IV. Where worshipp'd? Nature and sweet Poesy Their sport is on the breezy lawn; above LITERARY NOTES AND JOTTINGS. | much more piquant and amusing is the No. I. CROMWELL'S PREACHING. history of the affair given by Člement Walker! ·66 • About this time some thousands of well affected women of London, Westminster, Southwark, and the hamlets, stormed the House of Commons with two petitions in behalf of Jo. Lilburn and his company.They complain of the Council of State's HUME has been censured for asserting that Cromwell wrote sermons, "a discovery," says Dr. Harris, "of Mr. Hume's own, and quite unsuitable to his character and the violent and illegal proceedings against times. The historian was probably misled them, in seizing them in the night by solby an imperfect recollection of the follow-diers; of their arbitrary government, taxes, ing humorous and graphic description, by that acute writer and keen partizan, Clement Walker." Sunday after Easter day (1649) six preachers militant at Whitehall tried the patience of their hearers, one calling up an. other successively. At last the spirit of the Lord called up Oliver Cromwell, who, standing a good while with lifted up eyes, as it were in a trance, and his neck inclining a little to one side, as if he had expected Mahomet's dove to descend and murmur in his ear, and sending forth abundantly the groans of the spirit, spent an hour in prayer, and an hour and a half in a sermon. In his prayer he desired God to take off from him the government of this mighty people of England, as being too heavy for his shoulders to bear. An audacious, ambitious, and hypocritical imitator of Moses. It is now reported of him that he pretendeth to inspirations; and that when any great or weighty matter is propounded, he usually retireth for a quarter or half an hour, and then returneth and delivereth out the oracles of the Spirit. Surely the spirit of John Leyden will be doubled upon this man!"* Hume states that in the same year the women applied, by petition, for the release of Colonel Lilburn, but were desired to mind their household affairs, and leave the government of the state to the men. How 1661. excise, monopolies, &c., and with utterly taking away all liberty of discourse, than which there can be no greater slavery. They received not so good answers to these petitions as they were wont to receive when thimbles to sacrifice to these legislative they had money, plate, rings, bodkins, and idols. They were bid go home and wash the dishes; to which some replied,' they had neither dishes nor meat left."" JOHNSON'S POETICAL CRITICISM. The morose severity with which Johnson has treated the works of Gray has been universally condemned as ungenerous and unjust; but we know not that it has been remarked, that the worthy doctor-who was, after all, a “fine old fellow," as Byron terms him, though sadly swayed by masterless passion and inveterate prejudice-has himself fallen into the very sins for which he so coarsely censures_the poet. In his remarks on the "Ode to Eton College," a poem which, from its sedate contemplative character, one would think Johnson must have admired, he styles the apostrophe to the Thames "useless and puerile," and adds, as if with the blunt obtuseness of a true matter-of-fact critic, "Father Thames has no better means of knowing than himself." This is certainly a fact, but who ever before thought of applying such a test to poetry ? History of the Independents, p. 154. Edit."Gadzooks! must one swear to the truth of a song Dr. Johnson, however, when he so far forgot himself as to pen this sage dictum, forgot also, that some sixteen or seventeen years before, when his imagination was perhaps warmer, and his perceptions more vivid, he had written a book called "Rasselas," in which the river Nile is thus nobly apostrophised" Answer, great Father of Waters, thou that rollest thy floods through eighty nations, to the invocations of the daughter of thy native king. Tell me if thou waterest, through all thy course, a single habitation from which thou dost not hear the murmurs of complaint ?" Now, pray, Dr. Johnson, what better means of knowing had the Nile than your Princess Nekeyah, or the much-injured Father Thames? and don't you think you stand much in the same situation as poor Mr. Gray? In the same life, the critic censures the poet for conceiving that he could not write but at certain times, and terms this harmless imagination, which has been entertained by almost every writer of works of fiction, a fantastic foppery. In the life of Milton a similar charge is adduced. Now, Dr. Johnson himself, in his life of Denham, admits the force and reality of this conceit. Speaking of the four sonorous and oft-praised lines, also addressed to "Father Thames," "O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream Strong without rage; without o'erflowing full,”— THE HILL OF FOTHERINGAY, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. Sep. 12. Just returned from a visit to Fotheringay, in the eastern division of the county of Northampton-a spot famous in story. It was the residence of the princely Plantagenets, the birthplace of Richard III., and is known to all lovers of history, poetry, and romance, as the place where Mary Queen of Scots closed her sufferings and captivity on the scaffold. The day was propitious-the sun shone without a cloud, and some rain