No. 23. London Literary and Critical Journal. LONDON, FRIDAY, APRIL, 1828. SKETCHES OF CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS. THE mind of a poet of the highest order is the most perfect mind that can belong to man. There is no intellectual power, and no state of feeling, which may not be the instrument of poetry, and in proportion as reason, reflection, or sympathy is wanting, in the same degree is the poet restricted in his mastery over the resources of his art. The poet is the great interpreter of nature's mysteries, not by narrowing them into the grasp of the understanding, but by connecting each of them with the feeling which changes doubt to faith. His most gorgeous and varied painting is not displayed as an idle phantasmagoria, but there flows through all its scenes the clear and shining water, which, as we wander for delight, or rest for contemplation, perpetually reflects to us an image of our own being. He sympathises with all phenomena by his intuition of all principles; and his mind is a mirror which catches and images the whole scheme and working of the world. He comprehends all feelings, though he only cherishes the best; and, even while he exhibits to us the frenzies or degradations of humanity, we are conscious of an ever-present divinity, elevating and hallowing the evil that surrounds it. A great poet may be of any time, or rank, or country; a beggar, an outcast, a slave, or even a courtier. The external limits of his social re thing more than an innocent amusement. It is No one, probably, will be inclined to maintain, that Lord Byron's poetry produces a good moral effect, except those who are anxious to spread the disbelief of the goodness of God, and to bring about the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes. With such persons, we have at present no quarrel. They are welcome to their opinions, so far as we are concerned; and we can only lament, for their own sakes, that they should think and feel as they do. To those who, without going so far as these, lations may be narrow and wretched as they will, yet deny that his writings have a bad moral inbut they will always have an inward universality. Aluence, we will give up the advantage to be deIn his rags, he is nature's treasurer: though he may rived from pressing the two above-mentioned be blind, he sees the past and the future, and though points, and put the question on other grounds: the servant of servants, he is ever at large and pre- and we wish to state distinctly, that we think, in dominant. But there are things which he cannot the first place, Lord Byron (as seen in his writbe. He cannot be a scorner, or selfish, or luxu-ings) had no sympathy with human nature, and rious and sensual. He cannot be a self-worship- no belief in its goodness; and, secondly, that he per, for he only breathes by sympathy, and is its had no love of truth. These are grave charges; organ; he cannot be untrue, for it is his high and, at least, as grave in our eyes as in those of calling to interpret those universal truths which any of our readers. But we are convinced of the exist on earth only in the forms of his creation. justice of them; and no fear of being classed with He cannot be given up to libertine debauchery; the bigots, of being called churchmen rather than for it is impossible to dwell at once before the Christians, and believers in articles, more than starry threshold of Jove's court, and in the den of believers in God, shall prevent us from expressing lewd and drunken revel. It was to Hades, not to and enforcing our conviction. Olympus, that the comrades of Ulysses voyaged, from the island of Circe; nor can we pass, without long and hard purgation, from the sty to the sanctuary, or from the wine-cup to the fountain of immortality. The poet must be of a fearless honesty; for he has to do battle with men for that which men most dread, the regeneration, namely, of man and yet he must be also of a lovingkindness; for his arms are the gentleness of his accents, and the music of all sweet thoughts. Such is the real and perfect poet; and it is only in so far as verse-artisans approach to this, that they are entitled to that lofty and holy name. But he who is such as has been now described, is indeed of as high and sacred a function as can belong to man. It is not the black garment, nor the precise and empty phrase, which makes men ministers of God; but the communion with that Spirit of God, which was, in all its fulness, upon those mighty poets, Isaiah and Ezekiel; which unrolled its visions over the rocks of Patmos, and is, in larger or smaller measure, the teacher of every hard. : Many of the warmest admirers of poetry will, of course, be shocked at the idea of its being any The attempt to prove any thing as to the habitual state of mind of a writer, by picking out detached sentences from his works, we look upon as vain and sophistical; vain, because no sentence of any author expresses the same meaning when detached from the context as when taken along with it; sophistical, because the very selection and abruption of these parts indicates a wish to persuade us that we ought to judge of a house from a single brick. The only satisfactory and honest method of estimating an author is, by considering the general impression which his works leave upon the mind. Now, if any candid and reflecting man, (or woman,) were to inform us of the influence exerted upon him by the perusal of one of Lord Byron's poems, would not his account be something of this sort-that he had felt inclined to look with scorn and bitterness upon his fellow-creatures, to wrap himself up in his own selfishness, and to see, in the outward world, not embodyings of that one idea of beauty which prevails in our own minds, not frame-works for human conceptions and affections, but mere images of his own personality, and vantage-grounds on which to raise himself afar from and above Price 7d. mankind? Would he not say that he had been imbibing discontent, disgust, satiety, and learning to look upon life as a dreary dulness, re-, lieved only by betaking ourselves to the wildest excesses and fiercest intensity of evil impulse. If, as we firmly believe, a sincere observer of himself would give us this account of his own feelings, after communing with the poetry of Byron, the question as to its beneficial or even innocent tendency is at an end. It is true that there are in man higher powers than those which tend directly to action; and there may be a character of a very exalted kind, though not the most perfect, which