• I'd travel on-for ever on,

No pause, no peace, no stay;
Now in the storm-now in the sun-
Nothing to seek-nothing to shun,
Away-away-away!

Where'er the drifting winds should blow,
Where'er the restless wave should flow.

Why should the spirit be thus wild
That lives within this clay?

Of ev'ry joy and sorrow reft,

This is the all that death hath left-
This shadow of thy frame !
Thou mockery of living earth,
Thy silence speaketh loudly forth!
Yes-thou art ever eloquent!
Thy silence wins the ear-
The voice of words is idly spent,
Within a sepulchre!

Oh man, if ought can ever thrust
Thy proud-proud forehead to the dust,
It surely must be here!

No voice can ever seem so dread,

As this same stillness of the dead.

"Go, tell the sage, who trims his flame
Till morning lights the sky,

Who breaks the link that binds his frame
For immortality!

Go, tell the studious suicide
That devastation waits his pride;

The ruthless worms are nigh!
First for his frame, untimely spent,
Then for his book-piled monument !
"And tell the conqueror, who hath long
Trod o'er his brother worms,
And driven his scythed car along
Upon their mangled forms-

That soon shall fall his tottering throne,
That soon his sceptre shall be gone,
His glory quenched in storms.
His powers must meet a lowly doom,
His only kingdom be-the tomb!-
"Tell all—the king upon his throne-
The slave on bended knee-

The monarch proud-the captive prone-
The bondsman and the free-

Tell them, that all must come to this-
These are the only vestiges

Of low mortality!

A nameless clod of worthless clay,

Spurned by each scornful foot away!"

pp. 32-6.

It has seemed to us that Mr. Rogers has been more frequently at a loss for a subject, than for a rhyme. He evidently possesses that dangerous talent, facility: if he ever contents himself with such rhyming as sway and immensity, it must be through sheer laziness. Such poems as the Wreath of Sorrow,' Harp of the Mourner,' &c. must have been written in that sort of reverie in which one is apt to make pen and ink drawings of

trees, churches, or ugly faces, on one's letter paper, to fill the languid pause' of thought. We can have no faith in the hopeless sorrows of nineteen, or in the poet's renunciation of this 'lower sphere.' But Mr. Rogers will outgrow all this, and will hereafter feel it more difficult to do justice to the theme of his verse, than he now does to find a theme for his song. Give him a subject, and he immediately rises into a higher style. For instance:

THE MESSIAH WEEPING OVER JERUSALEM.

The Persian monarch, when he led
To Greece, in proud array,

His thousand thousand warriors, shed
A tear-to think that they,

Ere one brief hundred years had sped,
Should all be number'd with the dead.
"He wept-then bade his army go
To fight with Greece again :

A few short months-and Greece laid low
His warriors on the plain.

Thus his ambition gave the lie

To his own false humanity.

The haughty-minded Roman wept
At mighty Carthage' fall;

But still the scenes o'er which he stept-
Himself had wrought them all;

He wept o'er scenes his sword had bought,
He wept o'er ruin he had wrought.

Not such as these were those blest tears,
Which from Messiah fell,

When in the view of coming years

His heart foreboded well

The misery of Salem's lot

The desolation of that spot.

O, they were foes for whom he mourn'd,
And foes he sought to save-

But they his pitying mercy spurn'd,

And all that mercy gave.

Such tears no human eye bedewed

With God-like love they were imbued.' pp. 87-9.

But we must not pass over the Hebrew Odes, which occupy nearly a third of the volume. We by no means think that Lord Byron has either exhausted this class of subjects, or that he defies all imitation by his success. Some of his Hebrew Melodies, indeed, are exquisitely fine: Campbell alone could rival them. But, as a model, we think the noble Author a vicious one, both because he was himself too much a mannerist,

and the imitation of a marked manner is always unpleasing. and because he has not caught the genuine spirit of Hebrew poetry. InThe last Plague of Egypt,' Mr. Rogers has closely imitated perhaps the finest of Lord Byron's Melodies,

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold.'

But, though the poem is not without merit, the effect is that of a parody, and can please only those who are unacquainted with the original. We do not know what to make of The • Chief of Israel:' if it be meant to refer to the subject of the foregoing stanzas, it is chargeable with very great impropriety, and it has no meaning in any other application. The following, we think one of the best.

THE DEDICATION OF THE TEMPLE.

2 Chron. v. vi, vii. 1, 2, 3.

Each pillar of the temple rang-
The trumpets sounded loud and keen,
And every minstrel blithely sang,

With harps and cymbals oft between.
And while those minstrels sang and played,
The mystic cloud of glory fell,

That shadowy light-that splendid shade
In which Jehovah loves to dwell.

'It slowly fell and hovered o'er

The outspread forms of cherubim ;
The priests could bear the sight no more,
Their eyes with splendour dim.
The king cast off his crown of pride,
And bent him to the ground,
And priest and warrior side by side,
Knelt humbly all around.

• Deep awe fell down on every soul,
Since God was present there,
And not the slightest breathing stole
Upon the stilly air;

Till he, their Prince, with earth-bent eyes

And head uncrown'd and bare,

And hands stretch'd forth in reverend guise,
To heaven preferr'd his prayer.

"That prayer arose from off the ground,
Upon the perfumed breath

Which streaming censers pour'd around
In many a volumed wreath.

That prayer was heard-and heavenly fire
Upon the altar played,

And burnt the sacrificial pyre

Beneath the victim laid.

And thrice-resplendent from above
The cloud of glory beam'd,
And with immingled awe and love
Each beating bosom teem'd.

They bowed them on the spacious floor
With heaven-averted eye,

And bless'd his name who deign'd to pour

His presence from on high. pp. 122-4.

We have shewn Mr. Rogers that we think him worth being found fault with; which, in our younger days, we have had reason to consider as the most friendly and beneficial mode of praise. From other readers, he will receive, we doubt not, far higher compliments; and we hope that this notice of his volume will be the means of drawing attention to it, and extending the sale. Our verdict is, that it does betray latent power, and therefore the Author is acquitted of youthful indiscretion' in issuing the same; and we wish him all possible success. let him beware how he redeems the pledge he has here given. No plea of youth will avail hereafter, in the event of indiscretion, but he must prepare to endure all the pains and penalties of criticism.

Art. VII. 1. London in the Olden Time: or Tales intended to illustrate the Manners and Superstitions of its Inhabitants, from the Twelfth ⚫ to the Sixteenth Century. Sm. 8vo. pp. 324. Price 10s. London.

1825.

2. The Antiquary's Portfolio, or Cabinet Selection of Historical and Literary Curiosities, on Subjects principally connected with the Manners, Customs, and Morals, Civil, Military, and Ecclesiastical Government, &c. &c. of Great Britain, during the Middle and Latter Ages. With Notes. By J. S. Forsyth. In two Volumes. pp. 784. Price 18s. London. 1825.

THERE is something very fascinating in the poetry of anti

quarianism. We know of no better phrase to distinguish the imaginative pleasure arising from the day-dreams and romantic visions called up by old buildings, old monuments, and old manuscripts, from the genuine passion of the professional antiquary and palæographer. There is little enough that is poetical in the genuine F.A.S. He, intent upon matter of fact and chronology, knows better than to waste that time in idle fancies, which might be employed in copying an illegible inscription, recovering a lost pedigree, or verifying a date. great admirer he is,' says Bishop Earle, of the rust of old 'monuments, and reads only those characters where time hath eaten out the letters.' He is a miser of literary pelf, and

A