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on her princely nuptiall day when king Arthur married her: this fatall girdle shee made a sliding knot, of, and therwithall upon her bed-post shee hanged herselfe. Thus blood (you see) being guiltlesse shed, is quitted again with blood."

A Philosophical Question, with a plain Answer.-In a critique on Hajji Baba, the Quarterly Reviewers say, "An old acquaintance of ours, as remarkable for the grotesque queerness of his physiognomy, as for the kindness and gentleness of his disposition, was asked by a friend where he had been? He replied, he had been seeing the lion, which at that time was an object of curiosity; And what,' rejoined the querist, 'did the lion think of you?' The jest passed as a good one; and under it is something that is serious and true. When a civilised people have gazed, at their leisure, upon one of those uninstructed beings whom they term barbarians, the next object of natural curiosity is, to learn what opinion the barbarian has formed of the new state of society into which he is introduced-what the lion thinks of his visitors. Will the simple, unsophisticated being, we ask ourselves, be more inclined to reverence us, who direct the thunder and lightening by our command of electricity-control the course of the winds by our steam-engines -turn night into day by our gas-erect the most stupendous edifices by our machinery-soar into mid-air like eaglesat pleasure dive into the earth like moles? -or (to take us as individuals,) despise the effeminate child of social policy, whom the community have deprived of half of his rights-who dares not avenge a blow without having recourse to a constable-who, like a pampered jade, cannot go thirty miles a-day without a haltor endure hunger, were it only for twentyfour hours, without suffering and complaint-whose life is undignified by trophies acquired in the chase or the battleand whose death is not graced by a few preliminary tortures, applied to the most sensitive parts, in order to ascertain his decided superiority to ordinary mortals? We are equally desirous to know what the swarthy stranger may think of our social institutions, of our complicated system of justice in comparison with the dictum of the chief, sitting at the gate of the village, or the award of the elders of the tribe, assembled around the council fire; and even, in a lower and lighter point of view, what he thinks of our habits and forms of ordinary life,-that artificial and conventional

ceremonial, which so broadly distinguishes different ranks from each other, yet binds together so closely those who belong to the same grade."

We merely say, in answer to these queries, that the barbarian will not deny our pre-eminent talents, but will assert the superior spirit, manliness, and fortitude of his brethren, and laugh at the restrictions imposed by our laws, and the conventional formality of our manners and deportment; yet, in the progress of civilisation, he will become a convert to the general propriety of our system.

THE BEAUTY OF DANCING.

Ir is natural that a person should entertain a high opinion of the art which he professes to teach. He cannot be expected to pronounce that attainment frivolous or insignificant in which he pretends to excel; but, on the contrary, he will be ready to emblazon its merits and exaggerate its attractions. By this kind of prejudice and partiality was M. Blasis influenced, when he published his "Code of Terpsichore, a Practical and Historical Treatise on Dancing." Sir William Cornwallis, the essayist, did not think so highly of this art (or science, as M. Blasis would term it); for he says, "It troubles me not to see the light professions of dancers and tumblers cast their behaviours and bodies into unused forms; nor to heare toothdrawers and rat-catchers sweare themselves the best in the world in their professions; I knew this before: upon the sight of their banners I knew them guilty, for nature makes mindes conformable to their fortunes." Indeed, he preferred riding to dancing. "I hate (said he) the dulnesse of my own feet; and my horses, when I travel, cherish the nimblenesse of my thoughts, which can flie over the world in an afternoone." M. Blasis would doubtless attribute this "dulnesse" to equestrian exercise, which, it appears, "while it increases the thickness of the loins, debilitates the thighs."

M. Blasis ranks dancing with music, poetry, and painting; and the rules of Leonardo da Vinci, &c., are quoted and applied to that noble art. "The grand aim of the dancer," he says, "should be the embellishment and improvement of the art; to grace it with all the nobleness, the splendor, and beauty of which it is susceptible; to render it worthy of the place it occupies among the other fine

arts, and to make them all contribute, as much as possible, to so laudable, so desirable an object." It farther appears that, in dancing, it is much more difficult to attain excellence than in music, or even in painting. "With regard to music and singing, a good ear and a fine voice, with some years of moderate study, are usually sufficient to conquer all difficulties; nor does painting require such intense application, either from learners or professors, as dancing." M. Blasis, we fear, will gain few proselytes to his goddess by such representations of the difficulties attending her worship.

