpable shape;—like those objects that the eye takes in at either side of its principal mark.*

Is it possible that the might of human genius can have slumbered for five thousand five hundred years, throughout one of the principal portions of the globe? Can all this wilderness of events that makes up what we of the vetus orbis call "universal history," all this procession of ages lost in the clouds-this infinite fantastic moving scene of fortunes, follies, virtues, vices, loves, hopes, miseries, and death-can it all have moved away and away into the grey horizon of the past; and can there have existed all the while, and yet no syllable of a hint escape from the lips of nature,— —no gossip Naiad of the deep, breathless with the news, whisper to her wondering sisters of the shore-AMERICA? One can hardly think that the "conscious moon could so long have traversed

our presence without confessing the secret in her face. Wonderful, mysterious, America! This is that land for which Noah had no fourth son-of which the spoilt conqueror of Darius, when he wept for worlds on the banks of the Hydaspes, little thought-which never entered into the calculations of Pliny, nor mixed in the dreams of Plato. The grand, the colossal America, with its stupendous scenery and boundless expanse, and its noble-minded

I fear, in the opinion of some gentle Readers, this eagle of mine will turn out to be but a fly in the tele scope.

generous native tribes, that were cajoled, trampled on, put to death, for civilization's sake; slaughtered and exterminated to make room for banking houses and joint stock companies; America, with its simplehearted, honest, good-natured Peruvians-whose history makes the blood run cold in Christian veins, and renders the name of Spaniard a sound detestable in the ears of humanity; America, land for gods and heroes now ransacked from North to South by the greedy hands of Commerce-continent of clerks and counting-houses-filthy Mammon's peculiar kingdom!

one.

If the continent of America (supposed now by geographers to be insular, I believe,) is coeval with the vetus orbis, and has been peopled from the same point of time, then they who believe in mankind's indefinite power of advancement per se, have certainly a difficult cause to support. It is therefore at the risk of being suspected of too unscrupulous a desire to bolster my argument, but in reality with a sincere conviction, that I venture to state the following opinion. I do not believe that the continent of America is contemporary with the rest of the land; I believe that the "New World" is new in more senses than It seems to me that in her peculiarly wild and disordered aspect, America gives a sort of internal evidence of having left the bosom of the deep at no distant age. Her tremendous flood of rivers, with their jagged mouths cleft into a dozen pieces, as if by the impetuous recoil of waters after the first discharge, her towering heights and deep ravines, her lakes like seas, and thousand cataracts, all seem to I know nothing bespeak a recent and violent birth. of geology or chemistry, but I think those sciences would bear me out in asserting that there is a certain tendency throughout nature to equalization and amalgamation, the effect of which must be of course a diminution of marked features-a merging of the peculiar in the general. In chemistry, especially, I know, "give and take" is a leading principle; no anti-free-trade man can prevent this species of political economy as it is practised by chemical bodies, which carry on an unceasing interchange of their parts and qualities, mingling and communicating without end, and always hastening to a mass. So in the visible aspect of nature, I conceive the same principle is at work. Fill a glass with cold water, and leave it alone for a month; at the end of that time, behold! it is half gone; who has drunk it?-ask Anacreon. Dig a furrow a foot deep; visit it a twelvemonth afterwards-it is now no more than half a foot in depth; go at the end of another twelvemonth-it is not to be found. Rear a sandhill two feet high-imperceptibly it dwindles away, inch by inch, till you can no longer point out even the spot where it stood. What matters the scale, if the principle be true? Are not these so many mountains, lakes, and valleys in miniature? It does not seem too much then to assume, that these phænomena, subject of course to numerous conditional circumstances, are fair indications, if not available criteria, of the age of different countries. Now, judged by this standard, must not America be looked upon as new in the world, as a sort of infant Hercules, displaying its gigantic might in the cradle of childhood? There are, no doubt, in parts of the Old World, individual specimens of features as extraordinary as those which America exhibits (some of the Himalaya mountains, for example, are said to exceed the Andes in height) but where on the surface of the globe is to be found the same pervading magnificence, the same universal scale of grandeur in all the proportions of physical nature ? Where else shall we find, individually or collectively, such rivers as the St Lawrence, the Amazon, &c.-such lakes as Lake Erie, and Ontario, or where else a chain of mountains, such as the Titans of old with all the Ossas on all the Pelions could not have matched, spanning half a hemisphere, and topped with eternal snow under an equatorial sun,—with their very base—even the cities at their feet (as in the case of Quito plains) towering above the level of the sea, equidistantly with the summits of some of the most considerable mountains of Europe? If some few instances of a greater height are known, it need not disturb our conclusions, which

