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tion in this world." When offered the throne of Poland, it was at first proposed that he should divorce his wife, and marry the widow of the late king, to reconcile the contending faction. "I am not yet a king," said he," and have contracted no obligations towards the nation: Let them resume their gift; I disdain the throne if it is to be purchased at such a price."

It is superfluous, after these quotations, to say any thing of the merits of M. Salvandy's work. It unites, in a rare degree, the qualities of philosophical thought with brilliant and vivid description; and is one of the numerous instances of the vast superiority of the Modern French Historians to most of those of whom Great Britain, in the present age, can boast. If any thing could reconcile us to the march of revolution, it is the vast developement of talent

which has taken place in France since her political convulsions commenced, and the new field which their genius has opened up in historical disquisitions. On comparing the historians of the two countries since the restoration, it seems as if they were teeming with the luxuriance of a virgin soil; while we are sinking under the sterility of exhausted cultivation. Steadily resisting, as we trust we shall ever do, the fatal march of French innovation, we shall yet never be found wanting in yielding due praise to the splendour of French talent; and in the turn which political speculation has recently taken among the most elevated minds in their active metropolis, we are not without hopes that the first rays of the dawn are to be discerned, which is destined to compensate to mankind for the darkness and blood of the revolution.

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THE sun was setting in the summer west
With golden glory, "mid pavilions vast

Of purple and gold; scarcely a zephyr breathed;
The woods in their umbrageous beauty slept;
The river with a soft sound murmured on;
Sweetly the wild birds sang; and far away
The azure-shouldered mountains, softly lined,
Seemed like the boundaries of Paradise.

From early morn the day had o'er me passed In occupied perplexity, the cares

Which seem inseparate from the lot of one

Who breathes in bustling scenes-the crowded walks
Of man encountering man in daily life,

Where interest jars with interest, and each
Has ends to serve with all. But now the eve
Brought on its dewy pinions peace; the stir
Died on my ear; its memory from my mind
(Longing for quiet and tranquillity)
Departed half; and, in the golden glow
Of the descending sun, my spirit drank
Oblivion to the discords and the cares,
That, while they fall on, petrify the heart.

It is a melancholy thing, ('twas thus
The tenor of my meditations ran,)
That such a separation should exist

Between our present and our bye-past thoughts,
That scarcely seem the extremities of life
Parts of the self-same being,

Time and Fate

Year after year such alteration find

Or make, that, when we measure infancy
With boyhood-boyhood with maturer youth-
And with each other manhood's ripened years,—
Our own selves with our own selves-there is seen,
Less difference 'tween the acorn and the oak,
Than that which was, with that which is: But yet,
So melt insensibly day into day,

Month into month, the summer's mellowing heat
To yellow autumn-a vicissitude

Unjarring, though continuous, that we seem
To know not of Life's onward voyage, until
Earth's headlands are lost sight of in the deaths
Of those we prized-rocks interrupt our paths-
Or shipwreck threatens in fate's lowering storm.

Thus pondering as I paced, my wanderings led
To a lone river bank of yellow sand,-

The loved haunt of the ouzel, whose blithe wing
Wanton'd from stone to stone,-and, on a mound
Of verdurous turf with wild-flowers diamonded,
(Harebell and lychnis, thyme and camomile,)
Sprang in the majesty of natural pride
An Eglantine-the red rose of the wood-
Its cany boughs with threatening prickles arm'd,
Rich in its blossoms and sweet-scented leaves.

The wild-rose has a nameless spell for me;
And never on the road-side do mine eyes
Behold it, but at once my thoughts revert
To schoolboy days: why so, I scarcely know-
Except that once, while wandering with my mates,
One gorgeous afternoon, when holiday

To Nature lent new charms-a thunder-storm
O'ertook us, cloud on cloud-a mass of black,
Dashing at once the blue sky from our view,
And spreading o'er the dim and dreary hills
A lurid mantle.

To a leafy screen
We fled, of elms; and from the rushing rain
And hail found shelter, though at every flash
Of the red lightning, brightly heralding
The thunder-peal, within each bosom died
The young heart, and the day of doom seemed come.

At length the rent battalia cleared away, The tempest-cloven clouds; and sudden fell A streak of joyful sunshine: On a bush Of wild-rose fell its beauty:-All was dark Around it still, and dismal; but the beam (Like Hope sent down to re-illume Despair) Burned on the bush, displaying every leaf, And bud, and blossom, with such perfect light And exquisite splendour, that since then my heart Hath deem'd it Nature's favourite, and mine eyes Fall on it never, but that thought recurs, And memories of the bye-past, sad and sweet.

AUDUBON'S ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY.*

WILSON'S AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY.+

John Wilson.

SECOND SURVEY.

AMONG the many million moods of our own mind, that come and go like rainbows, uniting heaven and earth by lovely lines of living lustre-alas! too evanescent-one has frequently visited us with soft and sweet solicitation to indite in a few wee bit bookies, in themselves a Library of Useful and Entertaining, or, in other words, Instructive and Interesting Knowledge-The Lives of the Natu

ralists.

