this season, which, to the general regret, we find is not to be opened, as her Highness is about going to the continent for the summer; and those who admire genius, good nature, civility, true.. breeding, and unaffected kindness, will join hand and heart in wishing her a speedy and a safe return. THE TABLETS OF ATHMOS, THE SON OF BELON. [No. III.] Jucundum cum ætas florida ver ageret Calulus, BEAUTY, deceitful promiser, away! Why tint thy visage with Aurora's bloom? To dazzle Reason, and the soul consume? Deceitful breath, sweeter than Indian air, Flowing in accents soft as Music's strains,➡ The heart that prompts them owns them not for chains. The youth whose years of opening manhood are commenced in a large and voluptuous city, loses too often that delightful sensation of the soul which peculiarly claims the denomination of Love, and gives away that title to mere animal desire, or at least to the natural impulse excited in him towards the first object of sexual gratification. With an imagination crowded with ideas of tender attachment, and of the delights of enjoyment-with hopes seduced by deceitful blandishment-with sensations animate with the fire of youth, and the indulgencies of beauty, the infatuated boy believes he feels all that passion which either raises or depresses, refines, embitters, torments, or sweetens, the existence of man. Reflection, in vain, points out, during the moments of satiety, that perversion of sentiment by which he has been actuated: he believes all else, but what he has been sensible of, to be the sophistry of frigid age-the refinement of speculative mind, or the apologies of torpid impotency. He intoxicates Reason with renewed draughts of delight, and continues to desire without love becomes attached without esteem-and forms an interested intimacy without friendship; and where this delirium is, for any length of time, suffered to debase the affections, the heart loses the faculty of contracting constant and virtuous desires perhaps, inured to the infidelities of its object, it becomes insensible to the beauty of chastity. Perhaps, long engulphed in the vortex of dissipation, it cannot rise again to the smooth surface of domestic tranquillity; perhaps, habituated to the recesses of concealment and of shame, it cannot bear the splendour of conscious modesty, nor the dignity of authorised affection. Love,-tender and agitating influence of desire-impressive emanation of beauty!-those days of the life of ATHMOS which were devoted to thee must ever be remembered with regret, although in that remembrance arise remorse, with a tedious train of conscious follies. Moments due to reputation-hours claimed by duty-days which no exertion can recal, and the loss of which no labour can compensate, were all yielded, thoughtlessly yielded to thee, And art thou no longer master of the festive sound, the gay delight, the tender enthusiasm of pleasure? Peace, peace, my bosom: she is gone for ever-she is another's :-peace, peace; it is but Memory, who delights to dwell on the shadowy joys which have vanished, as the weary traveller dotes on the dream that restored him for a moment to his country, while he drags his miserable steps through the desart of some distant region. Peace, too suddenly excited heart; it is not her again acknowledging affection; it is not her again dismissing thy rival,—it is but Memory, rehearsing the strain which Imagination and the Muse learnt from the lips of Love. IL FELICE. What Muse can give expression to my joy? Yet I'll exclaim-" See her yon youth discard My rival, lo, from bliss untouch'd departs❝lö triumphe! won is Love's reward!” But words are weak-no language is the heart's ! E'en had we words-words from a Seraph's lyre- All words dissolve in sighs when charg'd with love. It has frequently been said that the influence of love is universal; yet how small part of mankind do we find capable of comprehending what thus actuates the bosoms of all. The thoughtless lose all sentiment in dissipation-the sedate in business; and nothing of that passion that burns in the verses of the poets, and glows the loveliest meteor of the imagination, is generally known, but animal desire, united to the friendship, of interest, or esteem. Yet every body is conscious of an indescribable idea which fascinated all other thoughts during some moments of that period which allies puerility to manhood. Care, pleasure, or a more immediate and violent impulse, hurried it away, and the strong impression it was about to make, is lost in the variety of the world, leaving on the memory that simple trace alone which acknowledges nature in the fictions of the poet or the novelist, and sometimes sympathizes with the sensations of those who accidentally retain its pristine force. If the miseries of dependance can ever be rendered sufferable, and the wretched hours of relentless toil softened into content, it is by making our submission and labour subservient to the comforts of a lovely and virtuous woman :-if the torments of slavery, the shackles of poverty, the fatigues of drudgery, can ever be increased, it is by finding them the despised and inadequate means of satisfying the prodigality of her for whom they are sustained. It appears that sentiment must be united with sensation, in order to elevate the sexual passion, and render it worthy the bosom of a rational being, and that to this union of the intellectual with the sensitive powers, is peculiarly bestowed the appellation of love. So universally does this truth seem to be acknowledged, that the term love is applied only to the passion as it actuates the human race; and although we observe in the brute creation symptoms of strong attachment, we never dignify their affection with the name of love. And pity it is that a word of which the soul of man appears jealous, as claiming by it a share of nature's most delightful influence, should ever be abused—that it should ever be applied to mere animal desire, 1 or to the unmeaning fondness of insensible folly. On the former we often find it bestowed, not only by licentious poets, but by such philosophers as are fond of vilifying the powers of the mind, and reducing all our intellectual faculties to material organism. On the latter, I mean on that unmeaning fondness of the ideot-on that unintelligible liking which the man of narrow understanding feels, in common with the rest of animated nature, we hear the term love bestowed too often, even by the lips of the fair. But would that lovely part of our race, for whose sake both thought and action agitate our days, compare the feeble tenderness, unsupported by understanding, playing about the unsettled imagination of the fop, with the firm and constant passion which the man of sense feels,-ardent, because replete with numerous ideas of beauty and delight, which the impotent intellect of the fool cannot conceive; and unalterable, because united with reason: then, we should soon see presuming folly sinking to its proper level-the card table of antiquated virginity, or the drawing-room of vanity and affectation-while our admiration would be more frequently excited by that highest perfection of human nature--the masculine power of intellect supporting and dignifying the gentle feminine attributes of loveliness and sensibility. LO SVENTURATO. Can any music from the well touch'd lyre Essay that air which LUCIA oft has sung. Ah, cease!-thy notes are now not heard, but felt! He listens-now the same sweet strain repeat.-- Relapsing into Memory's agonies! Cease, cease!-thy lyre affords no soothing strain- T. N. A FEW OBSERVATIONS ON Mr. H. K. WHITE's REMARKS on the BRITISH POETS. In your last Number, [for May] a gentleman has favoured us with some remarks on the similarity of the ideas of our English poets, with those contained in the Sacred Writings. Every one must agree, that the Old Testament, every where abounds with beauty of thought and sublimity of description; those, in particular, which relate to the Deity and his works, infinitely surpass the best attempts of ancient or modern bards. In that passage of the Iliad where Jupiter is described as shaking the Heavens with a nod, and Neptune striding from realm to realm, to give assistance to the Greeks, we see the only ideas which claim any connexion with the sublimity of the sacred penmen; but yet these are comparatively weak, if opposed to the magnificent descriptions in the 104th Psalm. "Thou deckest thyself with light as with a garment, and spreadest out the Heavens like a curtain: Who layest the beams of his chambers in the waters, and walketh on the wings of the wind.” In the Old Version of the Psalms, the author has rendered it, His chamber beams lie In the clouds full sure, and not in the waters, as the Psalmist expresses it so little regard had the compilers of the Old Version to the sense of the original. How consistent with the true spirit of the above passage, and how beautifully poetic, is the following versification, and how unlike the hobbling snip-snap lines of Sternhold. He, as a curtain, strecht on high The vast cerulean canopy, And gave with fires to glow- He walks upon the wings of wind, Their Monarch's awful will Cherubs await in dread suspense, |