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My dress-I strive with all my maiden skill
To make it pass, but 'tis disgraceful still.
Yet from all others I my wants conceal,
Oh! Captain Elliot, there are few that feel;
But did that rich and worthy uncle know
What you, dear Sir, will in your kindness show,
He would his friendly aid with generous hand bestow.
Good men my brothers both, and both are raised
Far above want,-the Power that gave be praised!
My sister's jointure, if not ample, gives

All she can need who as a lady lives,

But I, unaided, may through all my years

Endure these ills. Forgive these foolish tears," &c.

"The Equal Marriage" is clear and spirited, and the mutual reproaches of the disenchanted pair, as soon as the veil of the imagination has been torn away, and the false fires of a foolish love extinguished, are truly imagined and described.

Still they can speak-and 'tis some comfort still,
That each can vex the other when they will.
Words half in jest, to words in earnest led,
And these the earnest, angry passions fed,

Till all was fierce reproach, and peace for ever fled.
'And so you own it,-own it to my face!
Your love is banish'd,-infamous and base.'
'Madam I lov'd you truly, while I deemed
You were the truthful being whom you seemed,
But when I see your native temper rise
Above control, and break thro' all disguise,
Casting it off, as serpents do their skin,
And showing all the folds of vice within,

What see I then to love? was I in love with Sin?'
'So may I think, and you may feel it too,
A loving couple, Sir, were Sin and you.
Whence all this anger? is it that you find
You cannot always make a woman blind?
You talk of falsehood and disguise-talk on!
But all my trust and confidence are gone!
Remember you, with what a serious air
You talked of love, as if you were at prayer.
You spoke of home-born comforts, quiet, ease,
And the pure pleasure that must always please,
With an assum'd and sentimental air

Smiting your breast and acting like a player;
Then your life's comfort, and your holy joys,-
Holy forsooth!-and your sweet girls and boys,
How you would train them-all this farce review
And then, Sir, talk of being just and true.'
• Madam, your sex expects that ours should lie
The simple creatures know it, and comply.
You hate the truth-there's nothing you despise
Like a plain man, who spurns your vanities.

Are you not early taught your prey to catch?

When your Mamas pronounce- a proper match.'
What said your own? Do daughter, curb your tongue
And you may win him, for the man is

young;

But if he views you as ourselves-good bye

To speculation-he will never try, &c.'

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'Well,' said the wife, admit this nonsense true,

A mighty prize she gains, in catching you;

For my part, Sir, I most sincerely wish
My landing net had miss'd my precious fish.'
'Would that it had-or I had wisely lent
An ear to those who said I should repent!'

'Hold, Sir, at least my reputation spare,
And add another falsehood if you dare,'* &c.

The tale of Rachael possesses no novelty of incident. It's an old tale, and often told,' of an absent lover and a faithful mistress; but the description of the effect of the sudden appearance and as sudden departure of the lover, after a long absence, on a mind broken, wearied, and misled, is finely painted, and the following lines are unsurpassed for their melancholy truth and beauty:

He tried to sooth her, but retired afraid
T'approach, and left her to return for aid.

None came! and Rachel in the morn was found
Turning her wheel without its spindles round,

With household look of care, low singing to the sound.

Parts of the story of "Villars" are good in the execution, but it is not an agreeable picture; and we think that neither the morality, the delicacy, nor the feeling of the author, would approve or applaud a husband who takes to his bosom a wife who had been living in adulterous estrangement, and who at last is forcibly and unwillingly separated from her guilty paramour. This is not the only tale in Mr. Crabbe's works, where a false humanity triumphs over all honour, and a sense of justice connected with every pure and tender emotion, and virtuous principle, and honourable feeling. It may do very well in a German play, but we did not expect to find it in Mr. Crabbe's poems. The guilt is unfortunately such, as nothing on earth can expiate without lowering the moral purity of the feeling that pardons. Forgiveness must be sought elsewhere, and may be obtained; but here, to use the words of Young,

If I forgive, the world will call me kind :

If I receive her in my arms again,

The world will call me very-very kind.

The "Ancient Mansion"† is well described, the accompaniments judiciously chosen, and the description conveyed in some of Mr. Crabbe's best versification. We can only afford room for the latter part.

Here I behold no puny works of art,

None give me reasons why these views impart

Such charm to fill the mind, such joy to sooth the heart.

These very pinnacles and towers small,

And windows dim, have beauty in them all.

