And many a rose-leaf, cull'd by Love,
To heal his lip when bees have stung it!
Come, tell me which the tie shall be
To bind thy gentle heart to me.

Yes, yes, I read that ready eye,

Which answers when the tongue is loth, Thou likest the form of either tie,

And hold'st thy playful hands for both. Ah!-if there were not something wrong,

The world would see them blended oft; The Chain would make the Wreath so strong! The Wreath would make the Chain so soft! Then might the gold, the flow'rets be Sweet fetters for my love and me!

. But, Fanny, so unblest they twine,
That (Heaven alone can tell the reason)
When mingled thus they cease to shine,
Or shine but for a transient season!
Whether the Chain may press too much,
Or that the Wreath is slightly braided,
Let but the gold the flow'rets touch,

And all their glow, their tints, are faded! Sweet Fanny, what would Rapture do,

When all her blooms had lost their grace? Might she not steal a rose or two

From other wreaths, to fill their place?— Oh! better to be always free, Than thus to bind my love to me.

THE timid girl now hung her head,
And, as she turn'd an upward glance,
I saw a doubt its twilight spread

Along her brow's divine expanse.
Just then the garland's dearest rose
Gave one of its seducing sighs-
Oh! who can ask how Fanny chose,

That ever look'd in Fanny's eyes! The wreath, my life, the wreath shall be The tie to bind my soul to thee!

ΤΟ

AND hast thou mark'd the pensive shade That many a time obscures my brow, 'Midst all the blisses, darling maid,

Which thou canst give, and only thou?

Oh! 't is not that I then forget

The endearing charms that round me twineThere never throbb'd a bosom yet

Could feel their witchery, like mine!

When bashful on my bosom hid,
And blushing to have felt so blest,
Thou dost but lift thy languid lid,
Again to close it on my breast!

Oh! these are minutes all thine own,
Thine own to give, and mine to feel,
Yet, even in them, my heart has known
The sigh to rise, the tear to steal.

For I have thought of former hours, When he who first thy soul possess'd, Like me awaked its witching powers,

Like me was loved, like me was blest!

Upon his name thy murmuring tongue
Perhaps hath all as sweetly dwelt;
For him that snowy lid hath hung
In ecstasy, as purely felt!

For him-yet why the

past recal
To wither blooms of present bliss?

Thou 'rt now my own, I clasp thee all,
And Heaven can grant no more than this!

Forgive me, dearest, oh! forgive;

I would be first, be sole to thee; Thou shouldst but have begun to live The hour that gave thy heart to me.

Thy book of life till then effaced,
Love should have kept that leaf alone,
On which he first so dearly traced
That thou wert, soul and all, my own!

EPISTLE VI.

TO LORD VISCOUNT FORBES.

FROM THE CITY OF WASHINGTON.

Και μη θαυμασηις μητ' ει μακροτέραν γεγραφα την επιτολήν, μηδ' ει τι περιεργότερον η πρεσβυτικω τερον ειρηκαμεν εαυτή.

ISOCRAT. Epist. iv.

IF former times had never left a trace
Of human frailty in their shadowy race,
Nor o'er their pathway written, as they ran,
One dark memorial of the crimes of man;
If every age, in new unconscious prime,
Rose, like a phoenix, from the fires of time,
To wing its way unguided and alone,
The future smiling and the past unknown;
Then ardent man would to himself be new,
Earth at his foot and heaven within his view;
Well might the novice hope, the sanguine scheme
Of full perfection prompt his daring dream,
Ere cold Experience, with her veteran lore,
Could tell him, fools had dream'd as much before!
But tracing, as we do, through age and clime,
The plans of virtue 'midst the deeds of crime,
The thinking follies and the reasoning rage
Of man, at once the idiot and the sage;
When still we see, through every varying frame
Of arts and polity, his course the same,
And know that ancient fools but died to make
A space on earth for modern fools to take;
'T is strange, how quickly we the past forget;
That Wisdom's self should not be tutor❜d yet,
Nor tire of watching for the monstrous birth
Of pure perfection, midst the sons of earth!

