With other notes than to the Orphean lyre, |
I sung of chaos, and eternal night; |

Taught by the heavenly muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to re-ascend`, |

Though hard, and rare,: thee I revisit safe', |
And feel thy sovereign, vital lamp; but thou
Revisit'st not these eyes that roll in vain, |
To find thy piercing ray, | and find no dawn; |
So thick a drop serene hath quench'd their orbs
Or dim suffusion veil'd. |

Yet not the more |
Cease, I, to wander where the muses haunt,]
Clear spring, or shady grove', or sunny hill, |
Sinit with the love of sacred song; but chief
Thee, Sion, and the flow'ry brooks beneath, |
That wash thy hallow'd feet, and "warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: | nor sometimes forget
Those other two, equall'd with me in fate', |
('So were I equall'd with them in renown) |
Blind Thamyris, and blind Mæon'ides, |
And Tyre'sias, and Phineas, prophets old: |
Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird
Sings dark ling, and in shadiest covert hid, |
Tunes her nocturnal notes. J

Thus with the year,
Sea'sons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of e'en', or morn
Or sight of vernal bloom', or summer's rose',
Or flocks', or herds, or human face divine. ; |
'But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds, me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair, |
Presented with a universal blank

Of nature's works, to me expung'd and raz'd, |

a

Drop serene, gutta serena, a disease of the eye, attended wit loss of vision, the organ retaining its natural transparency,

And wisdom, at one entrance, quite shut out. !
So much the rather thou, celestial Light, |
Shine in ward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate: there' plant eyes, all mist from thence |
Purge, and disperse, that I may see, and tell |
Of things invisible to mortal sight. |

HYDER ALI.

[Extract from Mr. Burke's Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts.]

Among the victims to this magnificent plan of universal plunder, pursued by the company in India, so worthy of the heroic avarice of the projectors, you have all heard (and he has made himself to be well remembered) of an Indian Chief, called Hyder Ali Khan. This man possessed the western, as the company under the Nabob of Arcot, does the eastern

division of the Carnatic.* It was among the leading measures in the design of this cabal (according to their own emphatic language) to extir'pate this Hyder Ali. | They declared the Nabob of Arcot to be his sovereign, i and himself to be a rebel, and publicly invested their instrument with the sovereignty of the kingdom of Mysore. But their victim was not of the pas'sive kind : :| they were soon obliged to conclude a treaty of peace, and close alliance with this rebel, at the gates of Madras. I

Both before, and since' that treaty, every principle of policy pointed out this power as a natural alliance; | and, on his part, it was courted by every sort of ami

"The Carnatic is that portion of southern India which runs along the coast of Coromandel. Its length is 500 miles, and its breadth from 50 to 100, and it belongs to the East India Company. Hyder Ali and the Nabob of Arcot were neighbor.ng princes, — but the Nabob held his power from the Company. The Company lent themselves to the Nabob's schemes of ambition, the object of which was (as usual), to enlarge his own dominion at the expense of that of Hyder Ali." Plant eyes; not plantize.

cable office. But the cabinet council of English creditors would not suffer their Nabob of Arcot to sign the treaty, nor even to give to a prince', at least his equal, the ordinary titles of respect, and courtesy. I From that time forward, a continued plot' was carried on within the divan, black, and white, of the Nabob of Arcot, for the destruction of this Hyder Ali. | As to the outward members of the double, or rather treble government of Madras, which had signed the treaty, they were always prevented by some overruling influence (which they do not describe, | but which cannot be misunderstood) from performing what justice, and interest | combined so evidently to enforce.

When at length Hyder Ali | found that he had to do with men who either would sign no convention, | or whom no treaty, and no signature could bind, and who were the determined enemies of human intercourse itself, he decreed to make the country possessed by these incorrigible, and predestinated criminals, a memorable example to mankind. He resolved, in the gloomy recesses of a mind, capacious of such things, ] to leave the whole Carnatic | an everlasting monument of vengeance, and to put perpetual desola'tion, as a barrier between him, and those against whom, the faith which holds the moral elements of the world together, was no protection.

He became at length so confident of his force, and so collected in his might, that he made no secret whatever of his dreadful resolution. Having terminated his disputes with every enemy, and every rival, who buried their mutual animosities in their common interest against the creditors of the Nabob of Arcot, he drew from every quarter, whatever a savage ferocity could add to his new rudiments in the art of destruction; and, compounding all the materials of fury, hav'oc, and desolation, into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of the mountains. | Whilst the authors of all these evils, I were idly, and stupidly

gazing on this menacing meteor (which blackened all the horizon) it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatic.

Then ensued a scene of wo; the like of which no eye had seen, nor heart conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell. All the horrors of war. before known, or heard of, were mercy to that new havoc. A storm of universal fire, blasted every field, consumed every house, and destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants, | flying from their flaming villages, in part, were slaughtered; others, without regard to sex', to age', to rank', or sacredness of function-fathers torn from their children, husbands, from wives, enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry, and amidst the goading spears of drivers, and the trampling of pursuing horses, were swept into captivity in an unknown, and hostile land. Those who were able to evade this tempest, fled to the walled cities; but escaping from fire', sword', and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine. I

this

For eighteen months', without intermission, destruction raged from the gates of Madras to the gates of Tanjore,; and so completely did these masters in their art, Hyder Ali, and his more ferocious son, | absolve themselves of their impious vow, that, when the British armies traversed, as they did, the Carnatic for hundreds of miles in all directions, through the whole line of their march, they did not see one man, not one woman, not one child, not one fourfooted beast of any description whatever. One dead, uniform silence, reigned over the whole region. |

DARKNESS.

(BYRON.)

I had a dream which was not all' a dream—,
The bright sun was extinguish'd; and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space, i

Rayless, and path less; and the icy earth |

Swung blind and black'ning in the moonless air,. |
Morn came, and went, and came, and brought no day ;]
And men forgot their passions in the dread

Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light. |

And they did live by watch'-fires; and the thrones, |
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts', |
The habitations of all things which dwell, |

Were burn'd for bea.cons. | Cities were consum'd; |
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes |
To look once more into each other's face. ]
Happy were they who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes, and their mountain-torch. |
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd ; |
Forests were set on fire; and hour by hour
They fell and faded and the crackling trunks |
Extinguish'd with a crash',- | and all was black. |

--

The brows of men, by the despairing light, |
Wore an unearthly as pect, as by fits

The flashes fell upon them. | Some lay down, |
And hid their eyes, and weph; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clinched hands, and smil'd ; |
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses, cast them down upon the dust', |
And gnash'd their teeth, and howl'd ̧. ]

The wild birds shriek'd, i
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, |
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes'
Came tame, and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd, |
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but sting less. They were slain for food; ¦
And war which, for a moment, was no more,