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such difficulties are not felt, such reme. dies are not required. Unconscious passion, undoubted duty, unchallenged faith, there complete the history of humanity. The reality of objects has there remained unquestioned, and mankind is as it were a mere portion of external nature, with higher faculties and a longer destiny. There have, indeed, been mystics in the East, asserting the right and power of spiritual intuition above all the restrictions of pristine ordinance and material philosophy; but the motive-forces of mankind, in these portions of the world, have ever been facts, not ideas, thus accounting for the absence of, and even animosity to, forms of art, and the habitual confusion between the natures of truth and power. Mohammed is always vindicating himself from the charge of being a poet; he believed the character incompatible with the simple reality it was his business to declare and expound. Nor does he attempt to fix the minds of his hearers on the excellence, justice, or benevolence of God, but on his sensible omnipotence, and on the folly of resisting his will," &c.

The following observation is also worthy attention :

"There may be, indeed there must be, in the interior habits of Oriental life more play of feeling than we perceive in the calm surface presented to our observation; but we travellers see so small a portion even of that surface, and are not only so ignorant of what lies below it, but have so misapprehended and falsified even the external relations of social existence in these countries, that one is almost afraid to conjecture where he may have been grossly deceived. . . We have taken our notions of Eastern domesticity much more from the ballet than from reality, and have coloured them with so much ferocity and vice, that what is really common-place becomes paradoxical," &c.

The first poem, "The Greek at Constantinople," is spirited, lyrical, and well expressed, but with something reminding one too closely of Byron, and the last line serves to confirm the feeling. The Song of the Wahabees is correct in its character and spirit, and well executed, the expression and metre going well with the subject; while "The Kiosk," in a different style, is pleasingly narrated; and this also may be said of "The Burden of Egypt." But we must confine our specimens to the shorter poems, and what we now give is for the reason that they suit best to the space we have to spare, rather than from the conviction that

they excel in merit the other parts of the volume.

DELOS.

Though Syra's rock was pass'd at morn,
The wind so fairly arched the sail,
That, e'er to Delos we were borne,
The autumn-day began to fail.
And only in Diana's smiles
We reached the bay between the isles.
In sweet serenity of force

She rul'd the heavens without a star, A sacred image, that the course

Of tone and thought can hardly mar;
As dear, and nearly as divine,
As ever in Ephesian shrine.

I knew that on the spot I trod,
Her glorious twins Latona bore,
That for her sake the pitying god

Had fix'd the isle, afloat before;
And, fearful of his just disdain,
I almost felt it move again.

For the delicious light that threw

Such clear transparence o'er the wave, From the black mastich-bushes drew

Column and frieze and architrave; Like rocks which, native to the place, Had something of mysterious grace. Strong was the power of art to bid

Arise such beauty out of stone; Yet Paros might as well have hid

Its wealth within its breast unknown, As for brute nature to regain The fragments of the fallen fane. Who can rebuild those colonnades

Where met the ancient festal host, The peasant from Arcadia's glades,

The merchant from Ionia's coast, Gladdening their Grecian blood to stand On one religious father-land? So in my angry discontent

I cried; but calmer thoughts came on, And gratitude with sorrow blent,

And murmur turned to orison:

I thank'd the gods for what had been,
And nature for the present scene.

I felt that while in Greece remained
Signs of that old heroic show,
Hope, Memory's sister, so sustained,

Would sink not altogether low;
And Grecian hearts once more might be
Combin'd in powerful amity.

Long e'er the sun's most curious ray

Had touch'd the morning's zone of pearl, I and my boat were far away,

Rais'd on the water's fresh'ning curl;

And barely 'twixt the rose, and blue
The island's rim was still in view.
So Delos rests upon my mind,
A perfect vision of the night,
A picture by moon-rays designed,
And shaded into black and bright;

A true idea borne away, Untroubled by the dreamless day.

MODERN ATHENS.

If Fate, though jealous of the second birth
Of names in history rais'd to high degree,
Permits that Athens yet once more shall be,
Let her be placed as suits the thought and
worth

Of those who, during long oppression's dearth
Went out from Hydra and Ipsara free,
Making their homestead of the chainless sea,
And hardly touching their enslaved earth.
So on the shore, in sight of Salamis,

On the Peræan and Phalerian bays,
With no harsh contrast of what was and is,
Let Athens rise; while in the distance stands,
Like something hardly raised by human hands,
The awful skeleton of ancient days.

THE TOMB OF LAIUS.

