nity, for the genius, achievements, or worth of some pre-eminent individual. It is that, in order to identify the monument with the person or persons to whom it is consecrated, the statuary should be so appropriate, and form so integral a part of the design, as to make every other part of it appear to be auxiliary. But an isolated column does not afford any position suitable for statuary, and, strictly speaking, not even meagre compartments for sculpture. A column, bearing upon its capital a statue of a warrior or man of genius, is so far an unnatural design, as it places the object of our admiration in a place where we should not naturally expect to see him, and in which it was impossible for him to have performed any achievement. Moreover, as a statue with its accessaries, when raised so high above the natural point or focus of vision, would lose all distinctness of expression, and all similitude to their prototypes, unless they are colossal, and overcharged with expression beyond nature, even to caricature-these circumstances point out to us, that the height of such a column, if it was an admissible design, should be limited to the elevation that would shew distinctly a surmounting statue not much exceeding the natural size of man, for which purpose a column of a height within the limits of architecture would be sufficient. It is, therefore, evident, that columnar monuments of excessive height must have a bad effect upon the noble art of statuary, similar to that, which theatres of excessive size have had upon the drama. In respect of compartments for sculpture, upon an isolated column, it will scarcely be contended that a barbarous sub-base can obviate the deficiency of them; and as little need I argue against the impropriety of the spiral sculpture upon the Trajan column, though it has been imitated upon the copy of that column, lately raised by Bonaparte in Paris.

The device of concealing within an isolated column a spiral staircase, to make it a round tower in masquerade, and to which mechanism it is said that modern tower columns owe even their short existence, does not in the least avert the foregoing objections from the column, though the staircase gives access to the surmounting statue, which, like a Pagod, would attract the multitude below by its deformity. For near approach would only render the elevated monster more hideous, and expose the grossness of its exaggeration, by contrast with the real man at the same elevation. And as a column, so constructed of courses of small stones, appears to the eye weak and unfit to support an incumbent weight, which is the original columnar office, a built column is, therefore, a gross and offensive incongruity. For these reasons, it is evidently impracticable to unite, in such a design, its integral object in true beauty and elegance, with that spurious species of grandeur attributed to mere height.

We must, also, be conscious that a column, or any other design, that would expose to constant and familiar view, the statue and attributes of a patriot, hero, or genius, whose fame it commemorates, is directly opposed to the principle, which requires that the mind of a spectator should be in a free and fit state to receive the impressions, that objects of veneration, sublimity, and beauty, would excite.

If, as I imagine, the purest species of the sublime arises from whatever enlarges and awes our conceptions, whether it be an intellectual or a visible cause, as the sublime of matter excites the sublime of mind, and as the true sublime, like the beau ideal, transcends the exciting cause or object, it is erroneous to suppose, that a sublime effect can be produced by the mere height of an enormous, or be it a stupendous column, the monster of ungoverned fancy, and of misapplied art and labour. That emotion may be directly traced to the far nobler source, to which it is here, perhaps for the first time, properly attributed. For Longinus, though "he was himself the great sublime he drew," did not dare to define the sublime, and has been excused for that omission, because his treatise is a comment upon, or a deduction from, a work which has not descended to us; and the profound and luminous Edmund Burke has degraded the sublime, by supposing it to consist in the terrible, as if the emotions, which elevate and expand the mind, and those, which depress and confine it, could be identified. Vast height, depth, or extent, darkness, or the display of great power, with which Burke associated the sublime, are but secondary causes of sublimity. The moral world, with all its pure emotions, is, for the most part, beyond the influence of those secondary causes. Those emotions, which arise from the sublime and beautiful in buildings and statuary, are moral sensations, produced by the pure and permanent expression of physical analogies, which "lead up to sublime and noble axioms," by embodying intellectual conception in visible expression. It is evident, however, that stupendous height, or magnitude, in buildings, is not essential to the production of those emotions.