This principal dancer at the King's Theatre says, "The ballet-master, like the prism, should unite in himself those rays of light, which a general knowlege of the fine arts spreads over the mind, and his productions will then be tinged with those beautiful hues which such a knowlege must ever impart, embellishing them with an interesting and unfading charm. In poetry, painting, sculpture, and music, he will discover a treasure of materials; great art, taste, and fancy, however, are necessary to employ such advantages successfully. The exalted style of dancing should present us with the attitudes and contours of Correggio, Albano, and Guido; every movement, every step, should convey a sentiment."

He feelingly laments the decline of fine dancing."It is truly to be lamented, that the finest style of dancing is now so much neglected-I might, perhaps, say completely laid by. The causes of this sad abandonment are chiefly attributable to that confusion of branches by wihch at present the art of dancing is tarnished, to the want of perseverance and study in most dancers, and to the vicious taste so conspicuous amongst those who frequent the greatest part of our theatres. Our masters were perfect in this style, but they have had very few followers. For some length of time past, the noble and serious kind of dancing has been treated with a singular contempt. It is, indeed, difficult to imagine how any one can dance without being lively. Serious dancing, however, possesses its peculiar attractions. Beautiful positions, majestic movements, dignity of step, &c., give a certain character of importance to dancing, which, with respect to imitation, assimilates it, in a manner, to the art of sculpture. The ancients were very partial to this sort of recreation, and cultivated it with great suc

cess.

We despise and neglect it because

we are far beneath that perfection which∙ the Greeks, and especially the Romans, obtained."

This regret, we venture to say, is ridiculous. Dancing is still practised with a sufficient degree of taste and elegance.

THE KEEPSAKE, for the year 1829. ANIMATED by public favor, the great artist who is the proprietor of this annual has produced, with the aid of a new editor, a volume still more pleasing and attractive than that of the preceding year. The expense has been considerably greater than that which was before incurred; but this increasing liberality, we believe, has been more than compensated by the augmentation of demand. The eleven thousand guineas, therefore, devoted to this object, may be said to have been judiciously and profitably employed.

The names of the literary contributors to this volume form a splendid list-a fine array of talent. Sir Walter Scott, Sir James Mackintosh, the lords Normanby, Porchester, and Nugent, lord Francis Leveson Gower, Coleridge, Words worth, Southey, Shelley and his wife, Mrs. Hemans, Miss Landon, and other distinguished persons, have furnished a variety of articles both in prose and verse, to which the editor Mr. Reynolds (son of the dramatist) has added some tolerable productions of his own pen.

There are four pieces by Sir Walter, all of which may be supposed to evince talent, as he cannot write without some display of that quality; but there are perhaps many readers, who would not admire his choice of subjects; for two of the tales have a supernatural tendency, and one is a regular ghost-story.

Mr. Banim's Half-Brothers, and Mrs. Shelley's Sisters of Albano, are agreeable and interesting; and the Attempt at a Tour, by the author of the Roué, is lively and amusing.

Lord Normanby's "Clorinda, a Tale of a By-Stander," is superior in some respects to his Matilda; but the tone of feeling to which some objected in the old tale, is also apparent in the new one. A critic observes, not without reason, that "the consequences of guilt are, it is true, powerfully brought out; but still, as before, the whole interest of the reader is drawn to the guilty, while he who is "sinned against" is made so utterly odious and despicable, as to be nothing short of

revolting. Lord Normanby is now some few years older than when he wrote his first work; and, we confess, we wonder that he has not abandoned this view of composition. It gives, we are perfectly aware, great scope for vivid representations of the more violent workings of the heart, and opportunities of displaying a minute acquaintance with its metaphysics; but the impression left is often unpleasing, and, at the close, we cannot but wish that the author had devoted his powers to pic tures of passion as strong but more pure, to the representation of intellect as exalted, but not stained or degraded by being devoted to the cause of wrong.We would not be understood as wishing

to impute more laxity to the Tale of the By-stander than exists in a large proportion of modern literature; we are quite aware that lord Normanby may plead the infliction of poetical justice; for, if the guilty persons be so drawn as to gain our interest, they are also awfully punished by the immediate consequences of their guilt itself. But we regret that talents like those visible in this story, should be devoted to a school which its author, we doubt not, will soon feel is a false one; and which, moreover, his taste must point out, is fast becoming hackneyed."

Of the poetry, Wordsworth's CountryGirl is a fair specimen.

