THE Turkish epithet for the sultans is yoularsiz arslan, unmuzzled lions!

Man's being is a spider's web: The passionate flash of the soul-comes not of him:

It is the breath of that dark genius
Which whirls invisible along the threads -
A servant of eternal destiny.

It purifies them from the vulgar dust,
Which earthward strives to press the net,
But Fate gives sign; the breath becomes a whirl-
wind,

And, in a moment, rends to shreds the thing
We thought was woven for eternity!

From the German of Werner.

MR. MARKLAND, of the Temple, has addressed a sensible letter to the president of the Society of Antiquities, proposing the establishment of a Museum, or Repository of Antiquities, to be attached to the Antiquarian Society.

NOT contented with translating the romances of Sir Walter Scott, the Russians have fabricated others, which the booksellers of Moscow pass off as his productions; they have nothing of Sir Walter in them, beyond his name on the titlepage.

THE parallel between Gibbon and Lord Byron, as drawn by Leigh Hunt, is worthy of special attention.

LOVE OF COUNTRY.

M. JOSTI, a native of Sils, in Switzerland, was originally a groom, but running away from a tyrannical master, he hired himself to a confectioner in a German town; being industrious and skilful, he afterwards was appointed chocolate-maker to the reigning prince, and accumulated a large fortune. Yet, at the height of his favour and prosperity, he every year visited his native place, and spent the summer months with the humble companions of his youth.

ONE of the most recent of Mr. Theodore Hook's "wise saws and modern instances" is to enclose a silver spoon in the belly of a cod-fish during the boiling: if it be in good condition, the silver will remain uncoloured, when taken from the fish at table.

MAYER, a Venetian, attempts to show that music is on the decline in Italy. He calls Rossini the Marini of modern music, and accuses him of degrading his talents, from an endeavour to please the vulgar

taste.

"The joy of grief," says Dr. Blair, "is one of Ossian's remarkable expressions several times repeated. If any one shall

AMBITION.
SCENE-Pandemonium.

ALOUD she cried: "Oh, parent dear!
The merits of Ambition hear,
'Tis I who to thy palace bring

The courtier, statesman, people, king.
View the great names of ancient time;
Ambition was their only crime,
Who Alexander made a rod,
A madman, murd'rer, and a god?
Who made my Cæsar lash the globe?
Who stain'd with blood his royal robe?
Who all the tyrants of the earth

Nurs'd and instructed from their birth?
What wounds have by this hand been giv'n!
What souls by me detaiu'd from Heav'n!
And e'en in later times review

The sons I've brought: unnumber'd crew! Richelieu and Mazarin to thee Were introduced at first by me For Fleury, well thou knowst, I strove; What saved him was his country's love. Of England's kings a list I bear That credits well my skill and care. Is there a Stuart I have not brought? Indeed, they cost me little thought, For they were all so well inclin'd, That we were ever of a mind. Usurpers too, my long list crown, Who, others crush'd, themselves came down. Richard and Cromwell, names of note, Ambition may be proud to quote,: And then, along the statesman's line, What glory and what triumph's mine!" From the Vices, presumed to be by the Author of

Junius.

SPIRIT OF THE

Public Journals.

BOOKS, BOOKSELLERS, AND BOOK. MAKERS.

THE greatest mistake made by authors is to suppose, that, educated as gentlemen, and enjoying their society and mode of life, authorship can support them. No man ought to expect more from authorship than payment for his manual labour in writing. If he will estimate his work as a law-stationer does, by the same number of pence per folio, he will probably not be disappointed, on the supposition that he is not a man of talents and judgment. Sir Walter Scott may be quoted as an exception, and we give those who differ from us all the be

