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Pope Julius, then, the second of the name,
Before his brow was girt with triple crown,
Lived a poor monk, almost unknown to fame;
Years and austerity had bow'd him down ;
The hollow cough, that all incessant came

From wasting lungs, seem'd as a trumpet blown
Before his feeble steps, along the road
That led him to the narrow cold abode.
Pope Alexander, like a woodcock caught

In his own springe, had drain'd the poison'd bowl, By which, with impious joy, he vainly thought

To speed to heaven or hell his foeman's soul. All Rome breathed light. Even gentle mothers brought Their babes, to glad their eyes without control Upon the huge and bloated serpent's fall, Whose folds they late had fear'd would twine round all. There was caballing 'mong the Cardinals,

More than beseem'd men of such reverend station; Indeed, it much the virtuous soul appals

To see how power, both in the church and nation, Still to the low intriguer's portion falls,

Whilst virtue seems to lose all estimation;
I am determined, when the world I sway,
To alter quite this strange and naughty way.
Nevertheless, queer tricks were play'd at Rome
In great abundance, at the time I write of;
Each hoary priest evinced himself at home

In the soft courtier's supple arts, in spite of
The musty rules of each ascetic tome,

And deep-pledged vows, which they could not shake quite off

Yet wore so light, 'twas doubtful were they meant
For their restraint, or some quaint ornament.
And when the worthies in full conclave met,

So well each ancient sinner play'd his part,
No man, for fear of 'countering a defeat,

Before he saw his neighbour's game, dared start; Dimness was in each eye, big drops of sweat

At every pore, quick throbs in every heart; Before them stood the vacant papal chair, But what-oh! what the plan to mount up there? Meanwhile, there issued, from a neighbouring cell, Long and deep sighs of ill-suppressed pain; Cough followed cough, with low monotonous knell, And then came groans, then voice of low complain; The notes of sickness multiply and swell,

Nor can the assembled conclave long refrain To ask, what miserable child of sin

Was marching from this world with such a din? "Poor brother Julius nighs his latter end;"

And tears were shed for his unhappy case; Just then some power did to Trivulcio send, While yet fresh sorrows glitter'd on his face, The bright idea that his hopes might mend,

T

Could he gain time, ere starting on the race— Whispering," Make Julius Pope; he'll not live long, And, ere he die, your party will be strong." Rising at once, in accents bland and low, He chid himself to have so long forgot The virtues, and the talents, and the woe, That had distinguish'd the terrestrial lot, Of the dear saint whose moanings they heard flow, Inspiring grief to all upon the spot. "None like good Julius to the church was dear; None but good Julius her rich crown should wear!".

Each slyboots saw the wily speaker's aim,

But each a like hope cherish'd in his mind;
And, as the views of all were much the same,
The plan did ready acquiescence find;
With one consent they shout out Julius' name,

And with a will that kept pace with the wind,

How slow soe'er their heavy bodies moved,
Four priests sped forth to fetch the well-beloved.
Anon the ruddy couriers back return,

Bearing a feeble creature them among,
Whose bloodshot eyes with fever's frenzy burn—
Whose body is emaciate and long-
Whose tottering feet the pavement idly spurn-

Whose back is like a hoop, and not so strong;
Gravely they place him in the envied chair,
And with the triple crown they deck him there.
Awhile he idly sat where they had placed him,
As if unconscious who he was or where;
At last, as if some sudden thought had braced him,
He started up, and with majestic air,

As if he wish'd the astonish'd crowd who faced him
Should of his new-found strength be made aware—
"I go,” he said, " to greet my subjects' eyes,
Up! where those lofty battlements arise."

