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Varieties: Critical, Literary, and Historical.

What dire infliction shakes that fortitude,
Which propt the falling fortunes of the world?"

[VOL. 3

Farther than these extracts, our readers must look to the poem, and we presume The cause is given in "The death- that from these, they will look with curinote peal'd from yon terrific bell." The osity and pleasure. Its fault is the imcharacter of the Princess Charlotte is perfection arising from its brevity; its then sketched, and here we regret the merit, vigorous thought in vigorous lanhaste in which the author dismissed his guage, a masculine seizure of the leading performance. The circumstances at- ideas which should constitute character, tendant on the education of this destined to the neglect of that multitude of inferior inheritor of a throne were too singular conceptions, which load, without filling and too interesting not to have deserved the sketch. Mr. Gent has but once used a more extended memorial; that ad- the common-place, the tempting, and mirable mixture of simplicity and strength from universal evidence, we suppose, the in her mind, which made of a person so irresistible common-place of allusions to young, and so little engaged in public dying lilies and new cropt roses; and, life, so eminent a source of hope in her on the whole, he may congratulate himlife, and sorrow in her decease, might self on the distinction of having produced have merited a more minute detail. the best poem on a subject which has enHowever, what there is, is eloquent and gaged the national mind, and which was energetic. worthy of all its sorrow, and all its genius.-Lit. Gaz. Jan. 1818.

"Lost excellence; what harp shall hymn thy worth,
Nor wrong the theme? Conspicuously in thee,
Beyond the blind pre-eminence of birth,
Shone nature in her own regality.
Coerc'd, thy spirit smil'd-sedate in pride,

Fixt as the pine while circling storms contend;
But when in life's serener duties tried,

How sweetly did its gentle essence blend

All beauteous in the wife, the daughter, and the friend!

Not lull'd in languors, indolent and weak,

Nor wing'd by pleasure, fled thy early hours;
But ceaseless vigils blanch'd thy virgin cheek
In silent study's dim-sequester'd bowers:

But chiefly conscious of thy promised throne,
Intent to grace that destiny sublime,

SEA MONSTER.

Letters from Marseilles state, that a sea monster of enormous dimensions, has been seen on the coast of Calabria. Some fisherman perceiving a fire in the sea, and thinking that it was a coasting vessel, which was in need of assistance, approached the monster, whose motions caused a phosphoric light, which was what they had mistaken for a fire. They soon perceived a thick smoke, heard hollow bellowing mugient sound, and the

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Thou sought'st to make the historic page thine own, agitation of the waves was such, that the

And view the treasures of recorded time;

The forms of polity, the springs of power;
Exploring still with unexhausted zeal,
Still the pale star that led thy studious hour

Through thought's unfolding tracts, Thy Coun

try's Weal

The poem advances to its close with some reflections of true poetical richness of allusion, and sweetness of language. "Tis past-thy name, with every charm it bore, Melts on our souls, like music heard no more. The dying minstrel's last ecstatic strain, Which mortal hands shall never wake again. But if, blest Spirit! in thy shrine of light, Life's transient ties be not forgotten quite, If that bright sphere where raptured seraphs glow, Permit communion with this world of woe,—

The poet solicits her to pour balm up on the general sorrow, and promises her the general memory.

"Spontaneous incense o'er thy tomb shall rise, And, nidst the dark vicissitudes that wait Earth's balanc'd empire in the scales of fate,

Be thou our angel advocate the while,

boats were obliged to return precipitately to the shore. According to their account, the monster raised itself to a prodigious height, and then replunged into the waves; so that, though the night was One would be almost inclined to think, very calm, they were covered with spray. that the great sea-serpent, which was seen some time ago on the American coast, had crossed the Atlantic.

DEATH OF ONE OF THE INDIAN JUGGLERS.

A private letter from Dublin, Jan. 13, 1818, mentions the following melancholy accident: "One of the tricks performed by the Indian Jugglers now exhibiting their art in that city, is the catching of a ball between the teeth fired from a pistol. At a recent exhibition, the pistol, according to custom, was handed to a young Gentleman, one of the company, for the purpose of firing it. He did so, and

And gleam, a guardian saint, around thy native Isle." shot the unfortunate Juggler through the

VOL. 3.]

Illustration of Saints' Days, obscure Ceremonies, &c.

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head. It is supposed that a pistol actual- stronger proofs rest on discoveries made

ly loaded with powder and ball, was, by mistake, substituted for that prepared in the usual way."

