In antient times purgations had the name
Of Februa*; various customs prove the same;
The pontiffs from the rex and flament crave
A lock of wool; in former days they gave
To wool the name of Februa.

A pliant branch cut from a lofty pine,
Which round the temples of the priests they twine,
Is Februa called; which if the priest demand,
A branch of pine is put into his hand;
In short, with whatsoe'er our hearts we hold
Are purified, was Februa termed of old;
Lustrations are from hence, from hence the name
Of this our month of February came;

In which the priests of Pan processions made;

In which the tombs were also purified

Of such as had no dirgest when they died;
For our religious fathers did maintain,
Purgations expiated every stain

Of guilt and sin; from Greece the custom came,
But here adopted by another name;

The Grecians held that pure lustrations could
Efface an impious deed, or guilt of blood.
By Peleus' was Patroclus purified,

When he his sword in guiltless blood had dyed;
And Peleus self did king Acastus lave
For fratricide in the Hæmonian wave.
Alemæon to the sacred river cried,

O cleanse my guilt! and he was purified;
Weak men! to think that water can make clean
A bloody crime, or any sinful stain.

According to ancient history, the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians, Syrians, Phenicians, and Carthagenians, commenced their year at the autumnal equinox. The Jews also began their civil year at the same epoch; but their ecclesiastical year commenced at the vernal equinox. The ecclesiastical year with the Jews, also, regulated many more things than the civil year. The Greeks began their year at the

Varro tells us, that all filth, or dirt, in the ancient Sabine language was called Februa; from whence that word was afterwards applied to religious purgations or cleanings.

† We are informed by Livy, that after the expulsion of the kings, as there were some public sacrificial duties that had been usually performed by the reigning king, the Romans were obliged to institute a priest with that name, who was therefore called Rex Sacrificulus, but (to avoid a bad omen) he was to be subject to the Pontifex Maximus. The Flamen Dialis was the priest of Jupiter. Wool was much used in expiatory sacrifices, to wipe up the blood, &c.

The Romans bad a notion, that the ghosts of such persons, as had not been buried with proper rites and ceremonies, hovered about their graves, and thereby occasioned an unhealthy or pestilential air; therefore the festival called feralia, for quieting the manes of the dead, was observed in this month.

Our poet here enumerates several, who thought they were purified from the guilt of shedding innocent blood by certain ceremonious ablutions; and then justly censures the credulity of such as can suppose that any external rites can cleanse men from corrupt and wicked actions, which are formed in the mind; a remark, that breathes more of the spirit and genius of christianity than of paganism.

winter solstice prior to the regulations introduced by Methon, and at the summer solstice after that time. The Roman year commenced at the vernal equinox with Romulus, but at the winter sol. stice with Numa Pompilius; and also at the latter epoch among the Scandinavians, or ancient inhabitants of northern Europe. Among the Chinese the year appears always to have taken place at the same period, and which answers to our February.

According to modern history, the French began their year at Martinmas (22d Nov.) Under the first race of kings, when the government was purely military, it commenced on the 1st of May, when the troops were reviewed. Under the second race of kings, it began at the winter solstice; under the third, at the vernal equinox; on the 1st of January, by a proclamation of Charles IX, dated in 1654; and at the autumnal equinox (1st of Vendémaire), from the establishment of the republic. This continued but 14 years, and they have now returned to the former epoch of the 1st of January. The English began their civil year at the winter solstice; but their legal year at the vernal equinox till 1752, when the commencement of the year was fixed by act of parliament for the 1st of January. Among the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the Germans, the Siamese, and the Peruvians, all begin their year at the winter solstice. The Mexicans commence theirs at the vernal equinox. As the year of the Mahometans consists of twelve lunar months, or sometimes of 354 and at others of 355 days, to avoid the fractions which these lunations create, it commences on different days, and consequently has no fixed epoch.

The wintry aspect of this month,contrasted with the approach of spring, has a pleasing effect on the mind."

In this lone hour, when angry storms descend,
And the chilled soul deplores her distant friend :
When all her sprightly fires inactive lie,
And gloomy objects fill the mental eye;
When hoary Winter strides the northern blast,
And Flora's beauties at his feet are cast;
Earth by the grisly tyrant desart made,
The feathered warblers quit the leafless shade;

Quit those dear scenes where life and love began,
And, cheerless, seek the savage haunt of man;
How mourns each tenant of the silent grove!
No soft sensation tunes the heart to love;
No flutt'ring pulse awakes at Rapture's call;
No strain responsive aids the water's fall.
And crystal streams in frozen fetters stand.
The bleating flocks now ask the bounteous hand,

