But we must now give some account of the principal poem. The argument is briefly this. An Athenian of the olden time, when Greece was warring against Persia, after an eventful career and lonely wanderings through various countries, prompted by the restlessness of a wounded spirit, is at length conducted to A land of snow-clad mountains, sunny hills,

Green vales, and fruitful plains, and flowing rills,'

where he meets with one who directs him to 'the source sublime of all true light;' and his soul is thus taught to quench her thirst with living waters.' To this friend, on bidding him farewell, he recites his story. From the structure and drift of the poem, the Editor infers that Miss Woodrooffe had, in the course of her various reading, met with the almost romantic account which Justin Martyr gives of his own conversion to Christianity; but to have made the Athenian warrior a convert to the Christian doctrine, would have been an anachronism; and we are, therefore, to suppose that his teacher was a devout Jew. The title of the poem is derived from one of the incidents. In a paroxysm of mental agony, the Athenian had besought the gods to bless him with forgetfulness. His prayer is granted; a goblet of Lethe water is presented to him, which he eagerly drinks; but its effect is described as producing only a change of wretchedness.

Memory had no grief
Or joy for me. Oh, e'en a cause to sigh

Unto my spirit would have brought relief!
But I was sad. Nathless, I did not know
Wherefore my glee and mirth had turned to woe.

'It was a self-consuming of the heart;

A very searing of the soul and brain.

I walked among men as one apart,

Unconscious of their pleasure or their pain,
Who, by no gentle tie to others twined,

Counts but the throbbings of his own dark mind.'

At length he reaches in his wanderings his old paternal dwelling, and knows it not; but he falls asleep; and in a dream, the images of all his by-gone life pass in procession before him. The spirit that had offered him the boon of forgetfulness, 'so wildly sought,' re-appears, and addresses him :

Thou that didst seek, in anguish, to forget,
Could Lethe's waters happiness afford?
Or wilt thou that remembrance be restored?

Give me back memory, give.'

When I awoke,

I knew my father's pleasant home again.

The spell was loosed from me; the charm was broke,
No more to bind me with its fearful chain:
And, in the moonbeam's silvery light, I stood
Softened into a calm, though pensive mood.'

Upon this slender but golden thread, the poetical skill of the young authoress has strung a hundred and twenty-six beautiful stanzas, worthy of Campbell or of Mrs. Hemans, yet free from any appearance of imitation or mannerism, and flowing on as unconstrained as if they had welled forth from the hidden fount of verse without an intellectual effort.

The moral of the tale is obvious, and requires no comment. For the absence of distinctively Christian sentiment, the time in which the action is laid will account; but we must not conceal, that a similar negation of specifically religious allusion pervades the volume. The feelings with which we closed it would have been saddened by melancholy misgivings as to the most important feature of the author's character, had not her uncle given an assurance in the preface, that, as her steady principles were those of a real and well-instructed Christian, so, it was her blessed privilege, in the sound faith of the Church of England, the faith of the martyred Cranmer and the judicious Hooker, to die the death of a real Christian.' Yet, consolatory as this assurance must be to surviving friends, it leaves us to infer, that, 'high in spirits, and presumptuously secure in health,' loving and beloved, a stranger to any deep sorrow, her mind teeming with youthful hopes and ardent imaginings, the authoress had not given that place in her thoughts to the realities of faith and the most serious business of life-'a Christian preparation for eternity,' which they claim alike from young and old, the gay and the mourner, and which, had she anticipated the early and unexpected summons, they would have commanded. Not that there is any thing in these remains to indicate irreligious levity or an estrangement from the Christian faith, but one is led almost to wonder how a young person religiously instructed, could by possibility avoid disclosing an acquaintance with the grounds of the Christian's hope and the source and medium of christian devotion; how, in so excursive and wide a range through the regions of classical and modern literature, the glorious land of miracles and prophecy and inspired song, should apparently have presented no attraction, the sublime poetry of the Hebrew scriptures have been neglected, and no pilgrim visit have been paid to 'Siloa's brook that flowed fast by the oracle of God.' There might be, we are aware, an avoidance of such topics as too sacred, too awful,

too high a theme for a youthful hand, prompted by a modest diffidence and reserve; and it would be uncandid to infer, that subjects have no hold upon the thoughts and affections, because they are not made the topics of verse. Still, where the Christian faith is not part and parcel of the law of thought, and does not blend as an element with every pure feeling and high aspiration, there must either be a serious defect in the mental training, or a postponement of religion to the pursuits of literature and the luxuries of fancy. How sweetly, how nobly Sophia Woodrooffe might have touched the sacred harp, we can now judge only from the purity of taste, the unaffected feeling, and the lyrical spirit which are displayed alike in the original and the translated poems. But, if regret is vain, the volume conveys even by its silence a lesson to the young and thoughtless reader, like the touching epitaph in one of Poussin's classical landscapes: Et in Arcadia fui.'

Art. V. History of the War of the Independence of the United States of America. By Charles Botta: translated from the Italian, by George Alexander Otis, Esq. Edinburgh, London, and Glasgow: Fullarton. 1844.

