flowers, for Harriet had strictly maintained the secrecy enjoined by Mrs. Clayton. But when supper was announced, and the company proceeded to an adjoining room, great was Helen's astonishment; for in the centre of a table, richly spread with tempting viands, appeared the cherished plants; and while she stood in mute surprise, Mrs. Clayton said aloud, "You find old friends, Helen, where you least expected to do so. They have accomplished the benevolent purpose for which they left you, and to-morrow morning will return to your safe keeping." "Oh! Mrs. Clayton, was it you who bought them?" exclaimed Helen, forgetting, at the moment, by how many strangers she was surrounded; and then checking herself, she stepped into a recess near her, from which she might, unobserved, survey her recovered treasures, and feel convinced that she was really wide awake, and not in a delusive dream. The story of the flower girl, and Helen's generosity, soon circulated among the guests, Mrs. Clayton having purposely mentioned it to those near her; and Helen soon found herself so much of a heroine, that she was not sorry when her father whispered it was time to bid good night and return home. The next morning came Robert, Mrs. Clayton's coloured waiter, with the recovered flowers, to which had been added as many from her kind friend's valuable collection as Helen could take charge of. A superb japonica now filled the spot previously occupied by Cornelia's jessamine, which, stripped of its fragrant blossoms, and shorn of ali its beauty, was thrust into an obscure corner, to make room for its elegant successor; while Cornelia herself was taught the lesson, that human beauty is, at best, only a perishing flower, but the benevolent feelings of the heart, when cherished and warmed into life and action, have a loveliness that is unfading, and a fragrant odour that can never pass away. Poetry. In Original Poetry, the Name, real or assumed, of the Author, is printed in Small Capitals under the title; in Selections, it is printed in Italics at the end.] EARL SINCLAIR. Translated from the German of Oehlenschlager, by MRS. HAWKER, MORWENSTOW. EARL SINCLAIR sailed from Scottish land, Far Noroway to brave: He sleeps in Guldbrand's rocky strand, Low in a gory grave. Earl Sinclair saijed the billowy sea, "God speed thy warrior-hearts and thee, The moon beam'd in her cloudy cave, "Home, Scottish man, my warning trust, If thou shalt touch dark Norway's coast, "How loathsome sounds thy boding song! He sailed a day, and two, and three, The fourth sun saw him pass the sea, On Romsdal's shore his heart was fain He and his twice seven hundred men, Ah, stern and haughty was their wrath, With many a death the babes they slew, On rock and hill the beacon glared The Northman's breast was boldly bared,- The warriors of the land are far, Yet shame to him that shuns the war, They move-they meet-the Yewmen host, The Lange flows in Leydè-land The forest holds each feeble frame And shrouded them with snow! In onslaught first Earl Sinclair died, Come forth, come forth, ye Northmen true The ranks yield to that fiery storm, Ah me! for every quivering form They came, a host with life and breath: How fares the Foeman in the strife Who wars with Noroway! There is a mound by Lange's tide, His eye is bright, but not with pride- Miscellaneous. "I have here made only a nosegay of culied flowers, and have brought nothing of my own, but the string that ties them."-Montaigne. 95 GEORGE THE THIRD'S VISIT TO WEYMOUTH, ON RECOVERING FROM HIS ILLNESS IN 1789. "THE journey to Weymouth was one scene of festivity and rejoicing. The people were everywhere collected, and everywhere delighted. We passed Salisbury, where a magnificent arch was erected, of festoons of flowers, for the King's carriage to pass under, mottoed with, | variegated treasures to a friend, who suddenly turned The King restored,' and 'Long live the King,' in three divisions. The green bowmen, (foresters habited in green, and each with a bugle horn,) who had met his Majesty at the entrance of the New Forest, and, according to an old law, had presented him with two milkwhite greyhounds, peculiarly decorated, accompanied the train thus far; and the clothiers and manufacturers here met it, dressed out in white loose frocks, flowers, and ribbons, with sticks or caps emblematically decorated from their several manufactories. And the acclamations with which the King was received among them!-it was a rapture past description. At Blandford there was nearly the same ceremony. At every gentleman's seat which we passed, the owners and their families stood at the gate, and their guests or neighbours were in carriages all round. At Dorchester the crowd seemed still increased. The houses there have the most ancient appearance of any that are inhabited that I have happened to see and inhabited they were indeed! every window sash was removed, for face above face to peep out; and every old balcony, and all the leads of the houses, seemed turned into booths for fairs." "July 15th.