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rections, and you will not have to reproach discovered, in a corner of the picture, a

yourself with having taken his away from small portion of a Marshal's baton, as if him. Come, come, be a little obliging; we to indicate, that, at least, he merited it."are all sent on earth mutually to assist each "If he had been in the service," whispered other; describe to this gentleman the fea- || I.—" I wish also," continued he, "that my tures and phisiognomy of your father, ac- father may have the appearance of a veteran cording to the best of your recollection; || officer, and the flexible features of an adroit tell him what was unpleasant about him, courtier; that his smile may be that of a and what alteration he shall make; add man of sense, and his whole phisiognomy and diminish all that may tend to the glory like that of a man accustomed to courts.” of your family, and the success of your own "I know, then, how to suit you," replied individual interest. I will be answerable the modern Apelles; "you will then see, for his docility in complying with your without a doubt, the portrait of a certain will.”—“ Well,” said Lambert to the young personage that walks regularly every day, painter, "I wish my father to be repre- from two to four, on the Terrace des Feuilsented as a little man, between fifty-five lans; I expect to meet him on my return; and sixty years of age; who shall have the and if, the day after to-morrow I bring you appearance of having grown old in the your father"" Then," said Lambert, midst of honours, and who, on a blue coat, smiling, "I will restore you your's with shall have two General's epaulettes, and pleasure." five or six ribbons of the most striking colours; if possible, I should wish to be

S. G.

TO THE EDITOR OF LA BELLE ASSEMBLEE.

SIR,-I flatter myself your fair readers will not think you deviate from the principles of an elegant miscellany, though a few columns are occupied by the reflections of a husband and a father, who gratefully offers a testimony to their bliss-imparting virtues. Having

"By blest experience try'd,

||

"How much the wife is dearer than the bride," he wishes his sons may each obtain from Heaven the precious boon of a partner endowed with qualifications similar to those that constitute his domestic felicity; and his excellent mate earnestly prays, that our little girls may be as early and happily united as herself. Indeed, I could not help entertaining a low opinion of the connubial qualities, or the sincerity of a pair, who, independent of family aggrandizement, by new alliances, were not solicitous for the marriage of their offspring, as the best security of every comfort in life. I am not ignorant, that there are fathers and mothers to whom the silken bands of wedlock have || proved cumbrous and galling fetters-yet || are they very sedulous to procure splendid establishments for their daughters; and though those worldly-wise parents desire"

only public display, they will, probably, accord an indulgent perusal to an elucidation of the impediments to success for their manœuvres, with the cause of leaving in celibacy such fair creatures as cannot furnish an equivalent to support the increasing expences of an increasing family.

Nearly twelve years have elapsed since my return from a foreign country to take possession of a large estate, devolved to me by the death of a distant relation. I was still young, and had been so judiciously stimulated to diligence, in preparing myself to acquire independence by professional exertions, that I had no leisure for vicious addiction. Prepossessed by the placid affection and concord in the domestic association of my parents, though struggling with a narrow income, to educate six boys, and to maintain an appearance suitable to their highly respectable connections, I naturally inferred, that an affluent fortune could enhance the enjoyments of well assorted marriage; but believe I should have hesitated to reveal those sentiments to my only near relation, a bachelor uncle, if he had not bewailed his own improvidence in

trusting to contingencies for the care of his helpless old age.

"Get married-get married, George," said he, "if you would not, in sickness and decrepitude, throw yourself upon the mercy of a prosing housekeeper and mercenary valet-when, like me, you are unfit to take care of your decayed body, or your affairs. A wife, a daughter, or even a sister, would be worth more than wealth to me, when I can neither think nor act for myself, and am incapable of receiving any comfort, but in tender assiduities, and kind sympathy. As I am at present tolerably well, and the season is mild, I shall accompany you to visit our neighbours. Young ladies are seen, in their true colours, far more readily in rural scenes than in town; and young men, I imagine, are more apt to make a selection among a dozen captivating objects, than when their fancy is distracted by scores of bloomers. Cupid flutters about in assemblies, routs, and theatres, but his altars are erected only among the household gods, or in gardens, woods, and fields. I would as soon choose a wife by seeing her picture at an exhibition, as by contemplating her features or figure at public places."

To abbreviate my egotisms, I shall pass over intermediate occurrences, to tell, in few words, that a slight acquaintance inclined me to prefer the ever-gay and insinuating Louisa; and her mother seemed more pleasantly amusing than Mrs. Islesworth, with all her advantages of person, and greater fortune. My uncle perceived the nascent passion.

