from the impression made upon him, the permanent qualities of mind are to deduce some general principles re- displayed: his art, therefore, should specting the arts of painting and sta- be confined to the representation of tuary. He has, with considerable that permanent character of which judgment, traced the character of the they are expressive. different schools of painting to the cir. 2. While such is the object to cumstances and character of the coun- which statuary would appear to be try in which cach originated. He makes destined, painting embraces a wider the following general conclusions :

range, and is capable of more varied

expression : it is expressive of the *1. That the object of statuary living form; it paints the eye and should ever be the same to which it opens the view of the present mind; was always confined by the ancients, it imitates all the fleeting changes viz.-the representation of character. which constitute the signs of present The very materials on which the emotion. It is not, therefore, an sculptor has to operate, render his art abstraction of character which the unfit for the expression either of emo- painter is to represent; not an ideal tion or passion; and the figure, when form, expressive only of the qualities finished, can bear none of the marks by of permanent character; but an actual which they are to be distinguished. It being, alive to the impressions of preis a feature of cold, and pale, and life- sent existence, and bound by the ties less marble; without the varied colour of present affection. It is in the dewhich emotion produces, or the living lineation of these affections, therefore, eye which passion animates. The eye that the powers of the painter princi

a figure which is expressive of pre- pally consists ; in the representation, sent emotion; it is it which varies not of simple character, but of cha. with all the changes which the mind racter influenced or subdued by emoundergoes; it is it which marks the tion. It is the representation of the difference between joy and sorrow, joy of youth, or the repose of age; of between love and hatred, between the sorrow of innocence, or the penipleasure and pain, between life and tence of guilt ; of the tenderness of death. But the eye, with all the parental affection, or the gratitude endless expressions which it bears, is of filial love. In these, and a thoulost to the sculptor ; its gaze must, sand other instances, the expression of ever be cold and lifeless to him ; its the emotion constitutes the beauty of fire is quenched in the stillness of the the picture; it is that which gives tomb. A statue, therefore, can never the tone to the character which it is be expressive of living emotion; it to bear; it is that which strikes the can never express those transient feel. chord which vibrates in every human ings which mark the play of the living heart. The object of the painter, mind. It is an abstraction of charac- therefore, is the expression of emotion, ter which has no relation to present of that emotion which is blended with existence ; a shadow, in which all the the character of the mind, which permanent features of the mind are feels, and gives to that character the expressed, but none of the passions of interest which belongs to the events the mind are shewn: like the figures of present existence,' of snow, which the magic of Okba formed to charm the solitude of Lei- We shall not pursue the extract, la's dwelling, it bears the character because we do not agree with the wriof the human form, but melts at the ter in the limitations which he places warmth of human feeling. The power upon the power of the art, at the same of the sculptor is limited to the deli- time that our limits would not permit neation of those signs alone by which us to enter into the discussion. Oct. 1815.

II. Con

II. Consolation, with other Poems. Dared not essay to imitate the sounds
By the Rev. WILLIAM GILLESPIE. Religion ! with our race did’st dwell, anf

Inimitable, Thou, celestial maid, 8vo. 12s. Constable & Co.

madest

Even Paradise more fair; and still thy MR GILLESPIE is already known as smile,

a respectable adventurer in the Though banished now from Eden and from difficult field of didactic poetry. Con

bliss sidered simply in itself, the task of

We live, irradiates every storm of life,

And gives us back the peace which we have conveying information or instruction

lost.' through the medium of verse, is not

• Not only in the tranquil noon of life, very likely to be generally relished. By fortune blest, and when the lightsome To gratify the imagination with plea- heart sing images, is almost invariably the Is free to muse o'er Nature's various range, object of him who begins the per- Thou charmest the soul; chief in misforusal of a poem. If information be his Thou gild'st the pilgrim's dreary path foraim, he will generally prefer the per- Jorn, spicuity and simplicity of plain prose. Soothing with that blest peace the drooping For this reason, we suspect the writer

beart, of pure didactic poetry to lose sight Prov'st to the wretch a friend, a better home

