Milton's Comus, though not equal throughout to the Faithful Shepherdess in descriptive judgment, (for it talks of "groves of myrrh and cinnamon" on the banks of a British river,) is altogether a finer poem, and a far better recommendation of chastity; and, indeed, might rather have been called Castitas than Comus; for Comus has little justice done to his powers of temptation. Perhaps Fletcher's failure in recommending chastity, suggested the hope of surpassing him to Milton. His emulation of particular passages in the Faithful Shepherdess, particularly on that subject, has been noticed by the commentators. But Comus is a mask, not a pastoral. It can hardly even be called a pastoral mask; for the shepherd is the least person in it; and though the Italians identify the pastoral with the sylvan drama, or fable transacted in the woods, which are the scene of action in Comus, the reader feels that the woods have really almost as little to do with it as the fields;-that the moral, in fact, is all in all; which is the reason why nobody takes very heartily to the subject, especially as Milton acts in morals like a kind of solemn partizan, and does not run, like Shakspeare, the whole circle of humanity in arguing his question.

Milton's only real pastoral (with the exception of the country part of the Allegro) is his allegorical monody on the death of his friend King, the Lycidas; and a beautiful one it is, though Dr. Johnson, in his one-sided misapplication of a right principle, laughed at grief which departs from the ordinary phases of life, and talks of nymphs and river-gods, and “ satyrs with cloven heel." Grief, he said, does not talk of such things; to which Warton said very truly, "But poetry does;" and he might have added (still more literally than he puts it), that Grief does so too, when it is the grief of one young poet mourning for another. Johnson says that Milton and his friend were not "nursed" on the " same hill," as represented in Lycidas; and that they did not "feed the same flock," &c. But they were, and they did. They were nursed on the same hill of Arcady, and fed the same flock of the ideal pastoral life; and very grievous it was for them to be torn asunder,—to be deprived by death of their mutual delight in Theocritus, and Virgil, and Spenser, the beloved haunts of their minds, things which it has agonized friends and poets to be torn away from, both before and since the time of Milton, however little they may have been cared for by dear, good, dictatorial, purblind, un-ideal Dr. Johnson, whose world, though it was a wit's and a sage's world too, was not the universal and still sager world of the poet, but made up (exclusively) of the Strand, hypochondria, charity, bigotry, wit, argument, and a good dinner;-a pretty region, but not the green as well as smoky world of Nature and Shakspeare.

Fault has been found also with the intermixture of theology in Lycidas; but it is to be defended on the same ground—namely, that Milton's young friend studied theology with him as well as poetry; and hence the propriety of introducing the pilot of the Galilean lake.

One ought to be grateful for it, if only for its giving the poet occasion to dismiss the solemn vision, and encourage, in those lovely verses, the beautiful fictions of Paganism and Theocritus to come back:

"Return, Alpheus; the dread voice is past

That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells, and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,

A JAR OF HONEY FROM MOUNT HYBLA.

On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy, freak'd with jet,
The glowing violet,

The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears;
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,

And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,

To strew the laureat herse where Lycid lies.

*

*

*

*

*

Thus sang the swain to the oaks and rills,

While the still morn went out with sandals grey."

What softness in
What manhood in

These are the chief pastoral writers in the language, of the ideal class. Pope professed to be a classical pastoral writer, and split, accordingly, on the hard rock of Latin imitation. Even Gay's burlesque pastoral was better, for it went to the real fields for its imagery; and Phillips would have surpassed both, if he had not been full of affectation. His verses from Copenhagen, describing a northern winter, are fresh from Nature. Of Allan Ramsay, the prince of the homely pastoral drama, we have already spoken. Burns was pastoral poetry itself, in the shape of an actual, glorious peasant, vigorous as if Homer had written him, and tender as generous strength, or as memories of the grave. Ramsay and he have helped Scotland for ever to take pride in its heather, and its braes, and its bonny rivers, and be ashamed of no beauty or honest truth, in high estate or in low;-an incalculable blessing. Yet Ramsay, though he wrote an entire and excellent dramatic pastoral, in five legitimate acts, is but a small part of Burns;-is but a field in a corner compared with the whole Scots pastoral reigns. He has none of Burns's pathos; none of his grandeur; none of his burning energy; none of his craving after universal good. How universal is Burns! What mirth in his cups! his tears! What sympathy in his very satire! everything! If Theocritus, the inventor of a loving and affecting Polyphemus, could have foreseen the verses on the "Mouse" and the "Daisy," turned up with plough, the "Tam o' Shanter," "O Willie "Ye Banks and Braes o' bonnie Doon," &c., brew'd a peck o' maut," (not to mention a hundred others, which have less to do with our subject,) tears of admiration would have rushed into his eyes, not unmixed with a generous self-pity at being surpassed on his own grounds of rustical feeling and enjoyment, of popular witchcraft and universal passion. In the course of a few days, on the 6th of the present month, a festival is to take place in Ayrshire, to the honour and glory of Burns and his sons, who are to be welcomed to the Banks of the Doon. Would that we could be there, to add the mite of our respects; to listen to all that will be said in gratitude to their father, by noble and poetic lips; and to come away, warm with the grasps of the hands of our own Scottish friends, whom his example has helped to link with mankind in universal brotherhood. We seem to hear the spirit of the Poet crying out in his own words, on this sixth of August, first, to such as hesitate to attend his Festival for fear of the expense, though they can well afford it; and next, to the generous visitors who come jovially pouring in:

"Awa', ye selfish warly race,

Wha' think that havins, sense, an' grace,
Ev'n love and friendship, should give place
To catch-the-plack !*

I dinna like to see your face,

Nor hear your crack.

"But ye whom social pleasure charms,
Whose hearts the tide of kindness warms,
Who hold your being on the terms
Each aid the others,'

Come to my bowl, come to my arms,
My friends, my brothers!"

TO A FAIR FRIEND.

BY GEORGE RAYMOND.

WHEN from thine airy casement gazing,
As upon earth some seraph eye
Peeps through the loop-hole of the sky,
I saw thee, Geraldine-

Like the adoring Persian, praising

His deity, the sun, I stood

In rapt and reverential mood,

Nor thought thee less divine.

For that same sun seem'd only beaming
Faint as the silvery queen of night,
Thou wert so beautiful, so bright,
So lustrous to behold-

And when I mark'd thine eye-beam streaming,
Such was the magic of the spell,
The very earth on which it fell

Was changed to liquid gold!

Or, as Cassiope thou reignest
An empress in thy starry chair,
And chamber'd in the upper air,
Thy glass the placid sea-

But if in coy disdain thou wanest,
Though in the flecting of a smile,
Thou'lt leave us, stricken as the isle
Of Ferro's wave-girt lea.

If I have fled, the battle waging,
Ah! tell me not that Love's delight
Hath turn'd me to the Sybarite,
A traitor to my king-

But, that I deem thine heart engaging,
The nobler hazard of the twain,
Than plumed glory of the plain,
Or all that earth can bring.

And know, for Omphale, the greatest,
Work'd at the distaff, and became
Touch'd by a more impulsive flame
Than camps, or war's alarms-

Nor of his labours, deem'd the latest
Equal the triumph which confest
Th' enamour'd Lydian queen's unrest,
And gave her to his arms.

* Turning a penny.

THE EMPIRE OF MOROCCO.*

THE Moors, the degenerate race of noble ancestors, and the last remnant of that Mohammedanism which so long threatened Christianity from its strongholds in Granada, and afterwards from its piratical ports on the "sea of darkness," as they expressively call the Atlantic, are at length, it appears, threatened in their turn, by powers who proclaim themselves to be the daughters of Latin and Christian civilization.

The dependency of Tunis and Tripoli on the Sublime Porte has preserved them as yet from the almost unavoidable consequences which result from an inveterate barbarity being brought into close proximity with intelligence, industry, and ambition; but the empire of Morocco, isolated by the colonization of Algeria, and rendered as it were an intercepted and cast-off member of the Mohammedan family of nations, has fallen into a relationship with European powers, the results of which cannot be easily anticipated, and which leave for it a future of about as debatable a character as that which might belong to a carcass on its own plains, and for which stealthy crows and ravens quarrel with the vulture, and the latter again with sundry jackals and hyænas.

Two nations of the north, once deservedly famed for their sea-kings, and still possessed of gallant navies, have been the first to take advantage of this peculiar and crippled position of the old empire of the Moors, and to withhold that disgraceful tribute which they hitherto, through some curious policy, or out of veneration for olden customs, used to pay annually to the Moors, as if they were still the formidable toll-keepers of the Herculean Straits.

Sala, a name which has decorated many a plaintive ballad, and once the terror of the seas, is with its large suburb of Rabat, still the most populous port of the empire, boasting altogether of about 31,000 inhabitants; but its venerable and battlemented castles are falling into ruins, its circular batteries and round forts receal only a few guns mounted on clumsy carriages, and which, to use an expression of Captain Washington's,† “would not stand fire for ten minutes." The Imperial dockyard at the mouth of the "father of ripples" (Abu Rakrak) only contains one corvette on the stocks, and according to Mr. Hay, the Imperial squadron itself consists in all of a corvette, two brigs, a schooner, with some few-gun boats, and these unfit for sea. Such is the sorry remnant of the naval force of Morocco, whose Sala rovers used to keep in constant alarm the peaceful merchantmen of Christendom, and to which, up to the present year, two Christian nations have continued to pay tribute.

