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printers, that we now rarely see a Latin note without some such blunder, and the errors which they make in the English text are more mischievous because they are less conspicuous. Every printer used formerly to have a competent corrector of

the press in his employ, and we shall continue to notice the incorrectness of the works which come before us, in the hope that this may again be considered as ne cessary.

ART. XXII.-The Sabbath, and Sabbath Walks; by JAMES GRAHAME. 8vo. pp. 136.

SO remarkably successful has this little poem been, that it had reached a third edition before it came to our hands. For some part of its success it has been inlebted to its title. and it may also have hala sectarian circulation, but undoubtedly as much is to be attributed to the true genius which it displays.

The preface has nothing prefatory, but it is a striking chapter or chapterlet in the manner of Montesquieu.

"He who has seen threescore and ten years, has lived ten years of Sabbaths. The appropriation of so considerable a portion of butan life to religious duties, to domestic enjoyment, and to meditative leisure, is a most merciful branch of the divine dispensation. It is the grand bulwark of poverty against the encroachments of capital. The Jabouring classes all their time. The rich are the buyers, at least they are the chief buyers; for it is obvious, that more than the half of the waking hours of those who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, is consunned in the manufacture of articles, that cannot he deemed either necessaries or com forts. Six days of the week are thus disposed of already. If Sunday were in the market, it would find purchasers too. The abolition of the Sabbath would, in truth, be equivalent to a sentence, adjudging to the rich the services of the poor for life."

The poem begins very beautifully:

« How still the morning of the hallowed day! Mute is the voice of rural labour, hushed The ploughboy's whistle, and the milkmaid's

song.

The scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath
Of tedded grass, mingled with fading flowers,
That yester-morn bloomed waving in the
breeze:

Sounds the most faint attract the ear,--the
hum

Of early bee, the trickling of the dew,
The distant bleating, midway up the hill.
Calmness sits throned on yon moving cloud.
To him who wanders o'er the upland leas,
The blackbird's note comes mellower from
the dale;

And sweeter from the sky the gladsome lark
Warbles his heaven-tuned song; the lulling
brook

Marmurs more gently down the deep-worn glen;

While from yon lowly roof, whose curling

smoke

The voice of psalms, the simple song of O'ermounts the mist, is heard, at intervals, praise,

"With dove-like wings, Peace o'er yon
village broods:

The dizzying mill-wheel rests; the anvil's du
Hath ceased; all, all around is quietness.
Less fearful on this day, the limping hare
Stops, and looks back, and stops, and looks on

man,

free,

Her deadliest foe. The toil-worn horse, set
Unbeedful of the pasture, roams at large;
And, as his stiff unwieldy bulk he rolls,
Ilis iron-armed hoofs gleam in the morning
nay.”

After describing the social worship of Scotland and "the loftier ritual” of England, the poet paints the solitary sabbath of the shepherd's boy, who reads of the son of Jesse keeping sheep; and then marking the place in his bible with a sprig of thyme, sings the hymns which he has been taught at home. A fine passage follows in a higher strain;

"Far other times our fathers' grandsires
knew,

A virtuous race, to godliness devote.
What though the sceptic's scorn hath dared
The record of their fame! What though the

to soil

men

Of worldly minds have dared to stigmatize
The sister-cause, Religion and the Law,
With Superstition's name! yet, yet their
deeds,

Their constancy in torture, and in death,—
These on tradition's tongue still live, these
shall

On history's honest page be pictured bright
To latest times. Perhaps some bard, whose

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On which the angel said, See where the Lord
Was laid, joyous arose; to die that day
Was bliss. Long cre the dawn, by devious

ways,

O'er hills, thro' woods, o'er dreary wastes, they sought

The upland moors, where rivers, there but brooks,

Dispart to different seas: Fast by such brooks,
A little glen is sometimes scooped, a plat
With green sward gay, and flowers that stran
gers seem

Amid the heathery wild, that all around
Fatigues the eye: in solitudes like these
Thy persecuted children, Scotia, foiled
A tyrant's and a bigot's bloody laws:
There, leaning on his spear, (one of the array,
That, in the tiines of old, had scathed the rose
On England's banner, and had powerless
struck

The infatuate monarch and his wavering host,)
The lyart veteran heard the word of God
By Cameron thundered, or by Renwick
poured

In gentle stream: then rose the song, the

loud

Acclaim of praise; the wheeling plover ceased
Her plaint; the solitary place was glad,
And on the distant cairns, the watcher's ear
Caught doubtfully at times the breeze-borne

