more rich and gushing-more like the ardent throb of the nightingale, than any thing we have yet heard. All he has to avoid is, a too frequent wandering into the falsetto-and an occasional nasal earnestness, peculiar, as we thought, to Mr. Braham. He has not,to be sure,improved in his acting, or in his mode of speaking, and, for a person who has visited that land of sweet sounds, Italy, we cannot but feel surprised that he should still carry Scotland so plainly on the tip of his tongue.

The horses, reader! are at both houses, tittupping, snorting, sidling, tail-whisking, galloping, dying, with a zeal very inglori ous and unbecoming in this weak, piping period. Mr. Elliston's horses are numerous, and of many colours. They are too, and if we may say it without offence, apparently a leetle nearer the corn-bin than Mr. Ducrow's. Mr. Elliston's stud, too, has a good variety of colour, and the tails are well suspended, and admirably fastened—whereas, Ducrow, in thy lot, the brown rather predominates, and one tail told a tale one night (by nearly getting thrown from its horse) which, we trust, is not a common occurrence. On the other hand, however, if Mr. Elliston's nags are better in the foregoing points, they are worse in others. They cover less ground in their gallop-that is, they take up their little frenzied legs, and (like the hackney coachman and the countryman) set them down where they took them up: They are less profuse of the sawdust amongst the fiddlers. They dot too much :-whereas, thy chargers, Ducrow, get two yards in ten minutes, and really seem to go-thine turn about

caper-plunge-and actually leap a poplar with the courage of hunters. Mr. Elliston's crack-horse astounds the gallery with carrying a lady up the Cataract of the Ganges; and, truly, this sounds no bad feat-but thy cock-horse, Ducrow, wheels about-ascends a precipice, and flings a wild Indian over a bridge into the gulf below! This last beats Mr. Elliston's horse

all to tatters. In short, for we must cut

our parallel short, the spectator, who is thoroughly fond of four-legged actors, must go to both houses, and study both the studs. We suppose there will be no end to these cattle shows till a horse gets really wild, and makes a stepping block of Mr. Ware's head some night, previous to a comfortable skull-gallop over the pit. We would give seven shillings to be in the sccond tier on that night-particularly if we could induce a few select friends to pay their three-and-sixpences on the occasion.

But, seriously, where is all this abuse of the public taste to end? Is it not a wretched thing to see Fawcett shambling about among the saw-dust, as though he had been brought up in the shambles; and to hear beautiful music beat to death by trampling hoofs? Oh! where Shakspeare bas so greatly triumphed, and where genius still might triumph, why should the frivolities of Astley's, and the pranks of Bartholomew Fair, be played off, and in double tinsel ? Lastly, if horses must draw (and they generally do) why should they not be kept to the afterpiece, so that the stage should, for a short time, be free and safe for common sense, and two-legged performers; as until this year it has invariably been? Will any managers answer these questions?

NEW WORKS.

If I could bring my soul to think
That we should meet again
Beyond the grave, I would not shrink
From all this world of pain:
But, oh the dreadful thought, that we
Are parted by Eternity,

Will sometimes cross my brain;
And that is wo so sad and deep,
I almost wish for endless sleep.

I know 'tis wrong to love thee-feel
There's guilt in every sigh!
But I have seen soft Pity steal

The moisture from thine eye;
And I have felt how kind and warm

The soul encompassed in that form,
And cannot say "Good bye."

I know 'tis wrong to love thee, yet

I could not, for the world, forget.

For I have taught my heart to pray,
That it might pray for Thee;
And when the twilight fades away,
And moonbeams light the sea,
In fervent prayer I lift my soul,
That all thy days may calmly roll
In peace and social glee;
Tho' every blessing meant for mine
Should pass my head, and light on Thine.

To consummate my misery, I recollected that one of my fair friend's correspondents being in a similar dilemma, though not, as in my case, from the folly of self-confidence, had the felicity to fall asleep, and dream so entertainingly, that I only wondered how he could find in his heart to awake, unless it was for the pleasure of telling his dream. But though fervently invoked, Apollo in no shape, and least of all in the shape of Morpheus, would come to my relief; nor could I dream of sleeping in such distress, for if I had slept, whatever were my visions, pen, ink, and paper would haunt me through them, and I knew that when I awoke I should find nothing before me but pen, ink, and paper still.

"Again, with a feeling too forlorn to be remembered without a relapse of it, 1 took up my pen; the ink had already dried in it, though not a line had been written except that shortest and sweetest and least of all, as every body knows, Dear Madam! I cast my eye down the first page of the paper, and if it had been an indictment for petty larceny, I could scarcely have faced it with more horror ;—it was as white, and as smooth, and as empty as ever! I turned to the inkstand, and looked into it, like Esop's thirsty crow into the pitcher with a drop of water at the bottom, which the sagacious bird, it could not be the same crow that let the cheese fall out of his beak into the fox's chops,-raised to the brim by dropping pebble after pebble into it. But my difficulty was not to bring the ink out of the stand, but the meaning out of the ink. Ah!' quoth I, gently shaking it, here lies the quintessence of all science, all art, all invention, all expression. This drop of ink could speak all languages, discover all secrets, communicate all feeling, display all knowledge, detect all sophistry. There is not a thought which the heart of man can conceive, or words which human lips can utter, but it is here,—absolutely in my hand, before my eyes; yet I am so blind, or so stupid, that I can discern nothing but a decoction of nutgalls and copperas. O that I had a talisman, which would enable me to call up from this

O that I had a chemical test, whereby I might analyze this little fluid,and learn,-not what it is made of, but what might be made of it! I am too dull at present to fish up a single idea from the bottom: yet if ten thou sand people were to sit down to the experiment, each one would produce something different from every other; and were they all to record their lucubrations in this ink, with this pen, on this paper, their themes, their thoughts, their diction, would appear as diverse as their faces, their voices, and their hand-writing.'