-Gloucester House, which we now inhabit, at Weymouth, is situated in front of the sea, and the sands of the bay before it are perfectly smooth and soft. The whole town, and Melcomb Regis, and half the county of Dorset, seemed assembled to welcome their Majesties. The King is in delightful health, and much improved spirits. All agree he never looked better. The loyalty of all this place is excessive; they have dressed out every street with labels of "God save the King" all the shops have it over their doors; all the children wear it in their caps, all the labourers in their hats, and all the sailors in their voices; for they never approach the house without shouting it aloud, nor see the King or his shadow, without beginning to huzza, and going on to three cheers. The bathing-machines make it their motto over all their windows; and those bathers that belong to the royal dippers wear it in bandeaus on their bonnets, to go into the sea; and have it again in large letters round their waists, to encounter the waves. Flannel dresses tucked up, and no shoes nor stockings, with bandeaus and girdles, have a most singular appearance; and when first I surveyed these loyal nymphs it was with some difficulty that I kept my features in order. Nor is this all. Think but of the surprise of his Majesty when, the first time of his bathing, he had no sooner popped his royal head under water than a band of music, concealed in a neighbouring machine, struck up 'God save great George our King!' to him, and declared, "Well, you have not in your collection a prettier flower than I saw this morning at Wapping."" No! and pray what was this phoenix like?"-"Why, the plant was elegant, and the flowers hung in rows like tassels from the pendant branches; their colour the richest crimson; in the centre a fold of deep purple," and so forth. Particular directions being demanded and given, Mr. Lee posted off to Wapping, where he at once perceived that the plant was new in this part of the world. He saw and admired. Entering the house, he said, "My good woman, this is a nice plant, I should like to buy it."-" I could not sell it for no money, for it was brought me from the West Indies by my husband, who has now left again, and I must keep it for his sake."-" But I must have it."-" No, Sir!"-" Here," emptying his pocket, "here are gold, silver, copper;" (his stock was something more than eight guineas.)- Well-a-day! but this is a power of money, sure and sure."-" "Tis yours, and the plant is mine; and, my good dame, you shall have one of the first young ones I rear, to keep for your husband's sake.” -"Álack, alack !"- "You shall, I say, by Jove!" A coach was called, in which was safely deposited our florist and his seemingly dear purchase. His first work was to pull off and utterly destroy every vestige of blossom and blossom-bud; it was divided into cuttings, which were forced in bark-beds, and hot-beds; were re-divided, and sub-divided. Every effort was used to multiply the plant. By the commencement of the next floweringseason, Mr. Lee was the delighted possessor of 300 Fuchsia plants, all giving promise of blossom. The two which opened first, were removed into his show-house, A lady came;" Why, Mr. Lee, my dear Mr. Lee, where did you get this charming flower?"-" Hem! 'tis a new thing, my lady-pretty, is it not?" Pretty! 'tis lovely. Its price?"- A guinea-thank your ladyship;" and one of the two plants stood proudly in her ladyship's boudoir. My dear Charlotte, where did you get?" &c. &c.-" Oh! 'tis a new thing; I saw it at old Lee's ; pretty, is it not?"-" Pretty! 'tis beautiful! Its price?" "A guinea; there was another left." The visitor's horses smoked off to the suburb; a third floweringplant stood on the spot whence the first had been taken. The second guinea was paid, and the second chosen Fuchsia adorned the drawing-room of her second ladyship. The scene was repeated as new comers saw, and were attracted by the beauty of the plant. New chariots flew to the gates of old Lee's nursery-ground. Two Fuchsias, young, graceful, and bursting into healthy flower, were constantly seen on the same spot in his repository. He neglected not to gladden the faithful sailor's wife by the promised gift; but ere the flower-season closed, 300 golden guineas chinked in his purse, the produce of the single shrub of the widow of Wapping; the reward of the taste, decision, skill, and perseverance of old Mr. Lee. "One thing, however, was a little unlucky;-when the Mayor and burgesses came with the address, they requested leave to kiss hands. This was graciously accorded; but the Mayor advancing, in the common way, to take the Queen's hand, as he might that of my Lady Mayoress, Colonel Gwynn, who stood by, whispered, 'You must kneel, sir! He found, however, that he took no notice of the hint, but stood erect. As he passed him in his way back, the Colonel said, 'You should have knelt, sir !'