THIS work puzzles us a little. The author is by no means destitute of abilities, yet his book is full of absurdities, and, what is worse, serious offences against sound morality and correct principle. In some passages there is excellent writing, strong original thinking, and highly proper notions regarding men and manners; in many others nothing is discoverable but the most careless composition, the most distorted and erroneous opinions, and infringements, of the most painful and reprehensible kind, on the ordinary laws of polite society, not to say of religion and virtue. The general impression left by the work is, that the author has talents, which he might have turned to a far better use; but that, not being guided by steady principles, and, moreover, being particularly inexperienced in novel-writing, he has produced a book which, by all ordinary readers, will be pronounced dull and disagreeable in the extreme. There is next to no plot; and as the persons introduced do not in any extraordinary degree excite our sympathies, the incidents connected with them possess little interest. Reay Morden is a young man of respectable family and tolerable prospects, who comes down to Edinburgh to study medicine, having previously fallen in love, first with a Miss Dunsmore, whom he has seen once or twice at Brighton, and then with a servant girl, called Susan, whom he seduces, and afterwards writes false sentiment about, usque ad nauseam. Getting tired of Edinburgh, he visits the Continent, returns to London, lives in the most dissipated and profligate manner, attempts to commit suicide, goes mad, is taken to Italy, meets there with some ridiculous adventures, having again fallen over head and ears in love with a girl at first sight, in a wood near Florence, quarrels with her, comes home, and after writing another volume to make up three, finally marries Miss Dunsmore, and becomes a reformed rake. As a story, therefore, Reay Morden is below contempt; and were it not for detached pieces of writing scattered through it, and particularly in the first volume, we do not know what redeeming points it would have possessed. Even these, however, of which we shall say more immediately, cannot excuse the recklessness, in point of morality, which pervades the whole; and the fact of this recklessness being coupled with some abilities, only makes their perversion the more conspicuous, and calls more imperatively for the critic's lash. We are willing to believe that this fault is partly to be attributed to the natural careless hardihood of a youthful writer; but though "youth should be fearless and free," it must be put through a course of severe purgation, if it ever presume to assail, in a printed work, those important barriers by which the decencies of life are preserved inviolate. On this score 66 Reay Morden" has our severest cen sure. PRICE 6d. We have said, however, that the book contains passages which indicate talents much above mediocrity; and, as we are always anxious to cull an author's bes things, rather than point out his worst, we subjoin several extracts, which we are sure our readers will peruse with considerable satisfaction. They evidently indicate a strong (rather than a very well regulated or refined) mind, which thinks for itself, and is not afraid to express its thoughts. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. I see "I always love at first sight. I hate, abhor, detest, despise, abjure, the cold calculating clod, who thinks, compares, collates; examines from top to toe by square fortune; dives into petty matters of settlements, pinand rule; enquires about friends, connexions, interest, money, dress, liveries, equipages, and establishments; looks into the rent-roll, sums the total cent per cent, and then proceeds right regularly to court; who, seeing a dragon in every woman, and perspective families in every girl, trembles at a marriage where Plutus is not of beauty, as the sensitive plant at the touch of a finger, priest; and fastidiously shrinking from the fascinations retires from the verge of feminine attraction, like the gale. No! I give a loose to my fancy;-I revel in seaman from the wave before the frowns of a coming ideal perfection; I roll in imaginative splendour; her with the purity of the vestal hymn of a seraph my mistress lovely, young, and fascinating; I endue choir, and picture her in my heated brain like the unfresh. I would wish to be ever thus in love, my misfading flower of Syria, ever blooming, beautiful, and all its vividness from the mirror of my heart ;-for tress absent from my eyes, but her image reflected in dutiful and kind-administering to her wishes, wants, where's the honour of loving a woman of behaving and assuaging her griefs, when she is young, lovely, and little