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weakening their effect. What a tale for instance is this!

hours, John Brown, having performed the "One morning, between five and six worship of God in his family, was going, with a spade in his hand, to make ready some peat-ground. The mist being very dark, he knew not until cruel and bloody Claverhouse compassed him with three troops of horse. brought him to his house, and there examined him; who, though he was a man of stammering speech, yet answered him distinctly and solidly; which made Claverhouse to exănrire throse whom he had taken to be his guide through the mirs, if they had heard him preach? They answered, No, no, he was never a preacher.' He said, "If he has never preached, meikle he has prayed in his time." He said to John, Go to your prayers, for you shall immediately die. When he was praying, Claverhouse interrupted him three times one time that he stopped him, he was pleading that the Lord would spare a remnant, and not inake a full end in the day of his anger. Claverhouse said, I give you time to pray, and ye are begun to preach? he turned about upon his knees, and said,

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Sir, you know neither the nature of praying nor preaching, that calls this preaching then continued without confusion. When ended, Claverhouse caid, Take good night of your wife and children.' His wife standing by with her child in her arms that shie had brought forth to him, and another child of his first wife's, he came to her, and said

Now, Marion, the day is come that I told you would come, when I spake first to you of marrying me.' She said, 'Indeed, John, I can willingly part with you.' Then he said,

·

This is all I desire, I have no more to do but die.' He kissed his wife and bairns, and wished purchased and promised blessings to be multiplied upon them, and his blessing. Claverhouse ordered six men to shoot him; the most part of the bullets came upon his head, which scattered his brains upon the ground. Claverhouse said to his wife, What thinkest thou of thy husband now, woman?" She said, I thought ever much of him, and now as much as ever.' He said, 'It were justice to lay thee beside him.' She said, If ye were permitted, I doubt not but your cruelty would go that length; but how will ye mke answer for this morning's work

He said, 'To man I can be answerable; and for God, I will take him in mine own hand,' Claverhouse mounted his horse, and marched, and left her, with the corpse of her dead husband lying there. She set the bairn on the ground, and tied up his head, and straighted his body, and covered him in her plaid, and sat down, and wept over him. It being a very desart place, where never victual grew, and far from neighbours, it was some time before any friends came to her; the first

that came was a very fit hand, that old singular christian woman in the Cummerhead, named Elizabeth Menzies, three miles distant, who had been tried with the violent death of her husband at Pentland, afterwards of two worthy sons, Thomas Weir, who was killed at Drumclog, and David Steel, who was, suddenly shot afterwards when taken. The said Marion Weir, sitting upon her husband's grave, told me, that before that, she could see no blood but she was in danger to faint, and yet she was helped to be a witness to all this, without either fainting or confusion; except when the shots were let off, her eyes dazzled. His corpse were buried at the end of his house, where he was slain."

PEDEN'S Life.

Why is it that religious enthusiasm is fatal to genius? This very butcher who is as famous below by the name of Claverhouse as he is on earth by his title of Dundee, is the hero of Highland songs; the very cow-stealers on the border had better poets than Alexander the Great could get, and yet the wild sufferings and admirable courage of the Cameronians have not produced a single ballad. · Religious enthusiasm is not merely fatal to genius by what it prevents, but it seems to debase whatever it touches, as witness all the versions of the Psalms!

An exquisite image occurs in the description of the debtor's sabbath.

"Or turn thee to that house, with studded

doors,

And iron-visor'd windows;—even there The Sabbath sheds a beam of bliss, tho' faint;

The debtor's friends (for still he has some friends)

Have time to visit him; the blossoming pea, That climbs the rust-worn bars, seems fresher tinged;

And on the little turf, this day renewed,
The lark, his prison mate, quivers the wing
With more than wonted joy."

Mr. Grahame inveighs against the indiscriminate cruelty of the criminal laws, but he recommends death as the punishnient for blasphemy! We hope he will reflect upon the iniquity of all persecu tion, and omit this very exceptionable passage.

One extract more from these delightful : speaking of the Scotch emigrants poems: in America, he thus describes the blind

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Deplores its distance now. There well be knew

Each object, though unseen; there could he wend

His way, guideless, through wilds and mazy woods;

Each aged tree, spared when the forest fell, Was his familiar friend, from the smooth birch,

With rind of silken touch, to the rough eln: The three gray stones, that marked where he roes lay,

Mourned by the harp, mourned by the meting voice

Of Cona, oft his resting-place had been.
Oft had they told him that his hone was near
The tinkle of the rill, the murmuring
So gentle of the brook, the torrent's rush,
The cataract's din, the ocean's distant roar,
The echo's answer to his foot or voice,
All spoke a language which he understood,
All warned him of his way. But most be
feels

Upon the hallowed morn, the saddening change:

No more he hears the gladsome village bell Ring the blest summons to the house of God; And, for the voice of psalms, loud, solins, grand,

That cheered his darkling path, as, with slow step

And feeble, he toiled up the spire-topt hill,A few faint notes ascend among the trees."