The world can neither give nor take away : of the genuine ohject of the art. It To the lone exile shewest, and from the does not follow, however, that abstract cheek subjects are not susceptible of beco. Of pallid sorrow wipest the trickling tear. ming the theme of a poem. But it As stars that scarce through twilight's minis not in any proportion to their phi. Reveal their twinkling gems, that brighter losophical interest or importance, but glow solely according to the scope which As falls the night, so brighter to the view they afford for the display of imagery Thou call'st our virtues forth in adverse and sentiment. In this respect, the

hour : two pieces which principally compose His giant strength, so ʼmid the storms of

Or as the oak most in the tempest provas Mr Gillespie's volume, are certainly unexceptionable. The first and most Best thou, Religion, shewest thy .conquerextensive is entitled “Consolation,"

ing power.' and its object is to shey the influence of religion upon the various ills to which Its influence is first considered on life is subject. The poen opens with the miseries of long-protracted sickan invocation to this precious and all-ness. Among several illustrations powerful principle.

here employed, the following appears

to us the best :In Eden's lovely bowers, ere yet our sires Knew guilt or woe, when the young Earth * And what can comfort thee, ill-fated so fair

man! Won angels down to tread its blooming Sad prisoner! to the dreary couch confined sward,

Of sorrow and disease? Those dry parched And talk with man; when the meandering lips,

Those sallow cheeks, and anxious looks beRan music, and the smiles more soft re- tray turned

The fever of thy heart. Despair of health Of heaven and nature; when the fanning is in that drooping eye. Tsice fifteen gales

fate

stream:

The cob-webbed beams that cross thy cham- As if some spirit of the desert urged ber's roof,

Their gloomy course, which it were death And the dull light that through thy case to meet.'

ment gleams, Where, sometimes, the sweet chirp of pass

This naturally introduces the sufing lark Recals, warm as a sun-beam, o'er thy heart

ferings of Park, and the fortitude and The cheerful morn of youth for ever fled. resignation with which he endured Long by the world forgot, even by thy and surmounted them. The fate of friends

the prisoner is next surveyed. Scarce thought of now; what is that world

to thee? A joyless interchange of day and night,

• And dear art thou, Religion! heavenly Whose only pleasure is repose from pain,

maid ! A life's most welcome prospect is its close.

To himn who pines amid the dungeon's Say what can comfort thee, but the fond gloom, hope

From nature, kindred, liberty, shut out. That thou, from all thy trials, meekly borne,

Forlorn he sits, and through the still dark of patience and submission, shalt be blest night With the glad smiles of an approving God?

Sad hears his prison-bell with sullen sound. Drear is this scene, that here, thou might'st Tell the long weary, hours. When morn's, not place

pale beam Thy sole regard. Thy country this is not, Pour'd through his grated wicket's, narrow Too much enjoyment might allure thy steps

frame, To linger on their path, and make the voice

Falls on his meagre check, and dimly shows Unwelcome that should call thee to depart.

The dismal walls that hide him from the But the rude storms that on thy journey

world. beat,

He thinks, with bitter heart, how many an Make thee to hail its close, and send thy eye thoughts

That morn shall bless, which brings but Before thee to thy home, where smile for

woe to him; thee

Then counts how long it is since he has seen Delicious prospects of immortal Spring,

The rising sun, or heard a kinsman's voice, Where youth and joy are knit to endless love,

Inhaled the morning breeze, or looked Where even remembered woe is bliss, and

abroad,

O'er all the green and smiling face of things. Pain, sorrow, or disease, to vex no more.' Angel of Peace! then is he cheered by thee

With hope of happier worlds. Wretched to

him The loss of furtune and worldly

And drear this life has been ; even Nature's prosperity comes next under review;

self, whence the poet is insensibly led to So kind to all, has hid from him her face. i consider the most forlorn and desert Yet thou to him reveal'st that welcome

shore ed situations of human life.

