The concluding lines of the canto afford similar proofs of, Mr. M.'s skill in versification.

• Condemned in torrid noon, with palsy'd hand,
To urge the slow plough o'er th' obdurate land,
The lab'rer, smitten by the sun's fierce ray,
A corpse along th' unfinish'd furrow lay.
Q'erwhelm'd, at length, with ignominious toil,
Mingling their barren ashes with the soil,
Down to the dust the Charib-people pass'd,
Like autumn foliage with'ring in the blast:
The whole race sunk beneath th' oppressor's rod,
And left a blank among the works of God.' p. 9.

Instead of personifying African Nature, and introducing the principal features that characterize it in a delineation of an imaginary being, we could wish Mr. M. had employed the same fertility of thought and splendor of diction in a description of real nature; which would have given variety to the pocm, and a respite to the reader's imagination. A few couplets we shall extract; in which this continent is represented, as 'A world of wonders, where creation seems

No more the works of Nature but her dreams ;→→
Where none can check her bounty, when she show'rs
O'er the gay wilderness her fruits and flowers;
None brave her fury, when, with whirlwind breath
And earthquake-step, she walks abroad with death;-
O'er boundless plains she holds her fiery flight,
In terrible magnificence of light;

At blazing noon pursues the evening breeze,

Through the dun gloom of realm-o'ershadowing trees;
Her thirst at Nile's mysterious fountain quells,

Or bathes her swarthy limbs where Niger swells

An inland ocean, on whose jasper rocks

With shells and sea-flower wreaths she binds her locks:
She sleeps on isles of velvet verdure, placed

Midst sandy gulphs and shoals for ever waste;

She guides her countless flocks to cherish'd rills,
And feeds her cattle on a thousand hills.' pp. 13, 14.

The love of country and of home is treated with ingenuity and feeling; but the passage has a sort of enigmatical character, which we do not altogether approve. In illustrating the universality of the principle, several remarkable regions are thus appropriately specified.

'O'er China's garden fields, and peopled floods,

In California's pathless world of woods,

Round Andes' heights, where Winter, from his throne,
Looks down in scorn upon the summer zone;

By the gay borders of Bermudas' isles,

Where Spring with everlasting verdure smiles;

On

pure

Madeira's vine-robed hills of health ;
In Java's swamps of pestilence and wealth;

Where Babel stood, where wolves and jackalls rink,
Midst weeping willows, on Euphrates' brink;
On Carmel's crest, by Jordan's reverend stream,
Where Canaan's glories vanish'd like a dream;
Where Greece, a spectre, haunts her heroes' graves,
And Rome's vast ruins darken Tiber's waves;
Where broken-hearted Switzerland bewails
Her subject mountains and dishonour'd vales ;
Where Albion's rocks exult amidst the sea
Around the beauteous Isle of Liberty;-
Man, through all ages of revolving time,
Unchanging man, in every varying clime,
Deems his own land of ev'ry land the pride,
Belov'd by heav'n o'er all the world beside ;
His home a spot of earth supremely blest,

A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.' pp. 23, 24.

In proof of the hospitality and gentleness of the African character, the poet introduces Mungo Park's beautiful anecdote of the negro girls, whose song he versifies with equal neatness and fidelity.

"The winds, were roaring, and the white man fled;
"The rains of night descended on his head;
"The poor white man sat down beneath our tree,
"Weary and faint, and far from home was he:
For him no mother fills with milk the bowl,
"No wife prepares the bread to cheer his soul:
Pity the poor white man who sought our tree,
No wife, no mother, and no home has he.'

66

Thus eang the Negro's daughters

once again
O that the poor white man might hear that strain!
-Whether the victim of the treacherous Moor,

Or from the Negro's hospitable door

Spurn'd as a spy from Europe's dreaded chime,
And left to perish for thy country's crime;
Or destin'd still, when all thy wanderings cease,
On Albion's lovely lap to rest in peace;
Pilgrim in heaven or earth, where'er thou be,
Angels of mercy guide and comfort thee!' pp. 25, 26.

The following passage relates the history of thousands.
'Twas night: his babes around him lay at rest,
Their mother slumber'd on their father's breast:
A yell of murder rang around their bed;
They woke, the cottage blazed, the victims fled;
Forth sprang the ambush'd ruffians on their prey,
They caught, they bound, they drove them far away;
The white man bought them at the mart of blood;
In pestilential barks they cross'd the flood:

Then were the wretched ones asunder torn

To distant isles, to separate bondage borne ;
Denied, though sought with tears, the sad relief

That misery loves, the fellowship of grief.' pp. 27, 28.

The lines relating to the multitudes who died on the voyage, are truly admirable. A passage more exquisitely finished or more awfully sublime, we scarcely know where to look for. 'When the loud trumpet of eternal doom

Shall break the mortal bondage of the tomb;
When with the mother's pangs th' expiring earth
Shall bring her children forth to second birth;
Then shall the sea's mysterious caverns, spread
With human relics, render up their dead.
Though warm with life the heaving surges glow
Where'er the winds of heaven were wont to blow,
In sevenfold phalanx shall the rallying hosts
Of ocean slumberers join their wandering ghosts,
Along the melancholy gulph that roars

From Guinea to the Charibbean shores.
Myriads of slaves, that perish'd on the way,
From age to age the shark's appointed prey,
By livid plagues, by lingering tortures slain,
Or headlong plung'd alive into the main,

