and his defenceless life was preserved by an undisturbed and general peace. The propagation of his species was provided for, by the innate desire implanted in him; and thus the motley compound, man, partaking of the ve getable and brute, was completed.— His reason now by degrees began to unfold itself, and, as Nature still thought, provided and acted for him; his powers could direct themselves more easy and undisturbed to the tranquil observation of things; and touch the corners of their eyebrows. genial climate atoned for his nudity, We have not seen any place that has a more fertile appearance than New Ireland. It is a thick wood of lofty trees reaching to the summits of the highest hills, and in various places there are patches of some acres, apparently cleared and in cultivation, though I should rather suppose this was done by the hand of nature. In one of the last canoes that came off, there was a native perfectly white, with light woolly hair, but whether he was born so, or that the colour of his skin was changed by any cutane- his reason, being emancipated from ous disorder, I can not tell: the latter was the general opinion, but the bent of my mind was, that he was born white. all care, could employ itself undis turbed on the improvement of the organs of speech, and regulate the yet tender association of ideas. With July 8th. We are now off the the eye of a happy being he surveyed extreme west point of the coast of the glorious creation which was spread New Ireland, where there are nu- before him: his mind embraced all merous islands of various beautiful its phenomena, and treasured them shapes, and covered with trees, most- pure and genuine in a faithful me ly cocoa nuts. None of these islands mory. Thus the beginning of man are laid down in the chart; indeed the plan of the whole of the coast is very inaccurate; but this is easily accounted for, Bougainville having sailed at a considerable distance from it, whilst on the contrary, we coasted the whole length of it within a few miles. Having thus had the pleasure of conducting you to the end of New Ireland, I shall lay down my pen, with the intention of resuming it when a sufficiency of interesting matter has accumulated in my journal to frame another letter, that I may hope may be acceptable to you. [To be continued.] W. ESSAY on the first HUMAN SOCIETY, according to the MOSAIC HISTORY. UNDER the same control of in stinct by which the irrational brute is now guided, man was introduced into life by Providence; and as his reason was not yet developed, Providence acted the part of a watchful nurse over him. By hunger and thirst it pointed out to him the necessity of food; and whatever he required to satisfy that necessity, it spread around him in profuse abundance, and taste and smell directed him in the choice of it. A mild and was soft and smiling, and it required to be so to strengthen him for the contest which awaited him. If we were now to suppose, that at this point Providence stopped, man would have become the most happy and intellectual of all animals; but he never would have escaped from the leading strings of instinct; his actions would never have become free and, conse quently, moral; nor would he have risen above the limits of animality, In a blissful tranquillity he would have lived in an eternal childhood; and the circle in which he would have moved would have been the smallest possible from desire to enjoyment, from enjoyment to rest, and from rest again to desire. ferent state; and the powers which But man was destined to a very difwere implanted in him excited him to happiness of a very different na ture. The task which Nature had undertaken to perform for him in his cradled infancy, now in his adolescence devolved upon himself. He was to become the creator of his own happiness, and the degree of this happiness was to be determined by the participation which he had in it. He was excited by his reason to search for the state of innocence which he had lost, and, as a free rational spirit, to return to that point from which he emerged as a plant and as a creature rian is wholly in the right, when he treats this circumsance as a fall of the first man: but the philosopher is not less in the right, when he congratu lates human nature in the aggregate on this important step towards perfection. The first is in the right to call it a fall; for man from an innocent being became a guilty one, from a perfect eleve of nature an imperfect moral being, and from a happy instrument an unhappy artist. of instinct. He was to work his way out of a paradise of ignorance and servitude to one of knowledge and freedom; one, in which he would obey the moral laws in his breast with the same fidelity as in the commencement he obeyed the laws of instinct, and as the animals now obey them. What circumstances were therefore inevitable? What events must necessarily happen before he could reach this far distant aim? So soon as his The philosopher is in the right to reason had made a trial of its first call it a gigantic step of human nature, powers, Nature cast him off, or, to for from a slave of instinct man bespeak with more propriety, he him- came thereby a free agent, from an self, instigated by a particular impulse automaton a moral being, and with which he knew not, and ignorant of this step he first entered on the road, the great action which he in that mo- which after a lapse of millenaries was ment committed, tore himself from to guide him to the dominion of himthe leading strings of instinct, and self. The way which led to enjoy. with his yet feeble reason plunged ment now became more long and into the labyrinth of life, and entered