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approbation, which produces an invincible aversion || the voice-they are the features of my friend. The to the cold, degrading views of human nature world may malign, traduce, asperse, and hate me, adopted by the heartless, ungenerous philosopher. but here is one whose lips were never opened but in When such an adieu-scene as this is painted be- praise, and whose heart never beat but with love. tween individuals of opposite sexes, notwithstand- I'll lose myself in him; I'll submerge my sorrows ing all the efforts of the poet, we know that inferior in his affection; I'll love that very world that dis motives and subordinate sentiments may operate, likes and injures me, because he is a son of humanity. and diminish our admiration and delight; but when I'll look no longer at mankind with myown eyes, and man and man, woman and woman, are brought into through the medium of their harsh and cruel conduct. this situation, our feelings are without alloy, and we I'll regard them through the spirit of my friend; involuntarily ascend from the loveliness of moral ex- I'll love them through the channel of his heart, cellence in the creature, to its fount and origin in the If he prove unfaithful, then I'll count the world a Creator. Heaven, we begin to perceive, will be but || stranger for his sake; but if he continue steadfast friendship in its highest form. Every heart there will and unchanged, I'll love the world for him. love the Great Heart of the Universe; and, loving the There is no philanthropy without friendship; there same object, they will love one another. No selfish are no universal cosmopolitan sympathies without aims, no interested ends, can be there-all are ab- friendship. It is, par excellence, the ligament of sosorbed in the love of perfect love, and all are con-ciety, the fascicular bond of the world, and the mighty sequently absorbed in all. Depressed here by the local separation of united spirits, we anticipate with delight their everlasting union in that bright and happy world where farewells are unknown. Salanio replies to this well-turned and well-alone can live alone, because He is perfect and inmerited compliment to Antonio

"I think he only loves the world for him." In marked contrast to this is Valentine's speech in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," after the discovery of Proteus' infidelity:

"I count the world a stranger for thy sake." Upon this passage we remarked: "Let our readers here seriously contemplate the sweeping circumference of the crime of infidelity. It not only alienates a heart from an individual, but poisons it for the world. Valentine has not only lost Proteus; he has also lost his species." In the words of Salanio we have the absolute converse.

keystone of the arch of the universe. Man or angel, isolated, is misery and wretchedness: man or angel, united, is happiness and peace. This arises, unquestionably, from imperfection and finitude. God

finite; He existed throughout the unbeginning cycles of a past eternity, when no creatures hymned his praise, and no intelligence proclaimed his wisdom and his love; and then he existed in the enjoyment of blessedness that could never be increased, and that could never be diminished-a blessedness springing solely from the contemplation and love of his own underived and incommunicable excellencies. Himself was, and is, and shall be, suffi

cient to himself; but man, angels, archangels—every order and species of finite, intelligent, moral beingsare dependenton one another and on Him, and attain complete and unbroken happiness only in loving the Lord their God with all their heart, and with all their soul, and with all their strength, and with all their mind, and their neighbour as themselves.

The next insight into this singularly beautiful friendship is afforded by Antonio's letter. Bassanio has won, at Belmont, the golden fleece, fair Portia. His joy is complete, his happiness without alloy. But hark! a knock, a messenger from Venice, bearing a letter from Antonio. anxiously seizes it; but beautifully pauses with— "Ere I ope' this letter,

Bassanio

I pray you, tell me how my good friend doth." His heart is too eager to learn tidings of his friend's welfare, to bear the temporary suspense of beloved Antonio?" Receiving a doubtful answer, a letter. "Tell me, at once-how fares my wellhe breaks the seal, and reads