would withdraw itself from the business of society, and from the task of forwarding the culture of its generation, to contemplate with serene and grateful awe the perfect glory of the creation. But this is not the species of superiority to those around us and independence of them, which is fostered by the works of Lord Byron. The feeling which runs through them is that of a self-consuming scorn, and a self-exhausting weariness, as remote as can be from the healthful and majestic repose of philosophic meditation, as different from it as is the noisome glare of a theatre from that midnight firmament which folds the world in a starry atmosphere of religion; while the practical portion of our nature is displayed in his writings, as only active and vigorous amid the atrocities or the vileness of the foulest passions. He saw in mankind not a being to be loved, but to be despised; and despised, not for vice, ignorance, insensibility, or selfishness, but because he is obliged, by a law of his being, to look up to some power above himself, because he is not self-created and self-existing, nor himself, his world, and his own God.' As the Lord Byron of Childe Harold' and Don Juan' had no sympathy with mankind, neither does he seem to us to have had any love of truth. He appears to have felt that we have a natural tendency towards admiring and feeling, in accordance with the show of bold and bad predominances. The corrupt vanity of men, the propensity which teaches them to revere Cromwell and worship Napoleon, has made the world derive a diseased gratification from the pictures of Harold and Conrad. But these latter personages are essentially untrue. All that gives them more of the heroic and romantic character than the former worthies, is superadded to the original basis of evil and worthlessness, and is utterly inconsistent with it. And this Lord Byron must have known. He who put together these monsters, must have been aware that they are as false, and, to a philosopher, as ridiculous as sphynxes, or chimeras to a naturalist. he had so little love of truth, that he could not resist the temptation of encircling himself with these bombastic absurdities, to raise the astonishment of sentimental mantua-makers. But It is mournful to see that so much of energy and real feeling should have been perverted to the formation of these exaggerated beings, alternately so virtuous and so vicious, now so overflowing with tenderness, and so bright with purity, and again so hard, and vile, and atrocious. These qualities, to be sure, are all found in man; but the combination, where, in earth or moon, shall we look to find it? The principles of human nature are not mere toys, like phosphorus and paint, wherewith to eke out goblins: and he who pretends to exalt the mind by representing it as 352 superior, not only to its meaner necessities, bu | 'Do grow beneath their shoulders.' played that intense self-consciousness, and des- while we bow. SALATHIEL. Salathiel: A Story of the Past, the Present, and the A copy of this interesting and powerfully writ- The Demon Epiphanes. Of We entirely omit the question of the direct irreligion and indecency of his writings. As to these matters, those who feel religiously will blame him, without our assistance, and those who approve of infidelity, or gloat over obscurity, 'In one of those wanderings, I had followed the will applaud, in spite of us. At present, we course of the Kedron, which, from a brook under the neither seek to heighten the reprobation, nor to walls of Jerusalem, swells to a river on its descent to the Dead Sea. The blood of the sacrifices from the diminish aught from the approval. For ourselves, we lament the Anti-Christian and impure conduits of the altars curdled on its surface, and stained tendencies of his mind, not so much for any po- the sands purple. It looked like a wounded vein from sitive evil they can do,-this, we suspect, being the mighty heart above. I still strayed on, wrapt in much over-rated,-as because they are evidences sad forebodings of the hour when its stains might be of the degradation of a powerful mind, and of of more than sacrifice; until I found myself on the the pollution of much and strong good feeling. edge of the lake. Who has ever seen that black expanse without a shudder? There were the ingulphed We certainly differ considerably from the greater cities. Around it life was extinct-no animal bounded number of those who have attacked him, as -no bird hovered. The distant rushing of the River to the particular parts of his writings, which Jordan, as it forced its current through the heavy The story merit the severest condemnation. waters, or the sigh of the wind through the reeds, alone broke the silence of this mighty grave. of Haidee seems to us much less mischievous the melancholy objects of nature, none is more depresthan that of Donna Julia, and this far more with Catherine. sing than a large expanse of stagnant waters. No gloom endurable than the amour of forest, no wildness of mountain, is so overpowering, Childe Harold' will do more harm than Cain,' as this dreary, unrelieved flatness:-the marshy borand either of them more than the parody of der-the sickly vegetation of the shore-the leaden The Vision of Judgment.' Of this, also, we are sure, that, had he never openly outraged pub-colour which even the sky above it wears, tinged by lic opinion by direct blasphemies and grossness, the world would have been well enough content to receive his falsifications of human nature for genuine; and all his forced contortions, and elaborate agonies, would have passed current as natural manifestations of a reasonable and pretty despair. But, when he once did violence to those names which are the idols of the age, while the spirit of religion is wanting, he became a mark for the condemnation of those who live He might by the service of Bel and Dagon. exhibit man as a wretched and contemptible, an utterly hopeless and irrecoverably erring creature, he might represent selfishness and vanity as the true glories of our nature, he might leave us no home but solitude, and no stay but sensuality, and deny not only God, but good;and yet be the favourite of pious Reviewers, the drawing-room autocrat, the boudoir deity. But when he once dared to doubt, in so many words, of the wisdom of Providence, and, instead of hinting adultery, to name fornication, the morality of a righteous generation rose up in arms against him; and those who ought long before to have wept over the prostitution of such a mind, affected a new-born horror at the event, though they had been delighting for years in the reality of the pollution. its sepulchral atmosphere. But the waters before me 'The day of destruction seemed to pass again before above. I heard the voice of the thunder;-it was answer- the blackness of darkness for ever. 