is flung half-dead into the cockpit, for he then perceives the extreme consciousness of his existence, in his conflict with external matter, in the violence of his will, and his obstinate contempt for suffering.'

'Englishmen do not like to smell to a rose, or to taste of made dishes, or to listen to soft music, or to look at fine pictures, or to make or hear fine speeches, or to enjoy themselves, or amuse others. But they will knock any man down who tells them so; their sole delight is to be as uncomfortable and disagreeable as possible. To them the greatest labour is, to be pleased: they hate to have nothing to find fault with; to expect them to smile or to converse on equal terms, is the heaviest tax you can levy on their want of animal spirits or intellectual resources. A drop of pleasure is the most difficult thing to extract from their hard, dry, mechanical, husky frame! A civil word or look is the last thing they can part with!

'As long as they can swear, they are excused from being complimentary if they have to fight they need not think. While they are provoked beyond measure, they are relieved from the dreadful obligation of being pleased.

'Leave them to themselves and they are dull; introduce them into company and they are worse. An Englishman is silent abroad from having nothing to say; and looks stupid-because he is so.'

Such is the patriotism, the English feeling, which fills the bewildered brains and bitter heart of this author.

We have already gone farther into detail than such a work deserves. It was written for the columns of a newspaper, and much as has been left in, we can conceive that the taste and prudence of the editor has cast much out. But whether as a collection of views of foreign manners, or of intelligence of the arts, habits, and knowledge of France and Italy, it is puerile.

NOTICES.

ART. X. Abbassah, an Arabian Tale. In two Cantos. 8vo. pp. 116. London. Anderson. 1826.

THE circumstances which form the foundation of this tale, are so well calculated for poetry, that we are surprised they escaped the notice of Lord Byron. Abbassah was the sister of the celebrated caliph, Haroun Al Rashid, and, by his order, she married his favourite vizier, Giaffier, upon the monstrous condition that they should never meet, except in Haroun's presence. This condition was not long observed. A child was the fruit of their secret intercourse; it was betrayed to the caliph, who, failing to discover the babe, directed Giaffier to be put to death, and Abbassah to be condemned to mendicancy. Brief as this outline is, it is sufficient to indicate the nature of a theme, which, in the hands of a superior poet, might be rendered dramatic and affecting in the highest degree. Besides the varied characters belonging to it, it affords room for the expression of the most exquisite emotions which can affect the bosom of a lover, a wife, a parent, a widow, and a princess reduced from splendour to the lowest misery.

It was a great oversight in the author, in the first instance, to represent Abbassah herself as the narrator of the principal part of the tale. Her sufferings, her sense of present and enduring affliction, would prevent her, according to the natural order of things, from having the power to tell of her misfortunes in any other language than that of uniform despair. He thus precludes himself from developing the other characters belonging to the tale, from diversifying it with sketches of scenery, from enlivening it with a variety of incidents, or with any thing in the shape of episodical ornaments; for a woman overwhelmed in woe, like Abbassah, has no memory or imagination for any thing but the tumultuous feelings which rise up within her at the bare thought of her privations. As if to compensate for this want of variety, the author has devoted five hundred lines of his first canto to general reflections upon the scenery of Bagdad, and upon the characters of several of the earliest sovereigns of the east, from Nimrod down to Mahomet.

The following we esteem among the best lines of the poem. Abbassah is describing her nuptials.

"Our law had join'd us-ne'er to part -
That feeling swell'd upon my heart
And choked its utterance; all things seem'd
As if my troubled spirit dream'd;
Half waking;-dimly conscious still:-
But void of thought-of power-of will.
I tried to speak—a murmur rung,
Falter'd, and died upon my tongue;
Thick shadows all around me came;
My brain in wild confusion swam;
A doubling echo fill'd my ear,
He spoke to me,-I could not hear:
Distraction triumph'd in my breast,
My senses sunk-but not in rest.
Night waned apace, and Haroun rose;
They went-but could I thus repose?
Oh; no-for as the lingering door
Closed on his form, I felt no more
The cloud that late my soul o'erhung;
Upon the couch my limbs I flung
But not to slumber: all was changed;
The chaos of my thoughts arranged;
Sinking no more with shame, with awe,
I breathed again-and heard-and saw-
Saw but that past-which seem'd to be
The present hour's reality:

Sooner, his absence might have grieved,
But now I found my heart relieved;
And every faculty, unchain'd,
Flow'd free, in impulse unrestrain'd.
Night spread around-but night so fair
My frenzy seem'd to fill the air
With angel voices: morning's light

Broke in bright lastre-oh, how bright!
The sun in burning radiance came,
I met it, with a soul of flame.

I ran, with restless feet, to press
The garden's fragrant wilderness,

And sought my bower: but could not stay,
Some feeling forced my steps to stray:
Wide stretch'd above the broad, blue sky,
Fresh worlds seem'd opening from on high:
Where'er I moved an Eden bloom'd;
A secret bliss my breast illumed;
Rapt, as when first the spirit eyes
The blooming bowers of Paradise,
And feels its balmy gales bestow
A purer sense-a holier glow.
Earth, air, and heaven, appear'd my own;
Throughout their space I breathed alone;
All nature thrill'd with ecstasy;
Creation hung outspread for me;

And brightly smiled the future then,

As life could never frown again.'-pp. 65—67.

The merit of this passage, and indeed the principal merit of the poem, is, that it forcibly and clearly expresses strong emotion. The following lines are framed in a more gentle key.

