where we now find them. Had Godwin written " Macbeth," those reflections, in all probability, would have occurred where, instead of piercing the heart, they would have fatigued the attention. The trick of the boards, the scenic effect, the life of the stage, is what a novelist possessed of Miss Landon's powers should intently study. It will teach her never to narrate, where she can act, her story; and while as thoughtful, as reflective, as analysing as ever, to be so only in the right moment, and with the most effect. We need not say that we should not have given this advice to a writer of moderate genius; nor should we have given it to a novelist of long standing. It is given as a proof that we form from the present performance great hopes for the future. And now, passing over unmentioned, on the one hand, a few slight inaccuracies and petty blemishes, and on the other, a whole host of delicate and subtle beauties of composition, we consign our Author to the popularity she will doubtless obtain, and. most richly deserve. When we consider her accomplishments, her versatility, her acute observation, her graceful fancy, her powers both in the actual world and the ideal, her habit of thought, and her command of language; and when we remember also how much she has yet done, and how young she yet is, we speak advisedly when we recommend to her the highest models and the severest study. Such a recommendation could only be given to one capable, if she do justice to herself, of achieving those triumphs which, as her critics, we anticipate, and as her admirers, we predict.

INDISCRIMINATELY as these two terms are used, there is a wide difference between them. Government implies authority, a power not emanating from those over whom it is exercised. Hence the plausibility and receptability of the old notion of Divine right; for if Kings and Rulers derived not their authority from men, from whom did they derive it? Among an ignorant and unthinking people, who could not understand the expediency of compliance with laws and customs, the word Government was useful as a delusion. When the understanding of the people is matured, and when a people are really free, then the management of public affairs becomes Administration. Then the question is not of the wickedness of rebellion, but of the impolicy of resistance and the folly of a minority contending against the will of the majority. A Representative Government is very nearly a contradiction in terms. He that acts by a representative is supposed to act from his own will, though not in his own person :-now self-acting beings can hardly be said to be governed. The driver of a carriage governs the movements of his horses. The commanderin-chief governs the movements of his army. The schoolmaster governs his pupils. In these cases there is no representation. One mind-one will rules all. But representation implies that the will of the whole is consulted, and that the mass acts by its representatives, and is not acted upon by them.

POEM. BY THE AUTHOR OF THE CORN-LAW RHYMES. J. DAF

THE "New Monthly Magazine" was the first journal that attracted the attention of the Public to the genius of the Poem, called "Corn-Law Rhymes." The example thus set, was soon followed, and other periodicals, to which the Poem had been sent long before, but in so uninviting a type and shape that, in all probability, curiosity stopped at the outside-struck with the singular strength and beauty of the extracts we gave-took up the poem, hitherto neglected, and, to their honour be it said, were no less lavish, viz. no less just in their encomiums than ourselves. We have now the pleasure of presenting our readers with another poem by the same author. We are sure that those characteristics that stamped the "Corn-Law Rhymes," will be equally recognized in the verses we subjoin-the same nerve, vigour, and originality on the one hand-the same roughness and obscurity on the other. We think two or three lines, especially that containing the curious objurgation "cat but not vulture," as bad as lines can well be. We think the description of Napoleon, as fine as any thing in the language. We are sure that every man of a pure and genuine knowledge of criticism will unite with us in hailing the rise of a Poet of so great promise, from the lower ranks of life and the heart of a manufacturing town and in trusting that powers of so high an order will be exerted in a flight more lofty and sustained, than those in which they have, as yet, toyed with their own strength.-ED.

BYRON AND NAPOLEON; OR, THEY MET IN HEAVEN,

1.

THROUGH realms of ice my journey lay, beneath
The wafture of two pinions black and vast,
That shook o'er boundless snows the dust of death,
While over head, thick, starless Midnight cast
Gloom on sad forms, that ever onward pass'd.

But whither passed they? Oh, Eternity,

Thou answerest not! Yet still thy sable wings,
Silently, silently, how silently!