'I was idly watching the bursts of suffocating vapour that shoot up at intervals from the rising masses of bitumen, when I was startled by a wild laugh and wilder figure beside me. I sprang on my feet, and prepared for defence with my poinard: the figure waved his hand in sign to sheathe the unnecessary weapon; and said, in a tone strange and melancholy, "You are in my power; but I do not come to injure you. I have been contemplating your countenance for some time: I have seen your features deeply disturbed-your wringing hands-your convulsed form: are you even as I am?" We wish not to deny that Lord Byron was a 'The voice was singularly mild yet I never heard a There are moods of the poet, and a great one. sound that so keenly pierced my brain. The speaker mind which he has delineated with remarkable was of the tallest stature of man-every sinew and fidelity. But, as Shakspeare would not have muscle exhibiting gigantic strength; yet with the been what he is, had he exhibited only the fan-symmetry of a Greek statue. But his countenance was tastic waywardness of Hamlet, or the passionate the true wonder-it was of the finest mould of manly love of Romeo, so Byron is less than a first-rate beauty: the contour was Greek, but the hue was Sypoet for the uniformity with which he has dis-rian: yet the dark tinge of country gave way at times to a more than corpse-like paleness. I had full leisure 'I sheathed the dagger. "Does this strength amaze 'As he threw himself back, gazing upon the skywith his grand form buoyant with vigour, and his arm exalted he looked like one to whom height or depth could offer no obstacle. His mantle flew out along the blast like the unfurling of a mighty wing. There was something in his look and voice that gave irresistible conviction to his wild words.-Conscious mastery was in all about him. I should not have felt surprise to see him spring up into the elements. 'My mind grew inflamed with his presence. My blood burned with sensations, for which language has no name; a thirst of power-a scorn of earth-a proud and fiery longing for the command of the hidden mysteries of nature. I felt, as the great ancestor of mankind might have felt, when the voice of the tempter told him, "Ye shall be even as gods." "Look "Give me your power," I exclaimed; "the world to me is worthless: with man all my ties are broken : let me live in the desert, and be even as you are: give me your power." "My power!" he repeated, with a round the wilderness by what seemed voices innumerghastly laugh that rang to the skies, and was echoed able, until it died away in a distant groan. on this forehead!"-he threw back the corner of his "Here," mantle. A furrow was drawn round his brow, covered with gore, and gaping like a fresh wound. howled he, "sat the diadem.-I was Epiphanes." "You, Antiochus! the tyrant-the persecutorthe spoiler-the accursed of Israel!" I bounded backwards in sudden horror. 'I saw before me one of those spirits of the evil on earth in the body, whether of the dead or the living. dead, who are allowed from time to time to re-appear For some cause that none could unfold, Judea had been, within the last few years, haunted by them more than for centuries. Strange rites, dangerously borrowed from the idolaters, were resorted to for our relief from this new terror; the pulling of the mandrake at the eclipse of the moon-incantations-midnight offerings -the root Baaras, that was said to flash flame, and kill the animal that drew it from the ground. Our Sadducees and sceptics, wise in their own conceit, declared that possession was but a human disease, a wilder insanity. But, with the rage and misery of madness, there were tremendous distinctions that raised it beyond all the ravages of the hurt mind, or the afflicted frame; the look, the language, the horror of the possessed, were above man. They defied human restraint; they lived in wildernesses where the very insects died; the fiery sun of the East, the inclemency their strength. But they had stronger signs; they of the fiercest winter, had no power to break down spoke of things to which the wisdom of the wisest was folly; they told of the remotest future with the force of prophecy; they gave glimpses of a knowledge brought from realms of being inaccessible to living man; last and loftiest sign, they did homage to HIS coming, whom a cloud of darkness, the guilty and impenetrable darkness of the heart, had veiled from my unhappy nation. But their worship was terror-they believed and trembled.'-Vol, I., pp. 93–100, A Lion Fight. Dismounting, for the side or the hill was almost precipitous, I led my panting Arab through beds of myrtle, and every lovely and sweet-smelling bloom, to the edge of a valley, that seemed made to shut out every disturbance of man. 'A circle of low hills, covered to the crown with foliage, surrounded a deep space of velvet turf, kept green as the emerald by the flow of rivulets, and the moisture of a pellucid lake in the centre, tinged with every colour of the heavens. The beauty of this sylvan spot was enhanced by the luxuriant profusion of almond, orange, and other trees, that, in every stage of production, from the bud to the fruit, covered the little knolls below, and formed a broad belt round the lake. Parched as I was by the intolerable heat, this secluded haunt of the very spirit of freshness looked doubly lovely. My eyes, half-blinded by the glare of the sands, and even my mind exhausted by the perplexities of the day, found delicious relaxation in the verdure and dewy breath of the silent valley. My barb, with the quick sense of animals accustomed to the travel of the wilderness, showed her delight by playful boundings, the prouder arching of her neck, and the brighter glancing of her bright eye. Here," thought I, as I led her slowly towards the deep descent, "would be the very spot for the innocence that had not tried the world, or the philosophy that had tried it, and found all vanity. Who could dream that, within the borders of this distracted land, in the very hearing, almost within the very sight, of the last miseries that man could inflict on man, there was a retreat, which the foot of man, perhaps, never yet defiled; and in which the calamities that afflict society might be as little felt as if it were among the stars!" 