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by the Normans, before A. D. 805, when, he states, that they knew of the American coast. To which he adds the report made by Columbus himself, to Raphael de Sanxis, Grand Treasurer to the king of Spain.

ANECDOTE.

The celebrated comic actor Brunet, at Paris, who has a numerous family, never suffers his children to visit the theatre where he performs, lest by seeing and laughing at their father in the performance of ridiculous characters, they should insensibly lose the filial respect due from children to their parents.

TIME'S TELESCOPE, FOR APRIL.

The gorse is yellow on the heath,

From "Time's Telescope."

The banks with speedwell flowers are gay,
The oaks are budding, and beneath
The hawthorn soon will bear the wreath,
The silver wreath of May.

The welcome guest of settled spring,
The Swallow, too, is come at inst;
Just at sun-set, when thrushes sing,
I saw her dash with rapid wing,

And hailed her as she passed.

Come, summer visitant, attach

To my reed roof your nest of clay
And let my ear your music catch
Low twittering underneath the thatch,
At the green dawn of day.

APRIL is derived from Aprilis, of

SAINT AMBROSE, APRIL 4. Our saint was born about the year 340, and was educated in his father's palace, who was Prætorian Præfect of Gaul. He ruled over the see of Milan with great piety and vigilance for more than twenty years; during which time, he gave all his money to pious uses, and settled the reversion of his estate upon the church. He converted the celebrated St. Augustine to the faith, and at his baptism, in a miraculous manner, composed that divine hymn, so well known in the church by the name of Te Deum. He died aged 57, in the year 396.

Jews, as the anniversary of the death of The 10th of April is observed by the the two sons of Aaron.-The 16th of

aperio, I open; because the earth, in this month, begins to open her bosom for the production of vegetables. The Saxons called this month oster-monut, from the goddess Goster, or because the April, also, is commemorated by this winds were found to blow generally from the High-priest and his two sons, and the people, on account of the death of Eli

the east in this month.

ALL FOOLS' DAY, APRIL 1.

loss of the Ark.

traveller.

BUFFON DIED, APRIL 16, 1788. On this day idle people strive to make from Paris to Dijon, the house in which At Montbard, in France, in the route as many fools as they can : the wit chief- Buffon spent the greatest part of his life ly consists in sending persons on what are called sleeveless errands, for the His may yet be inspected by the curious tory of Eve's mother, for pigeon's milk, the court is behind. It is in the high street, and You ascend a stirrup oil, and similar absurdities. staircase to go into the garden, raised on the ruins of the antient mansion, of which the walls make the terraces. the top there still remains a lofty octagon tower, where Buffon made his observations on the reverberation of the air. JOHNSON. This singular and picturesque garden is

4, 1774.-Oliver Goldsmith died.
Thou seest the tomb of Oliver; retire,
Unholy feet, nor o'er his ashes tread.
Ye whom the deeds of old, verse, nature, fire,
Mourn Nature's priest, the bard, historian, dead.

On

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Time's Telescope for April. St. Dominic-St. George.

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well worthy of notice. In quitting this declared wasagainst the Christian religion, interesting spot, the column erected to St. George laid aside the marks of his Buffon by his son is seen, on which there dignity, threw up his commission and was once the following inscription: posts, and complained to the emperor • Excelsa turri humiles columna-Par- himself of his severities and bloody enti suo filius Buffon. That revolution edicts. He was immediately cast into which caused these words to be effaced, prison, and tried first by promises; and also condemned to the scaffold the writer afterward put to the question, and of them, who died, pronouncing only, in tortured with great cruelty: but nothing a calm and dignified tone, Citizens, my could shake his constancy. The next name is BUFFON !' day he was led through the city and beheaded, in the year 290. Under the name and ensign of St. George, Edward III, in 1330, instituted the most noble order of knighthood in Europe.

