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flames. An infant child of Spencer's, together with his most valuable property, were consumed, and he returned into England;-where, dejected, and broken-hearted, he died soon after, at an inn in King-street, Westminster.

"It does not appear what became of Spencer's wife and children. Two sons are said to have survived him, Sylvanus and Peregrine; Sylvanus married Ellen Nangle or Nagle, eldest daughter of David Nangle of Moneanymy, in the county of Cork, by whom he had two sons, Edmund and William Spencer. His other son, Peregrine, also married, and had a sor Hugolin, who, after the restoration of Charles II. was replaced by the Court of Claims in as much of the lands as could be found to have been his ancestor's. Hugolin attached himself to the cause of James II. and after the revolution, was outlawed for treason and rebellion. Some time after his cousin William, son of Sylvanus, became a suitor for the forfeited property, and recovered it by the interest of Mr. Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax, who was then at the head of the treasury. He had been introduced to Mr. Montague by Congreve, who with others was desirous of honouring the descendant of so great a poet. Dr. Birch describes him as a man somewhat advanced in years, but unable to give any account of the works of his ancestor which are wanting. The family has been since very imperfectly traced."-Chalmers's Biog. Dic.

The visits of Sir Walter Raleigh to Spencer at Kilcolman increase the interest attached to the place, and are not in the slightest degree questionable. To the advice of Raleigh the publication of the first books of the Fairy Queen has been ascribed; and the existence of a poetical intercourse between such minds, and in such distracting scenes, is a delightful recollection that almost warms the heart into romance.

Amongst the literary pilgrims whose veneration for Spencer has prompted them to examine Kilcolman was the celebrated Edmund Burke; nor should the imprudent and enthusiastic Trotter be forgotten; the account given by him of his visits, in 1817, are very pleasing, though highly tinged with that fanaticism to which he ultimately became a victim.

Raleigh, it will be recollected, became Spencer's patron, upon the death of Sir Philip Sidney, whom he celebrates under the title of "The Shepherd of the Ocean." Raleigh also ensured Spencer the favour of Elizabeth, a pension of 501. per annum, and the distinction of her laureate.-ED.

The Selector;

AND

LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

CROTCHET CASTLE.

THE author of Headlong Hall has, under the above title, produced as lively a little volume of humour and pleasantry as it has lately been our good fortune to meet with. Every page, nay, every line is a satire upon the extravagance and precocity of what Vivian Grey calls our "artificial state;" and all the weak sides of our age are mercilessly dealt with by the coterie at Crotchet Castle. The book is altogether Shandean, and the satire shandied to and fro with great vivacity. We need not tell the reader what period or event of the last seven years is pointed to in the following extract. Mr. Touchandgo, it appears, was a great banker, who was "suddenly reported absent one foggy morning, with the contents of his till;" his daughter was to have been married to Mr. Crotchet Here are but for this untoward event. two of the father's letters from his new settlement, and a reply :

:

Dotandcarry onetown. State of Apodidraskiana, April 1, 18—. MY DEAR CHILD,-I am anxious to learn what are your present position, intention, and prospects. The fairies who dropped gold in your shoe, on the morning when I ceased to be a respectable man in London, will soon find a talismanic channel for transmitting you a stocking full of dollars, which will fit the shoe, as well as the foot of Cinderella fitted her slipper. I am happy to say, I am again become a respectable man. It was always my ambition to be a respectable man, and I am a very respectable man here, in this new township of a new state, where I have purchased five thousand acres of land, at two dollars an acre, hard cash, and established a very flourishing bank. The notes of Touchandgo and Company, soft cash, are now the exclusive currency of all this vicinity. This is the land, in which all men flourish; but there are three classes of men who flourish especially, methodist preachers, slave-drivers, and paper-money manufacturers; and as one of the latter, I have just painted the word BANK, on a fine slab of maple, which was green and growing when I arrived, and have discounted for the settlers, in my own currency, sundry bills, which are to be paid when the proceeds of the crop they have just sown shall return from New Orleans; so that my