'A violent plunge of the barb put an end to my speculation. She exhibited the wildest signs of terror, snorted, and strove to break from me; then fixing her glance keenly on the thickets below, shook in every himb. But the scene was tranquillity itself; the chameleon lay basking in the sun, and the only sound was that of the wild doves murmuring under the broad leaves of the palm-trees. 'But my mare still resisted every effort to lead her downwards, her ears were fluttering convulsively, her eyes were starting from their sockets; I grew peevish at the animal's unusual obstinacy, and was about to let her suffer thirst for the day, when my senses were paralyzed by a tremendous roar. A lion stood on the summit which I had but just quitted. He was not a dozen yards above my head, and his first spring must have carried me to the bottom of the precipice. The barb burst away at once. I drew the only weapon I bad, a dagger,—and, hopeless as escape was, grasping the tangled weeds to sustain my footing, awaited the plunge. But the lordly savage probably disdained so ignoble prey, and continued on the summit, lashing his sides with his tail, and tearing up the ground. He at length stopped suddenly, listened, as to some approaching foot, and then with a hideous yell sprang over me, and was in the thicket below at a single bound. The whole thicket was instantly alive; the shade which I had fixed on for the seat of unearthly tranquillity, was an old haunt of lions, and the mighty herd were now roused from their noon-day slumbers. Nothing could be grander or more terrible than this disturbed majesty of the forest kings. In every variety of savage passion, from terror to fury, they plunged, and tore, and yelled; darted through the lake, burst through the thicket, rushed up the hills, or stood baying and roaring defiance against the coming invader; the numbers were immense, for the rareness of shade and water had gathered them from every quarter of the desert. While I stood clinging to my perilous hold, and fearful of attracting their gaze by the slightest movement, the source of the commotion appeared, in the shape of a Roman soldier issuing, spear in hand, through a ravine at the further side of the valley. He was palpably unconscious of the formidable place into which he was entering; and the gallant clamour of voices through the hills, showed that he was followed by others as bold and unconscious of their danger as himself. But his career soon closed; his horse's feet had scarcely touched the turf, when a lion was fixed with fangs and claws on the creature's loins. The rider uttered a cry of horror, and, for the instant, sat, helplessly gazing at the open jaws behind him. I saw the lion gathering up his flanks for a second bound, but the soldier, a figure of gigantic strength, grasping the nostrils of the monster with one hand, and, with the other, shortening his spear, drove the steel, at one resistless thrust, into the lion's forehead. Horse, lion, aud rider fell, and continued struggling together. 'In the next moment, a mass of cavalry came thundering down the ravine. They had broken off from their march, through the accident of rousing a struggling lion, and followed him in the giddy ardour of the chase. The sight now before them was enough to appal the boldest intrepidity. The valley was filled with the vast herd; retreat was impossible, for the troopers came still pouring in by the only pass, and, from the sudden descent of the glen, horse and man were rolled head foremost among the lions; neither man nor monster could retreat. The conflict was horrible; and the heavy spears of the legionaries plunged through bone and brain. The lions, made more furious by wounds, sprang upon the powerful horses and tore them to the ground, or flew at the troopers' throats, and crushed and dragged away cuirass and buckler. The valley was a struggling heap of human and savage battle; man, lion, and charger, writhing and rolling in agonies, till their forms were undistinguishable. The groans and cries of the legionaries, the screams of the mangled horses, and the roars and howlings of the lions bleeding with sword and spear, tearing the dead, darting up the sides of the hills in terror, and rushing down again with the fresh thirst of gore, baffled all conception of fury and horror. 'But man was the conqueror at last; the savages, scared by the spear and thinned in their numbers, made a rush in one body towards the ravine, overthrew every thing in their way, and burst from the valley, awaking the desert for many a league with their roar.' -Vol. ii. pp. 71–77. Supernatural Signs during the Siege of Jerusalem. In that hour came one of those solemn signs that marked the downfall of Jerusalem. 'The tempest, that had blown at intervals with tremendous violence, died away at once; and a surge of light ascended from the horizon, and rolled up rapidly to the zenith. The phenomenon instantly fixed every eye. There was an indefinable sense in the general mind, that a sign of power and Providence was about to be given. The battle ceased; the outcries were fol. lowed by utter silence; the armed ranks stood still, in the very act of rushing on each other: all faces were turned on the heavens. The light rose pale and quivering, like the meteors of a summer evening. But in the zenith it spread and swelled into a splendour, that distinguished it irresisti bly from the wonders of earth or air. It swiftly eclipsed every star. The moon vanished before it; the canopy of the sky seemed to be dissolved, for a view into a bright and infinite region beyond, fit for the career of those mighty beings to whom man is but a feather on the gale. der our feet, rolled from the four quarters of the heaven. The conquering host shook, broke, and fled in utter confusion over the sapphire field. It was pursued; hut by no semblance of the Roman. An awful enemy was on its steps. Flashes of forked fire, like myriads of lances, darted after it; cloud on cloud deepened down, as the smoke of a mighty furnace; globes of light shot blasting and burning along its track. Then, amid the doubled roar of thunder, rushed forth the chivalry of Heaven; shapes of transcendant beauty, yet with looks of wrath that withered the human eye; armed sons of immortality descending on the wing by millions; mingled with shapes and instruments of ruin, for which the mind has no conception. The circle of the heaven was filled with the chariots and horses of fire. Flight was in vain the weapons were seen to drop from the Jewish host: their warriors sank upon the splendid field. Still the immortal armies poured on, trampling and blasting, until the last of the routed was consumed. 