reason is obvious. They are apt to rely too much on their beauty; or to give themselves too many airs. Mere beauty ever was, and ever will be, but a secondary thing, except with fools. And fools admire it for as little time as anybody else; perhaps not so long. They have no fancies to adorn it with. If this secondary thing fall into disagreeable ways, it becomes but a fifth or sixth rate thing, or nothing at all, or worse than nothing. We resent the unnatural mixture. We shrink from it, as we should from a serpent with a beauty's head. The most fascinating women are those that can most enrich the every-day moments of existence. In a particular and attaching sense, they are those that can partake our pleasures and our pains in the liveliest and most devoted manner. Beauty is little without this. With it, she is indeed triumphant.

OF DECEASED STATESMEN WHO HAVE
WRITTEN VERSES.

Universality of poetry, and consequent good effect of a taste for it.—The greater the statesman, the more universal his mind.Almost all great British Statesmen have written verses.— Specimen of verses by Wyatt, by Essex, by Sackville, Raleigh, Marvell, Peterborough, and Lord Holland.

THE love of moral beauty, and that retention of the spirit of youth, which is implied by the indulgence of a poetical taste, are evidences of good disposition in any man, and argue well for the largeness of his mind in other respects. For this is the boast of poetry above all other arts; that, sympathizing with everything, it leaves no corner of wisdom or knowledge unrecognised; which is a universality that cannot be predicated of any science, however great. But in a statesman, this regard for the poetical is doubly pleasing, from the supposed dryness of his studies, and the character he is apt to obtain for worldliness. We are delighted to see, that, sympathizing with poetry, he sympathizes with humanity;

and that, in attributing to him a mere regard for expedience and success, we do him injustice. In truth, most men do injustice to one another, when they think ill of what is at their heart's core; nay, even when they take for granted those avowals of cunning and misbelief, which are themselves generated by an erroneous principle of sociality, and a regard for what their neighbours will think of them. If it were suddenly to become the fashion for men to have faith in one another, Bond Street and Regent Street would be crowded to-morrow with poetry and sentiment; not because fashion is fashion (for that is a child's reason), but because fashion itself arises from the social principle, however narrowly exercised, and goes upon the ground of our regard for one another's opinion. Statesmen are too often unjustly treated in men's minds, as practisers of mere cunning and expedience, and lovers of power. Much self-love is doubtless among them, and much love of power. Where is it not? But higher aspirations are oftener mingled with the very cunning and expedience, than the narrow-minded suppose. Indeed the very position which statesmen occupy, and the largeness of the interests in which they deal, tend to create such aspirations where they do not very consciously exist; for a man cannot be habitually interested, even on his own account, with the concerns of nations and the welfare of his fellow-creatures, without having his nature expanded. Statesmen learn to feel as England," and as

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'France," or at least as the influential portion of the country, and not as mere heads of a party, however the partizanship may otherwise influence them, or be identified with their form of policy. Byand-by we hope they may feel, not as "England" or as "France," but as the whole world; and they will so, as the world advances in knowledge and influence. Now poetry is the breath of beauty, flowing around the spiritual world, as the winds that wake up the flowers do about the material; and in proportion as statesmen have a regard for poetry, and for what the highest poetry loves, they "look abroad," as Bacon phrases it, "into universality," and the universe partakes of the benefit. Bacon himself wrote verses, though he had not heart enough to write good ones; but his great knowledge told him, that verses were good things to write.

We must compress our recollections on this tempting subject into the smallest possible compass, and therefore shall confine ourselves to the most truly poetical instances we can call to mind; that is to say, such as imply the most genuine regard for what is imaginative and unworldly,—the most childlike spirit retained in the maturest brains and manliest hearts. We must confine ourselves also to our own country. For it is a very curious and agreeable fact, that scarcely any name of eminence can be mentioned in the political world, from Solon and Lycurgus down to the present moment, that

has not, at one period of the man's life or another, been connected with some tribute to the spirit of grace and fancy in the shape of verse. Perhaps there is not a single statesman in the annals of Great Britain, that will not be found to have written something in verse, some lines to his mistress, compliment to his patron, jest on his opponent, or elegy or epithalamium on a court occasion. Even Burleigh, in his youth, wrote verses in French and Latin: Bacon versified psalms :* and Clarendon, when he was Mr. Hide, and one of the "wits about town," wrote complimentary verses to his friends the poets. There are some on a play of Randolph's -the concluding couplet of which may be thought ominous, or auspicious (as the reader pleases), of the future historian's royalism,

"Thus much, where King applauds" [that is to say, the king!] "I dare be bold

To say, 'Tis petty treason to withhold.

EDWARD HIDE."

Wyatt, Essex, Sackville, Raleigh, Falkland, Marvell, Temple, Somers, Bolingbroke, Pulteney, Burke, Fox, Sheridan, Canning, &c. &c. all wrote verses; many of them late in life. Pope's Lord Oxford wrote some, and very bad they were. They were sug

* Here is one of the couplets, not to be surpassed in the annals of Grub street :

VOL. I.

“With wine, man's spirit for to recreate;

And oil, man's face for to exhilarate!!"

U