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morals would allow such exhibitions, the Antinous, the Mercury, the Venus, and the Apollo, would soon fall from their pedestals ;--matchless as they are, as specimens of art.

In landscape, who has paused with greater delight, than I have, on the paintings of Poussin, Bassano, Claude, and Salvator Rosa? All captivating the eye by their majesty of outline, far more than the laboured finish and delicacy of Pieto Testa. Who, I inquire, has, in our age, paused with greater rapture on their beauty, their grace, and their magnificence? But how feeble, how confined, how indigent, have they appeared, when I have remembered them amid the solitude, solemnity, and immensity of Nature!

Thus meditating, and thus drinking in that species of delight, of which mere men of the world are so proudly and profoundly ignorant, we could almost fancy, that Nicholas Conti, the Venetian, merely meant to convey his idea of the value of Nature, when he fabled that in Java there grew a tree, which produced a rod of gold in its pith:-That Isabella had a similar design, when she fabled herself to possess the secret of distilling from herbs and plants a liquid, which would render the human frame invulnerable:-And that the Turkish kief was a substance embodying all those advantages; since it excites in those, that use it, a thousand images of the most delightful nature. While, on the other hand, mere worldly pursuits seem chiefly to resemble the Wong-li-choon rose of China;-which, though the most slow in growing, and the most difficult to propagate, has less scent than any other species of rose.

Castle now rose on the im

The ruins of ** mediate perspective. Still grand in their outlines; and still magnificent from the associations connected with them ;-they seemed to whisper, that time, though constantly moving is ever present. While the sombre aspect of the woods, the deeptoned murmur of the waters, and the solemnity of the heavens, seemed to heighten the silence of ruins, which, being of Roman origin, recalled powerfully to the imagination that fine passage in Montesquieu, where he says, that Rome had so greatly annihilated all nations, that, when she was conquered herself, it appeared, as if the earth had brought forth new nations to subdue and destroy her.

Let Vanity adorn the marble tomb

With trophies, rhymes, and 'scutcheons of renown,
In the deep dungeon of some Gothic dome,

Where Night and Desolatson ever frown.

Mine be the breezy hill, that skirts the down,
Where a green grassy turf is all I crave,

With here and there a violet bestrown,

Fast by a brook, or fountain's murmuring wave,
And many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave,1

1 Beattie.

BOOK XI.

CHAPTER I.

THERE is no object in the city of Paris more gratifying to the heart, and no institution more conducive to good morals, than the Museum of Monuments. It is situated on the scite of the ci-devant convent of Augustine monks, and was established by Monsieur Alexander Le Noir, whose name it will immortalize. Who, that has not lost all the best feelings of his nature, would not take pleasure in musing among the monuments of so many illustrious dead? Where, surrounded by cypresses, roses and myrtles, stand the cenotaph of Molière, and the busts of Sully, Fénélon and Bossuet; Montesquieu, Fontenelle and Malesherbes; where a sarcophagus contains the ashes of La Fontaine; and where a medallion perpetuates the memory of Chevert!

As I was writing the name of "Chevert," my Lelius, the letter, in which you tell me, that you are become a prey to the profoundest melancholy, was brought to me. Ah! my friend, if every man were to note down all the experiments, he has tried; the number of established adages, he has found to be false; the observations, he has made on fortune and mankind; the cruel scenes, he has witnessed; the miseries he has endured; and the times he has been injured, calumniated, and de

ceived; what a melancholy catalogue of human woe and infirmity would be present to his mind!" But Heaven," as Sterne beautifully says, "tempers the wind to the shorn lamb ;" and for nothing ought we to be more grateful to that Heaven for, than that accommodation of mind to circumstance, which alone prevents the miserable from laying down,-even with rapture,―the load with which some are so intemperately burthened. In every country and in every age the good and wise have been the sport of fortune!

So many great

Illustrious spirits have conversed with woe,
Have in her school been taught, as are enough

To consecrate distress, and make ambition

E'en wish the frown, beyond the smile of fortune.1

Those are the men, against whom fortune takes an unerring aim, and sharpens her most fatal arrow:"Fortuna immeritos auget honoribus," says a celebrated writer, "fortuna innocuos claudibus afficit, justos illa viros pauperie gravat, indignos eadem divitiis beat: inconstans, fragilis, perfida et lubrica." What more ought to convince you, that fortune is not of etherial origin? What argument is required farther, than the knowledge, that, appearing to disdain virtue, she wrongs the bosom of wisdom? To be revenged of her, my Lelius-(for in a case like this revenge assumes the character of excellence),-let me exhort you to draw

1 In this wild world the fondest and the best
Are the most tried, most troubled, and distress'd.

Crabbe.

solace from her frowns. Since you cannot woo her to be your mistress, exert all the energies of your nature, and resolve to become her master. Be like the granite, impervious to the weather, and unassailable by time. Firmness of hope gives patience to endure; and the frost, which nips the leaves of the mulberry tree, kills not the silkworms curdled in its leaves. The enemy, we have not the power to conciliate, therefore, must be subdued. In the struggle fortune will wound you, but the wound,-if you do not convert a difficulty into an impossibility,-will be healed by the touch of resolution; and as the swan subdues the eagle, when he ventures to attack her upon her own element, so will you, my Lelius, master Fortune, since she attacks you undeservedly. And when you have mastered her, from that moment she becomes your friend. ForFortune, wild and fickle and indiscriminate as she is, has still the virtue to admire, when she finds she has no power to conquer. And when Fortune stoops to admiration, the man, whom she admires, is the admiration of the world!

The good are better made by ill ;-
As odours crush'd are sweeter still!

Roger's Jacqueline.

But has melancholy no resources ?-Has she no charms?-Had the daughter of genius, as Milton calls her, no captivations, when she wooed Numa and Tully; Petrarch and Ariosto; Dante and Tasso; Milton and Euripides; Gray, Spenser, and Collins?

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