Look-from the classic lands, whose fallen pride,
Is fain to summon strangers to their side;

Where with weak wail they call themselves oppress'd,
Who, if unchain'd, would still be slaves at best-
To far across the dim and lonely sea

Where the thrice-conquer'd styles herself the free :'
How many generations now are past

Since the first war-cry rose, and when will be the last?
Yet is there freedom in a distant clime,

Where freedom dwelleth to the end of time;
And peace, and joy, and ignorance of fear,
And happiness-but oh! not here! not here!
Not in this world of darkness and of graves,
Where the strong govern, and the weak are slaves.
Thou, whose full heart would dream of liberty,
Go out beneath the solitary sky

In its blue depth of midnight-stand and gaze
While the stars pour on thee their gentle rays;
And image, if thou canst, unto thy soul
A little part of the most wondrous whole
Of all that lies beyond-there no dark strife
Destroys the creatures of the God of Life;
There no ambition to be made more great,
Turns the pure love of brothers into hate.
Each hath his place assign'd him like the stars

Up in the silent sky, where nothing wars."-pp. 38-40.

Let it not be supposed that all this time the Undying One' allowed his gallantry towards the fair sex to diminish. This would be a great mistake. He seems, however, so far at least as Mrs. Norton knows, to have been enamoured of nobody worth mentioning after he lost Edith, until one day, straying over the field of Moorish and Spanish battle, near the walls of Grenada, he beheld a widowed mother, with her infant on her breast, mourning over her fallen husband, in touching accents. They are touching, because they are simple and natural, and have nothing in common with that vehemence which Mrs. Norton is usually so ambitious to reach.

"My early and my only love, why silent dost thou lie,

When heavy grief is in my heart, and tear-drops in mine eye e?
I call thee, but thou answerest not, all lonely though I be:
Wilt thou not burst the bonds of sleep, and rise to comfort me?
"Oh! wake thee --wake thee from thy rest upon the tented field:
This faithful breast shall be at once thy pillow and thy shield;
If thou hast doubted of its truth and constancy before,
Oh! wake thee now, and it will strive to love thee even more.

"If ever we have parted, and I wept thee not as now,
If ever I have seen thee come, and worn a cloudy brow,

If ever harsh and careless words have caused thee pain and woe,
Then sleep, in silence sleep, and I—will bow my head and go.

"But if, through all the vanished years whose shadowy joys are gone,
Through all the changing scenes of life, I thought of thee alone,
If I have mourn'd for thee when far, and worshipp'd thee when near,
Then wake thee up, my early love, this weary heart to cheer!

"Awake; thy baby-boy is here, upon whose soft cheek lie

No tears of grief, save those which fall from his sad mother's eye;
How, lingering, didst thou gaze on him when we were forced to part-
Rise up, for he is here again, and press him to thy heart!
“In vain, in vain-I dream of thee and joyous life in vain ;
Thou never more shalt rise in strength from off the bloody plain ;
Thou never more shalt clasp thy boy, nor hold me to thy breast:
Thou hast left us lonely on the earth, and thou art gone to rest.
"Awake thee, my forsaken boy!-awake, my babe, and weep;
Art thou less wretched, that thy brow no trace of woe can keep?
Oh! would through life, that thou might'st taste no cup but that of joy,
And I, as now, might weep for both-my boy !-my orphan boy!"'

pp. 41-43.

A second wailing song follows this, which has neither simplicity nor feeling to recommend it. It talks of murmuring rills, sunshine and flowers, lighted halls, happy faces, gay young hearts, laughing voices, and dancing trains, those namby pamby phrases of the Landonic or juvenile school. Yet, with all her grief, the Moorish widow is not insensible to the approach of a new lover. The Jew came, saw, and conquered! Her sorrow was his. She reminded him of Edith. She all at once forget her woes, and took the wanderer home with her, where her orphan boy called him father, 'half pleased and half amazed.' No wonder that the cherub was amazed, indeed, if he had the sense to perceive the rapid transit of his mamma from the deepest grief to surpassing joy. With this lady the 'Undying One' spent years of uninterrupted bliss.

