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8.

Which hovers round, and chills his anguished soul;
E'en Hope has ceased to smile upon the wreck
Of promised bliss that cheered his brighter days.

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Not his the verse that virtue must condemn:
No reptiles through its flowery chaplets wind,
In sly concealment, beauty's heart to sting:
It gilds no baneful sentiments of vice,

Nor seeks to cover aught impure in thought;
9. But, e'en his light and wildest juvenile strain,
The young and innocent may safely read;
And virgin loveliness may chant his song,
Nor blush to own it yields her ear delight.

10.

Religion, free from ostentatious pride,
Sectarian bigotry, and priestly guile;

The simple, pure religion taught by Christ-
Composed of meekness, charity, and love,
And speaking forth its faith sincere, in works-
Received the humble homage of his Muse.
11. And shall he perish in this Christian land-
His mother-land-whose weal to him so dear
He sought with all a patriot minstrel's zeal,
To heighten and confirm? Shall he, for bread
And raiment, perish midst her garnered stores?
12. Will she, whose bounty ne'er refused to flow
In aidance of a suffering stranger's wants-
Whose mercy, even in the battle storm,

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Where vengeful passions rage through flames and blood,
Has always listened to a suppliant foe,

Relieved his pains, and steeped his wounds in tears;
13. Whose gates against the poor of other climes
Were never barred-whose wide-extended arms-
Beneficent, humane, and generous laws,
Invite the houseless exile to a home,
And all the happiness that freedom yields-
Will she her languishing and helpless Bard
Deny the little boon for which he pleads?

14. Since Coffin's name must swell the mournful list
Of Poets, whom misfortune has not spared,

Save, save him, Heaven! from that most wretched doom
Which closed the poor unfriended Otway's days;

Nor add his name to that more awful roll

Where Chatterton and Carey lead the band!

15. And O! protect him from the dreadful fate
Which rent and shattered the seraphic lyre
By Collins to celestial measures woke
And crushed the fabric of his splendid mind!

1.

LESSON LIX.

The same continued.

And must this hapless child of genius starve? O! what is wealth in hands that will not save From want's benumbing blast a mind like his? A mind with fancy's richest stores replete― Conceptions tender, beautiful and pure! 2. Can man in barren piles of golden dust, Amassed for pomp and show alone, delight, Nor yield a grain to sooth a brother's woes? Can human hearts regard with higher joy Their richly furnished domes, and spreading farms, Than happy souls from pain and want relieved By their own noble deeds?

3.

4.

5.

6.

Can life be sweet-
Can conscience wear an angel's form to him-
And dreams of pleasure round his pillow smile-
Who, while his riches feed his selfish pride,
And rise like frozen mountains in the sun,
A cold, inhospitable, glittering mass!
Can see a son of genius pine and die
In penury, nor share with him a part―
One little part of all his useless pelf?

Can parents hear the sufferer's mournful wail
And keep the fountains of their pity closed?
Think, fathers! mothers, think! those darling babes
In whom your hopes-and bliss-concentre now-
Around whose little hearts your life-strings twine,
May yet be doomed to drink the bitter wave
That gushes from misfortune's sable urn.

They, too, although their morning opens bright,
May feel affliction's tempests round them beat,
Long ere their noon of life has come; and clouds,
Black clouds, may darken their descending sun.
They, too, when your devoted hearts are cold,
And pulseless, in the tomb-in helpless wo

Poor shivering outcasts from the domes of wealth,
Without one breast of kindred softness near

To melt for them-may raise their suppliant cry
For food and shelter for their starving frames.
Be generous, then, to the dependent Bard,
And righteous Heaven your bounty will return
In copious blessings on your offspring showered.
D. BRYAN.

LESSON LX.

Description of a Storm.

1. Once, at high noon, amidst a sultry calm,
Looking around for comfort, I descried,
Far on the green horizon's utmost verge,
A wreath of cloud; to me a glad discovery,
For each new image sprang a new idea,
The germ of thoughts to come, that could not die.
2. The little vapour rapidly expanded,

Lowering and thickening till it hid the sun,
And threw a starless night upon the sea.
Eagerly, tremblingly, I watch'd the end.
Faint gleam'd the lightning, follow'd by no peal;
Dreary and hollow moans foretold a gale;
3. Nor long the issue tarried; then the wind,
Unprison'd, blew its trumpet loud and shrill;
Out flash'd the lightnings gloriously; the rain
Came down like music, and the full-toned thunder
Roll'd in grand harmony throughout high heaven:
Till ocean, breaking from his black supineness,
Drown'd in his own stupendous uproar all
The voices of the storm beside.