Where rests the weary-where the oppres

sor's voice • Yes! to the wretch Religion proves a The prisoner hears no more, but from his friend.

chains Oft has she chcered the pilgrim in the wild And bondage freed, unfettered as the wing Benighted; or at noon with devious path,

Of fancy, shall ke trace Creation's bounds; Through sandy wastes immeasurable led ; From star to star direct his boundless fight, Where fows no cooling brook, no spreading Blest in his conscious power, blest in the

smiles Yields from the parching glare a welcome Of worth-approving Heaven, and joyful reap sbade,

The glorious meed by suffering virtue won.' But prowls the spotted tyger fierce and fell, With eyes of fire, and jaws that thirst for blood;

The various perils and disasters of Where blows the hot simoom with deadly a sea-faring life afford now an ample breath,

theme for the picture of distress.-Or whirlwinds, which the sands in pillars We give only some part of the heave

repre°7'wixt heaven and earthi, moving the hori. sentation of a shipwrecked muiner. zon round;

cast alone upon a desert isle.

comes

palm

• Oft, when the moon with melancholy Even in thy careless boyhood have I marked beam

Thy nobler daring, which nor pale disease Shone on the midnight swell, swift would Nor penury could repress; whom Genius he start

nursed From his lone couch of leaves, and eye afar Even on the mountain wild, beside the The glistening waves, that, like his trans stream sient hopes,

Of lone Palnure, and as with eagle's flight Alternate rose and fell: oft stoop to hear (Which oft thine infant eye traced through Each sound that broke the stillness of the the storms, night,

The emblem of thy rise) thee born to fame! As the surge echoed 'mid the oozy caves Then weeping saw thy glory's transient Of his lone isle. But ship, alas! came none, blaze Nor even one distant sail shone to the moon Gleam a sad halo round thine honoured To nurse his dying hopes; but met his eye tomb.' The wilderness of waters cold and sad, Save when the pale ghosts of his shipwrecked mates

From this subject, a natural tranSkimmed o'er the deep, and whispered in sition leads the poet to the annihilathe blast.

tion of all mortal evils in a future Thus Ocean's exile wore his life away

state of existence; the glowing and Unpitied and unknown ; till from kind pious anticipations of which form the

Heaven
Came fair Religion as an angel down,

concluding part of the poem. To nurse, console, and cheer his drooping The subject of the next poem, Na. heart.'

ture, affords a still wider, and indeed

almost unbounded scope, for poetical Seduction, and all its train of guilt illustration. Those magnificent oband misery, affords now a lengthened jects which Astronomy presents, seem tale of woe. At last comes the final to attract the greatest share of the and most dreaded evil, Death itself.

poet's attention. Among the different examples of its fatal dominion, the author, recurring • Now let me mark, while through the to the friends of whom it has deprived spacious vault him, commemorates two names justly One starry lustre glows from pole to pole, dear to science.

The planets, moving round their monarch The friends of other years,

Harmonious; smiling to the source of light With whose fond names in recollection sweet

As on they march, nor lose their path in

heaven. Rolls back each scene of youth, have passed

Around them hung, their own attendant away,

orbs And memory only dwells upon the dead.

Keep constant watch ; while stars of fainter Far from thy country, from the osier wave

beam, Of Tiviot, that first heard thy Doric pipe.

Themselves the mighty suns of other worlds, With whom till midnight have I often spent The mirthful hours, with whom indulged

Burn ever round; from whose far.distant

bourn the dreams Of Same, alas ! prophetic but of thine !

A ray of light, shot at the natal hour

Of this our earth, had not yet reached its Cold, cold thou liest on Java's distant shore,

sphere. Too dearly purchased by the loss of thee, Oh Leyden ! early prescient of thy doom ;

Ye planets ! twinkling constellations! stars!

