always complicated with a sense of guilt and remorse; and generally produce some hasty and zealous purposes of more uniform virtue and more ardent devotion; of something that may secure us not only from the worm that never dies and the fire that is not quenched, but from total mortality, and admit hope to the regions beyond the grave.

"Let those who still delay that which yet they believe to be of eternal moment, remember, that their motives to effect it will still grow weaker, and the difficulty of the work perpetually increase; to neglect it now, therefore, is a pledge that it will be neglected for ever: and if they are roused by this thought, let them instantly improve its influence; for even this thought, when it returns, will return with less power, and though it should rouse them now, will perhaps rouse them no more. But let them not confide in such virtue as can be practised without a struggle, and which interdicts the gratification of no passion but malice; nor adopts principles which could never be believed at the only time when they could be useful; like arguments which men sometimes form when they slumber, and the moment they awake discover to be absurd."*

* Adventurer, No. 150.

One chief cause of the interest which the Adventurer has usually excited among its readers, has arisen from the INVENTIVE POWERS which our author has so copiously displayed. His oriental, allegoric and domestic, tales, form the most striking feature of the work, and have, by their number and mcrit, very honourably distinguished it from every preceding paper.

For the composition of castern narrative, Hawkesworth was, in many respects, highly qualified; his imagination was uncommonly fertile and glowing, his language clear and brilliant, yet. neither, gaudy nor over-charged, and he has always taken care to render the moral prominent and impressive. Than his Amurath, in Nos. 20, 21, and 22, no tale has been more generally admired; its instructive tendency is so great, its imagery and incidents are so ingeniously appropriate, that few compilers for youth have omitted to avail themselves of the lesson.

The story of Hassan, in No.32, inculcating the necessity of Religion as the only source of content, and of Cosrou the Iman, in No 38, proving that charity and mutual utility form our firmest basis of acceptance with the Deity, are wrought up with a spirit and force of colouring which, while they delight the fancy, powerfully fix upon

the heart the value and the wisdom of the precept.

The histories of Nouradin and Almana, and of Almerine and Shelimah, in Nos. 72, 73, and 103, and 104, unfold, through the medium of a well contrived series of incidents, the variety of human wishes, and the Omnipotence of Virtue; whilst in the Vision of Almet the Dervise, in N° 114, the duties of resting our hopes upon eternity, and of considering this world as a probationary scene, are enforced in a manner equally novel and ingenious.

Of the oriental fictions of Hawkesworth, however, by many degrees the most splendid and sublime, is the tale of Carazan the Merchant of Bagdad.* The misery of utter solitude, the punishment appointed in this story to the vices of avarice and selfishness, was never before painted in colours so vivid and terrific. The subsequent passage, in which the doom of Carazan and its . consequences are described, no writer of eastern fable will probably ever surpass. The Deity thus addresses the trembling object of his indig

nation.

"CARAZAN, thy worship has not been accepted, because it was not prompted by Love or GOD; neither can thy righteousness be rewarded, because it was not produced by Love of Man: *No. 132.

for thy own sake only hast thou rendered to every man his due; and thou hast approached the ALMIGHTY only for thyself. Thou hast not looked up with gratitude, nor around thee with kindness. Around thee, thou hast indeed beheld vice and folly; but if vice and folly could justify thy parsimony, would they not condemn the bounty of HEAVEN? If not upon the foolish and the vicious, where shall the sun diffuse his light, or the clouds distil their dew? Where shall the lips of the spring breathe fragrance, or the hand of autumn diffuse plenty? Remember,

CARAZAN, that thou hast shut compassion from thine heart, and grasped thy treasures with a hand of iron: thou hast lived for thyself; and, therefore, henceforth for ever thou shalt subsist alone. From the light of heaven, and from the society of all beings, shalt thou be driven; solitude shall protract the lingering hours of cternity, and darkness aggravate the horrors of despair.' At this moment I was driven by some secret and irresistible power through the glowing system of creation, and passed innumerable worlds in a moment. As I approached the verge of nature, I perceived the shadows of total and boundless vacuity deepen before me, a dreadful region of eternal silence, solitude, and darkness! Unutterable horror seized me at the prospect,

and this exclamation burst from me with all the vehemence of desire: O! that I had been doomed for ever to the common receptacle of impenitence and guilt! there society would have alleviated the torment of despair, and the rage of fire could not have excluded the comfort of light. Or if I had been condemned to reside in a comet, that would return but once in a thousand years to the regions of light and life, the hope of these periods, however distant, would cheer me in the dread interval of cold and darkness, and the vicissitude would divide eternity into time. While this thought passed over my mind, I lost sight of the remotest star, and the last glimmering of light was quenched in utter darkness. The agonies of despair every moment increased, as every moment augmented my distance from the last habitable world. I reflected with intolerable anguish, that when ten thousand thousand years had carried me beyond the reach of all but that POWER who fills infinitude, I should still look forward into an immense abyss of darkness, through which I should still drive without succour and without society, farther and farther still, for ever and for ever."

All the Allegories in the Adventurer are the product of our author's pen; these constitute, however, if we except an allegorical letter from