'The angry pomp then paused. Countless wings were spread, and the angelic multitudes, having done the work of vengeance, rushed upward with the sound of ocean in the storm. The roar of trumpets and thunders was heard, until the splendour was lost in the heights of the empyrean. We felt the terrible warning. Our strength was dried up at the sight; despair seized upon our souls. We had now seen the fate of Jerusalem. No victory over man could save us from the coming of final ruin. Thousands never left the ground on which they stood; they perished by their own hands, or lay down and died of broken hearts. The rest fled through the night, that again wrapped them in tenfold darkness. The whole multitude scattered away, with soundless steps, and in silence, like an army of spectres.'-Vol. iii. pp. 74-79. A Prophet. 'Whence came the intruder, no one could tell. But there he stood, a figure that fixed the universal eye. He was of lofty stature, brown as an Indian, and thin as one worn to the last extremity by sorrow or famine. Conjecture was busy. He seemed, alternately, the fugitive from a dungeon,-one of the halfsavage recluses that sometimes came from their dens in the wilderness, to exhibit among us the last bumiliation of mind and body,-a dealer in forbidden arts, attempting to impose on the rude credulity of the populace, and a prophet, armed with the fearful knowledge of our approaching fall. But to me there was an expression in his countenance that partook of all: yet I gazed with an indefinable feeling, that there was a something different from all in the glaring eye, the fixed and livid scorn of the lip, and the stern and grand outline of features, that appeared alike overflowing with malignity and majesty. 'No man thought of interrupting him. A powerful interest hushed every voice of the multitude; and the 'As we gazed, this boundless field was transformed only impulse was eagerness to hear the lofty wisdom, into a field of battle; multitudes poured across it in or the fatal tidings, that must be deposited with such the fiercest convulsions of combat; horsemen charged, a being. He himself seemed to be overwhelmed with and died under their horses' feet; armour and stand- the magnitude of the thoughts that he was commisards were trampled in blood; column and line burst sioned to disclose. He stood for a while with the look through each other. At length the battle stooped to- of one oppressed by a fearful dream; his bosom heavwards the earth; and, with hearts beating with inde-ing, his teeth gnashing, every muscle of his meagre scribable feelings, we recognised in the fight the ban- frame swelling and quivering. He strongly clasped ners of the tribes. It was Jew and Roman struggling his bony arms across his breast, as if to repress the for life; the very countenances of the combatants be- agitation that impeded his words; then, stamping on came visible, and each man below saw a representative the ground, in wrath at the faculties which thus sank of himself and his fortunes above. The fate of Jewish under bim at the important moment, the tempest of war was there written by the hand of Heaven; the fate his soul broke forth. of the individual was there predicted in the individual triumph or fall. What thought of man can conceive the intense interest with which we watched every blow, every movement, every wound of those images of ourselves? The light illumined the whole horizon below. The legions were seen drawn out in front of the camps ready for action; every helmet and spear-point glittering in the radiance; every face turned up, gazing in awe and terror on the sky. The tents spreading over the hills; the thousands and tens of thousands of auxiliaries and captives; the little groups of the peasantry roused from sleep by the uproar of the night, and gathered upon the knolls and eminences of their fields: all were bathed in a flood of preternatural lustre. But the wondrous battle approached its close. The visionary Romans shook; column and cohort gave way, and the banners of the tribes waved in victory over the field. Then first human voices dared to be heard. From the city and the plain burst forth one mighty shout of triumph. But our presumption was to be soon checked. A peal of thunder that made the very ground tremble un "Judah! thou wert as a lion-thou wert as the king of the forest when he went up to the mountains to slay, and from the mountains came down to devour. Thou wert as the garden of Eden, every precious stone was thy covering; the sardine, the topaz, and the beryl were thy pavements; thy fountains were of silver, and thy daughters that walked in thy groves were as the cherubim and the seraphim. "Judah! thy temple was glorious as the sunrising, and thy priests were the wise of the earth. Kings came against thee, and their bones were an offering; the fowls of the air devoured them; the foxes brought their young, and feasted them upon the mighty. Judah! thou wert as a fire in the midst of the nations-a fire upon an altar; who shall quench thee?A sword over the neck of the heathen; who shall say unto thee, Smite no more! Thou wert as the thunder and the lightning: thou camest from thy place, and the earth was dark the heaven was thine, the earth was at thy feet. Thou didst thunder, and the nations shook; and the fire of thy indignation consumed them." 'The voice in which this extraordinary being uttered those words was like the thunder. The multitude listened with breathless awe. The appeal in the language of their own prophets, was to them a renewal of the times of inspiration; and they awaited with outstretched and quivering countenances the sentence, that their passions interpreted into the will of Heaven. "The figure lifted up his glance, that had hitherto been fixed on the ground; and, whether it was the work of fancy or reality, I thought that the glance threw an actual beam of fire across the upturned visages of the myriads that filled every spot on which a foot could rest; roof, wall, and ground. 