-a

set there as practical satires upon the organ-glaring, small, and red, as if they had been just pierced with a hot iron;-a complexion burnt, adust, and adorned with perforations like those of a nutmeg-grater ;nose flattened to his face, and only distinguishable by two immense craters;-a mouth forming an impassable gulf from the lower to the higher regions of his face;-a combination and a form, indeed, in which every infernal power seemed to have set its seal, to give the world assurance-I need not say of a man! His tricks, also, were as whimsical as those of the hideous animal he most resembled. Eternally grinning, he attempted every species of joke, some good, others execrable, talking a kind of inarticulate gabble unendowed with words; for those who were not habituated to him could not understand one word he uttered. He was considered a privileged being; being exempted, by universal consent, from the strait rules of etiquette; for his nonsense, which seemed to flow from the unweeting gladness of a good heart, never excited more than a transient frown, which soon relaxed, as if half applauding what it half condemned. But never did countenance do less justice to the virtues of a human character than Wynox's. Poor fellow! no self-sacrifice, no task however laborious, would he shrink from, to do an act of kindness:-to comfort another in sickness, to relieve him with his purse if he was poor-that purse a too faithless interpreter to his heart. He had little to bestow but good-will and active service. Self, the centre of the system in others, was in him quite dethroned. He devoted himself to the navy, a service he intensely admired. Captains, commanders, lieutenants, even the humble middy, filled his house and his bungalows. The naval officer who casts his eye over these imperfect sketches, if he chanced to have been at that time on the India station, will recall the remembrance of Charley Wynox with a sigh. In their turn, they gave him invigorating cruises at sea, which helped to repair from time to time his shattered constitution. Could it be imagined that this rough-hewn copy of humanity was destined to feel the pangs of love? It was the only part of the passion he could be expected to feel. But he did love with fervency and idolatry, and he was for more than a year sicklied o'er with the pale cast of a lover's thought; and he told his love, but, as he himself used to remark, it was with a misgiving that marred all that he had conned over for the occasion. It was a beauteous creature whom he served; and it was a thousand pities that he made the proposal, for she was truly amiable, and would not willingly have wounded any sentient thing. She comprehended the nature of his visit, and guessed the purport of what he was stammering out, éclatéed, and ran out of the room. "You may go farther and fare worse," cried Charley, as the lady left him. She heard it, and laughed still louder. It was too ridiculous even for the lover, for he joined in her mirth most audibly, and then stepped into his palanquin. In those iron times at Madras, Wynox, as usual, said what he pleased. But his idle talk was not forgiven by the starch and austere man of authority. Nothing was too high or too mean for his resentment. Poor Charley was removed from his place; he embarked for England to obtain redress, but in vain; returned to Madras, and died in indigence. They ascribe an anecdote to Wynox which is highly characteristic of him. When he first arrived in India, and delivered his letters of recommendation round the settle

ment, he carried one to O, an old and churlish member of the council. This man was peculiarly splenetic at these introductions, and generally discharged his spleen upon the persons in England who took the liberty of writing them, not sparing occasionally the young gentleman who was obtruded on his patronage. "And pray, Sir," said he to Charley, as he glanced over the letter, "what is your father?"-" My father," replied Wynox, "is a farmer."-" And why," returned the other, "did he not make you a farmer also?" Poor Wynox was stung with the reproach, but with admirable quickness asked him, "And who, Mr. O was your father?""My father!-my father, Sir," said the counsellor; " my father was a gentleman."-"Then let me ask you," said Wynox, "why he did not make you a gentleman also ?"

I have recalled by-gone transactions, upon which the memory of mankind ought never to slumber, the occasional revocation of such transactions from oblivion being some security against their recurrence: for nothing can be more helpless than the victim of Colonial tyranny. At home the abuse of delegated authority has its immediate remedy: a thousand tongues, a thousand pens, are ready to awaken the public attention. In India there is no public; for the community is composed of the accomplices of the oppression, and the silent spectators of it, who know full well, that to breathe a remonstrance against it, would direct it to their own heads. Appeals to England are of little avail, being, for the most part, received with averted ears; and if the mischief is redressed, it has arrived at its consummation before the remedy can be felt. Despotism more unmixed in kind, more intense in action, can hardly exist. Life, indeed, is safe from its violence, but all that sweetens life-comfort, independence, and above all, the hopes so dear to every Anglo-Indian, of returning home, may be swept away in the storm of persecution. Probably in a few years the universal complaint of the settlement will produce its effect; but it is a suit in which success is an equivocal advantage. The Roman province at last prevailed over its guilty proconsul; but misgovernment had done its worst. "Tu victrix provincia ploras!" was the indignant exclamation of the satirist.

