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&c. the distresses of private families and domestic life. Goethe has written a tragedy of this nature, which is in great estimation, the principal incidents of which are events which really happened in the Beaumarchais family. The piece is exceedingly interesting, the situations well imagined, and the denouement affecting. Melpomene, however, in this play, as well as many other German tragedies, wears but a homely garb. The personages of the drama are merely citizens, and the hero is a political pamphlet-writer. The leading circumstances are, notwithstanding, truly dramatic, the story is well told, and the distress rises very high and very naturally.

Among other translations, the Germans are delighted with Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. The former was in rhyme; but they have lately turned it into an opera, and it has been played at Berlin and other places with vast applause. A sensible German told a countryman of his, who, understanding the English language, and having seen the play on a London theatre, was diverted at the absurdity of such a metamorphosis, that however ridiculous it might be supposed by those who had not seen it, the effect on representation was great. Hamlet, however, is their principal favourite: and some of them say, that there is not a circumstance can happen in life to which an apt quotation may not be made from 'Hamlet. In that scene where the mock play is performed before the King and Queen, they erect, at the Hamburgh theatre, a false stage, and when the King interrupts the performance and calls for lights, drop the curtain as at the end of any other play. They likewise precede this scene with a grand pantomime dance, in which the story of Gonzaga is related in dumb shew. The translator has altered the names of Horatio, Polonius, &c. to others from the Danish, and the characters are dressed in the habits of the times. The catastrophe is altered, in which alteration, as the Germans could not bear to see their favourite die, Hamlet is preserved.

Such was the state of the German Drama only twenty years ago. A slight sketch of the rapid progress it has made from that time to the present will be given in a future number.

For this absurdity the Germans have the authority of the original, as the reader may perceive, by consulting Dr. Johnson's or any complete edition of Hamlet.

November.]

COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THE LIFE AND HAPPINESS

OF THE

EAST AND OF EUROPE.

BY MR. BROWN.

MPATIENCE, activity, and sanguine hope, are habits of an European. By education his imagination is exalted, and his ideas are multiplied. By reading, and frequent intercourse with foreigners, he is enabled to present to himself the state of distant times and remote nations. Their knowledge, their arts, their pleas sures, become familiar to him; and, from a fixed principle of the human mind, the lively idea of all these advantages generates the hope of appropriating them.

The habits of the Oriental, on the contrary, are indolence, gravity, and patience. His ideas are few in number, and his sentiments, in course, equally rare; they are, however, generally correct, springing from the objects around him, and for the most part limited to those objects.'

Here Mr. Brown leaves out two very important items in the constituents of happiness; the one belonging to intellect, to wit, literature, and science; the other to will, a mild, benevolent, liberalising, beneficent religion.

MECHANICS.

ILLUSTRATION OF THE ACCOMPANYING PLATE.

ARTS are commonly divided into useful or mechanical, liberal or polite. The former are those in which the hand and body arę more concerned than the mind; of which kind are most of those which supply us with the necessaries and conveniencies of life. Of the mechanical arts, that of the Smith ranks among the most useful. His labour is required not only in every work of mechanical ingenuity, but it was so essential in the formation of the first conveniencies used by mankind, that its origin is beyond even the reach of tradition.

In the progress towards perfection in the art of the Saith, the British have excelled all other nations; and the various articles produced by his ingenuity and industry have commanded a pre-eminence in all parts of the world.

The Publisher therefore, conceived that the Engraving in this Number would be acceptable to his readers; and as it is connected with the department of SCIENCE, he does not consider that, in giving it, he departs from the plan of the pub cation.

VOL. I.

3 N

When the Smiths became first a Corporate Company in England he has not been able to trace, as many documents which would have illustrated that part of their history were destroyed by the great fire of London; but there are deeds existing by which some estates were conveyed to this Company so early as in 1461-63, as well as in several others subsequent to that period. A charter was granted to it in 1577 by Queen Elizabeth, which was afterwards confirmed by King James I, and King Charles; and there are some records so ancient as the reign of Edward III.