Are sweeping worlds away, with all their Kings !→→→
And still I wander'd with forgotten things,

In pilgrimage with Death, an age-long day,

A year of anxious ages-so methought

Till rose a living world in morning grey,

And light seem'd born of darkness-light, which brought
Before my soul the coasts of land remote.

"Hail, holy light, offspring of heav'n, first-born,

Or of the eternal, co-eternal beam!"

Through worlds of darkness led, and travel-worn,
Again I felt thy glowing, brightening gleam,
Again I greeted thine ethereal stream,

And bless'd the fountain whence thy glories flow.

II.

I waked not then, methought, but wander'd slow,

1

A

Where dwell the great, whom death hath free'd from pain.

Trembling, I gazed on Hampden's thoughtful brow,

While Strafford smiled upon me in disdain,
And turn'd away from Hutchison and Vane.
There, some whom criminals disdain'd; and all
Who, battling for the right, had nobly died;
And some whom justest men deem'd criminal,
Wond'ring, I saw the flatter'd, the belied!
And Muir, and Saville, walking side by side!
They wept-ev'n Strafford melted, when I told

Of Britain's woes of toil that earn'd not bread,
And hands that found not work; but Fairfax scowl'd,
While Cromwell laugh'd, and Russell's cheek grew red,
When, pale, I spake of satraps breadtax-fed.
Lo! as I ceas'd, from earth a Stranger came,

With hurried step a presence heavenly fair!
Yet grief, and anger, pride, contempt, and shame,
Were strangely mingled in his troubled stare!

1

And thus he spoke, with timid, haughty air,

To Russell, Fairfax, in tones low but sweet:

"I too am noble. England's magnates rank

Me with themselves; and when, beneath their feet
Fate's low-born despot, hope-deserted, sank-
When torrid noon his sweat of horror drank-

I join'd his name for ever with my own!"

III.

Him then to answer, one who sate alone,
Like a maim'd lion, mateless in his lair,
Rose from his savage couch of barren stone,
His Kingly features wither'd by despair,

And heart-worn till the tortur'd nerve was bare.
With looks that seem'd to scorn ev'n scorn of less
Than demigods, the Army-Scatterer came;

An awful shadow of the mightiness

That once was his; the gloom, but not the flame
Of waning storms, when winds and seas grow tame.
The stranger, shrinking from the warrior's eye,
On his own hands his beauteous visage bow'd,
Sobbing; but soon he rais'd it mournfully,
And met th' accusing look, and on the crowd
Smil'd, while the stern accuser spake aloud.

IV.

“Yet, Lordling*-though but yesterday a King,
Throneless, I died, yet nations sobb'd my knell !
And still I live, and reign, no nameless thing!
I fell, 'tis true-I failed; and thou canst tell
That any wretch alive may say I fell.
Of worth convicted, and the glorious sin
That wreck'd the angels, now I owe and pay,
To wealth and power's pretended Jacobin,
Scorn for thy glory, laughter for the lay
That won the flatteries of an abject day.

If it be objected to these lines that the great bard is dead, so, I answer, is also the great warrior; and he who has honest and useful thoughts to express of either, or both of them, should do his duty Briton-like.

+

』*

F

1

1

When Meanness taught her helots to be proud,
Because the breaker of their bonds was gone;
Didst thou, too, join, magnanimous and loud,

The yell of millions o'er the prostrate one?
What cat out-mew'd the Cat of Helicon ?
Yes, thou didst soothe my sorrows with an ode,
When stunn'd I lay beneath Destruction's wing,
And realms embattled o'er their conqueror rode.
Yes, when a world combined with fate to fling
A cruel sunshine on each vulgar King;
When fall'n, deserted, blasted, and alone,
Silent he press'd his bed of burning stone,
What caitiff aim'd at greatness in despair,

Th' immortal shaft that pierc'd Prometheus there?
Cat, and not vulture! couldst not thou refrain,

The laureate vile of viler things to be?

1

When Timour's Captive's' cage was rock and main,
What was 'proud Austria's mournful flower' to thee,
Thou soulless torturer of Captivity?

And what to thee, mean Homager of Thrones,

The sleepless pang that stung him till he died?
Tortur'd, he perish'd-but who heard his groans?
Chain'd through the soul, the throneless homicide,
Mantled his agony in stoic pride.

