THE UNIVERSE, A POEM. BY THE REV. C. R. MATURIN.

We do not believe that this poem will add much to the reputation of the celebrated author of Bertram, butasits tone of reflection is philanthropic and elevated, and as it possesses some passages of merit, we give some quotations from it, a place among our leading articles. We own that the subject strikes us as too vast and vague to be a happy one. The Universe! What a trackless theme for the imagination; absorbing the mind at once in ideas of infinity and abstraction; prescribing no visible boundaries, either of beginning or end, to the poet's course; and leaving his planless and fortuitous progress without the power of exciting curiosity or anticipation. To two out of the three books of this poem, Mr. Maturin prefixes an analysis of his topics. In the third, he leaves the clue of his contemplations to be discovered by the reader's own sagacity. The first part opens with an address to nature :---

“Nature-Ethereal essence, fire divine,
Pure origin of all that Earth has fair,
Or Ocean, wonderful,-or Sky, sublime!'
Thou when the Eternal Spirit o'er the abysson
Of ancient waters, moving, through the void ha
Spoke, and the light began!-Thou also wast→→
And when the first-born break of glorious day
Rejoic'd upon the youthful mountains,--Thou
Cam'st from it's God, the world's attempering soul!
From thee, the Universal, Womb conceived.
It's embryon forms, and teemingly array'd
All Earth with loveliness and life-the things
That draw the vital air or brightly glowjo
The animate, or silent beautiful,--
High spreading glories of the wilderness,"
That lift their blossomy boughs in summer air,"
From Araby to Ind; flinging sweet dews
Upon their fugitive twilight:-or the trees,
And flow'rets of the vernal temper'd zone,

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Brief pensioners of Spring, that deck Earth's wilds-buk
Bestrew'd with all diversities of light,→→
Seen in the rainbow when it's colour'd arch
Hangs glitt'ring on the humid air, and drives
The congregated vapours.-So, array'd

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In manifold radiance, Earth's primeval spring.
Walk'd on the bright'ning orb, lit by the Hours +
And young exulting Elements, undefil'd,-
And circling, free from tempest, round her calm
Perennial brow, the dewy Zephyrs, then,

From flower-zon'd mountains, wav'd their odorous wings
Over the young sweet vallies, whispering joy--
Then goodliest beam'd the unpolluted-bright--
Divine similitude of thoughtful man,

Serene above all creatures--breathing soul-
Fairest where all was fair,--pure sanctuary

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then,

Of those sweet thoughts, that with life's earliest breath, //
Up through the temperate air of Eden roseddaa ah to go 1
To Heav'n's gate, thrilling love!Then, Nature,
Thy Maker look'd upon his work and smiled-
Seeing that it was good! And gave thee charge
Thenceforth for evermore with constant eye

To watch the times and seasons, and preserve

The circling maze, exact. Pure minister
Of his unerring, all-pervading mind—
Wherever is thy dwelling-place-All hail!"

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After descanting on the inscrutable nature of the divine Author of the Universe, the poet, contrasts the magnitude and durability of his works with the narrowness and uncertainty of human designs :

"All that is human fleeteth-nought endures,
Beneath the firmament."

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This truth has been so often endited, both in prose and poetry, that it now begins to lose the gloss of novelty. Bowzebeus* himself could sing how "the corn now grows where Troy town stood," and we have been so often assured of Babylon, Memphis, and Tadmor being now little better than piles of rubbish, and of the generations that inhabited them having passed away like the beings of a dream, that it baffles all ordinary powers of verse to give an air of originality to the fact. We remember a Presbyterian preacher, who enlivened this solemn truism by a rhetorical hypothesis peculiar to the Calvinistic pulpit-Where," said he, "my friends," (astonishing the audience by an unexpected display of his erudition), "where are all your "great men of antiquity--your Hectors, and your Homers, and Alexanders, and where is Pontius Pilate, and Epicurus the great "stoic, and all your Greek and Roman heathens? They are all dead, my friends, and what is worse, I am afraid they are all "damned."

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Amidst a good deal of common-place matter, however, we were struck by the beauty and spirit of the following description of Pompeii

"Thus deep, beneath

Earth's bosom, and the mansions of the graves
Of men, are graves of cities.

Such of late,

From its long sleep of darkness disinterr'd,

Pompeii, with its low and buried roofs,

Rose dark upon the miner's progress, like
A city of the dead! a tomb perchance

Where living Men were buried!-Tyrant Death !

In Gay's Pastorals.

How didst thou triumph then!-thou us'd'st to steal
Behind thy sallow harbinger disease,

Or take thine open and determinate stand

In battle's ranks; with Danger at thy side e
Forewarning gallant breasts prepared to die;

But there thy spectral visage darken'd forth,
Amid the joyous bosom scenes of life,

From its invisible ambush! There-it found
The myriad fantasies of hearts and brains,
Young loves and hopes and pleasures all abroad,
Spreading their painted wings, and wantoning
In life's glad summer breeze, from flower to flower!
And, with the fatal spell of one dread glance,
Blasted them all!-How sunk the tender maid
Then silent in the chill and stiffening clasp
Of her dead lover! Echo had not ceased
To catch love's inarticulate ecstasies,
Strain'd in a first embrace-for ever, then,
Fix'd statue-like in Death's tremendous arms;
A hideous contrast!-One fell moment still'd
Lovers and foes alike;-workers of good,
And guilty wretches;-then the statesman's brain
Stopp'd in its calculation, and the bard
Sunk by his lyre;--the loud procession
Before the temple-all the cares of life,

