mdustry and talent. The old national claimants on public generosity, sailors with wooden legs and broken-down "match-venders," have given way to Polish "Counts" and Bavarian "broom-girls." Bulwer thought himself a lucky dog, a few weeks ago, to have got a day's work on a political pamphlet, that being part of the craft which no foreigner has yet monopolised. The job was soon done; though 'twas but a sorry hit, after all. He is now engaged on a pathetic romaunt of real life, the "Last Days of Grub Street." Matters must have gone hard with Tom Moore, since we learn with deep feelings of compassion that he is driven to compile a "History of Ireland." Theodore Hook, determined to make hay while the sun shines, has taken the "Bull" by the horns: we are to have three vols. 8vo. of "rost bif." Theodore! hast thou never ruminated the axiom- "Un diner réchauffé ne valut jamais rien ?" Tom Campbell, hopeless of giving to public taste any other save a foreign direction, has gone to Algiers, determined on exploring the recondite literature of the Bedouins. He has made surprising progress in the dialects of Fez, Tunis, and Mauritania; and, like Ovid among the Scythians "Jam didici Geticè Sarmaticèque loqui.” He may venture too far into the interior, and some barbarian prince may detain him as a laureate. We may hear of his being "bound in Morocco." This taste for foreign belles lettres is subject to variation and vicissitude. The gorgeous imaginings of Oriental fancy, of which the "Arabian Nights," and the elegant Eclogues of Collins, were the dawn, have had their day: the sun of the East has gone down, in the western tale of the “Fireworshippers.' A surfeit is the most infallible cure; we recollect the voracity with which "Lalla Rookh" was at first devoured, and the subsequent disrelish for that most lusci *The projected republication of these facetiæ has not taken place, though announced at the time in two volumes post 8vo. Albany Fonblanque subsequently reprinted his articles from the "Examiner." ous volume. There is an end to the popularity once enjoyed by camels, houris, bulbuls, silver bells, silver veils, cinnamon groves, variegated lamps, and such other stock items as made up the Oriental show-box. This leads to a melancholy train of thought we detect ourselves "wandering in dreams" to that period of our school-days when Tom was in high feather, "And oft when alone, at the close of the year, We think,-Is the nightingale singing there yet? He has tried his hand at Upper Canada and Lower Egyptand spent some Evenings in Greece;" but "disastrous twilight" and the "chain of silence" (whatever that ornament may be) now hangs over him. "Hora Sinica" found favour in the "barbarian eye;" Viscount Kingsborough has been smitten with the brunette muses of Mexico. Lord Byron once set up "Hebrew Melodies," and had a season of it; but Murray was soon compelled to hang the noble poet's Jew's-harp on the willows of modern Babylon. We recollect when there was a rage for German and High Dutch poetry. The classics of Greece and Rome, with their legitimate descendants, those of France, Italy, and England, were flung aside for the writers of Scandinavia and the poets of the Danube. Tired of nectar and ambrosia, my public sat down to a platter of sauerkraut with Kant, Goethe, and Klopstock. The chimeras of transcendental and transrhenane philosophers found admirers!-'twas the reign of the nightmare— Omnigenûmque Deûm monstra, et latrator Anubis, Eneid VIII, But latterly Teutonic authors are at a discount; and, in spite of the German confederacy of quacks and dunces, common sense has resumed its empire. Not that we object to foreign literature, provided we get productions of genius. and taste. The Romans in their palmiest days of conquest gave a place in the Pantheon to the gods of each province they had added to their empire; but they took care to select the most graceful and godlike of these foreign deities, eschewing what was too ugly to figure in company with Apollo. Turn we now to Prout and his gleanings in the fertile field of his selection, "Hesperiâ in magnâ." March 1st, 1835. OLIVER YORKE. Watergrasshill, Feh. 1830. I RESUME to-night the topic of Italian minstrelsy. In conning over a paper penned by me a few evenings ago, I do not feel satisfied with the tenour of my musings. The start from the fountain of Vaucluse was fair; but after gliding along the classic Po and the majestic Tiber, it was an unseemly termination of the essay to engulf itself in the cavity of a bob-wig. An unlucky "cul de sac," into which I must have strolled under sinister guidance. Did Molly put an extra glass into my vesper bowl? When the frost is abroad and the moon is up, and naught disturbs the serenity of this mountain wilderness, and the bright cheerful burning of the fragrant turf-fire betokens the salubrity of the circumambient atmosphere, I experience a buoyancy of spirit unknown to the grovelling sensualist or the votary of fashion. To them it rarely occurs to know that highest state of enjoyment, expressed with curious felicity in the hemistich of Juvenal, "Mens sana in corpore sano." Could they relish with blind old Milton the nocturnal visitings of poesy; or feel the deep enthusiasm of those ancient hermits who kept the desert awake with canticles of praise; or, with the oldest of poets, the Arabian Job, commune with heaven, and raise their thoughts to the Being "who giveth songs in the night" (Job xxxv. 10), they would acknowledge that mental luxuries are cheaply purchased by the relinquishment of grosser delights. A Greek (Eustathius) gives to Night the epithet of supporn, or "parent of happy thoughts:" and the "Noctes Attica" of Aulus Gellius are a noble prototype of numerous lucubrations rejoicing in a similar title, from the "Mille et une Nuits" to the "Notti Romane al Sepolcro degli Scipioni," from Young's plaintive "Night Thoughts" to the " Ambro sian" pernoctations called ambrosianæ,-all oearing testi mony to the genial influence of the stilly hour. The bird o Minerva symbolized wisdom, from the circumstance of its contempt for the vulgarities of day; and Horace sighs with becoming emotion when he calls to his recollection the glorious banquetings of thought and genius of which the able goddess was the ministrant-O noctes cœnæque Deûm ! Tertullian tells us, in the second chapter of the immortal "Apology," that the early Christians spent the night in pious "melodies," that morning often dawned upon their "songs”—antelucanis horis canebant. He refers to the testimony of Pliny (the Proconsul's letter to Trajan) for the truth of his statement. Yet, with all these matters staring him in the face, Tom Moore, led away by his usual levity, and addressing some foolish girl, thinks nothing of the proposal "to steal a few hours from the night, my dear !”—a sacrilege, which, in his eye, no doubt, amounted only to a sort of petty larceny. But Tom Campbell, with that philosophic turn of mind for which he is so remarkable, connects the idea of inspiration with the period of “sunset:" the evening of life, never failing to bring "mystical lore." Impressed with these convictions, the father of Italian song, in the romantic dwelling which he had built unto himself on the sloping breast of the Euganeian hills, spent the decline of his days in the contemplation of loftiest theories, varying his nocturnal devotions with the sweet sound of the lute, and rapt in the alternate Elysium of piety and poetry. In these ennobling raptures he exhaled the sweet perfume of his mind's immortal essence, which gradually disengaged itself from its vase of clay. "Oblivion stole upon his vestal lamp:" and one morning he was found dead in his library, reclining in an arm-chair, his head resting on a book, 20th July, 1374. Whether the enviable fate of Petrarca will be mine, I know not. But, like him, I find in literature and the congenial admixture of holier meditations a solace and a comfort in old age. In his writings, in his loves, in his sorrows, in the sublime aspirations of his soul, I can freely sympathise. Laura is to me the same being of exalted excellence and cherished purity; and, in echoing from this remote Irish hill the strains of his immortal lyre, I hope to |