With stupid wonderment they follow after,

Much marvelling at his steady length of stride;
And one there was, who with deep-smother'd laughter
View'd the blank faces moving by his side.
On went Pope Julius ;-now his soul had quaff'd her
Long wish'd-for draught of deep-enduring pride,
And on St Angelo's high-banner'd wall

He stopp'd triumphant, looking down on all.
Along the Tiber's bridge, before the gate,
At every window, and on every roof,

In sordid rags, or glittering robe of state,

Mix'd with the throng, or standing proud aloof, Gallant or abject, downcast or elate,

The Romans, anxious who should weave the woof Of their land's destiny, since morn had waited To hear the Conclave's grave resolve narrated. And when the stately senior strode before them, When heralds call'd aloud Pope Julius' name, And the key'd banner proudly rustled o'er him,

At once from out the multitude there came-As on their knees they fell down to adore himA shout so loud, as if the central flame Had burst the thick crust of the unclosing world, And roaring upwards, all in fragments hurl❜d. His eye flash'd proudly, and his breast swell'd high, And his long arms, in act of benediction, He stretch'd forth o'er his people gracefully,

As they perform'd their noisy genuflection; Then turning to the Cardinality,

Said, when he saw how pallid their complexion— "Fools! does my vigorous bearing thus astound them? 'I stoop'd to seek the keys, but now I've found them

ON THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF CHARLES JAMES FOX.

GIBBON records with delight, that in 1788, the " Man of the People" escaped from the tumult of the Westminster Election to the lakes and mountains of Switzerland, and visited him at Lausanne. "I have ate and drank, and conversed, and sat up all night with Mr Fox in England," says the gratified historian, "but it never has happened that I should enjoy him as I did that day, alone, from ten in the morning till ten at night. Our conversstion never flagged for a moment, and he seemed thoroughly pleased with the place and with his company. We had little of politics, though he gave me, in a few words, such a character of Pitt, as one great man should give of another, his rival. Much of my books, on which he flattered me very pleasantly, to Homer and the Arabian Nights; much about the country, my garden—which he understands far better than I do; and, upon the whole, I think he envies me, and would do were he minister.”

Gibbon was right. Fox's natural element was the pure air of the country-silvan occupations, lettered leisure, and gentle refined society. He was not inclined, though wondrously adapted, for the stir and turmoil of St Stephens. He excelled, as it were, in spite of himself. His gigantic mind, like the "lithe proboscis" of the elephant, accommodated itself to any task, however vast or minute. As leader of the Whigs, his ambition was gratified his patriotism, learning, and talents, were called into play and his oratory or eloquence was but the natural outpouring of his mind. Fox was educated for the senate, and once within the Circean toils and blandishments of high office and unbounded popularity, who could tear himself away from the witchery of the scene? The troubled grandeur of the debates on the American Warthe excitement of the Regency Question-the India Bill and Warren Hastings' impeachment-the first wildly beautiful prospects of the French Revolution, which promised to renovate the youth of civil society, and the orator's ceaseless objurgations of war, in the spirit of Tully,

"Iniquissimam pacem justissimo bello antefero," are splendid incidents in his chequered dream of public life. Others, perhaps, are of a darker shade. The coalition with Lord North was an unlucky conjunction made under an evil star; Mr Fox, too, stuck rather long by the frantic French reformers; and it is melancholy to think, that he whose sagacity was in general so profound, and whose spirit was so salient, generous, and manly, should by his devotion to the gaming-table have been compelled to accept of the pecuniary bounty of his admiring friends. Well has the poet said,→→→

"The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make whips to scourge us."

Fox must have felt this in all the bitterness of his soul when his annuity was doled out to him. But the closing scene of his life had something in it of his former glory. He was again in office, again surrounded by his noble and faithful friends; he had set the sign and seal of government to that great work of substantial justice, the Abolition of the Slave Trade. "He died," said Sheridan, “in the spirit of peace, struggling to extend it to the world." The sentiment is as just as it is beautiful.

