stituted for the time the great attraction of that journal. Father Prout is a fictitious character (at least we presume so;) a Roman Catholic priest, who at Watergrasshill, in Ireland, wrote his opinions of men and things. After his death his MSS. came into the hands of the Editor of Fraser, who occasionally inserts some of them in his Magazine. We need not say that they are all strongly tinged with the extravagant political wiews of that publication, in many cases to a ludicrous extent.

The volumes are the production of a mind of a very superior order. They display throughout the liveliest wit, in combination with profound learning and research. One of the papers is entitled “ The rogueries of Tom Moore," and is intended to prove that poet to be a notorious plagiarist. To maintain this point, the writer has translated some of Moore's pieces into Greek and Latin; he then pretends to have discovered the ancient originals, and exhibits them to the reader as conclusive evidence of the Irish bard's thieving propensities. This is managed so well that at first sight, we imagine that Moore is a translator from these Greek and Latin poems, which are, in fact, translations from his.

We shall confine ourselves at present to the poetical parts of these volumes. Four papers on the songs of France," give spirited translations of some of the choicest productions of that country, with beautiful critical and historical notices. There are two on "the songs of Italy," from which we shall give a few extracts.

"There is one statue in rather an unfrequented, but vast and magni ficent church, of the Eternal City, round which I never failed to meet a group of enthusiastic admirers: it is the celebrated Moses, in which the French have only found matter for vulgar jest, but which the Italians view with becoming veneration. One of the best odes in the language has been composed in honour of this glorious effort of Buonarotti's chisel :

Ode to the Statue of Moses at the foot of the Mausoleum of Pope Julius II., in the Church of St. Peter ad Vineula, Rome-the

Masterpiece of Michael Angelo.

Statue' whose giant limbs
Old Buonarotti planned,

And Genius carved with meditative hand,

Thy dazzling radiance dims

The best and brightest boast of Sculpture's favourite land.

And cogitation deep,

Of some uncommon mind the rapt beholder warns.

In that proud semblance, well
My soul can recognise

The prophet fresh from converse with the skies;
Nor is it hard to tell

The liberator's name, the Guide of Israel.

Well might the deep respond

Obedient to that voice,

When on the Red Sea shore he waved his wand
And bade the tribes rejoice,

Saved from the yawning gulf and the Egyptian's bond!

Fools! in the wilderness

Ye raised a calf of gold!

Had ye then worshipped what I now behold,

For

ye

Your crime had been far less

had bent the knee to one of godlike mould!

There is a striking boldness and originality in the concluding stanza, and the thought is warranted by the awful majesty of the colossal figure of which no plaster can give an adequate idea."

The following translation from Petrarcha contains the genuine elements of repentance.

"Towards the close of his career, when the vanity of all earthly af fection became more palpable to his understanding, there is something like regret expressed for having ever indulged in that most pardonable of all human weaknesses, the hopeless and disinterested admiration of what was virtuous and lovely, unmixed with the grossness of sensual attachment, and unprofaned by the vulgarities of animal passion. Still he felt that there was in the pursuit of that pleasing illusion some thing unworthy of his profession as a clergyman; and he has recorded his act of contrition in the following beautiful lines, with which I

close :

The Repentance of Petrarcha.

Bright days of sunny youth, irrevocable years!
Period of manhood's prime,

O'er thee I shed sad, but unprofitable tears→→
Lapse of returnless time:"

Oh! I have cast away, like so much worthless dross,
Hours of most precious ore-

Blest hours I could have coined for heaven, your loss
For ever I'll deplore!

Contrite I kneel, O God inscrutable, to thee,
High heaven's immortal king!

Thou gavest me a soul that to thy bosom free
Might soar on seraph wing:

My mind with gifts and grace thy bounty had endowed
To cherish thee alone-

Those gifts I have abused, this heart I have allowed
Its Maker to disown.

But from his wanderings reclaimed, with full, with throbbing heart,
Thy truant has returned:

Oh! be the idol and the hour that led him to depart

From thee for ever mourned.

If I have dwelt remote, if I have loved the tents of guilt-
To thy fond arms restored,

Here let me die! On whom can my eternal hopes be built,
SAVE UPON THEE, O LORD!

ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN.

On Mental Cultivation.

THERE is a very large class of society whose interests we are too apt to overlook, whose station renders them influential, and whose mental improvement, on that account, is exceedingly desirable; we allude to young men, who previous to their settlement in life, are filling subordinate stations as men of business. While those who are training for professions necessarily exercise their intellect and cultivate their abilities, those who are destined for tradesmen, in most cases leave learning when they are removed from school, and never contemplate further improvement. For

the benefit of all so circumstanced the following remarks are offered.

We advise all young men to remember that they are entrusted with powers of understanding, which it is their duty to improve. You are sufficiently alive to the fact, that your personal interests must be furthered, since your continual occupations from day to day, are solely intended to promote them. Forget not that your Creator has given you minds which were never intended to be neglected. They are far superior to your persons, and their position as degraded or exalted, is more connected with your happiness than the measure of your commercial success.

You are aware how frequently it is said, "what have young men in business to do with literature and science?" In too many cases employers put forth this exclamation, as though they feared that any attention to books would be detrimental to their interests. You may always meet this objection by the grand principle, that God has given you souls capable of improvement, and requires their cultivation. Always bear in mind that the influence of an exclusive attachment to business must be pernicious; it will throw you further from intelligence and bring you nearer to a mere physical or animal condition. In short, you will become mere machines with no power to do anything unconnected with the commodities you sell, or to think beyond the sphere of the warehouse.

Besides this great reason for cultivating your minds,arising from your duty to God, there are many others which we shall briefly enumerate.

Your happiness will be increased in proportion as you enlarge your acquaintance with men and things. Business you will often find to be a toil, requiring some pleasure to counteract its influence. The pleasure which is yielded by mental employment is always at hand. You need not leave your stations, or your families to procure it. An hour in the morning or the evening devoted to reading and reflection, will give you something to fall back upon throughout the whole of the day. As your mental stores increase, you will

be qualified to mingle in society of a reflecting character; this will throw a charm over your life, and enable you to encounter toil with fortitude.

Your usefulness will be increased by mental cultivation. Presuming that in this age, when a thousand institutions furnish scope for the powers of all classes, you will not live to yourselves, we lay much stress on this. You will be able to do good in a higher degree in proportion as your minds are enlarged. Suppose you take an interest in a sunday school, where is some mental superiority more needed? An idiot might almost go through the mechanical process of teaching to read, but to instruct your charge some attainment is necessary.

Mechanics' Institutions are rapidly spreading, and they will soon exist in every town in the kingdom. They furnish a fine sphere of usefulness to intelligent young men. In many of them, persons actively engaged in business, often deliver lectures with remarkable success. Their history indeed is a practical refutation of the statement that that commerce and literature are not congenial. Some of the most useful members of mechanics' institutions would be found to be the most successful tradesmen.

The utility of a knowledge of science cannot be estimated. Britain owes every thing to it, in a commercial point of view. The improvements in our manufactures have been made by tradesmen, who had cultivated their minds. We cannot forbear making an extract from the report of a mechanics' institution which closely bears on this subject.

"To what can we ascribe the penury of earlier ages? The elements of production were equally fertile the physical treasures of the globe we inhabit equally abundant-the faculties of man equally vivid—his desire for enquiry equally acute to none but the absence of knowledge-ignorance of the means of applying the power of man to the creative properties of the earth, and of calling forth that due supply of those various essentials to happiness so bounteously afforded by the hand of nature. Looking to practical illustrations of the increase of production or riches with the growth of