That light the dewy chambers of the East, By Genius mourned, by Science, and the

And silent as the feet of hoary Time
Muse;

Slide on your lueid wheels; ye vestal lamps! By every friend, and more by none than

That in the spacious temple of your God him The most obscure, who now deplores thy

Emit your holy fires ; bright eyes of heaven!

Oh! how expressive do you speak that Soul, fate.

That lives, and moves, and rules, and smiles And thou, his peer, even by the gift of

in all !' tongues Not favoured less, nor less by Science mourned,

The influence of light is thus celeCompanion of my earliest life, in whom brated :

• Whether,

suns

her way ;

Whether, Oh Light ! thou bid the orient

II. blush

Now the gales Hesperian blow; As thou unveil'st its beauties to the day,

While the soft refreshing showers, Or on the dewy lap of spring unfold

Nurse the cups of opening flowers, Flowers of unnumbered dyes; whether thou

That in warmer radiance glow; pour

While fitting swift, in circlets gay, Thy scattered rays among the shadowy woods,

Countless songsters hail the Spring : Showing their graceful shapes, or on the Or in the torrent's drizzling spray stream

Laves each bird her wing. Sparkle with trembling lustre; or swift Aing

Then the cuckoo's fitful call Lines of bright hue along the distant main,

Breaks each pause at evening fall : As soft it mingles with the evening sky;

And the pilgrim, lonely musing, Or smile from beauty's form, and fair reveal

Marks, while eve is soft diffusing, The face divine, the mirror of the soul:

On the upland heaths so dun Whether thou in the bow of heaven untwine

Lines of crackling flame to runo, Thy lovely beam of seven refracted hues,

Shine on the lake with bright reflected raya, Shining in brightness through the gemmy

Illume the mountain top, and round the shower;

welkin blaze. Light the wan moon along the starry road, Or gild the swimming clouds that cross

III. Still dost thou charm, for nought so sweet

Through the azure mist of morn, as thou,

Sweet, oh Spring, thy charms to view ! Bright messenger, that show'st his God to

Sweet to see the spangling dew

Gem the flower and pointed thorn; man, Waft'st him to heaven on fond devotion's

Sweet to see its blossoms strewed wings,

Thick as snow-flakes on the gale :

All is music in the wood,
To adore the brighter source from whence
thou flow'st.'

And gladness in the dale:
Sweet the lark aloft to hear,

Welcome in the new-born year ;
Comparing then the insignificance

And the swain, in rustic measure, of the works of art with those stupen

Greet the reign of Love and Pleasure ; dous ones of nature, the poet infers the And mid sylvan dells, how sweet unrivalled greatness of the Being by Shepherd's song and lambkin's bleat ! whom these were created.

But sweeter on that smiling Love to rest

That bids all Nature bloom, and all her sons The smaller poems are in consider

be blest. able number, and some of them not

IV. at all inferior to the large ones.Among these, one of the most pleasing Spring! with thee I love to wend

By the primrose-tufted bank, is Spring, an Ode, which, as it is of

Daisy-pied, with sedges rank, no great length, we shall here insert.

That to drink the streamlet bend ;
I.

Or to note each dew-sprent flower

Fair evolving to the day ; • Breathing odours, smiling love, Comes the young and gentle Spring,

Or the rainbow-painted shower

In heaven dissolve away.
And around her stoops to fling
Wreaths of clustering lilies wove,

Spring! thou emblem sweet and true And the snow-drop on her breast,

Of my youth, when all was new,
Wears its emblem sweet and fair ;

All was new, and all was smiling,
With daisies decks her emerald vest,

Lovely all, and all beguiling.
With primroses her hair.

Though since fled the fairy scene,
She comes in all her youthful pride!

Mine has inany a sorrow been ; Freshness blooming at her side;

Yet, moved with kindred sympathy, I hail Blushing Beauty next advancing,

Thy glad return, and breathe thy health-inRound her all the Graces dancing ;

spiring gale.

Το And Fancy in her rainbow-dye,

And rosy Health and laughing Joy ; And Hope, delighted, views the brightening Alluding to the practice in Scotland of scene,