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SAINT DOMINIC, APRIL 21, 1219, Found at Paris thirty of his religious followers in the chapel of St. James, and, in consequence of the name of the chapel and the street where it sood, he St. George is the patron Saint of Engcalled them Jacobins. This was the land; for this the following reason is asorigin of an Order which exercised great signed: When Robert, Duke of Norpower over kings. St. Louis had so mandy, the son of William the Conquemuch love for this community, that he queror, was fighting against the Turks, wished to be made a Jacobin. He pro- and laying siege to the famous city of posed his design to the queen, and con- Antioch, which was expected to be rejured her not to oppose it. That prin- lieved by the Saracens, St. George apcess immediately sent for her children peared with an innumerable army comand the Earl of Anjou, brother of the ing down from the hills all clad in white, King; she demanded of the first whether with a red cross on his banner, to reinthey would prefer being the sons of a force he christians; this so terrified the priest rather than the sons of a king? infidels, that they fled and left the chris. And, without waiting for their answer, tians in possession of the town. Under she exclaimed, The Jacobins have the name and ensign of St. George, our worked on the mind of your father, and victorious Edward III, in 1344, institutpersuaded him to abdicate the throne ed the most noble Order of the Garter. in order to become a priest and a preacher.' Its establishment is dated fifty years beAt these words, the Earl of Anjou ex- fore the knights of St. Michael were inpressed his determination to oppose the stituted in France by Lewis XI. eighty king and the priests; and the eldest son years before the Order of the Golden of the monarch swore by St. Denis, that, Fleece, established by Philip the Good, if ever he came to the throne, he would Duke of Burgundy; and one hundred drive every mendicant idle priest out of and ninety before the order of St. Anhis kingdom. The fanatic passion of drew was set up in Scotland by James St. Louis for crusades brought him to his V. The Emperor Frederic IV. institutdeath, near the ruins of Carthage, fighting ed, in 1470, an order of knights in honagainst Mussulmen in a country where our of St. George; and an honourable Dido had established the gods of the military order in Venice bears his name. Syrians. This king extended that re- St. George is usually painted on horseligious enthusiasm which depopulated back, and tilting at a dragon under his Europe during two centuries. feet: but this representation is no more than an emblematical figure, purporting, that by his faith and christian fortitude, he conquered the devil, called the dragon in the Apocalypse.

SAINT GEORGE, APRIL 23.

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SHAKSPEARE BORN, APRIL 23, 1564.

This illustrious saint, termed, by the Greeks, the great martyr,' was born in Cappadocia, of noble Christian parents. He was strong and robust in body, and, having embraced the profession of a soldier, was made a tribune or colonel in the army under Dioclesian: his courage and constancy soon induced the emperor Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, to promote him. But that prince having what need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?

What needs my Shakspeare for his honoured bones,
The labour of an age in piled stones;
Or that his hallowed relies should be hid

Under a star-y-pointing pyramid ?

FOL. 3.]

Time's Telescope for April-St. Mark-Jewish Passover.

Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,
Has built thyself a live-long monument;
For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow; and that each heart
Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book,
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took,
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And, so sepulchered, in such pomp dost lie,

That kings, for such a tomb,would wish to die.-Milton.

CERVANTES DIED, APRIL 23, 1616.

Great sage, whose wand at one commanding stroke
Each antique pile of elfin fabric broke ;
From midnight spectres purged the sorcerer's cell,
And burst stern chivalry's fantastic spell.

But for this theft, in pride of all his growth
A vengeful canker eat him up to death.
More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
But sweet or colour it had stolen from thee.

SAINT MARK, APRIL 25.

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St. Mark's Gospel was written in the year 63. The order of Knights of St. Mark at Venice, under the protection of this evangelist, was instituted in the year 787, the reigning doge being always grand master:-their motto was Pu tibi, Marce. Evangelista Meus.'

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tenth day of this month (Nisan) they shall take to them every man a lamb without blemish, a male of the first year.' On this occasion, every house was not only ordered to provide a lamb to be killed on the fourteenth day in the even

On the 25th of April, or 15th day of Nisan, is celebrated the Jewish festival More than twelve thousand copies of of the passover, or the Paschal Lamb, acthe first part of Don Quixote were cir- cording to the directions given in the culated before the second could be got twelfth chapter of Exodus from the ready for the press; an amazing rapidity third to the twentieth verse, beginning of sale, at a time when the readers and with the words Speak ye unto all the purchasers of books were but an incon- congregation of Israel, saying, in the siderable number, compared with what they are now. The very children, says Cervantes, handle it, boys read it, men understand, and old people applaud the performance. It is no sooner laid down by one, than another takes it up; some struggling, and some entreating for a ing, but its blood was to be sprinkled ou sight of it. In fine, continues he, this history is the most delightful, and the least prejudicial entertainment, that ever was seen; for, in the whole book, there is not the least shadow of a dishonourable word, nor one thought unworthy of a good catholic.

