which is blue. Do we not see that the moon, which we suppose to be covered in great part with very elevated glaciers, sends back to us, in a light of a bluish white, the rays of the sun, which are golden in our ferruginous atmosphere? Is it not by the reverberation of a soil composed of iron, that the planet Mars reflects upon us, at all times, a red light? Is it not more natural to attribute these constant colors to the reverberation of the soil, of the seas, and of the vegetables of these planets, rather than to the variable refractions of the rays of the sun in their atmospheres, the colors of which ought to change every hour, according to their different aspects with regard to that star? As Mars appears constantly red to the earth, it is possible that the earth might appear to Mars like a brilliant jewel, of the color of the opal towards the North Pole, of the agon marina at the South Pole, and alternately of the sapphire in the rest of its circumference. But without going out of our atmosphere, I believe that the earth reflects there the blue color of its ocean with the green of its vegetation, at all times in the torrid zone, and in summer only in our climate, for the same reason that its two poles reflect their different auroras, which participate of the colors of the earth or the seas that are near them.

"Perhaps our atmosphere sometimes reflects landscapes, which announce islands to the sailors long before they reach them. It is remarkable that they show themselves, like the reflections of verdure, only in the horizon and on the side of the setting sun. I shall cite, on this subject, a man of the Isle of France, who used to perceive in the sky the images of vessels which were out in full sea; the celebrated Vernet, who related to me that he had once seen in the clouds the ramparts of a town, situated seven leagues distant from him, and the phenomenon of the straits of Sicily, known under the name of the Fata Morgana. The clouds and the vapors of the atmosphere may very well reflect the forms and the colors of earthly objects, since they reflect in parhelions the image of the sun, so as to render it burning as the sun itself. In fine, if the waters of the earth repeat the colors and the forms of the clouds of the atmosphere, why then should not the vapors of the atmosphere, in their turn, reflect the blue of the sea, the verdure and the yellow of the earth, as well as the glancing colors of the polar ices?

"I advance my opinion, however, only as my opinion. The history of nature is an edifice which, as yet, is scarcely commenced; let us not fear to carry some stones towards the building; our grandchildren will use them, or lay them aside if they be useless. If my authority is of no weight hereafter, it will import little that I have deceived myself upon this point; my work will enter into obscurity, from whence it came; but if it should be, in future, of some consideration, my error in physics will be more useful to morals than a truth, otherwise indifferent to the happiness of mankind. For it will be inferred with reason, that it is necessary to regard even writers of credit with caution."

In one point of fact, St. Pierre is certainly mistaken. The green evening light is seen as often in winter as in summer. Having been led to look for it in consequence of suspecting the accuracy of his remarks, I noticed it on the very day when this extract was transcribed for the press, (late in December,) and twice in the course of the ensuing week; and I observed it, not in the evening alone, and in the west, (in which quarter, however, and at which time, it is most frequently seen,) but in different parts of the sky, and at different times of the day.

Whether France or Britain be threatened, Soon will the issue show, or if both at once are endanger'd. III. col. 1, p. 798. The murder of the Duke of Berry, and the Cato-street conspiracy, were both planned at the time of the King's death.

This is the Gate of Bliss. IV. col. 2, p. 798. The reader will so surely think of the admirable passage of Dante, which was in the writer's mind when these lines were composed, that I should not think it necessary to notice the imitation, were it not that we live in an age of plagiarism;

when not our jackdaws only, but some of our swans also, trick themselves in borrowed plumage. I have never contracted an obligation of this kind, either to contemporary or predecessor, without acknowledging it.

Discontent and disloyalty, like the teeth of the dragon,
He had sown on the winds; they had ripen'd beyond the Atlantic.
V. col. 2, p. 799.

"Our New World," says M. Simond, "has generally the credit of having first lighted the torch which was to illuminate, and soon set in a blaze, the finest part of Europe; yet I think the flint was struck, and the first spark elicited, by the patriot, John Wilkes, a few years before. In a time of profound peace, the restless spirits of men, deprived of other objects of public curiosity, seized with avidity on those questions which were then agitated with so much violence in England, touching the rights of the people, and of the government, and the nature of power. The end of the political drama was in favor of what was called, and in some respect was, the liberty of the people. Encouraged by the success of this great comedian, the curtain was no sooner dropped on the scene of Europe, than new actors hastened to raise it again in America, and to give the world a new play, infinitely more interesting, and more brilliant, than the first."