Compare naturalists with any other sect, religious or irreligious, such as poets, philosophers, physicians, divines, admirals, generals, or worthies in general, civil or military, lay or clerical, and you will acknowledge that they are, peculiarly, a peculiar people, zealous in good works. Poets are perhaps not always very unamiable; but they are most of them oddities, and are too often unintelligible both in theory and practice. The acquired habit of employing a language such as no plain prose person in his seven senses might, could, would, or should employ, were you to bribe him with a stamp-mastership, seems to have a strong, but, under the circumstances, neither a strange nor singular influence on the original constitution of their whole character. Let us not mince the matter-but say at once that many of them are inspired idiots, while too many drop the adjective, and are simply (it is all one in the Greek, drs) private gentlemen. Philosophers, again, are sad simpletons-especially such as have been afflicted with the metaphysics. It is their affair to study the human mind, as it exhibits itself to what is called the mental eye, which mental eye turns inwards, we are told, and narrowly inspects all the premises. The palace of the soul is unquestionably

:

a building of much magnitude and magnificence; but the Cretan Labyrinth was a joke to it in inextricable intricacy; and though, when looking at it from without, and at some distance, you suppose it illuminated, like a large cottonmill in honour of the Glorious Unit, yet on entering it, either by vestibule or postern-gate, you find yourself in the predicament of the Jewish lawgiver on the going out of his candle-all the interior is dark as Erebus. The mental eye, turn inwards as it may, sees not a single particle or article of any sort whatsoever, any more than in an unborn, or rather unconceived magazine, or other miscellaneous work. There is an unaccountable noise, very like the sea; and the poor philosopher is afraid to set one foot before the other, lest he should walk over the edge of an abyss like that which, among the Peaks of Derbyshire, bears the name of an individual at once illustrious and obscure, but who, on the present occasion-for there are persons and places which we never mention 'fore ears polite -must, like most of our other contributors, remain anonymous. Nevertheless, though the truth should not always be spoken in plain and plump expression, it should always be written, figuratively or in apothegm; and therefore we say-Sages are Sumphs. Of physicians, thank heaven, we know nothing and noneexcept our family physician, who, we devoutly trust and pray, will long keep out of the Family Library, which treats but of the defunct. Their lives are all led in one long line of prescriptions; and though Cholera Morbus and other diseases are, on Burke's principles--pain, danger,fear, and terror-exceedingly sublime,

Edinburgh Adam Black; R. Havell, junior, engraver, 77, Oxford Street, and Longman and Co., London; George Smith, Liverpool; F. Fowler, Manchester; Thomas Robinson, Leeds; E. Charnley, Newcastle; Pool and Booth, Chester; Beilby, Knott, and Beilby, Birmingham,

+ Constable's Miscellany.

yet we take leave to think a cholic more so than a dose of glaubers, and the patient on a bed, from which he has kicked sheets, blankets, and coverlet, and is writhing away like a wounded worm or a scotched serpent, out of all sight more impressive than the doctor, with his FEE-fa-fum, sitting with all due composure on a quiet chair, where he expects the issue with repose." Of divines, thank heaven, we know even less, if that indeed be possible, than of physicians. A few of the old English ones, such as Jeremy Taylor and Isaac Barrow, were "the wale o' auld men;" and we shall ever venerate the memory of Dr Macknight. But of the Lives of British Divines-and there are none else the less that is written the better-they are almost all so wearisomely worthy-so fatiguingly free from those faults with out which a man may be respectable, but can never hope to win our admiration. Therefore "dinna wauken sleepin' dougs," but let the clergy sleep and snore, and sermonize on in that peaceful privacy so engaging in the Christian life, whether it be a life enlightened by Episcopalianism, redolent of Presbytery, or embued with dissent without dissention, a nonconformity conformable with all all the laws of good citizenship, morality, and religion. With all admirals we have cultivated friendship since first we launched, on the mare parvum of a puddle pretending to be a pond, a boat of bark, with paper sails, drawing the eighth of an inch of water, tonnage one hundred wafers, and celebrated in the naval annals of Mearns, under the name of The Butterfly, for freight and pas sage apply to the King of the Fairies, in the holms of Humby, close by the Brigg of Yearn. Since that service, we have occasionally circumnavigated the globe, till, in fact, we began to get sick of doubling Cape Horn. The last great action, in which we more than assisted, was the attack on Algiers, We stood by the side of the gallant Mylne, in the form of a volunteer, and are ready to say that considerable execution was done on our quarter-deck, by the splinters of our crutch. We attribute our deafness to the noise we made in the world on that day, but we cannot lament the loss of a single sense