notes are the representatives of vegetation that is to be, and I am accordingly a capitalist of the first magnitude. The people here know very well that I ran away from London; but the most of them have run away from some place or other; and they have a great respect for me, because they think I ran away with something worth taking, which few of them had the luck or the wit to do. This gives them confidence in my re sources, at the same time that, as there is nothing portable in the settlement except my own notes, they have no fear that I shall run away with them. They know I am thoroughly conversant with the principles of banking; and as they have plenty of industry, no lack of sharpness, and abundance of land, they wanted nothing but capital to organize a flourishing settlement; and this capital I have manufactured to the extent required, at the expense of a small importation of pens, ink, and paper, and two or three inimitable copperplates. I have abundance here of all good things, a good conscience included; for I really cannot see that I have done any wrong. This was my position: I owed half a million of money; and I had a trifle in my pocket. It was clear that this trifle could never find its way to the right owner. The question was, whether I should keep it, and live like a gentle man; or hand it over to lawyers and commissioners of bankruptcy, and die like a dog on a dunghill. If I could have thought that the said lawyers, &c. had a better title to it than myself, I might have hesitated; but, as such title was not apparent to my satisfaction, I decided the question in my own favour; the right owners, as I have already said, being out of the question altogether. I have always taken scientific views of morals and politics, a habit from which I derive much comfort under existing circumstances.

I hope you adhere to your music, though I cannot hope again to accompany your harp with my flute. My last andante movement was too forte for those whom it took by surprise. Let not your allegro vivace be damped by young Crotchet's desertion, which, though I have not heard it, I take for granted. He is, like myself, a scientific politician, and has an eye as keen as a needle, to his own interest. He has had good luck so far, and is gorgeous in the spoils of many gulls; but I think the Polar Basin and Walrus Company will be too much for him yet. There has been a splendid outlay on credit, and he is the only man, of the original parties concerned, of

whom his Majesty's sheriffs could give any account.

I will not ask you to come here. There is no husband for you. The men smoke, drink, and fight, and break more of their own heads than of girls' hearts. Those among them who are musical sing nothing but psalms. They are excellent fellows in their way, but you would not like them.

Au reste, here are no rents, no taxes, no poor-rates, no tithes, no church establishment, no routs, no clubs, no rotten boroughs, no operas, no concerts, no theatres, no beggars, no thieves, no kings, no lords, no ladies, and only one gentleman, videlicit your loving father,

TIMOTHY TOUCHANDGO.

P.S. 1 send you one of my notes; I can afford to part with it. If you are accused of receiving money from me, you may pay it over to my assignees. Robthetill continues to be my factotum; I say no more of him in this place; he will give you an account of himself.

Dotandcarryonetown, &c.

DEAR MISS, Mr. Touchandgo will have told you of our arrival here, of our setting up a bank, and so forth. We came here in a tilted wagon, which served us for parlour, kitchen, and all. We soon got up a log-house; and, unluckily, we as soon got it down again, for the first fire we made in it burned down house and all. However, our second experiment was more fortunate; and we are pretty well lodged in a house of three rooms on a floor-I should say the floor, for there is but one.

This new state is free to hold slaves; all the new states have not this privilege. Mr. Touchandgo has bought some, and they are building him a villa. Mr. Touchandgo is in a thriving way, but he is not happy here: he longs for parties and concerts, and a seat in Congress. He thinks it very hard that he cannot buy one with his own coinage, as he used to do in England. Besides, he is afraid of the Regulators, who, if they do not like a man's character, wait upon him and flog him, doubling the dose at stated intervals, till he takes himself off. He does not like this system of administering justice: though I think he has nothing to fear from it. He has the character of having money, which is the best of all characters here, as at home. He lets his old English prejudices influence his opinions of his new neighbours; but I assure you they have many virtues. Though they do keep slaves, they are all ready to fight for their own liberty; and I should not like to be an

enemy within reach of one of their rifles. When I say enemy, I include bailiff in the term. One was shot not long ago. There was a trial; the jury gave two dollars damages; the judge said they must find guilty or not guilty, but the counsel for the defendant (they would not call him prisoner) offered to fight the judge upon the point; and as this was said literally, not metaphorically, and the counsel was a stout fellow, the judge gave in. The two dollars damages were not paid after all; for the defendant challenged the foreman to box for double or quits, and the foreman was beaten. The folks in New York made a great outcry about it, but here it was considered all as it should be. So you see, Miss, justice, liberty, and every thing else of that kind, are different in different places, just as suits the convenience of those who have the sword in their own hands. Hoping to hear of your health and happiness, I remain,

