For he to Greenland sail'd, and much she told
How he should guard against the climate's cold,
Yet saw not danger, dangers he'd withstood,
Nor could she trace the fever in his blood.
His messmates smiled at flushings in his cheek,
And he, too, smiled, but seldom would he speak;
For now he found the danger, felt the pain,
With grievous symptoms he could not explain.
He call'd his friend, and prefaced with a sigh
A lover's message,-"Thomas, I must die;
Would I could see my Sally, and could rest
My throbbing temples on her faithful breast,
And gazing go! if not, this trifle take,
And say, till death I wore it for her sake.
Yes, I must die,-blow on, sweet breeze, blow on!
Give me one look before my life be gone;
Oh, give me that! and let me not despair,-
One last fond look,--and now repeat the prayer."
He had his wish, had more. I will not paint
The lovers' meeting: she beheld him faint,-
With tender fears she took a nearer view,
Her terrors doubling as her hopes withdrew;
He tried to smile, and, half succeeding, said,
"Yes, I must die,"-and hope forever fled.

Still long she nursed him; tender thoughts meantime
Were interchanged, and hopes and views sublime.
To her he came to die, and every day

She took some portion of the dread away;
With him she pray'd, to him his Bible read,
Soothed the faint heart, and held the aching head;
She came with smiles the hour of pain to cheer,
Apart she sigh'd, alone she shed the tear;
Then, as if breaking from a cloud, she gave
Fresh light, and gilt the prospect of the grave.
One day he lighter seem'd, and they forgot
The care, the dread, the anguish of their lot;
They spoke with cheerfulness, and seem'd to think,
Yet said not so,-"Perhaps he will not sink."
A sudden brightness in his look appear'd,
A sudden vigor in his voice was heard;
She had been reading in the Book of Prayer,
And led him forth, and placed him in his chair;
Lively he seem'd, and spoke of all he knew,
The friendly many and the favorite few;
Nor one that day did he to mind recall
But she has treasured, and she loves them all.
When in her way she meets them, they appear
Peculiar people,-death has made them dear.
He named his friend, but then his hand she press'd,
And fondly whisper'd, "Thou must go to rest.”
"I go," he said, but as he spoke she found

His hand more cold, and fluttering was the sound;
Then gazed affrighted, but she caught a last,
A dying look of love, and all was past.

She placed a decent stone his grave above,
Neatly engraved, an offering of her love:

For that she wrought, for that forsook her bed,
Awake alike to duty and the dead.

She would have grieved had friends presumed to spare
The least assistance,-'twas her proper care.

Here will she come, and on the grave will sit,
Folding her arms, in long abstracted fit;
But if observer pass, will take her round,
And careless seem, for she would not be found;
Then go again, and thus her hour employ,
While visions please her, and while woes destroy.

JAMES MACKINTOSH, one of the most distinguished men of his time, and who attained eminence in literature, philosophy, history, and politics, was born in Aldourie, on the banks of Loch Ness, Scotland, on the 24th of October, 1765. At a very early age he exhibited a remarkable fondness for abstruse speculations, and read such books as fell in his way, among which were the works of Pope and Swift. In 1780 he went to the college of Aberdeen, where he was recognized, by commor consent, as the first scholar; while his courteous demeanor, refined manners, playful fancy, and easy flow of elocution rendered him a general favorite among his companions.

In 1784, having taken his degree, he set out for Edinburgh to commence the study of medicine, which he had chosen as his profession. Here a new world was opened to him, and he was introduced into the first literary society of that renowned metropolis. But metaphysical and political and scientific speculation, rather than the study of his profession, engrossed his attention; and, after three years spent in irregular application, he became a candidate for a degree. Having obtained his diploma, he quitted Edinburgh in September, 1787, and early in 1788 he set out for London, arriving at that great theatre of action at one of the most critical periods of the world's history,-the period of the French Revolution. In the discussions then and there going on he was eager to take a part; and his failure to receive a medical appointment, which he had expected, led him to think seriously of abandoning the profession of medicine. Early in 1789 he was married to Miss Catharine Stuart, a young lady of a respectable Scotch family; and at the age of twentyfour he found himself with no prospect of any immediate professional settlement, his little fortune left him by his father rapidly diminishing, and with a wife to provide for.