tedious. In the commencement he on the dangerous path of moral free- had only to stretch forth his band to dom. If we therefore transmute the make function immediately follow Voice of God in Eden, which forbade desire, but now reflection, industry, him to eat of the tree of knowledge, and trouble intervened between deto a voice of his own instinct, which sire and its enjoyment. Peace was made him shun the tree, then his broken between him and the beasts. upposed disobedience to that divine Necessity now drove them to destroy Commandment is nothing more than his plantations, and even to wage war a decline of his instinct, consequently, on himself; and he therefore called the first display of self-agency, the his reason to his aid, to procure him first exploit of his reason, and the security, and artfully to obtain that commencement of his moral exist- superiority of powers which nature ence. This decline of the instinct of had denied him. He found it necesman, though it produced moral evil sary to invent arms and weapons, and in creation, in order to render moral by strong and well guarded habitaFood possible in it, is without contra- tions defend himself from his enediction the greatest and most fortu- mies. Nature here indemnified him nate event in the history of man: by joys of the mind, for the common from this moment he dates his free- enjoyments of which she had deprived dom, and here the foundation stone him. was laid of his morality. The histo CRITICISM. [To be continued.] "Nulli negabimus, nulli differemus justitiam." LINGS AND SIXPENCE! POEMS, by Sir JOHN CARR. 1 vol. is no mean praise. It is a conspicu8vo. pp. 228. Price TEN SHIL- ous proof of our patience and our benevolence, virtues, of rare growth WITH the proudest conscious- in a critic. Of the first of these virness of our own merits, we tues no subsequent act of our own demand the approbation of our reacan rob us; to the last we shall perders when we inform them that we haps forfeit the claim before we dishave, in spite of yawning, laughing, miss Sir John Carr from our notice. rubbing our eyes, wriggling in our It is perfectly fair to remark, that chair, and stretching, absolutely gone we took up the present volume with through the present volume." This strong prejudices against its author. These prejudices we could no more meaning her eyes, were never made help than a man can his antipathy to to shine through "misty skies," a well known swindler, if he happens meaning her veil. (p. 64.) If he to be in his company. The swindler sees a fool in a corner holding a may have some virtues, but we should broom, (we do not mean to say that be slow to believe them; and Sir Sir John writes with a looking glass John Carr may have gleans of sense before him) his muse tells us that his that occasionally illumine the vast broom is "his wife, his child, his expanse of dullness that dwells upon prize," (p. 33), thus ingeniously his mind, but we have never found connecting, at once, matrimony and them. These are things of mere the "lucky lottery office," and conpossibility, and too much faith is not veying a delicate intimation that mar to be reposed in what is simply pos- riage is a prize. If a lady wears a sible. We hope we are not without diamond cross upon her bosom, he is that candour which would have suf- so enraptured, that his muse ambles fered us to rejoice in a discovery, yet through eight lines without any unmade, of Sir John's talents. We meaning at all. (p. 29.) Nothing can did not indeed look for them; for escape him. No, not even Bediam; who looks for roses on a rock? for the sight of its dilapidated walls reminds him of a "cracked head," and at that moment a strange, unacountable sympathy suggested to him that his own might be prefixed to the present volume. Such and so va How sweetly Sir John warbles his elegiac strains let the following de clare: With horror dumb, tho' guiltless, stood Beside his dying friend, To this volume of poems we have every objection to make that can possibly be made to a book. It is printed with a shameful diffusion of paper and type, in order to enhance its price, and in doing which we com- rious are the topics of this volume: mend the knight's policy more than and now, albeit scrupulous of pol his honesty. If my volume sells ting our pages with mere insipid cullfor half a guinea," says he, (we make ness, we will exhibit a specimen of Sir John the interlocutor, because we two. really do not think that any bookseller would be simple enough to purchase his copyright) "why then, as I cannot hope for many purchasers, they who do buy shall make up for those who do not." Very well. Thank heaven, we have not to sigh over the loss of half a guinea, and we pity those who have. It is nothing less than a literary fraud to print a volume as this is printed, many of its pages containing nothing more than what the author facetiously pleases to call an epigram, of two lines! Perhaps our knight hopes to soften the reader's indignation by the display of his own face as a frontispiece. We will honestly confess that his countenance is an accurate index of what the contents of the volume must be. Our next objection is, of course, to these contents. They are as various in their nature as can be engendered by vanity upon folly: by vanity that thinks itself equal to all, and folly that proves itself unequal to any.Sir John's muse is like a train of gunpowder : it takes fire at every thing. If a lady wears a muslin veil, he tells her inediately, that little stars," Sad from his side descend!!! The gen'rous suff'rer cried! Knew not for which to shed, So claim'd by both, her saddest tear The living or the dead! Sir John has a