which had fallen the previous night breathed a delightful coolness into the air, and gave an unwonted beauty and freshness to the green lanes, and the surrounding trees and commons. scenery of Northamptonshire, like most of the inland portions of "merry England,” is flat and unvaried, but rich and fertile. Broad level meadows, intersected by thick, well-kept hedges, rustic stiles and crossings, and bounded by a lazy brook or river, that displays on its margin a few stunted willows or alders, with here and there a neat The cleanly cottage, or a snug farm-house, or a baronial mansion, "Bosomed high in tufted trees ;" such are the objects that meet the eye, and, "Flow on, thou gently plashing stream, Johnson's criticism of Milton's Lycidas is wholly unworthy of his talents, and demonstrates, better than a thousand dissertations, that he was either sometimes wilfully blind from prejudice, or that to the charms of a certain class of imaginative poetry he was utterly insensible. The exquisite relish for the pleasures of a town life which predomi nated in the mind of Johnson, and his constitutional aversion to solitude, seem to have blunted his perception to the simple beauties of external nature, and to have rendered him distasteful of poetry which did not include some striking moral sentiment, or atThat makes me love thee dearly." tract by the stately grandeur and measured melody of its numbers. His mind disdained Fotheringay church is one of the finest an alliance with the gentler graces. He village churches in England, and, instead could comprehend and develope, with match- of being surmounted with the usual weathless skill and wisdom, the sublimities of Pa-er-vane, it is crowned with the favourite radise Lost; but the myrtle and ivy of Lycidas shrank from his touch, and eluded his grasp. With our great critic, the proper study of mankind was man. I've watched thee wind so clearly: armorial device of the House of York, the falcon in a fetterlock. The castle stood at the eastern extremity of the village on a high mount, and was protected by a double range of moats, now filled up. The hill descends abruptly on the western side, where it is bounded by "The Nen's barge-laden wave," A and some meadows as trim and smooth as the verses of Pope, which, according to Johnson's famous simile, were "shaven by the scythe and levelled by the roller." massy fragment of the outer wall of the castle lies by the river-side, and this, with the hill, forms the only remaining indication of the lofty fortress, the stern prisonhouse, where Mary spent the last year of her troubled life, and yielded it up to the jealous tyrannical policy of Elizabeth, with a magnanimity and composure worthy of a Christian princess. JOKES. "Joke, a jest; something not serious," says Johnson. Common sense is said to be a rarer quality than genius, but a good joke is rarer still. Rogers, the poet, remarked that the best joke he ever heard was an acknowledgment in the newspapers from the commissioners of the Sinking Fund, that they had received six pounds sterling from some patriotic individuals towards the liquidation of the national debt! The disproportion between the means and the end is certainly ludicrous enough, and rivals the egregious vanity of old Dennis the critic, ("Mad Dennis," as Swift called him,) who imagined the French were going to invade Great Britain, because he had written a tragedy reflecting on the French character. As an instance of the strange association of ideas in some minds, we may mention, that when a gentleman remarked on the morning that intelligence was received of Lord Byron's death-" So Byron is gone!"—an_individual present rejoined, Yes, and do you know, Mr. Cooper, our neighbour is not expected to live?" "A similar joke occurs in Shakspeare between the gravedigger and Hamlet, but the coincidence, being perfectly undesigned, only bears testimony to the truth and verisimilitude of the poet's conceptions. One slight ovation more, and we have done. Scotchmen are famous for nationality, and one night we remember a popular living author, in the midst of a joyous group in London, reciting with great enthusiasm, from memory, Burns' Address to the Deil. He repeated the lines "I've heard my reverend grannie say, In lonely glens ye like to stray;" when a genuine borderer burst out, "D'ye think the auld chield has any notion of This was the climax of nationality. Scotch scenery? OI wish I was wi' him!" In the Letters from the Highlands, written about 1720, by one of General Wade's engineers, there occurs a good practical joke with respect to the tailors of Inverness. To prevent cabbaging, an ingenious process was adopted. "I shall give you a notable instance of Precaution used by some of the men against the tailor's purloining. This is to buy of clothes, even to the staytape and thread; everything that goes to the making of a suit and when they are to be delivered out, they face. And when he brings home the suit, are all together weighed before the tailor's it is again put into the scale with the shreds of every sort, and it is expected the whole shall answer the original weight." ANECDOTES OF LORD BROUGHAM. Meeting with a Scottish baronet at Tours last summer, we learned the following circumstance illustrative of the "ancient inScarcely less rich was the remark of a timacy" which existed between Lords cockney citizen,-"I like