The mind that broods o'er guilty woes,
Is like the Scorpion girt with fire;
In circle wanowing as it glows
The flames around the captive clan,
Till inly search'd by thousand thieves,

And maddening in her ire,

One sad and sole relief she knows,
The sting she nourish'd for her foes,
Whose venom never yet was vain,
Gives but one pang and cures all pain,
And darts into her desperate brain:
So do the dark in soul expire,

Or live, like Scorpion, girt by fire;
So writhes the mind remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoomed for Heaven,
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death.

Yes, Love, indeed, is light from heaven,
A spark of that immortal fire
With angels shar'd, by Allah given,
To lift from earth our low desire.
Devotion wafts the mind above,
But heaven itself descends in love;
A feeling from the godhead caught,
To wean from self each sordid thought;
A ray of him who form'd the whole;
A glory circling round the soul!
I grant my love imperfect, all
That mortals by the name miscall.

*

Is not this very pretty?

T. F.

Ir has been our lot, on several occasions during this last month, to have heard good-natured and sage people exclaiming against the gross impropriety we were about to commit in enrolling the name of Sir Humphrey Davy in the register of the humbugs of the age. An elderly gentleman, in a elaret-coloured coat, whom we met by mere chance one evening at Steevens's, was particularly indignant, and as his conversation with us, whom he little suspected to be the culprit whose enormities he was denouncing, embodies all the objections we have heard, we think there can be no better way of communicating them to the public than through that medium. "It is a shame, Sir," said he, "that in this country no one can win his wellearned way to honour or rank by the exercise of superior talent, but he becomes, on that very account, the object of slander and scurrility. Here, Sir, I see in this little magazine, written and published by God knows whom, an announcement that the first chemist in the world-a man whose birth among us confers an honour on the countrya man who is, even at this moment, travelling for scientific purposes, and is, as he ever has been, under similar circumstances, received with distinguished honours-is to be held up to the shafts of ridicule, or, at all events, of insolence, as a humbug-as a fit companion for some unknown creature who chews opium for a magazine in Fleet-market, or a cooking recipemonger. It is not fair, Sir."

With all this, and much more to the same effect, did we agree while conversing with our claret-coloured friend at Steevens's. But he need not apprehend that we are going to post Sromredevi (as his Italian correspondent titled him) as a humbug on account of his chemistry. We there own his merits as a man of science as far as that word can be applied to the bundle of jointless facts which constitutes chemistry at present-and what is of still higher importance, we frankly admit the great advantage several of his inventions have been to the country, and are proud of the fame he has conferred on his native land among foreigners. Far different, indeed, are

VOL. I.

our reasons for inscribing him among the humbugs of the age. It is not of Davy, the chemist, we are going to speak, but of Sir Humphrey, the gentleman. In this latter capacity no humbug can be more super-eminent. He is in this peculiar and special ground as great as little Quincy himself.

It is a pity that we cannot see ourselves with others' eyes-or perhaps it is not a pity, for it might tend to make us miserable, without amending us in any important particular. If we could, however, Sir Humphrey would keep to his crucible, and drop the drawingroom. His lady would strip off the cerulean stockings, which have converted her stout legs into a pair of blue posts, and tattle scandal and gossip with the other old women, male and female, who compose her coteries. It is not much more than 20 years ago that Sir Humphrey, known by the name of Numps, was a petty apothecary in some barbarous town in Cornwall; and although he has since risen highly in the world, and mixed with some of the best society in England, he may be assured that he has still a gait and gesture, and habits and manners, nothing better than a village Ollapod. The clothes of a gentleman do not sit easily upon him; and you are always tempted to wish that he wore, as formerly, a clean apron. The very precision of slovenliness with which he dresses himself, inevitably puts you in mind of a natty little fellow called up. suddenly to attend a dowager patient with some lenitive cataplasm, or soothing enema. He smells of the shop completely. Sir Humphrey was one evening particularly superb and dandyish, dressed in a green velvet waistcoat, with gold spangles on it, at Miss Lydia White's, when she observed, that he looked as if he had stepped out of a box. "A pill-box, by G-, ma'am, then," said Lutterel, "and I see the powdered licorice has stuck to his waistcoat."

