the profession in general, and need not offer my testimony to the honourable and splendid exceptions which it has furnished in all times, and in none more signally than our own.

Bibliomania is an amusing illustration of this blind idolatry for whatever is ancient; though I will venture to assert that no good book, since the invention of printing, ever became scarce, and that in an immense majority of cases rarity is in exact proportion to worthlessness. The old types, and binding, and decorations, might be adored, as savages worship idols for their barbarism and ugliness; but when they ventured upon the experiment of reprinting some of these treasures of antiquity, the bubble burst at once. The Archaica and Heliconia induced people to read what they had hitherto only thought of buying, and they then discovered upon what gross trash and woeful rubbish they had wasted their precious guineas.

While we are lavishing the affections of our hearts and purses upon that egregious dotard, Antiquity, we evince towards our lineal, legitimate descendant, Posterity, a most scurvy and unpaternal disregard, although the poor creature has done nothing to merit such treatment. We bequeath him books enough, indeed, to complete kis education, though most of them will be probably moth-eaten, or obsolete, before he is breeched; but in the olden time it was customary to provide him with ready-made houses, and churches, and palaces, none of which can he hope to inherit from the present generation.-Our houses regularly fall in before the leases; our churches will never come down to him, unless it be their roofs; and as to our thatched palaces, and others in imitation of Chinese Pagodas, and Moori Alhambras, being fortunately as bad in construction as they are in taste, even we ourselves may hope to witness the decadence of these flimsy gewgaws. Waterloo-bridge is almost the only structure which seems likely to descend to the great unborn heir of the present community; and if we have enabled him to keep his head above water in one sense, we have rendered it almost impossible in another, by tying about his unbegotten neck, the tremendous millstone of the national debt. Now I have very grave and compunctious doubts whether the social compact confers upon us any right to commit this doubly-noxious injustice. Individuals are not responsible for the debts of their parents,-why should a collection of individuals be so? Why should I, or you, taxpaying reader, be at this moment putting our hands in our pockets to defray the charges of all the mad wars waged since the time of our revolution, when the perverse folly of "our sage ancestors" first discovered the secret of the Funding System ?-What authority have we to mortgage the flesh, and bones, and sweat of many generations, to gratify the insane pugnaciousness or extravagance of one?-what charter empowers us to discount futurity for blood-money? O fatal discovery, which torments whole ages with war, and its successors with debt, thus spreading misery over a surface of centuries! If the Holy Alliance would really merit the title of benefactors of the human race, let them invite the whole of Europe to join them in a solemn compact and agreement that every nation shall hereafter fight its own battles, and pay for its own wars; and they will have done more in one day for the maintenance of perpetual peace than they will now effect in a hundred Congresses.-Let them proclaim a public

universal law, absolving our successors from all responsibility, legal or moral, for the hostilities of their forefathers; and they will not only have conferred a signal blessing upon the present generation, but have performed a great act of justice towards that ill-used gentleman, who has been subjected to such a series of ante-natal inflictions-poor Mr. Posterity. H.

THE BARD'S SONG TO HIS DAUGHTER.

O DAUGHTER dear, my darling child,
Prop of my mortal pilgrimage,
Thou who hast care and pain beguiled,
And wreathed with Spring my wintry age,-
Through thee a second prospect opes
Of life, when but to live is glee,
And jocund joys, and youthful hopes,

Come thronging to my heart through thee.

Backward thou lead'st me to the bowers

Where love and youth their transports gave;

While forward still thou strewest flowers,
And bidst me live beyond the grave;
For still my blood in thee shall now,
Perhaps to warm a distant line,
Thy face, my lineaments shall show,

And e'en my thoughts survive in thine.
Yes, Daughter, when this tongue is mute,
This heart is dust-these eyes are closed,
And thou art singing to thy lute

Some stanza by thy Sire composed,
To friends around thou may'st impart
A thought of him who wrote the lays,
And from the grave my form shall start,
Embodied forth to fancy's gaze.

Then to their memories will throng

Scenes shared with him who lies in earth,

The cheerful page, the lively song,

The woodland walk, or festive mirth;
Then may they heave the pensive sigh,
That friendship seeks not to controul,
And from the fix'd and thoughtful eye
The half unconscious tears may
roll:
Such now bedew my cheek-but mine
Are drops of gratitude and love,
That mingle human with divine,
The gift below, its source above.-
How exquisitely dear thou art

Can only be by tears exprest,

And the fond thrillings of my heart,
While thus I clasp thee to my breast.

H.

