Then strode o'er the threshold the pale Mountain-king-
"Why standest thou here, thus presuming to fling
Such aspersions on me as I ne'er can forgive?—
The revealer of secrets deserves not to live."

"No aspersions on thee have these lips ever thrown,
I have dwelt on thy love and thy kindness alone."

"Thou hast mention'd the babes with thy venomous breath-
Thou fool! that vain boast has condemn'd them to death.
"Forewarn'd, thou hast broken the merciful spell
That permits in our palace those children to dwell,
Whose existence has never been whisper'd on earth-
Oh! accursed the hour I rejoiced in their birth!"
Then he struck her fair face as she knelt at his feet-

"Oh! the death-blow," she cried, "from thy hands will be sweet!
Since the deep chords of love thus mysteriously thrill,
While I suffer in patience resign'd to thy will."

"In this ill-fated mansion no more shalt thou stay,
Where thy crime was committed :-Away! then-Away!"
"Farewell, my dear father!-farewell, my fond mother!-
Farewell, weeping sister!-farewell, infant brother!—
"Farewell, ye high Heavens !-farewell, thou green earth!—
And farewell, thou sweet home, the dear place of my birth!-
For the King of the mountains I left ye before,
And for him, in his anger, I leave ye once more."

Horrid laughter appears in the Monarch's dark face,

While nine circles around the tall mountain they trace,-
And the tears on fair Isabel's bosom fell fast,
As smaller each circle became than the last.

The glad sun in the blue depths of heaven shone bright
As she gaspingly sought the last ray of its light;
Her young daughter beheld her with terror o'ercast-
"Oh, mother, dear mother! repose thee at last.
"Beneath this gold canopy lay thy pale head,
Where cushions of crimson profusely I've spread."
"My child! give me wine-bring the cup of my death—
Then close my sad eyelids-receive my last breath.
"A more tender farewell thy poor mother would take,
But fears, my sweet daughter! thy young heart 'twould break."
She drank-and to ice a more warm heart was chill'd,
Than by love's richest treasures had ever been fill'd.
Thus from home and from happiness Isabel stray'd,
And thus the pale Monarch her passion repaid ;-
Like a lily she sank when a pitiless shower
Has unsparingly beat on the delicate flower.

M. A. S.

NICE MEN.

THERE are several kinds of nice men; but I shall content my readers with two of them :

-

I. The nice-tasted man. He is your hypercritic in literature, painting, sculpture, music, acting, dancing, and singing; and is, moreover, over-profound in the virtù of coats, snuff-boxes, and keptChloes. A creature of this class is as troublesome to you with his

opinions, as an old over-provident housekeeper of the Mistress Alison frugality, or a conscientious steward; (but these are very scarce troubles.)

All niceness is effeminacy: niceness of judgment is but mental effeminacy. Strong minds are sometimes diseased down to it; but there are some minds that seem born with this sickliness of the judgment; one can conceive that they had a severe taste in pap, when infants; and when boys, were supreme-judgmented in taws, bloodalleys, and peg-tops. The man is as much to be pitied who has this malady of the mind, as if he had any one lingering disorder of the whole catalogue of sufferings which our "vile flesh is heir to." A nice woman is put-up-with-able;-I knew one who was so exquisite, she would not be cantered in a swing set up in a kitchengarden, because, as she whispered, the potatoes had eyes; but a nice man is a nausea: it is, as a certain Irish orator would say, the lion aping the lap-dog; the oak the violet.

over

You shall know this class simply by their noses. There is observable, in that very expressive feature, a prominent indication of never-failing conceitedness of opinion, and a nice dissatisfaction with every thing but themselves, in the up-curling of its widely-dilated nostrils: the nose I mean is very like the poet Gray's. You would think, at the first wink, that it was merely hypercritical in snuffs, and profound in distinguishing adulterated Irish Blackguard from the real; but, upon a nearer acquaintance, you discover that its discernment is of a higher and nicer character. This nose may vary in its shape it may have the straightness of the Grecian; the eaglebeaked curve of the Roman; the strength and manly beauty of the English; the shortness and pertinacity of the Scotch; or the snubbiness and obstinate stupidity of the Irish nose: the contour may vary, but the sentiment, the expression of the nose, is ever the same.