How absurd is this conduct! If we saw such people as Lord Petershamor any similar gaby, so rigged out, we should only think it of a piece with the general character of the man, and pass it by; but for Davy-the inventor of N

iodine, of the safety-lamp, of Heaven knows how many things beside-the great chemist-the deep philosopherto come forward, showing himself off in green and gold, is really the ne plus ultra of absurdity. But it is his daily practice. He is devoré, as the French would say, with a rage for playing the fine gentleman. He lounges into a room with what he thinks is an elegant languor; but which is much more like what the polite dialect of slang, now so much cultivated by our wits and fine writers, would call the gait of a foglehunter, on a morning sneak [a pickpocket looking after his business.] He then sits down, swinging his arms with an amiable nonchalance, which reminds one instinctively of the motion of a sign on a windy-day. Then he talks elegant trifles to young ladies, in what he imagines is the delightful tone of easy conversation, but which as much resembles that unacquirable art as the love-letter of the school-master, which poor Tom Pipes carries in Peregrine Pickle, did the real epistle, written by the gentleman himself. The poor fellow fancies himself irresistible among the girls, and is evidently pluming himself, while conversing with them, on the hope that they are saying to their own hearts, what they will give utterance to when he withdraws from their company

“How delightful a man is the great Sir Humphrey Davy!-What a charming fellow-You see how he was telling us about the last new novel, or the set of china, or the pattern of a lace, or the cut of a gown-not at all about chemistry. O! he is a universal geniusYou never, my dear, would take him for a great philosopher." In part of this anticipated speech, his hopes are generally gratified. The young ladies, whom Ire has been boring by his brilliant conversation, generally vote him no philosopher"-but they as generally add, that it is a pity so clever a man should make himself so great a fool.

66

In pursuance of this excellent system of his, he thinks it quite fashionable to affect indifference to his wife. There is something irresistibly comical in seeing Sir Humphrey and his lady in a company together, particularly at their own house. They never, by any chance, interchange a word, but if they happen to get together into the same circle, at dinner for example, they are continually talking at one another. Whatever position her ladyship lays down,

her knightly helpmate is surely a sidewind to contradict it. He considers her as having grown too old, and, therefore, a bore; she as evidently looks upon him as an ass. No man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre: we suspect it is as impossible to be a savant to a man's wife. Our couple have reversed matters. He talks badinage, and follies, and frivolities, in the tone of a country pedant determinedly light, and aims at making fierceful and playful hits, which he effects with the elegance and fancy of a paviour. She, on the contrary, despises the mere feminine chatter of the day, and discusses topics of literature and science in a manner which, to speak chemically, would turn the bestnatured alkali in the world into an acid.

She was a Mrs. Ap-SomebodyAp-Rees, we believe, or something equally hideous-so that we do not wonder at her changing it even into Davy. At all times she has been a basblen of the very first water. We remember her some fifteen years ago-perhaps longer-in the literary coteries of Edinburgh. About that time the top literary society of that city was oppressive to an awful degree. Puppyism was predominant beyond all former precedent. The Scotch leeterawti, as they call themselves, had taken it into their heads to imitate the French society of the last century. This absurd mania prevailed chiefly among those whom Cobbet compliments with the title of feelosofers. Heavy poor clowns, clever enough, we suppose, in the sciences, were hard at work, endeavouring to ape the elegancies of Paris in the days of Louis Quinze. Because D'Alembert, and Maupertuis, and others of that grade, had frequented female society, and been regarded as ornaments at the petits soupers of the Parisian belles, such folks as Playfair thought it would be quite the thing for them also. Playfair was a poor schoolmaster-a particularly unfortunate trade in Scotland