4.

Meanwhile
A war of mountains raged upon his surface;
Mountains each other swallowing, and again
New Alps and Andes, from unfathom'd valleys
Upstarting, join'd the battle; like those sons
Of earth,-giants, rebounding as new-born
From every fall on their unwearied mother.
5. I glow'd with all the rapture of the strife:

Beneath was one wild whirl of foaming surges:
Above the array of lightnings, like the swords

6.

Of cherubim, wide brandish'd, to repel

Aggression from heaven's gates; their faming strokes
Quench'd momentarily in the vast abyss.

The voice of Him who walks upon the wind,
And sets his throne upon the floods, rebuked

The headlong tempest in its mid-career,

And turn'd its horrors to magnificence.

7. The evening sun broke through the embattled clouds,
And threw round sky and sea, as by enchantment,
A radiant girdle, binding them to peace,

In the full rainbow's harmony of beams;
No brilliant fragment, but one sevenfold circle,
That spann'd the horizon, meted out the heavens,
And underarch'd the ocean. 'Twas a scene,
That left itself for ever on my mind.

MONTGOMERY.

LESSON LXI.

Character of Napoleon Bonaparte

1. Nature had no obstacles that he did not surmountspace no opposition that he did not spurn: and, whether amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or Polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, and empowered with ubiquity! The whole continent of Europe trembled at beholding the audacity of his designs, and the miracle of their execution.

2. Scepticism bowed to the prodigies of his performance; romance assumed the air of history, nor was there aught too incredible for helief, or too fanciful for explanation, when the work saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most ancient capitals. All the visions

of antiquity became common-places in his contemplation; kings were his people; nations were his outposts; and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as if they were the titular dignitaries of the chess-board!

3. Amid all these changes, he stood immutables adamant. It mattered little whether in the field or the drawingroom, with the mob or the levee,-wearing the Jacobin bonnet or the iron crown,-banishing a Braganza, or espousing a Hapsburg,-dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia, or contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leipsic, he was still the same military despot!

Cradled in the camp, he was, to the last hour, the darling of the army; and, whether in the camp or the cabinet, he never forsook a friend or forgot a favour. Of all his soldiers, not one abandoned him till affection was useless; and their first stipulation was for the safety of their favourite. They knew well, that, if he was lavish of them, he was prodigal of himself; and that, if he exposed them to peril, he repaid them with plunder.

5. For the soldier, he subsidized every body; to the people he made even pride pay tribute. The victorious veteran glittered with his gains; and the capital, gorgeous with the spoils of art, became the miniature metropolis of the universe. In this wonderful combination, his affectation of literature must not be omitted.

6. The gaoler of the press, he affected the patronage of letters, the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy, the persecutor of authors, and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the protection of learning!—the assassin of Palm, the silencer of De Stael, and the denouncer of Kotzebue, he was the friend of David, the benefactor of De Lille, and sent his academic prize to the philosopher of England.*

7. Such a medley of contradictions, and at the same time such an individual consistency, were never before united in the same character. A Royalist, a Republican, and an Emperor,-a Mahometan, a Catholic, and a patron of the Synagogue,―a Subaltern and a Sovereign,—a Traitor and a Tyrant, a Christian and an Infidel,--he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same sternt, inflexible original,—the same mysterious, incomprehensible self,the man without a model, and without a shadow.

8. His fall, like his life, baffled all speculation; in short, his whole history was like a dream to the world, and no man can tell how or why he was awakened from the reverie. Such is a faint and feeble picture of Napoleon Bonaparte.

9. That he has done much evil, there is little doubt; that he has been the origin of much good, there is just as little. Through his means, intentional or not, Spain, Portugal, and France, have risen to the blessings of a free constitution: Superstition has found her grave in the ruins of the

* Sir H. Davy.

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