hinge not so much upon a comparison of the existing appearances of different objects, as upon a comparison of the actual with the former appearance of the same object. The Dhwalegeri may exceed Chimborazobut who can tell how much the Dhwalegeri may once have exceeded itself? Nay, the New World may be a wonderful world to us, but when the Old World was a New World, who can tell what may have been the glory of her strength-the beauty of her face? I think I hear her, with an indignant glance across the Atlantic

sence of facts is felt as a relief by the visionary theorist, it is no convenience to him whose conjectures may happen to be based in truth; since, where there are no facts to be thrown into the scale, it only requires the greater weight of reasonableness to induce conviction.

It is generally received that the continent of Africa, with Arabia, and the adjacent parts of westtern Asia, is the most ancient division of the ter

restrial globe. Now this exactly describes the circle

belief that I have endeavoured to support,-that America is a comparatively recent acquisition from the Ocean, I consider that the condition of the natives at the discovery (and let it never be forgotten that the Peruvians were found in a state of society

hardly to be called less than civilized) can afford nothing in disproof but may afford much in corroboration of these views.

and lakes which millions of thirsty summer suns have sucked dry; mountains which time has ground to dust; valleys that have become the graves of the mountains. And this I suppose to be the course of nature and the destination of the world, and these are the visible steps by which we are approaching a time when, in a literal sense, 66 every valley shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low." So does the earth sensibly strip herself, and puts by her toys one by one, and prepares to return in original

nakedness to the arms of old Chaos.

Then that curious geographical fact respecting the Caspian Sea. The Caspian Sea, it is well known, is a perfect lake, having no communication with the Ocean on any side. But it seems it has been ascertained, by barometrical observation, that this lake lies now as much as three hundred and six feet below the ocean level.* How this is accounted for, I do not know. That it must once have been parallel with the sea (to wit, at the general deluge) can admit of no question. There seems no other way of account

ing for it, than to suppose that it has been gradually

either evaporating, or subsiding away into the bosom of the earth;—and if we may reasonably suppose this, we may as reasonably suppose the same of all waters whatsoever, not distinguishing rivers from lakes, nor seas from rivers, otherwise than in the time and manner of their exhaustion.

I need not carry these speculations further for the object in view. Perhaps I have carried them too far, and ought to apologise for launching so freely into a subject which I understand so slightly. If, however, there be any ray of truth in what I have thus hazarded, I could wish that some shrewd person, really qualified to handle such matters, would take up the question, and try how far it would be possible to proceed in a theory grounded on geological facts relat. ing to the mutations of the earth. And let such person examine with a nice scrutiny all accounts in figures, respecting the heights, depths, distances and general relations of natural objects, that have come down to us in the works of the ancient geographers, and bring them into a close comparison with modern calculations, and see if he cannot bring to light some carious private charges against particular mountains, seas, &c., living or defunct. But if on the contrary I have deceived myself in this course of conjecture, I beg pardon of the better-informed; and shall hope presently to arrive at true conclusions. tempting, to be sure, to frame theories, when facts are not in the way to refute us-so easy to talk of Truth behind her back,-that one is apt to take too much delight perhaps in this sort of invention; yet it may be observed, in a general way, that if the ab"This fact," says the only account which I have seen of this," is so singular, that it is necessary to give the authority on which the determination is founded. It is deduced from nine years' observations with the barometer at Astracan, by Mr Lecre, compared with a series of observations made with the same barometer at Petersburgh."

