"Pure as the morning's virgin dew Falling upon the vines of spring, In blest seclusion Julia grew,

A fairy shape a spotless thing. Her home she deemed a little heaven; She had heard nought of crime and sorrow,

Save in her father's tales at even,.

And their remembrance had no

morrow.

Till thoughts maturer fixed a trace
Of pensiveness on her sweet face,
And then, as to his neck she clung,
With curious, fond, familiar tongue,
Much would she question of the scar

Which his sagacious forehead bore,
And of the nodding plumes of war,
And why those nodding plumes he

wore,

Then wonder at the acts of men, And pause, and think, and ask again." Julia is then described in her sacerdotal character, and, bating a recurrence of the same faults, well described. The author positively must not repeat his words, as he is fond of doing, when nothing comes of that mistaken emphasis.

Again,

"Thro' ruin still exists, that token,
"Tho' fate the cup has broken, broken!”

"But I, whate'er may be your lot,

"In chains will never, never rot."

We have also "Oh all alone! Oh all alone!"-a match for "Oh, Sophonisba! Sophonisba, oh!”

Then follows a very singular effect of a clean well polished sword, whose brightness, it seems, protected it from the tarnish of rust, and moreover raised the dead.

"There's brightness on my single sword

"To keep its keen edge free from rust,
"And light our fathers from the dust."

All this is absolute absurdity. Julia's prayer to her virgin goddess is fine; but we pass a great deal, to extract, in justice to the author, the following description of the field after a battle, which, in spite of an average share of his besetting sins, of random words and bad measure, is certainly fine. "The thunder has its lull from riot, The morning storm its evening quiet; The raving and rebellious Ocean, Its crystal calm, its rest from motion; The avalanche its silence, when That thundering ball has rocked the glen;

The purple Simoom its light tread
When prostrate Caravans lie dead;
The earthquake its still under-tone,
Its whisper of the murders done.
And battle-which in the wide fall
Of nations blends the rage of all,
Its hush of passions, and the sleep
Of energies once strong and deep.
The earthquake-shout which shook
yon hill

Of pines, is over; all is still;

VOL. V. NO. I.

Save the cry of the shrill gale,
Sad as a shrieking spirit's wail;
Save the wild birds' flapping wings,
Now fluttering over lifeless things;
Save the lone gush of mountain-
springs;

And

clamour of cascades that
leap

Stainless from their aerial steep,
But rolling redly from the plain
Where lie the Proud and Mighty

slain :

Rigid and nerveless every hand, That grasped the battle-axe and brand;

Pallid each brow; each glazed eye

set,

But scowling fierce defiance yet;

I

The fiery heart of former years,
With all its wishes, hopes, and fears,
Its pride its pain-its might-its
mirth-

A pulseless ball of wasting earth;
The plume and scarf by Beauty wo-

The pennons proud, of yesterday Borne by the gallant and the gay, In life's last agony resigned, Forlornly waving in the wind:Another's harp may bear away The blazon of that fierce affray, But, Freedom! I will never show Daggled in blood; the helmet cloven; Thy dread anatomy of woe.' The following, with much inexcusable bathos, has a few lines like Byron; who, by the way, is evidently Mr. Wiffen's idolwe recalled the word model.

ven,

"

"O War! thou miscreating curse! For Priests, their mitres are thy Dark Juggler of the universe!

mirth,

How hast thou marred this glorious Thy panders are the kings of earth : From their high Pagods dost thou

globe!

Throwing round thee thy scarlet robe, And masking with the rainbow's blaze

Of gemlike beauty thy fierce face;
Thou hast deceived from Time's first
ages,

Its mighty Captains, lords, and sages,
Till they and the strong multitude
Thy mad, remorseless smiles have
wooed;

And, drunk with thy bewildering

song

From horn, or harp, or cymbalon,
Done deeds which might the lion

shame,

come

Charioted, with the hideous hum
Of thousands, who, where'er it reels,
Perish beneath thy waggon wheels:
When given the groaning death they
ask,