ON VAMPYRISM.

"Carpere dicuntur lactentia viscera rostris,
Et plenum poto sanguine guttur habent."

OVID.

VOLTAIRE was astonished that, in the eighteenth century, people should believe in vampyres; and that the doctors of the Sorbonne should give their imprimatur to a dissertation on these unpleasant personages. The philosopher of Ferney would scarcely have experienced less surprise had he lived to see them introduced into popular novels, represented as figuring at the drawing-room, shining in fashionable assemblies, favourites with the ladies, and this not alone in barbarous London, but forming the delight and admiration of elegant audiences in the superlatively polished capital of his own country. Indeed, their success among our refined and delicately-nerved neighbours has infinitely surpassed what they have met with among ourselves. We are not aware that many of our dramatists have hitherto attempted to draw tears from the pathetic amours of these interesting bloodsuckersthat 66 source of sympathetic tears has been only sparingly unlocked"and except the strange history of the "leaden-eyed" vampyre Lord Ruthven, which the circumstances attending its composition principally contributed to force into the hands of all the lovers of the marvellous, we are not aware that the "Broucolaca" has hitherto become a favourite in the English closet. But at Paris he has been received with rapturous applause at almost all the spectacles, from the Odeon to the Porte St. Martin; all the presses of the Palais Royal have for the last two years been employed in celebrating, and describing, and speculating on him and his adventures, and in putting forth perpetual nouveautés on all the cognate topics-" Infernal Dictionaries"- "Demoniana""Ombres Sanglantes"-" Diable peint par lui-même," &c. &c. Where are the descendants of the Encyclopædists and the worshippers of the goddess Reason, when Parisian readers and audiences are running mad after "loups-garoux" and " apparitions nocturnes," "cadavres mobiles," &c., all "puisées dans les sources réelles"? Thirty years ago, what bookseller in the Palais Royal would have risked the conflagration of his whole stock by exposing for sale any of these superstitious treasures drawn from sacred legends and monkish impositions? The revulsion has indeed been somewhat sudden, and does not tend to remove prevalent impressions on the instability of Parisian sentiments and opinions. From believing in the eternal sleep of death, and persecuting every one who hinted a suspicion unfavourable to the absolute supremacy of matter, it is rather a rapid bound to the study of demonolatry, and a lively interest in apparitions and spectres of all sorts.

If we are disposed to partake any interest in these subjects, it may, perhaps, be forgiven to us who have never professed ourselves votaries of Diderot and Bayle. We call our readers to witness, we have never said a syllable derogatory to the ghost of Mrs. Veal, or General Clavering, or any other respectable individual of spiritual memory. We have, therefore, a fair right, without inconsistency or fickleness, to say a few words on the subject of that most appalling of the whole corps demoniaque, the Vampyre. The belief in the existence of vampyres is one of the most extraordinary and most revolting superstitions which ever disturbed the brains of any semi-barbarous people. It is the

3

most frightful embodying of the principle of evil, the most terrific en carnation of the bad demon, which ignorance and fanaticism ever si tady gested to the weak and the deluded. It displays superstition in and

grossest and most unrelieved horrors.-Other creatures of fanati creation have a mixture of good and bad in their composition-th

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mischief is sometimes distinguished by sportiveness and mingled winee good humour-they are malicious, but not malignant-and the lightn halen

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and triviality of their spite against human nature is often united w an airiness of movement and a spirituality of character which ren mche them amusing, and often highly poetical.-Puck, Will-o'-th'-wisp, t' Bogles, the Ogres, the Nixies, and id genus omne, if they are to be co sidered as emanations of the Evil principle, are at least inspired with mu' of his drollery, and only a small portion of his gall and malignity;8 the Gnomes are sulky and splenetic persons, but there is a certain i en potence about them which prevents their becoming very terrific ;-raal, Lamia and the Larvæ of the ancients were, indeed, horrid creations1 but the latter were mere shadows, which takes off much of their mocoat strosity-but the Vampyre is a corporeal creature of blood and ultan. quenchable blood-thirst-a ravenous corpse, who rises in body and so re from his grave for the sole purpose of glutting his sanguinary appeti with the life-blood of those whos blood stagnates in his own veins. Fi is endowed with an incorruptible frame, to prey on the lives of his kiic t dred and his friends-he reappears among them from the world of th tomb, not to tell its secrets of joy or of woe, not to invite or to wapi by the testimony of his experience, but to appal and assassinate tho who were dearest to him on earth-and this, not for the gratificatioce of revenge or any human feeling, which, however depraved, might fin'!" something common with it in human nature, but to banquet a hlstrous thirst acquired in the tomb, and which, though he walks in hr, man form and human lineaments, has swallowed up every human motiv in its brutal ferocity. The corporeal grossness, the substantiali "palpable to feeling as to sight," of this monster of superstition, reri? ders it singularly terrific, and lays hold on the mind with a sense shuddering and sanguinary horror which belongs to few of the aëria demons of imagination, however ghastly or malignant. Fancy, (fc such tricks will flit across the fancy of the least superstitious)-fancin your friend with whom you are walking arm-in-arm, or your mistres on whose bosom your head reposes, a spirit-a Gnome or an Undineor any mere spirit--the idea is startling; if pursued it may lead aa i active imagination to a disagreeable sense of the possibility of happi ness being an imposition, and pleasure "an unreal mockery,"-but it ry not overpoweringly painful;-but let the idea of your companion or you're mistress being a Vampyre cross the brain-the blood would run chil and every sense be oppressed by the bare supposition, childish and absurd as it would be felt to be