How stately stand yon pines upon the hill,

How soft the murmurs of that living rill,

And o'er the park's tall paling, scarcely higher,

Peeps the low Church, and shows the modest spire.
Unnumbered violets on these banks appear,
And all the first-born beauties of the year.
The grey-green blossoms of the willows bring
The large wild bees upon the labouring wing;

* In this tale the last line is defective in metre, whether designedly or not we cannot say,

Oh! happy, happy, happy pair! both sought

Both seeking-catching both-and caught.

The ancient mansion reminds us, that the artist who has given a plate of Mr. Crabbe's house at Parham, in Vol. III. has made a complete mistake, and drawn a house in which Mr. Crabbe never lived; he has in fact given Parham Hall instead of Parham Lodge! It certainly is far the more picturesque mansion; and hence probably was preferred.

Then comes the summer with augmented pride,
Whose pure small streams along the valleys glide.
Her richer Flora their brief charms display,
And as the fruit advances, fall away.

Then shall th' autumnal yellow clothe the leaf,
What time the reaper binds the burden'd sheaf.
Then silent groves denote the dying year,
The morning frost and noontide gossamer.
And all be silent in the scene around,
All save the distant sea's uncertain sound.
Or here and there the gun, whose loud report
Proclaims to man that Death is but his sport.
And then the wintry winds begin to blow,
Then fall the flaky stars of gathering snow.
When on the thorn, the ripening sloe, yet blue,
Takes the bright varnish of the morning dew;
The aged moss grows brittle on the pale,
The dry boughs splinter in the windy gale,
And every changing season of the year

Stamps on the scene its English character.*

In the "Wife and the Widow," the concluding verses are neatly and forcibly expressed (p. 199), as is also the character of the frivolous and foolish Belinda Waters, who after coquetting long, at last marries a poor surgeon's mate, and suffers accordingly.

She wonders much-as why they live so ill,
Why the rude butcher brings his weekly bill;
She wonders why that baker will not trust,
And says-most truly says-indeed he must;
She wonders where her former friends are gone;
And thus from day to day she wonders on.
Howe'er she can-she dresses gaily yet,
And then she wonders how they came in debt;
Her husband loves her-and in accent mild
Answers and treats her like a fretted child;
But when he, ruffled, makes severe replies,
And seems unhappy-then she pouts and cries,

She wonders when she'll die. She faints, but never dies.

Danvers and Rayner" is a good story of a purse-proud parvenu; and the disenchantment of the lover at the end, is told with humour, though it is too long for us to give. "Master William, or Lad's Love," is of the same kind, where a quixotic and romantic youth falls in love with the gardener's niece; and his fancy invests her with such perfections as to make him even hesitate in venturing to declare his love. The dream is sadly broken in pieces by a sudden disclosure, abruptly made, that she is going to be married to the Footman.

Who takes her arm? and oh! what villain dares
To press those lips? not e'en her lips he spares.
Nay she herself, the Fanny, the divine,

Lip to his lip can wickedly incline.

The lad, unnerv'd by horror, with an air

Of wonder quits her arm and looks despair.

Nor will proceed-oh, no! he must return,

Tho' his drown'd sight cannot the path discern, &c.

In the Tales of the Hall (Book iv.), in the adventures of Richard, is a very

elegant and just description of Autumn in the country, beginning

It was a fair, and mild autumnal sky,

And earth's ripe treasures met the admiring eye, &c.—Vol. VI. p. 71.

'Come, Master William, come Sir, let us on,
What can you fear? you're not afraid of John.
What ails our youngster?' quoth the burly swain
Six feet in height, but he inquires in vain.
William, in deep resentment, scans the frame
Of the fond giant, and abhors his name,
Thinks him a demon of the infernal brood,
And longs to shed his most pernicious blood.
Again the monster spake in thoughtless joy,
We shall be married soon, my pretty boy!
And dwell in Madam's cottage-where you'll see
The strawberry bed and cherries on the tree.'
Back to his home in silent scorn return'd

The indignant boy, and all endearment spurn'd.

"The Will" is excellent, natural in its design, and well finished in its detail, but perhaps falling off a little towards the end; and the story of "The Cousins" admirably delineates the unsuspecting and disinterested feelings of a young woman, and her all-confiding lover; and the cold calculating selfishness, duplicity, and hardheartedness of a treacherous, worldy-minded man.

