on the other hand, by considering the passage as a mere poetic licence: besides, say they, "the robin is the Irish nightingale." And if it be hinted, how unlikely it was that Goldsmith should have laid the scene in a place from which he was and had been so long absent, the rejoinder is always, "Pray, Sir, was Milton in hell when he built Pandemonium ?"

The line is naturally drawn between;-there can be no doubt that the poet intended England by

"the land to hast'ning ills a prey,

Where wealth accumulates, and men decay."

But it is very natural to suppose, that at the same time his imagination had in view the scenes of his youth, which gives such strong features of resemblance to the picture.*

TO UGO FOSCOLO.

HER last convulsive struggles gasp'd away,
In utter helplessness Italia lay:

Shiver'd th' Imperial crown once graced her head-
Her brighter ringlets in the dust were spread :

And yet she look'd more royally in death,

Than all those living pageants, whom a breath
Elates to strut their hour upon the scene,
Then fade away-as they had never been.
Though priest and Levite pass'd unheeding by,
And left her pallid loveliness to die,

Despoil'd-dethroned-disgraced, but still adored,
Still with intense and hallow'd thoughts deplored,
She lay not on the earth like one forgot,
The light of love shone round the sacred spot,
And, coldly pale, her beauties still inspire
Hearts of high pulse, and eyes of glorious fire:
The lords of eloquence, and sons of song,
With duteous, filial care, around her throng.
Such are the souls, who in the grasp of fate,
Will to themselves a rising hope create.

Her long-long trance they view'd without despair,
Gazed with fix'd sight, and felt that life was there,
With clouds of incense purified the breeze,

Raised sweetest melodies by slow degrees,

Whisper'd the thrilling voice that wakes the dead,

Chafed her white hands, and raised her graceful head;

Till, at the last, a trembling light they spy

Dawn on her cheek, and glisten in her eye.Oh thou! by purest zeal distinguish'd there, How thrill'd thy bosom? Foscolo! declare, That future ages may thy transport share. March 23, 1821.

R.

* There was held last year, for the first time, a meeting and dinner in honour of Goldsmith at Ballymahon, for the purpose of raising a subscription towards a memorial. I have not yet heard what progress it has made.

ON HATS.

"What, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows.”—SHAKSPEARE.

To begin firste with their hattes. Sometymes thei use them sharpe on the croune, pearking up like the spere or shafte of a steeple, standing a quarter of a yarde above the croune of their heades; some more, some lesse, as please the phantasies of their inconstant mindes. Othersome be flat and broad in the croune, like the battlementes of a house."-PHIlip Stubbes.

A HAT is the symbol and characteristic of its wearer. It is a sign and token of his avocation, habits, and opinions—the creature of his phantasy. Minerva-like, it bursts forth in full maturity from his brain. It often serves as a beacon to the wary against lewdness, extravagance, pride, cold-heartedness, and vulgarity; vain pomp and parade, unblushing impudence, affected singularity, and many other of the ruling passions, may be detected by its form and fashion. One may ascertain whether a man is whimsical, grotesque, unnaturally gross, rigidly chaste, or venially flexible in his taste, by this infallible test. Much may be deduced too from the style in which it is worn. One man entombs his pericranium in its beaver; another sets it so lightly and delicately on, that it seems to be ever "straining upon the start," and, like "the sweet pea, on tip-toe for a flight."

What an infinity of associations are linked and embodied with the different styles and fashion of the head-covering! The monk's cowl, the turban, the mitre, and the helmet, would each furnish themes innumerable for dissertation and reflection. One might even descant with advantage on the humble mariner's cap.