Where Delphi's consecrated pass
Boeotia's misty region faces,
There is a tomb-like stony mass
Amid the bosky mountain bases.
It seems no work of human care,
But many rocks split off from one;
Laius, the Theban king, lies there,
His murderer, Edipus, his son.
No pilgrim to the Pythian shrine

But marked the spot with decent awe,
In presence of a power divine

O'erruling human will and law;
And to some thoughtful hearts that scene-
Those paths-that mound-those brows-
ing herds-

Were more than e'er that late had been
Array'd in Sophoclean words.

So is it yet no time or space

That ancient anguish can assuage,

For sorrow is of every race,

And suffering due from every age; That awful legend falls to us

With all the weight that Greece could feel,

And every man is Œdipus,

Whose wounds no mortal skill can heal.

Oh! call it Providence or fate,

The sphynx propounds the riddle still, That man must bear and expiate

Loads of involuntary ill :

So shall endurance ever hold

The foremost rank 'mid human needs, Not without faith, that God can mould To good the dross of evil deeds.

Courtenay of Walreddon; a Romance

of the West. By Mrs. Bray. THIS is not only the latest of Mrs. Bray's productions but the best. There is greater richness of invention, greater skill in the disposition of the incidents. The characters are well marked, yet without extravagance; the incidents GENT. MAG. VOL. XXII.

feel

surprising without being unnatural. The chain of circumstances is well maintained, and the mysteries of the plot are at once so skilfully conceived as to awaken the curiosity of the reader, and then so satisfactorily unravelled as to prove their adherence to nature and truth. There is much humour and a quaint drollery in some of the scenes that amused us not a little; in others a power of pathetic description which is effective because it does not overpass its proper boundaries. If there is any one character, in parts of which we may not be entirely satisfied, it is in that of "Cinderella;" we think her simplicity, and worldly ignorance, and innate purity, are carried beyond what we could be probable, in the early scenes and in the society in which she first appears; and yet, while we say this, it is with a strong approbabation of the feeling with which the entire character is drawn. We also object to Robin's death, which appears quite unnecessary, and which gave us much pain, for we were looking forward to his being made Major-General, or having the command of a regiment at least. Robin and Cinderella had suffered miseries enough; it would have been more satisfactory to have seen all the clouds that hung so darkly over their fortunes for ever dispersed; and what had Robin done that his fate should be different from that of Cinderella? We may also express a doubt whether, with all her gentle virtues, her innate loveliness, her feminine delicacy, her mental purity, her natural grace, Cinderella could be, from her want of education, and her strange, wild, and wandering life amid her rude companions, such a lady in manners, thought, and knowledge as Mrs. Chudleigh ought to be. We express our doubts rather timidly, for we believe strongly in the elasticity of the female character in adapting itself to the circumstances it is called to meet, and the stock of virtues and talents on which it is able, when required, to draw; but still, if something could be contrived to give this "gipsy wench" a little education, so at least as to enable her to read a French novel, and

play on the piano, or read the names of the plants at a horticultural fête,

I

all we can say, is-if this should be performed in the next edition, we shall think the general effect will be improved, and nothing wanting to make the interest we feel in her still heightened by the additional accomplishments of her mind. Surely Mrs. Bray has not the heart to deny us this, and will not refuse to add some acquired elegance to complete the natural graces of so interesting a character. There is an excellent ladies' seminary at Devonport, very suitable for the purpose.

The character of Lady Howard is the foremost figure in the work, and accordingly it has been drawn with care and fullness of colouring (v. p. 45, &c.), and with due consistency throughout; and indeed we must say that Mrs. Bray has succeeded in a point in which many of her rivals have failed, and the author of Coningsby among the rest, in harmonising the colouring in which the real and fictitious personages of the story are represented. In Coningsby, for instance, surely the half-ideal, poetical, mysterious character of Sidonia is out of keeping beside Lord Monmouth and Tadpole and Rigby. With Mrs. Bray, though she has mixed the real historical events with fictitious ones, yet she has rather alluded to the real persons of history than introduced them, and thus preserved an historical interest, without an incongruous mixture of the airy and shadowy creatures of the fancy with the solid forms of reality, -a mixture that, notwithstanding its high authority in late times, has never been quite satisfactory to our minds. Lady Howard's character is well supported by that of Constance Behenna; and such dark and gloomy passages are contrasted, much to the relief of the reader, with Mr. Gandy and his wife Sally, and his clerk, all eccentric, and all entertaining. The more powerfully described and affecting parts, as that in the chapel of Walreddon, the adventure of Cinderella when she received her wound, and the marriage scene, depend on the narrative being given entire for their effect, and, therefore, are totally beyond our very narrow limits. Besides, we have now dried our tears and have joined the society of Messrs. Gandy and Goodman, not a little delighted