Have proved at length the mineral's tempting hue,
Which makes a patriot, can unmake him too.1
Oh! Freedom, Freedom, how I hate thy cant!
Not Eastern bombast, nor the savage rant
Of purpled madmen, were they number'd all
From Roman Nero down to Russian Paul,
Could grate upon my ear so mean, so base,
As the rank jargon of that factious race,
Who, poor of heart and prodigal of words,
Born to be slaves and struggling to be lords,
But pant for license, while they spurn control,
And shout for rights, with rapine in their soul!
Who can, with patience, for a moment see
The medley mass of pride and misery,
Of whips and charters, manacles and rights,
Of slaving blacks and democratic whites,
And all the pye-bald polity that reigns
In free confusion o'er Columbia's plains?
To think that man, thou just and gentle God!
Should stand before thee, with a tyrant's rod
O'er creatures like himself, with soul from thee,
Yet dare to boast of perfect liberty:
Away, away-I'd rather hold my neck
By doubtful tenure from a sultan's beck,
In climes where liberty has scarce been named,
Nor any right but that of ruling claim'd,
Than thus to live, where bastard freedom waves
Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves;
Where (motley laws admitting no degree
Betwixt the vilely slaved and madly free)
Alike the bondage and the license suit,

The brute made ruler and the man made brute!

1 See PORCUPINE's Account of the Pensylvania Insurrection in 1794. In short, see Porcupine's works throughout, for ample corroboration of every sentiment which I have ventured to express. In saying this, I refer less to the comments of that writer, than to the occurrences which he has related and the documents which he has preserved. Opinion may be suspected of bias, but facts speak for themselves. * In Virginia the effects of this system begin to be felt rather seriously. While the master raves of liberty, the slave cannot but catch the contagion, and accordingly there seldom elapses a month without some alarm of insurrection amongst the negroes. The accession of Louisiana, it is feared, will increase this embarrassment, as the numerous emigratious, which are expected to take place from the southern states to this newly-acquired territory, will considerably diminish the white population, and thus strengthen the proportion of negroes to a degree which must ultimately be ruinous.

Che con le lor bujie pajon divini. MAURO D'ARCANO.

I DO confess, in many a sigh
My lips have breathed you many a lie,
And who, with such delights in view,
Would lose them for a lie or two.

Nay-look not thus, with brow reproving;
Lies are, my dear, the soul of loving!
If half we tell the girls were true,

If half we swear to think and do,
Were aught but lying's bright illusion,
The world would be in strange confusion!
If ladies' eyes were, every one,
As lovers swear, a radiant sun,
Astronomy should leave the skies,
To learn her lore in ladies' eyes!
Oh no!-believe me, lovely girl,
When Nature turns your teeth to pearl,
Your neck to snow, your eyes to fire,
Your yellow locks to golden wire,
Then, only then, can Heaven decree
That you should live for only me,
Or I for you, as, night and morn,
We've swearing kiss'd, and kissing sworn!

And now, my gentle hints to clear,
For once, I'll tell you truth, my dear!
Whenever you may chance to meet
A loving youth, whose love is sweet,
Long as you're false and he believes you,
Long as you trust and he deceives you,
So long the blissful bond endures;
And while he lies, his heart is yours:

BLEST infant of eternity!

Before the day-star learn'd to move,

Love and Psyche are here considered as the active and passive principles of creation, and the universe is supposed to have received its first harmonizing impulse from the nuptial sympathy between these two powers. A marriage is generally the first step in cosmogony. Timaus held Form to be the father, and Matter the mother of the World; Elion and Berouth, I think, are Sanchoniatbo's first spiritual lovers, and Manco-Capac and his wife introduced creation amongst the Peruvians. In short, Harlequin seems to have studied cosmogonies, when he said tutto il mondo è fatto come la nostra famiglia..

Yet, yet, when Friendship sees thee trace,
In emanating soul express'd,
The sweet memorial of a face

On which her eye delights to rest;

While o'er the lovely look serene,

The smile of peace, the bloom of youth, The cheek, that blushes to be seen,

The eye, that tells the bosom's truth;

While o'er each line, so brightly true,
Her soul with fond attention roves,
Blessing the hand whose various hue
Could imitate the form it loves;

She feels the value of thy art,

And owns it with a purer zeal,

A rapture, nearer to her heart

Than critic taste can ever feel!