And we did dwell together calmly fond

With our own love, and not a wish beyond.'

This was he who was doomed in a former part of the poem to eternal wretchedness and despair. No matter. He was now happy, and he even dreamt for a while that his happiness might last; but unfortunately his wife grew old, while he remained stationary in years; and wonderful to relate, she died a natural death. He did not kill her with the disclosure of his mystery. The fate of Edith warned him against that error. What is more wonderful is this, that his Moorish partner died without even once asking him the question, by what charm his years seemed to have no number, while hers rolled so rapidly away? Why her once ebon curls were streaked with grey, while his flourished in immortal youth, without one touch of snow? It is true that she looked this question sometimes, but never gave it expression. Before we wander to some newer lover, we must do Mrs. Norton the justice to extract a pretty little song which she puts into the

lips of the Moorish lady, as she sat her down by the blue waters of the Guadalquivir:' but we must first tell Mrs. Norton that the said waters are not blue, and, in the next place, that if she knew how to pronounce Guadalquivir, she would never have thought of coupling it for a rhyme with river.

"The spring! I love the spring! for it hath flowers,
And gaily plumaged birds, and sapphire skies,
And sleeping sunshine, and soft cooling showers,
And shadowy woods where weary day-light dies.
And it hath dancing waters, where the sun,
With an enamour'd look at the light waves,
Doth lull himself to rest when day is done,
And sinks away behind their rocky caves.
I love the spring, for it hath many things
In earth and air that mind me of old days;
Voices and laughter and light murmurings,

Borne on the breeze that through the foliage plays;
And sounds that are not words, of human joy
From the deep bosom of the shelter'd wood;

Woods dimm'd by distance, where, half pleased, half coy,
The maiden chides her broken solitude.

The spring of youth!-how like to nature's spring,
When its light pleasures all have pass'd away,
Are the dim memories which that word can bring,
Wringing the heart that feels its own decay!
The half forgotten charm of many a scene
Coming confusedly athwart the brain;

The wandering where our former steps have been
With forms that may not wander there again;-
• Murmurings and voices where some single tone
Thrills for a moment, and forgets to sound;
Yearnings for all that now is past and gone,

And vain tears sinking in the mossy ground:-
Oh! this is all, and more than all, which stays
To mock us with the sunshine of past years;
And those spring shadows on our autumn days

Cast their dim gloom, and turn our smiles to tears !'-pp, 50, 51. A long story, preciously strewed with all Mrs. Norton's tinsel, some of it as faded as any that is to be found in Monmouth Street, follows these verses. Sometime after the death of the mother the son takes unto himself a wife. He makes a vain effort before he weds, to turn out the Jew, who, however, coaxes him not to be so cruel. He remains with the newly married pair as long as possible; but ultimately, as he would not quit them, they quit him. Behold him, therefore, once more thrown upon the world, where now he meets with only brawling storms, inconstant lovers, perfidious friends, parricides, murderers, lunatics, and the whole tribe of wicked spirits by which the earth is infested. Never

theless, nothing makes him give up his old trade of love-making. He saves a female child from being drowned by its unnatural mother; the child grows up to womanhood, and becomes enamoured of her protector. Edith, the Moor, and now Miriam ; the latter flourished when the Jews were massacred, or rather massacred themselves in York, in the early part of the reign of Richard I. We love to fix the time with precision. Miriam, like the rest, also died in due course. She died, but not in due course, for her charming Jew murdered her one fine moonlight night, for no other reason that we can discover, than because he was astonished that she lived so long. All this is told very quietly to Linda, who still listens on, and hears that the law was about to try to put a finishing hand to his wanderings and his amours, when lo! he is extricated from the hands of the executioner by a tremendous peal of thunder. This did not prevent him from being re-committed, as Sir Richard Birnie would say, and as it suits Mrs. Norton's purpose to hurry on the time of her four cantos, she has her poor Jew lodged in a common jail for the period of one hundred years, part of the time as a lunatic! This beats the story of the Man in the Iron Masque hollow.

