There is perhaps too much of terrible and gloomy painting, yet it enchains the attention of the reader, and impresses the imagination with something like dramatic force. Mr Atherstone's second subject is of the same elevated cast: the downfall of an Asiatic empire afforded ample room for his love of strong and magnificent description, and he has availed himself of this license so fully, as to border in many passages on extravagance and bombast. His battle scenes, his banquets, flowering groves, and other descriptions of art and nature, are all executed with oriental splendour and voluptuousness-often with dazzling vividness and beauty and true poetical feeling. The failure of the author to sustain the interest of the reader is owing, as a contemporary critic pointed out, to the very palpable excess in which he employs all those elements of pleasing, and to the disproportion which those ornaments of the scene bear to its actual business-to the slowness with which the story moves forward, and the difficulty we have in catching a distinct view of the characters that are presented to us, through the glare of imagery and eloquence with which they This is the fault of genius-especially young genius-and if Mr Atherstone could subdue his oriental imagination and gorgeousness of style, and undertake a theme of more ordinary life, and of simple natural passion and description, he might give himself a name of some importance in the literature of his age. are surrounded.' The following passages, descriptive of the splendour of Sardanapalus's state, have been cited as happy specimens of Mr Atherstone's style : The moon is clear-the stars are coming forth- A thousand golden lamps their lustre fling, * Like a mountain stream, Amid the silence of the dewy eve * * Heard by the lonely traveller through the vale, Through all the city sounds the voice of joy Purple and edged with gold; and, standing then Amid the far-off hills, * He comes at length The thickening thunder of the wheels is heard: Behind the car, [The Bower of Nehushta.] 'Twas a spot Herself had chosen, from the palace walls Farthest removed, and by no sound disturbed, And by no eye o'erlooked; for in the midst Of loftiest trees, umbrageous, was it hidYet to the sunshine open, and the airs That from the deep shades all around it breathed, Cool and sweet-scented. Myrtles, jessamineRoses of varied hues-all climbing shrubs, Green-leaved and fragrant, had she planted there, And trees of slender body, fruit, and flower; At early morn had watered, and at eve, From a bright fountain nigh, that ceaselessly Gushed with a gentle coil from out the earth, Its liquid diamonds flinging to the sun 65 With a soft whisper. To a graceful arch Of heroes of old days: the harp, sometimes, In 1833 appeared two cantos of a descriptive poem, The Heliotrope, or Pilgrim in Pursuit of Health, being the record of a poetical wanderer in Liguria, Hetruria, Campania, and Calabria. The style and versification of Byron's Childe Harold are evidently copied by the author; but he has a native taste and elegance, and a purer system of philosophy than the noble poet. Many of the stanzas are musical and picturesque, presenting Claude-like landscapes of the glorious classic scenes through which the pilgrim passed. We subjoin the description of Pompeiithat interesting city of the dead : Pompeia! disentombed Pompeia! Here Shook to its centre, the convulsive soil No subterfuge! The pillared crypt, and cave Within the circus, tribunal, and shrine, It seems but yesterday! Half sculptured there, The streets are hollowed by the rolling car The author of the Heliotrope' is DR W. BEATTIE, a London physician of worth, talent, and benevolence, who is also author of Scotland Illustrated, Switzerland Illustrated, Residence in the Court of Germany, &c. CHARLES LAMB. CHARLES LAMB, a poet, and a delightful essayist, of quaint peculiar humour and fancy, was born in London on the 18th February 1775. His father was in humble circumstances, servant and friend to one of the benchers of the Inner Temple; but Charles was presented to the school of Christ's hospital, and from his seventh to his fifteenth year he was an inmate of that ancient and munificent asylum. Lamb was a nervous, timid, and thoughtful boy: 'while others were all fire and play, he stole along with all the self-concentration of a monk.' He would have obtained an exhibition at school, admitting him to college, but these exhibitions were given under the implied if not expressed condition of entering into the church, and Lamb had an impediment in his speech, which in this case proved an insuperable obstacle. In 1792 he obtained an appointment in the accountant's office of the East India Company, residing with his parents; and on their death,' says Sergeant Talfourd, he felt himself called upon by duty to repay to his sister the solicitude with which she had watched over his infancy, and well, indeed, he performed it. To her, from the age of twenty-one, he devoted his existence, seeking thenceforth no connexion which could interfere with her supremacy in his affections, or impair his ability to sustain and to comfort her.' The first compositions of Lamb were in verse, prompted, probably, by the poetry of his friend Coleridge. A warm admiration of the Elizabethan dramatists led him to imitate their style and manner in a tragedy named John Woodvil, which was published in 1801, and mercilessly ridiculed in the Edinburgh Review as a specimen of the rudest state of the drama. There is much that is exquisite both in sentiment and expression in Lamb's play, but the plot is certainly meagre, and the style had then an appearance of affectation. The following description of the sports in the forest has a truly antique air, like a passage in Heywood or Shirley : To see the sun to bed, and to arise, Go eddying round; and small birds how they fare, To view the graceful deer come tripping by, To mark the structure of a plant or tree, thorough appreciation of the spirit of the old dramatists, and a fine critical taste in analysing their genius. Some of his poetical pieces were also composed about this time; but in these efforts Lamb barely indicated his powers, which were not fully displayed till the publication of his essays signed Elia, originally printed in the London Magazine. In these his curious reading, nice observation, and poetical conceptions, found a genial and befitting field. They are all,' says his biographer, Sergeant Talfourd, carefully elaborated; yet never were works written in a higher defiance to the conventional pomp of style. A sly hit, a happy pun, a humorous combination, lets the light into the intricacies of the subject, and supplies the place of ponderous sentences. Seeking his materials for the most part in the common paths of life-often in the humblest-he gives an importance to everything, and sheds a grace over all.' In 1825 Lamb was emancipated from the drudgery of his situation as clerk in the India House, retiring with a handsome pension, which enabled him to enjoy the comforts, and many of the luxuries of life. In a letter to Wordsworth, he thus describes his sensations after his release: I came home FOR EVER on Tuesday week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelmed me. It was like passing from life into eternity. Every year to be as long as three; that is, to have