nefit of this single instance. Southey might, perhaps, be mentioned as an exception also: but setting aside his receipts for articles in reviews, which we exclude from present consideration, we would venture to assert that had he spent the same time in the office of a law stationer, or other copyist, that he would have been equally well paid for his time. It follows that all the head work must be thrown in; consequently no man, unless he derives a sufficient livelihood from other sources, can afford to write books. Novels and Poetical Tales, such as those of Byron, may perhaps be quoted against us; and the munificence of Mr. Colburn referred to as a proof of the unsoundness of our doctrine. Let it however be remembered, that a man can only write two or three novels of the class alluded to in his lifetime; his experience will of necessity be exhausted. That it is an easy thing for any idle man to write one or two, and that consequently crowds of competitors are entering the field, composed of persons moreover who possess the grand recommendation of having distinctions to be puffed, and not standing under the necessity of imposing hard terms upon the publisher. Genius of a very rare character might spring up in either of these departments; and genius, to a certain extent, is secure we are speaking of superior, but at the same time ordinary, acquirements.

In other classes of publication, if a nian has accumulated practical or theo. retical information, it is probable that a demand exists for it when condensed into a book-but one book may hold all the information which a life has accumulated. In cases where the information has to be collected from a vigorous and intelligent perusal of other works, as in the compilation of a history, it will be found that a common clerk in a banking-house is better paid. Let the reader refer to the accounts which exist of the price given for such works as Gibbon's History for instance, and then set against it the outlay in books, and the quantity of time bestowed upon it. Gibbon received, we believe, six thousand pounds for his work; a sum not exceeding the expense of the library he found necessary to supply the materials ;-deducting, however, only the interest of this sum, and taking into account the number of years during which he was occupied upon his work, he probably received at the rate of about two hundred pounds a year; an income which at Lausanne might perhaps pay his house rent, and keep his sedan. We have heard that Mr. Mill received fifteen hundred pounds for his work on British India ;

judging from the labour consumed in this elaborate work, and estimating the remuneration at the rate which a confidential attorney's clerk is paid, we are convinced that five thousand pounds would not have been an equivalent for the copyright to him. Probably the sum given was fully equal to the marketable value of it. We are acquainted with instances of authors, who, pursuing the more dig. nified lines of study, have published se.. veral works accounted works of importance and deep research in the world of literature, and which have raised their names to high consideration in the public estimation; these gentlemen have declared themselves not merely uniemunerated for either time or talent, but considerably out of pocket. There are other instances of men paying publishers bills to the amount of four or five hundred a year, for the pleasure of enlightening a world which will not be enlightened. These gentlemen complain loudly of the stupidity and ingratitude of the public; of its wretched taste, of its love of trash, of the baseness of critics. The truth is, that men ought not to write for a pecu niary return; much less ought they to propose to make literature a profession, and expect to live by the sale of their productions. This not only causes much pain and disappointment in the parties themselves, but the idea that literature is a good trade misleads many an unhappy individual, and seriously injures the qua lity of literature itself. This is done in many ways, by producing a great number of works, which injure one another by a ruinous competition: by creating hasty and undigested publications, which, written only to serve a temporary pur pose the procuring of money, are hurried into the world by their authors as fast as their own imperfections hasten them out of it: by degrading the general character of authors who undoubtedly would stand much higher with the world, and consequently take a higher place in their own respect, if they were induced to publish wholly or chiefly by a desire to inform or improve mankind, or to secure a lasting fame. No one can tell how low the expectation of pay has descended in literature, unless he has been admitted into the confidence of a periodical publi cation. The mere boys and girls, who can scarcely spell, scribble their first lines under a notion of being paid, and well paid.-London Magazine.

IT is a good rule, eat within your stomach; act within your commission; live within your means.-Selden.

LINES ON REVISITING A SCOTTISH

RIVER.

AND call they this Improvement?-to have changed,

My native Clyde, thy once romantic shore, Where Nature's face is banish'd and estranged,

And Heaven reflected in thy wave no more; Whose banks, that sweeten'd May-days breath before,

Lie sere and leafless now in summer's beam

With sooty exhalations cover'd o'er, And for the daised green sward, down thy stream Unsightly brick-lanes smoke, and clanking engines gleam,

Speak not to me of swarms the scene sustains; One heart free, tasting Nature's breath and bloom,

Is worth a thousand slaves to Mammon gains.