Thy visage thou dost then unmask,
Like the Veiled Fiend of Khorrassan,
And on thy wolfish brow we scan
The thunder-graven mark of Cain,
Heaven's warning impress, stamped
in vain ;

Eyeballs that act the Gorgon's part, A hydra's head, a viper's heart, The penal fire around whose core, And make the nations pale to name. Shall redly burn for evermore!" We beg to substitute the tiger for the lion, for which last we are certain even a London jury would find a verdict of libel. A hair's breadth, Mr. Wiffen would do well to keep in mind, is the boundary between the sublime and the ludicrous. He is perpetually stumbling over it. The next passage after the last quotation, commences with this high vituperation to naughty War. "Heaven's angry angel pour wrath on thee, War! "Ambition and cruelty harness thy car," &c.

Cecina is described in the poem, we believe without historical sanction, as yielding to the prayer of Julia, and affecting to spare Alpinus; but his wishes are known to the knights, and the patriot is dispatched as he goes out. The description of Julia's short survivaney, we consider exquisite. We give but a few lines.

of it.

"A little sense of former dread;
A little thought of what is dead;
A little numbering up the sum
Of days that darken ere they come;
A sudden flash through memory's
night

That all her reasonings are not right;
A little tracing round and round

The spot where anguish struck the
wound;

A trance-a vigil-and a fit-
O'er the cold tomb she cannot quit ;
And all beside is wasting flame,
The bloodless lip, the sleepless frame,
So meek, so wan, so passive, death
Has nought of stillness to bequeath.”

Julia's closing scene, for which we refer to the poem, is in good taste, and remarkable for its pathos.

There are some other poems in the volume, the largest of which is called " the Captive of Stamboul!" by an anachronism of nearly 300 years. It is founded on the singular story of Andronicus, the younger brother of John Comnenus, who was imprisoned by the emperor Manuel twelve years in a lofty tower of the palace of Constantinople. Finding a small hole in the wall of his cell, he gradually widened it, till he could creep through into a dark and deep recess beyond. Here he concealed himself, having replaced the bricks, so that there was no trace of the mode of his disappearance. His mysterious escape was imputed to his beau tiful wife Eudora, who was imprisoned by the tyrant in the very cell lately occupied by her husband. In the dead of night, he revealed himself to his first horrified, but soon enraptured wife. The poem concludes with the fictitious, and therefore injudiciously imagined incident of their liberation by two Venetian knights, who scaled their tower from a bark which they brought immediately under it. Had we read this poem first, although there are some passages in "Julia Alpinula" of greater merit than any in it, yet the faults are so much fewer in number, and the spirit on the whole so superior, that we should have been impressed with a much higher idea of the poet's genius.

We think both poems greatly too long for the simplicity of their subjects; and the latter of the two has its share of affected, new-coined words, and ever changing measure,-although it cannot change to worse than the poet's favourite octosyllabic,—and of another fault, the use of abstract and unpoetic terms, so as to form whole lines and couplets of prose. But in spite of all these defects, we are satisfied that no ordinary verse writer could have written either of these poems; and if Mr. Wiffen be, as we conjecture, a young,-we had almost said a very young man, whose tact may sharpen, and taste improve; if he shall learn to distinguish the sublime from the bathotic, and prose from poetry; acquire the wholesome habit of making sure that any given sentence he pens, has a meaning, as well as a verb, before he casts it upon the wide world; rigidly deny himself the aid of mere rhyme to suggest reason; and lastly, diligently practise the useful art of counting his own fingers,-convinced as we are that he has much of the right feeling, the fire and the genius of a poet, we think he cannot fail to signalize himself even in this age of fertility. With one specimen from The Captive," shall conclude. It is the spirited description-although an ill-chosen measure-of the Tyrant Manuel giving the order to immure Eu

dora. The passage will likewise shew some of the faults we speak of.