-Sir,' answered the poor man, 'I cannot. Everybody does, sir.'-'Sir, I have a wooden leg!'-Poor man! 'twas such a surprise; and such an excuse as. no one could dispute. But the absurdity of the matter followed;-all the rest did the same; taking the same privilege, by the example, without the same or any cause !"-Miss Burney's Diary. How to choose a Travelling THE FUCHSIA TREE. THE greatest of modern philosophers (Bacon) declares that "he would rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without mind."-Stewart. Companion Beauchamps, Chap. IV....... CONTENTS. Page 81 Reading for the Young :- ............ 91 84 POETRY: The Beggar's Castle, with cluded) Earl Sinclair.................. 95 90 Miscellaneous ................... ib. MR. SHEPHERD, the respectable and well-informed conservator of the Botanical Gardens at Liverpool, gives the following curious account of the introduction of that elegant little flowering shrub, the Fuchsia, into our English green-houses and parlour windows. Old Mr. Lee, a nurseryman and gardener, near London, well London:- Published by T.B.SHARPE, 15, Skinner Street, Snow-hill. known fifty or sixty years ago, was one day showing his Printed by R. CLAY, Bread Street Hill. No. 7.] London Magazine: A JOURNAL OF ENTERTAINMENT AND INSTRUCTION BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF NIEBUHR.' See page 112. We have of late been led to feel great compassion for those poor victims-celebrated men. Daily does the press, in order to gratify the caprices of a restless and insatiate curiosity, deliver them up to our tender mer eies, bound hand and foot,--stripped naked, both mind and body. They know not what it is to have rest or privacy; their abode is thrown open to every prying eye; their life is like a book from which the covers have been torn off, and the pages scattered in the path of the casual finder. Solitude has no shade deep enough to shut out the broad daylight of publicity; and the household gods have not wings large enough to overshadow them within the domestic sanctuary. But the celebrated man dies: surely the inquisition which has so harassed him during life, will pause before his grave. Not so. No sooner are his eyes closed, than, at the very moment, relations, friends, legatees direct and collateral, begin to ransack his manuscripts; to collect (1) Translated from the Revue des Deux Mondes. his notes, his unfinished letters, the fugitive thoughts unconnected pages he has dashed off as a refuge from he has put upon paper in some dream of fancy, the few the vapours. In vain does some voice of a true friend interpose to cry," All this is not worthy of him; you do not represent him really as he is, in those scattered fragments that you are so lightly handing down to posterity. This is the most vulnerable point of his mind; this is one of his momentary dreams, one of his mistakes. You have no right to divulge thus what he would have kept secret,-to revive what he would have buried in oblivion. Your zeal to serve him is treachery to him; your respect for all that he has written, or tried to write, is profanation." It matters not. The celebrated man must submit to this degrading honour. The inmost folds, the most secret recesses, of his moral and physical nature must be invaded; the most minute analysis must be made of his impulses, of his whims, of his passions, of his moments of excitement and his moments of depression. The mighty Homer must be seen asleep. Now, I believe, that at bottom of this restless and feverish | even then showed a passion for political science: he curiosity, which urges us to plunge our dissecting-knife into the most delicate fibres of a finely-touched and noble organization, there lies a feeling which, did we but pause to analyze it, we should repel as unworthy and selfish. The artist, the philosopher, the writer, whom we would study in such detail, was, taken as a whole, a being too great; he had too much of the ideal. In dissecting him, we dispel the halo; we break the charm that surrounded him; and we make ourselves amends, by the power thus given us of comparing ourselves with him in the points he has in common with the multitude, for the admiring awe of his genius, which kept us, with the multitude, at a distance. Many a man," says the German Richter, "fancies his head thinks like Pope's, because it aches like his." We shall not, then, in our little account of Niebuhr, violate our own rule, nor trouble our readers with uninteresting details, which might belong as well to the history of any honest burgher of Holstein, as to that of the illustrious historian; but shall confine ourselves to the facts of his life, to the traits absolutely necessary to characterise his mind. Parthold George Niebuhr was born at Copenhagen on the 27th of August, 1776; and in that city his father, on