**

33

nor imitation, a similar character. Don't interrupt me, George. I have no evil to say of Louisa; and after you hear some facts of her mother, you will agree with me, that you cannot too warily proceed in your love affair, lest latent foibles may, too late, break the charm. Mrs. Swinburne's father, as a wharfinger, in a West-India colony, acquired a competency which enabled him to give a shewy education to five sprightly daughters: their dashing manners gained them husbands, in dotage or minority. Swinburne was no more than nineteen, when, a few days after his introduction to a belle of five-and-twenty years old, he offered her his hand. He had a valuable property, but the returns depended upon following a system which the young man learned from his lately deceased father, and had successfully conducted during his tedious illness. While he could prevail with his wife to remain in the island, prosperity crowned his welldirected attentions; but the lady had been finished at a London boarding school, and she languished for gaities, of which having only partial glimpses, her imagination pourtrayed as the ne plus ultra of enjoy. ment. She wheedled her husband, at the end of four years, to take a trip to Eng land. He was a Creole, brought up on the spot of his nativity; and a total stranger in the emporium of pleasure and profusion, he depended entirely on his wife's guidance. She became, and still is, a fine lady, a very fine lady; but an usurper of altitude in society is no more to be tolerated than the usurper of a throne; since, in both cases, we may discern the absence of a pure and high moral rectitude. I condemn all that sport away, in personal adornment and selfish gratification, the superfluity of wealth that would relieve the distresses of many indigent fellow-beings-but immeasurably more culpable is she, that has cajoled a tooeasy husband to desert his most important interests, and who squanders his revenue in giving routs, and playing cards with

"Wait," said he, till you become a little intimate in both houses: I have a moral certainty, that, in general, the most accommodating mothers, or the most attractive daughters, are not always the most delightful companions in daily intercourse. I am a downright Englishman, and always thought Mrs. Swinburne over anxious to recommend herself and her daughter to rich young or old men; and I have seen her haughty as a Spanish Princess to penny-peeresses, when she should be acting her less merit but my old friend, Adleeron, whom I have not seen these seven-andtwenty years till last Monday, gave me a history which should deter you from yielding your heart to her eleve, until assured she has, neither by hereditary disposition, No. 112-Vol, XVIII.

part in economizing for the benefit of her progeny, and taking care of their health, and forming their minds. All Mrs. Swinburne's children died, except Louisa. Dissipated mothers seldom bring to maturity more than one or two of the creatures they

E

point out the most deserving matron with a marriageable daughter?"

"You are a sly rogue. You very well know my favourite; and should I do any justice to Mrs. Islesworth, you will say I am in love with her, or have predestined her Isabella for you. You smile: well, I shall even give you that opening, to retort severities. Mr. Islesworth was the ward of Mr. Cavendish, and had frequent op

They formed an early attachment; but Mr. Cavendish did not think Isleworth's estate equal to the pretensions of his daugh.

complaining dejection, and consented to her union with Islesworth: warning him that a few thousand pounds was all the portion he intended to bestow. In this resolution he persevered to the day of his death; but Mrs. Islesworth and her husband prudently suited their style of living

usher into existence, only to pine and expire-and had all the young Swinburnes been now living, they could be but slenderly provided for. The expenditure of their parents far exceeded their remittances, but both had acquired a taste for high life. Money was borrowed, at usurious interest. I need not expatiate upon the consequences. Swinburne died suddenly; some aver his own hand terminated his unhappy career. The widow had securities on his planta-portunities of seeing his lovely daughter. tions, and a quondam admirer, who drew out the settlements, took a friendly concern in winding up, for her behoof, the neglected business of the deceased Swin-ter; he was, however, moved by her unburne. He sold the land, the negroes, and moveables to great advantage, and embarked for England to claim his reward, but died on the passage. Mrs. Swinburne's annuity, and the reversion for her daughter, allows her to live some weeks in London with acquaintances, who make reprisals by passing months at her decorated cottage into their income. summer or autumn. This is all I have to say, George; but it is quite enough to make a judicious young man very cautious. You are not the first that has been enchanted by such a girl as Louisa; but all who have so much reason left as to remember, that a lover and a husband must draw their happiness from different sources, will inquire the real character of a mother; and I have known several relinquish a pursuit, on finding she was ill-tempered or extrava-libacy would be less frequent; and that gant. Good conduct in the mother, is the best recommendation for the daughters." "Do then, my dear uncle, inform me where I may find a faultless mother."

