view there was an appointment of 160 gallons of mustard. The Earl had two cooks, and more than 200 domestics. Holinshed says, that merchants, when they gave a feast, rejected butchers' meat as unworthy of their tables: having jellies of all colours, and in all figures, representing flowers, trees, beasts, fish, fowl, and fruit. In Queen Mary's time, a Spaniard remarked, "These English have their houses of sticks and dirt, but they fare as well as the King"-buildings were then only of timber wattled and plastered. Grates in houses were then unknown; coal was burnt upon the hearth, and a sum allowed for wood, "because coal will not burn without it." The streets of Paris, not being paved, were covered with mud; and yet for a woman to travel those streets in a cart was held an article of luxury, and prohibited by Philip the Fair. An old tenure in England binds the vassal to find straw for the King's bed, and hay for his horse. The linen allowed for the Earl of Northumberland's household for one year was 70 ells, of which there were to be eight table-cloths (no napkins) for his Lordship's table, and two towels for washing his face and hands. It was a luxurious change of wood platters for pewter plates, and from wooden spoons to those of tin. Holinshed says, "when our houses were builded of willow, then had we oaken men; but now that our houses are made of oak, our men are not only become willow, but many, thro' Persian delicacy, crept in among us, altogether of straw, which is a sore alteration. A knot of Highlanders, benighted, wrapped themselves up in their plaids, and lay down in the snow to sleep. A young gentleman making up a ball of snow, used it for a pillow; his father, Sir Evan Cameron, striking away the ball with his foot, said, What, Sir, are you turning effeminate?" 66 In 1768, a man died in the island of Rum, one of the Western isles of Scotland, at the age of 103, who was 50 years old before he had ever tasted bread. Holinshed inveighs against drinking glasses as an article of luxury. The plague, some centuries ago, made frequent visits to London, pro moted by air stagnating in narrow streets and small houses. Since the fire in 1666, these have been enlarged, and considerable openings made, and the plague has not been known there. Between 1740 and 1770, no fewer than six Lord Mayors of London died in office, a greater number, says Lord Kaimes, than in the preceding 500 years. Nations where luxury is unknown are troubled with few diseases, and have few physicians by profession. In the early ages of Rome, women and slaves were the only physicians, because vegetables were the chief food of the people; who beside were constantly employed in war or in husbandry; when luxury prevailed among the Romans, their diseases multiplied, and physic became a liberal profession. on The increase of wheel carriages is a pregnant proof of luxurious indolence. Queen Elizabeth rode horseback behind her Chamberlain, on public processions. In the reign of James I. the Judges rode to Westminster-hall, and continued it for many years afterwards. Charles I. by a proclamation prohibited hackney coaches in London, except by those who travelled at least three miles out of town. Charles II. made his public entry at his Restoration on horseback between the Dukes of York and Gloucester. The rough manners of the English in former years, and their sanguinary laws, afford a striking contrast with the severest punishments of modern times. By a law of Edward I. the third act of stealing in the lead mines in Derby was thus requited-a band of the criminal was nailed to a table, and in that condition he was left without meat or drink, having no means of freedom but to employ the one hand to cut off the other. The punishments in Amboyna among the Malayans cannot be read without shuddering; a native found guilty of theft is deprived of his ears and nose, and made a slave for life, imprisoned and never suffered to go abroad but to saw timber, cut stones, or carry heavy burdens. Scarlet fever first known in England in 1680. Ulcerated sore throat began at Bow, Greenwich, and adjacent places, in 1746,-returned in 1786. Noah's Noah's ark occupied 100 years in building. Sir R. Walpole said, when he had to deal with the landed interest, all went on smoothly, they came quietly to be shorn; but if he only touched the trader, it was like sheering a hog, more cry than wool. The sedan chairs were not known in England before the year 1634. The people of Switzerland seldom think of a writing to confirm a bargain; a lawsuit is scarcely known among them, and many there are who have never heard of an advocate or of an attorney. A. H. REMARKS PHILOSOPHICAL AND (Continued from p. 317.) the page of Scott, certainly suffers considerable disadvantage from the measure of his verse, and the quick gingle of returning sounds which marks the octo-syllabic line; for, bowever natural to the author himself, it sorts not with the heroic character of his subjects. Dryden has remarked of Butler, "the choice of numbers is suitable enough to his design, as he has managed it, but in any other hand, the shortness of his verse, and the quick returns of rhyme, bad debased the dignity of