his return from his celebrated travels in the East, filled for some years the situation of head Engineer. His mother was the daughter of a Thuringian physician. She had been educated in Denmark, and spoke Danish fluently. Niebuhr had thus, from his infancy, the opportunity of acquiring two languages at the same time; and he afterwards cultivated, to a high | degree, his philological talent. In 1778 his father was appointed magistrate for the province of Dethmar; and the whole family quitted the capital of Denmark, to take up their abode in the little village of Meldorf. This change of residence must be given a prominent place amongst the circumstances which favourably influenced the character and future destiny of Niebuhr. Far from the distractions of a large city, in the retirement of an almost solitude, under the watchful eye of an intelligent and tender mother, and of a father who had passed his life in acquiring knowledge, who had lived in the learned world, and visited distant countries, and whose abode, in every other respect somewhat of the humblest, was stored with valuable books-Niebuhr grew up in the sweet and salutary habits of a tranquil and happy home, in the rational enjoyments of a domestic and studious life. His father was his first instructor: he taught him French, English, geography, history. One of their neighbours, a man of taste and information, the poet Boje, editor of the Gottingen "Almanack of the Muses," often visited them, and mingled with the graver thoughts of the learned Niebuhr, the sweet and lighter flowers of literature. From time to time, also, some stranger, attracted by the reputation of the traveller in Arabia, broke in upon his retirement, and, by his conversation, opened vistas of far-distant scenes to the eye of the child, who, seated on his father's knee, listened with thoughtful air, and was in fancy ranging through those unknown regions, the aspect and manners of which he heard described. Surrounded thus by all that could at once awaken his imagination, and give to his young mind a profitable direction, the young Barthold was not long before he distinguished himself by his vivid intelligence, and by his ardour in acquiring knowledge. It may be that, in the midst of the retirement in which he lived, in the bosom of soft and rural scenery, a slight impulse would have sufficed to impel him into the flowery paths of poetry, but his father was there to fix a certain limit to the rambling excursions of a boyish fancy, to check him with steady hand in the midst of his visionary wanderings, and bring him back to the direct paths of sober thought and serious study. He left the fields of poetry for those of science; and it is said that, young as he was, he | traced out for himself a map of an imaginary country, of which he was governor, and to which he gave laws and institutions. Often does the genius of a man, before bearing fruit, reveal itself by some such slight indications. Childhood is a flower which suffers its germ to be seen through its light covering, and mature age does but develop what has been long prepared. At thirteen, Niebuhr entered the Gymnasium at Meldorf; but his stndies were still under the direction and encouragement of his father. He was afterwards placed at a school in Hamburgh, where he studied with ardour the modern languages. In 1807, the amount of his philological attainments was thus stated in one of his father's letters :-" He was but two years old when he came to Meldorf; so that German may be looked upon as his mother-tongue. In the regular course of his studies, he learned Latin, Greek, Hebrew, besides which, at Meldorf he acquired sufficient knowledge of Danish, English, French, and Italian, to be able to read a book written in any of these languages. Some books thrown upon our coast by a shipwreck, gave him an opportu nity of studying Spanish and Portuguese. He did not learn much of Arabic with me, because I had lent my Arabic dietionary, and could not procure another. Kiel and Copenhagen he practised both speaking and writing French, English, and Danish, under the direction of the Austrian minister at Copenhagen, Count Ludolph, who was born at Constantinople; he learned Persian, and afterwards taught himself Arabic; in Holland he added to his stock Dutch; at Copenhagen, Swedish and a little of Icelandic; at Memel, the Russian, Sclavonic, Polish, Bohemian, and Illyrian; if I add to this list, the Low German, I have enumerated twenty languages." At In 1794 he entered the University at Kiel, much better stored with information than most of his fellowcollegians, and much more eager than any one of them in his thirst for study, and in the pursuit of knowledge. His letters at this period indicate a most ardent imagination. They breathe a passionate admiration for classic antiquity. With transports of enthusiasm he reads the Greek historians; he weeps with Euripides, he glows with Homer. At the same time he looks round with restless eye, and with a hand trembling with impatient longing, on the multitude of volumes which he beholds in the Professors' houses, and on the shelves of the College library; books of which he knows nothing, yet the contents of which he pants to make his own, and which, perhaps, he never will have time even to look over. 