:

A critic of this class will not suffer you to admire any one thing for yourself: it is his pleasure (which, consequently, is your pain) to point out two things you should admire, which are not worthy to be admired, and two hundred you should not, which are. If Venus herself could bud out of her imaginary existence into the full-blown beauty of a thing of life, and come among the inhabitants of this "terraqueous earth," our nice man would find out that she halted in her gait; or that she squinted; or that her teeth were not so white as Ruspini's; or that her waist required stays à la Diana, to give it a graceful, undulating bend; or that her yellow tresses had too much of the sandy hue in them, and perhaps call her a "red-haired wench." If you have a new coat, you must consult his taste, and not your own; or endure the penalty of being held by the third button (that is his favourite one, because three is the number of the Graces,) while he lectures on the cut and constitution of coats, from the remotest collar of antiquity, to the most recent cape of modern days--from the little coat of Samuel, to the great coat of Soames. You sprain your ancle in a slip from the pavement, and he falls to shewing you how you might have sprained it with more grace in a Psychean quadrille. You weep the loss of some dear friend before him, and he asks you whether you have ever seen the celebrated statue of the weeping Narcissus, or

that of the tearful Niobe; he thinks their attitudes have more of the grace and sentiment of sorrow in them than your's. This is impertinent and unfeeling enough; but I verily believe that if his brother were about to endure what is technically termed the “ 'Tyburn-tie," he would object to the taste of the county-valet, and would, perhaps, step up on the scaffold to change the knot to the "tie à la Cavendish." He is a critic in every thing, from a pin to a pyramid; from an epic to an epigram. He looks at Memnon's head (in the Museum) through a microscope, and discovers that the granite is not without flaws. It is not easy to please him who cannot please himself. I should as soon hope to please a fleet-footed greyhound, by ordering him to be horseshoed. Did Apollo himself indulge his ear with a capriccio, he would play too flat or too sharp. It is no wonder, therefore, that Shakspeare shocks him; and that "his dramatic style is a bad one;" or that "Ben Jonson's works, taken altogether, are but trash." (Pope.) Milton, he agrees with Waller in considering as nothing more than "an old, blind schoolmaster, who wrote a poem," something about the loss of Paradise, or his pug-puppy, he forgets which, who, “if dulness and length are the principal requisites for a grand work," certainly was a great author. You shew him a painting of Hope you have just finished; he asks you to let him look at Despair, and gives you to understand, by a certain smirk of conceit writhing in the corners of his mouth, which he would prefer if he had to marry either of them by the choice of her portrait. You shew him a sketch you have made for a grand picture of the Furies dragging Eurydice back to the infernal regions; and he asks you why you did not persuade the Furies to put their snakes in papers, "for you see they are horribly out of curl." You shew him your own portrait; he glances hastily at it, and says, "You have flattered the old gentleman too much," meaning your father. You assure him that it was intended for you, and he lifts up his brows with surprise, and assures you, in return, that it is not a bit like you; besides, "who would know it to be the portrait of a painter? Let it have some mark and likelihood in it. Why not throw in a touch or two of St. Luke's style--a bull's head and a pallet in it?" You do not suspect him then, and you paint another; and to pourtray your profession as well as yourself, you introduce the portrait of a favourite ass on the easel. You call him in ; and at the first glance he cries, "Why, what is this? Here is the ass's head to the left, and your's is to the right; but perhaps you designed to shew the same head in two positions?" You quarrel with him for his ill-nature; and then he begs your pardon for his severity, and confesses that he is a little out of temper, because he had pricked his fingers with "Gammar Gurton's needle, "in buying a Whitechapel* one; and then, to restore you to smiling, he says, "Tut, man, never be fretted by a sneer! Sneers are to a fine-spirited genius, what spurs are to a high-mettled horse-they prick him on to strong endeavour. Why, there was What's-his-name, the great fine-art-ist, sneered at me but yesterday, with his polar, cold-looking nose, (not that I consider myself a genius-Apollo forbid !) and why, guess you?

* A cant phrase for a counterfeited copy of this old play.

because I insisted that the toe-nail of the Piping Faun was a more perfect semicircle than the eyelid of John of Bologna's Couching Venus! I did not chafe and fret, and pull my wig upon my brownot I! I coolly, and with all possible consideration, requested him, if he did not mean to saturate me with a cold, to favour me so much, when he sneered to-morrow at me, as to take the chill off his nose. The creature grinned his best Sardonic grin, (copied from an antique gem in his cabinet), and would have lent me his wife for my wit."

You confide your new comedy to his hands; he looks at the cover, and admires its Grecian border, though he thinks "the Egyptian would have been more à propos, as the scene lies in England" (this is his manner of sneering); reads through the title down to " 1820," returns it, calls it a farce run to seed, advises you to study divinity, and sends you a pastoral discourse by old Toplady.

Mrs. Jenkinson introduces her French shock-dog to him, and he shocks her, by declaring that he sees nothing in him but an animated hearth-rug.