With action and contrivance, through the streets
Throng'd multitudinous, in their busy time

Of bustle and magnificence,--and all

Life's thousands were abroad, and the high sounds
Of civic pomp rose audible from far :---

But louder rose the terrible voice of ruin

Over their mirth," BE STILL" and all was hush'd!
Save the short shuddering crics that rose unheard—
The upturn'd glances from a thousand homes
Thro' the red closing surge! the awful groan

Of agitated Nature ;--and beneath,

Ten thousand victims turn'd to die:-
:-Above

Bright sunbeams lit the plain-a nameless tomb!"

In the second part the poet apostrophizes the morning-star, and fondly dreaming that it is a world of unprophaned luxuriance, makes a natural transition to the possible amelioration and happiness of the beings who inhabit our own planet:→→→→

"Star of the brightening East!-Thyself most bright,-
That thro' the shadowy air of silent morn

Shedd'st thy lone love-beams down!-'Tis sweet to think
--And soothing to the sorrow-stricken mind-
They dawn upon us, from a blessed home
Of peace and love!-For gazing on thy light,
I feel their solace, and forget to mourn!

Tired of my woes, I mount upon the wing-bo
Of spirit, to thy glorious eminence,

To seek forgetfulness of storms that rend

A turbulent and transitory world!"

"For in that blessed noon of time, the world
Shall be as one wide city-with its strects
And several factories, apart, yet join'd,
Commingling in one spacious mart,—by one
Collective spirit ruled, through all her realms;
One wisdom and one faith shall govern man:
And his regenerate race shall o'er all kinds
Regain it's lost dominion!-Walls shall rise,
Where monsters range the aboriginal woods
And thickets, undisturb'd ;---and tillage fields
Bloom, where the horrid wilderness o'ershades
Th' unseemly loves, and instincts murderous
Of snaky broods, or, oft, at night, more fell
The tyger walks, and by some lone, scared hut
Prowls like a demon, uttering cries of death.
All dark and horrid things shall cease, and then
Evanishing, like spirits from pure dawn,
Fly from the waking world, then new disclosed,
In morning's mildly bright magnificence,
O'er many a climate, gilding tower, and town, ***
And dwelling seen by wood and mountain far,
Girt by the peaceful populous main, no more
By Heaven's dread wrath to tempests wrought,-
And then shall sounds of many voices wake
Those lone and mouldering fanes, where Silence now
With Desolation holds coeval sway,
Amid the wrecks of dim antiquity!

-or man's.

Then, from their tombs of time restored, shall they
Arising from the dust stand numerous

From Ganges westward to the Nile: Then, proud,
Old Nineveh shall arise, and THAT predoom'd

"Till then to sleep in fate!--Nor far from these,
That famous in the songs of Araby

Sung to its wizard lyre,-metropolis

And palace of Almansor shall be seen,
And, pillared on its golden capitals,

Hold commerce with all earth!

For then shall be

A highway through all nations, and a bond
Of joyful union!-Ispahan shall send
Glad tiding unto Sibir and Cathay,

Re-echoed with glad notes; for in that time
Peace shall attune the trumpet, never more
To shake the warrior's breast with fierce delight,

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But with its silver mounting lay sublime,
Winning the universal world to love!"

We take leave of Mr. Maturin, wishing to see his agreeable genius exercised on wieldier subjects than the Universe, and objecting to that theme, to borrow two of his own expressions, "most chiefly" on account of its "vastitude."

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PARRY'S EXPEDITION.*

IN proportion to the disappointment which the public felt, with respect to the comparative failure of Captain Ross's expedition, in 1818, for the purpose of discovering a North-west Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, have been the fresh hopes excited by Captain Parry's appointment to a similar destination. It was reasonably enough to be expected that the lights, feeble as they were, which Captain Ross had thrown upon the track prescribed, as far as he had proceeded on it, would at least teach his followers what to avoid; and in the same manner it was hoped, that all the errors of judgment manifested by one party, would tend to the sharpening of it in another.

The Admiralty sufficiently shewed how well satisfied it was with the conduct of Lieutenant Parry, whilst he was with Captain Ross, by appointing him to the command of the Hecla, for the further prosecution of those important enquiries, in which for nearly three centuries all the maritime nations of Europe have been deeply interested. In consideration of the lively interest felt in all ranks of society who have been enabled to hear of this second Expedition, for the success and welfare of the individuals who composed it, we hasten to lay before our readers a detail of their proceedings, as far as the general interests which they set out to promote may be considered to have been served. In this "brief chronicle and abstract," however, we must premise, that we give a biographical, if we may so term it, rather than a scientific sketch of their proceedings want of room obliging us to forego any account of the experiments and observations made during the voyage, and which are in themselves important enough to form the subject of a separate and most interesting article.

THE Hecla, Captain Parry, accompanied by the gun-brig Griper, commanded by Lieutenant Matthew Liddon, under the orders of

Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-west Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific; perforined in the years 1819-20, in his Majesty's ships Hecla and Griper, under the orders of William Edward Parry, k. N. F. R. S.