Dear Miss, your dutiful servant, RODERICK ROBTHETILL. Miss Touchandgo replied as follows, to the first of these letters :

MY DEAR FATHER,-I am sure you have the best of hearts, and I have no doubt you have acted with the best intentions. My lover, or I should rather say, my fortune's lover, has indeed forsaken me. I cannot say I did not feel it; indeed, I cried very much; and the altered looks of people who used to be so delighted to see me, really annoyed me so, that I determined to change the scene altogether. I have come into Wales, and am boarding with a farmer and his wife. Their stock of English is very small; but I managed to agree with them; and they have four of the sweetest children I ever saw, to whom I teach all I know, and I manage to pick up some Welsh. I have puzzled out a little song, which I think very pretty; I have translated it into English, and I send it to you, with the original air. You shall play it on your flute at eight o'clock every Saturday evening, and I will play and sing it at the same time, and I will fancy that I hear my dear papa accompanying me.

The people in London said very unkind things of you: they hurt me very much at the time; but now I am out of their way, I do not seem to think their opinion of much consequence.

I am

sure, when I recollect, at leisure, every thing I have seen and heard among them, I cannot make out what they do that is so virtuous, as to set them up for judges of morals. And I am sure they never speak the truth about any thing,

and there is no sincerity in either their love or their friendship. An old Welsh bard here, who wears a waistcoat embroidered with leeks, and is called the Green Bard of Cadair Idris, says the Scotch would be the best people in the world, if there was nobody but themselves to give them a character: and so I think would the Londoners. I hate the very thought of them, for I do believe they would have broken my heart, if I had not gone out of their way. Now I shall write you another letter very soon, and describe to you the country, and the people, and the children, and how I amuse myself, and every thing that I think you will like to hear about; and when I seal this letter, I shall drop a kiss on the cover.

Your loving daughter,

SUSANNAH TOUCHANDGO. P.S. Tell Mr. Robthetill I will write to him in a day or two. This is the little song I spoke of:

Beyond the sea, beyond the sea,
My heart is gone, far, far from me;
And ever on its track will flee,

My thoughts, my dreams, beyond the sea.
Beyond the sea, beyond the sea,
The swallow wanders fast and free:
Oh! happy bird, were I like thee,
I, too, would fly beyond the sea.

Beyond the sea, beyond the sea,
Are kindly hearts and social glee;
But here for me they may not be ;
My heart is gone beyond the sea.

SPIRIT OF THE

Public Hournals.

THE AUTOCRAT'S PRAYER.
EUROPE! hear the voice that rose
From the chief of Freedom's foes-
When he bade war's thunders roll
O'er the country of the Pole-
To his Cossacks on parade
Thus the Calmuck robber said:
"Mine the might, and mine the right,
Stir ye, spur ye to the fight-
Bare the blade, and strike the blow
To the heart's core of the foe-
Slaughter all the rebel bands
Found with weapons in their hands;
On the holy work of fate
Russia's God will consecrate.
"Tis decreed that they shall bleed
For their dark and trait'rous deed.
Poles! to us by conquest given,
Ye provoke the wrath of Heaven:
Therefore, purging sword and shot
Use we must, and spare you not.
Guardian of our northern faith,
Guide us to the field of death!
"Ere we've done, many a one
Shall weep they ever saw the sun.
Rouse the noble in his hall
To a fiery festival;
Dash the stubborn peasant's mirth-
Drown in blood his alien hearth;
Babe or mother, never falter-
Spear the priest before the altar.
Onward, and avenge our wrong!
God is good, and Russia strong!"

Englishman's Magazine, No I.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.

