Three uncouth legs of mutton shock our eyes,

Three roasted geese, three buttered apple pies."

One passage is remarkable, as displaying the antipathy of Mason to the great Tory of the age, coupled with something bordering on disrespect to royalty itself. After designating the monarch

Patron supreme of learning, taste, and wit,

he proceeds :

Does Envy doubt? Witness, ye chosen train,
Who breathe the sweets of his Saturnian reign;
Witness, ye Hills, ye Johnsons, Scots, Shebbeares,
Hark to my call, for some of you have ears;
Let David Hume, from the remotest north,
In see-saw sceptic scruples hint his worth;
David, who there supinely deigns to lie,
The fattest hog of Epicurus' sty;

Though drunk with Gallic wine and Gallic praise,
David shall bless old England's halcyon days:
The mighty Home, bemired in prose so long,
Again shall stalk upon the stilts of song;
While bold Mac Ossian, wont in ghosts to deal,
Bids candid Smollett from his coffin steal;
Bids Malloch quit his sweet Elysian rest,

Sunk in his St. John's philosophic breast,

And, like old Orpheus, make some strong effort

To come from hell, and warble "Truth at court."

Surely the political prejudices of that man must have been pretty strong, who could mention Johnson along with Hill and Shebbeare.

This epistle, and several others published about the same time, appeared under the name of Malcolm Macgregor. By some they were attributed to Horace Walpole, and one writer says, "It is not improbable that Walpole furnished the venom, and that Mason spotted the snake.” To Mason, however, they were confidently ascribed by his old rival Tom Warton, and his denial is a sort of Waverley confession.

Politics, in the latter part of his life, took up a very large portion of Mason's attention. He continued a staunch Whig during the whole period of the American war, defended the resistance of the revolted colonies, and inveighed boldly against the measures of government. He was a decided advocate for parliamentary reform, and a stirring member of the county reform associations. Being given to understand that his conduct was displeasing to the court, he resigned his chaplainship, and in 1788 composed a secular ode on the "glorious Revolution.” But the word Revolution, almost immediately after, acquired a new and more terrible signification. Whether Mason ever looked with satisfaction on the proceedings of the French Revolution is uncertain; but he

very soon followed the course of Burke, and after writing, talking, perhaps sometimes preaching, for the better part of a long life, to promote freedom and circumscribe prerogative, he discovered, all at once, that mankind had all along had quite as much liberty as was good for them, and that the so-called abuses, corruptions, and oppressions of society were so intrinsically wrought into its texture, that to attempt to pluck them out was to unravel the whole web of the community. In this new faith he composed a Palinodia, which, though written in 1794, was not printed till 1797, the last year of his life. It betrays no marks of senility. There is the same heat, earnestness, verbosity, and selfconfidence that appear in his earliest compositions; the same redundancy of epithets, compound terms, and personifications; much which every poetic boy can admire, and little or nothing which any one, without getting by heart, would remember. Two stanzas will be a sufficient sample of this, the latest published work of our author:—

And art thou mute? or does the fiend that strides

Yon sulphurous tube, by tigers drawn,

While seas of blood roll their increasing tides

Beneath his wheels, while myriads groan,

Does he with voice of thunder make reply,

"I am the Genius of stern Liberty;

Adore me as thy genuine choice;

Know, where I hang with wreaths my sacred tree,

Power undivided, just Equality,

Are born at my creative voice!"

Avaunt, abhorr'd Democracy!

O for Ithuriel's spear!

To shew to Party's jaundiced eye
The fiend she most should fear;

To turn her from the infernal sight,

To where, array'd in robes of light,

True Liberty, on seraph wing,

Descends to shed that blessing rare,

Of equal rights, an equal share

To people, peers, and king.

In abjuring Democracy, Mason did not, like too many, become the enemy of humanity, or the advocate of men stealers, but continued, as a good citizen and a christian minister, to urge the abolition of the slave The only sermon he ever published is in furtherance of this

trade. object.

Notwithstanding the disturbed state of the political world, the last days of Mason were spent in peace, and he enjoyed the reward of a life of temperance, healthful occupation, and calm piety. For some years before his death, he was in the habit of composing an anniversary

sonnet on his birth-day (the 23d of February). The following, perhaps the last lines he ever wrote, commemorate the completion of his 72nd year, A.D. 1797:

Again the year on easy wheels has roll'd,

To bear me to the term of seventy-two;
Yet still my eyes can seize the distant blue
Of yon wild Peak, and still my footsteps bold,
Unprop'd by staff, support me to behold

How Nature, to her Maker's mandate true,
Calls Spring's impartial heralds to the view,
The snow-drop pale, the crocus spik'd with gold;
And still (thank Heaven) if I not falsely deem,
My lyre, yet vocal, freely can afford

Strains not discordant to each moral theme
Fair Truth inspires, and aid me to record

(Best of poetic pains!) my faith supreme
In thee, my God, my Saviour, and my Lord!

From this sonnet it might have been expected that the venerable poet had years in store; and perhaps his life might have extended to fourscore, but for one of those accidents which shew the peculiar insecurity of the tenure of an old man's life. In stepping out of a carriage, he stumbled and occasioned a contusion on his leg, which did not appear at first to be any thing serious, but being neglected turned to a mortification, which proved fatal, in May, 1793. Previous to his death he had prepared a collection of his poems, in which the "Isis" was suffered to resume its place.