In the fourth year of the reign of that Monarch, the Smiths having petitioned Parliament against the introduction of articles belonging to their craft from foreign parts, which had greatly impoverished them, Edward granted them Letters Patent, dated on the 12th of June, forbidding such foreign introduction, on pain of forfeiting the whole, except such of these wares as were made in Ireland or Wales. The articles forbidden are here enumerated.*

Some defects having appeared in the first Coat of Arms granted to the Company of Blacksmiths, in the crest of which a phoenix was, contrary to Nature,' chained to a crown, on the 28th of June, 1634, it was amended and corrected in the manner and form following: "Sable, a Cheveron Or between three crowned hamers, as in the margent are depicted; and for the Creast, forth of a Wreath of their Cullors, on a hill vert, a Phenix proper fyreing in the Sonne beames, and by the agitation a working of her winges (according to the description of wryters) she kindleth certeyn sticks of Cinnamon and other spices, and therein consumeth herself to ashes, out of which there ariseth another." These are the words of the Grant.

'Any wollen bonnettes, any wollen cloth lacys, ribans, fringes of silk and of threde, threden lacys, throwen silk, silk in any wise embranded, golden lacys, tyres of silk or of gold sadels, stiroppes, or eny harness longing to sadelers, spores, moleyns [a kind of crosses] for bridels anndirnes gredirnes, any manner lokkes, hammers, pinsons [a short of shoe without a heel], firetonges, drepyingpannes, dyses, tennis-balls, points, laces, purses, globes, girdles, harness for girdles of iron, of laton, of steel, of tin, or of alkamyn; any thing wrought of any tawed [tanned] leder, any manner peltry [of or belonging to skins of beasts, from pellis, Latin] ware, tawed botes, shoen, galoches; or corks, knives, daggers, wodknives, bodkins, sheers for tailleurs, scissors, razors, she thes, cards for pleyng, pins, patyns, paknedles; any maner painted ware, forceps, casketts, rings of copper, gilt, or of laton; or chaffingdishes, candlesticks hanging or standing, hanging lavers, chaffing-balls, sakering-bells [hawk-bells, saker, a kind of hawk1, rings for curtains, iadels, counterfit basons, gyres, hats, brushes, cards for wool, or white wire.'

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HAIL to the hallow'd ground, where hush'd to rest,
Of man, the cares, the fears and passions sleep!
O blest abode! here no sad sufferers weep,
By goading insults, pains and wrongs oppress'd!
Sweetly reclin'd on Earth's maternal breast,
Each mortal pang lost in oblivion deep,
All, all repose, while Peace and Silence keep

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Their sacred guard around the confines blest.
And firm is your repose, O tranquil train!

You wake not to the Morning's rosy gleam,
To you, the birds trill their blithe song in vain :
1, wandering here, view the Sun's rising beam,
And hear the early lark's sweet, matin strain;
But sick at heart, more sweet your slumber deem.

SONNET.

WRITTEN AT MIDNIGHT.

YE disembodied spirits, who have past
Of this dim earth the feverish turmoil;
If, not in inner-heaven inthron`d—awhile
Ye wander, viewless, through the starry vast,
And pitying, see by changeful Passion's blast
Rude-tempested, or wrung by force or guile,
The feeble dwellers on this thorny soil,
Till friendly Death the confi& end at last;
Tell, if ye may, what cares what pleasures wait
The ethereal essence from encumbering dust
Releas'd, to seek on high its destin'd state:
Vain wish! ye hear not, or the Ever-just
For bids the wondrous story to relate;

Peace then, my soul! adore and humbly trust!

WHAT IS HOPE?

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THE suff'ring Patriots' cheering friend,

Whose life some few short hours will end;

Th' Exile's solace on the distant shore,

Who thinks to bliss his weeping love once more;
The Tar's glad messmate on the roaring main,
Who longs to hug his lovely Sall again;
The dear companion to the blooming maid,
Who her lov'd Edward soon expects to wed;
Balm of the sick, and of the poor a guest,
When pain and poverty disturb their rest.
Seek this not here--'tis my sad lot
To moan alone, I know her not.”

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