his style." The same celebrated writer, in his Discourse on Satire, has pointed out the decided advantages which the English verse of ten syllables possesses over that of eight. "This kind of verse," he continues, "is more roomy,-the thought can turn itself with greater ease in a larger compass. When the rhyme comes too thick upon us, it straitens the expression; we are thinking of the close when we should be adorning the thought. It makes a Poet giddy with turning in a space too narrow for his imagination; he loses many beauties without gaining one advantage. On these occasions it is, as in a tennis-court, the strokes of greater force are given when we strike out and play at length." The loose and negligent arrangement of Scott's numbers, and the frequent absence of all agreeable collocation and harmony of modulation, offends the classic ear, and sometimes becomes almost intolerable to the student who has been in habits of intimacy either with the full resounding line of Pope, or the energy and pomp of Milton, and the bold, expanding, and elevated measure of Akenside. Although, therefore, imagination, which is confessedly the store-house of the Poet, may rank high in the author of "The Lady of the Lake," other qualities in which he is signally deficient, likewise demand the attention of a writer who would please under every circumstance, his neglect or his failure in these must be thought to have placed his fame on a very equivocal basis. A writer, of characteristics differing altogether in point of genius and pretensions from Scott, lays claim to notice as engrossing a large share of the Poetical attention of the 19th century. It must be owned that the luRAZOR subordinate rank among the Poets of his day. His happy talent at description, the occasional justness of his sentiments, and the general ease, beauty, and harmony of his flow of numbers, must be appreciated by every reader of discernment. A parallel has been drawn by a writer of the present day, between Lord Byron and Danté the parallel is not ill-imagined. The mind teeming with a constant flow of original creations, and rising occasionally to fine and delicate sentiment, involves more than an occasional resemblance between them-it must render it powerfully striking to the intelligent reader. Å resemblance, it may be said, not indeed in matter, but in style and manner, may as obviously be traced between Crabbe and Pope. Correct and harmonious in his numbers, the agreeable collocation and full flow and measure of phrases which characterizes the former, must immedi ately recal to the imagination of the Classical Reader the polished and elaborate diction of the Augustan Bard of England. If here the parallel ceases,-if in lieu of the energy of thought and refined sentiments which accompany the latter, the mind is often offended with the coarseness of the scenes which the former has shewn, such an unaccountable pruriency in selecting, as the vehicle at once for the exercise of his powers and the inculcation of moral sentiments, this will rather excite the wonder of a future age at his vicious taste, than than proclaim his want of Poetical capacity. When we take up Crabbe for amusement, or the anticipation of some higher pleasure, we feel that, if he is capable of imparting the one, to a student who has been nurtured and trained amidst the noble, manly, and expansive images and sentiments with which certain Poets of other days abound,-which has marked at once the pathos, delicacy, and justness of their thoughts,-soared with them to regions of unbounded speculation, or melted into tenderness at scenes of ineffable beauty, he is utterly incapable of affording the other. His genius paints the minute in nature with considerable accuracy, and often with force, but higher than that he seldom rises; while the local, subordinate, often the humiliating features of his narratives impart a certain tone of homeliness and sterility of conception which generally sears the breast to the influence of the finer passions. There are many readers who cau appreciate the beauty of Crabbe's descriptions in the physical world, who remain indifferent to all his appeals in the moral; one reason of which may be, that in the former we feel that the topics of his discourse are partly those of Poetical delineation; but that in the latter they are forced into a medium for which nature never designed them. This, however, does not prevent the peculiar sphere of moral painting which he has struck out from affording scope for the exercise of contemplations; contempla. tions, it must be said, which, while they exhibit forcible specimens of his power as a writer, do honour to his feelings as a man. A large share of public patronage and of public admiration has been bestowed on MOORE.