Antonio loves Bassanio, and, through Bassanio, his species. With the fair image of truth, and charity, and faithfulness before him, in this solitary individual, he cannot think ill of his kind. Bassanio is to him the type of universal humanity; and in that type he beholds a beauty and a comeli ness that chains his heart indissolubly to the race. Antonio's was a spirit of a higher order; and there are few such that have not often heard the dread footsteps of misanthropy, in their lonely chambers, resounding through the deep silence of their soul. What thought arrests the approaching anarch? The thought of a beloved and a loving friend. Men have assailed and slandered my character; heaped epithets of foulest opprobrium on my name; checked, by cold reserve and frigid selfishness, my ardent aspirations of honourable ambition; regarded with jealousy my purest motives; and misconstrued, with relentless cruelty, my noblest, justest, highest sentiments. Shall I not retire from such a world-a|| world that I cannot please-a world that I cannot love--a world that cannot know me-and a world There is a sad earnestness, a dignified resignathat will not understand me? Shall I not bury my-tion, a calm resolution, about these lines. They self in the bosom of seclusion, and, in solitary reveal a soul of the highest type, prepared not only sadness, lapse silently away into the melancholy to suffer the loss of all earthly possessions with oblivion of death and the grave? But see! on the tranquil magnanimity, but to yield up even life dim horizon of my stormy, night-wrapped soul as- itself for the welfare of the friend he loves. We cends the form of a man, His features are familiar have already had one of the strongest proofs of the -his voice is not unknown. It is: h form it is sincerity and devotedness of his attachment; we

"Sweet Bassanio, my ships have all miscarried; my creditors grow cruel; my estate is very low; my bond to the Jew is forfeit, and since, in paying it, it is impossible I should live, all debts are cleared between you and me, if I might but see you at my death. Notwithstanding, use your pleasure if your love do not persuade you to come, let not my letter."

here have the strongest, the last, the crowning test of all. That there should be a principle in man, of strength sufficient to conduct him to a cruel death with cheerfulness, to save his friend, proclaims him kindred to the Deity.

One request, alone, Antonio makes before he dies; and that is, that Bassanio should be a witness of his end. This is singularly true to nature. First, because friendship delights to present before its object the most irrefragable and indubitable evidences of its constancy and love; and, second, because the object suffering is always supported by the presence of the object loved. These two motives induced Antonio to say,

"Pray God, Bassanio come

To see me pay his debt; and then I care not.”
Before proceeding to the judgment scene, we must
direct attention for a little to Portia. Bassanio,
overwhelmed with grief, is urged away by her from
Belmont. She would not for the world he should
remain a moment more in her society, while the
life of his friend is in peril. She offers to pay
the whole debt, and to discharge the faithful mer-
chant. Moreover, lest the Jew should pertina-
ciously demand his bond, she secretly devises the
means of rescue. Lorenzo, the husband of Shy-
lock's daughter, Jessica, struck with admiration
at her self-denial and disinterested generosity, ex-
claims,

"Madam! although I speak it in your presence,
You have a noble and a true conceit

Of God-like amity."

To this she replies:

"I never did repent for doing good,

Nor shall I do now, for in companions
That do converse and waste the time together,
Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love,
There must be needs a like proportion
Of lineaments, of manners, and of spirit;
Which makes me think that this Antonio,
Being the bosom-lover of my lord,
Must needs be like my lord. If it be so,
How little is the cost I have bestowed
In purchasing this semblance of my soul
From out the state of hellish cruelty!"

There is sound philosophy here, and a distinct
verification of the first half of our proposition
"Friendship is based on similarity and contrast.'
Portia justly reasons when she thinks that Antonio
must necessarily resemble Bassanio in all the lead-
ing features of his character and manners-similia
similibus, noscitur a socis, are axiomatic. She, how-

66

ever, goes a little too far when she includes lineaments" in the series of resemblances. But she was a woman, and this is her excuse.