SONNET WRITTEN IN THE SPRING.

How heavenly o'er my frame steals the life-breath
Of beautiful Spring! who with her amorous gales
Kissing the violets, each stray sweet exhales
Of May-thorn, and the wild flower on the heath.
I love thee, virgin daughter of the year!
Yet ah! not cups,-died like the dawn, impart
Their elves' dew-nectar to a fainting heart!—
Ye birds! whose liquid warblings far and near
Make music to the green turf-board of swains;
To me, your light lays tell of April joy,-
Of pleasures-idle, as a long-loved toy;
And while my heart in unison complains,
Tears like of balm-tree flow in trickling wave,

And white forms strew with flowers a maid's untimely grave!

ITALY, A POEM.

BY SAMUEL ROGERS.
RECORDS OF WOMAN.*

PART II.

WHEN will the streams of poesy cease to cherish and delight the human heart? As the empire of reason, says a modern writer, extends itself, that of imagination will diminish; the conclusion, therefore, is, that when reason governs mankind, we shall cease to feel pleasure altogether from works of imagination. We shall be content to wait until this era arrives. We experience less anxiety on this subject than some persons have shown about the exhaustion of our coal-mines, which they tremble to reflect will not last the nation more than two thousand years! We may safely give the empire of reason five thousand to establish itself, and that, at any rate, is long enough for us. Italy," by Mr. Sotheby, (a Welcome, therefore, " Italy," by Mr. Rogers, notice of which we are necessitated to delay this month,) and welcome "Records of Woman," from our friend Mrs. Hemans.

The name of Rogers is so familiar in our best modern poetry, that we turn to a new production of that distinguished author with the most pleasurable anticipations. To his "Italy," a poem published some years ago, which was universally read and admired, we have now to hail the addition of a second part, not inferior to the first in interest. The volume is divided into short scenes, of which it contains twenty-four. There is in the classic land of Italy no lack of images and subjects which come home to every elegant mind, from their relation to departed times and characters; and these are found in great abundance, associated with incidents which have occurred at eras comparatively recent. Some are terrible, others tender and heroic; some affect by sympathy, and all are hallowed with years and grey in modern memories. It is impossible, therefore, that poetry so connected should fail to interest; and though the present volume is less forcible and striking than its predecessor, it is more uniformly pleasing and graceful. There is, it is true, little that will strike or astonish the reader, but the aim of Mr. Rogers's poetry is not of that character; it essays to win rather by the polished elegance of its march, than by the rapidity and force of its evolutions. We do not admire Mr. Rogers, so much in blank verse as in his own polished rhyme, independently of our belief that the stately march of our epic measure is not so well adapted for a work like the present, as the measure in which Mr. Rogers has so frequently delighted us in his other productions.

The first poem is entitled "The Pilgrim," in which the author seems to aim at austere simplicity of style; it describes very briefly an interview with a pilgrim on his way to fulfil a vow "made in my distress."

The second is

"The Interview," and bears the same character. The third, denominated "Rome," is, to our seeming, far more pleasing than either of its predecessors, and is a most charming apostrophe to the "mother of nations." Some of the recollections inspired by Rome, which, with the traveller who sees it for the first time, throng rapidly upon the mind, are thus enumerated:

"Here the first BRUTUS stood, when o'er the corse
Of her so chaste all mourn'd, and from his cloud
Burst like a God. Here, holding up the knife
That ran with blood, the blood of his own child,

VIRGINIUS call'd down vengeance.-But whence spoke
They who harangued the people; turning now
To the twelve tables, now with lifted hands

To the Capitoline Jove, whose fulgent shape

In the unclouded azure shone far off,

And to the shepherd on the Alban mount

Seem'd like a star new risen? Where were ranged
In rough array as on their element,

* Records of Woman: with other Poems. By Felicia Hemans. 1 Vol. post 8vo. Pp. 320.

The beaks of those old gallies, destined still
To brave the brunt of war-at last to know
A calm far worse, a silence as in death!
All spiritless; from that disastrous hour
When he, the bravest, gentlest of them all,
Scorning the chains he could not hope to break,
Fell on his sword!