of

I encountered a hat yesterday which I had long deemed obso lete; it reminded me of quaint garbs, and the republican names Cromwell, Fairfax, Ireton, Bradshaw, Blake with his well-curled mustachios, and the far-famed battle of Marston-Moor. Henri Quatre with his particular face and half-closed eyes, the fair Gabrielle, the princely Mary de Medicis, the fierce leaguers, and the desperate fanatic Ravillac, float along with the up-turned brim, shadowing plumes, and strange fashion of their time. The Spanish hat breathes of soft serenades, and the tinkling guitarra, with its delicate voice stealing into the dark-eyed sleeping lady's dream of love, revelling for a moment with all her fanciful and warm ideas, and then gently, and by degrees, awakening her to rcalities, just as her lover's voice blends gently in, and seduces her to the flower-encircled casement by some magic rhymes of beauty. love, and constancy eternal. The formal beaver reminds me of cold, voiceless meetings, habitual gravity, William Penn, and the primitive immaculates. An opera-hat is associated with de licious cameos, eau de mille fleurs, eloquent dancing, passionate music, and a tiara of living beauty, with bright eyes and beaming brows, sparkling about in delightful exuberance. The small, ck

gant white chapeau, with its broad band, polished steel clasp, and fluttering plumes, speaks to me always of gallant maidens, mounted on slender palfreys, and fantastically gamboling over dewy swards richly begemmed with gay smiling margarites, and the deep green circles formed by "the light-footed fays." The most pathetic inanimate object I ever beheld was the gay white beaver of a lively and high-spirited girl, floating in a calm and delusive stream over its drowned mistress; it was a beacon which none could mistake-a fleeting monument, that spoke more directly to the heart than perdurable marble or erudite inscriptions.

Every man's hat is a cast of his head, and is strongly tinctured with his habits and prejudices. We may discover as great a variety in hats as in men. There is your hat bellicose, flaunting, and soldierly, that seems to court applause, and your tame, pusillanimous, and meekly covering, without shape or feature, emollient, pliable, and unresisting as wax; your technical dotand-carry-one companion to the ledger, and your little, pert, upstart, whipper-snapper chapeau. There is your hat clerical, devout, orthodox, and sanctified; your brazen-looking, up-turned symbol of arrogant stupidity; your demure, obtuse, and inflexible receptacle of a quaker's caput, whose elaborate brim is one of the chief insignia of the sect; and the incomparable and superlative aristocrat, that graces a noble buck's brows, and utterly defies criticism. There is also your deformed, mis-shapen, unbrushed hat, Benedictine and matrimonial, with its "knotty and combined locks;" and your steady, sober, bachelorly nap-lacking hat, everlasting and immortal, whose olden fashion and antique hue prove it to have enjoyed its present situation since its now-wrinkled possessor first entered the East India House as a stylish junior clerk. There is, besides, your majestical hat of capacity and dominion, and your hat subaltern and unaspiring; your profound, bronze-coloured, overbearing Johnsonian, and your prying, inquisitive, jealous, and "unsatisfied imp;" your infirm, elderly beaver, and your lusty, coarse, dog's-hair agriculturist, with its corollary of documents; your hat morose, sullen, and forbidding, with its never-failing accompaniment of an octagon face, scowling eyes, and clenched lips, and your gay, honest, graceful, but negligent harbinger of vivacity and good-humour; your insinuating, silky-smiling cap of salutation and complacency, which oftener graces its wearer's hand than his head, and the supercilious, haughty noli me tangere; your money-getting Mosaic slouch, and your worn-out, half-naked, and ruined silk hat, in its last stage of existence, still "smiling at grief," and striving to keep up appearances.

The catalogue is indefinite; but I shall content myself, at present, with naming two or three others only the delectably light straw Creolian, with its shady and efficient panoply, crowning

a made-up, magisterial, monotonous and mahogany visage, strongly impregnated with molasses, Jamaica rum, and bitter aloes;-the poetical vagary, with its infinite and inexplicable bends, contortions, freaks, and undulations (the maker would not know his own handy work in its present state of uncivilization and absurdity; it always inclines one to fancy that the bearer has lately been "in a fine frenzy rolling ;")-and the obdurate, hard-brimmed, and frost-bitten hat of anti-sociality, under which a sharp, thin, satirical, and calumniating nose juts out, with its prolonged extremity beetling over a venomous adder's nest-looking mouth, and a chin that altogether repels communion.

