unmixed wickedness which Sallust draws of him. Accordingly, we are taught to consider him as drawn or urged into treason by the mingled force of pride and disappointment-of ambition, added to fancied disgrace and wrong. These are some of his reflections while he is plotting the mischief by which he hopes to rise on the fallen fortunes of his enemies and opposers :

"I feel a nameless pressure on my brow,

As if the heavens were thick with sudden gloom;
A shapeless consciousness of some dark blow
Hanging above my head. They say, such thoughts
Partake of prophecy.
[He goes to the casement.]

This air is living sweetness. Golden sun,

Shall I be like thee yet? The clouds have passed-
And, like some mighty victor, he returns

To his red city in the west, that now

Spreads all her gates, and lights her torches up,
In triumph for her glorious conqueror."

What follows is a rich and picturesque description of a waking vision, which Catiline is supposed to have seen, and which contributes to lead him on in what he is made to consider as his appointed course:

"Heaven can show strange things:

Last night I could not rest: the chamber's heat,
Or some wild thoughts-the folly of the day-
Banish'd my sleep:-So, in the garden air,
I gazed upon the comet, that then shone
In midnight glory, dimming all the stars.
At once a crimson blaze, that made it pale,
Flooded the north. I turn'd, and saw, in heaven,
Two mighty armies! From the zenith star,
Down to the earth, legions in line and orb,
Squadron and square, like earthly marshalry.
Anon, as if a sudden trumpet spoke,
Banners of gold and purple were flung out;
Fire-crested leaders swept along the lines;
And both the gorgeous depths, like meeting seas,

Roll'd to wild battle. Then, they breathed awhile,

Leaving the space between a sheet of gore,

Strew'd with torn standards, corpses, and crash'd spears."

The following is exceedingly bold, vehement, and poetical:

"The state is weak as dust.

Rome's broken, helpless, heart-sick! Vengeance sits

Above her, like a vulture o'er a corpse

Soon to be tasted. Time, and dull decay,

Have let the waters round her pillar's foot;

And it must fall. Her boasted strength's a ghost,

Fearful to dastards;-yet, to trenchant swords,

Thin as the passing air! A single blow,

In this diseased and crumbling frame of Rome,
Would break your chains like stubble."

It may be agreeable to contrast these extracts with one or two others in a different style, but equally rich and poetical:

"Too much he loved her! 'Tis an ancient tale,

One of the ditties that our girls of Greece

Hear from their careful mothers, round the lamps,
On winter nights; and by the vintage heaps,

When grapes are crushing. I have seen the spot,
Still ashy-pale with lightning, where she died.

She was a Grecian maiden; and, by some,
Was thought a daughter of the sky; for earth
Had never shaped such beauty: and her thoughts
Were, like her beauty, sky-born. She would stray,
And gaze, when morn was budding on the hills,
As if she saw the stooping pomp of gods-
Then tell her lyre the vision; nor had eve
A sound, or rosy colour of the clouds,
Or infant star, but in her solemn songs
It lived again. Oh, happy-till she loved!"

And again. It is the story of Jupiter and Semele:

"Pity her! 'twas Love
That wrought this evil to his worshipper!
The deadly oath was sworn.-Then Nature shook,
As in strange trouble,-solemn cries were heard,
Echoing from hill to hill,-the forests bow'd,
Ruddy with lightnings,-in the height of heaven
The moon grew sanguine, and the waning stars
Fell loosely through the sky. Before her rose,
On golden clouds, a throne; and, at its foot,
An eagle grasp'd the thunderbolt. The face
Of the bright sitter on the throne was bent
Over his sceptre,—but she knew her lord!
And call'd upon him but to give one look,
Before she perish'd in th' Olympian blaze.
He rais'd his eye,-and in its flash-she died!"

This is rich and rare poetry, and cannot fail to meet with the admiration it deserves.

We give the following as a specimen of the undramatic manner in which Catiline is frequently made to express himself in the course of the work. However good it may be in its way, it is merely what may be said in the case in question-not what would be said. Catiline

draws his sword in preparation for the last desperate effort on which his hopes depend:

"This emblem of all miseries and crimes,

The robber's tool, that breaks the rich man's lock,-
The murderer's master-key to sleeping hearts,-

The orphan-maker-widower of brides;-
The tyrant's strength-the cruel pirate's law,-
The traitor's passport to his sovereign's throne,-
The mighty desolator,-that contains,

In this brief bar of steel, more wo to the earth
Than lightning, earthquake, yellow pestilence,
Or the wild fury of the all-swallowing sea!"

Almost immediately after this, Catiline is brought in from the field of battle, mortally wounded, and he dies in an insane paroxysm of ambitious images and hopes. Springing from the ground by a last effort of supernatural energy, he exclaims:

"Is there no faith in Heaven? My hour shall come!
This brow shall wear the diadem, and this eye
Make monarchs stoop. My wrath shall have a voice
Strong as the thunder; and my trumpet's breath
Shall root up thrones. Your husband shall be King!—
Dictator !—King of the world !”-

We must find room for two or three short detached passages, which are exceedingly good in their respective classes.

The cheerless image of a statesman's life!
To bear upon his brow the general care,-
To make his daily food of anxious thoughts,-
To rob the midnight of its wholesome sleep,-
And all, but to be made the loftier mark
For every shaft that envy, sullen hate,
Or thwarted guilt, can lay upon the string,-
And have his thanks for all,-ingratitude!"