Linda, notwithstanding that the man stands before her a confessed murderer and a ci-devant lunatic, still clings to him, and they set sail for Ireland. They are pursued by her betrothed; they escape his search; their vessel takes fire and is destroyed at sea, but no accident endangers the Jew's charmed life. They land in Ireland just when the French land at Killala, and here the tale breaks abruptly off. What became of the Jew and Linda, whether the latter is yet living, or whether Mrs. Norton has succeeded to her place; whether the wandering Jew be in London or at some pleasant watering place, watching the progress of liberty in France, or of the regatta at Cowes, are questions upon which, though we much desire it, we have no information. Wherever he is, we hope he will keep the peace, and if he wants a shilling at any time, he may call upon us. We should be most happy to make his acquaintance, for we have a notion that he would make a capital critic. What a delightful thing to have it to say that we shook hands with the Undying One! It would impart to us a portion of what we presume to be still his-immortality--although Mrs. Norton has done every thing in her power to murder him.

ART. IV.-Principles of Geology, being an attempt to explain the former Changes of the Earth's Surface, by reference to causes now in operation. By Charles Lyell, Esq. F.R.S., Foreign Secretary to the Geological Society. Vol. i. pp. 511. London: Murray. 1830.

THE history of Geology is full of the most forcible admonitions to men in the study of philosophy, for it exhibits in a light, absolutely ludicrous, the extravagance of the human mind, when under the

influence of that vain-glorious ambition which so often drives it, in the sphere of science, to premature generalization. Every variety, every shade and hue of this profound folly, is to be met with in the conduct of those men who purported to guide their fellow creatures to a knowledge of the mysteries of the earth's structure. It was only after theory upon theory had been delivered to the world with all the earnestness of conviction, and, sometimes, with all the authority of assumed infallibility, that it at length struck the unprejudiced votaries of Geology that there could be no principles without facts, in science, and that a great many, too, were necessary, in order to constitute a deduction of general application. Werner and Hutton set the example of seeking for a theory through the means of facts, instead of acting as their predecessors had done, that is, striving to modify evidence according to their preconceived theories. Our Geological Society and the French naturalists have followed up this only reasonable and useful course; and great progress has been made within the last few years in, at least, delivering geology from the thraldom of the schools, and clearing away the rubbish which ages had opposed to the general perception of its sublime truths.

The most remarkable feature which distinguishes the present state of geological knowledge in this country, is the complete (we believe we may answer for the sanity of all our geologists) extinction of Werner's theory, or, as it is still designated, the "Neptunean theory." The expedition with which this fanciful doctrine exhaled from the minds of men, is to be attributed, in great part, to the simpler and far more rational scheme by which Hutton explained the causes which have modified and continue to change the external structure of our earth; and it is no small testimony to the merit of Hutton's theory, that, after having been tried in the furnace of persecution, it has come forth, not exactly in its original integrity, but with so much of its substance as to admit of no doubt of its identity. The leading doctrine, then, that we derive from Hutton, is, that the continents of the earth, with all their strange irregularities of mountains and vallies, rocks and soft soils, &c., are the work of subterranean action, which has thus violently dealt with what was once level and perfectly horizontal. The Huttonian theory may be briefly described, as teaching that the materials of which the surface of this globe is composed are subject to the constant operation of a law which first sends these materials into the sea, and then causes them to be consolidated and finally protruded above the level of the ocean by means of the violent action of subterranean fire. Thus is a new earth constantly forming, and forming out of the ruins of the old one. This theory certainly involved the complete annihilation of all our notions as to the period of the formation of the earth and the finity of its existence; and being supposed to negative the Mosaic history, was assailed by a host of oppo

nents.

In the disputes which followed, between the partisans of