by all the old women, and is told still, because it was told in the Gentleman's Magazine some years ago. Let us hope that the New Monthly will put the old women right. Pope Gregory lived in 750; and Jacob,-all the world knows how long before that he lived.

To return to our compliments. When the Emperor of Monomotapa sneezes, the whole city is in an uproar. As he did not borrow from Pope Gregory, I suppose we must go back to Jacob at least for the origin of this outcry. Doubtless, our friends of St. Kilda have it from the same source: because Jacob's stone was brought from the plains of Luz to Spain, thence to Ireland, whence it was transferred by Fergus I. to Dunstaffnage, whence Kenneth carried it to Scone, to be forcibly abducted by Edward to Westminster Abbey, where it may now be seen for one shilling and ninepence-thanks to the liberality of the Church!

But when the Lama sneezes, then, indeed, all Asia feels it to her utmost verge and limit: the sound travelling from nose to nose till it is reverberated from the great wall of China. The French consider it boisterous to say "God bless you" on these occasions; so much does France differ from Tartary. It is only permitted, in the Code de Politesse, to pull off your hat and make a silent bow.

Aristotle, heaven bless him, is rather dull on this point, considering that he was a natural philosopher, and somewhat more. Sneezing, saith the Stagyrite, proceeds from the brain, and is a mark of vigour. The brain expels offensive or superfluous ideas through the nose, says he. It were to be desired that this were the usage still; as nowa-days they are apt to find vent through the mouth, to the vast annoyance of liege subjects. And, therefore, we salute the brain when it sneezes its energetic tokens of evacuated folly and incumbrance. Enough of the Aristotelian philosophy; and as to what Polydore Virgil says, it is as little to the purpose as the predication of Clement of Alexandria.

If they make sneezing a state concern in Monomotapa and Tartary, so they do also in Mesopotamia (or did), and in Siam. When the latter potentate sneezed, a general rejoicing took place in all that triangle which intervenes between the Euphrates and the Tigris; so that the whole nation was in a perpetual uproar whenever his Majesty chanced to have a cold. Hence it was not allowed to take snuff, lest the whole business of the state should fall into disorder. In that district of Pluto's dominions, which is set apart for the Siamese, the judge keeps a ledger of his prospective subjects. Occasionally he consults his tablets, impatient for the arrival of the next comer; and thus on whosesoever name he fixes his fiery eye, the fated individual's nose responds in sympathetic sneeze. Hence it is, that the men of Siam bless each other from the foul fiend, whose influence is marked in impending omens on the echoing nose.

But enough of nasal compliments. If St. Kilda's hundred and ten noses do not sneeze a hundred and ten compliments to the stranger, why then they sneeze a hundred and ten omens of dire mishaps, from expected rents.to be raised, and further evils to ensue.

In Old Egypt, the nose was a familiar demon-a walking oracle: a minchin Malicho, meaning mischief when the moon was in Taurus, and a blessed token when it was in Libra, Capricorn, or Pisces.

From morning to midnight it was a bad prognostic, but it was a happy one from midnight to morning. It was an evil sign to sneeze in rising from table or in getting out of bed; and the only remedy was to go to bed again and sleep, or to sit down again to dinner, or to take a cup of bouza to defeat the demon of the nose. A double sneeze was double trouble. But of sneezes to the left and sneezes to the right-of sneezes at work and sneezes at play, what can I do better than refer you to the works of "Sanchoniatho, Manetho, and Berosus," or to Cicero, and Seneca, and Aristotle, where you will find as much as you will choose to read, and somewhat more. It is a great mistake of that great soldier the Duke of Wellington, that, though from the cut and figure of his nose it must make a noise equal to a thirteen inch mortar, he never consulted it in his campaigns. In the time of Cyrus, no general officer would have attacked a ravelin, or mounted a breach, against the advice of his nose. Whenever even a corporal sneezed in his Imperial Majesty's army, Mithra or Arimanes was invoked for directions how to proceed. Socrates, who was certainly not quite so good a soldier as his Grace, had similar respect for the prognostic of the nose; though his own, it must be confessed, was but an unhappy-looking specimen. Habuit pro Dæmonio, says some one. Sneezing was the omen of victory, says some one else. If you ask who all these somebodies were, Plutarch, Aristotle, and Aristophanes, are the men. Would you have better authorities?