"That happy gleam of vernal eyes,
Those locks from summer's golden skies,
That o'er thy brow are shed;
That cheek--a kindling of the morn,

That lip-a rose-bud from the thorn,
I saw; and fancy sped

To scenes Arcadian, whisp'ring, through soft air,
Of bliss that grows without a care;

Of happiness that never flies

How can it, where love never dies?

Of promise whisp'ring, where no blight
Can reach the innocent delight;
Where pity to the mind convey'd
In pleasure is the darkest shade,
That Time, unwrinkled grandsire, flings
From his smoothly gliding wings.

What mortal form, what earthly face,
Inspired the pencil, lines to trace,
And mingle colors that could breed
Such rapture, nor want power to feed?
For, had thy charge been idle flowers,
Fair damsel, o'er my captive mind,
To truth and sober reason blind,

'Mid that soft air, those long-lost bowers,
The sweet illusion might have hung for hours!
-Thanks to this tell-tale sheaf of corn,

That touchingly bespeaks thee born,
Life's daily tasks with them to share,
Who, whether from their lowly bed
They rise, or rest the weary head,
Do weigh the blessing they entreat
From Heaven, and feel what they repeat,
While they give utt'rance to the prayer
That asks for daily bread."

The engravings can scarcely be praised beyond their deserts. The portrait of Mrs. Peel, executed by Mr. Charles Heath, is tasteful and brilliant; the most elegant of the poetical subjects are Love and Jealousy, both designed by Stephan

off; and to Stothard's representation of the Garden of Boccaccio full justice has been done by the burin of Engleheart, while the garden itself is well described by Coleridge.

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A PROTESTANT in Ireland, being desirous of seeing a wake, entered a chapel in a retired spot. This was a large ruinous looking thatched cottage, one end of which bore the marks of being commonly used as a ball-alley,—a species of disrespect to holy things, not uncommon in Ireland. The interior, too, did not by any means seem to indicate the character of a religion, which is supposed to place so much dependence on effect; indeed, a more neglected desolate-looking "house__of God" could not easily be found. The altar was of the rudest description, and ornamented only by various blotches of ink, and villainous pothook scrawls, which gave token, that it was also applied to the secular purpose of a writing-desk by the scholars of the village. A small wooden crucifix, and two carved candlesticks of the same material, were the only works of art which graced a supper-table, as plain as that of the founder of Christianity himself, but strangely different from those of his accredited servants, the bishops of both churches, to whom it seems he bequeathed his spiritual power, and hishumility. The furniture of the chapel was completed by a pew at each side of the altar, intended for the more respectable part of the inhabitants. A deal table was placed, for the present occasion, flanked by two forms, in the middle of the earthen floor, on which a corpse lay with the feet toward the altar. It occasionally happens, that the bodies of even the more decent class of cottagers are waked in the chapel, from domestic circumstances rendering the dwelling-house a less convenient scene for the ceremony; but in general this honor is claimed only for the stranger poor, and other homeless vagabonds, who usually infest, like a cloud of locusts, an Irish village. In any case, however, the same regard to decency, according to the barbarous customs of the people, is paid here to the miserable relic of mortality,

which it would receive in the home of its

living friends, the charity or piety of the neighbours supplying any thing that might be wanting in the funds of the deceased; but, on the present occasion, the visitant was particularly struck with the omission of things always customary, and, indeed, considered absolutely necessary not merely to the "dacency" of the affair, but to the actual welfare of the spirit, already trem

From Mr. Ritchie's Tales and Confessions.

bling at the judgement-seat. The body, it is true, was covered up to the chin with a coarse white sheet, the cheeks were outline of the face, and an earthen plate stuffed with tow to preserve the living full of snuff lay on the breast; but instead it, amounting to the mystical number of of candles, which should have surrounded six, there were only two yellow stalks of tallow, which shed a "dim religious

is usually said or sung for the benefit of light" around; in lieu of the mass, which such souls as can afford to go to heaven, the only music proceeded from an organ, commonly described as the seat of smell, solitary old woman, who had leaned her rather than of sound, appertaining to a head on the table, and fallen fast asleep, in the discharge of her laborious duty of wakefulness. The forlorn and deserted condition of the corpse surprised the view more closely the moral of the scene, stranger, who approached the table to