London. The facts may be given, and the conclusion, whether by inquest or induction, declared for the general behoof. But it is in other and more verdant quarters that the narrative is touched as a narrative ought to be, with the whole picturesque of the affair, "with mellowness of pencil and magic of detail," as the most celebrated auctioneer alive says of every picture that undergoes his hammer.

Of course there are exceptions, and some of the country journals are written with a spirit that would do honour to the sagacity or skill of any public writer. But still the "sentimental" flourishes

whom?

See, but life enough and breathing room

The bunger and the hope of life to feel,

Yon pale Mechanic bending o'er his loom, And Childhood's self as at Ixion's wheel, From morn till midnight task'd to earn its little meal.

Is this Improvement?— where the human breed

Degenerates as they swarm and overflow,

Till Toil grows cheaper than the trodden weed, And man competes with man, like foe with foe, Till Death, that thins them, scarce seems public woe?

Improvement!-smiles it in the poor man's eyes, Or blooms it on the cheek of Labour?-NoTo gorge a few with Trade's precarious prize, We banish rural life, and breathe unwholesome skies.

Nor call that evil slight; God has not given This passion to the heart of man in vain, For Earth's green face th' untainted air of Heaven,

And all the bliss of Nature's rustic reign. For not alone our frame imbibes a stain From foetid skies; the spirit's healthy pride Fades in their gloom-And therefore I complain, That thou no more through pastoral scenes shouldst glide,

My Wallace's own stream, and once romantic

Clyde

NEWSPAPER SENTIMENT.

THE London newspaper authorship is forced into something like common sense by the perpetual necessity of writing. Men may be as sentimental by inclination as a German dramatist; but the absolute drain on their sentimentality in the wear and tear of London, would exhaust the "fount of feeling" in a week; and the "thoughts that lie too deep for tears" would be fished up, and turned to service inexorably before a month renewed its moon. But in the country the case is different. The interval of a week allows an accumulation of the tender feeling, which inevitably overflows through the pen the moment it is taken in hand. A dog "suspected of being mad," an overdrove ox, a village quarrel, a rustic elope ment, or the breaking down of a safety coach, can never be done justice to in

chiefly at a distance from the "fumum strepitumque ;" and the richest class of description is never found on this side of the fifty mile-stone.

Metaphor is the native language of fancy, and fancy is the daughter of feeling, and feeling is the daughter of the fields. Then the use of metaphor is established as an heir-loom in the soil of the hawthorns and blue-bells; and accordingly the dialect of rural description is always magnificent, profound, eloquent, and rather puzzling; as " to do common things in an uncommon way" has been considered an evidence of genius, so to say common things in an uncommon way is an evidence of similar superiority to the race of mankind.

Thus, if your true describer has to talk of pen, ink, and paper, he disdains the homeliness of the immediate expression, and invests his meaning in the dignified phrase of "writing materials." If one clown's wig takes fire from another clown's pipe, we hear of the operation of "the devouring clement," fire being obviously beneath the rustic pen. If a flash of lightning set a haystack in a blaze, or ring the bells of a steeple, the approved epithet is, "the electric fluid." dog bite a pig, the narrative teems with "virus," the "rabid animal," and the "latration" of the patient. Or, if a stage-coach running races meet its natural fate, the world are called to wonder at

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If a

centripetal force," "" dire concussions," and "compound fractures of the tibia." The whole being wound up with the solemn pledge of the writer, that the accident never had equal, or similar, in the "memory of the oldest inhabitant;" a circumstance generally to be accounted for, when true, by the oldest inhabitants having lost what memory they ever had.

But it is in the sentimental subjects that the true triumph is found. A "tale, alas! too true," lately "wrung the heart," detailing the sorrows of an interesting pair, found, by a gentleman of humanity,

in the lowest state of mortal privation on the edge of a wood," in the west of England. The female had been "evidently of the first order of fine forms," and the man was worthy of her. "An unhappy attachment, cruel parents, remorseless friends, and an inhospitable world,” having excluded them from hope, they took the desperate resolution of seeking an asylum from the bounty of nature, in one of those spots" where lonely want retires to die."