three times as much real timetime that is my own-in it! I wandered about thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But that tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the gift. Holidays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys, with their conscious fugitiveness, the craving after making the most of them. Now, when all is holiday, there are no holidays. I can sit at home, in rain or shine, without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own master, as it has been irksome to have had a master.' He removed to a cottage near Islington, and in the following summer, went with his faithful sister and companion on a long visit to Enfield, which ultimately led to his giving up his cottage, and becoming a constant resident at that place. There he lived for about five years, delighting his friends with his correspondence and occasional visits to London, displaying his social racy humour and active benevolence. In 1830 he committed to the press a small volume of poems, entitled Album Verses, the gleanings of several years, and he occasionally sent a contribution to some literary periodical. In September 1835, whilst taking his daily walk on the London road, he stumbled against a stone, fell, and slightly injured his face. The accident appeared trifling, but erysipelas in the face came on, and in a few days proved fatal. He was buried in the churchyard at Edmonton, amidst the tears and regrets of a circle of warmly attached friends, and his memory was consecrated by a tribute from the muse of Wordsworth. complete edition of Lamb's works has been published by his friend Mr Moxon, and his reputation is still on the increase. For this he is mainly indebted to his essays. We cannot class him among the favoured sons of Apollo, though in heart and feeling he might sit with the proudest. The peculiarities of his style were doubtless grafted upon him by his constant study and life-long admiration of the old English writers. Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Jeremy Taylor, Browne, Fuller, and others of the elder worthies (down to Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle), were his chosen companions. He knew all their fine sayings and noble thoughts; and, consulting his own heart after his hard day's plodding at the A India House, at his quiet fireside (ere his reputation | Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, was established, and he came to be over-compa- Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling? nied' by social visitors), he invested his original So might we talk of the old familiar faces— thoughts and fancies, and drew up his curious analogies and speculations in a garb similar to that which his favourites wore. Then Lamb was essentially a town-man-a true Londoner-fond as Johnson of Fleet Street and the Strand-a frequenter How some they have died, and some they have left of the theatre, and attached to social habits, courtesies, and observances. His acute powers of observation were constantly called into play, and his warm sympathies excited by the shifting scenes around him. His kindliness of nature, his whims, puns, and prejudices, give a strong individuality to his writings; while in playful humour, critical taste, and choice expression, Charles Lamb may be considered among English essayists a genuine and original master. To Hester. When maidens such as Hester die, A month or more she hath been dead, To think upon the wormy bed, A springy motion in her gait, Of pride and joy no common rate, I know not by what name beside Her parents held the Quaker rule, A waking eye, a prying mind, My sprightly neighbour! gone before Some summer morning, The Old Familiar Faces. I have had playmates, I have had companions, I have been laughing, I have been carousing, I loved a love once, fairest among women; I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man; Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood; me, And some are taken from me; all are departed; A Farewell to Tobacco. May the Babylonish curse Or a language to my mind (Still the phrase is wide or scant), To take leave of thee, Great Plant ! Or in any terms relate Half my love, or half my hate: For I hate, yet love thee so, The plain truth will seem to be A constrained hyperbole, More from a mistress than a weed. Sooty retainer to the vine, 'Gainst women: thou thy siege dost lay While thou suck'st the lab'ring breath Thou in such a cloud dost bind us, Shoots at rovers, shooting at us; While each man, through thy height'ning steam, Does like a smoking Etna seem, And all about us does express Thou through such a mist dost show us, Bacchus we know, and we allow Brother of Bacchus, later born, Or judge of thee meant: only thou His true Indian conquest art; Scent to match thy rich perfume For the smaller sort of boys, Stinking'st of the stinking kind, Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind, Nay, rather, Plant divine, of rarest virtue ; To paint forth their fairest fair, Or in part but to express But no other way they know Or, as men, constrained to part For I must (nor let it grieve thee, Where, though I, by sour physician, Of thy favours, I may catch Some collateral sweets, and snatch And in thy borders take delight, An unconquered Canaanite. The following are selections from Lamb's Essays, which contain more of the exquisite materials of poetry than his short occasional verses. Dream-Children-A Reverie. Cer Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children; to stretch their imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in which they and papa lived), which had been the scene so at least it was generally believed in that part of the country-of the tragic incidents which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. tain it is that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts, till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, too tender to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to say how religious and how good their greatgrandmother Field was, how beloved and respected by everybody, though she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoining county; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner's other house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately at the abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, 'that would be foolish indeed.' And then I told how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the neighbourhood for many miles round, to show their respect for her memory, because she had been such a good and religious woman; so good, indeed, that she knew all the Psalter by heart, ay, and a Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave thee; great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice For thy sake, Tobacco, I spread her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their great-grandmother Field once was; and how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer. Here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted-the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain; but it could never bend her good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so good and religious. Then I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house; and how she believed that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down |