cause can you ascribe what, in my mind, is still. more astonishing;-in such a country as Scotland a nation cast in the happy medium between the spiritless acquiescence of submissive poverty, and the sturdy credulity of pampered wealth-cool and. ardent adventurous and persevering-winging her eagle flight against the blaze of every science, with an eye that never winks, and a wing that never tires-crowned as she is with the spoils of every art, and decked with the wreath of every muse, from the deep and scrutinizing researches of her Hume, to the sweet and simple, but not less sublime and pathetic, morality of her Burns-how from the bosom of a country like that, genius, and character, and talents, should be banished to a distant barbarous soil, condemned to pine under the horrid communion of vulgar vice and base-born profligacy, for twice the period that ordinary calculation gives to the continuance of human life?"*

LIFE OF J. P. CURRAN.C

REMORSE UNASSUAGED IN THE CONTEMPLATION OF LANDSCAPE-BEAUTY.

It was the night-and Lara's glassy stream
The stars are studding, each with imaged beam :

Mr. Curran alludes to the sentence of Mr. Muir, Palmer, &c. who had been transported for sedition.

So calm, the waters scarcely seem to stray,
And yet they glide like happiness away;
Reflecting far and fairy-like from high
The immortal lights that live along the sky

Its banks are fringed with many a goodly tree, 1:
And flowers the fairest that may feast the bee;
Such in her chaplet infant Dian wove,

And Innocence would offer to her love.

These deck the shore; the waves their channel

make

In windings bright and mazy like the snake.
All was so still, so soft in earth and air, 7
You scarce would start to meet a spirit there;
Secure that nought of evil could delight
To walk in such a scene, on such a night!
It was a moment only for the good:

So Lara deemed, nor longer there he stood,
But turned in silence to his castle-gate:
Such scene his soul no more could contemplate:
Such scene reminded him of other days,
Of skies more cloudless, moons of purer blaze,
Of nights more soft and frequent, hearts that now—
No-no-the storm may beat upon his brow,
Unfelt-unsparing—but a night like this,
A night of beauty, mocked such breast as his.

BYRON.

NIGHT.

THE crowd are gone, the revellers at rest;
The courteous, host, and all-approving guest,
Again to that accustomed, couch must creep
Where joy subsides, and sorrow sighs to sleep,
And man o'er-laboured with his being's strife,
Shrinks to that sweet forgetfulness of life:
There lie love's feverish hope, and cunning's guile,
Hate's working brain, and lulled ambition's wile;
O'er each vain eye oblivion's pinions wave,
And quenched existence crouches in a grave.
What better name may slumber's bed become?
Night's sepulchre, the universal home,

Where weakness, strength, vice, virtue, sunk §. supine,

Alike in naked helplessness recline:

Glad for awhile to heave unconscious breath,
Yet wake to wrestle with the dread of death,
And shun, though day but dawn on ills increast,
That sleep, the loveliest, since it dreams the least.
BYRON.

MORNING.

NIGHT wanes the vapours round the mountains

curled

Melt into morn, and Light awakes the world.

Man has another day to swell the past,
And lead him near to little, but his last;
But mighty Nature bounds as from her birth,
The sun is in the heavens, and life on earth;
Flowers in the valley, splendour in the beam,
Health on the gale, and freshness in the stream.
Immortal man! behold her glories shine,
And cry, exulting inly," they are thine!"
Gaze on, while yet thy gladdened eye may see; (06
A morrow comes when they are not for thee:
And grieve what may above thy senseless bier,
Nor earth nor sky will yield a single tear;
Nor cloud shall gather more, nor leaf shall fall,
Nor gale breathe forth one sigh for thee, for all;
But creeping things shall revel in their spoil,
And fit thy clay to fertilize the soil.

BYRON.

A

RETENTION OF IDEAS.

THE next faculty of the mind, whereby it makes a farther progress towards knowledge, is that which I call retention, or the keeping of those simple ideas which from sensation or reflection it hath received. This is done two ways; first, by keeping the idea, which is brought into it, for some time actually in view; which is called contemplation. The other way of retention, is the power to revive again in our

minds those ideas, which after imprinting have disappeared, or have been as it were laid out of sight: and thus we do when we conceive heat or light, yellow or sweet, the object being removed. This is memory, which is as it were the store-house of our ideas. For the narrow mind of man not being capable of having many ideas under view and consideration at once, it was necessary to have a repository to lay up those ideas, which at another time it might have use of. But our ideas being nothing but actual perceptions in the mind, which cease to be any thing when there is no perception of them, this laying up of our ideas in the repository of the memory signifies no more but this, that the mind has a power in many cases to revive perceptions which it has once had, with this additional perception annexed to them, that it has had them before. And in this sense it is that our ideas are said to be in our memories, when indeed they are actually nowhere; but only there is an ability in the mind when it will to revive them again, and as it were paint them anew on itself, though some with more, some with less difficulty; some more lively, and others more obscurely. And thus it is, by the assistance of this faculty, that we are to have all those ideas in our understandings, which, though we do not actually contemplate, yet we can bring in sight, and make appear again, and be the objects of our thoughts, without the help of those sensible qualities which first imprinted them there.