versaries, but by disgust at the want of candour and moderation in their friends. N- said, "To be sure, there was nothing more painful than to have one's own opinions disfigured or thrust down one's throat by impertinence and folly; and that once when a pedantic coxcomb was crying up Raphael to the skies, he could not help saying, "If there was nothing in Raphael but what you can see in him, we should not now have been talking of him!"

THE TWO DREAMS OF JULIAN.*

IN his pride the sun went down

On the gilded waves of Seine;

And the crescent moon on tent and town
Shed her pearly light serene.

A slumbering army lay

Under hush'd Lutetia's walls,

Who had filed that morn, in arm'd array,
Through her streets of festal halls,

Where laurel hung over every door,

And flowers were scatter'd their ranks before.

There's a light in the palace bower,

Where the lone gold cresset gleams

Far beyond the midnight hour,

Though with faint and waning beams.

Why burns so late and long

The lamp in that chamber high?

Why alone, amid the slumbering throng,

Does the Cæsar wake to muse and sigh?
He has dared his fate-he has staked his all—
For his father's eagle flies in Gaul!

He had flung the purple by,

But its spell remain'd behind,
For the mien of conscious majesty
Is not with its robes resign'd:
On his pale but princely brow
The strife of his soul was shown,
By the cresset's faint and fitful glow,
While he paced his bower alone :-

As the sage, the prince, or the subject sway'd,
His heart like a plume in the war-breeze play'd.

Long he thought on his future path,

On the perils he must brave,

On an empire's love and a tyrant's wrath,

A throne, or a traitor's grave.

The historic passages which suggested these stanzas will be found in the fourth volume of Gibbon's " History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire :" the first dream, at p. 14 (Edit. 1825); the second dream, at p. 196. The circumstances of Julian at these different periods will account for both visions in the most satisfactory manner, without having recourse to supernatural agency. Respecting the meteor, it may be regarded as one of those singular coincidences which happen to most men in the course of their lives, and which an excited imagination may easily convert into omens of fate or fortune. That the Emperor should have imagined he had seen the angry face of Mars, is completely explained by the brief note of Gibbon (p. 197), in which he quotes the authority of Ammianus, that Julian had rashly sworn never more to offer sacrifice to that God.

At length, on the regal bed
His limbs th' Augustus threw,

And woo'd, with a fever'd heart and head,
Late oblivion's welcome dew:

He slept with his purple around him furl'd,
He dreamt like the king of the Roman world!

For he seem'd, in that broken sleep,
Rome's awful Spirit to view:-

Round the form, with slow and stately sweep,
A dim phantom-eagle flew.
His voice was the voice of fate,
And eternity glass'd his eye ;-
He stood at the palace gate,

And call'd with a thrilling cry

On the name of the sleeper; whose blood ran cold To see the shade of the days of old.

"Wake, Julian!" the proud voice spake, "Thy glory, or shame, is mine:

'Tis the Genius of Rome that calls, to wake The last of a throne-born line!

Was it all in vain I flew

The path of thy fame before,
When over the Rhine thy legions drew,
And it five times roll'd in gore?

Arise! too long the Spirit of Rome
At the Cæsar's gate demands a home!"

The beads were on his brow

As the voice fell on his ear;

But the soul that feels the hero's glow,
Will not long be chill'd by fear:

He started from his sleep,

With his hand upon his sword,

And he swore by the Roman Jove, to keep
The oath in his deep heart stored-

That, before he sheathed the sword he drew,
The Sun-bird of Old should its youth renew!

And well he kept his word,

As his Country's page can tell;

From the fields of Gaul the Imperial Bird

Wing'd a last flight wide and well;

But, alas! while the path he trod

Which his name with a proud wreath twines,

The apostate left his fathers' God

For the gods of a thousand shrines—

And never had Truth a foe like him,

Under whom an Empire's faith grew dim.

-Behold him once again

On the bare Assyrian sands, Encamp'd on the midnight plain, With his brave, but broken bands:

Ah, little their leader thought,

When he left soft Antioch's bower,
That the eagle, in whose shade he fought,
Should fly from a rival's power-
That, ere twice he pass'd the Tigris wave,
He should find a red, untimely grave!

In his soil'd imperial vest,

With the march and the fight outworn, He had laid him down to rest

Till the first faint blush of morn. But scarce did his eyelids close, When the same unearthly form From his troubled soul arose,

Like the lightning from the storm; But the purple garb it had worn before Was around the spectral shape no more.

In its place a funeral vest

Seem'd to sweep the form behind,
Of the hue which robes a father's breast
For a child to the dust consign'd:

A veil conceal'd his face,

And his brow to earth was bent,

As he seem'd, with a slow and mournful
To part from the Cæsar's tent;

But the Vision gave no parting look,
Nor a word the dreadful silence broke.

From his couch the Monarch sprung;
He rush'd to the open air:-
Instant, athwart the night was flung
A meteor's awful glare!

The faces of those on watch were dyed
With a bloody light, yet pale withal-
The tents of the sleepers, far and wide,

pace,

Were involved in à sanguine pall,-
And the Emperor deem'd, among the stars,
He had seen the frown of the Roman Mars!

There are times a dream can sink

The spirits of the bold;

But the Cæsar did not shrink

From the fate thus darkly told:

He bade his trumpets sound;
He bade his eagles fly;

He moved on his own death-ground

Like a king to victory:

But the Parthian dart was aim'd too well

The King of the World in glory fell!

He fell in a nameless waste;-
But his dust could not repose

In the land where he breathed his last,
In the earth of his Empire's foes.

Where the limpid Cydnus stream

Reflects proud Tarsus near,

They have reat'd a tomb, full oft to gleam

With the soldier's generous tear:

They have graven the marble with Julian's name

But the noblest epitaph is FAME!

