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ess, insincere, pleased, affected, amiable! The French physiognomy is more cut up and subdivided into petty lines, and sharp angles than any other: it does not want for subtlety, or an air of gentility, which last it often has in a remarkable degree, but it is the most unpoetical and the least picturesque of all others. -I cannot explain what I mean by this variable telegraphic machinery of polite expression better than by an obvious allusion. Every one by walking the streets of London (or any other populous city) acquires a walk which is easily distinguished from that of strangers; a quick flexibility of movement, a smart jerk, an aspiring and confident tread, and an air, as if determined to keep the line of march; but for all that, there is not much grace or grandeur in this local strut: you see the person is not a country bumpkin, but you would not say, he is a hero or a sage, because he is a cockney. So it is in passing through the artificial and thickly peopled scenes of life. You get the look of a man of the world: you rub off the pedant and the clown; but you do not make much progress in wisdom or virtue, or in the characteristic expression of either.

The character of a gentleman (I take it) may be explained nearly thus:-A blackguard (un vaurien,) is a fellow who does not care whom he offends; a clown is a blockhead who does not know when he offends: a gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them. Politeness, and the pretensions to the character in question, have reference almost entirely to this reciprocal manifestation of good-will and good opinion towards each other in casual society. Morality regulates our sentiments and conduct as they have a connection with ultimate and important consequences:-Manners, properly speaking, regulate our words and actions in the routine of personal intercourse. They have little to do with real kindness of intention, or practical services, or disinterested sacrifices; but they put on the garb, and mock the appearance of these, in order to prevent a breach of the peace, and to smooth and varnish over the discordant materials, when any number of individuals are brought

in contact together. The conventional compact of good manners does not reach beyond the moment and the company. Say, for instance, that the rabble, the labouring and industrious part of the community, are taken up with supplying their own wants, and pining over their own hardships,-scrambling for what they can get, and not refining on any of their pleasures, or troubling themselves about the fastidious pretensions of others: again, there are philoso phers who are busied in the pursuit of truth,-or patriots who are active for the good of their country; but here, we will suppose, are a parcel of people got together who having no serious wants of their own, with lei sure and independence, and caring little about abstract truth or prac tical utility, are met for no mortal purpose but to say, and to do all manner of obliging things, to pay the greatest possible respect, and show the most delicate and flattering attentions to one another. The po litest set of gentlemen and ladies in the world can do no more than this. The laws that regulate this species of artificial and fantastic society are conformable to its ends and origin. The fine gentleman or lady must not, on any account, say a rude thing to the persons present, but you may turn them into the utmost ridicule the instant they are gone: nay, not to do so is sometimes considered as an indirect slight to the party that remains. You must compliment your bitterest foe to his face, and may slander your dearest friend behind his back. The last may be immoral, but it is not unmannerly. The gallant maintains his title to this character by treating every woman he meets with the same marked and unremitting attention as if she was his mistress: the courtier treats every man with the same professions of esteem and kindness as if he was an accomplice with him in some plot against mankind. Of course, these professions, made only to please, go for nothing in practice. To insist on them afterwards as literal obliga tions, would be to betray an ignorance of this kind of interlude, or masquerading in real life. To ruin your friend at play is not inconsistent with the character of a gentleman and a man of honour, if it is done with civility; though to warn him of

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his danger, so as to imply a donbt of his judgment, or interference with his will, would be to subject yourself to be run through the body with a sword. It is that which wounds the self-love of the individual that is offensive-that which flatters it that is welcome-however salutary the one, or however fatal the other may be. A habit of plain-speaking is totally contrary to the tone of goodbreeding. You must prefer the opinion of the company to your own, and even to truth. I doubt whether a gentleman must not be of the established church, and a Tory. A true cavalier can only be a martyr to the fashion. A Whig lord appears to me as great an anomaly as a patriotking. A sectary is sour and unsociable. A philosopher is quite out of the question. He is in the clouds, and had better not be let down on the floor in a basket, to play the blockhead. He is sure to commit himself in good company-and by dealing always in abstractions, and driving at generalities, to offend against the three proprieties of time, place, and person. Authors are angry, loud, and vehement in argument: the man of more refined breeding, who has been "all tranquillity and smiles," goes away, and tries to ruin the antagonist whom he could not vanquish in a dispute. The manners of a court, and of polished life, are by no means downright, strait-forward, but the contrary. They have something dramatic in them; each person plays an assumed part; the affected, overstrained politeness, and suppression of real sentiment, lead to concealed irony, and the spirit of satire and raillery; and hence we may account for the perfection of the genteel comedy of the century before the last, when poets mingled in the court-circles, and took their cue from the splendid ring

Of mimic statesmen and their merry king. The essence of this sort of conver

sation and intercourse, both on and off the stage, has somehow since evaporated; the disguises of royalty, nobility, gentry have been in some measure seen through: we have individually become of little importance, compared with greater objects, in the eyes of our neighbours, and even in our own: abstract topics, not personal pretensions, are the order of the day; so that what remains of the character we have been talking of, is chiefly exotic and provincial, and may be seen still flourishing in country places, in a wholesome, vegetable state of decay.