Besides his skill in poetry and in gardening, he was a considerable proficient in painting, and a respectable amateur in music. He translated Du Fresnoy's " Art of Painting" in early life, chiefly, as himself declares, for his own instruction. This version was laid aside in an unfinished state for many years, till being accidentally shown to Sir Joshua Reynolds, he was so much pleased with it, that he desired it might be completed, and enriched it with his annotations, which undoubtedly are the most valuable part of the joint performance. Mason also wrote essays, historical and critical, on English church music. As in gardening, so in music, he was the votary of simplicity; but the simplicity he demands is too severe to be generally adopted, even in congregational psalmody.

With the great poets in any department of poetry, Mason cannot be numbered, yet for many years of his life he was England greatest living Poet.

SIR RICHARD ARKWRIGHT.

So now, where Derwent guides his dusky floods,
Through vaulted mountains, and a night of woods,
The Nymph, Gossypia, treads the velvet sod,
And warms with rosy smiles the watery God,
His ponderous oars to slender spindles turns,
And pours o'er massy wheels his foamy urns;
With playful charms her hoary lover wins,
And wields his trident, while the monarch spins.
First, with nice eye emerging Naiads cull,
From leathery pods the vegetable wool;
With wiry teeth revolving cards release,

The tangled knots, and smooth the ravell'd fleece,
Next moves the iron-hand with fingers fine,
Combs the wide card, and forms the eternal line,
Slow, with soft lips, the whirling can acquires
The slender skeins, and wraps in rising spires,
With quickened pace, successive rollers move,
And these retain, and those extend the rove;
Then fly the spoles, the rapid axles glow,

And slowly circumvolves the labouring wheel below.

Darwin's "Loves of the Plants," Canto, 11, 85, 104.

"Gossypium, the Cotton Plant. On the river Derwent, near Matlock, in Derbyshire, SIR RICHARD ARKWRIGHT has erected his curious and magnificent machinery for spinning cotton, which had been in vain attempted by many ingenious men before him. The cotton wool is first picked from the pods and seeds by women. It is then carded by cylindrical cards, which move against each other with different velocities. It is taken from these by an iron hand, or comb, which has a motion similar to that of scratching, and takes the wool off the cards longitudinally in respect to the fibres or staple, producing a continued line loosely cohering called the Rove or Roving. This Rove yet very loosely twisted, is then received or drawn into a whirling canister, and is rolled by the contrifugal force in spiral lines within it, being yet too tender for the spindle. It is then passed between two pairs of rollers; the second pair moving faster than the first, elongate the thread with greater rapidity than can be done by hand, and is then twisted on spoles, or bobbins.

The great fertility of the cotton plant, in these fine flexible threads, whilst those from flax, hemp, or from the bark of the Mulberry tree, require a previous putrefaction of the parenchy matous substance, and much mechanical labour, and afterwards

bleaching, renders this plant of great importance to the world. And since SIR RICHARD ARKWRIGHT's ingenious machine has not only greatly abbreviated and simplified the labour and art of carding and spinning the cotton-wool, but performs both these circumstances better than can be performed by hand; it is probable that the cloth of this small reed may become the principal clothing of mankind."Darwin's note on the passage.

Now Richard's talents for the world were fit,

He'd no small cunning, and he'd some small wit,

Long lost to us, at length our man we trace,

Sir Richard Munday, died at Munday place.

Some are born great, some atchieve greatness.—SHAKSPEARE.

CRABBE.

It may seem somewhat paradoxical if we declare an opinion that Arkwright, the penny-barber, who came to be a Knight-batchelor, and died worth double the revenue of a German principality, belonged to the class of men born great, rather than of those who atchieve greatness, and yet, if they be duly considered, there are good substantial reasons for that opinion. For he either did invent the machinery that made his fortune, or he did not,-therefore he was either a great mechanician or a great knave, and no man can be either the one or the other without certain powers, capacities, and Ideas, which are not acquirable, but must be intertwined by Nature herself with the thread of his destiny. It is no doubt easy, for any man that chooses, to be a knave; knave enough to ruin himself and his friends, knave enough to lose his character and his soul, but all this a man may do without being a great knave, without realizing a fortune of half a million. The common run of small knaves, like small poets, are wretchedly poor, living from hand to mouth upon their shifts or their verses, because they are not the knaves or the poets of nature, but of vanity or necessity. They play off their tricks and their sonnets on the spur of the moment, and are incapable of forming any scheme befitting "a creature of large discourse, looking before and after." But the great knave despises all the epigrams, and impromptus, and fugitive pieces of knavery. As the great poet speaks plain prose to his neighbours, writes a letter of business like a man of business, and can see a rose or a pretty milk-maid without committing rhyme or blank upon either, reserving and consolidating his powers for some great and permanent object, that will rather enoble his genius, than be enobled by it. So the truly great knave never throws knavery away; in all but the main point he is minutely honest, and only to be distinguished from the naturally honest man, by a greater anxiety about appearances. But in one thing the great knave differs from the great poet. The poet conceives great ideas of his own, and in the production and developement of those ideas his delight consists; he does