THERE are pages in modern, as well as in ancient history, which cannot be too frequently studied. Their associations extend backward into the past, and forward into the future. The annals of the world, being neither more nor less than the memory of time, are a magazine and museum of all sorts of things, good, bad, and indifferent. But to the eye, which looks lower than the surface, there will appear one golden electric chain of mighty facts, running through the whole. Liberty, with the Magna Charta of the Most High in her hand, by touching skilfully some of the links, will bring to bear a stream of celestial fire upon the dullest individual, or the most torpid multitudes. She will show, how that from the battle of Marathon to the surrender at Yorktown, the conflict between her followers and her foes, has never varied in its general characteristics. The rights of person, property, and conscience, the triple birthright of a people, have been the prize placed before each successive set of combatants. Tyranny would fain trample these in the dust; but freedom would enthrone them in the heart. Peace, then, be with the ashes of those who have contended for the best interests of mankind. We never tire of hearing about our own civil wars, between Charles I. and the Parliament; nor should our ears be slow to listen to the narra

tives of transatlantic independence. Its achievement has been pronounced, by Sir James Mackintosh, to be the grand event of the eighteenth century. Dr. Botta was a celebrated physician in Piedmont, possessed of all the qualifications and opportunities for becoming what he has proved himself, a first-rate historian. He may be described as the Thucydides of his subject, with quite as much propriety as Guicciardini; whether we glance at his genius, his diligence, his fidelity, his arrangement of details, his grouping of circumstances, or his impartiality in awarding praise and censure. His very mind seems to have been omnipresent in America, from the landing of the pilgrims at Plymouth to the withdrawal of Washington from his labours. His translator is a member of that family so well known, and so highly respected, in the best intellectual circles of New England and Philadelphia. The work is full of idioms and phrases quite peculiar to his own countrymen: but then, it must be remembered, that for them it was principally written. Our readers, we feel certain, will thank us, for a brief sketch of its contents; the more important as they are just now, when Ireland is struggling for her emancipation.

The volume is divided into fifteen books, which are neither more nor less than very long and ample chapters. The first touches upon the manners, customs, and inclinations of the earliest inhabitants of the colonies. When oppression had urged some of the bravest spirits of the seventeenth century into exile, their vessels conveyed across the ocean a freight more precious than gold. Souls, and energies, and intellects, the seed-corn, so to speak, of a harvest yet to be gathered in, constituted the inestimable cargo. Many of their warmest associations were with the land they had left, to encounter hunger, peril, and nakedness,-all for the sake of civil and religious freedom. This last indeed was the palladium of their affections; yet they still loved dearly the country which gave them birth. Their language spoke of its triumphs and greatness; whilst in their charters and constitutions, both the philosopher and philanthropist might easily trace the vestiges of British institutions. Other nations also sent forth contributions to the future grandeur of America; although these seemed quickly absorbed into the mass of the English emigrants, who stamped their indelible impress upon that portion of the transatlantic continent, extending from the thirty-second to the forty-fifth degree of north latitude. Within these limits were marshes drained, forests felled, rivers restrained, wild beasts extirpated, and savages repelled, amidst much developement of cruelty and injustice, we admit, yet with an indomitable perseverance, allied to fervent piety, such as probably the world may never hope to see again.

These emigrants were to be the ancestors of millions of men, whose office it would be to teach Europe lessons far different from any which she had before learned. Most of them, having quitted their native shores whilst the contest was at the highest between the crown and the people, were eager partizans for popular privileges, as already mentioned. They believed it a right inalienable in all free-born subjects, that property should never be encroached upon without consent from parliament; that the House of Commons only, as representing the people, could make money-grants to the sovereign; that taxes are free-gifts from the governed to their governors; and that all power was a public trust, to be administered by responsible persons for the benefit of the community at large. In other words, they were liberals to the back-bone, saving the hideous and abominable exception of negro slavery. This plague-spot they unhappily neglected to wipe out from their escutcheon. It was borrowed, indeed, originally from ourselves; but let that pass. Within the space of a hundred years from the age of Sir Harry Vane, thirteen colonies had expanded into importance, slightly noticed by British ministers, until the seven years war had brought France and England into collision. The victories of the latter having added Canada to her empire, George III. and his courtiers began to think of enriching their coffers, at the expense of other pockets than those which could make themselves heard in parliament, through the medium of hired members sitting for corrupt boroughs. In 1765 appeared the Stamp Act, which directly or indirectly was to raise the revenue of three hundred thousand pounds sterling per annum. There could be no longer any shadow of mistake about the matter.

After ten years of almost inconceivable vacillation and folly on the part of Great Britain, the war began in 1775. The second, third, and fourth books of Doctor Botta bring us down to the siege of Boston, and the unanimous determination of the Americans to take up arms. Neither the eloquence of Burke, nor the predictions of Chatham, nor the sagacity of Franklin, could suffice to illuminate the understandings of Lord North and his colleagues. It must be admitted, that at first the bulk of the nation was with them, through want of knowledge on the subject, and the overwhelming influence of the aristocracy and clergy. Even Wesley, with many of his followers, could plead for regal prerogative as against what they termed rebellious colonists. Franklin had every now and then been sent for, to confer with ministers, as to the probability or improbability of permanent colonial resistance. The account given by that illustrious individual of such interviews often was,