-A genius of no ordinary standard in the world of Poetry, he may be said to have merited those eulogiums which the contemplation of superior intellect, or a well-stored mind is wont to demand as a well-earned tribute. That the imagination of this distinguished Poet partakes highly of Nature's gifts, must be acknowledged, not only by the ardent breast who eagerly and indiscriminately imbibes her thousand sweets wherever they lie scattered, and swallows indigestively the deleterious flower with the wholesome herb, but also by the judicious and well-regulated mind which is yet alive to the finer impressions. His Lyric aspirations exhibit a fancy teeming with ideas, in all their finely-conceived forms, struck out in all their beauty and harmony of diction. If his performances of a later date, although combining the varied imagery and splendid pageants of Eastern story, with a native fecundity of description, exemplify somewhat of monotony in its lengthened progress,-if the inte rest we feel in "Lalla Rookh" languishes through the glitter of balmy flowers and oriental sweets from Araby the Blest," which are so thickly sprinkled through his page,if his verse loses all pretensions to dignity and force through the light and airy stanza in which he has embodied the imaginations of his geniusstill this does not destroy the convictions which must strike every reader, that poetical fire and a mind susceptible of agreeable associations of imagery eminently characterize him. Of the precise rank and poetical order of a COLERIDGE, and, it may be added, a WORDSWORTH, as the founders of a peculiar school, it would perhaps be difficult to give an opinion which should not violate truth, and which should yet favour the views of the friends and admirers of those gentlemen. If the littlenesses for which Literature has scarcely a name, and which have occasionally disgraced their pages, and the absurdities with which they have sometimes taken it into their head to insult the understandings of their readers, do not effectually conceal the native talent which they individually possess; they would do well to recollect that they degrade, instead of adorning, the Literature of their country, when, formed by Nature for superior purposes, they render their Muse a vehicle for folly or extravagance. But, indeed, from the countenance sometimes given in our own day to productions wholly at variance with the principles of sound taste, the tender, the chaste, the elegant, and the manly, in poetic disquisition, seem to have made way in the breasts and opinions of men for quaint conceit, splendid inanity, or unintelligible sentiment. Much will it be to be deplored by the admirer of just and noble sentiments, when the fine effusions and native glow which has ever cha characterized our sons of genius,which has shone forth with such exquisite and animated effect in a Milton, a Thomson, a Warton, or a Gray, shall no longer occupy their high station in the human breast, when point, unnatural associations, and vapid trifles shall, in their turn, become the objects of taste and of enthusiastic applause. Occupying a distinguished rank in the scale of modern Poets, CAMPBELL, MONTGOMERY, and ROGERS, to whom, perhaps, may be added BowLES, strike the eye of the contemplatist who reviews the present state of Poetry in our native land. Their genius, if not of the highest class, is at least the genuine offspring of nature, presenting neither the pomp and brilliancy of diction, without a correspondent force of images and of sentiment, or the cold antithesis, and artificial manner which characterizes some of our schools of modern inspiration. Rightly discerning that the genuine effusions of a mind alive to sensibility, clothed in the simple but elevating language of the heart, must eternally outlive the ephemeral novelties of system, with their borrowed charms, they have rejected the meretricious ornaments which frequently gild the pages of contemporaries; their numbers form a proper vehicle for sentiments which, while they sufficiently speak to the imagination, do not of fend the understanding or the voice of sober judgment. But these Poets, so far as their general tone and complexion of thinking may be argued from their works, are of opinion with those who consider fancy and enthusiasm, although among the chief accomplishments of a fine writer, as not forming his sole requisites-discrimination, good sense, and a knowledge of what must eternally exercise dominion over the human mind, when the contemporary influence of prejudices, partialities, or courtly favour, will cease; and as the creations of their "imaginations are bodied forth," justly think with the criticks of other days that reason, as well as fancy, has a share in forming the sublime Poet,-that propriety and order of thought and of diction, is so far from shackling the views and aspirations of the breast, swelling with exuberant conceptions, that it points and tempers them aright, and conducts them to the road of fame. The "Pleasures of Memory," "The Pleasures of Hope," and "The West Indies," may be not improperly said to have respectively realized many of the sentiments which every thinking heart must immediately own to be genuine, much of that beauty which pleases and must ever please, and that passion which is a transcript of nature unfolded in harmonious dignity of numbers. It will, perhaps, upon an impartial and comparative analysis, be acknowledged that, with all homage to the strength of genius and fecundity of imagination, which characterizes our Poets of the present day, and the degrees of positive excellence which