Young's acting Brougham and Melbourne. Upwards of better than his Night Thoughts," confound-thirty years ago Sir George S. Mackenzie, ing the poetical divine, long since gathered to his fathers, with the tragedian then flourishing on the stage. We have heard that when a Scotch duchess, once the admired of all observers," was questioning the children at one of her charity schools, the teacher asked, "What is the wife of a king called?" "A queen," bawled out the little pher. of Coul in Ross-shire, was waited upon at his house one day by a messenger from the inn or change-house, to tell him that two gentlemen were at the said hostelry, and were desirous of speaking with him. The baronet repaired to the spot, and on entering the cottage saw to his surprise his college acquaintance, Mr. Henry Brougham, philoso-dressed in a kilt, sitting with his feet upon a pail of water, and by his side Mr. William Lamb, apparently very tired and woebegone. After the usual congratulations, the travellers stated that they were on a pedestrian excursion in the Highlands, and were considerably fatigued. The gentleman pressed them to go to his house, but this they declined. Some whisky was called in, and after the glass had circulated a short time, and many a pretty remark and lively sally had been made, the two strangers, little dreaming, we dare say, that one "The wife of an emperor?" "An empress," was replied with equal readiness. "Then what is the wife of a duke called?" "A drake," exclaimed several voices, mistaking the title duke for the biped duck, which they pronounced the same. At a meeting of a turnpike board one day, a farmer objected to some decision, when the clerk asked upon what ground he objected. was to be prime minister and the other lord | business of public life; and Telford_may chancellor of England, slung their knapsacks be cited as an instance of how completely on their backs and departed. It is a pity one description of genius may be overlaid that courts or debates should come between and neglected by the mind of its possessor a friendship of so old standing, and ce- receiving a totally different bias and direcmented by kindly thoughts and offices thir- tion. ty years since among the Highland hills. In his early days Telford lived on poetic The energy and perseverance of Brougham ground, amidst the scenes of the finest old at this time led all who knew him to pre- Scotch songs, green hills, and the other addict his future greatness; and one gentle-juncts of a landscape of great sylvan and man in Glasgow, Mr. Jardine, a merchant, pastoral beauty. Eskdale, his native district, bet ten guineas to one that Brougham was also the birthplace of Armstrong, author would be a cabinet minister. The mer- of the "Art of Preserving Health," and of chant did not live to see this realised; but Mickle, the translator of the Lusiad. Telso firm was his conviction that it would ford wrote a poem descriptive of this classic take place, that he left a memorandum in dale, but it is only a feeble paraphrase of his will, stating that the ten guineas were to Goldsmith. It seems, however, to have supbe paid over to the Glasgow Infirmary. plied a line to his friend Campbell. Telford This was actually done after Lord Brough- writes, am's elevation to the woolsack. Mr. Jardine's son (who told the circumstance) was a Scottish advocate, or barrister, and is now a sheriff in Scotland. TELFORD, THE ENGINEER. "Whose airy summits mingle with the skies," and the fourth line in the Pleasures of Hope is the same, with the exception of "sunbright" instead of "airy." The engineer afterwards helped the poet to a more valuable line, which he could lawfully appropriate -a line in his will leaving Mr. Campbell 500l. This bequest has also turned out to be nearly double the amount, owing to the terms of the will and the testator's effects far exceeding what he believed to be their value. We The late Mr. Telford was in his young days a devoted rhymster, and his boyish studies and predilections contrasted strangely with the severer pursuits of his manhood and old age. In his original occupation of a stone-mason, cutting names on tombstones, (in which he excelled,) we Sir David Brewster has paid a generous can fancy him cheering his solitary labours tribute to the virtues and merits of Telford, with visions of literary eminence, rivalling in the last number of the Edinburgh Review. the fame of Milton or Shakspeare; but we We would add that, apart from the utility of may be sure that he never dreamed of con- his labours, and of the genius with which ceiving the Menai Bridge or the Pont-cy- they were planned and executed, the examsylte Aqueduct in Wales. We should as ple of his life must have been important in soon expect to see the "gnarled and un- directing attention to extensive public works wedgeable oak" spring from a graft upon to engineering and improvements on a a myrtle. Yet Telford seemed to be mark- scale of grandeur suited to the dignity of this ed out as a literary man by his friends and great empire. The British government has contemporaries, as well as by the first lagged behind some of the continental states dawnings of his own ambition. In Edin-in zeal for science, and encouragement of burgh he associated with Dugald and Mrs. the skill and enterprise of the nation. Stewart, with Gregory, Alison, Playfair, have all inscribed on our