It is so

MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL DEFICIENCIES OF THE ARISTOCRACY.

precation of too familiar a use of the name of "Tomkins," foreseen that it would have graced the titlepage of a man of wit and observation, who has just given the public some curious intelligence respecting the upper circles, he would have waited in contentment for that best possible assertion of its dignity. The following remarks are taken from a pamphlet just published, intitled Thoughts upon the Aristocracy of England, by Isaac Tomkins, Gent.' We do

not conceive ourselves to be trenching upon politics in extracting them. In fact, we have studiously omitted the political remarks that both precede and follow them; but we cannot omit passages in books every way interesting to us all, and to the purposes of knowledge, merely because they more immediately concern a class who have the misfortune to be better known as influencers of politics, than dispensers and perfecters of the elegancies they possess. We quoted Mr Simpson's remarks on the imperfections of their edueation, and we now quote this very curious and pungent testimony in evidence of his truth.] THE picture we are about to contemplate is not pleasing; it is, however, like: it has many features peculiar to the past state of things; it has some

stantial interest, and say a word of society merely The one of the two youths whom we are supposing to be started together in life, is born to admittance everywhere, and to the unsolicited enjoyment of the most refined society; the other may arrive at the same favour after he has made himself famous by his talents, or powerful by his success, when the silly creatures who preside over such intercourse would feel themselves neglected if he were not found among their attendants. As for the daughter of the tradesman or the yeoman, no fancy can help us to picture her in those haunts of fashion, be she as fair as Venus, as chaste as Diana, as wise as Minerva, unless she has been able to repair the ruined fortunes of some noble rake by the legacy of an uncle in the East Indies. For the brother, parliamentary eloquence, (not learning or solid wisdom,) party devotion, or professional success, may cast a plank across the gulph which separates the circles of high and middling society. For the sister there is but one bridge, and it must be made of solid and massive gold. Passing across it, she will be admitted to the enjoyment of having her relations sneered at, and, if her ears are very acute, herself nicknamed among those whom she saves from want of bread; she will listen to the horrors of vulgar life, the atrocities of under-breeding, the hatefulness of honest industry, the misfortune of humble birth, until she dares not look about her or behind her, but is haunted by the recollection of her origin as if it had been a crime, and is brought to be more ashamed of her humble and virtuous family than if they had borne her in the hulks or bred her on the tread-mill.

"But surely," the country or the city reader will exclaim, "there must be something extremely cap

tivating in this fine society, which makes it so much run after, and gives it so much sway, not only over the fashion, but even over the policy of the country!' For that it does exercise such influence we cannot deny. Statesmen pass much of their time in it; they discuss their measures of a 'party nature before the empty women and the frivolous youths who compose it. They are not a little moved by the opinion which has dominion in these select circles; they are prevented from making useful appointments of men unknown to these arbiters and arbitresses of fashion-and therefore despised by thembut who would be still more despised if they were known, because they are men of learning and sound The same statesmen are also kept from taking an interest in many good works-as in humane and philanthropic pursuits-and in supporting wise measures of improvement founded upon profound views of human nature and of man's wants,

sense.

The question is this. A substantial farmer or a reputable shopkeeper, intending to let two or three of his sons continue in his own business, has the spirit and the means to give one of them, who shows good abilities, a better education, that he may be a parson or a lawyer. The lad goes to Oxford, and he there meets the younger son of the squire or the nobleman, about his own age.-Now which of the two finds it easiest to get on in the world? Which is soonest received into the company of men of influence in the college? Which makes his way best to notice, wherever it is of importance to him that he should obtain notice? Which has, first at college, and afterwards in town, most favour bestowed on his efforts? Which rises the fastest and mounts the highest, supposing their abilities and understanding equal? Does it not require that the obscure man should be a first-rate genius to climb the heights of his career, be that civil or military, ecclesiastical or political? In England these questions can be an. wered in one only way.'

i. But suppose we come away from matters of sub

sacred precincts, all mention of such things is sure to be greeted. Lastly, as those circles are drawn round the very focus of all hatred and contempt for the people, they are the very hotbeds of Toryism and intolerance; nothing being more certain than that the Women of Fashion and all the young Aris tocrats (perhaps more or less of all parties) hate Reform,-desire more or less openly to have a strong, arbitrary, Tory government, and would fain see the day dawn upon military power established on the ruins of the national representation.