'My head gets dizzy," he writes to his father, "when I think of all that I have yet to learnphilosophy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, natural history-history thoroughly, and French perfectly; then the common law accurately; then a part of other jurisprudence, the civil constitutions of the whole of Europe, all that relates to the ancients;-and all this in the space of five years at most! I must learn it all. But how? God only knows." None of the usual recreations of German studentsraces, festive meetings-could divert him from the regular task which he had imposed upon himself for every day; nothing could counterbalance with him the delight he experienced in burying himself in some scientific work. The world had but little attraction for him; and he felt the greatest restraint in female society. "I must every day," he writes, "appear more absurd in the eyes of women. Timidity takes from me the power of uttering a single word to them; and the very consciousness of how insupportable I must be to them, makes their society to me scarcely to be endured." Two years passed thus-two years of undaunted, untiring effort, of laborious study and intense thought. In that time he had so distinguished himself by the range of his mind, and the extent of his knowledge, that the Count de Schimmelmann, Prime Minister of Denmark, appointed him his secretary. Niebuhr car ried with him into the world, into which he was thus suddenly called, the tastes which he had imbibed at Meldorf, and so assiduously cultivated at Hamburgh and Kiel. When the duties of his office were discharged, he hurried back to the quiet retreat of his study, to his darling books. From time to time, however, in the stillness of retirement, the vague dreams of his imaginative youth came back upon him; the visions of fancy arrested him amid his graver toils; and it is not uninteresting to see that vigorous and laborious mind resisting these temptations to wander amid the flowers of thought, accusing itself of effeminate weakness, and bracing itself anew for all the energy of its former intense application to severer studies. "I have often," he says, "found myself in a state so listless, so averse to all noble and serious occupation, that I have been quite unhappy; for, at such times, I experienced a feeling of weakness, a consciousness of decaying powers, that distracted and tortured my mind. I know that there are men who feel a humiliating inequality in the exercise of their intellectual faculties. A task which delights them one day, and appears so easy of accomplishment, on the next will inspire nothing but repug. nance, and seem utterly beyond their powers. But still this is not that utter listlessness, that absence of all ideas, that blank of mind, for which I have so often to blush. And in me this evil is not connected, as in some natures, with an unhappy organization; it insinuated itself into my mind, and rooted itself there, either through incidental misfortune, or by my own fault. To rid myself of it I must necessarily trace out its root, and having found, apply myself, with all my energies, to the task of destroying it. In the almost perpetual indolence, the endless reveries of my early childhood, I did not consider this--and it is not wonderful that I did not-and thus the evil of which I complain was suffered to develop itself, to grow till it has become so difficult to overcome. I had accustomed myself to turn away from every serious subject, to take in all indiffer ently, without dwelling upon anything. My heaven was in the world of faney; its visions, and the charm which I found in them, filled my whole soul. Some what later, vanity-the desire of making a name-began to kindle a taste for graver occupations, but the poison in my mind hindered me from throwing myself wholly into this new career. It was in the winter of 1790 that the evil I have just described was at its height. At that time I yielded myself up to it unresistingly, and abandoned the labours which at other times had so great an attraction for me. How many days and weeks of the two following years passed with out any serious study? In the spring of 1792, learning Italian thoroughly was the only object I pursued with any ardour, or carried out with any success. The following winter I made a more effectual struggle, but it still fell far short of that determination, that fixedness of purpose, which overcomes every obstacle. At Hamburgh I felt, to the highest degree, this state of listlessness, and again, in 1794 and 1795, while at Kiel. What a painful