If they consulted their own noses, so they complimented each his own proboscis, as well as those of their neighbours. Why else should Ammian have written an epigram on a man whose nose was so long, and consequently so far off, that he could not hear himself sneeze, in consequence of which he was unable to say, "Bless thee, snout!"

If Socrates was not much of a soldier, no one will deny that praise to Xenophon, particularly as he was a great foxhunter and knew as much as even Arrian about the rearing of young puppies. Like "Mr. Leach he made a speech" to his army on a particular occasion, as every schoolboy knows, which was answered by the responsive sneeze of a quartermaster of dragoons, on which all the army fell on their knees and worshipped Jupiter Sternutator.

The first thing which the Man of Prometheus did was to sneeze. I know not if Mr. Godwin's child, Master Frankenstein, made the same entry into the world of walking-gentlemen. Alexander Ross, whom nobody ever read over, notwithstanding what Hudibras says, asserts that this was the real origin of sneezing. But we need not mind him. As to Themistocles and Euphrantides, if they had done no more than sneeze, Xerxes would have had some other reasons to boast of his bridge over the Hellespont. And so I shall pass over what Hormannus and Pictorius and Del Rio, and Bartholinus, and Villaret, and Minutius Felix, and Sir Thomas Browne, and twenty more say about this matter; for if you are not tired, I am.

But lest your fair readers should be wearied of all these crabbed ancients, I must pass to the affair of love-love, the beginning and end of every thing, as it must be the end of my dissertation.

Sneezing is critical in matters of love. Not only does your nose itch to prognosticate what every one knows; not only does it sneeze good and evil omens, but the very loves and graces themselves watch

over the noses and sneezes of lovers. If you doubt, read Aristænetus. Does not Parthenis write a billet-doux to her lover, and does not she sneeze at the most tender passage? And when she sneezes, does not she know by the consciousness that belongs to true love, that, at the same instant, her lover's absent nose sneezes in amorous responsiveness, ominous of success as of sympathy.

I could say much more, but though I have just sneezed into this very paragraph, I connot hear yours in return. Let me still hope that you will not open this most learned essay without being moved, and that you will sneeze two sneezes to the right hand in token of approbation. I had some thought of dusting the ink with Irish blackguard to ensure a favourable omen; but trusting to the sterling worth of the matter itself, and confident that you will not crook your silent nose at me, shall subscribe myself, NASO.

THE LOVER'S QUARREL.*

THE morning bright bathed in rosy light
San Lucar's ample street,

When Gazul drest in a snow-white vest
Mounted his courser Heet;

With purple and green and in golden sheen
His trappings and harness shone,
Stately and loud and with champings proud
Caracoll'd his brave steed on.

At a mansion high with a balcony,
Where a form of beauty stood

Like an angel fair in the clear blue air
On an errand of mortal good;

Gazul checks his rein, for the pride of Spain

Was there in her matchless grace:

On his soul she gleams, as the sun's first beams
O'er a soft cloud's silvery face.

He lights on the ground with a warrior's bound,
And his knee to the earth is bent,

But his gaze is above at the maid of his love,
From his heart's devotion sent :-

"To Gelves I go and the tourney's show,

O vision of hope to me!

And thou art the charm that shall nerve my armı

With the power of victory."

But with haughty scorn from the warrior-born

Zelinda looks away,

His love she spurns, for her bosom burns

In a hell of jealousy.

"Go, haste to the tilt, or the maid, if thou wilt,

Whom thou lovest far more than me!"

Not a moment is past and the casement is fast,
While the lover is on his knee.

The Moorish Romance in Gines Pérez, beginning Lucar," is similar to the above in story.

"Por la Plaça de San

He gazes around, then low to the ground
Casts a thunder-stricken glance,

And in wild despair on the marble there
Shivers his useless lance:

From the gallant fête and in downcast state

He back t'ward Granada hies,

While the sorrow and pain that madden his brain
Gush forth in his humid eyes.

