of humanity may possibly escape the regards of an author, while he fosters the conceit of the cold and the unfeeling. General happiness may vanish from before the sight of him who fixes his eagle gaze only on the dazzling splendours of literary fame. Not such was the course of him whom I have attempted to present to the reader. His bent of mind was towards the generous and heartfelt charities of life. He reproved and satirized the follies of the great, because they weaken the natural ties of brotherhood, that bind our race together; and he discouraged and ridiculed the attempt on the part of persons in moderate circumstances, to render those follies more generally prevalent. The reader will readily recollect as examples of this raillery, the amusing letters* of John Homespun and his daughter, and those of the ingenious Miss Marjory Mushroom.

A deep sense of the value of that practical morality which is founded on just sentiments of piety, is every where apparent in the writings of Mac Kenzie; but we have no prosing lectures on the efficacy of dogmas, or on the value of this or that abstract speculation. He appears to have entertained the rather obsolete notion, that goodness consists in being good. The story of La Roche exemplifies the nature of those principles and feelings, which, according to the views of our author, can give the most certain consolations in adversity and cast into comparative obscurity all the " pleasures of philosophical discovery, and all the pride of literary fame."

The humane and generous spirit of this author will be duly appreciated, when it is considered, that he was among the first to invoke the smiles of public favour

*See "Mirror" Nos. 12 and 25; also "Lounger" Nos. 17, 98, 53, 36, 56 and 62.

upon the early efforts of the poet Burns. At a time when that most extraordinary child of genius was struggling agains the frowns of fortune and of former friends, and when he had by great efforts caused a small edition of his early poetical effusions to be put to press, at a country town in the west of Scotland, in order to raise the means of embarking to a foreign land, where his genius would in all probability have soon gone with his bones to the oblivion of a West Indian charnel house; at that time did the amiable Mac Kenzie immediately invite public attention to the simple, natural, and "truly pastoral strains" of the "Ayrshire ploughman.* " The fact that the poet was soon found in all the circles of taste and refinement within the Scotish capital, where he was "universally admired, feasted, caressed, and flattered;" and that his genius and writings became known and appreciated throughout England, is ascribed, and probably with justice, by one of his biographers, to the timely interference of him, who thus proved that the "man of feeling" was not a mere "creature of the brain."

*See Lounger, No. 97.

LOVE ASLEEP.

BY J. N. BARKER.

"Tis said that music is the food of Love,
Light diet, certes, though excess of it,

As the bard sings-THE BARD, par excellence-
May give a surfeit, and the appetite
Sicken and die-the Irish way, perhaps
The poet meant to live a little longer.
If some have died for love, 'tis probably
Not over-eating, but the lack of food

Led to such sad catastrophes. The limners
Have sometimes made this Love a chubby child,
Like Clara Fisher, (who's a little love,

Par parenthese,) in Gobbleton. But who Would think of Cupid, as of one o' the quorum, (Not but that aldermen can love, however,)

Dying of calipash and calipee!

Yet music is the food of love, nay more,

It is the vital air of love, its soul,

It's very essence, love is harmony

Or nothing; love's the music of the mind

(Perhaps that thought is stol'n from Lady Morgan
Whose books I read with pleasure, notwithstanding
Some pigmy critics here, and those they ape,
Those barbarous, one-eyed Polyphemuses,
The Cyclopes of the English Quarterly.)
But to return from rambling-Cupid's movements
Are the true "poetry of motion," (that

I'm sure belongs to Lady Morgan,) full,
We must confess, of strange variety.
From epic down to ballad. Here's a pair
Will bow and curtsy, in chapeau and hoop,
Then stalk the stately minuetto round,

Ending where they began their metaphysics,

With bow and curtsy! this is called "engagement"❞— Very engaging truly! Here's another,

Goes you to church in galliard, and returns

In a coranto. One is all adagio,

Another naught but jig. All times, all movements,
This mighty master of the heart-strings tries

In his capricio: most full of crotchets,
And quavers, too, is love-as I have learn'd
From the old book of nature, always open.
I knew a gentleman was quite unlover'd,
('Twas in the days when youthful damsels sew'd
What time our mothers flourish'd,) for his mistress
Threaded her needle with a too careless air
While he read Werter to her. And 'tis giv'n
As a strict verity, when Dame Von Haller
First rear'd her cambric banner o'er the stage,
Commanding tears to flow-two German barons,
Warm lovers too, as German barons may be,
Broke troth and plight with their affianced brides
The self-same night-the first because his lady
Was weak enough to weep a sister's fall;
The other, for his fair display'd a heart

So hard, it would not melt at other's woes.
And such is love-or such, at least, the whims
Of those by courtesy call'd lovers, fellows
Who plume themselves upon their manliness,
And arrogate superiority

Over a sex, which, in all things where love
Truly is shown:-in faith and constancy,
(Ay, sneer ye brainless coxcombs, constancy,)

In perfect self-devotedness: in courage

To brave the world's barbarity; and patience

To bear e'en wrong from him for whom that world
Was cast aside, and lost: in truth and honour:

In pure, enduring, fond and fix'd affection,
Nature has placed upon an elevation
In her great scale of being, over man;
Man, that mere egotist, vain, fickle, selfish,
In whom e'en love is a disease, a kind
Of tertain that by fits freezes the soul,
Or burns it up with fever-yea, as high
As the most glorious Heavens are raised above
The gross and sordid Earth. But to resume
My tale-which, by the way, I have not yet
Begun, I think-without more preface, or
Digression--for I hate digressions more,
If possible, than long and wordy preface-
But who could ever yet encounter woman
And keep the onward, jog-trot, business pace,
Passing her without reverence?—To my story:-
There lived in Italy, I think near Florence,
Some brace of centuries past, a good old count,
Who, in his fine old castle rear'd a daughter,
His only child-Angelica-so named,
Perhaps, from her of the divine "Orlando;"
Medoro's fair Angelica, the fondest

And tenderest of women, whose sweet face,
As given by Cipriani I could kiss

Although but in translation, from the copper
Of Bartolozzi. Our Angelica

Was beautiful:-but I had rather not
Describe minutely, lest it should be deem'd
Invidious, by some female friend of mine

Whom the description suited not. 'Tis dangerous
To dwell on female charms too long or warmly,
Or too particularly-I never do,