THE PHILOSOPHER ARISTIPPUS.'

TO A LAMP WHICH WAS GIVEN HIM BY LAIS.

Dulcis conscia lectuli lucerna.

MARTIAL. lib. xiv. epig. 39.

On! love the Lamp (my mistress said), The faithful lamp that, many a night,

Beside thy Lais' lonely bed

Has kept its little watch of light!

Full often has it seen her weep,

And fix her eye upon its flame, Till, weary, she has sunk to sleep, Repeating her beloved's name!

. Oft has it known her cheek to burn
With recollections, fondly free,
And seen her turn, impassion'd turn,
To kiss the pillow, love! for thee,
And, in a murmur, wish thee there,
That kiss to feel, that thought to share!

Then love the Lamp-'t will often lead Thy step through Learning's sacred way; And, lighted by its happy ray, Whene'er those darling eyes shall read

It was not very difficult to become a philosopher amongst the ancients. A moderate store of learning, with a considerable portion of confidence, and wit enough to produce an occasional apophthegm, were all the necessary qualifications for the purpose. The principles of moral science were so very imperfectly understood, that the founder of a new sect, in forming his ethical code, might consult either fancy or temperament, and adapt it to his own passions and propensities; so that Mahomet, with a little more learning, might have flourished as a philosopher in those days, and would have required but the polish of the schools to become th· rival of Aristippus, in morality. In the science of nature, too, though they discovered some valuable truths, yet they seemed not to know they were truths, or at least were as well satisfied with errors; and Xenophanes, who asserted that the stars were igneous clouds, lighted up every night and extinguished again in the morning, was thought and styled a philosopher, as generally as he who anticipated Newton in developing the arrangement of the universe.

For this opinion of Xenophanes, see Plutarch. de Placit. Philos. lib. ii, cap. 13. It is impossible to read this treatise of Plutarch without alternately admiring and smiling at the genius, the absurdities of the philosophers.

Thy flame shall light the page refined, Where still we catch the Chian's breath,

Where still the bard, though cold in death,

Has left his burning soul behind!

Or, o'er thy humbler legend shine,

Oh man of Ascra's dreary glades! 2

To whom the nightly-warbling Nine 3
A wand of inspiration gave,4

Pluck'd from the greenest tree that shades

The Chrystal of Castalia's wave.
Then, turning to a purer lore,
We'll cull the sages' heavenly store,
From Science steal her golden clue,
And every mystic path pursue,
Where Nature, far from vulgar eyes,
Through labyrinths of wonder flies!

"T is thus my heart shall learn to know
The passing world's precarious flight,
Where all that meets the morning glow
Is changed before the fall of night!5

I'll tell thee, as I trim thy fire,

Swift, swift the tide of being runs,

The ancients had their lucernæ cubiculariæ, or bed-chamber lamps, which, as the Emperor GALIENUS said, nil cras meminere ;and with the same commendation of secresy, Praxagora addresses her lamp, in ARISTOPHANES, Exxàng. We may judge how fanciful they were in the use and embellishment of their lamps, from the famous symbolic Lucerna which we find in the Romanum Museum MICH. ANG. CAUSEI, p. 137.

HESIOD, who tells us in melancholy terms of his father's flight to the wretched village of Ascra. Εργ. και Ημερ. ν. 151. 3 Εννυχίαι ςείχον, περικαλλέα όσσαν ιείται.--Theog.

V. 10.

4 Και μοι σκήπτρον εδόν, δαφνης εριθήλεα οζον.— Id. v. 3o.

5 'Ρει» τα όλα ποταμού δίκην, ως expressed among the dogmas of HERACLITUS the Ephesian, and with the same image by SENECA, in whom we find a beautiful diffusion of the thought:■ Nemo est mane qui fuit pridie. Corpora nostra rapiuntur fluminum more; quicquid vides currit cum tempore. Nihil ex his quæ videmus manet. Ego ipse, dum loquor mutari ipsa, mutatus sum,» etc.