numberless requisites soothing her sorrows interesting, and of large fortune? I question much if dered him a good husband and constant man. Jupiter himself would have required more to have ren'tis the loving, the adoring, the marrying-but in this, after all, we need not be too precipitate a woman you have seen but once or twice, of whom you nothing know, to meet all the blandishments of the sex, mingled with but that she is a woman, and in whom you are likely reciprocal love; or, on the other hand, all the miseries, unhappinesses, and bickerings in the world :—'tis this, and this alone, that constitutes the honour. The very uncertainty makes it delicious." THOUGHTS ON CHURCH-GOING. No! "I am ever willing, at proper times and places, to breathe my aspirations to that Being of whose incomprehensibility I tremble to think; with whose goodness and greatness I am ever surrounded; and by whose might the heavens, the seas, the winds, and the tides, perform their stated tasks, the wide world his footstool, the universe his resting-place! But it must be alone, in the thick and silent solitude of woods, and wilds, and wildernesses, where the rough rocks give glory to his name, the mountain torrents thunder pæans to his greatness, and waving forests hallelujahs to his immensurable Majesty !-or in the meditative moments of unfathomable thought, when the soul, forgetting and forgot by things external, loses itself in its own awfulness, and turns to an Almighty cause, as the helpless infant to the mother's breast! misses, like Virginias, going to school,—there is no pretension to gaiety or fashion. The elite do not think it quite the thing to be seen often in that street, and you soon become acquainted with all the faces that appear there; and as that part of the terrace, which is allotted to promenading, is not extensive, you will, in the course of the morning's walk, meet and re-meet the same persons so frequently, that you may count the wrinkles in the old veterans' faces, and the bought curls on the ladies' heads. No Shades,' nor Fives' Court,' nor any place, in short, as I heard a Cockney, who came to spend a week in the Modern Athens, exclaim, 'fit for a Christian.' This was certainly rhetorical; but an| tiphrasis was the favourite figure of the speaker.” A STUDENT'S INVENTORY. "In public worship, there is much to disturb attention, the pomp and circumstance of man, many passions brought into action, which slumber in solitude; and devotion not unfrequently has little to do with the internal councils at the hebdomadal purgation. I do not wish to be severe or cynical upon the fair sex, when I say, that I do not think there are many in any one congregation, taken at random, however large, above twenty and below thirty, who go to pray. Husbands; "There were seven cane-bottomed chairs, one sofa, tittle-tattle; worldly ideas; dress; the confinement a tripod stool, with an earthen jar upon it, and two taduring the week; a new bonnet, pelisse, muff, or beau, bles, one in the middle of the room, the other in a are all powerful allurements in the eyes of females, corner. The latter was laden with books, plates, and which, added to the desire of being seen, admired, stared instrument-cases, surgical, astronomical, surveying, muat, squeezed, and talked about, would cause them to vi- sical, and geometrical,-piled up like a chapman's sit the chapel of Satan himself, if he were but to become goods, one above the other, in much-admired disora fashionable preacher on earth. Let this not be con- der,' till they nearly touched the ceiling. On the floor strued into disrespect or bad opinion of the down of were boxing-gloves, books again, and masks for fencers. creation.' The fault is in human nature, and not in In one corner shot-belts and guns,-half a score of whole them, 'tis in the sex, not the individual. I love and broken foils; basket-sticks, fishing-rods, and an women too well not to admire even their peccadil- innumerable quantity of bullets, shot, and slugs; over loes. They err from a good motive they dread sin- which lay an iron ladle, used for melting lead. On the gularity; and, being naturally gregarious, wherever other side, alembics and retorts; a galvanic battery, one goes, all follow. If Lady Evergreen or Mrs with electrical machine, jars, bottles, and vials, sine Sims thinks Dr Crabjaw an excellent preacher and numero, of all shapes and sizes, ever described in a course good man, she bores her acquaintances until they take of Materia Medica,-from the conico-spheroidal, to seats in his chapel; and if she have a large circle of the globulo-cylindrical; - besides stoppers of cork, five or six hundred friends, and money to give them wood, and glass; flasks, quills, and pieces of leather; entertainments, they follow her like a