contrast to me, between the brilliant hopes with which I commenced my career, and the feeble, languid efforts I made to follow it up. The last weeks of my abode at Copenhagen, the time that I passed in Holstein, have taught me fully to know myself. The remedy for this disease is to put away from me all the vain dreams of imagination; to think out a subject before attempting to write upon it; to weigh maturely every question; to carry out plans, when once formed; in a word, to work. Every morning, then, one hour shall be employed in thinking out some one particular subject; two hours shall be devoted to mathematics, to algebra, to chemistry, to physics, &c." The desire to enter into the practical study of man, after having been so long engaged in that of books, induced him to resign the honourable post he filled with the Count de Schimmelmann, and to travel. He set out in 1798 for England, the country about which he felt the greatest interest. The plans he laid down for himself, in quitting the shores of his native country, would have obliged Sterne to have given, in his classifi cation of travellers, a special place apart to this aspiring observer. 66 'By reading, and observation, and inquiry," he says, "I will endeavour to obtain an accurate idea of the constitution, a complete knowledge of the topography of the country. I will study the system of weights and measures in use in England; the character, the talent, the life of its distinguished men. I will collect documents on its institutions, its schools, its education; the way of life of its different classes; on its taxes, its army and navy, its commerce and banking system, its whole literature, its authors, its libraries. Note.-I must endeavour to gain access to Dalrymple's Collection, and study the books upon India in the following order :India, its antiquities, history, national character; the Mogul Empire, before and after its fall; description of its different countries; the East India Company, its charter, privileges, commerce, its European relations; Indian institutions, their constitution and administration." To this plan of study and observation, so little resembling that which most travellers lay down for themselves when about to visit a foreign country, Niebuhr scrupulously adhered. He visited the schools, the literary and scientific institutions, formed an acquaintance with some of the most distinguished men of both England and Scotland, and returned to Denmark, bringing back with him stores of the most accurate, definite, and varied knowledge. On his return to Copenhagen he was given a situation, to which was attached only a trifling pecuniary remuneration; but the wise man needs but little, and Niebuhr, Assessor to the Board of Trade, receiving every month a small salary, and, after his official duties, flying to the relaxation of his favourite studies-Niebuhr is happy, Niebuhr is grateful to God, who had given him that valuable gift sung by Horace-"a golden mediocrity." To complete his happiness he marries a fair and gentle girl, whom he had met in Holstein, and in whose society he had found himself less constrained and embarrassed than in that of other women. A short time after his pecuniary affairs became still more prosperous. He was appointed Bank Director; and, while filling this situation, his talent for financial business attracted the notice of the Prussian government, and he was offered the post of Director of the Bank of Berlin, with a much larger salary than he received at Copenhagen. Niebuhr hesitated for a long time before accepting this offer; and, perhaps, the love of his country would have triumphed over all the inducements that Prussia held out, had he not been at this very time wounded by an injustice, against which he in vain protested. This circumstance decided him; he quitted Copenhagen for Prussia. Scarcely had he arrived at Berlin, when he heard the fatal issue of the Battle of Jena. The king and the ministers take to flight, and Niebuhr with them, first to Stettin, then to Dantzic, to Konigsburgh, to Memel, pursued at every step by the victorious shouts of the French army. At length the storm ceases; peace is concluded; Niebuhr returns to Berlin, and from this period a new career opens to him. Successively Director of the Bank, Envoy to Holland to negotiate a loan, Professor of the University, and afterwards, on the renewal of the war, commissioned to treat with England, he passes with the same happy facility from a question of finance to the examination of a philosophical theory-from the Roman history and Herodotus to the travels of Bruce, to the works of Aristotle. He brings to everything a memory ever fresh, never-failing; the same power of deep and lucid thought and of intense application. All this period of his life is most animated. Now, from the professor's chair, he proclaims his new views of Roman history, from which the learned world recoil in |