"What, then," our honest yeoman's son, our worthy tradesman's daughter, may properly ask, "what is it that gives the Aristocratic circles all this extraordinary influence? and first of all, why is the admission into Aristocratic society so very highly prized, that we of the middle classes are ready to leave father or mother, and brother and sister, and cleave unto them, if we can only, at the cost of such sacrifices, obtain admission within their pale?"

First, it must be admitted that there is a very great, a very real charm, in those circles of society. The elegance of manners which there prevails is perfect; the taste which reigns over all is complete; the tone of conversation is highly agreeable— infinitely below that of France indeed--but still most fascinating. There is a lightness, an ease, a gaiety, which to those who have no important object in view, and who deem it the highest privilege of

existence, and the utmost effort of genius, to pass the hours agreeably, must be all that is most attractive.

After this ample admission, let us add, that whoever, after passing an evening in this society, shall attempt to recollect the substance of the conversation, will find himself engaged in a hopeless task. It would be easier to record the changes of colour in a pigeon's neck, or the series of sounds made by an Æolian harp, or the forms and hues of an Aurora Borealis. All is pleasing; all pretty; all serviceable in passing the time; but all unsubstantial. If man had nothing to do here below but to spend without pain or uneasiness the hours not devoted to sleep, certainly there would be no reason to complain of these coteries. But if he is accountable for his time, then surely he has no right to pass it thus. Compared with this, chess becomes a science; drafts and backgammon are highly respectable. Compared with this, dancing, which is exercise, and even games of romps are rational modes of passing the hours. Compared with this, it is worthy of a rational being to read the most frivolous romance that was ever penned, or gaze upon the poorest mime that ever strutted on the stage.

The want of sense and reason which prevails in these circles is wholly inconceivable. An ignorance of all that the more refined of the middle, or even of the lower classes, well know, is accompanied by an insulting contempt for any one who does not know any of the silly and worthless trifles which form the staple of their only knowledge. An intire incapicity of reasoning is twin sister to a ready and flippant and authoritative denial of all that reason has taught others. An utter impossibility of understanding what men of learning and experience have become familiar with, stalks hand in hand, insolent and exulting, with a stupid denial of truths which are all but self-evident, and are of extreme importance. Every female member of this exquisite class is under the exclusive dominion of some waitingmaid, or silly young lover, or slandermongering newspaper; and if not under the sway of one paper, lives in bodily fear of two or three. Bribes, entreaties, threats, are by turns employed to disarm these tyrants; and however tormented the wretched victim may be, she is forced by some strange fatality, or propensity, to read what most tortures her.

Indeed, the relations of this Aristocratic class with the press, form one of the features most illustrative of the Aristocratic character, replete as it is with all the caprice and waywardness, the unreasoning and often unfeeling propensities, the alternate fits of blindness to all danger, and alarm where all is safe; in short, all that goes to the composition of a child, and a spoiled child.

Of the press, then, they live in habitual dread; but it is a fear, which being altogether void of wisdom, produces good neither to its victims nor its objects. Frightened to death at any unfavourable allusion to themselves or their ways, they support with the most stoical indifference all attacks upon their professed principles, all opposition to the policy they fancy they approve. Furious to the pitch of Bethlehem or St Luke's, if they themselves be but touched or threatened, nothing can be more exemplary than the fortitude with which they sustain the rudest shocks that can be given to the reputation of their dearest and nearest connexions. Nay, they bear without flinching, with the patience of anchorites, and the courage of martyrs, (but that the pain is vicarious,) the most exquisite and longcontinued tortures to which the feelings of their friends and relations can be subjected. This is no exaggeration; for it is below, very much below the truth. They delight in the slander of that press, the terrors of which daily haunt them, and nightly break their slumbers. Nothing is to them a greater enjoyment than to read all that can be said against their friends. They know, to be sure, that all is false; but, judging by themselves, they know that all of it gives pain. The public, they are quite aware, believe little of it; for of late