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"Isleworth behaved to his father-in-law without servility, but with the complacency of an affectionate son; he lost his life by going to see him when attacked by a putrid fever. The same distemper made Mrs. Islesworth an orphan and a widow in one week. She inherited her father's estates, and has had more than one tempting offer from admirers, who prized her for her own sake. If we had more such matrons, ce

you may not think me a surly bachelor, unjust in the most amiable portion of rationals, I will say, that if we had more such husbands as Islesworth, we should have few or no frivolous extravagant wives."

The reader will have anticipated that Mrs. Islesworth was my mother-in-law; and beg leave to add, that the best recom

"Fauitless! George; now I see you are angry at my blunt sincerity. All mortals, male and female, are faulty; but the kind and degree of failings, you will acknow-I ledge, make an essential difference in their mendation for marriageable fair ones will merit or demerit." always proceed from the worth of their

"True, my dear Sir: will you, therefore, || parents.

FUGITIVE POETRY.

The Arctic Expedition. By Miss Porden.

8vo. Murray.

MISS PORDEN is well known to the literary world, as the author of a Poem entitled The Veils; and she has now cho

sen a very interesting subject; for the warm wishes of every Englishman are keenly excited, and their bosoms glow with every anxious wish for the success of their bold countrymen who have undertaken the

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perilous search for the discovery of a northMiss Porden is the first

west passage. who has treated this subject in a poetical way; a subject well calculated for the enthusiasm of poetry: she excels in description, and here a wide field is opened for that her peculiar forte.

Nor has she seized the pencil at random; it is not mere fancy that has guided her pictorial and poetical delineations; she has taken good care to inform herself minutely and correctly of those incidents which she has clothed in such charming colours.

The following kind of invocation at the commencement of the Poem is very beauti

ful:

"Sail, sail, adventurous barks! go fearless forth,
Storm on his glacier seat the misty north,
Give to mankind the inhospitable zone,
And Britain's trident plant in seas unknown.
Go! sure, wherever science fills the mind,
Or grief for man long severed from his kind,
That anxio is nations watch the changing gales,
And prayers and blessings swell your flagging
sails."

"And you, aspiring youths! heroic band! Who leave, by science led, your native land; Undaunted steer where none have mark'd the way,

Whom danger damps not, nor whom toils dismay.
You, no green islands of the West invite,
No dangerous Capua, nurse of soft delight;
No paradise where yet mankind is pure,
No flowery fields or balmy gales allure.
Fatigue and frost, and storms, and death, you
brave,

Where none are near, to witness or to save.".

TERRORS THAT AWAIT THE ADVENTURERS.

"Fear not, while months of dreary darkness roll,

To stand self-centred on the attractive pole;
Or find some gulf, steep, turbulent, and dark,
Earth's mighty mouth suck in the struggling
bark;

Fear not, the victims of magnetic force,
To hang arrested in your midmost course;
Your prows drawn downward and your sterus
in air,

To waste with cold, and grief, and famine, there:
Strange fancies these-but real ills are near,
Not cloth'd in all the picturesque of fear,
Which makes its wild distortions doubly drear.
Nor like the rush of fight, when burning zeal
Forbids the heart to quail, the limbs to feel-
Long patient suffering, when the frozen air
Seems almost solid, and the painful glare
Of endless snow destroys the dazzled sight;
When fatal slumber comes with dreadful weight;

When every limb is pain, or deadlier yet, When those chilled limbs the sense of pain forget;

Awful it is to gaze on shoreless seas,

But more to view those restless billows freeze
One solid plain, or when like mountains piled,
Whole leagues in length, of forms sublimely
wild,

In dreadful war the floating icebergs rush,
Horrent with trees that kindle as they crush;
The flickering compass points with fitful force,
And not a star in heaven directs your course,
But the broad sun through all the endless day,
Wheels changeless round, sole beacon of your
way;

Or through a night more dreadful, doomed to

roam

Unknowing where, and hopeless of a home.

Dense fogs, dark floating on the frozen tide,
Veil the clear stars that yet might be your guide;
The moon shines glorious in a cloudless sky,"
And vainly conscious that for weeks on high,

This last line alludes to the phenomenon of the arctic moon, which in the middle. of the polar night, or winter, shines for a fortnight together.

THE BIRTH OF THE BUTTERFLY,
FROM MR. TAYLOR'S 66 ANECDOTES
SECTS."