The face was of a cast not uncommon in where the foolish and brutal exercise of this, or, perhaps, in any other country Power on the part of the powerful, has called up the latent energies of human nature in an illegitimate and desperate form. The courage which would have graced that throne of marble in countries tyranny, demanded here the name of exempted from political and social ferocity, and, in spite of the chiseled beauty of the features, threw a savage and repulsive air over the whole portrait. pier state of society would have been Cunning and obstinacy, which in a hapdenominated ingenuity and fortitude, were still more brutalised by the evident traces of dissipation; and, in short, the corpse, which was that of a young man of two or of what the Irish peasant is, and what he three and twenty, presented a specimen might be, escaped from the dominion, not of the acknowleged enslavers of his nation, but of the social bigots who perbelief, and of the Catholic lords of the secute him for his ignorant but honest soil, who pocket the produce of his labor, sneak off to England, to water its fertile cover the laborer with chains, and then soil with the sweat of their country, and howl for emancipation. On raising a part of the sheet, said the stranger to a friend, "I was astonished to observe that the

body was dressed in a military uniform, which made it the more extraordinary that it should be left in this solitary manner, not merely by the town's people, but by the comrades of the deceased; and I was

on the point of disturbing the slumbers of the guardian hag, to request a solution of the mystery. I first, however, lifted a coarse towel, with which the brow was covered (although the whole head is usually left bare), to obtain a fuller view of the dead man's face; but, with a shudder of horror and disgust, dropped the veil on the most dreadful wound I ever beheld. It was larger than a dozen musket-bullets could have inflicted, and the bone of the scull was shattered and driven in, as if by the blunted point of a stake. I walked away from the table with a momentary sensation of sickness, but, before leaving the chapel, took a pinch of snuff out of the plate with an air of piety and politeness; and, if the charitable wishes of a living denizen of the earth could in any respect benefit the tree which lieth where it falls, the departed tenant of that ruin of mortality would find itself all the better for the visit of the heretic stranger. A female in a corner, apparently observing this action, and possibly the feeling of sympathy which prompted it, rose suddenly from her knees, and courtesied to me as I passed, but immediately resumed her position, and drew the hood of her cloke farther over her head. She was apparently about eighteen years of age, and her face had that expression of mental beauty and intelligence, which, when met with among an ignorant and barbarous people, arrests the attention of the passer by, like the appearance of a spirit. I returned her salute with a silent bow, and left the chapel.

A SATIRICAL CONTRAST BETWEEN THE ANCIENT BRITONS AND THE PRESENT SUBJECTS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM;

from the Misfortunes of Elphin.

As the bard Taliesin grew up, Gwythno (the British king) instructed him in all the knowlege of the age, which was of course not much, in comparison with ours. The science of political economy was sleeping in the womb of time. The advantage of growing rich by getting into debt and paying interest, was altogether unknown: the safe and economical currency, which is produced by a man writing his name on a bit of paper, for which other men give him their property, and which he is always ready to exchange for another bit of paper, of an equally safe and œconomical manufacture, being also equally ready to render his own person,

at a moment's notice, as impalpable as the metal which he promises to pay-is a stretch of wisdom to which the people of those days had nothing to compare. They had no steam-engines, with fires as eternal as those of the nether world, wherein the squalid many, from infancy to age, might be turned into component portions of machinery for the benefit of the purplefaced few. They could neither poison the air with gas, nor the waters with its dregs: in short, they made their money of metal, and breathed pure air, and drank pure water, like unscientific barbarians. Of moral science they had little; but morals, without science, they had about the same as we have. They had a number of fine precepts, partly from their religion, partly from their bards, which they remembered in their liquor, and forgot in their business. Political science they had none; yet they went to work politically much as we do. The powerful took all they could get from their subjects and neighbours, and called something or other sacred and glorious when they wanted the people to fight for them.

There was no liberty of the press, because there was no press; but there was liberty of speech to the bards, whose persons were inviolable, and the general motto of their order was, "the truth against the world." If many of them, instead of acting up to this splendid profession, chose to advance their personal fortunes by appealing to the selfishness, the passions, and the prejudices, of kings, factions, and the rabble, our free-press gentry may afford them a little charity out of the excess of their own virtue.

The laws lay in a small compass; every bard had those of his own community by heart. The king or chief was the judge; the plaintiff and defendant told their own stories; and the cause was disposed of in one hearing. We may well boast of the progress of light, when we turn from this picture to the statutes at large and the court of Chancery; and we may indulge in a pathetic reflection on our sweet-faced myriads of "learned friends," who would be under the unpleasant necessity of suspending themselves by the neck, if this barbaric "practice of the courts" should suddenly be revived.

As the people did not read the Bible, and had no religious tracts, their religion, it may be assumed, was not very pure. The rabble of Britons must have seen little more than the superficial facts, that the lands, revenues, and privileges, which

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