'Bowing his head, and raising his hands in the most solemn adoration towards the Temple, he pursued, in a voice scarcely above a whisper, yet indescribably impressive "Sons of the faithful Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob; people chosen of God, elect and holy! Will you suffer that house of holiness to be the scoff of the idolater? Will you see the polluted sacrifice laid upon its altars? Will you be slaves and victims in the presence of the house of David?" A rising outcry of the multitude showed how deeply they felt his words. A fierce smile lightened across his features at the sound. He erected his colossal form; and cried out, like the roar of a whirlwind, "Then, men of Judah, be strong, and follow the hand that led you through the sea and through the desert. Is that hand shortened, that it cannot save? Break off this accursed league with the sons of Belial. Fly every man to arms, for the glory of the mighty people. Will the Most High desert his people? Go; and let the sword that smote the Canaanite, smite the Roman." He was answered with furious exultation. Swords and poinards were brandished in the air. The safety of the Roman officers became endangered; and I, with some of the elders, dreading a result which must throw fatal obstacles in the way of pacification, attempted to control the popular violence by reason and entreaty. But the spirit of the Romans, haughty with conquest, and long contempt of rabble prowess, disdained to take precautions with a mob; and they awaited with palpable contempt in their faces the subsiding of this city effervescence. But this silent scorn, which probably stung the deeper for its silence, was retorted by clamours of unequivocal rage; the mysterious disturber saw the storm coming; and flinging a furious gesture towards the Roman camps, which lay glittering in the sun-shine along the hills, he rushed into the loftiest language of malediction. "Take up a lament for the Roman," he shouted. "He comes like a leviathan; he troubleth the waters with his presence; and the rivers behold him, and are afraid. "Thus saith the king, he who holdeth Israel in the hollow of his hand: I will spread my net over thee, and my people shall drag thee upon the shore; I will leave thee to rot upon the land; I will fill the beasts of the earth with thee, until they shall come and find thee dry bones and dust, even thy glory turned into a taint and a scorn. "Lift up a cry over Rome, and say: Thou art the leopard; thy jaws are red with blood, and thy claws are heavy because of the multitude of the slain; thy spots are glorious, and thy feet are like wings for swiftness. But thy time is at hand. My arrow shall smite through thee; my steel shall go through thee: I will lay thy flesh upon the hills, thy blood shall be red in the rivers, the pits shall be full of thee. ""For, thus saith the king, I have not forsaken my children. For my pleasure, I have given them over for a little while to the hands of the oppressor; but they have loved me-they have come before me, and offered up sacrifices; and shall I desert the land of the chosen, the sons of the glorious, my people Israel?" A universal outcry of sorrow, wrath, and triumph, followed this allusion to the national sufferings. "Ho!" exclaimed the figure. "Men of Israel, hear the words of wisdom. The burden of Rome. By the swords of the mighty will I cause her multitude to fall; the terrible and the strong shall be on thee, city of the idolater; they shall hew off thy cuirasses, as the hewer of wood; and of thy shields, they shall make vessels of water. There shall be fire in thy palaces, and the sword. Thy sons and thy daughters shall they consume; and thy precious things shall be a spoil, when the king shall give the sign from the sanctuary.' He paused, and, lifting up his fleshless arm, stood like a giant bronze pointing to the Temple. wreathing and white like the smoke that used to mark the Daily Sacrifice. Our first conception was, that this great interrupted rite was resumed; and the shout of joy was on our lips. But the vapour had scarcely parted from the crown of the hill, when it blackened, and began to whirl with extraordinary rapidity; it thenceforth less ascended than shot up, perpetually darkening and distending. The horizon grew dim, the cloudy canopy above continued to spread and revolve; lightning began to quiver through; and we heard, at intervals, long low peals of thunder. But no rain fell, and the wind was lifeless. Nothing could be more complete than the calm; not a hair of our heads was moved; yet the heart of the countless multitude was penetrated with the dread of some impending catastrophe, that restrained every voice; and the silence itself was awful. In the climate of Judea we had been accustomed to the rapid rise and violent devastations of tempests. But the rising of this storm, so closely connected with the appearance of the strange summoner, that it almost followed his command, invested a phenomenon, at all times fearful, with a character that might have struck firmer minds than those of the enthusiasts round him. To heighten the wonder, the progress of the storm was still faithful to the command. Wherever this man of The bluest tract of heaven was black as night the mystery waved his arm, there rushed a sheet of cloud. moment he turned his ominous presence towards it, until there was no more sky to be obliterated, and, have stood under a canopy of solid gloom. but for the fiery streaks that tore through, we should At length the whirlwind that we had seen driving and rolling the clouds, like billows, burst upon us; roaring as it came; scattering fragments of the buildings far and wide, and cutting a broad way through the overthrown multitude. Then superstition and dashed down, exclaimed that a volcano was throwing terror were loud-mouthed. The populace, crushed and up flame from the mount of the Temple; that sulphurous smokes were rising through the crevices of the ground; that the rocking of an earthquake was felt; and, still more terrible, that beings not to be looked on, nor even to be named, were hovering round them in the storm. The general rush of the multitude, in which hundreds were trampled down, and in which nothing but the most violent efforts could keep any on their feet, bore me away for a while. The struggle was sufficient to absorb all my senses, for nothing could be more perilous. The darkness was intense. The peals of the storm were deafening; and the howlings and fury fighting for life in blindness and despair, with hand, of the crowd, trampling and being trampled on, and foot, and dagger, made an uproar louder than that of the storm. In this conflict rather of demons than of men, I was whirled away in eddy after eddy, until chance brought me again to the foot of the elevation. 