And thus at length we are arrived at the end of this pleasing and clever volume, which the editors judged rightly in giving to the public. Of Mr. Crabbe's former fame it has in no manner impaired the lustre; while to the public it has afforded a few more hours of innocent gratification. If compared to his former productions, a critical and curious eye may perhaps detect in some cases a feebleness of execution, and an incompleteness of design :-may find the colouring of a fainter hue, and some few of the tales deficient in power and spirit-but we cannot see that the best of them are at all below the level of Mr. Crabbe's general power of writing. We have not, it is true, those tempestuous descriptions of his earlier scenes; the terrific and heart-rending descriptions that are to be found in Ellen Orford, or in that half-dæmon and halfbrute Peter Grimes, or in the Prisons; but in these perhaps the tragic distress has not been sufficiently softened and subdued by the ideal and poetical, which ought always to maintain their elevated dominion over the violence of passion, while the reason and the taste are to be satisfied even among the most engrossing and painful impressions. We have alluded before to those earlier paintings by our great artist, of debased humanity, where the whole soul has become diseasd by crime; the moral nature disappeared in dark perspective behind the savage and sensual; and where the gloom and blackness that brooded over it, were only occasionally broken through by the electric fires of the unhallowed and ungovernable will. There are, too, the not less affecting scenes of a heart withering away in an uncongenial atmosphere, and in defenceless misery; where a long and fatal sorrow, grown up from early emotions, and youthful feelings, and modest and delicate desires, is first seen by a few sunny tears and tender alarms, and timid hopes; afterwards in patient resignation, and silent suffering, and virgin pride; then, as blow followed blow, and a fresh tide of calamity rushed in e'er the former had ebbed away, the progress of misery is beheld gradually increasing in power, and growing sterner in feature, unfortunately mastering all other passions and feelings, till it gains entire possession of every faculty, banishing even hope itself, and making its habitation the receptacle of thoughts and images more forlorn and fearful than the grave. There is a life, alas!—thrice happy they who know not of it-that is said to resemble one single-one endless sigh!

Such were the masterly productions of Mr. Crabbe's muse, in the fulness of his strength, and when his genius was in its meridian power and heat. The present Tales belong rather to the subdued and chastened fancy which shed a mild gleam on the evening of his poetical life. They hold, as it were, a middle place between the deeply tragic and the ludicrous; serious some, some pathetic, and some almost conversational and familiar. Yet they exhibit the same knowledge of the human heart; the same profound view-" of the life of nature and her mysterious springs,"—the inconsistencies of disappointed passion, and the wanderings of a misguided and distressed mind; the same picturesque situations; the same power of collecting all the impressions in one focus to bear with the greatest effect; the same fine harmonies and contrasts, colours delicate or strong, allusions playful or pathetic, grave or gay; the same discrimination and selection of facts, images and illustrations; with the same occasional superfluity of detail, weakness of expression, and tameness of versification.

GEOLOGY NOT SUBVERSIVE OF DIVINE REVELATION.

MR. URBAN, Gray's Inn. ON some points I readily agree with your reviewer in his critique on the Rev. H. Coles' "Popular Geology subversive of Divine Revelation," in your Sept. number, p. 283.; fully indeed, in his general negative to that proposition; but I cannot but think, that in detracting from the inspiration of the Book of Genesis, in support of his argument, he has advanced a position at once erroneous, and dangerous to the cause of revealed religion. Your reviewer, if I understand the end of his argument rightly, admits that Moses, from oral tradition, and various writings of others, compiled an account of the creation, which he did not himself clearly understand, and which the progress of science now shews to our senses and understandings, was not entirely true. Can any cne coolly advance this of the man who conversed with God, and was the medium through which God communicated to his peculiar people the Jews, his laws and commandments? who, in the power of the Almighty defied the sublunary power and malice of the Egyptian Tyrant, and forced his people from his unwilling grasp by the most awful and tremendous miracles, and was the ruler and lawgiver of that people for so many years, under the immediate guidance and personal dictation of the Almighty?

Whether Moses had the account of

the creation immediately revealed to himself, (which, from his frequent communion with God, is most probable) or derived it from those to whom it had been revealed, is, perhaps, not very material, but Moses was not likely to write from slight or inconsiderable information, still less from guess. The account of the creation, (slight as it is, though perhaps sufficiently full for the comprehension of mankind at the time it was written,) must have been the subject of Revelation, because man was the last work of the creation, and could of course know nothing of what passed before Adam existed, but from Revelation. If we may doubt any part of Moses' account of the creation, we may also doubt his information that, "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

Now, believing, as I do implicitly, in the inspiration of the Mosaic account, 1 apprehend that the best and truest way of supporting the converse of Mr. Coles's proposition, is, to shew that popular geology is not only consistent with, but supported by that account of the creation; which I now propose to do by an examination of the first Chapter of Genesis.

It was immaterial to the principal end of the writings of Moses, (the knowledge of the true God, and his laws) whether the world was created in six days, or whether the Almighty

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