flock of chickens; and last, not least, a bladder of hog's lard, pending by and, in a month or two, the worthy doctor's chapel is a piece of whip-cord from the top of the window. In vaconverted, from a house of prayer, to a fashionable as-rious little habitats, were the relies of pneumatic apparasembly of scented beaux and ribboned belles. Those tus; racks for holding vials, from which various colourwho doubt what I say, had better visit any of the fa- ed rags depended; while fragments and larger pieces of shionable'killtimes,' or chapels, in London, and then minerals, placed in wooden trays, divided into comthey will possibly think less of chapel-going than I do. partments, attracted the eye by their glittering, and reFor my own part, I never visited any of these temples lieved the dulness of the scene. There was scarcely of fashion, that I did not come out infinitely worse than space to move, without stepping on something; such as when I went in. I ever saw too much to distract attention, little brown paper parcels of powders, pounded minerals, -too many beautiful faces,-and too many eyes darting and dye substances; and, once or twice, I was thrown contagious love; lips that pouted a wantonness of rosy into a violent perspiration by the explosion of detonahealth; and forms, and arms, and hands-not to say ting balls. The walls were decorated with many anyany thing of dress that made me conjure up in fancy but-agreeable-looking plates of the human body; and the palace of Eblis, or the Harem of Samarcand. There others, representing what I at first conceived to be diawas so much beauty, and pomp, and human splendour, grams for studying the manner of piling cannon-balls, that the Creator was lost in his own works." but, on nearer inspection, discovered to be Illustrations of Dalton's Theory of Atoms! There was also a cari. cature or two of the late Queen, Sir William Curtis, and Lord Petersham; several groups of human thighbones, legs, and arms, crost and figured, in the manner of armoury, to add to the effect. On the chimney-piece burned an old-fashioned bronze lamp, with a pale blue flame, round which were various skulls of animals,-as dogs, hawks, and crows; and, on the whole, this world of odds and ends recalled to memory the remembrance of those nameless repositories, about the neighbourhood of Wapping and the docks, over the black lintels of which, in white consumptive-looking characters, is inscribed, Dealer in Marine Stores." EDINBURGH. "To a young man without acquaintances, Edinburgh, for the first month or so, is the very city of blue devils, ennui, and hypishness. There is no part in which he can stroll, and mingle with the youth and beauty of the season; no arcade, where elegant languor and fashionable folly may be seen to advantage; no saloon, in which all that is frail and lovely bloom, smile, and sigh. It is the city of professions; learning and literature there take precedence of fashion and parade; and, instead of the gala beau and flippant coxcomb, that one encounters in the west end of Babylon, the paper-bearing lawyer, and the hurrying medical, alone obstruct the way. "Even Prince's Street is any thing but a fashionable resort; for, except a few awkward, meagre-looking ensigns, just on commission, and valetudinarian veterans, wounded at mud-walled forts in the East Indies, with here and there a pallid-faced debauchee of a medical student, looking as if he were the sentry-box, and not the watchman, of disease, one or two respectably dressed lawyers, with occasional country-cousins, and little "I was on the point of ringing, to enquire if I had not been shown into the lumber-room by mistake, when I was attracted to the fireplace by one of those unseemly smells often experienced in the prosecution of anatomical studies, but of which, at that time, I had no idea; and, on peeping into the grate, saw a heart, which I supposed a sheep's, a calf's, or some other animal's, but which subsequently turned out to be a human creature's, in the last stage of putrefaction! I did not meddle with it, but got this information afterwards. From this survey, I naturally looked up again at the mantel-piece, and saw what, in my previous examination, had escaped notice; viz. three or four lizards in spirits, a tape-worm, and what I sometime after learned was the dried windpipe of a man, who was hanged for murder. Above the mantel-piece, again, were different sized bladders of different animals, hanging together like a bunch of onions. The pier-glass such a glass! -was hung with weeds I beg the shade of Linnæus pardon !—I mean plants of every description,-green, dried, and drying. 