years the press has taken pretty good care to make its attacks very harmless in that respect; but then they feel that those friends who are the objects of the abuse are probably as sensitive as themselves. Thus, the class we are speaking of form in reality the slander-market of the day; and yet, with a miraculous inconsistency, they are in one everlasting chorus against "the license of the press," which, but for them, would have no being; but for their follies, no object; but for their malice, no support; but for their spiteful credulity, no dupes to work upon; but for their existence, no chance of continuing its They, indeed, turn upon their own instruments make war upon the tools they work withthe very limbs they sustain and move! It is the rebellion of the members reversed; for here we have the overgrown belly attacking the limbs! Had the Aristocrats the power and the industry, they would indite their book A Good Name worthless,' or The Crimes of the Press,' but we should then expect to see Sermons on the Sixth Commandment, by a Receiver of Stolen Goods.'

own.

But more

That their encouragement is confined to the vilest portion of the press, has long ago been affirmed, and is not denied. The respectable journals are no favourite reading of theirs. The newspaper that fearlessly defends the right; that refuses to pander for the headlong passions of the multitude, or cater for the vicious appetites of the selecter circles; that does its duty alike regardless of the hustings and the boudoir ; has little chance of lying on the satin-wood table, of being blotted with ungrammatical ill-spelt notes, half bad English, half worse French, or of being fondled by fingers that have just broken a gold-wax seal on a grass-green paper. especially will it be excluded, possibly extruded, from those sacred haunts of the Corinthian order, if it convey any solid instruction upon a useful or important subject, interesting to the species which the writers adorn, and the patricians do their best to degrade. Even wit the most refined finds no echo in such minds; and if it be used in illustrating an argument or in pressing home the demonstration (which it often may be), the author is charged with treating a serious subject lightly, and of jesting where he should reason. Broad humour, descending to farce, is the utmost reach of their capacity; and that is of no value in their eyes unless it raises a laugh at a friend's expense. Some who have lived at Court,

and are capable of better things, say they carefully eschew all jests; for Princes take such things as a personal affront—as raising the joker to their own level, by calling on them to laugh with him. One kind of jest, indeed, never fails to find favour in those high latitudes-where the author is himself the subject of the merriment. Buffoonery is a denizen in all courts, but most commonly indigenous; and, after the court's example patrician society is fashioned. It is not in the true Aristocratic circles that anyone will adventure the most harmless jest who would not pass for a jacobin or a free-thinker. He make may merry with the led-captain, or the humble companion, or possibly the chaplain (though that was rather in the olden time, before the French Revolution had taught the upper orders to pay the homage rendered by vice to virtue,* without acquiring piety or morals). Any other kind of wit rather indicates, if tolerated, that the adventurous individual has found his way thither from the lower latitudes of the liberal party.

* Hypocrisy-thus described by a French writer, wit, and nobleman-indeed a duke; for in France, where, even under the absolute monarchy, the claims of letters and talents were always admitted, the nobility cultivated wit and learning, and were a race infinitely superior to our own, in proportion as literary men were admitted into their society on a footing of equality.

THE WEEK.

PERSONAL PORTRAITS OF EMINENT MEN.

WOLFF, THE GERMAN SCHOLAR.

WOLFF was of middle stature; his demeanour natural, yet dignified; his forehead broad and lofty, his eyes blue, deep set, and penetrating; the mouth gracefully formed; but with a slightly sarcastic expression; the general expression of his countenance was that of power, tempered with mildness. His gait and movements partook of the vivacity of his mind; his temper was quick and sensitive; he was easily offended, but as easily reconciled. He never brooded over vexations and disappointments, but expressed his feelings strongly, once for all, and forgot them. So open was his mind to the influence of the pathetic, that, like our Richard Bentley, he could not ́peruse a tender passage in his favourite poets without tears.