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a sufficient number remain unimpaired-incurred in liberation of the Christian captives. Campbell's Lives of the Admirals is one of our vademecums, and so is the Naval Chronicle, which, from the necessary number of volumes, became, how ever, rather a heavy work. James's Naval History-we love to carry our head high even in sleep-we use as a pile of pillows on Clerk of Eldin's book about Breaking the Line (an old achievement), which has long been our bolster; and had we not got. through so much of our longevity, we should cheerfully accept Mr Murray's very handsome, indeed gene, rous offer, of five thousand guineas, for a more Philosophical and Poeti cal and Political History of the Flag that has "braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze." But were luctantly leave the glory of that great work to Basil Hall, than whom the British navy contains not a man better skilled in the science, not even excepting Maryatt, both of pen and cutlass. He is a true son of a seagun. Generals, again, are our parti cular friends, "and that is sure a reason fair" not to write their biographies. Impartiality could not be reasonably expected from a person not only on the crutch, but the staff. To that excellent periodical, then, the United Service Journal, we leave our great commanders" alike of the battalion, light-bobs, and grenadiers-not forgetting the rifle-brigade, the bravest of the brave, and with all kind regards to Captain Kincaid, whose Memoirs of the GreenGlancers would inspire with valour a constitutional coward, had he even been suckled by a White Doe. Peace to the manes, and fame to the name, : of Sir Sidney Beckwith! A man, as Napier says, who was equal to any emergency, and more than once in Spain retrieved a disastrous day. As for Napier himself, his "Spanish Campaigns" are immortal. His famous passage about "the astonishing infantry," the fifteen hundred unwounded survivors of the six thousand British heroes, crowning the hill with fire, and dying it in blood, at Albuera, will be quoted as long as we are a military people, and that we, trust will be till we fade away within the Millennium, (yet we devoutly hope afar off,) as the most spirit

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stirring specimen, in any tongue, of the Moral and Physical Sublime. The sooner, too, that J. G. P. R. James, (whynot the whole alphabet at once?) the author of the History of Chivalry, and of those admirable romances, Richelieu, Darnley, De L'Orme, and Philip Augustus, lets us hear his trumpet the better-sounding its points of war-a reveille to the "Commanders" now sleeping in the dust-all their brows, before imagination's eyes, crowned and shadowed with unwithering laurels. Of Worthies in general, civil and military, we have neither space nor time, business nor leisure, now to say one half of what they deserve-so we hand them over -and from him they will receive the best treatment-to Patrick Tytler, Esq., the ingenious, learned, and eloquent historian of Scotland, a country which contains, we verily believe, more Worthies than all the rest of the world.

The gentle reader must be pleased to observe, that having announced our intention to shew that Naturalists are the only people who deserve having their lives taken, we have been betrayed by the benignity of our nature into an animated panegyric on all other mortal men. This is so like Us. We assume the appearance of the satirical-and instantly relapse into the reality of the eulogistic. We exchange an attitude which threatens war and annihilation, for a posture pregnant with praise and perpetual life; just as if Jem Warde or Simon Byrne, while extending his maulies in a flourish apparently prelusive of a knock-down, were suddenly to pat you on the cheek as gently as if he were making love to a modest Hibernian maiden in a booth at Donnybrook Fair. Yet, to balance this caprice on the other side, the observant reader cannot well have failed to remark, during his fifteen years' assiduous study of the Star of the North, that sometimes while, according to all reasonable expectation, founded on all reasonable grounds, we seem about to pat, as if with a velvet cat's-paw, the cheek of our dear, we smite him on the os frontis as with an iron gauntlet. Like a bull in a china shop, or even on a heather mountain, there is no dependence to be placed on our temper. We have always a sharp-but some

VOL. XXX. NO. CLXXXIII.

times a sullen eye in our head-and we are aware of our infirmity—a hereditary predisposition-with dif ficulty to be distinguished from instinct-for instinct, too, is mutable and precarious-to tossing. Belling the Cat is easier than belling the Bull-which is beyond the power even of a Douglas-and he who should try it, would be as infatuated a quack as the Great Glasgow Gander. Once on a time an awkward squad of Whigs, consisting of some scampish scores, under the excitement of a paltry Peter the Hermit, attempted a crusade against Mount Taurus; it being their intention to saw off the points of his horns, affix a board to his forehead, and perhaps to perpetrate even greater enormities -more disloyal lése majestie against the Sovereign Lord of Herds, majestically but peacefully lowing in the verdant pastures. One growl-an earth-shaking lion's was comparative silence-produced unmentionable effects on the ragged and rascal Rashness that took to flight in a shower of vermin'd tatters. Ever since, the sun has lingered in the same signor alternated with one other-leading his shining life equally divided between Taurus, Christopher North, and Virgo, which is but the classical and celestial name of-Maga-name figurative too-for is it not recorded in the Book of the Chaldees, by the pen of the Inspired Shepherd"That her number is as the number of a virgin when the days of her virginity have expired?"

Having thus arrived by short and easy stages to the end-we beg your pardon to the beginning of our day's journey, let us introduce you to a brace of Naturalists, whom we are confident you will take to at once most kindly, and thank us for giving you the opportunity of cultivating their friendship-Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon.-Ah! gentlemen, so you are already acquainted? Well-away with us to the woods!

Wilson was a weaver-a Paisley weaver-an useful occupation, and a pleasant place, for which we entertain great regard. He was likewise a pedlar-and the hero of many an Excursion. But the plains and braes of Renfrewshire were not to him prolific-and in prime of life, after many difficulties and disap

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