941 On Dancing.-Mannal of Epictetus. 942 But take only a glance of the evils a child grow up with the loss of limbs, which too frequently attend this de- or be ever so much deformed, and structive amusement-this delusive en- walking in the paths of virtue and injoyment. A mere retrospect within tegrity, than I would see one in the the circle of our own acquaintance will most perfect use of those faculties, and prove the fact. How many have curs- yet pursuing the course of vice. I ed the hour when they first drank of have, for many years, narrowly watchthis corroding poison! How many who ed those who have moved within. once bade fair to be an ornament to my circumscribed sphere of acquaintsociety, have had their minds debased, ance, and I have generally found them their habits vitiated, their happiness to turn out indiscreet, dishonest, or destroyed by the indulgence of dan base; the wretched destroyers of their cing! Incitements to the gratification own peace, and the formidable invaof every vicious propensity are here ge- ders of the happiness of all those who nerated. The unseasonable hours when belonged to them: while, on the condancing is carried on, are enough to trary, others who have had prudenco stamp it with eternal infamy. Take a and resolution enough to abandon such view of the individual who participates a scene of iniquity, have candidly conin this exercise, and who depends upon fessed, that had they remained in the his own exertions for a maintenance; course which they were pursuing, it and I ask, whether he is competent to must have led to final ruin. I do not say, follow his regular avocations with cre- but that there are some few exceptions dit and integrity, after leaving the dan-to this general principle; but I do afcing room at so late an hour, even admitting that he is so circumspect as to avoid all alluring temptations? But if he falls into the other temptations which surround him, (and which more frequently happens by far,) what a picture of human wretchedness does he present! We all know that an association with company under such circumstances is unavoidable. With some you form an acquaintance who are above your sphere of life; and to keep up an equal degree of outward respectability, dishonesty is a general means resorted to; while, on the contrary, there are others, from whom you cannot be entirely separated, who are sunk into the lowest state of degradation and immorality. Intemperance and every species of profligacy, in all their diversified forms, are the inseparable and wretched companions of such a life. firm, from extensive observation, that the great majority fall into this lamentable situation. Look at the vast bulk who attend the dancing academies within this metropolis, and who were once respectable, virtuous, and healthy, the delight of all around them; but now the frightful spectres of human formthe emaciated and immolated victims of self-delusion-the cheat of their own fancy-the murderers of their own existence-the precipitate preparers of their own charnel house! Peruse the black and gloomy records of the catalogue of crimes; trace the history of the individuals, once respectable, whose names are inscribed there; and you will find the index of their misfortunes generally point to the indulgence of this alluring vice. Were it not for transgressing the necessary limits of your columns, I might lead you step by step through all the diversified gradations of human disgrace and human depravity; and we should find that dancing is subordinate in no one particular towards the propagation and encouragement of every thing degrading, pernicious, and T. W- I might most easily enumerate more particularly the stimulants to vice; but as I am unwilling to draw aside the veil which hangs over the innocent cheeks of pale-flushed modesty, I shall abstain, and let the reader supply the deficiency. All this refers not only to one sex, but to both. I recollect hear-fatal. ing a gentleman once declare, that he would rather see his child fall down and break both its legs, than it should ever learn the cursed system of dancing. Yes, Sir, and though it may appear repugnant at first to human nature, I feel not ashamed to echo the same sentiment. Rather would I see M. MANUAL OF EPICTETUS. MR. EDITOR. SIR,-Should the following passages in the Enchiridion, or Manual of Epictetus, meet with your approbation, their insertion in the Imperial Magazine will oblige Your's, very respectfully, Penzance, Aug. 14, 1821. "Require not things to happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well. "Remember that you must behave in life as at an entertainment. Is any thing brought round to you? Put out your hand, and take your share with moderation. Does it pass by you? Do not stop it. Is it not come? Do not stretch forth your desire towards it, but wait till it reaches you. Thus do with regard to children, to a wife, to public posts, to riches: and you will be, some time or other, a worthy partner. "Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such kind as the author pleases to make it: if short, of a short one; if long, of a long