In his conversation there was a singular charm,— wisdom was so set off by wit, and profound learning poured forth with so little pedantry; anecdotes and characteristic sketches of the many eminent men, with whom his long literary career had brought him in contact, succeeded each other so amusingly, and with so little appearance of egotism, that it had equal attractions for the learned and unlearned. With none was Wolff a greater favourite in society than with the ladies, with whom he could intirely abandon the dictatorial and Johnsonian style into which, in argument with the other sex, he was not unfrequently betrayed. Of irony, he had a wonderful command, and when provoked by any appearance of pretension or affectation, he used it unsparingly. He had less of the intellectual gladiator about him, however, than the Doctor; he did not throw down the gauntlet to all comers, though, when once embarked in debate, their conversation had many features in

common.

His household arrangements, with a great pretension to order, seem to have been confusion worse confounded. Knowing the peculiarity of his own habits and dispositions, he entertained a great dislike to "clever servants;" his object always was to secure some quiet, good-natured creature, who would be as much as possible an automaton in his hands, and live, move, and have his being exactly as the professor choose to direct.

Wolff had the greatest aversion to being kept waiting, and had never, probably, kept a coachman waiting five minutes, in his life. He exacted the same punctuality from his unfortunate servant: in the morning he would give him a list of twenty messages to be performed, for each of which a quarter of an hour, or half an hour was allowed, as the case might be; and if, as was occasionally unavoidable, his servant exceeded the time allowed, the professor would pour such a storm about his ears, that with all his liberality he had enough to do to retain a servant in his house.

Of taste, either in matters of dress or ornament, he had not a vestige. He was fond of fine clothes, but never could contrive to dress decently; the furniture of his house was gaudy, but selected without the least regard to propriety, and huddled together as in an upholsterer's ware-room.

Like many other literary men, he was a most irregular correspondent; letters from his correspondents would be occasionally left unanswered for years: his own, when he did write any, are generally distinguished by wit, and a careless felicity of expression.

As a teacher, we have already said, he was active and conscientious in the highest degree; and few seem to have so thoroughly possessed the art of conciliating affection united with respect. He had the satisfaction of witnessing in his lifetime the most gratifying results of these exertions, in the progress and high character of many who had derived their instruction from him, and drawn their inspiration from his example. "I enjoy," he writes in a blank leaf of his journal, on one of his last birth-days, good fortune, which falls to the lot of few, that of seeing, while alive, the promise of a plentiful harvest from the seed I had sown with toil, and of calculating, in some measure, its increase when I am no more."

66

a

ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE.

LXV. A TALE OF OLD ITALIAN REVENGE.

[THIS is from our old friend Camerarius' (see Nos. 26-29); and is full of frightful truth. We behold the horrible human relics (taken for bats!) blackening on the city gate. There are no such sights now in Italy, thanks to the progress of knowledge and Christian feeling; and we shall not be too hasty to triumph over "Italian" stories of revenge, when we call to mind, that spectacles not very dissimilar (more horrible in one respect, because they had faces) were to be seen, not a great many years ago, over Temple Bar and one of the bridges. And even against stories of modern Italian assassination may be set off too many appalling things in our daily newspapers. But then more of them transpire now than they used to do, owing to those channels of publicity. We are all getting on, thank God, generally speaking, in knowledge andj humanity, the whole civilized world, ay, and the uncivilized; and we should desire and love to get on, all together,-nobody lording it or valuing himself over another. English, Italians, French, &c. will, we verily believe, before many years are past, be like all one great intelligent family, acknowledging the same guidance of public opinion, and interchanging all the blessings of advancement.] ONE day (says our honest and earnest old scholar) as I went from Rome with my companie, and past through the Marquisal of Ancona, wee were to go through a citie called Terni, seated in a very pleasant and fruitfull valley, betweene the armes of a riuer called the Mar. As wee entered into the citie, wee saw ouer the gate a certaine tablet upon a high tower, to which were tied (as it seemed to vs at first), a great many Bats or Reere-mise. Wee thinking it a strange sight, and not knowing what it meant, being set vp in so eminent a place, one of the citie whom we asked, told us of a certaine thing that had hapned some years before. There were (quoth he) in this citie, two noble, rich, and mightie houses, which for a very long time carried on an irreconcileable hatred the one against the other, in so much as the malice passed from the father to the son, as it were by inheritance; by occasion whereof many of both houses were slain and murdered. At last, the one house not able to stay the fire of their violent wrath, resolved to stand about murdering no more of the aduerse by surprise and treason, but to run upon them all at once, and not to leaue one bodie thereof aliue. They of this bloodie familie gathered together out of the countrie adioyning (vnder some other pretence) many of their seruants which met in the citie, whereof they ioyned them to their Bravos (which are swaggerers, assassins, and hacksters, such as many Italians that haue quarrels, keep in pay, to employ them in the execution of their reuenges) and secretly armed them enioyning them to be always readie to do some notable exploit whensoeuer they should be called upon. Soon after taking hold of occasion, they march about midnight with their people to the Gouernour's house, who mistrusted nothing, seare of his person, being a man of authoritie and power, and (leauing guards in the same house until they should haue executed their purpose) goe on silent towards the house of their enemies, and disposing their troops at euery street end, about ten of them goe on to the same house (the Gouernour being between them) as if they had been the archers of his guard, whom they compelled to command that speedy opening might be made him, as if he had some seruice of importance to dispatch within their house and withal they held a poinyard at his throat, threatning to kill him if they said not that which they had put into his mouth. He amazed at the death which he saw present before his eyes, caused all the doors to be opened, a thing which they within made no refusal of, seeing the Gouernour there: which being done, those ten call their complices, not farre off, put the Gouernour into safe keeping, enter into the house, and