Shall rise in judgment from their gloomy beds,

And call down vengeance on their murderers' heads.' pp. 26, 27. The characters of the slave-captain and the creole-planter are forcibly drawn; we can only admit part of the latter. Satiate with food, his heavy eyelids close, Voluptuous minions fan him to repose ; Prone on the noon-day couch he lolls in vain, Delirious slumbers rock his maudlin brain; He starts in horror from bewildering dreams, His blood-shot eye with fire and frenzy gleams; He stalks abroad; through all his wonted rounds, The negro trembles, and the lash resounds, And cries of anguish, shrilling through the air, To distant fields his dread approach declare. Mark, as he passes, every head declin'd; Then slowly raised, to curse him from behind. This is the veriest wretch on nature's face, Own'd by no country, spurn'd by every race ; The tether'd tyrant of one narrow span, The bloated vampire of a living man; His frame.-a fungus form of dunghill birth, That taints the air, and rots above the earth; His soul-has he a soul, whose sensual breast Of selfish passions is a serpent's nest ? Who follows headlong, ignorant and blind,

The

vague brute instinct of an ideot mind?' &c. p. 30.

The praise most justly bestowed on the Moravians, in the fourth canto, will sound very harshly in the ears of those who regard conversion as a figment of hypocrisy or a dream of enthusiasm. Few however of our readers, we trust, are so afflicted with a nausea of piety, as to derive no gratification from the following lines.

And thou, poor Negro ! scorn'd of all mankind;
Thou dumb and impotent, and deaf and blind!
Thou dead in spirit! toil-degraded slave,
Crush'd by the curse on Adam to the grave!
The messengers of peace, o'er land and sea,

That sought the sons of sorrow, stoop'd to thee.
'T'he captive rais'd his slow and sullen eye;

He knew no friend, nor deem'd a friend was nigh,
Till the sweet tones of Pity touch'd his ears,
And Mercy bathed his bosom with her tears:

Strange were those tones, to him those tears were strange,
He wept and wonder'd at the mighty change,
Felt the quick pang of keen compunction dart,
And heard a small still whisper in his heart;
A voice from heaven, that bade the outcast rise.
From shame on earth to glory in the skies.

From isle to isle the welcome tidings ran;
The slave that heard them started into man:
Like Peter, sleeping in his chains he lay,
The angel came, his night was turn'd to day;
Arise!' his fetters fall, his slumbers flee;
He wakes to life, he springs to liberty.

'No more to dæmon gods, in hideous forms,
He pray'd for earthquakes, pestilence, and storms,
In secret agony devour'd the earth,*

And, while he spar'd his mother, curs'd his birth :
To heaven the Christian Negro sent his sighs
In morning vows, and evening sacrifice;
He pray'd for blessings to descend on those
That dealt to him the cup of many woes,
Thought of his home in Africa forlorn,
Yet, while he wept, rejoic'd that he was born;
No longer, burning with unholy fires,
He wallow'd in the dust of base desires;
Ennobling virtue fix'd his hopes above,
Enlarged his heart, and sanctified his love;
With humble steps the paths of peace he trod,

A happy pilgrim, for he walk'd with God.' pp. 37-39.

*This and the following lines might be scarcely intelligible to a reader unacquainted with the facts to which they refer. The first alludes to the desperate and fatal practice of earth-eating, among the disconsolate slaves; the second, to the negro proverb, mentioned by Park, Strike me, but do not curse my mother? No person, however, who had read the preceding canto with its notes, could mistake the meaning of this couplet.

We must pass over the references to Granville Sharp, Clarkson, and Wilberforce, and the affecting apostrophe to Cowper, with whose sorrows the poet intimates he is but too capable of sympathizing himself. Pitt, he says,

- Supreme amid the senate rose,

The Negro's friend among the Negro's foes;`

Yet, while his tones like heaven's high thunder broke,
No fire descended to consume the yoke.' p. 40.

Of Fox, it is remarked,

He spake in vain :-till with his latest breath
He broke the spell of Africa in death.' p. 41.

In the following allegorical account of the ultimate success of the Abolitionists, we shall not be very severe upon Mr. M. for attributing that event to imaginary rather than real causes, and preferring the graces of fiction to the truth of history. It is equally affecting and picturesque.

High on her rock, in solitary state,
Sublimely musing, pale Britannia sat,
Her awful forehead on her spear reclin'd,
Her robe and tresses streaming with the wind;
Chill through her frame foreboding tremors crept,
The mother thought upon her sons and wept :
She thought of Nelson in the battle slain,"
And his last signal beaming o'er the main;
In Glory's circling arms the hero bled,
While Victory bound the laurel on his head;
At once immortal, in both worlds, became
His soaring spirit, and abiding name:

She thought of Pitt, heart-broken, on his bier; i

And O my Country!' echoed in her ear:

She thought of Fox ;-she heard him faintly speak,
His parting breath grew cold upon her cheek,

His dying accents trembled into air,

Spare injured Africa! the Negro spare!'

She started from her trance! and round the shore

Beheld her supplicating sons once more,
Pleading the suit so long, so vainly tried,
Renewed, resisted, promised, pledged, denied,
The Negro's claim to all his Maker gave,
And all the tyrant ravish'd from the slave.
Her yielding heart confess'd the righteous claim,
Sorrow had soften'd it, and love o'ercame;
Shame flush'd her noble cheek, her bosom burn'd,
To helpless, hopeless Africa she turn'd;

She saw her sister in the mourner's face,

And rush'd with tears into her dark embrace

• All hail !' exclaim'd the empress of the sea,
Thy chains are broken; Africa, be free!'
All hail !' replied the mourner, she who broke

↑ My bonds shall never wear a stranger's yoke.' pp. 42, 43.