" 'twould shake the disposition

With thoughts beyon the reaches of our souls."

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ad

We remember once spending t vo days at Brighton at the same hotent with a renowned old money-lender. The man was lean and stooping,-td dressed in rusty black-with grey hairs that inspired no respect-s dull large grey eye" without speculation," (unless, perhaps, at the look

!

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a post-obit)-hollow cheeks, a vulture nose, and a blotchy truculent rt of complexion, which, with long clawy hands, made up a character most uninviting appearance. He was quite alone-prowled about great deal with a quiet creeping step-spoke little-read the papersId never took above two meals in a day, which, indeed, he seemed sho order more for form than any thing else, as his daily consumption shortainly could not extend to two ounces. There was altogether somesoning repulsive to sympathy about this old Shylock; and whether or lespt from any involuntary associations connected with his known prorepssion (which certainly of itself might entitle him to succeed to the seristinction of the monks, whom Voltaire called the modern vampyres), Lor more, as we believe, from his red hollow cheeks, adunc nose, and in mall appetite for butchers' meat, we wrote this man down in our imasucnation a Vampyre. We involuntarily avoided meeting him, and felt nit uch disposed to think that his nightly abode was in the buryingno round of St. James, or St. Martin, and that he was only at Brighton tean a foraging excursion, not in quest of title-deeds and annuity-bonds, thaut of the richer dainties which the assemblage of youth of both sexes annight afford to a being of his presumed propensities. Our acquaintRince with vampyres at that period wasbut slight--had we then known all cove have since learnt of them, we should infallibly have given informaweon at the Pavilion of the suspiciou ampyrio-fœnerator, and have taken vo place in the Dart with all possible speed. Not long after this cirrajumstance, we (yes we, the magnificent we) were at a ball in London, Pand, with a modest resignation of our collective dignity, were forming twhot a whole quadrille, but, one in a quadrille together with a young lady inpf a mind and person both exquisitely poetical. She complained of ompeing fatigued, saying, as she sat down on a sofa, "I was up half last "night."-" Were you dancing ?" was the reply. "No! I was reading arCalmet on Vampyres with my brother!!"-Calmet on Vampyres, in gouch a scene of brilliance, and beauty, and innocent and splendid enaftoyment! Calmet on Vampyres perused by the midnight lamp by & those pure and lovely eyes of the blue of sixteen summers! What a secontrast of images!--The book was bought and read. wi Next to the famous Mississippi scheme of Law, Vampyrism appears to drhave become the ruling mania in France and in Europe. From the year ha1730 to 1735 vampyres formed the general topic of argument and specuvalation. Pamphlets were published on them-the journals continually denitailed fresh prodigies achieved by them-the philosophers scoffed at them ev-sovereigns sent officers and commissioners to enquire into their terrimfic proceedings. Hungary, Poland, Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia, were arthe favourite scenes of their appearance and exploits. The people of these countries, sunk in the most abject ignorance, and living in a conpedition and on a coarse food little above the brutes, placed implicit faith of in these wonders. A vampyre haunted and tormented almost every sa village. Deceased fathers and mothers, who had reposed for years in ve their graves, appeared again at their dwellings-knocked at the doors, ha sat down to table in silence, ate litle or nothing, sometimes nodded a significantly at some unfortunate relation in token of their approaching de death, struck them on the back, or sprang on their bellies or throats, is and sucked draughts of blood from their veins. In general, however, ev this last consummation of vampyrism was left as an inference from