hurry him who indulges it into further evils; and to this point our observations tend. The advice ought not to be contemned on account of the obscurity of those by whom it was given :—the roughest fisherman is a useful pilot when a gallant vessel is near the breakers; the meanest shepherd may be a sure guide over a pathless heath, and the admonition which is given in well-meant kindness should not be despised, even when tendered with a frankness which may resemble a want of courtesy. If the conclusion of Lord Byron's literary career were to be such as these mournful verses have anticipated-if this darkness of the spirit, this scepticism concerning the existence of worth, of friendship, of sincerity, were really and permanently to sink like a gulf between this distinguished poet and society, another name will be added to the illustrious list to whom Preston's caution refers. "Still wouldst thou write?-to tame thy youthful fire, Recall to life the masters of the lyre; Lo, every brow the shade of sorrow wears, And every wreath is stain'd with dropping tears!" But this is an unfair picture. It is not the temper and talents of the poet, but the use to which he puts them, on which his happiness or misery is grounded. A powerful and unbridled imagination is, we have already said, the author and architect of its own disappointments. Its fascinations, its exaggerated pictures of good and evil, and the mental distress to which they give rise, are the natural and necessary evils attending on that quick susceptibility of feeling and fancy incident to the poetical temperament. But the Giver of all talents, while he has qualified them each with its separate and peculiar alloy, has endowed the owner with the power of purifying and refining them. As if to moderate the arrogance of genius, it is justly and wisely made requisite, that the conscious possessor must regulate and tame the fire of his fancy, and descend from the heights to which she exalts him, in order to obtain ease of mind and tranquillity. The materials of happiness, that is, of such degree of happiness as is consistent with our present state, lie around us in profusion. But they lie so low, that the man of talents must stoop to gather them; and it is just they should do so, otherwise they would be beyond the reach of the mass of society, for whose benefit, as well as for his, Providence has created them. There is no royal and no poetical path to contentment and heart's-ease that by which they are attained is open to all classes of mankind, and lies within the most limited range of intellect. To narrow our wishes and desires within the scope of our powers of attainment; to consider our misfortunes, however peculiar in their character, as our inevitable share in the patrimony of Adam; to bridle those irritable feelings, which, ungoverned, are sure to become governors; to shun that intensity of galling and self-wounding reflection which our poet has so forcibly described in his own burning language "I have thought Too long and darkly, till my brain became, -to stoop, in short, to the realities of life; repent If we have offended, and pardon if we have been trespassed against; to look on the world less as our foe than as a doubtful and capricious friend, whose applause we ought as far as possible to deserve, but neither to court nor contemn-such seem the most obvious and certain means of keeping or regaining mental tranquillity. "Semita certe Tranquillæ per virtutem patet unica vitæ.” We are compelled to dwell upon this subject; for future ages, while our language is remembered, will demand of this, why Lord Byron was unhappy? We retort this query on the noble poet himself while it is called "to-day." He does injustice to the world, if he imagines he has left it exclusively filled with those who rejoice in his sufferings. If the voice of consolation be, in cases like his, less loudly heard than that of reproach or upbraiding, it is because those who long to conciliate, to advise, to mediate, to console, are timid in thrusting forward their sentiments, and fear to exasperate where they most seek to soothe; while the busy and officious intrude, without shame or sympathy, and embitter the privacy of affliction by their rude gaze and importunate clamour. But the pain which such insects can give only lasts while the wound is raw. Let the patient submit to the discipline of the soul enjoined by religion, and recommended by philosophy, and the scar will become speedily insensible to their stings. Lord Byron may not have loved the world, but the world has loved him; not perhaps with a wise or discriminating affection, but as well as it is capable of loving any one. And many who do not belong to the world, as the word is generally understood, have their thoughts fixed on Lord Byron, with the anxious wish and eager hope that he will bring his powerful understanding to combat with his irritated feelings, and that his next efforts will show that he has acquired the peace of mind necessary for the free and useful exercise of his splendid talents. "I decus, i nostrum, melioribus utere fatis." 1 [In a letter to Sir Walter Scott, dated Pisa, January 12, 1822, Lord Byron writes, "I owe to you far more than the usual obligation for the courtesies of literature and common friendship; for you went out of your way in 1817 to do me a service, when it required not merely kindness, but courage to do so: to have been recorded by you in such a manner, would have been a proud memorial at any time, but at such a time when all the world and his wife,' as the proverb goes, were trying to trample upon me, was something still higher to my self-esteem,-I allude to the Quarterly Review of the Third Canto of Childe Harold, which Murray told me was written by you,—and, indeed, I should have known it without his information, as there could not be two who could and would have done this at the time. Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent or panegyrical, I should have felt pleased, undoubtedly, and grateful, but not to the extent which the extraordinary good-heartedness of the whole proceeding must induce in any mind capable of such sensations. The very tardiness of this acknowledgment will, at least, show that I have not forgotten the obligation; and I can assure you that my sense of it has been out at compound interest during the delay. I shall only add one word upon the subject, which is, that I think that you, and Jeffrey, and Leigh Hunt, were the only literary men, of numbers whom I knew (and some of whom I had served), who dared venture even an anonymous word in my favour just then: and that, of those three, I had never seen one at all-of the second much less than I desired-and that the third was under no kind of obligation to me whatever; while the other two had been actually attacked by me on a former occasion; one, indeed, with some provocation, but the other wantonly enough. So you see you have been heaping coals of fire,' &c. in the true gospel manner, and I can assure you that they have burnt down to my very heart."-Life, vol. v., pp. 299-300.] THE DUKE OF YORK. [From the Edinburgh Weehly Journal, Jan. 10, 1827.] In the person of his Royal Highness the Duke of York, we may justly say, in the language of Scripture, "there has fallen this day in our Israel a Prince and a Great Man." He has, from an early period of his manhood, performed a most important part in public life. In the early wars of the French Revolution, the Duke of York commanded the British forces on the Continent, and although we claim not for his memory the admiration due to the rare and high gifts, which, in our latter times, must combine to form a military genius of the first order, yet it has never been disputed that in the field his Royal Highness displayed intelligence, military skill, and his family attribute, the most cool and unalterable courage. He had also the universal testimony of the army for his efforts to lessen the distresses of the privates, during the horrors of an unsuccessful campaign, in which he acquired, and kept to his death, the epithet of the Soldier's Friend. It was singular, that on the triał of the maniac Hatfield, where the Duke was ex |