SHAKSPEARE died, april 23,1616.
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing:
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play:

The forward violet thus did I chide ;

the door-posts, and the lamb eaten by the people in their travelling attire, because it was known, that in consequence of the dreadful plagues, the Egyptians would send them forth in haste. They were also ordered to take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts of the door, and on the upper door-post of their houses, in order that, when the destroying angel passed through to smite all the first-born of the land of Egypt, seeing this blood, he would pass over the children of Israel, so that the plague should not be upon them to destroy them. This feast of the Paschal Lamb, or the Passover, was therefore ordered to be kept throughout all generations, by an ordinance, for ever.

This festival is also called the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is commanded to be eaten seven days:--the particu

Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that lar precepts for its observance are to be

smells,

If not from my love's breath? The purple pride
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells,
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.
The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair;
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair;
A third, nor red nor white, had stolen of both,
And to his robbery bad annexed thy breath;

found in the twelfth chapter of Exodus, from the fifteenth to the twentieth verses. The prohibition against eating any kind of leavened bread, during seven days, is enforced from several considerations, but, principally, because on this self-sume day

Lord brought the armies of the Israelites out of the land of Egypt; and be

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Biographical Portraits.-The Nabob of Oude.

[VOL. 3

cause whoever eateth that which is leav- up to Jerusalem to sacrifice, these maleened, even that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a stranger or born in the land.

factors were executed, in order that all Israel might see and fear.

ROGATION SUNDAY, APRIL 30. This day takes its name from the Latin term rogare, to ask; because, on the three subsequent days, supplications were appointed by Mamertus, Bishop of Vienna, in the year 469, to be offered up with fasting to God, to avert some particular calamities that threatened his dio

Among the antient Jews at Jerusalem, it was customary, when criminals bad been condemned to death, to reserve them for execution till the celebration of the most solemn feasts, of which there were three in the year; viz. the Pussover, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Then, when the Jews came cese.

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AMONG the deaths mentioned in the

aces, 1200 elephants, 3000 fine saddle

horses, 1500 double-barrel guns, 1700

Calcutta papers we find that of Vi- superb lustres, 30,000 shades of various zier Ally, once Nabob of Oude; but forms and colours; several hundred large being deposed by the East India Com- mirrors, girandoles, and clocks; some of pany, he was subsequently, and in con- the latter were very curious, richly set sequence of the treacherous murder of with jewels, having figures in continual Mr. Cherry, and others, at Benares, con- movement, and playing tunes every hour, fined for life in a room made to resemble two of these clocks cost him 30,000l.an iron cage, in Fort William, where he Without taste or judgment, he was exlingered out an imprisonment of 17 tremely solicitous to possess all that was years, three months, and four days. He elegant and rare; he had instruments died in May last, at the age of only 36. and machines of every art and science, As a relation of the vicissitudes of fortune but he knew none; and his museum which this young man experienced, with was so ridiculously disposed, that a the circumstance of his long imprison- wooden cuckoo clock was placed close ment, may not prove uninteresting to the to a superb time-piece which cost the reader, we shall here subjoin it. price of a diadem: and a valuable land

Vizier Ally was the adopted son of scape of Claude Lorraine,suspended near Asufud-Dowlah, late Nabob of Oude. a board painted with ducks and drakes. His mother was the wife of a Forash (a He sometimes gave a dinner to ten or menial servant of low description, em- twelve persons, sitting at their ease in a ployed in India in keeping the metallic carriage drawn by elephants. His hafurniture of a house clean). His reputed ram contained above 500 of the greatest father, Asufud-Dowlah, was a wealthy beauties of India, immured in high walls, and eccentric Prince.-Having succeed- which they were never to leave, except ed to the musnud (throne) of Oude by on their biers. He had an immense numthe assistance of the East India Compa- ber of domestic servants, and a very large ny, he professed great partiality to the army, besides being fully protected from English. "Mild in manners, polite and hostile invasion by the Company's subaffable in his conduct, he possessed no sidiary forces, for which he paid 500,000l. great mental powers; his heart was good, per annum. His jewels amounted to considering his education, which instilled about eight millions sterling.—Amidst the most despotic ideas. He was fond this precious treasure, he might be seen of lavishing his treasures on gardens, pal- for several hours every day, handling aces, horses, elephants, European guns, them as a child does his toys." Asuf lustres, and mirrors. He expended had no legitimate children, and it was every year about 200,000. in Eng doubted whether he had any natural ones. lish manufactures. This Nabob had He was in the habit whenever he saw a more than an hundred gardens, 20 pal- pregnant woman, whose appearance struck

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