one. If it be his pleasure you should act a poor man, a cripple, a governor, or a private person, see that you act it naturally. For this is your business, to act well the character assigned you. To choose it, is another's. "If you have an earnest desire of attaining to philosophy, prepare yourself from the very first to be laughed at, to be scorned by the multitude, to hear them say, He is returned to us as a philosopher all at once! and whence this supercilious look? Now, for your part, do not have a supercilious look indeed, but still keep steadily to those things which appear best to you, as one appointed by God to this station. For remember, if you adhere to the same point, those very persons who at first ridiculed, will afterwards admire you: but if you are conquered by them, you will incur a double ridicule. "When a neighbour's boy has had a slight accident, broken a cup, for instance, we are presently ready to say, These are things that will happen. Be assured then, that when your own cup likewise is broken, you ought to be affected just as when another's cup is broken. Transfer this in like manner to other things: Is the child or wife of another dead? There is no one who I would not say, "This is an accident to which human nature is liable." But if any one's own children happen to die, it is presently, Alas! how wretch | 944 ed am I! But it should be remembered, how we are affected in hearing the same thing concerning others. "If any person had delivered up your body to any one whom he had met in the way, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in delivering up your own mind to be disconcerted and confounded by any one who happens to give you ill language. "Duties are universally measured by relations. Is any one a father? In this are implied, as due, taking care of him, submitting to him in all things, patiently receiving his reproaches, his correction. But he is a bad father. Is your natural tie, then, to a good father? No: but to a father. Is a brother unjust? Well, preserve your own situation towards him; consider not what he does, but what you are to do. In this manner you will find, from the idea of a neighbour, a citizen, a general, the corresponding duties, if you accustom yourselves to contemplate the several relations. "Immediately prescribe some character and form of behaviour to yourself, which you may preserve both alone and in company. "For be assured, that if a person be ever so sound himself, yet if his companion be infected, he who converses with him will be infected likewise. "If any person tells you, that such a person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you, but answer, 'He does not know my other faults, else he would not have mentioned only these.' “If you are struck by the appearance of any promised pleasure, guard yourself against being hurried away by it; but let the affair wait your leisure, and procure yourself some delay. Then bring to your mind both points of time; that in which you shall enjoy the pleasure, and that in which you will repent and reproach yourself, after you have enjoyed it: and set before you, in opposition to these, how you will rejoice and applaud yourself if you abstain. And even though it should appear to you a seasonable gratification, take heed that its enticing, and agreeable, and attractive force, may not subdue you; but set in opposition to this, how much better it is to be conscious of having gained so great a victory. 945 Lord Byron's Don Juan. "When you do any thing from a clear judgment that it ought to be done, never shun the being seen to do it, even though the world should make a wrong supposition about it: for if you do not act right, shun the action itself; but if you do, why are you afraid of those who censure you wrongly? "If you have assumed any character above your strength, you have both made an ill figure in that, and quitted one which you might have supported. "Whtever rules you have deliberately proposed to yourself for the conduct of life, abide by them as so many laws, and as if you would be guilty of impiety in transgressing any of them: and do not regard what any one says of you, for this, after all, is no concern of yours. How long will you defer to think yourself worthy of the noblest improvements, and in no instance to transgress the distinctions of reason? You are no longer a boy, but a grown man. If, therefore, you will be negligent, and slothful, and always add procrastination to procrastination, purpose to purpose, and fix day after day, in which you will attend to yourself, you will insensibly continue without proficiency and living and dying, persevere in being one of the vulgar. This instant then think yourself worthy of living as a man grown up, and a proficient. Let whatever appears to you to be the best, be to you an inviolable law. And if any instance of pain or pleasure, or glory or disgrace, be set before you, remember that now is the combat, now the olympiad comes on, nor can it be put off; and that by once being worsted and giving way, proficiency is lost; or, by the contrary, preserved." LORD BYRON'S DON JUAN. AGAIN has