to abjure his faith. Merula, his wife, who had apostatized from Christianity, is sent to him in prison, to dissuade him from his purpose. The whole of this part is in a higher strain than usual. We quote part of Merula's expostula

tion:

What I could ever joy or pleasure call,

'Twas you I tasted, you enjoyed in all.

The spring from whence your stream of life proceeds

My veins with vital warmth and vigour feeds.

My life's dependent and precarious fire

Must quickly cease, should you its source retire,

As evening rays, forsaken, soon expire.
Defeated and defrauded of supply

Streams flow no longer, when the fountain's dry.
How sad, and hard a task it is to live,
When I must all that life endears survive!

Elsewhere Clovis says:

Men who from heaven derive their noble birth
Cast on a foreign clime live here on earth;
When the wild natives with loud clamour chase
To woods and caves the mild and godlike race.
And should not these be willing to retreat
From such a rude inhospitable seat?
Should strangers, used so ill, and so oppress'd,
Be courted to their home and to their rest.

Again:

We must without debate, without delay,

Boldly advance when conscience leads the way:

Obedience only can our peace secure ;

No mind is easy long, that is not pure,

There is one happy couplet in the ninth book. The prayers of penitence are styled:

The only giants that assail

The throne of heaven, and in the end prevail.

Some of our readers may, perhaps, be interested in the fate of a Frank dandy of the age of Clovis.

Next Boser, sprung from Solon's noble blood,
In splendid armour on the rampart stood.
His stature graceful, courtly was his air,
And costly oils perfumed his limbs and hair.
He by the dames was with applauses crown'd,
Of all the dancing nation most renown'd.
He came, as if he did expect to fall,
Embalm'd beforehand for his funeral.
When Cutar saw him in the ranks appear,
With great disdain he threw his massy spear,

Which thro' his coat of mail and crimson vest
His bosom pierc'd, and lodg'd within his breast.
The fragrant warrior felt the fatal wound,

Fell on the rampart and perfum'd the ground.

Thus much for "King Arthur." The last in the list (for with "Eliza" we are not acquainted) is "Alfred." This great prince has met with peculiarly hard measure from the poets of his country, having been (like Virgil's king Herilus) thrice murdered, first by Blackmore, secondly by Pye, and last of all by Cottle. Even dulness is infinitely divisible; and of the three performances above-mentioned, Pye's is decidedly the worst, though in other respects it has the advantage of them, being shorter and more elaborate. In Cottle's we believe, (for we have never read it) there is something like poetry. That of Blackmore's, now before us, is a philosophieal epic, on the model of Telemaque. Alfred is sent by his father Atulpho (Ethelwolf) to study the laws and institutions of foreign countries, for the benefit of his own. He is cast by a storm on the coast of Tunis, where he finds a virtuous and happy people, a well tempered monarchy, a wise and paternal sovereign, arts and sciences flourishing, &c. He traverses several other countries, meets with a variety of adventures, and returns in the twelfth book to conquer the Danes. We have found little here for quotation, but detached lines. The following conceit is at least original :

They pass the mountains, that aspire so high
Their heads grow blue by mingling with the sky.

Blackmore's battles, like Homer's, are varied with occasional family-pieces of the combatants. He makes mention of one,

Who, though a patriot, was the Court's delight:

And of another, who

long impelled by a haughty wife,

To 'scape the torments of domestic strife,
Fearless expos'd to nobler war his life :
By mortal wounds now did the warrior bleed,
By worthy combat from inglorious freed.

Blackmore was a great traveller, and a very tolerable guidebook to many of the most interesting places of Europe might be compiled from this poem. The following speaks of Cheapside: He is speaking of Lisbon—

Whose gilded domes and spires that glittering rise

With double glory reimburse the skies.

The next is happier, on the Pyrenees-
Their peaks survey the meteor-fields below,

And white in sultry heavens wear unrelenting snow.

Again, describing an immeasurable plain

No rising lands confine the eye,

Lost in transparent gulfs of endless sky.

The following etymology of Cornwall is new to us :

Here oft the land uncommon freedom takes,
And to the main excursions frequent makes,
While rocky points protended wedge their way,
And oft extruded promontories stay

The rushing bellows this and that way tost,
Whence the unequal, rough, indented coast
A kind of hornwork seems by nature framed,
Whence the whole region is Cornubia named.

The description of night, which seems to have been intended in emulation of that in the Indian emperor, is remarkable for the confusion of several styles within the compass of a few lines:

'Twas night, the image of the court of death;

Waves ceas'd to rage, and winds had spent their breath;

Tired swains relieve their day's by nightly sweat,

And hounds their chases in their dreams repeat;

The groves and garden-trees cold dew-drops weep,
And flowers in native silks enfolded sleep;

The sparkling stars in azure turrets shine

And now, having called the shade of Sir Richard Blackmore from his repose of a century, for the edification of our readers, we dismiss him again to his peaceful abode, the elysium of the well-meaning.