6 which, when copied neatly into a lady's album, may be read with much applause; but though Horace has said truly, that no man can be a poet unless he be born so, he never meant that a born poet might sit all his life playing with his fingers, and that whenever he opened his lips, poetry would flow spontaneously from them. No; the poet must work like other men. At school and college he must labour; he must explore the wisdom of philosophy, and the mysteries of science; he must see and become acquainted with the works of art and of nature. Knowledge must form the substratum of his "In a recess, which the gloom of the apartment had poetry; and out of the things that are, he must weave at first prevented me from observing, but which, now bright fancies, which point perchance to things that may that my eyes had become accustomed to the dim light, never be. This is a merit (and no small one) which Mr was very evident, I discovered a piano forte, an Eolian Sillery possesses. His classical lore, his scientific inharp, and a case of duelling pistols. On the piano was formation, and his habits of industrious research, are a tray of stones from the Mediterranean, as the label apparent in almost every page. If he describes a tourinformed me, Borneo, Cape-Coast, and the neighbour-nament, the minutest laws and customs of chivalry seem hood of Seringapatam. Bless me!' ejaculated I, he's familiar to him; and he consequently presents many wrong here,' touching my forehead."" vivid and glowing pictures of deeds done in the days of the shield and the lance, which even St Palaye, Froissart, or Sir Walter Scott, might not have been ashamed to own. If he speaks of an ancient castle, all the technicalities of architecture seem at his finger ends; if he ascends a mountain, geology opens up her stores for him; if he lands on an uninhabited island, botany pours her treasures into his lap; the still midnight finds him pointing to the heavens with the wand of the astronomer; and the vessel that bears him to distant lands, carries with it a curious observer of all the natural phenomena of the earth. Hence Mr Sillery's verses are calculated to convey, not pleasure alone, but also instruction, which ought to be the great aim of all writers, and the chief object of all readers. More than a third part of each volume is occupied with notes, illustrative of the text; and even a hasty glance at these will show that Mr Sillery has not been throwing away the invaluable spring-time of his days in dreamy listlessness—a poet, perhaps, from the cradle, but a poet still in a state of infancy. Mr Sillery has cultivated his mind; and the many indications of his having done so, contained in the work before us, is the first reason why we hold it worthy of commendation. A good many more passages, of a similar kind, might be selected; but, as soon as this was done, little would be left behind but "leather and prunella." As a whole, we cannot recommend "Reay Morden" to our readers; but have some hopes that the author's next production will be of a purer and better kind, Vallery; or, The Citadel of the Lake. A Poem. WE have pleasure in directing the attention of our readers to this work. It is not without some of the faults incidental to young writers; but it contains many beauties which amply redeem its imperfections, and which, while they indicate the presence of genius, also imply the probability that its future achievements will be of no mean kind, seeing that so much has been done at the very outset. Mr Sillery's chief error is one which "leans to virtue's side;" his fancy is too exuberant, and, consequently, his descriptions are too protracted, and too frequently introduced. Had he lopped off a good number of the over-luxuriant shoots, his poem would have gained in strength what it lost in length, and would have afforded to ordinary minds fewer opportunities for cavilling and criticism, Our own opinions, however, with those of Sir Joshua Reynolds, are never so much influenced by the absence of defects, as by the presence of beauty. We observe few errors in Mr Sillery's book, which may not easily be remedied when a little more experience has tamed the excursiveness of imagination, and given additional solidity to the judgment. We find, on the other hand, much to be pleased with, and hail with confidence and gratification this accession of a fresh and ardent-minded lover of the Muses to the list of those whose names are already familiar to the public ear. We do not wish to praise indiscriminately, or to encourage unprofitably; we shall, therefore, mention the two leading circumstances which in our estimation entitle Mr Sillery to the commendations we are disposed to bestow upon him. The first of these is, that our author has evidently not taken to writing poetry (as too many persons do), merely because he felt his informa. tion was too limited, and his mind too uncultivated, to permit of his