About this time the green woodpecker
is heard in the woods, making a loud
noise. More formidable in strength
and magnitude, and at the head of the
whole class of these birds, stands the
ivory-billed woodpecker (picus princi-
palis) of North-America. He may be
called the king or chief of his tribe;
and nature seems to have designed him
a distinguished characteristic in the su-
perb carmine crest, and bill of polished
ivory, with which she has ornamented
him. His eye is brilliant and daring,
and his whole frame so admirably adap-
ted for his mode of life, and method of
procuring subsistence, as to impress on
the mind of the examiner the most rev-
erential ideas of the Creator. His man-
ners have also a dignity in them supe-
rior to the common herd of woodpeck-
ers. Trees, shrubbery, orchards, rails,
fence-posts, and old prostrate logs, are
alike interesting to those, in their hum-
ble and indefatigable search for prey ;
but the royal hunter now before us
scorns the humility of such situations,
and seeks the most towering trees of
the forest, seeming particularly at-
tached to those prodigious cypress
swamps whose crowded giant sons
stretch their bare and blasted or moss-
hung arms midway to the skies. In
these almost inaccessible recesses, amid
ruinous piles of impending timber, his
trumpet-like note and loud strokes re-
sound through the solitary savage wilds,
of which he seems the sole lord and in-
habitant. Wherever he frequents he
leaves numerous monuments of his in-
dustry behind him. This is particular-
ly the case in the Southern and Wes-
tern states. We there see enormous
pine-trees, with cart-loads of bark lying
around their roots, and chips of the
trunk itself, in such quantities as to sug-
gest the idea that half a dozen of axe-
men had been at work there for the
whole morning. The body of the tree is

DOCTOR FAUSTUS.

Extracted from Baldwin's London Magazine, Aug. 1820.

WHEN, in 1773, Goethe publish- nature in her physical productions,

See Mr. Wilson's American Ornithology.

ment their magic influence on our Cesar recounting his own grand military minds by illustrating them with the enterprises.-But if the self-biographer splendour of his imagination. This is an individual, not only distinguished Wincklemann and Lessing bad pre- by extreme mental acuteness, and exviously done; and Goethe has ably quisite sensibility, but inclined to repfollowed their example. resent with accuracy and research the multiplied operations of his internal life, the various intellectual phenomena which preceded, accompanied, and followed his external actions—as has been done by Saint Augustin and by Rousseau-then, to the common interest which has been already explained, is added a very particular one :-we regard such a composition with the most lively attention, as calculated to throw light on the secret source, and hidden mazes, of what may be termed the vital fibres of the human character, and to afford some clue to the great mystery of their movements.

So much generally of the author in question; it is now time to state, that a single one of his dramatic compositions-the FAUSTUS-is more peculiarly the subject of the present article. It is for this reason that, in what we have further to say of his literary character, we shall confine ourselves to his capacity of poet. If he were not as he really is one of the most comprehensive intellects, one of the greatest encyclopedists of his age, his poetical compositions would nevertheless fully suffice to justify with posterity the high applause which he has received from bis contemporaries.

Amongst the multitude of volumes published by this author, there are four which, up to the present time, he has particularly consecrated to a plain narration of the events of his life. He who writes his biography, unless he be a creature altogether null in the human family, is pretty sure to write a work which will be acceptable to all classes of readers. Although curiosity may not be gratified with the display of important adventures; although the mind may not be kept in a state of agitation by those sublime fears and hopes that await on the vast interests of history there is nevertheless, almost necessarily, in the composition of him who narrates the story of his own actions, a certain vivacity, an air at least of frankness, a simplicity, or what the French term naiveté, altogether constituting a magical charm-which can never be successfully imitated by the art of rhetoric, and which pleases mightily that innate curiosity, felt by almost every one, to become acquainted with the casualties of life in the experience of others. It is by the inAluence of this species of enchantment that an artist of Florence, Benvenuto Cellini, narrating the occurrences of a common plebeian life, manages to arrest our attention, equally with Julius

Such is the case in regard to Goethe's book. Besides that the occurrences of his poetical life are often the direct consequences of the circumstances of his social or domestic situation, it happens also that the biography of this great man, associated with his poetical productions, is of a nature to assist the student of the art, as well as the inquirer into the springs of moral existence. The two, thus considered in connexion, enable one to trace the line of contact between the world of reality and that of the imagination; the relations that exist between the sensations directly proceeding from facts, and those which spring up in the mind under the agency of a reminiscent fancy; the system of action by which the intellect advances from the slightest. impulses to its most ardent fights; and the benefit which a poet may derive, in the exercise of his art, from his self-consciousness and feeling of individuality. Thus, for example, in the Memoirs of his own Life, we find the real history of Goethe's love affair; and it furnishes us with the type from whence he has extracted the ideal of the passion, so finely represented in his poetical compositions. In the portrait of a girl to whom he was much attached, we recognize the source from whence he has taken that sweet ideal image of moral beauty which lives in