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A man may have the manners of a gentleman without having the look, and he may have the character of a gentleman, in a more abstracted point of view, without the manners. The feelings of a gentleman, in this innate sense, only denote a more refined humanity-a spirit delicate in itself, and unwilling to offend, either in the greatest or the smallest things. This may be coupled with absence of mind, with ignorance of forms, and frequent blunders. But the will is good. The spring of gentle offices and true regards is untainted. person of this stamp blushes at an impropriety he was guilty of twenty years before, though he is, perhaps, liable to repeat it to-morrow. never forgives himself for even a slip of the tongue, that implies an assumption of superiority over any one. In proportion to the concessions made to him, he lowers his demands. He gives the wall to a beggar:' but does not always bow to great men. This class of character have been called “God Almighty's gentlemen." There are not a great many of them. The late GD- was one ;-for we understand that that gentleman was not able to survive some ill-disposed person's having asserted of him, that he had mistaken Lord Castlereagh for the author of Waverley.— T.

He

The writer of this article once saw a Prince of the Blood pull off his hat to every one in the street, till he came to the beggarman that swept the crossing. This was a nice distinction. Farther, it was a distinction that the writer of this article would not make to be a Prince of the Blood. Perhaps, however, a question might be started in the manner of Montaigne, whether the beggar did not pull off his hat in quality of asking charity, and not as a mark of respect. Now a Prince may decline giving charity, though he is obliged to return a civility. If he does not, he may be treated with disrespect another time, and that is an alternative he is bound to prevent. Any other per son might set up such a plea, but the person to whom a whole street had been bowing just before.

WITHERED VIOLETS.

LONG years have pass'd, pale flowers, since you
Were cull'd and given in brightest bloom,
By one whose eye eclipsed your blue,

Whose breath was like your own perfume.
Long years! but, though your bloom be gone,
The fragrance which your freshness shed
Survives, as memory lingers on

When all that bless'd its birth have fled.

Thus hues and hopes will pass away

Thus youth, and bloom, and bliss, depart:

Oh! what is left when these decay?

The faded leaf-the wither'd heart!

Sept. 20.

THE RAINBOW.

THE evening was glorious, and light through the trees,
Play'd the sunshine and rain-drops, the birds and the breeze;
The landscape, outstretching in loveliness, lay

On the lap of the year, in the beauty of May.

For the Queen of the Spring, as she pass'd down the vale,
Left her robe on the trees, and her breath on the gale;
And the smile of her promise gave joy to the hours,
And flush in her footsteps sprang herbage and flowers.
The skies, like a banner in sunset unroll'd,
O'er the west threw their splendour of azure and gold;
But one cloud at distance rose dense, and increased,
Till its margin of black touch'd the zenith, and east.
We gazed on the scenes, while around us they glow'd,
When a vision of beauty appear'd on the cloud ;—
"Twas not like the Sun, as at mid-day we view,

Nor the Moon that rolls nightly through star-light and blue.
Like A SPIRIT, it came in the van of the storm!

And the eye, and the heart, hail'd its beautiful form;
For it look'd not severe, like an Angel of Wrath,
But its garment of brightness illumed its dark path.
In the hues of its grandeur sublimely it stood,
O'er the river, the village, the field, and the wood;
And river, field, village, and woodlands grew bright,
As conscious they gave and afforded delight.
"Twas the bow of Omnipotence; bent in His hand,
Whose grasp at Creation the Universe spann'd;
'Twas the presence of GOD, in a symbol sublime;
His Vow from the Flood to the exit of Time!
Not dreadful, as when in the whirlwind he pleads,
When storms are his chariot, and lightnings his steeds;
The black clouds his banner of vengeance unfurl'd,
And thunder his voice to a guilt-stricken world ;—

In the breath of his presence when thousands expire,
And seas boil with fury, and rocks burn with fire;

And the sword, and the plague-spot with death strew the plain,
And vultures, and wolves, are the graves of the slain :—

Not such was that RAINBOW, that beautiful one!