there most cruelly murder man, woman, and child, nay, they spare not so much as the horses in the stable. That done, they make the Gouernour set open the city gates, and so depart, and disperse themselves into diuers secret places, here and there, among their friends. The wisest of them fled to the next sea-ports, and got them away far off: but as for those that kept anything neere, they were so diligently searcht for, that they were found and drawn out of their holes by the justices, greatly mooved (as good cause there was) with such a horrible massacre: so these wicked offenders were put to death with the most greiuous punishments, and after, their hands and their feet being cut off, were nailed to the tablet which you saw (quoth he) as ye entered the gate, on the top of the tower, set up for a show to terrifie the cruel, and to serue for a lesson to posteritie: the sun having broiled those limbs so fastened and set up, maketh travellers to think (that know nothing of this horrible tragedie) that they be Reere-mise. Wee hauing heard this pitiful discourse, reuenge, kept on our way." with detestation of such a furious and cruel desire of

CHARACTERS OF SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS.

BY WILLIAM HAZLITT.

NO. XIII. ROMEO AND JULIET.

ROMEO AND JULIET' is the only tragedy which Shakspeare has written intirely on a love-story. It is supposed to have been his first play, and it deserves to stand in that proud rank. There is the buoyant spirit of youth in every line, in the rapturous intoxication of hope, and in the bitterness of despair. It has been said of Romeo and Juliet,' by a great critic, that "whatever is most intoxicating in the odour of a southern spring, languishing in the song of the nightingale, or voluptuous in the first opening of the rose, is to be found in this poem." The description is true; and yet it does not answer to our idea of the play. For if it has the sweetness of the rose, it has its freshness too; if it has the languor of the nightingale's song, it has also its giddy transport; if it has the softness of a southern spring, it is as glowing and as bright. There is nothing of a sickly and sentimental cast. Romeo and Juliet are in love, but they are not love-sick. Everything speaks the very soul of pleasure, the high and healthy pulse of the passions: the heart beats, the blood circulates and mantles throughout. Their courtship is not an insipid interchange of sentiments lip-deep, learnt at second-hand from poems and plays,-made up of beauties of the most shadowy kind, of "fancies wan that hang the pensive head," of evanescent smiles and sighs that breathe not, of delicacy that shrinks from the touch, and feebleness that scarce supports itself, an elaborate vacuity of thought, and an artificial dearth of sense, spirit, truth and nature! It is the reverse of all this. It is Shakspeare all over, and Shakspeare when he was young.