charming felicity in writing what he calls epigrams and impromptus. Ex. Gr. EPIGRAM To such extremes were I and BET We quarrell'd every time we met, EPIGRAM, Upon seeing the dulupidated state of Belles Well with the purpose does the plaɑ g.00; Upon a very pretty Woman asking the Author his Opinion of Beauty. Madam! you ask what marks for beauty pass: Require them rather from your lookingglass! a "Fair maiden, come with me, For I your bridegroom am to be." Of course no maiden would like a ghost for a husband, so she "Sent forth a hideous shriek, and died!'' And then comes the moral, which is, "Fright not, fond youths, the timid fair;" and so ends the story of Paul and Rebecca. visions are very unlike those of comWe have often heard, that a poet's mon men; and it must be so, for Sir John has seen, mirabile dictu! the sea Our readers should be informed in a flutter." (p. 50.) How pleasant that each of these epigrams occupies with small: and what a lively image it is to observe great things compared page to themselves! Whether this be done as illustrative of their own he has even seen his own mother in a cockney must have of the ocean, if emptiness; or whether, from a high and proud belief on the part of the a flutter at the unexpected arrival of author, that even his own poetry a guest to dinner just as the family placed in juxtaposition with such were sitting down to suet dumplings bright and dazzling irradiations of wit and sugar sauce. It is this happy would but obscure their glory, it is art of illustrating the vast which not for us to decide. Certain it is, bespeaks the true poet. But Sir John that they stand alone: and so stand abounds in these felicities of diction. ing, they reminded us of a pig in a At p. 2, he tries to "rear a feeling flower garden; more conspicuous in in the mind of a nymph: at p. 5, their deformity from their singleness. At p. 14, there is a story of a certain maiden, called Rebecca, who, as was very natural to maidens, and very much like all young maidens, wished to know who her husband was to be. What did she do to find it out?Why marble:" at p. 6, the moon is conevery bosom thrills colder than verted into a lamplighter, for she 101, the nightingale is called a "dark "trims up her waning lamp :" at p. warbling bird;" but whether the authe dark when the moon shines, (for thor means to say that she warbles in the first line says that this luminary "bespangled the murmuring wave,") or whether he would express a very singular, but no doubt a poetic idea, that she sings dark, is really beyond our comprehension. At p. 209, Sir John indulges his philological erudition with the use of " captivations." Rebecca heard the gossips say, "Alone from dusk till midnight stay Within the church-porch drear and dark, Upon the vigil of St. Mark, And, lovely maiden, you shall see What youth your husband is to be." Well, she did so. And what happened? Oh! something very horrible. What was it? Patience, and to Sir John's language: let us now you shall hear. There was a "roguish consider his sentiments. He wanted Scout," ycleped Paul, who slyly to picture a lady's modesty and beauguessed what she was going to do at ty. What did he do? Read and "St. Stephen's church;" so, when learn: UNIVERSAL MAG. VOL. XII. Thus far we have done due honour 2 P Written in a Cottage by the Sea-side, (in which the Author had taken Shelter during a violent Storm) upon seeing an idiotic Youth, seated in the Chimney-corner, caressing a Broom. 'Twas on a night of wildest storms, When loudly roar'd the raving main, When dark clouds shew'd their shapeless forms, And hail beat hard the cottage pane,Tom Fool sat by the chimney-side, With open mouth and staring eyes; A batter'd broom was all his pride,It was his wife, his child, his prize! Alike to him if tempests howl, Or summer beam, its sweetest day; For still is pleas'd the silly soul, And still he laughs the hours away. Alas! I could not stop the sigh, To see him thus so wildly stare,- Callous alike to joy and care. Its cares and crimes to thee are new. To snatch thee thus from grief and pain. Deceit shall never wring thy heart, And baffled hope awake no sighs; And true love, harshly forc'd to part, Shall never swell with tears thine eyes. Then long enjoy thy batter'd broom, Poor merry fool! and laugh away, "Till Fate shall bid thy reason bloom In blissful scenes of brighter day. After all, here was a subject which a mind possessing true genius might have made something of. It is Sir John's praise, that he can make nothing of any thing. *It is generally believed by the peasants of Devonshire, that idiotcy is produced by the influence of a witch. Some encomiastic lines to a young lady begin thus: Oh form'd to prompt the smile or tear, p. 212. But the following is in Sir John's happiest vein of humour : LINES, Written en badinage, after visiting a Paper- That ever went to paper-mill. Pleas'd between flannel I'd be put, And after bath'd in jellied size. For thee, sweet girl! upon my word, Eliza! I would pray to thee, If with thy pen thou would'st amuse, That thou would'st deign to write on me. On me, oh! may she still imprint For thus, to high importance grown, Become a treasure rarely known. There is more than jest in this; and our knight has had proofs of being "cut up," both in literary and other courts. At p. 94, he presents us with a translation of a German song, from which we easily gather that he does not know the language. The following lines, Und wüsten wir, wo jemand traurig läge, he translates, with spirited elegance, If any one is mournful found, - * The literal meaning of these lines is, "And knew we where one sorrowing lay, To him we'd give some wine." |