"Yes!-blest indeed the mother feels

That, placed her infant's couch beside,
While sleep its little senses seals,
And time's light pinion lightest steals,
Bends o'er her bud-her joy-her pride!
So dark a shroud involves those eyes,
So hush'd th' unconscious slumberer lies,
So deeply heaved the breath it draws,
So slow subsiding in that pause
When the pure life of infancy
From mortal stain and suffering free,-
The being, just begun to be,-
Flows purest;-and that sweet repose
Without a shade, a breath, a dream,
To curl the stillness of its stream,
A holier charm o'er nature throws:
Diffusing, 'mid the haunts of men,
So calm, so pure a feeling then,
As though beneath her guardian care
Some heavenly essence slumber'd there,
And silent angels deign'd to keep
Their vigil o'er an infant's sleep!
There has attention hung-to trace
The loveliest traits of human race;
Gazing so long, that slumber stole
Contagious o'er the hovering soul;

Lull'd the soft tumult of the breast,
And soothed even rapture into rest.

My child!-my child!-how every hour
Bore brighter hues for thee, my flower!-
How, in the harem's bower apart,
With thee to occupy the heart,
Its every thought with thee imbrued,
How have I loved that solitude!
There have I, musing, joyed to see
Thy father's image dawn in thee;
There watch'd, as but a parent can,
Thy tiny gestures mimic man;
There loved thy little bed to smooth,
And lull the pang I could not soothe;
Have wept to see thy griefs o'erflow,
Thy pigmy energy of woe;

And felt the dear, returning smile

With thine, thy mother's pain beguile!
There too, affection loved to trace

One look maternal on thy face;

One transient gleam, though lightly thrown,

That told the heart thou wert my own!"'-pp. 77—79.

These passages, however, though by no means inelegant, are not sufficient to redeem the two cantos from the heaviness-the mediocritywhich oppresses them. The writer appears to have travelled in Asia, and to have acquired some knowledge of its history; at least we can collect as much from the notes, for in the poem itself we would look in vain for any associations that speak "of the land of the cypress and

myrtle."

ART. XI. Shakspeare's Romances, collected and arranged by Shakspeare II. 2 vols. 12mo. London. 1825.

THIS is a specimen of a foolish attempt to metamorphose Shakspeare's plays into romances, because,' in the opinion of Shakspeare II.' as expressed in his ill-written preface, they are rather uninteresting to read, though uncommonly fine for acting.' (pp. ix. x.) The two volumes before us contain only one of the plays thus intended to be done into novels; it is the first part of Henry the Fourth. The author's plan is a simple one: it consists merely in changing into bad prose the delicious versification of Shakspeare; and even in doing this he shows himself to be as ignorant of what prose ought to be, as the worthy Bourgeois gentilhomme who had talked it all his life without knowing it, for he does not even disguise a rhyme. He gives us, for instance, Harry to Harry shall hot horse to horse, meet and ne'er part till one drop down a corse,' as part of a plain prose conversation. The prose passages of the play are generally given as printed in Shakspeare, without much other debasement than says I's, says he's, and the author's own descriptions; but this is not always the case. We are sometimes favoured with an original scene,

in which Falstaff himself is actually introduced. Of his powers of managing Falstaff and Prince Hal take the following sample:- "No, no," answered his royal highness," I can't give it you. By 'r lady, old dad will put on a commanding countenance, stern as the Saracen's Head, if a grey-nobbed veteran call not that post his. You shall have it, Bob, that is," rejoined Hal, "you and Spencer shall toss up for it. Sky a coin, Poins, and let the twain call. I will to horse. But oh! here comes plump Jack, with Bardolph like a canister to the fat dog's tail. What brings you to Windsor, Sir John?"-" An indifferent horse and a good inclination," cried Falstaff. My lords, my service to you. Why, Hal, what a crowd hast thou girdling thy presence. A gentleman of my bulk finds as much difficulty to come at you as a man crosses 'Change at two o'clock, or squeezes into St. Paul's choir on a Sunday whilst they are singing of an anthem." (pp. 91, 92.) Some more trash of the same kind follows, and the chapter concludes by this exclamation of the new Falstaff, "War and good pay are as natural to me as oats to a game-cock.” (Vol. ii. p. 94.)

Ex his dice Shakspeare the Second's wit and his talents for manufacfacturing novels out of plays. If he persist in his design upon the present pattern, Shakspeare will not, perhaps, make more than eighty volumes. The narrative by which the speeches are connected is rendered utterly unreadable by the author's flippancy of manner.

ART. XII. Hints to Purchasers of Horses. 12mo. pp. 72. London. C. Knight.

EVERY trade, it is said, has its secret. The maxim is peculiarly applicable to the trade in horses, for it is certain that dealers in that necessary article are very rarely to be found who have the least pretension to honesty. Imposition and fraud are not only practised by them in the most open manner, but those who treat with them generally know what they have to expect, though not always prepared to guard against it. To such we would recommend the "Hints" which will be found in this little book. We do not mean to say that it will render an inexperienced purchaser all at once skilled in the points of a horse, or that it will sufficiently arm any man against the tricks of the dealers; but it explains, in a manner difficult to be misunderstood, the perfections requisite to form a good horse, and the defects that are sure to form a bad one. We select, as an example, the following rules for ascertaining a horse's age:

Yearlings and two-year-olds are alike in mouth, and must be judged by general appearance. At three years old, the horse has four horse teeth, two above, and two below, in front of the mouth, which supply the place of the sucking teeth. At four he has eight horse teeth, four above, and four below, having the corner teeth only sucking teeth. At five years old these are gone, and the mouth is up; that is, all the teeth are horse teeth, and the tusk is up on each side of the mouth. A dark mark, or hollow, is generally observable in all the teeth in the bottom jaw at just five years old; and the tusks are concave in their inner surface. At six, the two middle teeth have quite lost this mark, and the tusk is higher up,