From a paper on the Fine Arts of old in England, in Blackwood's Magazine. THE sex and character of Elizabeth herself was no weak ingredient in the poetic spirit of the time. Loyalty and gallantry blended in the adoration paid her; and the supremacy which she claimed and exercised over the church, invested her regality with a sacred unction that pertained not to feudal sovereigns. It is scarce too much to say, that the virgin-queen appropriated the Catholic honours of the Virgin Mary. She was as great as Diana of the Ephesians. The moon shone but to furnish a type of her bright and stainless maidenhood. To magnify her greatness, the humility of courtly adulation merged in the ecstasies of Platonic love. She was charming by indefeasible right;—a jure divino beauty. Her fascinations multiplied with her wrinkles, and her admirers might have anticipated the conceit of Cowley,

The antipevistoisis of age

More inflamed their amorous rage."

It is easy for a Whig, or a Puritan, or any other unimaginative blockhead, to cry out against all this as nauseous flattery, and assert that after all she was rather an unpoetical personage than otherwise-a coarse-minded old maid, half prude, half coquette, whose better part was mannish, and all that belonged to her sex a ludicrous exaggeration of its weaknesses. But meanwhile, they overlook the fact, that not the woman Elizabeth, but the Virgin-queen, the royal heroine, is the theme of admiration. Not the petty virtues, the pretty sensibilities, the cheap charity, the prim decorum, which modern flatterers dwell upon, degrading royalty, while they palaver its possessor, but Britannia's sacred majesty, enshrined in chaste and lofty womanhood. Our ancestors paid their compliments to sex or rank-ours are addressed to the person. There is no flattery where there is no falsehoodno falsehood where there is no deception. Loyalty of old was a passion, and passion has a truth of its own--and as language does not always furnish expressions exactly adapted, or native to the feeling, what can the loyal poet do, but take the most precious portion of the currency, and impress it with the mint-mark of his own devoted fancy? Perhaps there never was a more panegyrical rhymer than Spenser, and yet, so fine and ethereal is his incense, that the breath of morning is not more cool and salutary :

"It falls me here to write of Chastity

That fayrest virtue, far above the rest.
For which what needs me fetch from Faery,
Forreine ensamples it to have exprest,
Sith it is shrined in my soveraine's brest,
And form'd so lively on each perfect part,
That to all ladies, who have it protest,
Neeus but behold the pourtraict of her part,
If pourtray'd it might be by any living art;
But living art may not least part expresse,
Nor life-resembling pencil it can paint,
All it were Zeuxis or Praxiteles-

His dædale hand would faile and greatly faynt,
And her perfections with his error taynt;
Ne poet's wit that passeth painter farre-
In picturing the parts of beauty dayut," &c.
But neither Zeuxis nor Praxiteles was
called from the dead to mar her per-
fections, nor record her negative charms.
Poetry was the only art that flourished
in the Virgin reign. The pure Gothic,
after attaining its full efflorescence under
Henry VII., departed, never to return.
The Grecian orders were not only ab-
surdly jumbled together, but yet more
outrageously conglomerated with the
"To gild re-
Gothic and Arabesque.
fined gold-to paint the lily," was all
the humour of it. A similar inconsist-
ency infected literature. The classic
and the romantic (to use those terms,
which, though popular, are not logically
exact) were interwoven. The Arcadia
and the Fairy Queen are glorious offences,
which "make defect perfection." Per-
haps, Shakspeare's "small Latin and less
Greek," preserved him from worse ana-
chronisms than any that he has com-
mitted. Queen Bess's patronage was
of the national breed: she loved no pic-
tures so well as portraits of herself. As,
however, her painters have not flattered
her, it may not uncharitably be con-
cluded that they were no great deacons
in their craft. It is a much easier thing
to assure a homely female, in prose or
rhyme, that she is beautiful, than to
represent her so upon canvass.
effigies are, I believe, pretty numerous,
varying in ugliness, but none that
have seen even handsome-prettiness,
of course, is out of the question. She
was fond of finery, but had no taste in
dress. Her ruff is downright odious;
and the liberal exposure of her neck and
With all
bosom anything but alluring.
her pearls about her, she looks like a
pawnbroker's lady bedizened for an
Easter ball, with all the unredeemed
pledges from her husband's shop. She
seems to have patronized that chimera
in the ideal or allegorical portrait, at
which Reubens and Sir Joshua were so
often doomed to toil. She would not
allow a shadow in her picture, arguing,
like a Chinese, or a chop-logic, that
shade is only an accident, and no true
property of body. Like Alexander, who

