THE LION'S HEAD. IMMEDIATELY after the publication of a just and excellent Essay upon FRENCH PRETENSIONS in our last number, we met with a passage in Diodorus Siculus, which would have made the aptest motto to the paper that Author could desire. We cannot resist still letting our readers see what a writer of the time of Julius Cæsar thought of the French, because it is really astonishing that the national character of France should have undergone so little alteration in the space of 2000 years. What an eternal dance of mind and body this volatile people seems to be involved in! They (the Gauls) are high and hyperbolical in trumpeting out their own praises; but speak slightly and contemptibly of others. They are apt to menace others; self-opinionated; grievously provoking; of sharp wits, and apt to learn.-Diodorus Siculus, Chap. ii. Booth's Translation. The following poem is melodiously written, and, with the exception of the fourth line of the first stanza, has more sweetness in it than generally marks. our anonymous modern lyrics. We should, however, be glad to know the meaning of the said fourth line-it quite pozes us. We have received a letter (directed "to be delivered immediately,") giving us a description of The Mermaid now exhibiting in St. James's Street, from the pen of " Dr. Rees Price, a gentleman distinguished for his scientific literary productions." Does the proprietor of this suspicious importation think that we never read Sheridan's Puff Collateral, or that we will artlessly stand a comma 'tween the amities of him and the Stamp Office! No-no.Besides, who is this distinguished Dr. Rees Price? We really do not know him-nor can we meet with any one who does. Has he any interest in this herring-tailed lady?-The Mermaid, in fact, comes very suspiciously, per the Americans. Now, if Mermaids do really exist, we must say we are surprised that no fisherman ever netted a specimen since the year One! The following is taken, as Nimrod assures us, from a real "Old Poem," upon hunting, and indeed it has the appearance of having never been young. Now the loud Cry is up—and hark! Tomfood We really have not room this month for particular replies to our numerous Unknowns. We only request they will not mistake our Silence for Consent. EDWARD HERBERT'S LETTERS TO THE FAMILY OF THE POWElls. No. V. To Russell Powell, Esq. It has a strange quick jar upon the ear, DEAR RUSSELL,-To write short and dispirited letters is one of the tokens of a distempered frame. I blush to find by the packet of anxious notes and tender enquiries, lately received from your family, that I have furnished them a messenger of alarm and disquiet, by my last brief but tedious epistle from the country. When women are ill, they bear their sufferings with silence and patience, but the moment we masters of the creation are nipped by ailments, we lose no time in hallooing to the world about our agony and magnanimityand in writhing before visitors like giants in pain. I am sorry to say, my dear Russell, that experience daily proves to me, that in all great things we men are frightfully little and that it is the weaker sex that rise with the difficulties of the time, and that display unaffected greatness and power, in the moments of anguish, disappointment, or despair. I gave to your sister the other day a melancholy report of myself-hinted at declining health and decaying VOL. VI. Lord Byron. hopes-spake of pain and its company of evil spirits-of sea-side solitude and melancholy readings:I wish I had written no such foolery. Do you know, Russell, that a few morning rambles on the beach, and a few early excursions in the fishing boats, gave my feelings a new life on the instant, and made me better and blither than I ever in my life remember to have been. I arose with the sun (no common trick of mine); and while the sky was yet white, and the cold brisk waves came shuddering in with a green gloom upon the beach,-I scrambled into one of the old black fishing boatsand oh, how bravely did we spread the brown sail on the graceless pole of a mast, and dance off to our profitable sport! I assisted in putting out the nets-I assisted in managing the boat-I assisted in the pulling in. Suchflapping and flashing in the light! -such tossing and breaking of waves! We would return before the day was warm-and I relished my breakfast with part of the spoils. Sometimes, 2 F however, I have done nothing but saunter among the shingles as the tide was swelling in, and take note of the grand labour of the sea-the labour which has been-and which will be!-What sights! what noble music! The white spread of the foam,-eternal, yet momentary;the sound of the curled wavesounding with time!--I became learned, Russell, in the mysteries of an ocean and its shores. I studied the patient strife, and forgot the world in all I saw and heard. If you would, indeed, steep your mind in quiet and in power, take a seat on a rock or on the loose dry stones of the shore-and read the waves!-If you would truly wed your senses to serenity" feast them upon the wideness of the sea!"-I only know this (to know something in these extremely wise times is not amiss) Yes, -I only know this,-that with all my love of merriment, bustle, and life-with all my passion for popular pleasures and exciting pastimesI never was half so contented in any hour of my existence, as in that which found me overtaken by a ravenous wave that covered my feet with embossed foam, and set me tearing with might and main from a wave-that was dead and gone!Well, Russell, the meaning of all this salt-water prose is, that I am now terribly well-and I must entreat you to break my sudden relapse into health to your distracted family with as much tenderness as possible,-to soften to your sister my unbecoming desertion of the romance of my letter; to make them all, in short, think as favourably as they can of a gentleman, who gave promise of an approach towards the interesting, and who, at the very threshold of delicacy and youthful decay, has put the pale face in his pocket, turned round impudently on those who were sympathising with him, tripped up the heels of sensibility, and rushed back to life with the impudence and strength of an Irish giant. Pwill be good enough to let my last letter go for nothing:-It was-as dear uncle Noll 66 says, too sentimental by half!". The sea air certainly has given the return-force to my frame, but I have much reason