mark their several performances, the rage for novelty, for system, for passion, distorted to the utmost height of frenzied madness, and for an affectalion of feelings which Nature never felt, materially detract from its efforts of competition with those periods, in our literary history, when the "sterling bullion of one English line" did not shine through "whole pages of French wire;" but when the richness and solidity of the conception was only equalled by the fine arrangement and tuneful modulation of the expressions. Shakspeare himself, in all his flights and irregularities, never lost sight of the language of Nature; the passions of his characters were in unison with the occasion which gave them birth, were regulated by a sort of poetical propriety which gave them force and beauty, the conceptions of Milton were embodied in language finely harmonizing with the sentiment,-and the emotions of Otway and Dryden were delivered in numbers corresponding with the impression which they wished to excite in the minds of their readers, of their being great Poets as well as men of genius. Our poetical pretensions of equality, therefore, with several previous epochs during the long line of our literary history, may be justly a matter of question with the cool unpre-. judiced critick. The constellation (if the propriety of the term be admitted) which now illumines the British hemisphere, must evidently suffer from a comparison with the rude but invigorated intellect which adorned the close of the S a resident on the Banks of upon which I ground the idea; perhaps the very worst that an Engineer would adopt; but, if the plan can be proved feasible by a process not good, it is fair to infer that it is more easily executed by a better. You know that Ferries at present consist of a large flat-bottomed lighter, or barge-shaped boat, for the conveyance of horses, and another smaller, for passengers. The conveyance of carriages (so far at least as concerns this River) is, from causes well known to the natives, exceedingly rare, because excessively inconvenient and troublesome. Nocturnal passage by carriages, horses, or men, is not quite as rare, but studiously and prudently shunned. proposed A Wye, in habits of friendship with for the consideration of Engineers, is a gentleman who has intermarried with a relative of the celebrated Man of Ross, I was recently invited to attend the funeral of a gallant Officer (Capt. Jones), who perished in an attempt to ford the river Wye at an unseasonable period *. The death of any brave man, professionally engaged in the service of his country, is a national loss, because such men are the coin with which alone the country can purchase Victory in the time of war. This, however, is not to the point. In the funeral procession we passed the fatal spot and a concentration of ideas, suggested by the occasion, has produced the following opinion, which, through the medium of your valuable Miscellany, I beg to offer to professional men and Engineers. You, who know your Correspondent on this occasion, will readily bear him witness, that his avocations are of a description far too different to merit the suspicion of vanity or interest; and that, in offering his remarks, he acts only upon an opinion that common sense, in ratiocination à priori, does not appear to overturn the natural idea, that Ferries are convertible into moveable bridges, by a very simple process, where a river is narrow. At the same time, also, that I mention the idea, I do not presume to say what may or may not be the best, or even the proper method ;-that I leave to professional men; but of the practicability of the plan there can be no question, even by the method * See our last Obituary, p. 381. EDIT. simply this, whether these Ferries could or could not be converted into moveable bridges, answering every useful purpose, without impeding the navigation, or being of heavy expense? The Author does not know the exact breadth of the Wye in most of the Ferries; but presumes, from the eye, that it may be upon an average from sixty to seventy yards. Could this distance be shortened by causeways and stone-work on each side, with arches, to fifty yards? Could two bridges, turned on pivots, as in canals, be made to meet horizontally, like the folding-gates of a Lock, and rest upon a single pier, or wooden piles, in the middle of the River ? Possibly the length might be too great of each bridge. Would it not, then, be possible to have two piers, upon each of which, on both sides, rested a turning or pivot canal bridge; one of which was provided with a platform, in the manner of a drawbridge, to cross the centre vacancy; and would not this rest upon the opposite pier, and form a complete bridge from bank to bank; the whole, or at least, the draw-bridge and one privot bridge being, by means of the usual lever, as easily moveable as winding up the rope, and affording a better passage to barges, saving them the trouble of lowering the mast. It must be evident to every candid reader, that this plan, simple as it is, is only the antient Drawbridge between two canal bridges; and, therefore, that it does not partake of the nature of project. The expence |