Dr. Franklin describes the state of things during the reign of Wilkes and liberty. He says, "There have been amazing contests all over the kingdom, twenty or thirty thousand pounds of a side spent in several places, and inconceivable mischief done, by drunken, mad mobs, to houses, windows, &c. The scenes have been horrible. London was illuminated two nights running, at the command of the mob, for the success of Wilkes in the Middlesex election; the second night exceeded any thing of the kind ever seen here on the greatest occasions of rejoicing, as even the small cross streets, lanes, courts, and other out-of-the-way places, were all in a blaze with lights, and the principal streets all night long, as the mobs went round again after two o'clock, and obliged people who had extinguished their candles, to light them again. Those who refused had all their windows destroyed. The damage done, and the expense of candles, has been computed at fifty thousand pounds. It must have been great, though probably not so much. The ferment is not yet over, for he has promised to surrender to the court next Wednesday, and another tumult is then expected; and what the upshot will be, no one can yet foresee. It is really an extraordinary event, to see an outlaw and exile, of bad personal character, not worth a farthing, como over from France, set himself up as a candidate for the capital of the kingdom, miss his election only by being too late in his application, and immediately carrying it for the principal county. The mob, (spirited up by numbers of different ballads, sung or roared in every street,) requiring gentlemen and ladies of all ranks, as they passed in their carriages, to shout for Wilkes and liberty, marking the same words on all their coaches with chalk, and No. 45 on every door, which extends a vast way along the roads in the country. I went last week to Winchester, and observed that for fifteen miles out of town there was scarce a door or window-shutter next the road unmarked: and this continued here and there quite to Winchester, which is sixty-four miles.

Even this capital, the residence of the king, is now a daily scene of lawless riot and confusion. Mobs patrolling the street at noonday, some knocking all down that will not roar for Wilkes and liberty; courts of justice afraid to give judgment against him; coal-heavers and porters pulling down the houses of coal-merchants that refuse to give them more wages; sawyers destroying saw-mills; sailors unrigging all the outward-bound ships, and suffering none to sail till merchants agree to raise their pay; watermen destroying private boats, and threatening bridges; soldiers firing among the mobs, and killing men, women, and children, which seems only to have produced an universal sullenness, that looks like a great black cloud coming on, ready to burst in a general tempest. What the event will be God only knows. But some punishment seems preparing for a people who are ungratefully abusing the best constitution, and the best king, any nation was ever blessed with; intent on nothing but luxury, licentiousness, power, places, pensions

wherein I have now followed him. I should not forgive myself were I ever to mention Sydney without an expression of reverence and love.

"Of versifying," he says, "there are two sorts, the one ancient, the other modern; the ancient marked the quantity of each syllable, and, according to that, framed his verse; the modern, observing only number, with some regard of the accent; the chief life of it standeth in that like sounding of the words which we call Rhyme. Whether of these be the more excellent, would bear many speeches, the ancient, no doubt, more fit for musick, both words and time observing quantity, and more fit lively to express divers passions by the low or lofty sound of the well-weighed syllable. The latter likewise with his Rhyme striketh a certain musick to the ear; and, in fine, since it doth delight, though by another way, it obtaineth the same purpose, there being in either sweetness, and wanting in neither majesty. Truly the English, before any vulgar language I know, is fit for both sorts; for, for the ancient, the Italian is so full of vowels, that it must ever be cumbered with elisions: the Dutch so, of the other side, with consonants, that they cannot yield the sweet sliding fit for a verse. The French, in his whole language, hath not one word that hath his accent in the last syllable, saving two, called Antepenultima; and little more hath the Spanish, and therefore very gracelesly may they use Dactyls; the English is subject to none of these defects. Now for Rhyme, though we do not observe quantity, yet we observe the accent very precisely, which other languages either cannot do, or will not do so absolutely.

"That Casura, or breathing-place, in the midst of the verse, neither Italian nor Spanish have; the French and we never almost fail of. Lastly, the very Rhyme itself the Italian cannot put in the last syllable, by the French named the Masculine Rhyme, but still in the next to the last, which the French call the Female, or the next before that, which the Italian call Sdrucciola: the example of the former is Buono Suono: of the Sdrucciola, is Femina Semina. The French, on the other side, hath both the male, as Bon Son; and the Female, as Plaise, Taise, but the Sdrucciola he hath not, where the English hath all three, as Due, True, Father, Rather, Motion, Potion, with much more, which might be said, but that already I find the trifling of this discourse is too much enlarged."

The French attempted to introduce the ancient metres some years before the trial was made in England. Pasquier says, that Estienne Jodelle led the way in the year 1553, by this distich upon the poems of Olivier de Maigny, "lequel," he adds, "est vrayement une petit chef-d'œuvre."

Phabus, Amour, Cypris, veut sauver, nourrir et orner
Ton vers et chef, d'umbre, de flamme, de fleurs.