Her

forbade all sculptors but Lysippus to carve his image, she prohibited all but special cunning limners from drawing her effigy. This was in 1563, anno regni 5, while, though no chicken, she still was not clean past her youth. This order was probably intended to prevent caricatures. At last she quarrelled with her looking-glass as well as her painters, and her maids of honour removed all mirrors from her apartments, as carefully as Ministers exclude opposition papers (we hope not Maga) from the presence of our most gracious sovereign. It is even said, that those fair nettles of India took advantage of her weakness, to dress her head awry, and to apply the rouge to her nose, instead of her cheeks. So may the superannuated eagle be pecked at by daws. But the tale is not probable. After all, it is but the captious inference of wit. lings and scoffers, that attributes to mere sexual vanity that superstitious horror of encroaching age, from which the wisest are not always free. It may be, that they shrink from the reflection of their wrinkles, not as from the despoilers of beauty, but as from the vaunt-couriers of dissolution. In rosy youth, while yet the brow is alabaster-veined with Heaven's own tint, and the dark tresses turn golden in the sun, the lapse of time is imperceptible as the throbbing of a heart at ease. "So like, so very like, is day to day,"-one primrose scarce more like another. Whoever saw their first grey hairs, or marked the crow-feet at the angle of their eyes, without a sigh or a tear, a momentous self-abasement, a sudden sinking of the soul, a thought that youth is flown for ever? None but the blessed few that, having dedicated their spring of life, to Heaven, behold in the shedding of their vernal blossoms, a promise that the season of immortal fruit is near. It is a frailty, almost an instance of humanity, to aim at concealing that from others, of which ourselves are painfully conscious. The herculean Johnson keenly resented the least allusion to the shortness of his sight. So entirely is man a social ani mal, so dependent are all his feelings for their very existence upon communi. cation and sympathy, that the "fee griefs," which none but ourselves are privy to, are forgotten as soon as they are removed from the senses. The artifices to which so many have recourse to conceal their declining years, are often intended more to soothe themselves, than to impose on others. This aversion to growing old is specially natural and excusable in the celibate and the

childless. The borrowed curls, the pencilled eyebrows,

"The steely-prison'd shape,

So oft made taper, by constraint of tape," the various cosmetic secrets, well-known to the middle ages, not only of the softer sex, are not unseemly in a spinster, so long as they succeed in making her look young. They are intolerable in a mother of any age. But we, my dear Christopher, resigned and benevolent old bachelors as we are, can well appreciate the vanity of the aged heart, that sees not its youth renewed in any growing dearer self. Nothing denotes the advances of life, at once so surely and so pleasantly as children springing up around a good man's table. Perhaps our famous Queen, in her latter days, though full of honours as of years, would gladly have changed places with the wife of any yeoman that had a child to receive her last blessing, whose few acres were not to pass away to the hungry expecting son of a hated rival. Her virginity was not like that of Jephthah's daughter, a freewill offering to the Lord. Pride, and policy, and disappointment, and, it may be, hopeless, self-condemned affection, conspired to perpetuate it. Probably it was well for England that no offspring of hers inherited her throne. By some strange ordinance of nature, it generally happens that these wonderful clever women produce idiots or madmen.Witness Semiramis, Agrippina, Cathe, rine de Medicis, Mary de Medicis, Catherine of Russia, and Lady Wortley Montague. One miniature of Elizabeth I have seen, which, though not beautiful, is profoundly interesting: it presents her as she was in the days of her danger and captivity, when the same wily policy, keeping its path, even while it seemed to swerve, was needful to preserve her life, that afterwards kept her firm on a throne. Who was the artist that produced it? I know not; but it bears the strongest marks of authenticity, if to be exactly what a learned spirit would fancy Elizabeth-young, a prisoner, and in peril-be evidence of true portraiture, There is pride, not aping humility, but wearing it as a well-beseeming habit;— there is passion, strongly controlled by the will, but not extinct, neither dead nor sleeping, but watchful and silent; brows sternly sustaining a weight of care, after which a crown could be but light; a manly intellect, allied with fe male craft;-but nonsense! it will be said; no colours whatever could represent all this, and that, too, in little, for the picture was among Bone's enamels,

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