Here, again, we see the expansive and diffusive influence of this relation. It first chains you in sweetest bonds to a single individual, then to all he loves, and then to the whole circle of humanity. We have no confidence in the theory of those who would have us believe that we must first embrace, in the ample folds of our affections, all the myriads of the world's population, and then, proceeding inwards by a system of concentric circles, arrive at last at the solitary central individual. No; we must begin at the individual, and end with the species. Our love must be like the wavy circle

VOL. XVI.-NO. CXCII.

produced by the projection of a stone into the calm, deep sea, which widens and extends till it loses itself amid the distant waters of the boundless waste, It may here be objected-As it is impossible that we can love as friends without first loving as worshippers of Deity; as our affections must || flow to man through the medium of God; and as He is infinite; do we not thus first love the universal, and then the particular?-do we not first love the Allembracing, and then the all-embraced? Our answer is this, that while it is perfectly true that, in order to a stable, disinterested, genuine friendship, we must first love that Being from whom all our affections spring, and to whom all our affections should return, we love Him not as many, but as one-not as multitude, but as unity-not as an abstract universal diffusion, but as a distinct personality. We love Him as an individual Being—we love Him first as the centre, then as the circumference, of the universe. Thus, in loving primarily the Deity, we do actually proceed from the one to the many, from the simple to the complex, from unity to multitude, from the particular to the universal, from the solitary individual to the mighty class of Being.

The fourth act we conceive the chef d'oeuvre of Shakspeare. It is a drama in itself. In comparison every prior scene is but a tame preliminary, and the whole following act, however rich in poetry, but an insignificant sequel. To the Duke's expression of generous sympathy, Antonio replies

"I have heard

Your grace hath ta'en great pains to qualify
His rigorous course; but since he stands obdurate,
And that no lawful means can carry me

Out of his envy's reach, I do oppose

My patience to his fury, and am armed
To suffer, with a quietness of spirit,
The very tyranny and rage of his."

Here stands the martyr to friendship. He is calm, firm, unmoved; no signs of trepidation disturb the deep placidity and resignation of his features. Strange that a spirit so attuned to love, so linked to human sympathies, so attached to life for its amenities, so sensitive to its sacred happiness,

should thus tranquilly surrender his earthly being to the incensed cruelty and demoniac hate of a revengeful Jew. In the tenderest and gentlest

souls there lives a heroic fortitude and sublime dis

regard of death in its most terrible and hideous
form, that excites a reverential wonder, and pro-
claims the high origin and end of man. There is no
braggartism about Antonio, and yet see how he
beholds the king of terrors. It is the mens conscia
recti that sustains him. It is the conviction that
he dies the victim of an undying love that nerves
his spirit for the dread encounter, and, with
quietness of spirit," prepares him to meet his me-
and he is not unwilling to give this culminating
He has loved, and deeply loved,
lancholy fate.
test of its mysterious depth; and when Bassanio,
distracted, pleads with frantic energy with the
Jew, he thus mildly dissuades him from his hope-

less task

"I pray you, think you question with the Jew.
You may as well go stand upon the beach
And bid the main flood bate his usual height;
You may as well use question with the wolf

3 P

66 a

Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb;
You may as well forbid the mountain pines
To wag their high tops, and to make no noise
When they are fretted with the gusts of Heaven;
You may as well do anything most hard

As seek to soften that, (than which what's hardér ?)
His Jewish heart. Therefore, I do beseech you
Make no more offers, use no further means,
But, with all brief and plain conveniency
Let me have judgment, and the Jew his will."

In this there is exquisite pathos and exquisite poetry.

BasHe tries to

But the Doctor of Laws is announced. sanio derives new encouragement.

cheer his friend, and declares—

"The Jew shall have my flesh, blood, bones, and all,

Ere thou shalt lose for ine one drop of blood!"

Antonio per

This is the resolution of a noble nature, and sub-
limes the character of Bassanio.
suasively replies-

"I am a tainted wether of the flock,
Meetest for death; the weakest kind of fruit
Drops earliest to the ground: and so let me.
You cannot better be employed, Bassanio,
Than to live still, and write mine epitaph."

I have been smitten with the shafts of fortune; adversity has frowned upon my earthly lot. Let me die; and live thou, to benefit and bless thy kind, and write mine epitaph."" Antonio sees the immortality and glory of an epitaph written by the man he died to save. And yet there is no impurity of motive here, for it would proclaim to generations yet unborn the moral beauty and the transcendent excellence of genuine friendship. It would teach mankind how to live and how to die. It would confound the misanthrope, and consoli

date the union of society.