An opportunity now presented itself which was to give to Mackintosh that prominence in the world of politics which he had so long desired. In 1790 appeared Burke's celebrated Reflections on the French Revolution, than which no work, probably, ever excited a more immediate, intense, and universal interest in Great Britain. Numerous replies immediately appeared; but none, excepting the Rights of Man of Thomas Paine, were deemed of any remarkable power, until, in April, 1791, appeared Vindicia Gallica, or, A Defence of the French Revolution and its English Admirers against the Accusations of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, This work had been finished in a great

hurry; but, with all its defects and imperfections, it at once placed the author in the very front rank of those who upheld the cause of France, caused him to be courted and caressed on all sides, and made him, as he says, "the lion of London."

In 1795 Mr. Mackintosh was called to the bar, at which he rose with rapid and sure steps. In 1799 he delivered a course of lectures, at Lincoln's Inn, upon the Law of Nature and of Nations, which gained him much credit. In 1803 an event occurred in his life which gave him the highest fame as an advocate. On the 21st of February of that year took place the celebrated trial of M. Peltier, an emigrant French Royalist, for a libel on the First Consul of France, Bonaparte. Mr. Mackintosh was counsel for the accused; and his address delivered on that occasion has been said to be "one of the most splendid displays of eloquence ever exhibited in a court of justice,-a monument of genius, learning, and eloquence."

In 1804 he was appointed by the government to the office of Recorder of Bombay, and, after having received the honor of knighthood, sailed with his family for India. By this step he was in hopes of improving his pecuniary resources, and he laid out much work in the walks of literature; but he returned home in 1812 with broken health and spirits, uncertain prospects, and vast materials for works which were never to be completed. He soon after entered Parliament, and continued in it to the end of his days,-always true to liberal principles. He contributed articles of great value to the Edinburgh Review, and, in a preliminary discourse to the Encyclopædia, furnished by far the best history of Ethical Philosophy that has ever been given to the world. He also published, in three volumes, a popular and abridged History of England, for Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia, which has been highly praised for its enlarged and liberal views; and he was engaged upon a History of the Revolution of 1688,1 when he was suddenly called away, on the 30th of May, 1832, "regretted with more sincerity, and admired with less envy, than any other man of his age."

JOHNSON'S LIVES OF THE POETS.

Towards the end of his life, when intercourse with the world had considerably softened his style, he published his Lives of the English Poets, a work of which the subject insures popularity,

1 Read a masterly account of this fragment in the sixty-second volume of the Edinburgh Review; also Memoirs of His Life, by his son Bobert.

2- The intellectual character of Sir James Mackintosh cannot be unknown to any one aquainted with his works, or who has ever read Bany pages of his Memoirs; and it is needless, therefore, to speak here of his great knowJedge, the singular union of ingenuity and Bandness in his speculations, his perfect candr and temper in discussion, the pure and Ifty morality to which he strove to elevate the minds of others, and in his own conduct to conform. These merits, we believe, will no Anger be denied by any who have heard of his Bame or looked at his writings. But there were other traits of his intellect which could only be known to those who were of his acquaintance, and which it is still desirable that

the readers of the Memoirs should bear in mind. One of these was that ready and prodigious memory by which all that he learned seemed to be at once engraved on the proper compartment of his mind, and to present itself the moment it was required; another, still more remarkable, was the singular maturity and completeness of all his views and opinions, even upon the most abstruse and complicated questions, though raised without design or preparation, in the casual course of conversation.*** The vast extent of his information, and the natural gayety of his temper, joined to the inherent kindness of his disposition, made his conversation at once the most instructive and the most generally pleasing that could be imagined." Read a very interesting and able notice of his Memoirs in the Edinburgh Review, Ixii. 205.