Dryden. This was to set up a turnpike at every step of his progress to forget the end in the means. The writer of this was informed by an aged nobleman, the Earl of Carysfort, who knew Mr Fox long and intimately, that he would sometimes write half-a-dozen copies of a common invita tion card before he hit off one to satisfy himself. The first was too cold and distant-the second, perhaps, too familiar-the third too long and so on through the vagaries of a restless fastidious fancy, or the sensibilities of a nature tremblingly afraid of wounding, even in the slightest point, the feelings of another. Lord Holland has given a brief but happy sketch of his noble relative's habits of composition. "His habit was seldom or ever to be alone when employed in composition. He was accustomed to write on covers of letters or scraps of paper, sentences which he, in all probability, had turned in his mind, and, in some degree, formed, in the course of his walks, or during his hours of leisure. These he read over to Mrs Fox; she wrote them out in a fair hand in the book; and, before he destroyed the original paper, he examined and approved of the copy. In the course of thus dictating from his own writing, he often altered the language, and even the construction of the sentence."

66

The historical work, thus carefully and anxiously proceeded in, was, alas! left to posterity in an incomplete, unfinished state. There are few historical fragments, however, from which the student of our constitutional history will derive more instruction or delight, than the Introductory Chapter to the Reign of James II. The author's philosophical reflections on the rise and progress of the Civil War-his prophetic sagacity in forecasting the prospects of society-and the truly English spirit of his love of freedom, and hatred of tyranny, are visible in every page. In such a work, the style and diction are but subordinate considerations; but even here Fox is impeccable. He had too great a horror of any invasion of the King's English, to sanction for a moment, by his example, that Babylonish unnatural idiom which began to prevail in his day. His definition of the duty of an historian was to tell the story of the times" a simple, forcible expression, to which his language was strictly conformed. The Eulogy on the Duke of Bedford, the only one of his speeches which Fox revised for the press, is characterised by the same nervous and elegant simplicity. There is As an oratory Fox has had few equals, either in ancient or something extremely touching in the manner in which he modern times. The overpowering force of his arguments, recalls the virtues of his departed friend, and of the house -the variety, appositeness, and richness of his illustra- of Russell-the partial veneration which we feel for the tions,-his enthusiasm, artlessness, and elegance all con- principles of the ancestors from whom we are descended spired to render him the very beau ideal of a perfect Bri-biasses which, in Athens and Rome, were considered tish orator. He was what Byron says of Moore, the delight of all parties the idol of his own. His very faults were in consonance with the British character. Against Fox the statesman, numerous and bold were the invectives that were uttered; but against Fox the man, not a word was breathed. His gentlemanly courtesy and frank popular bearing won the affections of the people, and, to travesty the words of Milton, smoothed the raven wing of Party till it smiled.

It is an anomalous circumstance in the history of the human mind, that the man who was never at a loss in debate who seemed to have wit and words at will-who cattered the careless felicities and inimitable graces of his genius as freely as the gorgeous East "showers her Barbaric pearl and gold," should yet have been one of the most tardy, unready, and laborious of writers. Few auhors would submit to the drudgery which Fox, by his own fastidiousness, entailed upon himself. His scrupuous attention to all the niceties of language was carried almost to the verge of the ridiculous. Like Rousseau, he aboured night and day to attain simplicity to master that reat difficulty in writing, the art of concealing art. It is carcely possible to refrain from smiling at the idea of the reat Charles James Fox sitting down to compose an elaboate historical work, with the resolution of admitting no word into his book for which he had not the authority of

favourable to the cause of patriotism and public virtue. "It is not, however,” adds the orator, “for the purpose of performing the pious office of friendship, by fondly strewing flowers upon his tomb, that I have drawn your attention to the character of the Duke of Bedford: the motive that actuates me, is one more suitable to what were his views. It is, that this great character may be strongly impressed upon the minds of all who hear me that they may see it--that they may feel it that they may discourse of it in their domestic circles that they may speak of it to their children, and hold it up to the imitation of pos terity. If he could now be sensible to what passes here below, sure I am, that nothing could give him so much satisfaction, as to find that we are endeavouring to make his memory and example as he took care his life should be-useful to mankind." Esto perpetua."