I shall never forget the reverence and awe with which the scholars at school were wont to inspect the hat of our head-master. "I shall not look upon its like again." It was large and expansive, encrusted with powder and the learned dust of many a year. It was hallowed by recollections of imperative frowns, grave lectures, and profound disquisitions on the Greek and Roman tongues. It would have been deemed akin to sacrilege to touch it irreverently. He often left it in the most conspicuous part of the room, to preserve order in his absence. No one could forget him who beheld his hat; they were so mixed up and amalgamated together, that the hat was a component, and almost essential part of the man. It looked dominant, impressive, and gubernatorial.

A.

CONVERSATION.

Ut ventum ad cœnam est, dicenda, tacenda locutus.-HOR. Epist. i. 7.
If speaking, why a vane blown with all winds;
If silent, why a block moved with none.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

THESE are the opposite imputations, Mr. Editor, thrown on him who seeks to shine by his own conversation, and him who is content to profit by that of others. In social life there is no one we envy more than him who entertains or instructs the convivial party by wit or knowledge. On a first view this appears a very attainable advantage. Where all are disposed to be merry, it would not be thought difficult to divert; and he who communicates knowledge would seldom, one would think, fail in attracting respect, however he might in exciting attention. "Oh it is much," says Falstaff," that a lie with a slight oath, and a jest with a sad brow, will do with a fellow that never had the ache in his shoulders." But on closer inspection, it is found that the character of an entertaining companion is not to be earned so easily. The success of the few who do succeed, will often be seen to result from their station and fortune; for, as the Vicar of Wakefield says, "the jokes of the rich are ever successful;" while on the other hand, so much depends on the nature of the recipient, the party whom the talker struggles to amuse, that his prosperity will frequently

dépend on chance. Perhaps I cannot better illustrate my sense of the difficulty he has to contend with who aims at the character of an amusing companion, than by detailing the different efforts I have fruitlessly made to attain it.

Never mind my education: that has not necessarily much to do with it; for how often do we see a shallow ignorant fellow succeed in setting the table in a roar. But my parentage and prospects have; for none has so little chance of pleasing as he who must live by doing it. Suffice it to say, that I was born a gentleman, and enjoy a small independence.

I remember soon after I was left to follow my own way, which I decided should be the law, I met at dinner at the house of a cousin of mine of that profession, one of his friends who was the life of the party, and whom, in fact, the others, students of the law, had been invited to meet. His style was quoting, for succeeding in which he was excellently qualified by a retentive memory and a copious collection of sentences from English, Latin, and even Greek poets.

Whatever happened, whatever was said, he had some quotation at hand, which either delighted by its appositeness, or astonished by its erudition: the latter seemed to be most his object; and perhaps in relating his success in the former, I ought not to omit that he was heir to a wealthy baronet, to whose property he unexpectedly succeeded from the baronet being childless.

This man's success, from whatever causes derived, filled me with an irrepressible desire to follow his system. I rummaged Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and other writers, to look for passages to be appositely applied, which I copied into a common place-book, that soon contained a collection infinitely exceeding all the "dictionaries of quotations" that ever were published. I committed my stock to memory, and produced it in company sometimes with propriety, and sometimes, as must occasionally happen, à tort et à travers. On the whole, my success for a time was such as to content and encourage me. I remember two or three of my attempts which met with signal applause, and I will relate them as specimens.-A young coxcomb of my acquaintance who had taken to drawing, was telling us of his having just begun to paint in colours, in which his first attempt had been so good that his drawing-master said he would be a great proficient; on which I turned to him, and said with a look of affected compassion, "Oh formose puer, nimium ne crede colori." This was cheered by the whole party as brilliant. During the O. P. riots at Covent Garden, a gentleman at dinner was expressing his surprise at Kemble, who had been so generally a favourite with the public, having become so extremely unpopular on so slight a ground. On which I exclaimed, "Opes irritamenta malorum."-One more, and I have done with Latin: I was dining in company with Sir C. H., a Colonel in the city militia, who was saying that he had lately, at the request of the Duke of procured an ensigncy in his regiment for a man whom he was not over-glad to receive in it, a jack of all trades, who had lately failed in one business and adopted another. I could not resist reminding Sir C. of Horace's description of his friend, "Et centum puer artium, dignè militiæ signa feret tuæ."