to believe that my men tal elasticity has taken its spring from the reflections which a maimed old sailor lately awoke in me during some conversations I held with him. I cannot resist the temptation to which we tourists are constantly subjected, of giving you a sketch of this amiable and suffering creature, poor, pained, contented, gentle Tom Barnes! He was about thirty-five years of age apparently healthy-certainly patient and cheerful:-but the position which he invariably occupied too plainly told me that he was the victim of some dreadful malady. On all sunny days, he was wheeled out in a sort of plain wooden chaise, and placed opposite the cheering light and warmth-and long before you reached him you saw him surrounded with children,-a sure sign of worth! I was first attracted towards him by the mild smile of his sunburnt and placid countenance, and by the extreme urbanity of his manner as I passed him. He was nibbing a pen for a child. He sat in a sailor's dress,in his leathern hat, in his blue striped shirt,-habited as when he trod the deck or walked the shore. The costume of his once dear element was left to him, though he was divorced for ever from boat and billow. His upper frame was nobly robust and manly, and his face remarkably placid and handsome. I never saw softer or bluer eyes in woman. stopped one morning and discoursed with him;-I stopped each succeeding day, and our discourse grew longer. He informed me briefly of his malady. About eighteen years ago, in some quay, on the Cornish coast (I forget its name, though he mentioned it) he fell from a high part of a vessel, and was stupified, bruised, and wet with his fall: his messmates took off his jacket and shirt, but left him in his wet trowsers for two days totally neglected. He was brought home, surgical aid was called in, but the lower part of his frame was thenceforth affected with paralysis beyond remedy. From that day, he has been thus helpless and afflicted. From that day, he has been downward-dead-useless-except to sit in the sun-to lighten the fireside,to show the simple beauty of an ungrieving endurance, to read through the long and cheerless night! I quite sure, Russell, that I gained strength of mind from my colloquies with this patient wreck of a manand my resolution not to moan and mutter over trifling ailments and temporary pains gained vigour from the contemplation of this smiling sufferer of eighteen years' duration, who knew himself half perished,-the eternal prey to sloth and anguish,— yet could sit in the sun, gladden in the face of the sea, and look philosophy to the gay, the active, and the healthy of his kind.-Poor Tom Barnes! I would thou couldst read this honest description of thyself, and see how much good thou art able to do, even in thy lone and withering inactivity! To hear him speak, was to hear true, pure, unaffected wisdom-the philosophy, not of the schools, but of nature. His face appeared to have received a softer expression from his long inaction and serenity. His humanity seemed to have gone into his features to have taken steady and temperate watch in his calm blue eyes. I learned from his townspeople (who invariably knew and loved him) more of his history,-more of Tom Barnes; and one or two anecdotes gave me a sensible delight-for they not only vouched for the endearing qualities of the sea-sufferer himself, but extended my respect for others of his species. He had been attached, in the heyday of his youth and spirit, to one a young But to come to more serious matwoman, who lived by assisting ladies ter. I turn from the sea and its in their plain-work, as it is termed, wonders as abruptly as I bounded and a miserable living it is!-She from sickness to health. Nor will you must have been industrious, patient, regret that I make so little ceremony and contented-for persons not pos- in varying my subjects, for there is sessed of such qualities would quick- no one that surpasses Russell in an ly want employ-He must have been insatiable appetite for knowledge merry, volatile, handsome. I should "with a difference." I remember, in like to have seen them in this spring- one of my early letters, I made a time of their love! Eighteen years kind of half promise to induct you are now gone by, and more! Tom into the mysteries of this metropolis,; Barnes has lost relatives, acquaint--and since my return to the placid ance, and friends-but this young woman (she can never grow old) is near, dear, and constant to him still, and her family are the only creatures that attend him. She talks to him of an evening, sits with her needlework by his side, and loves him at this very moment. He has also once been taken to a hospital, some fifty miles from his residence, at the expense of the Misses P, and there he has had the first medical aid,-but to him, alas! aid, it has been none!-At this day he is continually hearing of the deaths of those sailors who so cruelly deserted him when he met with his accident-and he seems to lament, by his manner of recounting their dooms, that they should be so marked by Providence! His own fate he never repines at, and he even recalls certain mischances, by which his progress was baffled in the royal navy, the West-India, and the EastIndia trades, with an air of wonder rather than sorrow ;-invariably concluding with the remark, that his was "a number lot," and therefore not to be lamented or disputed. I am comforts of the Albany once more, I am strongly reminded of my duty to you, my poor country solitary,—and more particularly since I have been carried by volatile Tom Morton to a fresh scene of London's singular drama. I shall, therefore, put on my habit of description-and retail to you, not only the particulars of what I witnessed, but my own impressions at the time. I can give you few of Tom's-who certainly sinks a good deal of his humanity and moral feeling in the enthusiasm of the moment. He has a way of settling these things with his conscience in a very summary mode; for when he has a mind to be profuse, or when he has, in his sporting speculations, "made his money," (to use his own expression) he sends off his initials and his guinea to some charitable subscription-and thus pays his toll for the liberty of passing through the turnpike of iniquity. He will hold five guineas in his hand, just received from some creature of folly like himself,-and calculate its application with the nicest mixture of |