Whose arch was refraction, its key-stone-the Sun ;

A Pavilion it seem'd which the Deity graced,
And Justice and Mercy met there, and embraced.
Awhile, and it sweetly bent over the gloom,

Like Love o'er a death-couch, or Hope o'er the tomb;
Then left the dark scene, whence it slowly retired,
As Love had just vanish'd, or Hope had expired.

I gaz'd not alone on that source of my song ;-
To all who beheld it these verses belong,

Its presence to all was the path of the Lord!
Each full heart expanded,-grew warm,-and adored!
Like a visit the converse of friends—or a day,
That Bow from my sight pass'd for ever away;
Like that visit, that converse, that day-to my heart,
That Bow from remembrance can never depart.
'Tis a picture in memory distinctly defined,
With the strong, and unperishing colours of mind;
A part of my being beyond my controul,

Beheld on that cloud, and transcribed on my soul.

SONNET.

It is not that she moveth like a queen,
(Although her graceful air I must admire ;)
Nor that her eye shoots forth the falcon's fire,
(And yet her gentle glance is bright and keen:)
Perhaps Diana's hair had scarcely been

Thus braided; nor the voice of choiring bird
Entirely thus, in old times, sweetly heard,
When that great huntress trod the forests green.
What matters this?—To me her eye is fill'd
With radiant meaning, and her tones are clear
And soft as music, a sweet soul betraying;
And o'er her flushing cheek (ah! sensitive child!)
Beautiful pain is seen, too often, playing,
As though to say, "Perfection dwells not even here."

B.

SONNET,

Written in the Woods of Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire.

There is no lovelier scene in all the land.—
Around me far a green enchantment lies,
Fed by the weeping of these April skies,
And touch'd by Fancy's great "all-charming wand."
Almost I expect to see a lightsome band

Come stealing thro' the hazel boughs, that cross
My path-or half-asleep upon the moss

Some Satyr, with stretch'd arm, and clenched hand.

-It is a place of beauty: here, half hid

By yellowing ash and drooping aspens, run
The river waters,* -as to meet the sun;
And in the distance, boiling in its might,
The fatal fall is seen,-the thundering strid;
And over all the morning blue and bright.

The river (the Wharfe) runs eastward.

B.

LINES

Written for a Young Lady's Pocket Book, near the Ruins of Horace's
Villa (so called,) a little above the Cascades at Tivoli.

What do I see? waters that glide
Gracefully slow where olives wave;
The aloes on the mountain-side-
A mound, perhaps the poet's grave.
What do I hear? an under-sound
From yonder chasm that yawns below,
Which darts a shudder through the ground,
And shakes the flowers that round me grow.

"Tis thus, when moments smoothly pass,
An inward trembling of the soul
Predicts, with fatal truth, alas!
That tow'rds a fearful change they roll.
But let me check those thoughts of pain,
That from black memory take their hue,
For flowery hopes should deck the strain
That comes an offering to you :—

Yes you shall tread those paths of life
By which the peaceful streamlets roam,

Far from the horrors of the strife

Where 'gainst the dark rock strikes the foam.

LETTER FROM JOHN O'GROATS' TO THE EDITOR,

ENCLOSING SPECIMENS OF A POEM.

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SIR,-I take the liberty of sending you some extracts from a new poem which a friend of mine threater.s to publish. I have perused the work, and shall only say it treats upon every subject; but, principally, on Poetry,Criticism, the Fancy,-Nature,-Coleridge,-Waterloo Bridge,-Aristotle, -Walter Scott,-Youth,-Port Wine,—the Author,-Astronomy,-Tom Moore,-Botany,-Intoxication,-Manias,-Radicalism, Mr. Ex-Sheriff P--rk-ns,-Sunset,-Chemistry,-and other similar subjects. My extracts are, like tea-pots, of various sorts and sizes:-but, if I write a long proem, my sheet will be filled,—and I cannot afford a double letter from this great distance. By the way, 'tis a pity you Magazine Editors will not, like other tradesmen, send travellers round the country to solicit orders and communications; a shilling, or eighteen-penny postage on every communication, is a serious tax to a poor bard, and must debar you from many a choice article. John O'Groats',

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Last year, kind reader, it comes o'er my mind

With Chemistry I was awhile quite thick;

I broke retorts with decomposing wind,

And burnt my house with mixtures phosphoric,

And with voltaic batteries refin'd

Gold, silver, charbon (Anglicè, burnt stick)
But now my folly's chang'd-I'd have you know it,
I've clos'd my lab'ratory, and turn'd poet.

*

60.

How sweet to hear the sound of rushing waters,
As o'er a rock the sparkling currents dash!

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