But, as the isolated column has pre-engaged the applause of large portions of the British and French nations, it may be shewn, by reference to the remarkable column commonly, but erroneously, called Pompey's Pillar, that the effect of that species of design is entirely derived from the associations with which it may happen to be connected. A spectator must feel and confess that even this ever-during column, it being monolithos, and not extravagantly high, exclusive of a superfluous cube or sub-base, is indebted, for all its supposed grandeur and effect, to the solemnity of the scene that surrounds the rising ground on which it stands, in the silent desert, between the remains of the celebrated City of Alexandria, which commerce, policy, and science, valour, genius,

religion, were emulous to aggrandize, and the vast and gloomy Lake Mareotis, where the solitary gliding sail rarely appears, and on whose barren shores the sun rises and sets in sadness, never inspiring joy or serenity, as when he plays aslant upon fertile and inhabited lands. There, in that dreary region, unblest by life or verdure, where the human voice, which we hear in society with indifference and impatience, would be found to breathe touching and exquisite melody, and where jealous and vindictive rivals, subdued to amity by a sense of the weakness and mutual dependence of mankind, would gladly meet in friendship-there, that time-defying column stands amidst desolation, emblem of fortitude in adversity, contrasting its stability with the parched and drifting sands of the desert, the ashes as it were of a consumed creation, whilst battles, sieges, inundations, and a thousand other recollections, on which history and poetry dwell, are united with the solemn scene. Overpowered by these awful impressions, the mind of the spectator is penetrated by a deep sense of the visionary nature of human pursuits; he turns, with a sweet and mournful feeling, to this relic of antiquity, as to the altar of the spirits of the just made perfect," whose splendid actions, and exalted thoughts, it will, through time, commemorate; it seems, to him, to stand upon the bank and shoal of time," connecting the eternity of the past, with that which is coming; and inspires him, through the influence of those grand and solemn associations, with a veneration that has, I firmly believe, preserved this column from the savage and the fanatic, through a long succession of ages! But, without those awful impressions, created by the solemnity and association of the solitary scene, the column itself would not inspire any awe, and but little admiration, or at all enlarge our conceptions.

We may, therefore, conclude, that all the sensations, which can be excited by an isolated column, surmounted by a statue or emblem, and, either with or without sculpture, standing in a crowded city, must be not merely less sublimated, but the very reverse of the high and pure emotions of a secluded spectator of the enshrined representative of a hero, patriot, or genius, whom we wish to make triumph over time.

J. M.

THE FRIARS OF DIJON. A TALE.

BY T. CAMPBELL.

WHEN honest men confess'd their sins,
And paid the church genteelly-
In Burgundy two Capuchins

Lived jovially and freely.

They march'd about from place to place,
With shrift and dispensation;
And mended broken consciences,
Soul-tinkers by vocation.

One friar was Father Boniface,
And he ne'er knew disquiet,
Save when condemn'd to saying grace
O'er mortifying diet.

The other was lean Dominick,

Whose slender form, and sallow,

Would scarce have made a candlewick
For Boniface's tallow.

Albeit, he tippled like a fish,

Though not the same potation;
And mortal man ne'er clear'd a dish
With nimbler mastication.

Those saints without the shirts arrived,
One evening late, to pigeon
A country pair for alms, that lived
About a league from Dijon-

Whose supper-pot was set to boil,

On faggots briskly crackling : The friars enter'd, with a smile

To Jacquez and to Jacqueline.

They bow'd, and bless'd the dame, and then
In pious terms besought her,

To give two holy-minded men
A meal of bread and water.

For water and a crust they crave,

Those mouths that even on Lent days Scarce knew the taste of water, save When watering for dainties.

Quoth Jacquez, "That were sorry cheer

For men fatigued and dusty; And if ye supp'd on crusts, I fear, You'd go to bed but crusty."

So forth he brought a flask of rich
Wine fit to feast Silenus,

And viands, at the sight of which
They laugh'd like two hyænas.

Alternately, the host and spouse
Regaled each pardon-guager,
Who told them tales right marvellous,
And lied as for a wager-

'Bout churches like balloons convey'd

With aeronautic martyrs ;

And wells made warm, where holy maid Had only dipt her garters.

And if their hearers gaped, I guess,

With jaws three inch asunder, 'Twas partly out of weariness, And partly out of wonder.

Then striking up duets, the Frères
Went on to sing in matches,
From psalms to sentimental airs,

From these to glees and catches.

At last, they would have danced outright, Like a baboon and tame bear,

If Jacquez had not drunk Good night,

And shewn them to their chamber.