your apprehension for my happiness. Before I was married I had heard the same reports as you have done of my beloved bride's disposition; but I am happy to say I have found it quite otherwise; she is a most docile and obedient wife.' 'But how has this miraculous change been wrought?' Why,' said Sâdik, I believe I have some merit in effecting it, but you shall hear.' “After the ceremonies of our nuptials were over, I went in my military dress, and with my sword by my side, to the apartment of Hooseinee. She was sitting in a most dignified posture to receive me, and her looks were any thing but inviting. As I entered the room a beautiful cat, evidently a great favourite, came purring up to me. I deliberately drew my sword, struck its head off, and taking that in one hand and the body in the other, threw them out of the window. I then very unconcernedly turned to the lady, who appeared in some alarm; she, however, made no observations, but was in every way kind and submissive, and has continued so ever since.' "Thank you, my dear fellow,' said little Merdek, with a significant shake of the head- a word to the wise;' and away he capered obviously quite rejoiced. "It was near evening when this conversation took place; soon after, when the dark cloak of night had enveloped the bright radiance of day. Merdek entered the chamber of his spouse, with something of a martial swagger, armed with a scimitar. The unsuspecting cat came forward as usual to welcome the husband of her mistress, but in an instant her head was divided from her body by a blow from the hand which had so often caressed her. Merdek having proceeded so far courageously, stooped to take up the dissevered members of the cat, but before he could effect this, a blow upon the side of the head from the incensed lady laid him sprawling on the floor. "The tattle and scandal of the day spreads from zenâneh to zenâneh with surprising rapidity, and the wife of Merdek saw in a moment whose example it was that he imitated. 'Take that,' said she, as she gave him another cuff, take that, you paltry wretch; you should,' she added, laughing him to scorn, have killed the cat on the wedding day."" -vol. ii., pp. 54-57. Much has been written, and something done, towards inducing the Persians to adopt our European modes of civilization. Upon this subject our author's reflections are admirable : 'I do not mean, in what I have here said, to condemn national efforts to spread knowledge, nor to deny that such endeavours may in due season produce happy effects; but such results will be retarded, not accelerated, by all attempts at rapid and premature changes. In endeavouring to effect these, we are often as absurd in our admiration of individuals, to whom a few of our own favourite lights have been imparted, as in our condemnation of those, whom we conceive to remain in their primitive darkness. We altogether forget that it is from the general condition of the country that the character of the population is chiefly formed. Hereditary and undisputed succession to the throne, though it may not diminish the frequency of foreign wars, nor prevent the shedding of human blood, gives an internal security, which leads to the introduction of a system, that enables such a state to have efficient and permanent civil and military establishments; and it also gives, to a great proportion of its subjects, a valuable leisure to pursue science and literature, which gradually lead to further improvements in society. But in countries like Persia all government is personal; institutions and establishments rise and fall with the caprice of a sovereign; and supposing him steady in his objects, still the probability is, that they prosper and die with their founder; and while their basis is so unstable, and their duration so uncertain, they cannot be permanently efficient or useful. 'Revolutions of such a nature as we desire will work themselves into form, when time changes men's sentiments, and ripens a nation for them; but we too often, in the foolish pride of our knowledge, rush towards the end, with little or no consideration about the means. In our precocious plans, we cast the blame from that, on which it ought to rest, upon those we desire to reform. Because men continue, like their ancestors, to live under an arbitrary monarch, and have not the precise qualities upon which we value ourselves, we hasten to the conclusion that they are slaves and barbarians, whom the force of habit and prejudice alone saves from being as miserable as they are degraded. Viewing them in this light, we waste a pity upon them, which they neither value nor understand; nor has it, if we analyze its grounds, any just foundation. Though unacquainted with political freedom, though superficial in science, and unlearned in Greek or Latin, they are not without defences against injustice or despotism; and the very condition of their society gives them, on all points affecting themselves, their families or friends, an intuitive quickness and clearness of perception, which appears wonderful to men rendered dull, as it were, by civilization. Neither are such nations deficient in those arts, which are subservient to the subsistence, and promote the enjoyments of man; and they are perhaps more alive than we improved beings to those passions whence so much of our happiness and misery flows. 'I have travelled much, but have found little difference in the aggregate of human felicity. My pride and patriotism have often been flattered, by the complaints and comparisons of the discontented; but I have never met any considerable number of a tribe or nation, who would have exchanged their condition for that of any other people upon the earth. When I have succeeded, as I often did, in raising admiration and envy, by dwelling upon the advantages of the British government, I have invariably found that these feelings vanished, when I explained more specifically the sacrifices of personal liberty, the restraints of the law, and the burden of taxation, by which these advantages are purchased. It was the old story of the Arab nurse, who could not endure England because there were no date trees; and the King of Persia, who, though feeling all the insecurity of his own crown, could not for a moment tolerate the thoughts of wearing that of England, which would have reduced him to only one wife!'