Pasquier himself, three years afterwards, at the solicitation of a friend, produced the following "essay de plus longue haleine:"

Rien ne me plaist sinon de te chanter, et servir et orner;
Rien ne te plaist mon bien, rien ne te plaist que ma mort.
Plus je requiers, et plus je me tiens seur d'estre refusé,
Et ce refus pourtant point ne me semble refus.
O trompeurs attraicts, desir ardent, prompte volonté,
Espoir, non espoir, ains miserable pipeur.
Discours mensongers, trahistreux oeil, aspre cruauté,
Qui me ruine le corps, qui me ruiné le cœur.
Pourquoy tant de faveurs t'ont les Cieux mis à l'abandon,
Ou pourquoy dans moy si violente furcur?

Si vaine est ma fureur, si vain est tout ce que des cieux
Tu tiens, s'en toy gist cette cruelle rigeur :
Dieux patrons de l'amour bannissez d'elle la beauté,
Ou bien l'accouplez d'une amiable pitié ;
Ou si dans le miel vous meslez un venemeux fiel,
Vueillez Dieur que l'amour r'entre dedans le Chaos:
Commandez, que le froid, l'eau, l'Esté, l'humide, l'ardeur :
Brief que ce tout par tout tende à l'abisme de tous,
Pour finir ma douleur, pour finir cette cruauté,
Qui me ruine le corps, qui me ruine le cœur.

"Je ne dy pas," says the author, "que ces vers soient de quelque valeur, aussi ne les mets-je icy sur la monstre en intention qu'on les trouve tels ; mais bien estime-je qu'ils sont autant fluides que les Latins, et à tant veur-je que l'on pense nostre vulgaire estre aucunement capable de ce subject." Pasquier's verses were not published till many years after they were written; and in the mean time Jean Antoine de Baif made the attempt upon a larger scale,-" Toutesfois, says Pasquier, “ER Ce subject si mauvais parrain que non seulement il ne fut suivy d'aucun, mais au contraire descouragea un chacun de s'y em ployer. D'autant que tout ce qu'il en fit estoit tant despourteu de cette naifveté qui doit accompagner nos œuvres, qu'anesi tost que cette sienne poësie voit la lumiere, elle mourut comme un avorton." The Abbé Goujet, therefore, had no reason to reppresent this attempt as a proof of the bad taste of the age: the bad taste of an age is proved, when vicious compositions are applauded, not when they are unsuccessful. Jean Antoine de Baif is the writer of whom Cardinal du Perron said, "qu'il étoit bon homme, mais qu'il étoit méchant poëte François."

I subjoin a specimen of Spanish Hexameters, from an Eclogue by D. Esteban de Villegas, a poet of great and deserved estimation in his own country.

Licidas y Coridon, Coridon el amante de Filis,

Pastor el uno de Cabras, el otro de blancas Orejas,
Ambos a dos tiernos, mozos ambos, Arcades ambos,
Viendo que los rayos del Sol fatigaban al Orbe,
Y que vibrando fuego feróz la Canicula ladra,
Al puro cristal, que cria la fuente sonora,
Llevados del són alegre de su blando susurro,
Las plantas veloces mueven, los pasos animan,
Y al tronco de un verde enebro se sientan amigos.

Tú, que los erguidos sobrepujas del hondo Timavo
Peñones, generoso Duque, con tu inclita frente,
Si acaso tocáre el eco de mi rústica avena
Tus sienes, si acaso llega a tu fértil abono,
Francisco, del acento mio la sonora Talia,
Oye pio, responde grato, censura severo :
No menos al caro hermano generoso retratas,
Que al tronco prudente sigues, generoso naciste
Heroe, que guarde el Cielo dilatando tus años :
Licidas y Coridon, Coridon el amante de Filis,
Pastores, las Musas aman, recrearte desean:
Tu, cuerdo, perdona entretanto la bárbara Musa,
Que presto, inspirando Pean con amigo Coturno,
En trompa, que al Olimpo llegue por el ábrego suelta,
Tu fama llevarán los ecos del Ganges al Istro,

Y luego, torciendo el vuelo, del aquilo al Austro.

It is admitted by the Spaniards, that the fitness of their language for the hexameter has been established by Villegas; his success, however, did not induce other poets to follow the example. I know not whom it was that he followed, for he was not the first to make the attempt. Neither do I know whether it was ever made in Portuguese, except in some verses upon St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins, which are Latin as well as Portuguese, and were written as a whimsical proof of the affinity of the two languages. 1 have met with no specimens in Italian. The complete success of the metre in Germany is well known. The Bohemians have learnt the tune, and have, like their neighbors, a translation of the Iliad in the measure of the original. This I learn accidentally from a Bohemian grammar; which shows me also, that the Bohemians make a dactyl of Achilles, probably because they pronounce the x with a strong aspirate.