for the best part of his life; and owed his rise in society to any thing but the cultivation of the graces. He was a regular Dominie Sampson, a little, and but little, improved by the application of a curry-conib; but then he thought it would be one of the finest things possible to be elegant, in order that people might wonder at the grace and gusto of his accomplishments, as well as the powers of his mind-just the same by the way that Sir Humphrey is playing

off now, so much to the merriment of his acquaintances. Voltaire and Co. were deists too, and Playfair was a deist of course. The French witswho were wits-had joked ingeniously on what we poor people believe to be sacred subjects-aud, of course, Playfair, who was no wit, but a fine specimen of a hard-headed mathematician-had his dry joke, and cutting sarcasm, and agreeable rallying on the same subject. [We do not take Playfair invidiously as a sample of the whole, nor because we have not living specimens plenty of this bourgeoise gentilhomme sort of philosophers alive and well, this present minute, in Scotland, though they are not in such good odour as formerly--but because he is dead, and we do not wish to hurt living people, and have a particular objection to being prosecuted for libel, as we undoubtedly should be if we ventured to speak the truth about any of that particular set, as Blackwood, we should think, could tell.] You would see this hard, dry, underbred, withered, old Scottish pedagogue, at balls and routs, persuading himself that the days of the philosophers of France had revived in Auld Reekie. This mixture of dandyism and science, which has always appeared to us one of the most disgusting things in the world, gave the ton to the Edinburgh society, and Mrs. Ap. was up to her eyes in blue. We remember to have been present when old Playfair was talking airily-Heaven help the mark-on Madame de Stael's Corinne, and a set of Mrs. A.'s parasites, (the lady had money) were asserting, on what grounds we cannot conjecture, that she was the Corinna. Every body knows that the vain creature who wrote the novel drew the heroine for herselfbut Mrs. A. swallowed the lump of incense. Playfair put in, however, a faint caveat. He did not think her tall enough. "She wanted," he said, "of the proper height for Corinna, an inch and some "He then coughed. He was going to say an inch and some lines-when he caught himself in time to hinder the mathematics from bursting out.

Sir Humphrey married her forWhat? Why, for love, to be sure: what else does a man ever marry for? And if a little money comes, it is no harm. Her blue stockingism was delighted to the highest, and his ambition of shining among the fashionables instead of lec

turing to them, also received its gratification. He dedicated his work on "Agricultural Chemistry" to her; which, as the book chiefly treats on analysis of dung and other manures, was a wellturned compliment. Frere, in his capital little poem, "Whistlecraft's Prospectus and Specimens," has a sly hit at this absurd dedication. We forget the lines, but he laughs at dedicating to relatives, in that easy and good-humoured style, which characterizes him beyond all other writers of ottava rima. The satire is meant against this dedication of Davy's; and nothing could better deserve it than such a piece of nonsensical affectation of conjugality in the face of the public. All that, however, is over entirely now, and he finds it bon-ton to be as negligent as he was formerly gallant. Both are equal pieces of humbug.

As a counterbalance for Davy's puppyism in fine society, he has taken into his head, that it is spirited and manly to talk obscenely among men. This is always the refuge of poor wits, or rather of people setting up for wits. There is poor Tom Campbell, for instance, who never said a good thing in his life, but is continually straining after one, and he knows no way of doing it but by talking dirt. Numps carries it to a high degree, and is quite in raptures with the cleverness he displays. He is everlastingly telling of his amorous adventures, and occasionally turning them by a side-wind to a scientific account. It is a pity that we cannot tell his story of the invention of the safety-lamp, with which he once regaled us at the Royal Society. It is a rich specimen of what we allude to, but we dare no more than allude. This talent of his, with some absurd attempts at playing magnifico, made him abominated at the Alfred. There are some queer stories about him connected with that club. He evidently considered himself quite the attraction of the place, and thought that if he withdrew his countenance, it must go down. He had contrived to get himself on the committee, where he was excessively disagreeable; and, at last, out of disgust at not being able to domineer over every body in his own way, he, to the infinite delight of his brethren in office, resigned. He, of course, expected that the Alfred was gone; when, to his surprise and mortification, his place was immediately filled up by the Marquis of Camden. That