Taking advantage of the same isolated and peculiar position, and probably urged also from without, Spain, which has in her time put up with many an affront from her barbarian neighbours, can now afford to avenge with the tone of superiority, followed by military demonstrations, the last insult offered to her flag. The regiments of Gallicia and of Baylen are on their way to reinforce the garrison of Ceuta; but, as with the French, prudence, reserve, and the utmost moderation, are proclaimed as the basis of all negotiations.

The complication with France is, if possible, of a still more serious complexion. The uncertainty of the limitrophal line may, to a certain extent, excuse past events. The French acknowledge the Tafnah as the boundary line, but they make the river of Lalla Maghrania, where their camp was, and the river of Uchdah (the Oushdah of the French) tributaries to the Tafnah, but which, in existing maps, are made tributaries to the Muluyah, "the winding river," and a river indisputably of the Morocco territory. France, also, naturally feels herself aggrieved at the protection yielded, if not positive assistance granted,

* "Western Barbary;" its wild tribes and savage animals. By John H. Drummond Hay, Esq. London: J. Murray.

"A Map of the North Coast of Africa," including Morocco and Algiers. By James Wyld, Charing Cross East, London.

† Geographical Notice of the Empire of Morocco, Journal of Royal Geographical Society, vol. i. p. 123.

Yet up the valley of which the French have since advanced in search of the fugitive Augades, and have met with some opposition.

by a neutral power to their long-tried enemy Abd el Khadr, the "evergreen,” as his name indicates, old Arab chieftain. Disclaiming, then, all ideas of conquests and territorial aggrandizement, the French ministry even repudiates the occupation of a single port of the Maroquins, but proclaims as their ultimatum, satisfaction for past misunderstandings, which will no doubt be yielded at once; but further, that Abd el Khadr shall be removed from the frontier to the interior, or to some Morocco port. This appears to be an almost impossible demand. How can it be expected that Morocco power shall effect that, which France herself has been unable to accomplish during fourteen years' warfare? Who is to capture the brave, wily, and experienced Arab chieftain? Will the emperor's negro body-guard effect the mission, or will it devolve on his son, Sidi Mohammed, (said to be of English mother,) who commands at Fez? If the French insist upon the accomplishment of this unreasonable request, the termination may be the same that occurred under the Emperor Sidi Mohammed, whose campaign against his rebel red-haired son of Irish mother, Mulaï Yezid, terminated by the elevation of the latter to the throne. Not the least complication which arises from these various categories is, that Great Britain cannot well afford the loss of the Morocco commerce (299,000l. of exports annually); the Morocco supplies so essential in case of a maritime war, or that the keys of the Mediterranean should be held by a rival European power. The Battle of Trafalgar was fought at a point, and to decide a question, which certain parties are anxious to revive again, as capable of a new solution. Nelson long ago said that some day or other the possession of Tangiers would be a necessity to Great Britain; and whether diplomatically ceded, or granted in exchange for assistance given in the time of necessity, the city held by the bluff soldiery of our Charles II. would always be a point from whence the supplies of the rich granaries and abundant flocks and herds of Barbary would flow, whoever might be the possessors of the land, to the benefit of those whose anomalous position has so often obtained for them the cognomen of rock-scorpions, and the freedom and inviolability of the straits would be also, by such a possession, permanently ensured.

It would have been a truly gratifying task to us, had our space permitted it, to have sketched, under existing circumstances, the actual condition and resources of the Morocco empire. It is an error to say, as has so often been done, that there is no country concerning which so much has been written, and of which so little is known. There is, in reality, much good and available information existing, especially since the British mission of 1829-30. The total population appears certainly not to exceed 4,000,000; and the negro body-guard of the emperor, which, under Mulaï Ishmael, is said to have reached 100,000, did not, at the time of the British mission, reach above 5000. The mixed popula tion of Moors in the towns, Arabs on the plains, and the aboriginal Berbers in the mountains, are not always on the best understanding; and it appears, that on the advance of the French to Uchdah, that they had already a regiment of the mountaineers, Amazigh, "the great," as they call themselves, and from whence the port of Mazighan takes its name, in their service. But the call to a "holy war" would cement all parties, to what, without assistance from without, must always ultimately prove to be a vain resistance.

The nearest ports from whence the capital, Morocco (Maraksh), can be diplomatically threatened, are Mogador and Asafi; but the harbour of the former is not available for men-of-war, which must anchor off its long but inefficient batteries; and the latter has only a roadstead; Tangiers will therefore be probably the point of demonstration; yet, in case of hostilities, the loss would, at Tangiers or Mogador, be entirely on the side of European merchants, and Christian and Jew residents, while at Sala, the most populous and essentially Moorish port, and the most honourable point of demonstration, the loss would be mainly with the Moors.

The extreme fertility and productiveness of Morocco is almost proverbial; but all authorities, even to Mr. Hay, the last before us, agree in stating that a soil which, in the hands of an industrious people, would be a source of inexhaustible wealth, is, by indolence and despotism, rendered, for the greater part, equally useless to the natives, and to the rest of the world.