J.

STRAWBERRY HILL.-BY LADY MORGAN.

"Some cry up Gunnersbury,

For Sion some declare,

And some say that with Chiswick House

No villa can compare ;

But ask the beaux of Middlesex,

Who know the country well,

If Strawberry Hill-if Strawberry Hill

Don't bear away the bell."

Earl of Bath's ballad on Strawberry Hill.

LORD BYRON has somewhere observed, that it has long been the fashion for the canaille of literary criticism, to vituperate Horace Walpole, "because he was a gentleman." An unfounded observation, which the " Edinburgh Review" has successfully refuted, and refuted upon the testimony of a deeper experience, and more intimate knowledge of the science of literary economy (if the phrase may be allowed), than could have been attained by one, whose high rank, and high genius, alike placed him far beyond the dabblings of literary intrigue, or the possibility of intellectual subserviency.

If ministers of state best know every man's price in the political market, if they are best acquainted with the inherent littleness of that 66 poor human nature," to the corruptibility of which they have the means of applying such powerful stimulants, such resistless temptations, -the editors of an influential party and periodical work best know of what stuff those "Swiss of the press" are made, who deal out opinion according "to the measure that is measured unto them" by their taskers, -of what mixed metal the current coin of literary criticism is composed, which ductile, though base, takes the mark of any dye impressed on it by the master-worker of the mint. The Edinburgh Reviewers, therefore, told Lord Byron, and told him truly, that, as a body, the periodical critics of the day bore no malice against Lord Orford, because he was "a gentleman," and that, far from rank being injurious to literary fame, even he Lord Byron, the star of the ascendant, stood indebted for the lenity, with which the author of "Don Juan" was treated by the most orthodox reviewers in England, at least as much to the elevation of his rank, as to the loftiness of his genius-to his "gentle blood," as to his splendid talents. The fact is, that

"If a saint in crape be twice a saint in lawn,"

an author in a coronet has twice the chance of obtaining a favourable judgment, that can be expected by mere plebeian talent, which has only its original merits to plead for those "sins" which all literary "flesh is heir to."

With what indulgence has not the accomplished, but titled Author of "Matilda" been treated by the reviewing hierarchy of the day, even in spite of the little faux-pus which forms the ground-work of his catastrophe, in spite of the certu de moins of his bon-ton heroine-in spite of a moral produced by a cold in the head (when a more legitimate source of poetical justice was at hand, in the fate and story of many fair contemporary delaissées in real life and living frailty)-nay, in spite even of his whiggism, his liberalism, and his anti-Austrianism; and when re

buked, how gently and with what a patte de velours has this lordly author been treated by the great conservators of public and literary morals. What honours indeed have not been done to the light and pleasant pages of one, who has so agreeably added to the daily increasing list of noble authors, and who is certainly something more than "a wit among lords, and a lord among wits." But who among the literary toparchs, who are so ready to bring mediocrity into fashion, and to patronize the usurpations, that can never interfere with their own acknowledged supremacy-who among the great fame-bestowing reviewers, that "give and take away" the bubble reputation, or try to do it, have turned out the author of "Crohoore of the Bill Hook," and "John Doe," for public admiration? And yet in these two great pictures of an unopened vein of national manners, there is as bold etching, and as fine masses of chiaro oscuro, as were ever produced even by the exquisite burin of the Scottish Rembrandt. It was not then the gentility of Horace Walpole, that stood in the way of his preferment in Reviews, and his popularity with the members of literary coteries. Yet that he has been borne down on, from his own to the present time both by the corporate bodies, and by the honorary members of criticism, is quite true. His claims to genius denied, his pretensions to taste ridiculed, his style termed "slip-slop," his historic doubts doubted, and his villa at Strawberry, which he himself has named "a paper fabric to hold an assemblage of curious trifles," selected as a damning proof against his antiquarianism, by the learned young gentlemen of the "old lady's logic"+-(the learning which draws fools from their obscurity) who have always affected to consider it as a "Gothic Vatican of Greece and Rome," and a standing monument of his ignorance of all true virtù. And yet Horace Walpole has established his claims to genius by its own highest prerogative-original invention! His "Castle of Otranto" is the first of its genus, and has consecrated him the founder of that delightful school of literary fiction, of which Radcliffe, Scott, and a host of far inferior spirits, are but the disciples; while

Every possible encouragement should be held out to the rising aristocracy, to pursue other roads to distinction than those acquired by coronets and quarterings. Upon such heaven-born distinctions, the world is now somewhat désabusé! thanks to the Monsieur Tonsons of the French revolution, and to the Jesuitism and toujours en arriere vocation of the premier sang Chrêtien de l'Europe. The bel air pages of "Matilda" and "Granby," light as they are, are real benefactions, after the eternal imitations of the Scotch novels.

+ Archæology, so called playfully by H. W.

"It was an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance (says its author), the ancient and the modern. In the former, all was imagination and improbability: in the latter, nature is always intended to be (and sometimes has been) copied with success. Invention has not been wanting; but the great resources of fancy have been dammed up, by a strict adherence to common life. But if in the latter species nature has cramped imagination, she did but take her revenge, having been totally excluded from old romances. The actions, sentiments, conversations, of the heroes and heroines of ancient days, were as unnatural as the machines employed to put them in motion."-Preface to the second edition of Otranto.

The first imitation of Otranto was "The Old English Baron," of which Walpole gives the following notice. "I have seen, too, the criticism you mention on The Castle of Otranto,' in the preface to The Old English Baron.' It is not at all oblique, but, though mixed with high compliments, directly attacks the visionary