One scene more, and we close. Judgment has been pronounced against the merchant.

The in

He first attempts to reconcile Bassanio to his impending fate, by reminding him of his wrecked fortunes, his shattered hopes, his crushed and blighted prospects; and then enjoins him to narrate the circumstances of his death to his beloved wife, that she may know her husband's worth, and friendship's sacred power. Like Damon, friendship was the goddess of his idolatry; and when death had closed his mortal pilgrimage, he ardently desired that she should be worshipped and adored with a devotion as intense, and a reverence as profound, as he himself had felt and shown.

Bassanio, deeply moved, energetically answers-

"Antonio, I am married to a wife,

Which is as dear to me as life itself;
But life itself, my wife, and all the world,
Are not with me esteem'd above thy life-
I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all,
Here, to this devil, to deliver you.”

Friendship was regarded by Shakspeare as the highest degree of spirituality of which humanity is capable, and hence, in this speech of Bassanio, all human things, and all human relations, are subordinated to its claims. He makes Bassanio ready to sacrifice his loving spouse, his worldly possessions, even his own life, all that is dear and valuable on earth, freely and unhesitatingly upon its altar.

Of course, every one is acquainted with the sequel of the judgment scene. The Jew is bafled and beggared. The friends, transported at their providential deliverance, set out together for the seat of Portia, where they spend a delightful season of festivity, and taste again the sweets of friendship, to which they had, by an almost miraculous interposi

tion, been restored.

In fine, if our readers receive as much benefit and pleasure as ourselves in tracing the interesting hisviolable laws of Venice sanction Shylock's bond. tory of this faithful pair, they will not regret the

Antonio thus bids a final farewell

"Give me your hand, Bassanio. Fare you well!
Grieve not that I am fallen to this for you;
For herein fortune shows herself more kind
Than is her custom. It is still her use
To let the wretched man outlive his wealth,
To view, with hollow eye and wrinkled brow,
An age of poverty; from which lingering penance
Of such a misery doth she cut me off.
Commend me to your honourable wife ;
Tell her the process of Antonio's end,

Say how I lov'd you, speak me fair in death,
And, when the tale is told, bid her be judge
Whether Bassanio had not once a love.
Repent not you that you shall lose your friend,
And he repents not that he pays your debt;
For, if the Jew do cut but deep enough,
I'll pay it instantly, with all my heart."

hour they have devoted to their portraits in the gallery of the "Amicitie Shakspeariante."

We have been benefited, because in contemplating such fine specimens of human nature, we admire; in admiring, we esteem; in esteeming, welove; and love, binding the soul to the object with soft, resistless power, stamps upon it the very lineaments, the very impress of the character contemplated. While we regard Antonio, we become Antonio, His etherial nature spiritualizes ours. We have also been pleased, because the healthy action of our moral powers, either in admiring or imitating the great, the noble, and the good, confers a satisfaction as pure, and a felicity as perfect, as the soul of man is capable of enjoying.

ROSY JULY.

A BATCH OF BALLADS.

Or all the sweet months of the year

There's none like rosy July! The early sun shines warm and clear, And flowers have open'd fully: All sparkling is the world at noon,

At eve the air breathes coolly;
Of all the sweet months of the year,
There's none like rosy July!

Young April has its smiles and tears,
And May its opening roses;
And though the sun in joy appears,

Oft darkness round him closes.

BY A PARK.

And even though June brings forth new bloom, Though Summer reigns more truly

Of all the sweet months of the year,

There's none like rosy July!

The birds aboon are in full tune,

With joy the woodlands ringing;

The haw-thorn trees perfume the breeze,
And all the world is singing!
The butterfly and bee sweep by,
To blossoms open'd newly-

Of all the sweet months of the year,
There's none like rosy July!

COME, SWEET MAID.