Mr Fox was all his life attached to poetry. His letters, we are told by Lord Holland, are filled with complaints of the annoyances which arose from politics, while he speaks with delight and complacency of whole days devoted to Euripides and Virgil. In the midst of his stormy political contentions, it is delightful to find him writing to Mr, now Lord, Grey, a long letter in defence of his opinion, that the note of the nightingale was a merry, and not a melancholy note. Theocritus, Sophocles, Chaucer, and Dryden, are all pressed into the argument; and the

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leader of the Opposition concludes with admirable frankness and simplicity," I am afraid I like these researches as much better than those which relate to Shaftesbury, Sunderland, &c., as I do those better than attending the House of Commons." Mr Fox himself wrote verses. They are of a higher cast than proceed from "the mob of gentlemen who write with ease," but do not exceed what the French call vers de société. He was an elegant, accomplished versifier, but nothing more. He had no visions of surpassing grandeur or beauty-none of the "fine frenzy" which glances from earth to heaven. The conclusion of his verses to Mrs Crewe has more of imagination than any other of his occasional effusions:

"Beauty alone but imperfectly charms,

century, and which is so inseparably associated in the mind of a modern with ideas of full-bottomed perukes, long-backed coats, gold-buckled shoes, and tall walkingcanes. Mr Pitt's tax, which had so strong an effect upon the heads of the British public, did not perhaps unsettle one grain of truly Jacobite powder; nor is it hypotheti cal to suppose, that the general abandonment of snuftaking by the ladies, which happened rather before that period, wrenched a single box from the fingers of any ancient dame, whose mind had been made up upon politics, as her taste had been upon black rappee, before the year of God 1745.

In proportion as the world at large ceased to regard the claims of the House of Stewart, and as old age advanced

For though brightness may dazzle, 'tis kindness that upon those who still cherished them, the spirit of Jacobi

warms.

As on suns in the winter with pleasure we gaze,
But feel not their warmth, though their splendour we
praise,

So beauty our just admiration may claim,

But love, and love only, our hearts can inflame." It would be uncandid and unjust to estimate the literary character of Mr Fox by the standard applied to ordinary authors. Literature was to him a pastime rather than a pursuit; and if we consider the engrossing and harassing nature of the public duties, in the discharge of which he was nearly all his life actively engaged, our wonder that he has done so little will be abated, if not wholly removed. Dr Johnson, in estimating the merits of Dryden, remembered, in extenuation, that he had to provide for the day that was passing over him: Mr Fox, in meeting the calls of his political engagements, had a task even more arduous to perform. His anxiety must

have been great, for his responsibility was heavy: the bare sacrifice, or rather devotion, of his time was immense; and he no doubt found that, in politics, "suffi

cient for the day was the evil thereof." He can only be considered, in a literary point of view, as affording one of the few examples of British statesmen, who have cultivated literature with a success proportioned to their exertions. Burke was perhaps of a higher order, and Chatham might have been still more transcendent. But the fame of Fox is secure. England already numbers him among the greatest of her patriots; and his taste and genius the simple magnanimity and unconscious nobleness of his nature—will ever endear his name to the lover of letters and virtue.

tism, once so lofty and so chivalrous, assimilated more and more with the mere imbecility of dotage. What it thus lost, however, in extensive application, it gained in virulence; and it perhaps never burned in any bosoms with so much fervour, as in those few which last retained it. True, the generosity which characterized it in earlier and better times, had now degenerated into a sort of acrid humour, like good wine turned into vinegar. Yet, if an example were wanting of the true inveterate Jacobite, it the few who survived till recent times, and who had carcould not be found any where in such perfection as amongst ried the spirit unscathed and unquenched through three quarters of a century of every other description of political sentiment.