But the fairest frame that may chill love's flame
With the fear of a rival's art,

Will ofttimes see that, like ghaunt envy,

She preys on her own torn heart.
Ere evening was near, after many a tear
Paid by burning love to pride,

Zelinda once more from her chamber-door
Calls her page to her couch's side.-

My eyes

overflow, haste, my dear To Gazul the Moorish knight,

page, go

Say Zelinda will wait at her garden-gate

At the hour of pale moonlight.

Yet stay-oh, nol-yes, my good page, go."—
Then she call'd him back as fast

As her pride prevail'd and love's impulse fail'd,
But she sent him away at last.

The moon slept sweet on San Lucar's street,
And the treinbling stars were bright,
When the lover stole to the maid of his soul,
Through the shades of that lovely night.

To the gate he is come where the page stands dumb
With the wicket in his hand :

He has enter'd there to his mistress fair,

The star of Granada's land.

Zelinda blush'd, but her voice was hush'd

At the thought of her pride and scorn,

And the Moor look'd down as he fear'd a frown

Might wither his hope new-born.

A moment they stood as all lovers would

That had suffer'd a like annoy;

Then the knight in his arms lock'd his mistress' charms,

In his bosom's speechless joy.

"By our prophet I swear, my Zelinda fair,

(Said the knight when he silence broke) That I'd sooner die by my enemy,

Or suffer the Christian's yoke,

Than day by day drag my life away

Unwarm'd by thy eyes' bright beam, And the lists to me bring no victory

But by spell of thy magic name.

"When I couch my lance, I see thee advance,

And direct it to my foe;

When faint grows my stroke, I thy name invoke,

And it nerves my falchion's blow;

No laurels I wear but for thee, my fair,

No hopes in my bosom spring

And I give no prayer where thou dost not share
My heart's whole offering."

In the eloquence of her dark eyes' sense,
On the knight the maiden gazed,
They told her tale more than words avail,
And the flame that within her blazed :-
"Go, Gazul, go to the tourney's show,
Thy turban I'll dress for thee,

Lest men should say that my fault to-day
Robb'd thy arm of a victory.”

On his barb he sprung, while the morning hung
Like pearl in the eastern sky,

And rock, tower, and tree, lay tranquilly
In their colourless nightly dye.—
To Gelves he went to the tournament,
With his mistress' token and prayer-
Could he fear a blow from the boldest foe,
When Love was his armour there?

REMARKS ON POETRY AS COMPARED WITH PAINTING

AND SCULPTURE.

THE received opinion, that every well-described poem must also furnish a good subject for the artist in painting or sculpture, and that the representation of the two latter is the absolute criterion of the poet's merit, so far at least as the artist is able to follow the poet in all the features of the poem, requires some limitation, even when the sphere of both is considered à priori. For poetry must be considered to possess a much wider sphere than the fine arts, in the unlimited region of the fancy, and the immateriality of her figures, which may coexist in the greatest number and variety, without one covering, or injuring the other whereas in the representation of the things themselves, or of their natural symbols, by the artist, it is confined within the limits of time and space. However, though the sphere of the fine arts cannot comprehend the greater one of poetry, yet it must be acknowledged that the former is always contained in the latter; that though it cannot be said that every subject on which the poet descants will produce the same good effect, when represented on canvass, or in marble, yet every pleasing representation from the artist must produce the same effect when described by the poet. For what we find beautiful in works of art does not prove to be so by its effect on the eye alone, but by its influence on our imagination through the medium of the senses; if, therefore, the same image could be raised in our minds by the arbitrary symbols of language as its representation by the painter, or sculptor, it would produce a similar effect on our imagination.

The identity of Poetry and Painting.

Poetry and Painting alike present to our minds absent objects as present-representing appearances as realities; both effect an illusion, and the illusions of both please. The pleasing nature of both has its origin in the same source, in the form of beauty. That conception of beauty which is formed in our imagination through the process of the mind in abstracting the variety of forms from material objects, is subject to general rules, and may be applied to actions, thoughts, and forms. But, notwithstanding this essential identity, it could not be said with correctness, that painting is but mute poetry, or that the