as far as I could judge, equally vigorous; and his predilection for poetry was rather the result of his own enthusiastic and impassionate temper, than of a genius exclusively adapted to that species of composition. From his conversation, I should have pronounced him to be fitted to excel in whatever walk of ambition he had chosen to exert his talents." We presume that Burns was no anomaly in this respect. We find the following passage in the introduction to "Ivanhoe: "But much more frequently the same capacity which carries a man to popularity in one department will obtain for him success in another, and that must be more particularly the case in literary composition than either in acting or painting, because the adventurer in that department is not impeded in his exertions by any peculiarity of features or conformation of person, proper for particular parts, or by any peculiar mechanical habits of using the pencil limited to a particular class of subjects." Poeta nascitur et fit. Homer might have out-Hectored Hector or out-generalled Agamemnon. Instances are on record of poets possessing no one-sided idiosyncrasy. The rack wrung out the religious and political dogmas of Southwell, Milton engaged successfully in politics, and Coleridge in metaphysics. The red field of Flodden may attest for Surrey, and a page in our annals for Scotland's poet-king. In short, excluding all considerations of competency, the poet and philosopher generally feel too dignified to splash in the gutter round the well-spring of fortune, retiring into a world exclusively their own. The mind is its own place, and of itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. Precedence attests to the probity of the words of Lord Lytton: "Are you discontented with the world? This world was never meant for genius, to exist it must create another. What magician can do more; nay, what science can do as much?" But be that world as it may, yet in respect to sublunary matters, the votary of the Muses is still somewhat on the same footing as when the Greek beggar sung the battle-songs of his immortal Iliad, when Otway and Savage starved, and Goldsmith wandered lorn by the "lazy Scheldt or wandering Po." Master-spirits that have scaled the rampart between merit and celebrity may pitch their tent pretty comfortably on the acme of Parnassus, but mediocrity may pass creditably in physic or forensic pursuits, or almost anywhere except in poetical composition. Si paulùm summo decessit, vergit ad imum. The numerous and squalid children of the Bathos must toil as laboriously on their pilgrimage to Helicon as the Palmers did to the holy sepulchre, and scramble up Parnassus as Hannibal did up the Alps, and with no congratulations but their own. We would naturally brand these madcaps as those who have resolved "against nature and their stars to write ;" but we are not sure but posterity may revoke our judgment, and brand us as undiscerning dolts. Sir Walter Raleigh, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Camden, Marlowe, Lodge, Peele, Seldon, &c., were all men of the Elizabethan age, and two or three of them greater men of mark than their contemporary, "Immortal Will." We may remark that in him, however, we fail to find the poet a half mendicant, half ethereal being. The business of life, as well as its romance, engaged successfully some of the energies of the "myriad-minded Shakespeare." Perhaps, like Sir Walter Scott, the solici tude generally given to literary fame was exerted to accumulate a fortune and found a family. His disregard to literary reputation is well known. The prince of dramatists was a gentleman in the world's acceptation of the term; but, taken all in all, Shakspeare is not one of nature's every-day productions, but a prodigy, cradled in the lapse of many centuries for paltry man and his little world. The matter-of-fact friends of the poetical neophyte have still cause to exclaim : "Ah, why did he write poetry, That hereto was so civil, And sell his soul for vanity To rhyming and the devil?" The poet's pecuniary remunerations might keep up an air of comfort and respectability in the domicile of a plodding mechanic, presided over by an economical grisette or some industrious Dorothy Draggletail of a milkmaid; but with the poet his high sentiment and circumscribed means are at fearful disparity. He has hitherto been a convivial and devil-may-carish sort of being-a gentleman of education and ton-a decided devotee of the candleburning-at-both-ends system-one that could, by rapid metamorphoses, make Croesus a gaberlunzie man. But Get thee back, sorrow-get thee back. Hurrah, gentlemen of the cacoethes scribendi and the clouted shoe! Give me your hand, my trusty confreres, and we will follow Melpomene and the glorious sisterhood, through good report and evil, in all a poet's glorified rags and immortal tatters, to the end of the world! ANDREW VOMER. THE SACRIFICE. (6 THE sun was now sinking slowly through those masses of purple cloud which belong to Iberian skies; when, emerging from the forest, the travellers saw before them a small and lovely plain, cultivated like a garden. Rows of orange and citron trees were backed by the dark green foliage of vines; and these, again, found a barrier in girdling copses of chesnut, oak, and the deeper verdure of pines: while, far to the horizon, rose the distant and dim outline of the mountain range, scarcely distinguishable from the mellow colourings of the heaven. Through this charming spot went a slender and sparkling torrent, that collected its waters in a circular basin, over which the rose and orange hung their contrasted blossoms. On a gentle eminence, above this plain or garden, rose the spires of a convent : and though it was still clear daylight, the long and pointed lattices were illumined within; and, as the horsemen cast their eyes upon the pile, the sound of the holy chorus-made more sweet and solemn from its own indistinctness, from the quiet of the hour, from the sudden and sequestered loveliness of that spot, suiting so well the ideal calm of the conventual life-rolled its music through the odorous and lucent air. But that scene and that sound, so calculated to soothe and harmonise the thought, seemed to arouse Almamen into agony and passion. He smote his breast with his clenched hand; and, shrieking rather than exclaiming, "God of my fathers! have I come too late?" buried his spurs to the rowels in the sides of his panting steed. Along the sward, through the fragrant shrubs, athwart the pebbly and shallow torrent, up the ascent to the convent, sped the Israelite. Muza, wondering and half reluctant, followed at a little distance. Clearer and nearer came the voices of the choir; broader and redder glowed the tapers from the Gothic casements: the porch of the convent chapel was reached; the Hebrew sprang from his horse. A small group of the peasants dependent on the convent loitered reverently round the threshold: pushing through them, as one frantic, Almamen entered the chapel and disappeared. A minute elapsed. Muza was at the door; but the Moor paused irresolutely, ere he dismounted. "What is the ceremony?" he asked of the peasants. "A nun is about to take the vows," answered one of them. A cry of alarm, of indignation, of terror, was heard within. Muza no longer delayed: he gave his steed to the by-stander, pushed aside the heavy curtain that screened the threshold, and was within the chapel. By the altar gathered a confused and disordered group -the sisterhood, with their abbess. Round the consecrated rail flocked the spectators, breathless and amazed. Conspicuous above the rest, on the elevation of the holy place, stood Almamen, with his drawn dagger in his right hand, his left arm clasped around the form of a novice, whose dress, not yet replaced by the serge, bespoke her the sister fated to the veil: and, on the opposite side of that sister, one hand on her shoulder, the other rearing on high the sacred crucifix, stood a stern, calm, commanding form, in the white robes of the Dominican order: it was Tomas de Torquemada. "Avaunt, Abaddon ! were the first words which reached Muza's ear, as he stood, unnoticed, in the middle |