the voice of the mighty autocrat of British poets sounded from the spot of his voluntary ostracism to the shores of this, his native country; long have the admirers of the noble bard been anxiously expecting the future cantos of Don Juan; and long have the friends of religion and morality been fearing for what should come next in the exquisitely disgusting details of this unprofitable, yea, iniquitous poem. At last it is before the public, and neither of the above 946 "Now my lost fancy falls into the yellow Two things yet appear to be his Lordship's abomination, and these he seems to continue to hate as cordially as a good Mussulman does pork ;marriage and society. We are afraid there is but too good reason for his antipathy to both, which leave him but a very inadequate judge of the blessings of either. He long ago wrote that "He was the most unfit of men, to herd with And this we believe: on the subject of marriage also, he has often given his opinion; he has here again introduced it, and it is "sour" enough: Tis melancholy, and a fearful sign Of human frailty, folly, also crime, That love and marriage rarely can combine; Although they both are born in the same clime. 66 Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine- There hath long been a mystery about this man, which has rendered him an object of peculiar interest. Voluntarily exiled from his own land, a fugitive in that country which once was Greece, yea, and which is Greece still, notwithstanding the barbarous names by which the moderns have parcelled it out, and the mushroom race that has sprung over the graves of their forefathers; from that country his poetical inspirations have come hither like the awful responses of the Delphic oracle: we heard the voice, but were hidden from the pseudo-divinity which delivered it. Yet even Lord Byron himself may learn in time that the pungency of his own productions will destroy their effect on pa 947 Review-History of Boston. 948 lates which he has so highly stimu- |ther, and in spite of the remonstrance of lated, and that something more will Haidée, and the dagger of her hero, be necessary to maintain his popula- called in a band of his attendants, rity than the distance between Eng- who presently carried Juan on board, land and Ravenna-yet he has not and bore away with him to Constantionly the poetry of nobility, but the no-nople, and sold him for a slave, leavbility of poetry. And if piety and purity had been the blandishments of his muse, and his native country the soil of his productions, there are few names in the peerage which I should more have honoured than that of Byron. The following stanzas are interest-paramour, and seeing Juan walk past ing, as connected with the name of Dante; and have, like many others, little to do with Don Juan : "I pass each day where Dante's bones are laid: The time must come, when both alike decay'd, whose wild Instinct of gore and glory earth has known I shall conclude these desultory remarks by an imperfect sketch of the subjects of these three cantos of Don Juan, not supposing that my animadversions will have any influence upon those who have read, or intend to read the poem; yet I marvel how any modest maiden or virtuous matron can allow herself to read it, and not impugn her own innocence: such a cage of unclean birds it is impossible to turn into the imagination, but they must leave a trace or a taint on the heart. ing the frantic female to die of a broken heart. HereJuan enters upon a new series of those illicit adventures which his Lordship's peculiar taste can furnish in such variety: the principal sultana having fixed her mind on a her window to the slave market, resolves to obtain him at all events. For this purpose she employs an old domestic of" the third sex," as his Lordship says;-Juan is purchased, brought to the palace, and attired by Baba the eunuch in a rich female costume, in order that he may pass unsuspected into the presence of the sultana, as a young female Frank. With a scene connected with this event, the canto and the volume closes. It will not be difficult for those who do not care to read the poem, to divine how these situations are illustrated by his Lordship's pen, which seems, like an enchanter's wand, to summon all the facilities of the English language into his Protean stanzas; some of which are as stiff and unbending as the oak, and others as sweet as Hyblean honey, but it is the honey of the aconite, dulcet on the lip-but bitterness and poison in his belly that receives it. H. REVIEW.-Collections for a Topographical and Historical Account of Boston, and the Hundred of Skirbeck in the County of Lincoln, with Engravings, by Piskey Thomson. 8vo. pp. 460. London. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown; and Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, Paternoster-row; Nichols and Son, Parliament-street; Major, Skinner-street; Symco, Ayrstreet, Piccadilly, &c. 1820. The second canto (before published) left Juan the hero, in the arms of Haidée, the princess of an island which her father seems to have held in fee simple by virtue of his piratical prowess; and who was out on a cruise when Juan was shipwrecked on his shore. The third canto unfolds the return of this "lawyer of the deep;" his daughter having concluded him BOSTON is a large commercial borough lost at sea, was in the thick of her re- town of Lincolnshire in England. It vel with her paramour, his domestics, stands in that division of the county &c. when Lambro entered his own called Holland, and is nearly surhouse; the old pirate choaks the risings rounded by the fens, the greater part of his resentment, which nevertheless of which having been inclosed and burns fiercely within him, till he pre-drained, is now appropriated to arable sently surprised the young couple toge- and meadow lands. 949 Review-History of Boston. Previously to this great undertaking, Boston had lost much of its population and trade, but this event has renovated the place. It stands on the banks of the Witham, which discharges its waters into the sea, about five | miles east of the town. Here is a commodious, well-frequented haven; and formerly an extensive trade was carried on in the exportation of wool, which being prohibited, the merchants employed their capitals in other branches of commerce; in consequence of which, the town has considerably increased in opulence, trade, and population. It is now one of the most considerable towns and ports in the county of Lincoln. Boston is a place of great antiquity. According to Bede, its former name was Botolph, from St. Botolph, a Saxon, who founded a monastery here, and thus gave origin to the town; but other writers assert, that the Romans had a station here; and they exhibit stones and urns that were dug out of the ruins in 1716, in support of their opinion. So early as the reign of Henry I. a man named Henry Chamberlain, with some accomplices, disguised in the habits of monks, set the town on fire in several places, that he might have an opportunity of plundering the inhabitants. Chamberlain was taken and executed, but he refused to impeach his associates. Such is the generally received history of this town, to which the volume before us refers. 950 In tracing the progress of Boston from the Norman invasion to the present time, Mr. Thompson has recorded the various incidents which have marked and diversified its history. Many of these are rendered remarkable by their singularity; and it is pleasing to observe throughout the whole, the visible influence of apparently secret causes, operating to produce those vicissitudes, which the progress of time displays to the observer's eye. The ancient state of Boston exhibits many singular curiosities; among which the establishment of several religious houses, the manner in which their internal concerns were regulated, and the superstitious practices to which they gave rise, are not the least remarkable. Of the guilds, charters, and chantries, the author has taken special notice: and its ancient and stately church has been honoured with a minute description. In a commercial view, Boston has been exposed to a variety of changes. Of these the author takes particular notice; marking the dates of its privileges, and mercantile revolutions, and recording the imposts, clogs, and impediments, which retarded its prosperity, and more than once reduced it to the eve of ruin. The account given of the river Witham, and its swans and fisheries, cannot but prove interesting to all who are acquainted with the district through which the water runs ; and the historical observations which are made on the adjacent fens, plainly prove, that through every age they have been deemed of importance. Mr. Thomson, however, in prosecuting his work, is not guided by the uncertain light of common opinion. He examines the records of remote antiquity, avails himself of the aids Of the sea banks of Richmond fee which contemporary and preceding of honour, of public buildings, places antiquarians and historians furnish, of worship and of amusement, chariand finally, gives to his readers the re- table institutions, library, public gaol, sult of his investigations. This result, and seminaries of instruction, the auwith respect to the remote origin of thor gives a sufficiently detailed acthe town, conducts us back to the days count. To this he has added various of the Romans, and he adduces many observations on the commercial imbranches of evidence to give confirm-portance and prosperity of the town, ation to his decision. In collecting the evidence leading to this result, the author has exercised much industry, perseverance, and research, so that scarcely a source of information is left unexamined. Many curious documents are also introduced; and the various branches are enlivened by anecdotes which characterize the ages in which they are reported to have oc curred. as well as taken a survey of its environs, adverting to its accommodations, its charities, and to the literary characters who have adorned Boston with their names. In this collection, the families that have been renowned for wealth and power, hold a distinguished rank. Some of these have long since become extinct; but others still retain, in the 2 |