As no general description can present a very vivid pertraiture to the mind, it may be proper here to condescend upon the features of the party, by giving a sketch of an individual Jacobite who was characterized in the manner

of his brethren.

alluded to, and who might be considered a fair specimen might be styled the LAST OF THE JACOBITES; for, at the peThe person meant to be described, riod of his death in 1825, there was not known to exist, refused to acknowledge the reigning family. His name at least in Edinburgh, any person besides himself, whe was Alexander Halket. He had been, in early life, a merchant at the remote town of Fraserburgh, on the Moray Frith; but had retired for many years before bis death, to live upon a small annuity in Edinburgh. The propensity which characterized him, in common with all the rest of his party, to regard the antiquities of his nahis fortune in inducing him to take up his abode in the tive land with reverence, joined with the narrowness of Old Town. He lodged in one of those old stately hotels near the palace of Holyroodhouse, which had formerly been occupied by the noblemen attendant upon the Scattish court, but which have latterly become so completely overrun by the lower class of citizens. Let it not be supposed that he possessed the whole of one of these magnificent hotels. He only occupied two rooms in one of the floors or flats into which all such buildings in Edinburgh are divided; and these he possessed only in the character of a lodger, not as a tenant at first hand. He was, nevertheless, as comfortably domiciled as most old gentlemen who happen to have survived the period of matrimony. His room-for one of them was so styled par excellence-was cased round with white-painted paThese relics of the party-for they could be called no-nelling, and hung with a number of portraits representing thing else—soon became isolated in the midst of general society; and, latterly, were looked upon, by modern politicians, with a feeling similar to that with which the antediluvian patriarchs must have been regarded in the New World, after they had survived several generations of their shortlived descendants. As their glory lay all in the past, they took an especial pride in retaining every description of manners and dress which could be considered old-fashioned, much upon the principle which induced Will Honeycomb to continue wearing the wig in which he had once gained a young lady's heart. Their manners were entirely of that stately and formal sort which obtained at the commencement of the eighteenth

THE LAST OF THE JACOBITES. By the Author of the Histories of the Scottish Rebellions. I HAD occasion to mention, at the conclusion of my History of the Insurrection of 1745, that, after that period, the spirit of Jacobitism became a very different thing from what it had formerly been-that, acquiring no fresh adherents among the young subsequent to that disastrous year, it grew old, and decayed with the individuals who had witnessed its better days-and that, in the end, it became altogether dependent upon the existence of a few aged enthusiasts, more generally of the female than the

male sex.

the latter members of the House of Stuart, among whom the Old and Young Chevaliers were not forgotten. His

Some rascally picture-dealer had imposed upon him a nonelscript daub of the female face divine as a likeness of the beautiful Queen Mary. How he accomplished this it is not easy to say; probably he was acquainted with Mr Halket's ardent devotion to the cause of the House of Stuart at every period of its history, and availed himself of this knowledge to palm the wretched portrait upon the old gentleman's unsuspecting enthusiasm. Certain it is, that the said portrait was hung in the place of honour-over the mantel-piece -in Mr Halket's apartment, and was, on state occasions, exhibited to his guests with no small complacency. Many of his friends were, like himself, too blindly attached to every thing that carried a show of antiquity to suspect the cheat; and others were too good-natured to disturb a harmless delusion, from the indulgence of which he de rived so much satisfaction. One of them, however, actuated by an unhappy spirit of connoisseurship, was guilty of the cruelty of unde

windows had a prospect on the one hand of the quiet, and cloistered precincts of Chessels' Court, and on the other to the gilded spires and grey time-honoured turrets of Holyroodhouse. Twice a-year, when he held a card party, with three candles on the table, and the old joke about the number which adorn that of the Laird of Grant, was he duly gratified with compliments upon the comfortable nature of his room, by the ancient Jacobite spinsters and dowagers, who, in silk mantles and pattens, came from the Abbeyhill and New Street, to honour him with their venerable company.