"Fanciful as this soliloquy may seem to my readers, to me it was a golden key, which of its own accord unlocked a casket of curious speculations, so dazzling, attractive, and numberless, that I knew not where to begin, or which to select. It was evident, however, on the first glance at this treasure, that I might fill my paper with a descriptive catalogue of only a few of the gems, while the mine whence they came would be as exhaustless as the collective imaginations of all minds that ever have been, are, or will be in this world of everlasting vicissitude. Accordingly, in brisker spirits, I snatched up the pen once more, though it trembled like a living thing between my fingers, so impatient did I feel to fix down with it one of those fleeting visionaries which a breath or a motion might startle away, and forever dissolve the enchantment. And thus I began with the first that I could touch.

66

If I were little Jackey Jessamy, ten years old last Candlemas, with a flaxen poll, rosy cheeks, and a frilled shirt-neck ;-and if, having mastered pot-hooks and strokes, I had made my way into joined hand,-with this pen, from this ink, on this paper, I should be inditing. Fortune favours the brave,'

Custom is second nature,'-' Be wise betimes; shun darling crimes? with other saws and maxims equally elegant and edifying,-which no time, no space, no circumstance could ever blot out from the tablet of memory;

though for the time present, so far from improving either my morals or my handwriting by the exercise, I might be playing truant in my head, and whipping a top, or striking a ball with all my heart. But if I were Jackey's mamma, and thro' means of this apparatus were corresponding with his schoolmaster, on the best method of spoiling the dear boy, there is no doubt that, with due maternal tenderness, I would expatiate upon his naturally quick parts, and give special warning that these should not be blunted by too much study; for reading wears the eyes, writing soils the fingers, and arithmetic wrinkles the forehead before its time: but I would recommend the utmost care of his person, the free indulgence of his gingerbread appetite, and the most conscientious neglect of his morals. Ah! then, a hundred to one but this very letter would be the death-warrant to the poor lad's best interests; which, being duly executed by the obsequious pedagogue, would cause him to leave the school with as little head as the fondest parent could desire to see on his heir apparent's shoulders, to maintain the family imbecility, and transmit it unimpaired to posterity. - - -"

Our author next figures the love-letter, its answer, a challenge, &c. ; but, shocked by the latter, will "not be a man of honour another moment," and lapses into a new train of ideas.

"Pen, ink, and paper are still before me as at first; and neither copies at school, a letter full of maternal solicitude, billets doux, despatches, nor challenges have been produced. I look again at the ink, in which the elements of all knowledge are blended indistinguishably, and I think, If I were a poet! Why nothing in the world is easier than to think oneself a poet; and next to it, nothing more common than to be thought so by others! Aye, but to be a poet!-why, to be sure that is quite a different thing. Well, but if I were a poet, how could I illumine these blank leaves, and adorn them with imagery more imperishable than the sculptures of Greece? If, for example! I were Scott?-Impossible! Campbell ?-next to impossible! By

ron!-more than impossible! Make what you will of the phrase, it is not a thousandth part so absurd as the thought. Well then, if I were Southey?

No. Wordsworth?-No. Bloomfield?-No. Moore? No. I was so disheartened by these negatives, that I durst not hazard another if; but it was my good fortune to fall immediately into a brown study, when, to my as tonishment and delight, the afore-named personages, one by one, came into the room, and sitting down on the chair which I had occupied, how I happened to vacate my seat I know not, any more than by what spell I was replaced in it, at the end of two hours; each in his turn made use of my pen, ink, and paper. Oh! if I could copy what they wrote,-what only one of them wrote,-I should make these pages the most acceptable that were ever presented by me to the public; but I could not have passed them for my own, without hazarding the fate of the jackdaw who borrowed the peacock's feathers. Nor will I plume myself at their expense in another way, by foisting impotent imitations upon my good-natured readers, to gain spurious credit, under the sanction of great names.

The door was first opened without ceremony, by a hearty-looking, middle-aged country gentleman, who came in as if he were just arrived at his own home after a day of grouse-shooting on the moors, with a smile of indescribable good humour on his countenance, through which some gay apparition of thought seemed breaking, like the moon out of a cloud :-he sat down, took up the pen, dipt it in the ink, and presently covered the paper with an eight-syllable lay of the easiest verse in the world, that ambled and cantered in all the paces of a Highland pegasus, through an episode concerning barons and knights, and ladies and lakes, and fields and tournaments, and feasts and songs, and forests and mountains, and minstrels,-so unlike any thing, that any body else ever wrote, and so like all that he himself had written, that I could not mistake the author. No sooner, however, had he risen up, than the whole,-which I read as he penned,