writing prose. It is a common mistake, that a certain susceptibility of feeling, together with a liveliness of fancy, are of themselves sufficient, not only to constitute a poet, but to enable him to produce poetry. No doubt they will enable a youngster to produce something which may, by courtesy, be termed poetry, and A second and no less powerful consideration induces us to bestow the meed of praise upon our author. Mr Sillery's heart is in the right place. His principles are pure, his feelings are strong, and his enthusiasm, as yet unimpaired, is all directed towards laudable objects. He is a passionate admirer of nature in all her moods; he is full of benevolence towards all his fellow-creatures; there is none of the littleness of false pride, or of morbid sensibility, or of harsh misanthropy, whether real or pretended, about his book. He writes, as a young poet always should, honestly and unaffectedly, pouring over his subject the warm glow of native, virtuous, and healthy sentiment. Here and there he is prosaic, extravagant, tedious, inflated; but these are imperfections we are ever disposed both to forget and to forgive, in behalf of young genius nobly commencing a career where even to fail is honourable. We think there is every reason to believe that Mr Sillery will not fail. He is deeply embued with the best part of a poet's nature the warm affections and generous aspirations of the soul, from which all that is selfish is excluded, and which elevate to eminence, simply by refining the grosser parts of our nature. We do not intend dwelling on the story of "Vallery." It is a romance of the days of Chivalry, and full of the spirit of the times. In some respects, the plot is rather awkwardly managed, and a poet's privilege has been taken throughout, of infringing pretty extensively on the confines of probability. The scene is laid principally in Spain, though it changes occasionally to Arabia, and, for a cauto or two, to an island (beautiful as the Isle of Palms) in the Persian sea. Several detached passages which we shall extract, will supply a sufficient idea of the author's style and abilities. In chivalric descriptions, Mr Sillery is always very happy; take for example the following spirited passage, with which the second canto opens: How dark are those woods in the solitudes where the spreading chestnuts grow! How green are the oaks o'ershading the brooks that meand'ring through them flow! How gloomy and still the pines on the hill, scarce waving a leaf to the breeze! But how bright is the glance of shield and lance all glittering between the trees! Ride forth! Ride forth! from the gloomy north, ride forth from the dismal wood; Each lofty lance, advance! advance! and shield with thy cross of blood. They come from between the elms green, a dashing and clashing tier; All sheathed in steel, from head to heel, a hundred knights appear! By the coronet in his helmet set, by the lofty plumes he bears, By the cross on the field of his burnish'd shield, and cuirass of gold he wears, By the gauntlets bright of silver white, in which his lance is grasp'd, By the baldrick fair, with jewels rare, and brilliant cuisses clasp'd, By falchion emboss'd, and cuirass cross'd, with crimson bands on gold, He comes from the chase, with lance and mace, from hunting the wolf in his den, With him from the heights a hundred knights are winding down the glen Through thicket and brake, by river and lake, and under the rocky steep, Their chargers of black all follow the track that leads to the verge of the deep Their steeds are prancing, plumes are dancing, helmets glancing bright, While sabres are gleaming, armour beaming, and pennons streaming white. It is not too much to say of the following graphic sketch of a knightly feast in Baron Vallery's castle, that it has an Homeric air: Not Haerlem's organ, with its awful peals, Roaring through twice ten thousand tubes at once, White plumes are dancing round the burthen'd board, We want more wine. Come, minstrels, sweep your harps." "A toast! a toast!" the gallant warriors shout: "Long may the griffon on the banner spear Of Vallery wave upon her lofty towers Joy to the Christian-trouble to the Moor- We are not quite sure that even in "Marmion," many passages will be found more spirit-stirring, and accurately descriptive, than that which we subjoin: Beneath the Baron's banner broad And, sooth it was a goodly sight To see them on their steeds; Silk penoncels on spear-heads strong, And ponderous falchion clash'd and rung To see the silver spurs on heel, Their housings with escutcheons, too, Red, green, and sable, pink and blue, And plumage white, And hoofs like arrows springing, And golden reins, And bells of silver ringing. Of all those gallant warriors brave, Of all those knights who bore a glaive, And why?