and on which his fame probably now depends. He seems to have poured into it the miscellaneous information which he had collected and the literary opinions which he had formed during his long reign over the literature of London. The critical part has produced the warmest agitations of literary faction. The time may, perhaps, now be arrived for an impartial estimate of its merits. Whenever understanding alone is sufficient for poetical criticism, the decisions of Johnson are generally right. But the beauties of poetry must be felt before their causes are investigated. There is a poetical sensibility which, in the progress of the mind, becomes as distinct a power as a musical ear or a picturesque eye. Without a considerable degree of this sensibility, it is as vain for a man of the greatest understanding to speak of the higher beauties of poetry as it is for a blind man to speak of colors. To adopt the warmest sentiments of poetry, to realize its boldest imagery, to yield to every impulse of enthusiasm, to submit to the illusions of fancy, to retire with the poet into his ideal worlds, were dispositions wholly foreign from the worldly sagacity and stern shrewdness of Johnson. If this unpoetical character be considered, if the force of prejudice be estimated, if we bear in mind that in this work of his old age we must expect to find him enamored of every paradox which he had supported with brilliant success, and that an old man seldom warmly admires those works which have appeared since his sensibility has become sluggish, and his literary system formed, we shall be able to account for most of the unjust judgments of Johnson, without recourse to any suppositions inconsistent with honesty and integ rity.

As in his judgment of life and character, so in his criticism on poetry, he was a sort of freethinker. He suspected the refined of affectation, he rejected the enthusiastic as absurd, and he took it for granted that the mysterious was unintelligible. He came into the world when the school of Dryden and Pope gave the law to English poetry. In that school he had himself learned to be a lofty and vigorous declaimer in harmonious verse; beyond that school his unforced admiration perhaps scarcely soared; and his highest effort of criticism was accordingly the noble panegyric on Dryden. His criticism owed its popularity as much to its defects as to its excellencies. It was on a level with the majority of readers,-persons of good sense and information, but of no exquisite sensibility; and to their minds it derived a false appearance of solidity from that very narrowness which excluded those grander efforts of imagination to which Aristotle and Bacon confined the name of poetry.

Among the victories gained by Milton, one of the most signal is that which he obtained over all the prejudices of Johnson, who was compelled to make a most vigorous, though evidently re

luctant, effort to do justice to the fame and genius of the greatest of English poets. The alacrity with which he seeks every occasion to escape from this painful duty, in observation upon Milton's life and minor poems, sufficiently attests the irresistible power of Paradise Lost. As he had no feeling of the lively and graceful, we must not wonder at his injustice to Prior. Some accidental impression, concurring with a long habit of indulging and venting every singularity, seems necessary to account for his having forgotten that Swift was a wit. As the Seasons appeared during the susceptible part of Johnson's life, his admiration of Thomson prevailed over that ludicrous prejudice which he professed against Scotland, perhaps because it was a Presbyterian country. His insensibility to the higher order of poetry, his dislike of a Whig university, and his scorn of a fantastic character, combined to produce that monstrous example of critical injustice which he entitles the Life of Gray.

Such is the character which may be bestowed on Johnson by those who feel a profound reverence for his virtues, and a respect approaching to admiration for his intellectual powers, without adopting his prejudices or being insensible to his defects.

REBELLION.

A wanton rebellion, when considered with the aggravation of its ordinary consequences, is one of the greatest of crimes. The chiefs of an inconsiderable and ill-concerted revolt, however provoked, incur the most formidable responsibility to their followers and their country.

THE PROGRESSIVENESS OF THE RACE.

Society is inevitably progressive. In government, commerce has overthrown that "feudal and chivalrous" system under whose shade it first grew. In religion, learning has subverted that superstition whose opulent endowments had first fostered it. Peculiar circumstances softened the barbarism of the Middle Ages to a degree which favored the admission of commerce and the growth of knowledge. These circumstances were connected with the manners of chivalry; but the sentiments peculiar to that institution could only be preserved by the situation which gave them birth. They were themselves enfeebled in the progress from ferocity and turbulence, and almost obliterated by tranquillity and refinement. But the auxiliaries which the manners of chivalry had in rude ages reared, gathered strength from its weakness, and flourished in its decay. Commerce and diffused knowledge have, in fact, so completely assumed the ascendant in polished nations that it will be difficult to discover any relics of Gothic manners but in a fantastic exterior, which has survived