'There I beheld a new wonder. A column of livid fire stood upon it, reaching to the clouds. I could dis cern the outline of a human form within. But, while I expected to see it drop dead, or blasted to a cinder, the flame spread over the ground, and I saw its strange drew a circle upon the burning soil, poured out some inhabitant making signs like those of incantation. He rased the skin of his arm with a dagger, and let fall ungent, which diffused a powerful and rich odour, some drops of blood into the blaze. ་ 'I shuddered at the sight of those palpable appeals to the power of evil; but I was pressed upon by thousands, and retreat was impossible. The magician then, with a ghastly smile of triumph, waved the weapon towards the Roman camps. Behold," he cried, "the beginnings of vengeance!" A thunder-roll, that almost split the ear, echoed round the hills. The darkcleared, and cleared into a translucence and blue splenness passed away with it. Above Jerusalem the sky dour, unrivalled by the brightest sun-shine. The people, wrought up to the highest expectancy, shouted at this promise of a prouder deliverance, and, exclaiming, "Goshen! Goshen!" looked breathlessly for the completion of the plague upon the more than Egyptian Pressor. They were not held long in suspense. The storm had cleared away from above our heads, only to gather in deeper terrors round the circle of the hills, on which we could see the enemy in the most overwhelming state of uncertainty and alarm. The clouds rushed on, ridge over ridge, till the whole horizon seemed shut in by a wall of night towering to the skies. I heard the deep voice of the magician; at the utterance of some wild words, a gleam played round To the utter astonishment of all, a vapour was the dagger's point, and the wall of darkness was instantly a wall of fire. The storm was let loose in its seen to ascend from the summit of Mount Moriab, rage. While we stood in day-light, and in perfect calm, the lightning poured like sheets of rain, or gushes of burning metal from a furnace, upon the enemy. The vast circuit of the camps was one blaze. The wind tore every thing before it with irresistible violence. We saw the tents swept off the ground, and driven far over the hills in flames, like meteors; the piles of arms and banners blown away; the soldiery clinging to the rocks, or flying together in helpless crowds, or scattering, like maniacs, with hair and garments on fire; the baggage and military machines, the turrets and ramparts sinking in flames; the beasts of burthen plunging and rushing through the lines, or lying in smouldering heaps where the lightning first smote them.'-Vol. iii, pp. 114-126. REFORM OF THE LAW. A History of the Court of Chancery; with Practical Remarks on the Recent Commission, Report, and Evidence, and on the means of improving the Administration of Justice in the English Courts of Equity. By JOSEPH PARKES, Solicitor, Birmingham. 8vo. pp. 616. Longman and Co. London, 1828. THE reign of George the Third,' says Mr. Parkes, may be truly denominated the age of war.' That of George the Fourth bids fair to become one of legislation. A greater than either had shown, that the most ambitious pursuit of conquest was not incompatible with the most scientific arrangement of the art of governing. It must be confessed, however, that Napoleon Buonaparte, who will be remembered with gratitude as a legislator, when he has ceased to be execrated as a conqueror, had the advantage over his contemporary Sovereigns: the Revolution the curiously-preserved ruins of feudal architechad swept away the refuse of the ancient law; ture had been thrown down by the political earthquake; the stagnation of judicial corruption had been scattered by the political whirlwind. He had a clear stage, and little or no prejudice to encounter; his task was to restrain, rather than to excite, reform. Very different was the state of Great Britain. Her rulers, feeling, or pretending to feel, alarm, at the progress of innovation, wilfully confounding the excesses of an exasperated people, newly emanated from the most hateful slavery, with the essence of revolution, determined, as far as lay public opinion, and to prolong, for their own day, in their limited power, to retard the progress of at least, the darkness of legislative superstitions. We know how well they succeeded; the aristocracy, trembling for their privileges, the priesthood clinging to their tithes, the lawyers to their emoluments, each aided in his vocation the efforts of the gagging ministry-each maintained that the law was perfect-each denounced doubt of its perfection as heresy-each resolved to treat any attempt at reform as rebellion; a splendid Norfolk, Charles Fox, and Mr. Grey, proved that body from universal disgrace. minority, indeed, in each class, rescued their The Duke of a few men of birth could be disinterested; the Bishops Watson, Bathurst, and King, were examples that every ecclesiastic is not a court sycophant; Erskine and Romilly were lawyers, and yet philanthropists. But for these, and a few more of less note, how many even of those who saw the light, closed their eyes upon it, and voHonour and persecution was on one hand, subluntarily sought the security of darkness.serviency and promotion on the other: shall we wonder that so many deserted, or that any stood, their ground? Happily for mankind, a small but energetic party did persevere, in spite of temptation, in spite of calumny, in spite of persecution; and now they see legions flocking to their banner;-they see their ancient enemy endeavouring to counterfeit their standard, and to possess themselves, by fraud, of that vantage ground for commanding public opinion which they once affected to despise, but now find the only permanently tenable post for the government of the country. Two parties now appear, equally anxious for the reformation of the law-the old reformers, with a host of volunteers, under Mr. Brougham, and a new legion, headed by Mr. Peel, who falsely claim the honour of having first raised the legislative standard of innovation. If both were equally sincere, we should have little to apprehend from the feeble band of veterans who yet rally upon the ancient ways, even though we should find in their ranks some few deserters from a better cause, and, among the number, that leader on whose talents and integrity we had once relied as a mainstay of our cause. But we have too much reason to distrust the faith of the new converts. As long as proposed amendment touch no man's purse who is in place, no man's privilege who is in office, no man's patronage who is in power, we may calculate upon a cautious and almost reluctant