failure in the path of sensibility and moral pathos. We cannot refrain from presenting to the reader the following three stanzas. "Adieu to thee again! a vain adieu ;

There can be no farewell to scene like thine;
The mind is coloured by thy every hue;
And if reluctantly the eyes resign

Their cherished gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine!
'Tis with the thankful glance of parting praise;
More mighty spots may rise-more glaring shine,
But none unite in one attaching maze

The brilliant, fair, and soft,—the glories of old days.
"The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom
Of coming ripeness, the white city's sheen,
The rolling stream, the precipice's gloom,
The forest's growth, and Gothic walls between,
The wild rocks shaped as they had turrets been
In mockery of man's art; and these withal
A race of faces happy as the scene,

Whose fertile bounties here extend to all,

Still springing o'er thy banks, though Empires near them fall.

"But these recede. Above me are the Alps,

The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls
Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps,
And throned Eternity in icy halls

Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls
The avalanche-the thunderbolt of snow!
All that expands the spirit, yet appals,
Gather around these summits, as to show

How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet leave vain man below."

(P. 35.)

The tribute of the poet to the memory of a young Aventian priestess, called Julia Alpinula, is contained in some pathetic lines. The daughter is represented as having tried all in her power to save the life of her father, who had been condemned to death as a traitor by Aulus Cæcina, and having failed in her pious object died of the disappointment. The circumstances of the case are certainly very touching; but why the poet should exclaim that "these are deeds which should not pass away," and ،، names that should not wither," we are at a loss to discover. The merit of the father, as far as we learn from the verses and the note subjoined, was simply that of being a traitor, or of being accused and condemned as such; and, as Lord Byron says, "the judge was just," the deed of the judge or execu tioner, for aught that we see, was as worthy of being handed down as the deed of the criminal. The sorrows of the tender Julia cannot be regarded without emotion, but still we do not see with what propriety the tenderest affection for a parent can

be called "a deed which should not pass away." Lord Byron has copied for us the epitaph on her tomb, which was discovered many years ago: we give it to our readers as a performance of which the poet says that he does not know of any human com position so affecting.

Julia Alpinula

Hic Jaceo

Infelicis patris infelix proles,

Deæ Aventiæ Sacerdos;.
Exorare patris necem non potui
Male mori in fatis ille erat.

Vixi annos XXIII.

"These are names and actions," says Lord Byron, "which ought not to perish, and to which we turn with a true and healthy tenderness, from the wretched and glittering detail of a confused mass of conquests and battles." An observation which we quote for the sake principally of the phrase "healthy tenderness," which, we think, very well expresses a quality of which we have always regretted the total absence in every production of his Lordship's pen. Sickliness sometimes passes for delicacy in the human frame; just so the hectic sensibility of Lord Byron's muse assumes a colour more imposing than the ordinary hue of health itself, while the morbid taint inly consumes the core of life, and produces a feverish action of the system, sometimes mistaken for energy, but the real forerunner of exhaustion and death. A "healthy tenderness" is the inmate of that bosom only where domestic virtue and religious peace direct the feelings to their proper objects, correct their excesses, and consolidate their strength.

No one, through the medium of poetry, has a right to introduce among us a false and nefarious philosophy, calculated to pervert the true ends for which we are born into the world. While poe try confines itself to description, to narration, or to the develope ment of human passion, it has large privileges and a wide do main; but when it undertakes to be the vehicle of preceptive truth, it assumes a responsible office, and its merit must be founded upon other qualities besides the power of charming the ear or delighting the fancy. From the fifty-eighth to the seventythird stanza inclusive, the poet pursues a train of reasoning, to excuse his misanthropy, which sufficiently shows the whole blame of the rupture between him and his fellow creatures to rest with himself. The sentiment, drawn out into flimsy wire through these obscure stanzas, seems to be this: I will not associate with man, because I cannot live with him but in a perpetual "interchange of wrong; my temper will be apt to overboil in the "hot throng," and may give me cause for penitence which I

would by all means avoid. There is nothing in the world I so much loathe as that fleshy link which connects me with man; Ι think it much better therefore to retire within my own thoughts, gloomy as they are, to have no reciprocities with my fellow men, and, dissolving all partnership with them in the charities of a common nature, to cultivate an exclusive acquaintance with the earth, the sky, and the ocean. In a word, the misanthropic poet, after boasting how much he soars above the homely maxim of "Homo sum, nihil humani à me alienum puto," confidently asks, "Is it not better, then, to be alone,

And love earth only for its earthly sake?"

which we understand to be a declaration of his passion for the earth, as such, without a metaphor, and exclusively of all that live upon its surface. Thus enamoured of its solid contents and shining superficies, he seems to look upon himself as entitled to the sole fruition of all its varieties. He still, however, occasionally coquets it with his kind, and drops pretty plain hints that, upon certain terms, he might be induced to compromise with the world, and pay some flying visits to our vulgar habitations. Some part of the poet's description of that wretched thing of vanity and passion, selfishness and sophistry, Rousseau, is vigorous, beautiful, and just; and the only fault we find with it is its too much leaning towards apology. The love of woman in Rousseau was little more than the love of woman's idolatry: to be admired and flattered was his ruling passion; and this incense, he knew, was to be obtained in a much larger quantity, and at a much cheaper rate, from women than from his own sex. What he principally wanted in a companion was an unlimited toleration of his egotism, an understanding not to be startled by paradox, and an ear submissive to eternal repetition; and such a companion he found among the softer sex, whose kindness he repaid by dragging her with him through a degraded existence, the sport of his caprice, and then casting her offspring adrift upon the world, defrauded of the rights of nature.