While souls guilt-clotted watch'd, with other's eyes,
And from afar, with other's feet, repair'd

To count, and weigh, and quaff his agonies-
Like Phidian marble he endur'd, and dared
The Universe to shake what Fate had spared.
How fare the lands he lov'd, and fought to save?

Oh, Hun and Goth! your new-born hope is gone!
Thou, Italy, art glory's spacious grave,

Through which the stream of my renown flows on,
Like thine Euphrates, ruin'd Babylon!

What gain'd my gaolers by my wrongs and fall?
Laws, prais'd in hell-not Draco's laws, but worse;
A mournful page, which history writes in gall;
A table without food-an empty purse:
A name, become a byword and a curse,
O'er every sea, to warn all nations, borne !"

V.

Was it the brightening gleam of heavenly morn,
Beneath the shadow of his godlike brow?

Or, did a tear of grief, and rage, and scorn,

Down his sad cheek of pride and trouble, flow?
He felt upon his cheek th' indignant glow,

But shed no tear, not ev'n a burning tear.

The fire of sorrow in his bosom pent,

He gaz'd on Milton, with an eye severe,
On tranquil Pymm a look of sternness bent,
Then, smiling on the humbled stranger, went

To laugh with Cæsar tasking Hannibal.

་་་སྒོ་བ། ན *སྣ

REMINISCENCES OF WINDHAM.

BY AN OLD MEMBER

OF PARLIAMENT.*

THINGS passing strange are every day happening in our world of letters. Among these, can any thing be more unaccountable than the preposterous selection of persons deemed worthy of biographical commemoration? You have life-writers by dozens plying their obscure labours to force into a few weeks' importance names as obscure as their own, in spite of the wise destinations that had ordained them to ripen and to rot unheeded-the natural euthanasia to which they were hastening in the course of things, but for the stercoraceous culture of the biographer. East India Generals or Colonels, and individuals who have groped their way to some humble nook of science, zoologists, botanists, men who passed their days in stuffing their museums with butterflies and plants, have had their lives written, and their private letters to their wives and daughters dragged from their sanctuaries-to prove what? Why that they were wise in their generation, fond husbands and good parents; that is, that they followed the ordinary instincts of their nature, and had sense enough to find out that the practice of those modest virtues made their homes comfortable and their fire-sides cheerful. Is this to be called biography? The preservation of such names and characters from utter decomposition is not worth a single ounce of the gums and unguents expended in the process.

Yet amidst so many works of biographical supererogation, Windham to this day remains uncommemorated. Passing by the slender' notices of Malone and Amyot, the one a mere memento for an obituary, the other of some merit considered with reference to its professed purpose, that of being an introduction to a collection of his speeches, but sadly disfigured by a long and dull ode from the pen of Mr. Courtenay, and a whining jeremiade by a certain Mrs. Browne of Norfolk, there is not a moral portraiture of the man, that is worth a farthing. And yet in Windham were concentrated more than the chivalry of his own or of any agethe courage and the courtesy, the eldest-born of courage, that ennobled a Bayard every unbought grace of mind that belongs to the finished gentleman-the lofty unbending integrity that never stooped to a job, nor even listened to the suggestion of one, and during the whole of its shining and uncontaminated career, stood proudly aloof from the vulgar chase after the wealth, or honours, or titles, for which common men barter away the immediate jewel of their souls. Add to this (nor is it a mean praise) he was a hater of cant in a canting age, of such cant especially as is now dominant-a cant not venting itself in harmless bursts of verbal hypocrisy, but an embodied living nuisance, pursuing with unslumbering zeal its sworn purpose, the extinction of the amusements and exercises of the poor, filching away their humble recreations, and for ever growling at their ale-house enjoyments, or their village festivities. Indeed, of all kinds.

In personal sketches of this sort, great latitude must be allowed to the generous admiration of the writer. And we content ourselves with warning our readers, that in all such sketches, they should consider the author rather as a friend who narrates, than as a judge who determines.-ED.