Mr Halket belonged, as a matter of course, to the primitive apostolical church, whose history has been so intimately and so fatally associated with that of the House of Stuart. He used to attend an obscure chapel in the Old Town; one of those unostentatious places of worship to which the Episcopalian clergy had retired, when dispossessed of their legitimate fanes at the Revolution, and where they have since performed the duties of religion, rather, it may be said, to a family, or at most a circle of acquaintance, than to a congregation. He was one of the old-fashioned sort of Episcopalians, who always used to pronounce the responses aloud; and, during the whole of the Liturgy, he held up one of his hands in an attitude of devotion. One portion alone of that formula did he abstain from assenting to-the prayer for the Royal Family. At that place, he always blew his nose, as a token of contempt. In order that even his eye might not be offended by the names of the Hanoverian family, as he called them, he used a prayer-book which had been print

Charles, the Duke of York, and the Princess Anne. He was excessively accurate in all the forms of the Episcopalian mode of worship; and indeed acted as a sort of fugleman to the chapel; the rise or fall of his person being in some measure a signal to guide the corresponding motions of all the rest of the congregation.

Such was Alexander Halket at least in his more poetical and gentlemanly aspect. His character and his tory, however, were not without their disagreeable points. For instance, although but humbly born himself, he was perpetually affecting the airs of an aristocrat, was always talking of "good old families who had seen better days," and declaimed incessantly against the upstart pride and consequence of people who had orginally been nothing. This peculiarity, which was perhaps, after all, not inconsistent with his Jacobite craze, he had exhibited even when a shopkeeper in Fraserburgh. If a person came in, for instance, and asked to have a hat, Halket would take down one of a quality suitable, as he thought, to the rank or wealth of the customer, and, if any objection was made to it, or a wish expressed for one of a better sort, he would say, "That hat, sir, is quite good enough for a man in your rank of life: I will give you no other." He was also very finical in the decoration of his person, and very much of a hypochondriac in regard to little incidental maladies. Somebody, to quiz him on this last score, once circulated a report that he had caught cold one night, going home from a party, in consequence of having left off wearing a particular gold ring. And it really was not impossible for him to have believed such a thing, extravagant as it may appear.

Halket was an old man of dignified appearance, and generally wore a dress of the antique fashion above alluded to. On Sundays and holidays, he always exhibited a sort of court-dress, and walked with a cane of more than ordinary stateliness. He also assumed this dignified attire on occasions of peculiar ceremony. It was his custom, for instance, on a particular day every year, to pay a visit to the deserted court of Holyrood, in this dress, which he considered alone suitable to an affair of so much import-ed before the Revolution, and which still prayed for King ance. On the morning of the particular day which he was thus wont to keep holy, he always dressed himself with extreme care, got his hair put into order by a pro- | fessional hand, and, after breakfast, walked out of doors with deliberate steps and a solemn mind. His march down the Canongate was performed with all the decorum which might have attended one of the state processions of a former day. He did not walk upon the pavement by the side of the way. That would have brought him into contact with the modern existing world, the rude touch of which might have brushed from his coat the dust and sanctitude of years. He assumed the centre of the street, where, in the desolation which had overtaken the place, he ran no risk of being jostled by either carriage or foot passenger, and where the play of his thoughts and the play of his cane-arm alike got ample scope. There, wrapped up in his own pensive reflections, perhaps imagining himself one in a court pageant, he walked along, under the lofty shadows of the Canongate, a wreck of yesterday floating down the stream of to-day, and almost in himself a procession. On entering the porch of the palace, he took off his hat; then, pacing along the quadrangle, he ascended the staircase of the Hamilton apartments, and entered Queen Mary's chambers. Had the beauteous Queen still kept court there, and still been sitting upon her throne to receive the homage of mankind, Mr Halket could not have entered with more awe-struck solemnity of deportment, or a mind more alive to the nature of the scene. When he had gone over the whole of the various rooms, and also traversed in mind the whole of the recollections which they are calculated to excite, he retired to the Picture-gallery, and there endeavoured to recall, in the same manner, the more recent glories of the court of Prince Charles. To have seen the amiable old enthusiast sitting in that long and lofty hall, gazing alternately upon vacant space and the portraits which hang upon the walls, and to all appearance absorbed beyond recall in the contemplation of the scene, one would have supposed him to be fascinated to the spot, and that he conceived it possible, by devout wishes, long and fixedly entertained, to annul the interval of time, and reproduce upon that floor the glories which once pervaded it, but which had so long passed away. After a day of pure and most ideal enjoyment, he used to retire to his own house, in a state of mind approaching, as near as may be possible on this earth, to perfect beatitude.*