O come, sweet maid with me

Where Lugar'as stream is flowing, While the evening sun,

Ilis race hath run,

And the clouds his crimson showing My home is 'mong the hills, love,

Where zephyr's revel free,

Two merry hearts,

Love never parts

Shall there unite in glee!

Then come, sweet maid! with me

All day we'll wander forth

Where the wild flowers sweet are growing,

O'er the mountain side,

With stately pride,

While the Summer sun is glowing.

I'll never dream of care, love!

When once along with thee,

While joy and love,

Like all above,

Shall with us constant be;

Then come, sweet maid! with me.

I.

THE HEATH-CLAD HAUNTS OF INFANCY.

WHEN heath is purple, verdure lies

O'er mountain breasts in rich display;
When Summer-blossoms meet the cyes
Where'er our wandering footsteps stray;
When cascades leap in dazzling sheen,
And nature's grandest form is seen,

I love my native hills to see,

Those heath-clad haunts of infancy!

I've seen Hibernia's vernal land,
Like Titan rising from the sea;
As if some fairy with her wand
Had form'd a world alone, and free!
I've seen fair England's lofty towers,
And France in her frivolity;
But dearer, far, is still to me,
Those heath-clad haunts of infancy.

There's not a spot on this fair earth,

That warms my heart and charms mine eye, That calls such joyous thoughts to birth, Or can such careless hours supply,

As those gigantic cliffs of old,

Where clouds and tempests revel free-
Where Summer spreads etherial gold,
My heath-clad haunts of infancy!

ADIEU TO SORROW.

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COME, let us depart from our sorrow,
And hear what each other may say;
Perhaps the bright beams of to-morrow
Will chase all the clouds of to-day!
Contentment is better than richies,
And easier far to be had;
A fig for the cares that enslave us,
To-day we'll be merry and glad.
So, let us depart from our sorrow.

Our ancestors lov'd to be merry,

Nor pined at the darkness of fate; They sang, and they quaff'd off their cherry Until every bosom grew great! They chatted and laughed in their glory, And chased every sorrow away, By chanting some comical story That happen'd in life's early day. So, let us depart from our sorrow!

DOWN IN THE VALLEY. A BALLAD-FOR MUSIC.

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SECOND PART.

V.

Down in that valley, when five long years had gone,
One evening strayed Mary, still grieving, alone.
She gazed on the spot where that parting took place,
While the tear-drops of mem'ry suffused her sweet face.

VI.

She heard coming footsteps-was hastening away,
When a voice cried, "Oh, stay Mary! stay, my love, stay!”
She knew it she turned-in a moment was pressed
To the heart of her Henry-her sorrows at rest.

VII.

"Said I not, my dear Mary, I'd come back from sea, With honours and wealth, and a heart true to thee? Now I've gold on my shoulder, and gold in my purse, And my heart you will find's not a farthing the worse.

VIII.

"Now, look up, dearest Mary, the wars are all o'er ;
Our foes are subdued, and we'll never part more,
For here I will anchor the rest of my life,
And leave the big world to its noise and its strife."

COLIN RAE BROWN.

ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE OF GENERAL WOLFE.

taken in it by the mountain clans, had, however, seriously alarmed the Government of that day, and prompted a more close inspection of Scotland and her warlike hill-tribes. As already said, little was known of the Highlands, beyond what fatal experience had recently taught, namely, that their

IN the galaxy of brilliant names which illuminate our military annals, there are probably few which Britons regard with more honest pride, and almost affectionate interest, than that of the young|| and gallant Wolfe. This arises, not less from his consummate genius in the art of war, than from the nobleness of soul and gentleness of disposition || dreary recesses were filled with wild and hardy by which he was distinguished; while the sentiment in his favour is deepened, and our feelings stimulated, by reflecting on the splendour of his great and final achievement, when, on the heights of Abraham, victory snatched him too soon from his country, and claimed him as her own. Anything, therefore, which tends to illustrate the life and cast of thought of this excellent man, and real hero, cannot fail to prove interesting. A small packet of letters, written by Wolfe to a very intimate friend and brother officer, having been lately discovered amongst the papers of a relative of that friend, in Glasgow, access has been kindly allowed to them, and permission given to make extracts.