We have heard it objected to Romeo and Juliet,' that it is founded on an idle passion between a boy and a girl, who have scarcely seen and can have but little sympathy or rational esteem for one another, who have had no experience of the good or ills of life, and whose raptures or despair must be therefore equally groundless and fantastical. Whoever objects to the youth of the parties in this play as "too unripe and crude" to pluck the sweets of love, and wishes to see a first-love carried on into a good old age, and the passions taken at the rebound, when their force is spent, may find all this done in the Stranger,' and in other German plays, where they do things by contraries, and transpose nature to inspire sentiment and create philosophy. Shakspeare proceeded in a more straight-forward, and, we think, effectual way. He did not endeavour to extract beauty from wrinkles, or the wild throb of passion from the last expiring sigh of indifference. He did not "gather grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles." It was not his way. But he has given a picture of human life, such as it is in the order of nature. He

has founded the passion of the two lovers not on the pleasures they had experienced, but on all the pleasures they had not experienced. All that was to come of life was theirs. At that untried source of promised happiness they slaked their thirst, and the first eager draught made them drunk with love and joy. They were in full possession of their senses and their affections. Their hopes were of air, their desires of fire. Youth is the season of love, because the heart is then first melted in tenderness from the touch of novelty, and kindled to rapture, for it knows no end of its enjoyments or its wishes. Desire has no limit but itself. Passion, the love and expectation of pleasure, is infinite, extravagant, inexhaustible, till experience comes to kill and check it. Juliet exclaims on her first interview with Romeo

"My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep."

And why should it not? What was to hinder the thrilling tide of pleasure, which had just gushed from her heart, from flowing on without stint or measure, but experience which she was yet without? What was to abate the transport of the first sweet sense of pleasure, which her heart and her senses had just tasted, but indifference which she was yet a stranger to? What was there to check the ardour of hope, of faith, of constancy, just rising in her breast, but disappointment which she had not yet felt? As are the desires and the hopes of youthful passion, such is the keenness of its disappointments, and their baleful effect. Such is the transition in this play from the highest bliss to the lowest despair, from the nuptial couch to an untimely grave. The only evil that even in apprehension befalls the two lovers is the loss of the greatest possible felicity; yet this loss is fatal to both, for they had rather part with life than bear the thought of surviving all that had made life dear to them. In all this, Shakspeare has but followed nature, which existed in his time, as well as now. The modern philosophy, which reduces the whole theory of the mind to habitual impressions, and leaves the natural impulses of passion and imagination out of the account, had not then been discovered; or if it had, would have been little calculated for the uses of poetry.

It is the inadequacy of the same false system of philosophy to account for the strength of our earliest attachments, which has led Mr Wordsworth to indulge in the mystical visions of Platonism in his 'Ode on the Progress of Life.' He has very admirably described the vividness of our impressions in youth and childhood, and how "they fade by degrees into the light of common day," and he ascribes the change to the supposition of a pre-existent state, as if our early thoughts were nearer heaven, reflections of former trails of glory, shadows of our past being. This is idle. It is not from the knowledge of the past that the first impressions of things derive their gloss and splendour, but from our ignorance of the future, which fills the void to come with the warmth of our desires, with our gayest hopes, and brightest fancies. It is the obscurity spread before it that colours the prospect of life with hope, as it is the cloud which reflects the rainbow. There is no occasion to resort to any mystical union and transmission of feeling through different states of being to account for the romantic enthusiasm of youth; nor to plant the root of hope in the grave, nor to derive it from the skies. Its root is in the heart of man: it lifts its head above the stars. Desire and imagination are inmates of the human breast. The heaven "that lies about us in our infancy" is only a new world, of which we know nothing but what we wish it to be, and believe all that we wish. In youth and boyhood, the world we live in is the world of desire, and of fancy: it is experience that brings us down to the world of reality. What is it that in youth sheds a dewy light round the evening star? That makes the daisy look so bright? That perfumes the hyacinth? That embalms the first kiss of love? It is the delight of novelty, and the seeing no end to the pleasure that we fondly believe is still in store for us. The heart revels in the luxury of its own thoughts,