A lover's music at night.

"You are a music-lover, and sigh Greek.
This comes of evil company. Your lyre
Has broke the rest of many a stately dame,
Who left her curtains tenantless, to gaze,

Where the chill'd minstrel sent his amorous soul
Up through the moonshine."

[To the Secretary.

The space we are enabled to devote to our notices of contemporary literature, seldom permits us to go into the detail of those minor faults which are to be found in almost every poetical work of any length; and in this among the rest. If we ever regret our circumscribed limits, it is not on this account; for the pointing out of such trifling errors and oversights as those now alluded to we regard as but a secondary and very unimportant duty of criticism; and we willingly pass it over in the present instance.

The volume before us contains a few other poems besides the tragedy of Catiline, some of which possess extreme delicacy and beauty, but the chief of which we recognise as having appeared in print before; and upon the whole we close it with a high opinion of the author's

poetical talents, but an opinion not heightened by the present publication. It possesses fewer defects than its predecessor, but it also evinces less power, and displays less beauty. Indeed, we think Mr. Croly capable of much better things than he has yet done. He has shown us all the faults of which his style is susceptible, but not all the beauties; and when he chooses to look for a subject properly adapted to his powers, (and such a one is probably to be sought, with the best chances of success, among the gorgeous imagery and romantic fictions and traditions of the East,) we think him not unlikely to construct a work that shall place his name in a distinguished and permanent rank among those of his poetical contemporaries.

SONNET I.

THERE is an hour, when all our past pursuits
The dreams and passions of our early day,
The unripe blessedness that dropp'd away
From our young tree of like-like blasted fruits-
All rush into the soul. Some beauteous form
Of one we loved and lost, or dying tone
Haunting the heart with music that is flown,
Still lingers near us with an awful charm!
I love that hour,-for it is deeply fraught
With images of things no more to be:
Visions of hope, and pleasure, madly sought,
And sweeter dreams of love and purity:
The poesy of heart, that smiled in pain,
And all my boyhood worshipp'd—but in vain!

SONNET II.

They loved for years, with growing tenderness;
They had but one pure prayer to waft above-
One heart-one hope-one dream-and that was Love,
They loved for years, through danger and distress,
Till they were parted, and his spotless fame

Became the mark of hate and obloquy-
Till the remembering tear that dimm'd her eye
Was dried on blushes of repentant shame.
While he-oh, God! in raptured vision sweet,

Would walk alone beneath the evening star,
Watching the light she loved, and dream of her,
And of the hour when they again should meet.
They met at last-but Love's sweet vision fled
For ever from his heart-for she had wed!

M.

M'QUEEN ON NORTHERN CENTRAL AFRICA.

Ir has been the singular ill fortune of all our African expeditions, that they have failed. Some attribute this general failure to the injudicious selection of the travellers, none of whom, excepting Louis Burckhardt, were masters of the travelling language of that continent. If we read the reports of these various travellers, we shall perceive that the grand object of their several researches was, to ascertain the termination of the Niger; hence we are led to inquire, What purpose would have been answered by this discovery? None, we apprehend, unless it had been discovered that it communicated with the Nile of Egypt, thereby affording a navigable communication with the interior of Africa, by means of Alexandria. It should be recollected, that when this inquiry first excited the attention of England and of France, Bonaparte was master of Egypt, and that he then contemplated other conquests in Africa, together with the establishment of an extensive commerce with India and Africa, through Egypt. The inquiry was revived when our navy, under the immortal Nelson, changed the destiny of Egypt. Hopes were entertained, that our possession of that country would afford us a communication with Sudan, or the interior of Africa, by navigating the stream of the Nile. All reports, and all the information collected by our travellers since that period, have tended to corroborate this water-communication from Timbuctoo to Alexandria, but nothing certain has yet been established. In this state of things, the public is presented with A Geographical and Commercial View of Northern Central Africa, containing a particular Account of the Course and Termination of the great River Niger in the Atlantic Ocean. The first who suggested this opinion was Sidi Hamed, as reported by Riley, the American sailor; and at the same time that Mr. M'Queen brings forward this new African hypothesis, it certainly has received a strong corroboration by the narrative of Alexander Scott, a sailor, who has been lately redeemed from captivity, and who belonged to the Montezuma, a Liverpool trader that was wrecked in 1810, on the coast of the Sahara, or the Sehel, or flat coast between Cape Nun and Cape Bojador; a narrative of the interesting adventures of whom is given in the Edinburgh Philosophica! Journal; and an explanatory dissertation (rather than a review) of which will be found in the New Monthly Magazine for 1821.

Our author's arguments in favour of this new hypothesis appear to be very plausible, and several quotations tend to support and corroborate it.

"As these sheets were preparing for the press, a further confirmation of this important point (alluding to the discharge of the Niger into the Gulf of Guinea) was received, in the account given by a sailor named Scott, belonging to Liverpool, who was wrecked about Cape Nun, and carried into slavery by the Arabs of the Desert. While in this state, he journeyed along with a tribe across the desert into Sudan, and with it he crossed the lake Dibbie, or what he calls Bahar Tee-eb.* There he was told by some negro boatmen who rowed

* See Note in New Monthly Mag. No. 3. p. 356.