Were we to select all the passages of striking merit, it would far exceed our limits. There is a want of method and of order in the poem, and all parts are not equally good. When the author speaks of the missionaries, he sinks into a methodist versifier. He rises again upon the subject of the slave-trade. Scotland may indeed well boast that not a single slaveship sails from a Scottish port! but are not many of the planters and most of the overseers in our accursed islands Scotchmen?

The Sabbath Walks contain many beartiful lines and images caught from netare; but the connection with the Sabbath is too arbitrary. After a separate poem upon the Sunday, these walks had better have been taken upon another day. We copy a note to the last poem, because it contains a plan which ought to be adopted, and enforced by law.

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no means are ever thought of, for the preservation of the lives of shephe ds during Sow-storins. I believe, that in nine instances out of ten, the death of the unhappy persons who perish in the snow is owing to their losing their way. A proof of this is, that very few are lost in the day-time. The remedy, then, is both easy and obvious. Let means be used for enabling the shepherd, in the darkest night, to know precisely the spot at which he is, and the bearings of the surrounding grounds. Snow-storms are almost always accompanied with wind. Suppose a pole, fifteen feet high, well fixed in the ground, with two cross spars placed near the bottom, to denote the airts, or points of the compass;-a bell hung at the top of this pole, with a piece of flat wood attached to it, projecting upward, would ring with the slightest breeze. For a few hundred pounds, every square mile of the southern district of

Scotland might be supplied with such bells. As they would be purposely made to have different tones, the shepherd would soon be able to distinguish one from another. He could never be more than a mile distant from, one or other of them. On coming to the spot, he would at once know the points of the compass, and of course the direction in which his home lay."

Mr. Grahame wants that correctness which can only be attained by long practice; he has however the true feeling of a poet. We have seldom seen a poem from which so many fine passages and single lines of striking excellence could be selected. Its success has not been beyond its merits; it will become perma nently popular.

ART. XXIII.—Simple Poems on Simple Subjects. By CHRISTIAN MILN, Wife of a Journeyman Sh.p-carpenter in Footdee Aberdeen. 8vo. pp. 183.

THE contents of this volume may most fivourably be characterized by negatives. The rhymes are not bad, the style is not

ART. XXIV.—The Pleasures of Love, a Poem.

THE versification of this little poem is evidently modeled from "The Loves of the Plants" of Dr. Darwin. It displays tnuch glitter, and some affcetation, and may be read from beginning to end, or from the end to the beginning, or by alternate pages, without the least detriment to its sense or harmony, as the following specimen will evince:

“O'er every surge, through every fateful
storm,

The distant sailor chaunts his fair-one's form;
And not a sun that pours the zenith ray,
And not a cloud that hides the orb of day,
Dissolves the vision, dims the radiant smile,
Or strips sweet Fancy of her magic wile.
Through plains of ice if slow his course he

steer,

O'er tepid waves if high his bak career;
Where Orellana spurns the oceau's bound,
Or shivering Volga chills with sullen sound;
Still undecay'd the imaged pleasures glow,
In torrid sun-beams and 'mid wastes of snow.
Pillow'd on hope, his temples Love reclines,
Straight 'mid his dreams the dear illusion
shines;

ART. XXV ---The Pleasures of Love; being
the Asiatic and European Languages.
THIS title-page is calculated to deceive.
Of the greater part of the poems in this
volume, Mr. Fitzwilliam cannot in any
sense be called the author, not even of
those which by omitting the names of the

affected, and probably no other journeyman ship-carpenter's wife in Aberdeen can

write better.