There is a line which I was in the ten years' innocent habit of admiring, for the beauty of its thought:

"The conscious water saw its Lord, and blush'd:"

he proved, perfectly to my dis-satisfaction, that it was nonsense; "for (said he) though blushing might give to the water the hue of wine, it required something more to give it the quality."

He is proud to be considered a man of taste, though he sometimes allows that taste is a great maker of little minds. A friend of his says of him, that "he is like the Lord Mayor's taster,- he makes a meal of no one dish, and is hungry with plenty before him." He is, however, a very gourmand in taste; and it is not a few dainties will satisfy his appetite. He picks a leg of the young Antinous; a bit of the breast of Canova's Venus; a lip of the Piping Faun; a knuckle of the Gladiator; the wing of an angel from the Cartoons; and a pope's eye from Lawrence's Pontiff;-these tid-bits serve for his morning repast. His more substantial, or dinner-meal, consists of an olla podrida of Lamb's tales, Crabbe's tales, and Hogg's tales,—a strangely-selected literary dish, all of which he tastes of, with a hungry ostrich sort of haste, grumbling as he picks them to pieces, like a gourmand who is fuller of spleen than satisfaction, when his soles are done to devils. Two dozen of Milton objections, instead of one of ditto oysters, serve as a side dish. A mouthful of Bacon, swallowed, with some complaints of there being too much of the Attic salt in it for his taste, and an insinuation that it has grown rusty from antiquity, and is not likely to be relished by high tastes, finishes the meal.

His opinions are not worth much; but I was glad to hear him say, "that any lord who wrote poetry, and could be priggish enough to assert that Cowper was no poet, would be intemperate enough to take the next chair's wig off to wipe his own mouth with."

II. The Nice, or Ladies' Man.-This is a sort of Tom Shuffleton grown flat, staid, and fortyish; a fop running to seed; just such a being as would have made Cowper's" wheel-footed chair, wide

elbowed and wadded with hair," (for which he thanked Lady Hesketh pleasantly) a thorn-stool. He says, of such an one-

"I cannot talk with civet in the room,

A fine puss-gentleman, that's all perfume;
The sight's enough-no need to smell a beau;
Who thrusts his head into a raree-show?
His odoriferous attempts to please,

Perhaps might prosper with a swarm of bees;
But we that make no honey, though we sting,
Poets, are sometimes apt to maul the thing."

The ingredients which go to his composition, are-a good face, white teeth, and regular (or, as a waggish friend of mine describes them, teeth which keep good hours); a nose that has neither sneers nor snuff about it, though it politely puts itself to the expense of maintaining a box for noses that carry their own sneers, but take anybody's snuff; a very moderate share of sense, and an immoderate share of nonsense, mixed according to the Gratiano recipe, (that is, in the proportion of two grains of wheat to two bushels of chaff); a voice that sounds agreeably musical in a "How-d'ye-do?" in the anti-room, in a quartett or conversation in any room, or in a "good night" at the extremity of the hall-stairs; a back which can bend like a willow to my Lord George, or my Lady Fanny; a smile and insinuated sovereign, which purchase my lord's butler, and procure him hot plates, choice bits, and frequent changes of both, besides careful helpings-on of great coats, infinite care-takings of hats, umbrellas, and walking-sticks, and gentle shuttings of hall and hackney-coach-doors after him; a smirk that does not displease my lady's confidential maid, when it is accompanied by something substantial though flimsy; hands white, long-fingered, and acorn-nailed, if convenient legs with some probability of calf; ancles as much superior to the Apollo Belvidere as possible; two eyes of one colour; whiskers and hair of his own growth; with washes, essences, lavender soaps, tooth-picks and powders, tight waist, tighter pantaloons, silkstockings, &c. &c.

He is of an equable temper, lightly pleased, and not lightly displeased. He is as cheerful to-day as he was yesterday; his boots and his wit were equally brilliant yesterday and to-day. I have, however, known him melancholy; but that was when his " dear Chloe" was unkind, and would not confess (what he had some violent suspicions about) whether the crop of shavings he found on her toilette were the produce of that pretty piece of common-land, her chin. And then he talked of committing suicide, by throwing himself into the arms of the Dowager Countess Closefist, with 90,000 attractions a year; and then Chloe frowned him out of her presence; and then he came like a prodigal in penitence back again; and then Chloe forgave him, at the entreaties of a set of brilliants, valued at 200 guineas by Love; and then he was made so happy and tractable, that she sent him out of her house on the stilts of elevation just five minutes, by the gold repeater he had lately given her, before his rival, the Marquis, descended from his close carriage to fly to her arms and her drawing-room.