banners Lord and Campbell: the latter then a very young Grey's talismanic word "Retrenchment,”— man, in the flush of his precocious and an admirable motto, but surely not intended wonderful genius. Nor did he forget this to cover a peddling, huxtering economy, spirit in his later and more prosperous unworthy the first commercial empire in the days. He was a warm and steady friend world. Mr. Telford, we do think, lifted the to Campbell, to whom his house in Abingdon public mind a little above this creeping at Street was ever open. When Dr. Currie mosphere. He also afforded an excellent conceived the benevolent project of pub-pattern to men of science to be free and lishing the works of Burns, and writing the liberal in their communications with each life of the bard, for the benefit of his desti- other, to extend the boundaries of useful tute widow and family, Telford entered knowledge. Above all, his example must warmly into the project, and promoted it teach the humblest not to despond under by his money as well as by his counsel and adverse circumstances, or to fold their hands influence. The magnificent plans and in despair. Many a young engineer and schemes on which he was latterly engaged mechanic will, we hope, recollect that Telcompletely occupied his time and talents, ford seized every opportunity to acquire and all traces of the youthful poet had en- information, and that if he had not perhaps tirely vanished. It is impossible to reckon pored over the plates and descriptions in the amount of latent talent constantly Rollin's history, by his mother's fireside, or slumbering in this great country from want in the open air, while he herded sheep, he of industry or opportunities of action, or would not have risen to be president of the buried beneath the weightier cares and Society of Engineers, and a man whom kings delighted to honour. And, should they attain a certain degree of eminence, they must recollect also that Telford never slacked in his efforts, or reposed on his past exertions. Some of his best works were planned when he was above sixty, and when he was in the enjoyment of easy circumstances and high reputation. Let them, therefore, persevere. Telford's latter days were a fine commentary on the text of Shakspeare "Perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honour bright; to have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; FLOWERS AT SEA. BY MRS. ABDY. Ir enthusiasm of public spirit, and sanctity of private manners, were sufficient to secure for a nation an independent existence, Italy would have sent her glorious freedom down to the remotest generations. The wealth and splendour to which the enfranchised cities of the Lombard league were suddenly raised, did not, for a long time, exercise their corruptive influence. The eternal state of warfare in which they found themselves engaged, from their earliest origin, was not peculiar to Italy. It was the element in which that age of steel equally breathed. It had the effect of preventing them from falling into that languor and torpor into which they would have been lulled by uninterrupted prosperity. Their spirit of enterprise, their emulous ambition, kept pace with their municipal jealousies, with their endless con turned all poisonous seeds into sources of Liberty, the worker of wonders, blessing. "This morning we were surprised by the appearance of a bouquet on one of our cabin tables-flicts. lilies, hyacinths, daffodils, violets, and primroses at sea! It is a matter of ambition with us to carry into New York a flower still fresh, though plucked in England."-From Mr. Foster's Journal of the First Voyage to America in the Great Western. OH! dear is this gift from a kindly hand, hours Arise at the sight of these English flowers, Let us long delay their final doom, Let us carefully tend their fleeting bloom; And these flowers a moral may convey ;- ers. But the Italian republics ran their race alone. The higher they rose in their liberal aspirations, the deeper their neighbours sank into darkness and madness. The disorders of feudal anarchy raged to their highest pitch on the other side of the Alps. The Italians led the way to a land of promise, on which they were not to set their foot. They lit a torch that was afterwards to pass over to Switzerland, and hence to Holland and Germany, to England and America, and never, or but too late, warm their bosoms again. Italy was to assume the apostleship of civilisation and freedom, and, like all other apostles, to be requited with crucifixion and martyrdom. Those free states rose amidst the confusion of unsettled institutions and jarring opinions. The Italians loved the name of liberty more than they comprehended its meaning. They hung in hesitation between the reminiscences of the ancient world and the wants of the modern. They contrived to reconcile the advantages of republican equality with the brilliancy of chivalrous prowess. They struggled to unite the worldly wisdom of Roman policy with the pure dictates of Christian humanity. Their governments partook of the military assemblies of the feudal Champ de Mars, and of the demagogic tumults of the Forum. Scarcely emancipated from the reign of violence, they had not well learned to give always right the ascendency over strength. The last germs of feudalism, which they flattered themselves to have uprooted, shot forth again, by |