-vol. ii., pp. 172—175. Among the chief means of astonishing his Persian friends, which the Elchee adopted on his first mission, was an electrifying machine. The economists and theorists of our day may derive a pointed lesson from the manner in which this machine was treated by a savan of Persia : 'At Isfahan all were delighted with the electric machine, except one renowned doctor and lecturer of the college, who, envious of the popularity gained by this display of our superior science, contended, publicly, that the effects produced were moral, not physical-that it was the mummery we practised, and the state of nervous agitation we excited, which produced an ideal shock; but he expressed his conviction, that a man of true firmness of mind would stand unmoved by all we could produce out of our glassbottle, as he scoffingly termed our machine. He was invited to the experiment, and declared his readiness to attend at the next visit the BeglerBeg paid the Elchee. The day appointed soon arrived. The Begler-Beg came with a numer-ous retinue, and amongst others the doctor, whom he used to call " Red Stockings," from his usually wearing scarlet hose. He was, we found, nothwithstanding his learning and reputed science, often made an object of mirth in the circles of the great and wealthy at Isfahan, to whom he furnished constant matter of amusement, from the pertinacity with which he maintained his dogmas. He had nearly, we are told, lost his life the year before, by marching up to a large buck-antelope, which was known to be vicious, but which, according to the theory of the philosopher, was to be overawed by the erect dignity of man, provided he was fearlessly approached. The consequence of this experiment was different from what the theorist expected. The wild animal very unceremoniously butted the doctor into a deep dry ditch, in the field were he was grazing, and the learned man was confined to his bed nearly three months, during which he had ample time to consider the causes of this unlooked-for effect. 'Though the above, and similar instances, might afford reason for concluding, that Red Stockings, with all his philosophy, was not over wise; I discovered that he maintained his ground in the first society, by means common in Persia as in other countries. He was, in fact, "A little of the fool, and not too much of the honest." This impression of his character, combined with his presumption, made us less scrupulous in our preparations to render him an example for all who might hereafter doubt the effects of our boasted electricity; and, indeed, our Persian visitors seemed anxious that the effect should be such as to satisfy the man who had dared us to the trial, that it was physical, not moral. The philosopher, notwithstanding various warnings, came boldly up, took hold of the chain with both hands, planted his feet firmly, shut his teeth, and evidently called forth all his resolution to resist the shock. It was given; and poor Red Stockings dropt on the floor as if he had been shot. There was a momentary alarm; but on his almost instant recovery, and the Elchee explaining that the effect had been increased by the determination to resist it, all gave way to one burst of laughter. The goodnatured philosopher took no offence. He muttered something about the re-action of the feelings after being overstrained, but admitted there was more in the glass-bottle than he had anticipated.'-vol. ii., pp. 177-180. Here we must close these extracts. We make no apology for having taken the reader so often from one subject to another, as from the nature of these sketches, one of their principal merits consists in their miscellaneous character. We have been much delighted with them, and we sincerely hope to see them continued. NOTICES. ART. XI. Alma and Brione: a Poem, in two Cantos. Theseus, a Dramatic Scene. 8vo. pp. 122. 8s. 6d. man and Co. 1827. The Return of London: Long ONE of the defects of the steam-engine which still limit its universal utility, is, that it cannot be made to produce poetry. How happy were the lot of most of our rising bards, if they had only to collect a mass of words together, arrange them in lines, and give them the semblance of verse, while to the steam-engine, or rather to the press set in motion by its power, should belong the duty of diffusing, through the stanzas, the charms of melody and inspiration! Now here is a slender, genteel, and elegantly printed volume of verse before us, with a soft-sounding title, a regular critical preface, a poetical introduction, and two cantos of Spenserian stanzas, which, to the eye, look as graceful and as well measured, as any page of Childe Harold. But unhappily, when we come to consider their meaning and their harmony, we become involved in a labyrinth of words, which frequently have very little connection, and are never heightened by a gleam of true poetic feeling. The two cantos are employed in recording the loves of Alma and Brione, who are represented as the very models of human beauty. They meet, ' in an unknown age,' on the banks of a erystal stream, flowing through a visionary region of the author's creation. At the first glance, they are both of course entangled in the toils of Cupid beyond all redemption. Unfortunately the first interview is a very short one; the lady vanishes, and the gentleman is plunged in despair. Let the following stanza speak at once, both for the lover and the author: 'Then driven on by this despairing thought, And which pursue his mind could settle not !'-p. 23 The harmony of this stanza, and particularly of the two last lines, we leave to be judged of by the reader. It is no wonder if, after this, we find Brione refusing to receive any consolation from the scenes around him. We are told, in another stanza, the worthy rival of the one which we have just quoted, that "He cared not for all the beauty spread Forth through nature's beautiful landscape there, So to that water were his wishes wed, His heart had no delight nor life elsewhere; The joyful sweetness of the morning air So had pale love enthrall'd his bosom warm, Its freedom girt in chain-enweaving arm.'-p- 31. We own that the image in the two last lines is too sublime for our comprehension. We must favour the reader with one more stanza, in which Brione repeats a speech he intends to address to his beloved, when next it might be his felicity to meet her. "Oh, most beautiful! and, alas! unknown" If Alma were likely to be captivated by such strains as these, then we wish her joy of her lover and her poet. "The Return of Theseus' is written in blank verse, and really contains some plausible passages. We were much amused with the note appended to it, in which the author allows, that he took a considerable license' with traditional history, by restoring the young Hylas to life many years after his death, and making Hippodamia weep for her husband; whereas history relates that she left him to weep for her! A considerable license' truly! But we forgive it, as the author kindly refrained from introducing Cerberus into his scene. He justly remarks, that the monster 'might cause more noise than melody!!" ART. XII. Truckleborough Hall, a Novel. In three volumes 8vo. 28s. 6d. London: Colburn. 1827. FROM the title of this novel, the reader will at once comprehend the description of matter of which it is composed. The various scenes of political profligacy, and of disregard for all public principle, to which a general election usually gives birth, in this corporate country of our's, would unquestionably furnish abundant objects for ridicule and honest indignation. Such a subject might not only be productive of much amusement, but if happily dealt with, by a sarcastic and accomplished writer, might tend in some degree to diminish that mass of corruption which is the greatest disgrace to a free people. It is a subject, however, which still remains to be effectually treated. The author of Truckleborough Hall, is fortunate only in his title. It is well chosen, and likely to attract many readers to his pages, but we fear not quite potent enough to detain them there for any considerable length of time. We confess that with all the aid of the purest essence of Bohea, we were unable to get through more than the first volume. It may be deemed, |