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The following lines were proposed by Mr. Reginald Heber as an inscription for the vase presented to Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, by the nobility and gentry of Denbighshire, at the conclusion of the war in 1815:

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"Ask ye why around me twine
Tendrils of the Gascon vine?
Ask ye why, in martial pride,
Sculptured laurels deck my side,
Blended with that noble tree,
Badge of Albion's liberty?
Cambria me, for glory won
By the waves of broad Garronne,
Sends to greet her bravest son;
Proved beyond the western deep,
By rebel clans on Ulster's steep;
Proved, where first on Gallia's plain,
The banish'd lily bloom'd again;
And prov'd where ancient bounty calls
The traveller to his father's halls!

Nor marvel, then, that round me twine

The oak, the laurel, and the vine;

For thus was Cambria wont to see

Her Hirlas-horn of victory:

Nor Cambria e'er, in days of yore,

To worthier chief the Hirlas bore!"

To E. D. Davenport, Esq.

"DEAR DAVENPORT,

Hodnet, March 14th, 1816.

"I feel that I have too long neglected to thank you for the kind and useful warning which you sent me from Lichfield, of which I did not fail to take advantage, though whether any further benefit is likely to accrue to me from the çi-devant Old Bank, than the excellent appetite produced by a long ride on a snowy and rainy day, is as yet in the darkness of futurity. "The farmers in this neighbourhood speak very despondingly of the bankrupt's sufficiency; but at the present moment a far

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* At Nantwich, by the failure of which house Mr. Reginald Heber was a considerable loser.-ED.

LETTER TO THE REV. GEORGE WILKINS.

413

mer is disposed to look on every thing in the most unfavourable and hopeless light. The Old Bank at Shrewsbury (on whose shoulders all the subsequent defaulters lay the blame of their own difficulties) is expected to recommence immediately; more strong from its fall.

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"I congratulate you most sincerely on your having so well arranged the letting of your farms. Verily, for those who can persevere in a course of losing for a few months longer, farming, I believe, will turn out a profitable concern, inasmuch as it will approach nearer to a monopoly than it has done for many years past. Yet, amid all these distresses, with the exception of a few flannel merchants in Shrewsbury, nobody in this neighbourhood has petitioned against the income tax. I do not ascribe this to patience, much less to indifference, but simply to the persuasion, which in this neighbourhood is very prevalent, that to petition would be only useless trouble, and I believe to some remains of the old confidence in that identity of interests which De Lolme extols, between the representatives and the represented.

"I feel curious to know whether the necessities of the country gentlemen have rendered London duller than usual. Do more men dine at clubs, and give fewer parties? Are routs less crowded? or has bankruptcy produced, as it often does, a greater display, and more eagerness to conceal the poverty of which men are conscious? I should fancy that, as the present times are such as undoubtedly neither you nor I have seen before, and such as there is good reason to hope we shall neither of us fall in with again, the behaviour of mankind under their pressure might, to a philosopher like yourself, be not uninteresting. Nor can your lucubrations be communicated to one who will receive them more gladly than,

"Dear Davenport,

"Your obliged friend,

"REGINALD HEBER."

To the Rev. George Wilkins.

Hodnet Rectory, March 16, 1816.

"MY DEAR SIR,

"After a pilgrimage little less tedious than that of Mirza Abu Taleb Khân, your beautiful manuscript of Hafiz is at

length safely arrived. Allow me to offer you my best thanks for so valuable a present, which will make a very conspicuous figure in my humble collection. I shall always look at it with pleasure, as recalling to mind the confidence with which you have flattered me, and as encouraging the hope that, notwithstanding our distance and occupations, we may still, at no distant time, contrive a meeting, and thus put an end to the solecism of a friendship carried on without personal acquaintance. "Your's very truly,

"REGINALD HEBER."

In looking over some prose translations of the Shah Nameh of Ferdusi, and the Moallakah of Hareth, Mr. Reginald Heber was so much struck with the beauty of the oriental imagery which they present, that he versified the two following passages:

SPEECH OF GEOORGIN TO BEYUN.

(From the Shah Nameh.)