E. H.

THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION.

IF in simple theory a nation may be conceived to be so happily circumstanced, that the ordinary causes of political division were eradicated, and the respective claims of every constituent member of the state were willingly, solemnly, and interchangeably sanctioned and satisfied; it should seem, with the reasonable allowances for reducing speculation into practice, that such a nation is England. The mysteries of government have been revealed; the dark speech and the hard sayings of old have been expounded; the ambiguous passages have been translated into the vulgar tongue. The rights which

in other countries, and in past and present times, have been and are evaded, or withholden, or crushed, or denied, are here known and relied upon even by children. The forms of the constitution are work for antiquaries, the spirit is beyond the reach of tradition. But neither the one nor the other have been left to the uncertainty of research, or the caprice of passion; they have with all imaginable solemnity been enacted into a law. This law is couched in plain words; it is at once concise and explicit; it is not suspended out of reach ; it is so close, so fixed, and so bright, that those who run may. read it.

These are advantages which no man can prove to have existed elsewhere; indeed the direct contrary may be easily demonstrated. Where shall we seek them? At Athens where neither life, liberty, or property were regularly secure for a single hour against the stimulated furies of a merciless. democracy? Or at Rome-where the superior virtue of individuals could never cure the radical disease of the constitution; where the expulsion of one king produced two with equal power, and invested with more than equal terrors; where secession was the resort against slavery, and official bullies the remedy against oppression; where the mutual rights of senate and people were never adjusted, never acknowledged; where there was an everlasting alternation between patrician and plebeian despotism; where lastly, and it is a fact deserving profound attention, the wisest and the freest nation then existing could devise no better medicine for the complicated ills of oppressed liberty and insulted law, than from time to time to annihilate all liberties and all laws, and through fear of tyranny to create one irresistible tyrant, upon whose slightest word the lives, the honours, and the possessions of every citizen depended without trial, review, or appeal?

The nations on the continent of Europe which rose into consistence upon the ruins of the Roman Empire, were indeed freeborn; they inherited, as we did, the right to northern independence, but they could not preserve it in a southern latitude. In France, the spirit of individual liberty scarcely outlived the first transplanting; it died even under Clovis. The Champs de Mars or de Mai were idle pageants; the people, the Frank soldiers of fortune, those who divided the spoils with a blow of their own battle-axes, became mercenary hirelings or abject slaves. "Ils (the French) laissèrent passer aux hauts magistrats, les ducs, les comtes, et les vicaires, le droit de la nation entière; de sorte que le commune n'eut d'autres fonctions dans les assemblées réelles, que d'y parôitre pour les acclamations, que l'usage rendoit neces

saires*." And again:"Jamais nation n'honora tant la noblesse que celle la; car non seulement elle étoit exempte de toute sorte d'impots, et corvées, mais commandoit à baguette à ses inferieurs, sur lesquels elle avoit presque droit de servitude +."

In Italy, the seed, though it seemed to fall into less favourable soil, did yet live longer; but even there within no great distance of time infinite division and sub-division did the work of wholesale oppression, and the fruits produced with difficulty were so dwarfish in size and so insignificant in number, that nothing but their singularity could have made them worth the trouble of collecting. Moreover, while torrents of blood were shed in an assassin-like warfare between petty neighbouring states to maintain or destroy their national, or properly their civic independence, the freedom of individuals was left obnoxious to the storms of faction; and at the very time the republics were in their most palmy and flourishing condition, it was then precisely that more than threefourths of their citizens were absolute slaves. Let every page of the panegyrical histories of Venice and Florence attest this.

In Spain indeed, though the early history of the invading Goths is involved in great obscurity, the duration of the constitution, of which they must at least have laid the foundations, was long, and its consequences glorious and salutary. The Moorish dominion polished the manners of the people, without extinguishing their recollections of their ancient freedom. Upon the expulsion of the Mahometans from Castile, the old spirit revived, and the rights of individuals as well as of societies were acknowledged and acted upon by unanimous consent. The Cortes of those times is the closest imitation of an English Parliament that the continent of Europe ever saw. It consisted of peers, spiritual and temporal, and of the procurators of the commons. They enjoyed immunity of arrest, and an absolute freedom of speech. The laws against corruption and intimidation were numerous and express; the purity of election was zealously maintained; the exclusive right of imposing taxes was vested in this assembly; and it was a received maxim that the redress of grievances ought to precede the giving of supplies.

That this did not last as it should have lasted; that a fabric built for a thousand years was forgotten by all except antiquaries and ministers of state in less than a third of that time; that one of the most enlightened, the most virtuous, and therefore chiefly the freest nations in the world became, and is with * Boulainvilliers. + Mezerai.