ceiving him, and not only persuaded him that the picture was not a likeness of the goddess of his idolatry-Queen Mary, but possessed him with the belief that it represented the vinegar aspect of the hated Elizabeth. Mr Halket, however, was too proud to acknowledge his mortification by causing the picture to be removed, or perhaps it might not have been convenient for him to supply its place; and he did not want wit to devise a pretext for allowing it to remain, with out compromising his hostility to the English Queen one whit: Very well," said he, "I am glad you have told me it is Elizabeth; for I shall have the pleasure of showing my contempt of her every -day by turning my back upon her when I sit down to table."

He raid a state visit, in full dress, with a sword by his side, to

THE DRAMA.

WHAT a weary load of trash is emptied out of muddy brains upon the subject of Kean's acting! Long, dismal, half-philosophical dissertations, containing a strange mixture of nonsense touching Shakspeare's plays, and of drivel touching the actor's conceptions of them! The simple truth lies in a nutshell;—Shakspeare was a man of genius, and Kean is a man of genius, and ninety-nine out of a hundred who pretend to speak about them are not men of genius, and consequently do not, in the most remote degree, understand either the one or the other. Kean has played five of his best parts here,-Shylock, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Richard twice; but Heaven forbid that we should make one of the twenty thousand who, for the twenty-thousandth time, gravely set themselves down to write an analysis of each of these parts,

the Crown Room, in Edinburgh Castle, immediately after the old regalia of the kingdom had been there discovered in 1818. On this occasion, a friend of the present writer saw him, and endeavoured to engage him in conversation, as he was marching up the Castle Hill; but he was too deeply absorbed in reflection upon the sacred objects which he had to see, to be able to speak. He just gazed on the person accosting him, and walked on.

and to discourse "most eloquent music," though somewhat drowsy withal, on their respective merits and defects. The world knows pretty well, by this time, what kind of actor Kean is. He is one whom Nature, in her mercy, threw upon the stage, to redeem it from the stiff frigidity of tight-laced art. She bestowed upon him strong passions and acute feelings, and she desired him to give them free and spontaneous scope. The actor caught her meaning, for the understanding of it was inherent in him; and taking to himself plenty of elbow-room, he knocked at the heart of his audience boldly and at once, and if the door was not willingly opened to him, he threw himself against it with all his weight, and forced it. Some there were who said, there was no grace, no study, no refinement in his style, that it was coarse and vulgar, and against all rule; but he dashed on, regardless of their prating, and he carried mankind along with him in spite of themselves. The old sober spectacled critics looked at him as they would have done at Joshua commanding the sun and moon to stand still, shook their heads, confessed they did not understand him, and so went home to bed. But he held the theatre breathless, or stirred it into thunder, as he chose; and, therefore, there was in him the invisible fire, the existence of which men know and feel, though they cannot describe or catch it. Let all his faults be granted, for they cannot be concealed;-he was a shabby little creature, with a harsh voice, and uninteresting fea

tures, at times he ranted, and at other times he was too

tame, he had some tricks, too, to catch the gallery,-he had none of the patrician dignity of Kemble, none of the gentlemanly ease of Young;-let all this be granted,— much the better for Kean,-for we should like to know

what it was, after all, that so many thousands of people squeezed their sides out to see? Was it not this one small man, because he had acquired a mastery over their souls? and what more can be said of the mightiest minds that ever lived?