Seest thou yon shelter'd vale of various dye,
Refreshing prospect to the warrior's eye?
Yon dusty grove, yon garden blooming fair,
The turf of velvet, and of musk the air?
Surcharg'd with sweets the languid river glides,
The lilies bending o'er its silver tides;
While through the copse in bashful beauty glows
The dark luxuriance of the lurking rose.
Now seen, now lost, amid the flowery maze,
With slender foot the nimble pheasant strays;
The ring-dove's murmur lulls the cypress dell,
And richest notes of tranced Philomel,

Still, still the same, through every circling year,
Unwearied spring renews an Eden here.
And mark, my friend, where many a sylph-like maid
Weaves the lithe dance beneath the citron shade!
Where chief, of Touran's king the matchless child,
Beams like a sun-ray through this scented wild;
Sitara next, her sister, beauteous queen,
Than rose or fairest jasmine fairer seen;

And last, their Turkish maids, whose sleepy eyes
Laugh from beneath each envious veil's disguise,

EASTERN POETRY.

Whose length of locks the coal-black musk disclose,
Their forms the cypress, and their cheeks the rose;
While on their sugar'd lips the grapes rich water glows.
How blest the traveller not forbid to stay

In such sweet bowers the scorching summer's day!
How fam'd the knight whose dauntless arm should bear
To great Khi-Kusroo's court a Turkish fair!

FROM THE MOALLAKAH OF HARETH.

415

And Asma! lovely sojourner! wilt thou forsake our land,
Forgetful of thy plighted vows on Shamma's glittering sand?
No more in Shoreb's rugged dell I see thee by my side,
No more in Katha's mead of green where vocal waters glide!
In Ayla and in Shobathan all lonely must I go,
And, therefore, sleep has fled my soul, and fast my sorrows flow!

Yet am I loved, and yet my eyes behold the beacon light
Which Hinda kindles on her hill, to lure me through the night,
Broad as the dawn, from Akik's brow its ruddy embers shine,
But Hinda's heart may never meet an answering glow in mine!
And I must seek a nobler aid against consuming care,
Where all the brethren of my tribe the battle bow prepare.

My camel with the mother-bird in swiftness well may vie,
Tall as a tent, 'mid desert sands that rears her progeny,
That lists the murmur of the breeze, the hunter's lightest sound
With stealthy foot at twilight fall soft gliding o'er the ground;

But not the ostrich speed of fire my camel can excel,
Whose footstep leaves so light a mark we guess not where it fell;
Now up, now down, like wither'd leaves that flit before the wind,
On her I stem the burning noon that strikes the valiant blind.

Yes, we have heard an angry sound of danger from afar,
Our brother's bands of Tayleb's seed have braved us to the war;
The good and evil they confound, their words are fierce and fell,
"Their league," say they, "is with the tribe that in the desert dwell."
Their men of might have met by night, and as the day began,
A proud and a disdainful shout throughout their army ran,
And horses neighed, and camels screamed, and man cried out on man!

CHAPTER XIV.

66

Death of the Rev. T. C. Heber-" Timour's Councils"-Milman's "Siege of Jerusalem"-Heads of a proposed pamphlet "On the Causes of the present Discontents”—Kinneir's “Travels in Asia Minor"-" Childe Harold"-Mr. Reginald Heber's appointment as University Preacher-Fragment of the "Masque of Gwendolen"-Bowdler's "Select Pieces in prose and Verse"--The distresses of the country--Anecdote of a beggar -Treatise on the distinction between the two Maries. 18161817.

In the year 1816 Mr. Reginald Heber sustained a heavy affliction in the loss of his youngest brother, Thomas Cuthbert, who died from the rupture of a vessel on the brain, after a short illness, on the 27th of March. A similarity of age, education, and profession had united them with more than ordinary fraternal affection. From infancy they had seldom been separated; and the younger brother had acted as curate to the elder till the year before his death, when he removed to his own perpetual curacy of Moreton See. The blow thus fell with peculiar weight; under its influence the hymn for the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany was composed, and the original manuscript contained the following stanza :

"He called me by a brother's bier,

As down I knelt to prayer,

But ah! though sorrow shed the tear,
Repentance was not there!"

From this time forward it was Mr. Reginald Heber's constant custom to consecrate every important occurrence of his life by a short prayer. Several of these aspirations have unfortunately been lost in the various removals of his papers; but such as are preserved will be given according to their dates. On his birth-day in this year he writes, "completed my thirty-third

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