WHEN, bursting forth to life and light,
The offspring of enraptured May,
The butterfly, on pinions bright,
Launched in full splendor on the day.
Unconscious of a mother's care,
No infant wretchedness it knew;
But, as she felt the vernal air,

At once to full perfection grew.
Her slender form, etherial light,

Her velvet textured wings unfold,
With all the rainbow's colours bright,
And dropt with spots of burnish'd gold.
Trembling awhile with joy she stood,

And felt the sun's enlivening ray,
Drank from the skies the vital flood,

And wondered at her plumage gay.
And balanc'd oft her broidered wings,
Thro' fields of air prepared to sail;
Then on her ventrous journey springs,
And floats along the rising gale.
Go, child of pleasure, range the fields-
Taste all the joys that spring can give-
Partake what bounteous summer yields,
And live while yet 'tis thine to live.
Go sip the rose's fragrant dew-

The lily's houied cup explore-
From flower to flower the search renew,
And rifle all the woodbine's store,

OF

IN

And let me trace thy vagrant flight,
Thy moments, too, of short repose:
And mark thee when, with fresh delight,
Thy golden pinions ope and close.

But hark! while I thus musing stand,
Pours on the gale an airy note,
And breathing from a viewless band,
Soft silvery tones around me float.

They cease-but still a voice I hear,

A whispered voice of hope and joy-
Thy hour of rest approaches near,

Prepare thee, mortal! thou must die!
Yet start not! on thy closing eyes
Another day shall still unfold;
A sun of milder radiance rise,

A happier age of joys unfold.

Shall the poor worm that shocks thy sight,
The humblest form in nature's train,
Thus rise in new-born lustre bright,
And yet the emblem teach in vain?
Ah! where were once her golden eyes,
Her glitt'ring wings of purple pride?
Conceal'd beneath a rude disguise!

A shapeless mass to earth allied.

Like thee, the helpless reptile lived,

Like thee she toiled, like thee she spun ;
Like thine, her closing hour arrived,

Her labours ceased, her web was done.
And shalt thou, number'd with the dead,
No happier state of being know?
And shall no future sorrow shed,

On thee a beam of brighter glow?
Is this the bound of Power Divine,
To animate an insect frame?
Or shall not he who moulded thine,
Wake at his will the vital flame?

Go, mortal! in thy reptile state,

Enough to know to thee is given;

Go, and the joyful truth relate,

Frail child of earth, bright heir of heaven!
ANONYMOUS.

ORIGINAL POETRY.

SPRING,-A PASTORAL POEM.

STERN winter no longer prevails,

With its raging ferocity wild;
The snow fills no longer the vales,
But the scene is all placid and mild;
The winds all their fury assuage,

The tempest's loud blast is no more,
No longer shall youth and old age
The raging of winter deplore.

'Tis spring that now visits the plain,

The east brightens wide with the dawn; See Flora, the head of her train,

In the midst of the dance on the lawn. All hail, thou fair emblem of love!

That has in the superlative state, Clad in green the umbrageous grove,

And with gladness the earth doth elate. The shepherds their flocks now release At the rise of the lark from her nest; They browse the high steep in calm peace, For envy's unknown to their breast. The lambs sport around the green mead, To Pallas's soft flowing strains; And Pan, with his musical reed,

Of spring the existence proclaims. Aurora breaks forth from the skies,

In splendour amazingly bright; The cock bids the peasants arise,

And to labour the rustics invite: The lark from her pillow ascends,

Serenades the renewal of light; To the sky she high towering bends, And is enveloped now from sight. The thrush hails the morning's first beam,

Swells her throat with the music of love; And the notes of the birds near the stream,

Resounds from the dell through the grove. All the feather'd musicians of spring,

The delights of the morning enjoy; May they to maturity bring,

And no evil their broodlings annoy.

New beauties emerge from the lands,

The profusions of Flora behold! How the tulip her colours expands,

And lily of white and of gold. The primrose adorns the gay mead,

And the violet appears in the dale; O'er the pasture the cowslips are spread, To lavish their sweets on the gale.

The rose, royal queen of perfume,

Its beauteous vermilion displays;
And the suckle and lilac in bloom,
Deserve a just tribute of praise.
The bless'd renovation enjoy

In the sylvan secluded retreat;
For grandeur your peace will annoy-
Content's not in luxury's seat.

But, hark! at the sound of the bells
From the hamlet that stands near the grove;
'Tis there the young Clerimont dwells,
Who's just wedded to Delia his love.
Ye shepherds your garlands prepare;
Convene all your musical powers;
Ye belles to the hamlet declare,
That mirth the most jovial is ours.

SANGRADO.

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