But Kean (though he is still the best actor we have) has fallen off; and when we say so, we mean ourselves to be understood in the fullest acceptation of the term, without making any ridiculous distinction between physical strength and mental power. The two are inseparably conjoined. If a man's body grow weak, his mind, to all intents and purposes, grows weak also. Sickness and dissipation have made terrible havoc with Kean; and the consequence is, that his whole manner is now tamed down, and that half his wonted fire is extinct. His style is far more pompous and elocutionary than it used to be; and this is an alternative which debility has forced upon him. He now mouths and journeys slowly through many passages, to which, in his better days, he would have given all the force of nervous and rapid utterance. Let nobody suppose that this is a voluntary change, because time has chastened his judgment. Judgment was never Kean's forte; but when his blood dashed strongly through his veins, he yielded to the quick impulses of the moment, and these impulses were true to nature. But now they come more rarely, and are feebler when they do come. He has not so much blood as he once had, and a great deal of Kean's best acting lay in his blood. He is like a good race-horse somewhat stricken in years; he walks over a course which he has often galloped round, a hundred yards a-head of all competitors; yet now and then he starts off into his old pace, and the common spectator ignorantly imagines he is as able to win the cup as before. We do not say that Kean is past his best now and for ever. If he gets stronger and more regular in his habits, his acting will again insensibly assimilate itself to what it was in his most vigorous days. In the meantime, he has got three hundred pounds for his six night's performance in Edinburgh, and with that sum in his pocket, he will probably smile very coolly at our assertion, that he has fallen off.

Old Cerberus.

POSTSCRIPT. By the by, what does Kean mean by his

new readings of Shakspeare? He mangles the soliloquy, "To be, or not to be,” most dreadfully, and he has so altered several other passages that we scarcely knew them.

ORIGINAL POETRY.

SONNETS.

By Charles Doyne Sillery.

I. MORNING.

'Tis morn! the mountains catch the living glow
Of amethystine light, and beam sublime
The shatter'd thrones of Omnipresent time—
Belted with broken fragments of the bow!
Up their brown sides, from crag to crag, I climb,
Gazing, enraptured, on the scene below.
The blue and boundless ocean, in the prime
Of the young morn, is heaving to and fro;

And all around is beautiful and bright,
From the green earth to the calm liquid skies!
Light melting into shade, and shade to light→→→
The dew-gemm'd world's a perfumed paradise
Of flowers, so fresh and fragrant, that I feel
The very morn of life into my being steal!

II. EVENING.

But hush! the dolphin dies-the west is tinged
With the last gorgeous tinctures of the day;
And clouds of burnish'd gold, with sapphire fringed,
Roll gloriously into sublime array,

And fade and languish tremulous away
Into the heavens, like rainbows in the spray.
A change is wrought ;-the beams which late were sown
Into the soil of darkness, now have grown

Ten thousand thousand gems of living light! How great is God!" how beautiful is night !” Lift up thy voice, my soul! awake! arise! On every ray that streams so purely bright I feel my spirit wafted to the skies, And there eternal day puts Nature's frown to flight!

III. THE THINGS I LOVE.

Sweet is Aurora's breath at early dawn ;

Sweet is the melody of birds and bees;
Sweet the faint zephyr from the fragrant lawn,

And sweet the plaining of the Eolian trees:
Give morn her glorious star in purple roll'd,
But there are sweets my soul loves more than these ;—

Give even her melody and blushing gold,
Give noon her cloudless skies of laughing blue,

And night her skies, where countless worlds shine through,

Give spring her blossoms summer, flowers and dew— Autumn, her yellow corn-and winter, bind

In zones of glass, and robes of virgin hue :---
But give me-give me sunshine in the mind-
My lyre-my native land—and gentle womankind!

SONNET. THE DEPARTED.
By Thomas Atkinson. 65

Nor with the plaint of unavailing grief
Shall we who knew and loved-it was the same
Thy blameless life, for us on earth too brief!

Lament that we can cherish but thy name ;
Though natural tears will drop,thy only fame!---
Yet we will not, with a despairing woe,! ** vị,
Mourn that thou lingerest not with us below;

For though recall'd so soon to whence you came,
Shall not thy mem'ry, like thy living worth,
If unobtrusive, yet be potent too?...
Hath not upon our hearts the dove gone forth,
Which shall with consolation come anèw,
And tell us, while Example bids us soar,

Earth hath one saint the less but heaven one angel more?

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