Along the Sacred Way

Hither the Triumph came, and, winding round
With acclamation, and the martial clang

Of instruments, and cars laden with spoil,
Stopt at the sacred stair that then appear'd,

Then through the darkness broke, ample, star-bright,
As though it led to heaven. 'Twas night; but now
A thousand torches, turning night to day,
Blazed, and the victor, springing from his seat,
Went up, and, kneeling as in fervent prayer,
Enter'd the Capitol. But what are they
Who at the foot withdraw, a mournful train
In fetters? And who, yet incredulous,
Now gazing wildly round, now on his sons,
On those so young, well-pleased with all they see,
Staggers along, the last ?-They are the fallen,
Those who were spared to grace the chariot-wheels;
And there they parted, where the road divides,
The victor and the vanquish'd-there withdrew;
He to the festal board, and they to die."

The "Funeral" is a very striking description of the ceremony of interment in the South. The description of the assassinated female borne to her last home:

"Lying on her funeral-couch,

Like one asleep, her eyelids closed, her hands
Folded together on her modest breast,

As 'twere her nightly posture, through the crowd

She came at last-and richly, gaily clad,

As for a birth-day feast!"

The following extract is very true and impressive. The closing lines true not only of Italy, but of every nation in all climes.

The "

"Death, when we meet the Spectre in our walks,

As we did yesterday and shall to-morrow,
Soon grows familiar-like most other things,
Seen, not observed; but in a foreign clime,

Changing his shape to something new and strange,
(And through the world he changes as in sport,
Affect he greatness or humility)

Knocks at the heart. His form and fashion here
To me, I do confess, reflect a gloom,

A sadness round; yet one I would not lose;

Being in unison with all things else

In this, this land of shadows, where we live

More in past time than present, where the ground,
League beyond league, like one great cemetery,
Is cover'd o'er with mouldering monuments;
And, let the living wander where they will,
They cannot leave the footsteps of the dead."
Campagna of Rome" is thus described:-
"Groves, temples, palaces,
Swept from the sight; and nothing visible,
Amid the sulphurous vapours that exhale
As from a land accurst, save here and there
An empty tomb, a fragment like the limb
Of some dismember'd giant."

The burial-ground of the Protestants is thus described:

"When I am inclined to be serious, I love to wander up and down before the tomb of Caius Cestius. The Protestant burial-ground is there: and most of the little monuments are erected to the young; young men of promise, cut off when on their travels, full of enthusiasm, full of enjoyment; brides, in the bloom of their beauty, on their first journey; or children borne from home in search of health. This stone was placed by his fellow-travellers, young as himself, who will return to the house of his parents without him; that, by a husband or father, now in his native country. His heart is buried in that grave.

"It is a quiet and sheltered nook, covered in the winter with violets; and the You Pyramid, that overshadows it, gives it a classical and singularly solemn air. feel an interest there, a sympathy you were not prepared for. You are yourself in a foreign land; and they are for the most part your countrymen.

They call upon you in your mother-tongue-in English-in words unknown to a native, known only to yourselves: and the tomb of Cestius, that old majestic pile, has this also in common with them. It is itself a stranger, among strangers. It has stood there till the language spoken round about it has changed; and the shepherd, born at the foot, can read its inscription no longer."

There are a number of beautiful passages and thoughts scattered through the volume, which would be well worthy of extract, and equal to any thing in the preceding works of the poet. Such as that on Naples :

"Every where

Fable and Truth have shed, in rivalry,
Each her peculiar influence. Fable came,

And laugh'd and sung, arraying Truth in flowers,
Like a young child her grandam. Fable came;
Earth, sea, and sky reflecting, as she flew,
A thousand, thousand colours not their own:
And at her bidding, lo! a dark descent
To Tartarus, and those thrice happy fields,
Those fields with ether pure and purple light
Ever invested, scenes by Him described,
Who here was wont to wander, here invoke

The sacred Muses, here receive, record

What they reveal'd, and on the western shore

Sleeps in a silent grove, o'erlooking thee,

Beloved Parthenope."

"Pæstum" we have read before, and have been delighted with. "Genoa" is full of characteristic description; and the last piece, entitled "A Farewell," one of the most charming in the volume, thus concludes:

"But now a long farewell! Oft, while I live,
If once again in England, once again
In my own chimney-nook, as Night steals on,
With half-shut eyes reclining, oft, methinks,
While the wind blusters and the pelting rain
Clatters without, shall I recall to mind
The scenes, occurrences, I met with here,
And wander in Elysium; many a note
Of wildest melody, magician-like,
Awakening, such as the Calabrian horn,
Along the mountain-side, when all is still,
Pours forth at folding-time; and many a chant,
Solemn, sublime, such as at midnight flows
From the full choir, when richest harmonies
Break the deep silence of thy glens, La Cava ;
To him who lingers there with listening ear
Now lost and now descending as from Heaven!