with the ecclesiastical drums these worthy divines are both beating in our ears. We almost believe we were present, "When Mr. Gandy dwelt much on the authority of Scripture, Mr. Goodman on that of tradition. Mr. Gandy quoted the great divines of the Church of England, Mr. Goodman the writings of the fathers; Mr. Gandy argued for the Reformation, Mr. Goodman called it innovation. Mr. Gandy declared the Protestant to be a representative of the primitive Church, Mr. Goodman insisted on the higher antiquity of his own;" and we think we remember them separating to go to bed, "not, however, without a last word, in which Mr. Gandy sent bloody Queen Mary to the devil, and was answered by Mr. Goodman paying the same compliment to Queen Elizabeth." We also enjoyed the dialogue between Mr. Lukeman and his clerk, and, on the whole, we may truly say of this very pleasing and varied history,

Reading, alternate tears and smiles would rise, [ing from the eyes. These playing round the lips, those burst

Mesmerism and its Opponents, &c. By George Sandby, junior, M.A. Vicar of Flixton, Suffolk.

THE little pamphlet of Mr. Sandby's which we noticed last year has since grown into the present volume, having attracted much attention as to the curiosity of its facts, and produced much conviction in the truth of its argument. In the interval that has elapsed since his former publication, Mr. Sandby has had much practical experience himself in mesmerism-has formed the acquaintance and profited by the conversation of many persons of science, whose attention has been drawn to the subject, has read many works, considered at leisure the objections that have been advanced, and as the fruit of his researches has expanded his former publication into the present volume. In the third and fourth chapters, p. 59 to 178, the reader will find a large mass of curious and important facts collected, both as regards the truth of mesmerism and its curative power in disease; facts that we hold it is impossible openly to deny, or insidiously to explain away, and which therefore form a strong and

unbroken body of evidence. In the sixth chapter, the author has examined the bearing of the wonders of mesmerism on the miracles of the New Testament, though why he has confined it to the New we do not know; but he says, "It is notorious that a feeling is gaining ground that these several facts exhibit an equality of power, and that the divine nature of the one is impaired by the extraordinary character of the other." Mr. Sandby shows that a part of our Saviour's miraculous acts of power is altogether removed out of the sphere of mesmeric influence; as his stilling the waves of the sea, withering the fig-tree, changing water into wine, feeding the multitude in the desert, walking on the sea, being transfigured on the mount, raising the dead. He then comes to the other class of miracles, healing all manner of diseases; and he distinguishes the wonders recorded in the Gospel from those performed by merely human means; by showing in the first place that no mesmeriser could claim, or claiming prove, the possession of a power of removing diseases, that was infallible and universal. He succeeds in many cases, he fails in others; sometimes the benefit is lasting, sometimes temporary. Secondly, the cures related in Scripture are of a far higher order than those that mesmerism can boast; and thirdly, the change that followed the touch or voice of Christ was instantaneous, whereas mesmerism requires some interval of time, longer or shorter according to circumstances, to develope its effects. "A fourth distinguishing mark (he says) attendant on the cures related in the Gospel, is the permanency of their effect. There is no reason to suspect from the slightest phrase that drops from any of the New Testament writers, nor from any charge that was advanced by the unbeliever, that the benefit was not as lasting as it was complete. No one can assert the same of all mesmeric cures. Many are indeed permanent, but with a large number the action requires to be renewed at intervals, especially in some diseases that are of a chronic kind." Yet Mr. Sandby does not positively deny the identity of mesmerism and the Christian miracles. He says, "Christ may have exercised a latent mesmeric power to

an extra and miraculous extent;" and yet he adds, "this is rather mentioned in deference to the views of others, than as expressing his own opinion." And lastly he mentions a fifth and remarkable distinction, the cure of persons at a distance, whither the assumed mesmeric virtue could not possibly except by miracle extend: nothing in the annals of mesmerism has a parallel to this. He then turns to the subject of clairvoyance, internal vision, and the predictive faculty, all of which are phenomena partaking of the miraculous character, and then he shews how they are to be distinguished from similar supernatural powers mentioned in Scripture. He lastly takes a view of the modern miracles among the Roman Catholics, that have excited of late such reverential curiosity in the members of that Church, and especially the Tyrolese nuns of Lord Shrewsbury, the Ecstatica of Caldaro, and the Addolorata of Capriana, and he considers their states to be states of catalepsy; this part of the work we recommend to the attention of our readers, and particularly that relating to the sympathy between the mesmeriser and his patient, and the transference of thoughts from one to the other, which we consider to be a key unlocking much difficulty, and opening a new region of experiment. As regards clairvoyance, from what we ourselves have seen of patients in mesmeric states, we should say that its effect on all the senses, in rendering them supernaturally acute, is too plain to deny; and this extraordinary power of vision is to be paralleled by a similarly increased fineness in the touch, in the taste, and in the ear. All is wonderful; but the power of the eye to read writing through an interposed medium, is not more so than that of the ear, to catch the faintest whisper at a distance inaudible to all others; that of the tongue to distinguish tastes from substances in the mouth of others; that of the touch, (if so it may be called,) which enables the mesmerised person, though with eyes fast closed in sleep, to feel where the mesmeriser is and to approach him in the most direct line, as if led by some subtle fluid to the spot. But not only the senses but the whole brain is excited to a sensibility that it does not