His love was the raving of metaphysical bombast; but it is a great question whether he loved any woman or women upon earth, as well as any one of his favourite paradoxes. These very paradoxes seem to have been counterfeited for the sake of the distinction they conferred, or to gratify the spleen of disappointed vanity. He launched them into the world reckless of their consequences, and expended all the powers of his eloquence, which were doubtless very great, in giving them a fatal currency. Perhaps, Voltaire excepted, there has scarcely lived a human being who has sent among mankind so many unextinguishable mis

*

chiefs as this philosophical incendiary. We doubt much whether Mr. Burke was right in his opinion that "if Rousseau were now alive, and in one of his lucid intervals, he would be shocked at the practical frenzy of his scholars." It is wonderful with what a steady eye and regular pulse the philosophers, the orators, and preachers of these maxims of universal disorder, contemplate the dreadful medium through which they are to prosecute their ambiguous ends. The painted distresses, the theatric woes, with which they fill their imaginations, dissolve them into tenderness; but the tremendous realities to which their principles inevitably conduct are felt, understood, intended, and promoted by them without the smallest concern. Lord Byron seems to have much consulted the Confessions of Rousseau, and to have drawn from that drivelling register of a debauched imagination the matter of which his seventy-eighth and seventy-ninth stanzas are composed, with which we have somewhat doubted whether it would be safe to sully our page; but, considering what is the presumable character of the readers of this journal, and that it is necessary sometimes to face a mischief in order to repel it, we have determined to produce the specimen.

"His love was passion's essence-as a tree
On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame
Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be
Thus, and enamoured, were in him the same.
But his was not the love of living dame,
Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams,
But of ideal beauty, which became

In him existence, and o'erflowing teems

Along his burning page, distempered though it seems.

“This breathed itself to life in Júlie, this
Invested her with all that's wild and sweet;
This hallowed, too, the memorable kiss

(P. 44.)

Which every morn his fevered lip would greet, From her's, who but with friendship his would meet; But to that gentle touch, through brain and breast Flash'd the thrill'd spirit's love-devouring heat; In that absorbing sigh perchance more blest, Than vulgar minds may be with all they seek possest." To these stanzas we have a note, which refers us account, in the Confessions,' of Rousseau's Passion for the Comtesse d'Houdetot (the mistress of St. Lambert), and his long walk every morning for the sake of the single kiss which was the common salutation of French acquaintance. "Rousseau's description of his feelings on this occasion may be considered as the most passionate, yet not impure description and expression

to the

of love that ever kindled into words, which after all must be felt from their very force to be inadequate to the delineation: a painting can give no sufficient idea of the ocean."

Those who have read the "Confessions" of Rousseau, in which the interior of a very bad heart is pretty fairly laid open, (thanks to his inordinate vanity which hid from him at least half of his own turpitude!) have read enough to satisfy them that he was from first to last an animal feræ naturæ, utterly incapable of domestication, of an unrestrained sensuality of thought, and passions so impotently fierce as to find their only corrective in their mutual interference. In the stormy interior of his mind, qualities at once rude and refined were in a sort of "ruin reconciled;" and all which the pruriency of his wishes suggested, the power of his imagination supplied the means of producing, so that together they conspired to send into society a sentimental savage, with his appetites in their brutal strength and original freshness, but at the same time decorated with all that the fancy could bestow to impose upon the heart and affections. The kiss of desire surreptitiously enjoyed under the pretence of a common salute is not, in our minds, what Lord Byron calls it, "a passionate but not impure expression of love," but a sort of mental treachery, in the profligate avowal of which there was the grossest impurity. The story is in perfect congruity with other disgusting confessions of this unblushing betrayer of himself, which every manly mind is desirous, for the credit of human nature, to drive from his memory. "His love," says Lord Byron, "was passion's essence," "an ethereal flame" which "no living dame" could satisfy, but which found out for itself an ideal beauty," which became "in him existence itself," and "teemed along his burning page." This "ideal beauty," however, in the language of this fascinated poet, "breathed itself into life in Julie," and thus "hallowed, too, the memorable kiss," the account of which has been already given; so that after all, the Platonic vision embodied itself occasionally in the person of some matron or virgin, and led to impertinences and indignities on the part of the philosopher very deserving of summary chastisement. Lord Byron supposes that a greater bliss might accompany these precious moments of Rousseau's existence than vulgar minds enjoy in the possession of their direct and natural pleasures. But we take leave once again to enter our protest against this insulting misapplication of the word "vulgar." We have no patience with an aristocracy of sentiment among men who upon other occasions will tolerate nothing but nature unmodified by culture. Upon the whole, we are convinced that there is no such riddle in the character of Rousseau as is generally pretended. He was a raving, romantic, bloated egotist, with a fine imagination but a selfish unfeeling heart;

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