may be rather nearer the truth, or, at all events, we would have taken his lordship's word for the fact, even if he had not reiterated his assertion. The reasons why the world has not loved the noble bard, we are not anxious to inquire: possibly the world, or at least the virtuous part of it, may have ungratefully thought that neither Lord Byron's writings, nor his personal example, have done it much service, and that if all the Littles, and Byrons, and Maturins of the age, had been long ago extinct, the cause of morals and happiness would have felt no injury. But be this as it may, Lord Byron is quite even with the world: there is no love lost on either side; for his lordship, with the most conciliating aspect,

"Looks on the peopled desert past As on a place of agony and strife Where for some sin to sorrow he was cast

To act and suffer." p. 41.

Now, to be perfectly serious, there is, perhaps, somewhat more truth in this remark than his lordship intended. Life is a state of probation; for, though the Almighty does not place us here to inflict on us agony and strife," yet we certainly are called upon both to "act and suffer." To fly, therefore, from the world, is to desert our allotted post, and to incur the guilt of having squandered time and talents which were bestowed for the most responsible purposes. We are far from inviting the noble lord to love the world; rather would we reiterate the cautions of the inspired writers on this subject: "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the Father but of the world; and the world passeth away, and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." "The friendship of the world is enmity

with God: whosoever, therefore, will be a friend of the world, is the enemy of God." But we would humbly remind his lordship, that there are two ways of not loving the world: neither St. Paul nor Rousseau much loved it; but their dislike sprang from very different motives, and produced very different effects. The actual reason why the world is not congenial to our author's taste may be, that it is not a world of poets and sentimentalists; but the reason why it ought not to be congenial, is of a very different and a far more exalted kind. The devout Christian cannot love the world, because it is beset with snares and dangers, because it is unholy and unlike God, and because it impedes him in his journey to that blessedness at which he longs finally to arrive. We doubt, however, and have certainly no right to inquire, how far the right honourable author is thus weaned from the world, in the scriptural sense of the expression, as including the desires of the eye, the desires of the flesh, and the pride of. life. We can, indeed, well imagine, that placed, as he has necessarily been by his rank and fortune, and still more so, perhaps, by his talents and personal endowments, in the very vortex of worldly enchantment, he may have witnessed' enough of joyless, heartless dissipation to have cloyed his appetite, and perhaps for a moment to have We disgusted his better feelings. do not affect to know what character beyond that of a mere spectator his lordship may have thought fit to assume, amidst the sickening vanities and pollutions with which he may have been surrounded. We allude simply to the fact with which he has himself furnished us: he confesses the glare

to have worn off: he owns that he is surfeited, and has thus added one more to that long list of earthly votaries who have been obliged to acknowledge by better experience, what Solomon might have taught

them long before, that the world and its fashions are transitory and unsatisfying; and that nothing is to be found on earth, as far, at least, as earth is alone concerned, but "vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Having thus felt the truth of Solomon's premises, we sincerely hope that our author may arrive also at his conclusion, that "to fear God, and keep his commandments, is the whole of man ;"-his end and his duty, his privilege and his reward.

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We are sorry, however, to remark, that if his lordship have any particular predilection in favour of one religion more than another, his admiration seems rather to attach itself to the code of Mohammed than to that of Christ. We do not intend this as an allusion to his Turkish scenery, machinery, decorations, and dresses," though it be true that" out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." We might even here remark, that it is rather surprising that a Christian poet could find no sources of thought and feeling nearer home. But we refer immediately to one of the notes to the poem before us, in which, amongst other observations, is the following: "On me the simple and entire sincerity of those men (the Musselmans,) and the spirit which appeared to be in and upon them, made a far greater impression than any general rite (Christian rites of course included) which was ever performed in places of worship, of which I have seen those of almost every persuasion under the sun; including most of our own sectaries, and the Greek, the Catholic, the Armenian, the Lutheran, the Jewish, and the Mahomedan." This is quite frank: his lordship has not even availed himself of that common-place saving clause, our own holy religion of course excepted," which we have so often heard from the mouths of the lovers of picturesque religion. The remaining part of this note is of less consequence, being chiefly

to apprize us of his lordship's admiration for "field-preaching," above the sober discipline of an established church.

But amidst all the misanthropy for which the poem before us is distinguished, we are happy to find that Lord Byron is obliged at last to confess, as we have just seen, that, after all, there may be still some truth, and reality, and kindness, and friendship surviving among men; that "goodness is no name, and happiness no dream." We can assure the noble lord, that bad as the world may be, his conjecture is not incorrect. Would he have condescended to have forsaken "the pomps and vanities” of dissipated life, and to have extricated himself from the "busy crowd" of idle or sensual flatterers, who were always ready to attach themselves to a man of his lordship's rank and popularity, he might have found he might still find-no smail number of persons, of both sexes, with whom to have been associated would have left no sting behind, and in whose friendship he might have felt that the present world, though not intended for a scene of unmixed or poetical enjoyment, may be made a much happier, because holier, spot, than a sensualist knows how to conceive, He needed not to have descended from either his political or intellectual rank, to have discovered genuine Christianity diffusing her balmy influences in social and domestic life, and leading in her train, though not acknowledging as her equals, all the subordinate graces, and charities, and felicities. of human kind.

We would hope that it is not even yet "too late." His lordship's really feeling apostrophe to his daughter, with whose name his song began, and with whose name it ends, is almost the only part of his personal allusions in which we feel much sympathy; and if it be true that "it was in his nature" to have enjoyed, in the manner he dẹ

a

scribes, the sweets of parental affection, we can only wish that this desire may find means to operate in acts appropriate to the occasion. We would remind his lordship of scene described by a brother poet, who also had been a "pilgrimage to Waterloo," and who on his return sketched a family picture, part of which we exhibit for our noble author's imitation, with the assurance that exquisite as may be the feelings of poetical enthusiasm, yet for daily use and permanent felicity, nothing can equal the silent unobtrusive enjoyments of domestic repose. As we have not had occasion to notice Mr. Southey's Pilgrimage before, our readers will excuse the length of the quotation.

Surprise and wakening memory held them dumb.

"Soon they grew blithe as they were wont to be:

Her old endearments each began to seek;

And Isabel drew near to climb my knee,

And pat with fondling hand her father's cheek,

With voice, and touch, and look, reviving thus

The feelings which had slept with long disuse.

"But there was one whose heart could entertain

And comprehend the fulness of the joy: The father, teacher, playmate was again

Come to his only, and his studious boy; And he beheld again that mother's eye Which with such ceaseless care had watched his infancy." Southey's Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo.

GREAT BRITAIN. PREPARING for publication:-The Lockhart Papers, containing a great

variety of authentic Manuscripts, respecting the Affairs of Scotland; and particularly the Union and the two Re