Further intelligence ascertained the fact, that the hero was a poacher, driving a handsome trade in purveying hares and pheasants for London. The heroine was the usual companion of such heroes, and both are now furnishing fresh matter for description in the county jail.

But fine effect may be produced on more repulsive topics. Who has ever dreamed of detailing the mutual compliments of a black bird and a stage-coach guard before? Yet the history is extant, scarcely a week old.

As the coach was rolling along, a hawk hunted a blackbird into a hedge. The blackbird was in prodigious hazard, and the guard flung his stick; luckily for the catastrophe, he hit the hawk instead of the blackbird. The narrative must now be left to the original hands. " So exhausted was the poor blackbird, and so unexpected her deliverance, that when the guard proceeded to pick up the hawk, she was unable to move, but merely shot forth a look of expression of her gratitude, and which amply repaid the conducteur for his promptitude and decision." And that man of generosity relinquished his half-crown with a feeling worthy to be as memorable as it is unfortunately rare. But the story is imperfect without the fact, that the rescued bird pulled out a white handkerchief, wiped a brilliant eye, and made him a curtsey down to the ground.-Blackwood's Magazine.

The Gatherer.

"This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons peas." SHAKSPEARE.

AN ENTERTAINING JOURNEY.

DODD the comedian was very fond of a long story.-Being in company one night, he began at twelve o'clock to relate a journey he had taken to Bath; and, at six o'clock in the morning, he had proceeded no farther than the Devizes!The company then rose, to separate; when Dodd, who could not bear to be curtailed in his narrative, cried, "Don't

go yet; stay and hear out, and upon my soul I'll make it entertaining!"

BIFEDS.

THE most disagreeable two-legged animal in the world, is a little great man ; and the next, a little great man's factotum and friend.

LET WELL ALONE.

AN Irishman being on a long journey in a part of the country where Mr. M‘Adam's useful talents had never been exercised, at length came to a mile of excellent road. Over this he kept trotting his horse backwards and forwards, till some spectators, a little surprised at this singular mode of travelling, inquired the reason of it. "Indeed," said he, "and I like to let well alone, and from what I have seen of the road, I doubt whether I will find a better bit of ground all the way."

Printed and published by J. LIMBIRD, 143, Strand, (near Somerset House,) and sold by all Newsmen and Booksellers.

reign of Henry VIII.; but the bare outline of its rise, decline, and fall, is one of those "whirls of vicissitude, upon which it is not good to look too long, lest we become giddy; as for the philology of them, that is but a circle ot tales."

NONSUCH was the name of a magnificent palace, two miles N. E. of Ewell, in Surrey. It was begun by Henry VIII. in a village called Codinton, or Cudington, then contiguous to the parish o Cheam, near Epsom. But the village, the palace, and the fashionable celebrity of Epsom, have long since vanished, i. we except the horse-racing notoriety of the latter place.

Camden says, this palace" is built with so much splendour and elegance, that it stands a monument of art, and you would think the whole science of architecture exhausted on this building. It has such a profusion of animated statues and finished pieces of art, rivalling the monuments of ancient Rome itself, that it

VOL. XI.

H

"Unrivall'd in design the Britons tell

The wondrous praises of this nonpareil."

Hentzner, a German, (who visited England in queen Elizabeth's reign,) says, that "it was chosen for his (Henry's) pleasure and retirement, and built with an excess of magnificence. One would imagine everything that architecture can perform to have been employed in this one work there are everywhere so many statues that seem to breathe, so many miracles of consummate art, so many casts, that rival even the perfection of Roman antiquity, that it may well claim its name of Nonsuch. It is so encompassed with parks, full of deer; delightful gardens; groves, ornamented with trellis-work; cabinets of verdure; and walks so embrowned by trees; that it seems to be a place pitched upon by Pleasure herself, to dwell along with Health. In the pleasure and artificial gardens are many columns and pyramids

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