co-operation; but when we come to the root of the evil, the extortions, the bribery, the peculations which affect the pockets of the office-bearers-to the delays which minister to the indolence of the functionaries-to the ignorance and incapacity of favoured placemen-to the sinecures of a pensioned aristocracy-there we shall find ourselves deserted by our allies, if not opposed by them as enemies. We must not, therefore, consider the work of reform secure, because a Secretary of State has volunteered his assistance; we know enough now of him, and of the men he leads, to be well assured, that if the current of public opinion should slacken, the tories would again become the advocates of existing abuses, the obstinate opponents of every change. It is for this reason that we hail with peculiar pleasure every work which keeps the attention of the public alive to the present state of the law. By long and laborious efforts an interest has been excited on this subject. We must beware that it is not suffered to flag for want of stimulus; it is exceedingly difficult, however, to keep the minds of men alert on a subject which, though to the highest degree interesting to them in its end, is not intelligible in its details. The mass of the people must generally be content to see the result; they cannot comprehend the machinery by which it is produced. Still those who, from time to time, show them the great moving powers of the engine, point out their uses, their defects, or their decay, detect their rust or their rottenness, or discover the dead weights which impede the due action of the machinery, are the most valuable benefactors of the state. discussion it is averred, that those States which have not a separate Court of Chancery, feel the want of one, and that, where the equity and common law jurisdictions had been blended, great evils existed. Delavare tried both systems; and, in 1799, had divided the Chancery powers into a distinct and separate branch: and the question had been decided in favour of that course, in South Carolina, after long and deliberate discussion.'Jurist, No. I., p. 32. We must now hasten to give our readers some idea of the information to be derived from the historical part of Mr. Parkes's work, which we shall do as concisely as the nature and importance of the subject will permit: the Court of Exchequer, cannot, for a moment, On this question of the separate existence of Mr. Parkes has, we believe, been for some con- equitable jurisdictions, we may look, with profit, to siderable time a labourer in this vocation; he now the other side of the Atlantic. We left our laws comes before us as the historian of the Court of as a legacy to the United States, and they long Chancery, to give us an account of the origin, retained them with something like the superstiadditions, and alterations, (would that we could tious veneration with which we, till lately, woradd the improvements) of that monstrous engine. shipped them; but juridical scepticism, if not of If, to recover the truth, it be most expedient earlier growth there, met with a more congenial to trace the progress of error, and so start with a soil and climate; and, for some time, the Amenew reckoning, this History is most important. rican Legislature have been actively engaged in It investigates the origin, it tracks the increase, it adapting their ancient institutes to modern exidemonstrates the magnitude of evil under which gence. The consideration of the state and expethe country labours, for its existing equitable diency of this' (the equitable) jurisdiction, has jurisdiction. To have done this, and to have done lately undergone a solemn and ingenious debate in this well, was no trifling task; and, if our author the conventional legislation of New York; the had done no more, he would have been entitled discussion and resolves of which are highly importo the highest praise. We have to commend, the tant, and might be made assistant to the legislahonesty which exposes abuses without respect to tive measures now before Parliament, in the Bill party or persons; the industry, which, in the ex- introduced by the Master of the Rolls, (Lord ercise of a profession allowing little leisure, has Lyndhurst) for the amendment of our own Court collected a vast store of recondite learning; the of Chancery. It became a serious and grave intalent, which has combined such a mass in a form quiry, whether that state should transfer or aboat once interesting and intelligible to the general lish the equity jurisdiction. Such is the bold and reader. Having bestowed this much of appro-statesman-like conduct of these republican legisbation, we mean no detraction when we occasionally differ on some conclusions, and, in one or two instances, question the accuracy of the information, or the correctness of the reasoning, on which such conclusions are founded. We do not, for instance, concur in the bias which this author evidently entertains against the separate existence of Courts of Equity. We must not confound the use and abuse of things, The expense and delay of the Court of Chancery, and the inefficiency of lators: they submit the evils of their judicial sys- But the Barons were not to be so tricked out of their favourite system of Common Law; a severe contest ensued between the clergy and the nobility. The clergy were ultimately defeated, and with the tact peculiar to their cloth, when they found the field no longer tenable, affected a virtue in retiring from it. The bishops forbade Ecclesiastics to appear as advocates in foro seculari; but their consciences did not forbid their sitting as judges. We had still clerical Chancellors, who made the civil law the basis of equitable jurisdiction, as it remains even unto this day. Mr. Parkes declines giving us a list of these ecclesiastical judges, or a detail of their official and political biography. This we regret, for if, as he says, the greater number may be fairly judged by the character of one, the recital would have afforded a useful lesson to those who, even in this day, affect to believe, that the sanctity of the spiritual character is not affected by mixture with temporal jurisdictions. The example cited is, of Robert Bluot, Bishop of Lincoln, a wholesale dealer in Church Preferment, and who died in prison for his misdeeds, (where many more ought to have expired,) of whom Coke dryly observes, that he lived without love, and died without pity, save of those who thought it pity he lived so long.' Nor was the nomination of priestly Chancellors the only evil: |