know in its natural state, as if the man had become all mind, and the body was only the more dormant and half-lifeless vehicle, over which it reigned supreme, and from which it threw its intellectual illuminations wide around. Mr. Chevenix said a few years back,

By

The Philosophy of Training, &c. A. R. Craig. 12mo.-This little essay is worthy of attention, for its purpose is not only to advocate the necessity of normal schools for teachers to the wealthier classes, but to afford better guides to the mode of teaching languages, so as to abridge the time employed in attaining them, and to enable the learner to gain them with more ease as well as accuracy. It is said (p. 92,) "That the late accomplished Sir W. Jones said, he considered a course of six months' study by the way he practised, a sufficient length of time to acquire a thorough knowledge of any language.'" Now, as life is short and languages numerous, he who teaches us to master them with the smallest expenditure of time, is conferring an inestimable benefit on society.

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Treatise on Forest Trees. By John Smith. A useful, practical, little work, containing judicious advice on most branches of forest culture, as planting, fencing, preparing the ground, thinning, pruning, &c. and containing at the end a very judicious list of the best apples and pears suitable to the climate of Scotland; though a few of the names, as doux morceaux and others, do not appear to us to be correctly spelt.

A Manual of Devotions for the Holy Communion. Compiled from various sources. The author mentions that he has made in this little work "an unsparing use of the Latin Manual called Paradisus Anima, a book comparatively little known in this country." It concludes with a Hymn of St. Thomas Aquinas, in the original Latin, and translated.

Sermons preached before the University and other places. By Rev. C. Marriott, A.M.-These are very impressive, earnest, and even elegant discourses, and we think so equal is their merit, that it would not be easy, perhaps not just, to select any particular ones as superior to the others; but it is difficult to read any volume with. out preferring some parts to others, as more easily associating with our feelings and knowledge. We were accordingly struck with the spirit and tone of the

"Mesmerism is established." Mr. Sandby adds, "soon, very soon, will it be acknowledged an admitted branch of medical practice;" and, when that day arrives, "a grateful posterity will respond with the name of John Elliotson."

26th discourse, called "Christ the Door." We cannot deprive ourselves of the pleasure of giving one short passage, (p. 440,) and that is all for which space is granted us.

"When we are occupied with our own immediate belief and first duties as Christians, we may be said to stay within; and when we range over a wider field, and apply our minds either to the arts of life, or to secular knowledge, or to the general study of humanity in history, philosophy, and literature, still must our Lord be kept ever in view, unless all is to be lifeless and starving to the soul. Whoever has entered in by Him' is in a position where he may discern the true life and meaning of all that is in the world,-of all that really concerns man here. What is the aim of political science, but that which has began to be realised in his kingdom? What is the aim of moral philosophy, but the saintly character, the transcript of his? What is liberty, but choosing the Father's will? What is Christian education, but fulfilling the mystery of his birth and our new birth in Him? What is reason, but a partaking of the light that lighteneth every man that cometh into the world? What is poetry, but the baring of the heart when he is near? What is art, but the striving to recollect his lineaments? What is history, but the traces of his iron rod or his shepherd's staff?"

This is beautifully imagined and expressed: we glean a few words from another.

"The Christian may seem minute in fixing his practice and ordering his thoughts; but, if he only does this according to the heavenly standard, he really enlarges his powers of discerning truth. He is like the astronomer who gazes intently on a microscopic adjustment that he may measure spaces so great as to be scarcely conceivable to thought, and who proves again and again the calculation of a cypher, that navies may traverse the boundless ocean in safety. We disconnect our life, that we may have some of it at our own will, and for our own indulgences; but so much as we thus set apart for ourselves, so much do we kill, and the rest is weakened by the loss," &c.

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