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But, before approaching these letters, now for the first time made public, and roused from the dust of nearly a century, some remarks on the aspect of the times in which Wolfe lived, and a brief sketch || of his own history, seem to be necessary, in order to elucidate the contents of the packet, and that the import may be better understood.

warriors, who held the comparatively peaceful men of the plains in contempt, for cultivating vocations opposed to their own, of clan-strife and war. They were, therefore, ready, on the least signal from their chiefs, to descend with the fury of a mountain tempest on the inhabitants of the Lowlands, and carry devastation around them, with little or no check at the hands of a timid government.

There is a very curious and instructive report to George I., by Wade, the intelligent and able military officer he had sent to reconnoitre the High||lands, and bring back an account of their military strength, resources, and prevalent political sentiment, with such suggestions as seemed to the Gene||ral best calculated to hold this troublesome frontier in check, and promote the internal improvement of the hill-country. The report bears date 31st January, 1725,shortly before the monarch's death, and ten years after the Rebellion of 1715, which, as already said, Wolfe's father had assisted in suppressing. This able report is characterised by the discrimination and calm, good sense for which Wade was remarkable. In it he gives an account of the features of the wild region, estimating the fighting men at about 22,000, of whom fully one half were disaffected to the King, the kind and quality of their arms, mode of warfare, and cattle-thieving propensities. It contains a recommendation to have the clans properly disarmed, their country held with a firm grasp by means of forts, and rendered more accessible to the King's troops by lines of military roads. How curious to read his description of a country and a people, then nearly as dangerous to visit as the American wilds, but which is now the favourite retreat of royalty itself for recreation from the weight of State cares, and the chosen resort of tourists from every clime.

The report was acted upon. To Wade was assigned the duty of carrying out his own recommen

James Wolfe was born on the 2d January, 1727, at Westerham, in Kent. This pretty little town is situated near the west border of the county, on the declivity of a hill overlooking the romantic stream of the Dart, which rises in the vicinity, and, after pursuing a meandering course through a district of much natural beauty, falls into the Thames, below London. He was the only son of the veteran General Edward Wolfe, who had distinguished himself under Marlborough, and in the suppression of the Scotch Rebellion of 1715. Destined, in like manner, for the profession of arms, young Wolfe was taken from his studies, part of which had been at the College of Glasgow, and entered the regiment which bore his father's name, at the early age of fifteen. This was in 1741, only four years previous to the last Rebellion. The period at which he thus became a soldier was one of uncommon interest in the national history. It was in the interval be-dations of disarming the clans, and constructing tween two rebellions, when the northern part of the the roads. The former was a delicate task, which island, but more especially that section included in he executed with judicious moderation; so much the Highlands, was comparatively little known and so, that even Rob Roy wrote him a curious letter, little cared for. Indeed, of the Highlands it may still preserved, praising that moderation, and safely be said that the greatest ignorance had, till soliciting his clemency. The military roads were about the year of Wolfe's birth, prevailed. The carried into the heart of the Scottish wilderness. edge of the ancient animosity between the people Two main lines were formed, and attest, at the dis of the northern and the southern divisions of this tance of more than 100 years, the skill of this excelisland, now happily broken and removed, was still lent officer. He took the ancient Roman Iters for keen. The Scottish mind was filled with distrust; his model, and, in fact, started his roads from their it rankled with the remembrance of the treachery venerable lines, at nearly right angles west and which forced on Scotland the then hated Union. north-west, across the dreary country, towards the The Hanoverian succession was by no means popu-pre-existing forts on the chain of the great Scottish lar in the north; and men's minds fluctuated between the old and the new race of kings. The Rebellion of 1715, and the prominent part

lakes, now connected by the Caledonian Canal. These roads stretched over 250 miles; and 500 soldiers laboured upwards of 11 years in their for

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