"All words, all eloquence were faint, If a hand but wave below,

The monarch's paroxysm to paint,
As veering now from rage to pride,
His mantle-folds he threw aside;
And, fixed on his dark forehead, sate
A mingled scowl of pain and hate.
He stamped his foot, and, at his call,
His armed vassals filled the hall,
And for a minute's space, no sound
Was heard their deepening files a-
round,

But awe and wonder o'er them spread
The unstirring silence of the dead.
Quivered the monarch's lips, and
clung

To the palate's roof his tongue,
Till within his lowering eye

Brighter fires of anger woke
A spell of stronger mastery-
Pointing to the turrets nigh,
Terribly he spoke:
Away, away, this Lady bear
Up yon
dark tower's winding stair;
Sleepless eyes beneath her wait,
Adamantine be the grate ;-

'Lip salute, or head but bow,
'Headman's axe shall be his doom,
'Hers, a dungeon's deeper gloom.
Haughty woman, have thy will,
Share his penance, share his ill;
Weep by day, by night repine,
'Suns shall rise, and planets shine
To thy drooping eye in vain.
Never shalt thou break the chain
"Which around thine arm I wind,
Till Prince Andron come to bind
His with that which humbleth thee,
Sealer of his destiny!
'Then may'st thou again be free.
We, meanwhile, will hem his path,
And if he should meet our wrath,
'His shall be the sepulchre,
Thine the eternal cell's despair.
Princess, dost thou now obey?
She speaks not. Hurry her away,
"Nor let those whimpering slaves be

' near

To whisper treason in her ear.""

ART. VII.-The Percy Anecdotes. Original and Select. By Sholto and Reuben Percy, Brothers of the Benedictine Monastery, Mont Benger. London. Boys. 1820. Part I. Anecdotes of Humanity. Pp. 180. 16mo.

GENERALLY speaking, we do not think anecdotes form the most agrecable species of reading; nor are we disposed to estimate very highly their effects in improving or confirming character. To us, it seems that the very suddenness of the transition from one emotion to another which they occasion, and that too before any meditative or reflex action of mind has been practised, is unfriendly to imaginative interest, at least, if it be not so to advancement in morality. The absence of relation in the events or incidents described, and of consecutiveness in the thoughts suggested, is probably destructive of powerful agency in either way; and we believe we may with confidence appeal to any one who has ever read fifty or more anecdotes at once, for support of

the opinion, that 'weariness and dissatisfaction have been the immediate effects, while neither the amount nor the kind of permanent result was such as to encourage a repetition of the experiment. We speak, of course, in reference merely to miscellaneous and unconnected anecdotes, not such as relate to a particular person, whose principles and habits are thereby illustrated, and which derive from that very circumstance a peculiar value; though even these, we conceive, are inferior in operation to a biographical narrative, in which the affinities of the occurrences and traits, and their dependence on the individual life, are systematically displayed. But, by these remarks, we do not mean utterly to deny that even the former description of anecdotes may be read sometimes agreeably and advantageously. On the contrary, our present object is not only to point out how they are to be used, so as to conduce to amusement and instruction; but also to recommend a special collection of them as very happily contrived for both purposes. What we have to say just now on either head may be delivered in a single sentence, for we have no room for disquisition.

66

Anecdotes require to be used sparingly-not many at a time; and it is desirable that those which are read at once should be so far related as to bear distinctly on a single point, and be referable to one principle. The work before us has several claims to attention. It avowedly derives its title from two brothers, who, impressed with the conviction of the importance of known facts as the materials from which rules of conduct may be deduced, are said to have spent a great part of their lives in endeavouring to bring into one focus all those anecdotal passages of ancient " and modern times, which are illustrative of those qualities of the "mind and heart which a person, ambitious of true dignity, would "most desire to realize.' In prosecution of this assumed task, they seem to have engaged in a most extensive course of reading, and to have exercised no ordinary judgment and discrimination. The results of their research are communicated periodically in separate parts or numbers, each of which has its appropriate title and embellishment; and these parts, besides their neatness and conveniency for the pocket, which render them inviting to readers of taste, are published at so moderate a rate as to be pretty extensively accessible. Already, Already, we believe, thirteen of them have been issued, though we have only eleven on our table. The first of them, which is the only one we shall notice at present, is denominated "Anecdotes of Humanity," and is very suitably dedicated to Mr. Wilberforce, whose portrait forms its frontispiece. We select the following