By JOHN STEWART, Esq. 8vo. pp. 177.
Silence and sleep a mimic life renew,
With softer hours and transports ever new:
Wake the light sylphs, in Fancy's court that

dwell;

And bid the airy modulations swell;
Harness in gassamer the meteor train,
And mould the tinsel coinage of the brain.
Now the fond maid attends her sailor's sigh,
Basks in his smile and revels in his eye;
In spicy fields and citron-blushing bowers
Culls the gilt fruit, or crops the purple
flowers:

Plucks the ripe cocoa from the nectar'd glade,
And roans delighted in Tobasco's shade;
Or drinks the breeze that fans the cassia-
wood;

Or laves her white limba in the gelid flood.
Now, by the dimpling shore at home she
stands,

Marks the white sail, and waves her lily-
hands;

As, soon across the scintillating foam,
Scuds the tall bark to near the rising home!
Now jovial hands swift-ply the flying oar;
Now the gay keel divides the daycing
shore:-

Ah! sweet enthusiast! soon th' ideal breast
Clings to thine own, caressing and carest!"
Amatory Poems, original and translated from
By G. W. FITZWILLIAM, Esq. pp. 188.
real authors, he by implication claims for
his own. It must therefore be considered
for the most part as a selection of poems
on amatory subjects. We have not ob-
served in it any glaring violations of deco-

rum, but offences against good taste might easily be pointed out. It is upon the whole a dull selection, and will we appre

hend be little in request either for the shelves of the library, or the secret cabinets of the fashionable dressing-rooms.

ART. XXVI.-Poems. By P. L. COURTIER. Vol. 2. 12mo. pp. 154.

THE first word in the volume is false grammar.

Him who of solitude erewhile

Not vainly sung, now courts the smile
Of beauty:

We notice it however only as a piece of
carelessness which the author will do well
to rectify in a future edition. Mr. Cour-
tier's epigrams, epitaphs, and moral re-
flections, most certainly do not rise above
the dead level of mediocrity; but from the
kisses of his mistress he derives both spirit
and elegance, of which the two following
pieces are fair though favourable speci-

mens.

Song.

"Call it truth, or call it art,

In her sunile such magic hes
With that smile I would not part,
Not for aught beneath the skies.
O! if passing false thou art,

Since I cannot but believe thee,
Playing still the guiletul part,
Woinan! never undeceive me."

The Kiss.

“When first the lips of lovers meet,
That kiss, of kisses, O how sweet!
Time, while it steals each featured grace,
But more endears the lov'd embrace;
For, ah! no after-kiss so sv cet,
As first when lips of lovers meet !”

ART. XXVII.—Rhymes on Art; or, the Remonstrance of a Painter : In two Park. WA Notes, and a Preface, including Strictures on the State of the Arts, Criticism, Putronage, and Fublic Taste By MARTIN ARCHER SHEE, R. A. 8vo. pp. 106.

MR. SHEE informs us in his preface that having written a poem in four books upon the subject of painting, in which more particularly the early progress of the student is attempted to be illustrated and encouraged, he has sent the first book abroad to ascertain by its success how far such an article of his manufacture may be acceptable in the market.

Though, with respect to this general plan, it may be acting somewhat file the man who put a brick in his pocket, in order to his house, yet he offers the present produc enable a purchaser to form a judgment of tion as a fair sample of the commodity he deals in; he sends it up as a small balleon, to ascertain the current of the air before he commit's himself to the mercy of the clements in his larger and more hazardous machine.”

The preface to his volume is of unusual length, and unusual interest. It is indeed like the poem which it ushers in, an appeal to the nation on the part of the fine arts for that national patronage, with out which, though they may exist, they cannot flourish.

"It is a mistake unworthy of an enlightened government, to conceive that the arts, left to the influnce of ordinary events, turned loose upon society, to fight and scramble, in the rude and revolting contest of coarser occupations, can ever arrive at that perfection which contributes so materially to the permament glory of a state.

"This is the true handicraft consideration

of the subject-the warehouse wisdom of z dealer and chapman, who would make të artist a manufacturer, and measure his wors by the yard. The arts treated commercial, intrusted to that vulgar and inadequate irfound in the mass of society, never dil, 2. ↑ pression of their importance, which is to be never can flourish in any country. Thepilciple of trade, and the principle of the arts, an not only dissimilar, but incompatible. Pre the other. Employment is the pabulum at is the impelling power of the one—prase, c' of the first-encouragement, of the k and genius, they differ as widely in mearing These terms are synonymous in the ordir v avocations of life; but in the pursuits of tate coldness from Kindness, as the or&d conmerce of mechanics, from the liberal intercourse of gentlemen.”

"Without any adequate as istance, may, i obstructed and oppressed by circumstores of England have already advanced beyond peculiarly hostile to their interests, the ans our hopes, and taken precedence of their age. What may we not therefore anticipate fro their exertions, if they shall be so fortunate s to experience those inspiting proofs of pub estimation, which, in all former instance, 1 have been essential to their existence?

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