ception, he approaches more nearly to Lord Byron than any other of his contemporaries; while in many of his pieces he has touched, with equal mastery, the same softer strings of pathos and tenderness which respond so delightfully to the more gentle inspirations of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Wilson. His fame would, indeed, have been a glorious plant, if he had not blasted its expanding leaves by the suicidal chillings of immorality'. That Mr. Shelley was a poet is sufficiently proved by the two specimens given in this volume, and by theft would piece: if h. 1 mus,

have been unnecessary to blame, and useless to praise him.'

On DEATH.

How wonderful is Death,

Death and his brother, Sleep!**

One pale as yonder wan and horned moon,
With lips of lurid blue;

The other glowing like the vital morn,
When throned on ocean's wave

It breathes over the world:

Yet both so passing strange and wonderful!
Hath, then, the iron-sceptered skeleton,
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres,
To the wild crew that couch beneath his throne
Cast that fair prey? Must that divinest form,
Which love and admiration cannot view
Without a beating heart, whose azure veins*
Steal like dark streams along a field of snow,
Whose outline is as fair as marble clothed
In light of some sublimest mind, decay?
Nor putrefaction's breath

Leave aught of this pure spectacle

Of a poem written in the hey-day of youth," whose tendency is quite indefensible, it is but fair to say, that a few copies only were printed, many years since, for private circulation among his friends; and that a stray volume finding its way into the hands of a bookseller, mere profit got the better of every other consideration, and the work was, for the first time, given to the world, with all its imperfections on its head.' We have just heard that our friend Bernard Barton has produced a poem on Mr. Shelley's death; but we are now at press, and it is too late to give even a specimen.

But loathsomeness and ruin?---
Spare aught but a dark theme,

On which the lightest heart might moralize?
Or is it but that downy-winged slumbers
Have charmed their nurse, coy Silence, near her lids
To watch their own repose?

Will they, when morning's beam

Flows through those wells of light,
Seek, far from noise and day, some western cave,
Where woods and streams, with soft and pausing winds,
A lulling murmur weave?—

Ianthe doth not sleep

The dreamless sleep of death;

Doth Henry hear her regular pulses throp,

Or mark her delicate cheek

With interchange of hues mock the broad moon,

Outwatching weary night,

Without assured reward.

Her dewy eyes are closed:

On their translucent lids, whose texture fine
Scarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn below
With unapparent fire,

The baby Sleep is pillowed:

Her golden tresses shade

The bosom's stainless pride,

Twining, like tendrils of the parasite,

Around a marble column.

10.-SAINT LAWRENCE.

St. Lawrence was, by birth, a Spaniard, and treasurer of the church of Rome, being deacon to Pope Sextus, about the year 259. Soon afterwards, his bishop was killed by the soldiers of Valerian the emperor, with whom our saint would willingly have died. Lawrence refusing to deliver up the church treasure, which they imagined to be in his custody, he was laid upon a gridiron, and broiled over a fire. The celebrated palace of the Escurial is dedicated to this saint. See this described in T.T. for 1814, p. 199.

*10. 1813.-ANNE BURGESS DIED, ÆT. 49. Endowed with very superior talents, she had cultivated them with an assiduity rarely paralleled, and

with a success of which probably there are few examples. Her mind appeared to possess powers suited to the acquirement of every species of knowledge which successively engaged her attention. There were few authors, antient or modern, whose writings were not familiarly known to her in their own idioms. With the Greek and Latin languages she was very conversant; and in those of more modern date her acquirements were still more considerable. Those of France, Italy, and Spain, she had so entirely mastered, that she read, spoke, and wrote them with a fluency and correctness hardly inferior to those of a native. Of German and Swedish she had not gained so extensive a knowledge, but she read them with facility. In all feminine pursuits she was equally successful; in all manner of needlework; in music, of which she was both a performer and composer; in drawing and painting, and in the art of etching. Distinguished, however, as she was in these various departments of science and accomplishment, she was yet more admirable for the evenness of her temper, for the suavity of her manners, and that modest retiredness of disposition which led her to shrink from the celebrity to which the extent and application of her talents so justly entitled her; for that pure and fervent devotion which governed her conduct through life, and enabled her to sustain, not only with patient resignation, but even with cheerfulness, the heavy dispensations of sickness and pain, by which her last years were embittered; for that zealous pursuit of truth, and almost enthusiastic adherence to the moral obligations on which all social order and good government are founded; and, above all, for her constant exercise of kindness towards her friends, and of charity towards all those within the sphere of her active benevolence. Possessing an easy though limited income, she invariably allotted a large portion of it to the relief of the necessitous, the succour of the aged and infirm, and

the virtuous education of the young. In the year 1800 she published, anonymously, The Progress of the Pilgrim Good-Intent in Jacobinical Times, an imitation of, or sequel to, The Pilgrim's Progress of Bunyan, having all the spirit of, but greater polish than the original. It was translated into German, by order of his late Majesty, by M. de Luc, who went into Germany for the purpose of counteracting the effects of Jacobinical principles. At the death of Mrs. B. the ninth edition was published, with her, name affixed: this excellent work is now in the supplementary catalogue of the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge. She published also three; comedies, translated from the Spanish, and, we believe, other works.

12. 1762.-KING GEORGE IV BORN.

*12. 1822.-MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY DIED, ÆT. 52.

His character is thus ably and impartially pourtrayed by a celebrated contemporary writer. When we find (he observes) within the course of a very few years, no less than three eminently gifted members of the British senate struck, in the most high and brilliant state of their faculties, with a sudden and instantaneous blight of reason, and driven, by an almost momentary fit of insanity, to the unconscious act of self-destruction, we cannot but tremble at the frail tenure of those noble talents, which seem to form the most genuine and dignified objects of human pride. It is needless to dispute on the gradations by which the Noble Marquess, who now lies cold in death, ascended to his twofold distinction as a diplomatist and a debater, or to notice the censures which may have been passed on him in each of those characters; for it is enough to say, that in the House of Commons he was considered to discharge, with extraordinary tact and effect, the difficult office of a Parliamentary leader: and throughout the continent

ST

of Europe he was looked up to as one of the ablest negotiators of the age. If we look to personal honours, which, though an ingenuous mind will perhaps rank them below the acquirements of talent and experience, are yet justly classed among the enviable distinctions of social life, how richly was his lordship endowed with these splendid gifts of fortune! To his own merits was probably owing the last elevation in the peerage conferred on his noble father, and transmitted to himself. Decorated with the highest domestic and many foreign orders, a cabinet minister, and a personal favourite of the most gracious of sovereigns, it was scarcely possible for him to desire any new title, or outward claim to the reverence of his fellow citizens. His personal appearance and deportment were well suited to his other distinctions; but he had better claims than any we have yet mentioned-to that peace of mind which one would have thought must for ever have shielded him from the dire calamity to which he fell a victim. Of high honour, fearless, undaunted, and firm in his resolves, he combined, in a remarkable manner, with the fortiter in re, the suaviter in modo. To his political adversaries (and he had no other) he was at once open, frank, unassuming, and consequently conciliating. Seldom was his temper ruffled, or his self-possession disturbed. He was happy in his union with a most amiable consort, and he was the pride of a venerated father. To his friends he was grateful for service, and firm in attachment; to his tenants and other dependants he was liberal and kind; to the poor, charitable and beneficent; to all, without distinction, candid, generous, and humane.

Such a man must have been regarded (and, indeed, the Noble Marquess was so by all who knew him) as the last person in the world to yield to neryous weakness, to lowness of spirits, or debility of mind. Nor was there any thing in the present conjuncture of affairs to call forth apprehension.