-the bloom of youth was bright His lip was red-his brow was white- Adorn'd our hero liege. And, O! how bless'd 'bove all mankind, Whose greatest joy is to impart As many a gallant heart has proved; In a different strain, but one of much power and May harbour in it tribes of every kind,- O glorious thought, to rank with souls in Heaven! We are much pleased with the delicacy and simplicity of the following song, which might, we think, be very successfully set to music: The rose that blushes bright to-day, Ah! no-ah! no, The heart can alter never; Its ceaseless flame still burns the same, The sweetest flowers but bloom to die, The happiest love that glows, may yet Ah! yes-ah! yes, The brightest eye may languish ; Beyond a world of anguish. From heaven to earth, from earth to sky, To climb the mount, or span the sea: Be dumb the tongue, the eye be blind, Be perish'd hope, be wrung the breast, Yet still the mind, the mind is free! In conclusion, we have no hesitation in saying that we know of few young men of one or two-and-twenty, (and Mr Sillery is no more,) who have made so successful an appeal to the public, or one which should be more speedily recognised and encouraged, whether we regard the intrinsic excellence of this his first effort, or the promise it holds out of still higher things yet to come. THE author of this work, which has just issued from the Edinburgh press, is entitled, from the specimen of his abilities before us, to take an honourable place among the scientific travellers of the day. Mr Murray has already appeared before the public as a scientific author, in his treatises on the "Light and Luminous Matter of the Glow-worm," and his " Manual of Experiments in Chemical Science," which have been received with applause. His Lectures, too, at the Surrey Institution, we know to have been characterized by that perspicuity and conciseness, which are best calculated to ensure success as a teacher. Willingly, therefore, do we introduce Mr Murray to our readers in the work before us; and we think we shall be able to favour them with a "glance at some beauties" of it, as well as of Switzerland. Switzerland, which, like our own country, is the "land of mountain and of flood," possesses, for the man of science and the scholar, no common attractions. Its stupendous mountains, covered with eternal snows,—its icy glaciers, reflecting the sun's rays with a bewildering brilliancy, its fertile valleys, its magnificent lakes, its lofty woods, and its bird-nest-like towns, present a tout ensemble totally different from that of any other Continental country; and the only wonder is, that it never produced a poet. Mr Murray very properly omits detailing any thing connected with his journey from Paris to Geneva, as that has been described a thousand times, and frequently, too, by individuals who never saw either of those cities. "For me, the scenery of France," says Mr Murray, somewhat ungallantly towards la Belle France," is void of charms; destitute alike of the peasant's hamlet, and the mansions of the great, neither pretty pleasure grounds decorate the landscape, nor beauteous semblance of a flock at rest,' is seen. fields of France are naked and cheerless, and the woods are mantled in more than forest gloom, while the villages we pass through are of little interest." In like manner, our author has declined saying almost any thing of Geneva, but from the little which he does say, we extract the following passage: GENEVA. The "On Monday we perambulated the city, which certainly has very little, as a city, to recommend it. It is characterised by much active industry within doors, the savans and mechaniciens being pent up in their closets and ateliers, and very little gaiety pervades the promenades. Some parts of the town are sufficiently picturesque; the overhanging roofs, for which it is remarkable, are, however, too lofty to screen the pedestrian from the rain, especially if accompanied by a high wind, and form no shade from the sun. The pave ment of the streets is bad, and their irregularity is a considerable drawback from the internal appearance. The pavement of the inclined plane in the Hotel de Ville, by which we gain the arduous ascent that conducts to the Passport Office, is a curiosity of its kind, and perhaps unique. The city is tolerably well fenced in with walls within walls, draw and suspension bridges, and gates; while stakes and chains secure from surprise on the part of the lake. The small canton of Geneva, though in the vicinity of the Great Alpine chain and the mountains of the Jura, includes no mountains. The name of the city and canton has been traced by the etymologists to a Celtic origin; Gen, a sally-port or exit, and av, a river, probably because the Rhone here leaves |