⚫ Shuddering he mark'd, - but soon collected spoke :
"Not yet, oh Astaroth! not yet the day
That frees immortals from my earthly yoke:
Stili art thou bound, and still thou must obey.
Hear then my last command! Henceforth be broke
The mighty spell, and melt in air way,

So now my potent bidding thou fulfil —

Hear then, submissive! hear, and do my will.
"First teach me, for thou canst, since Charles hath gone,
Reckless of danger, to the coast of Spain,
And he the great defender of his throne,
Abides the Moor on Roncesvalles' plain,
What doom is in the rolls of fate foreshown?
What is the doom of France and Charlemain ?
Say doth the dæmon of destruction lower,
With treason leagued, o'er all the Christian power?"
"Master! → so still thou art !"—the fiend replied, -
(For that determined voice recall'd the day
When magic bound for his rebellious pride
Seven years within the rifted rock he lay,)-
Things are there in the womb of fate denied
To spiritual ken as sense of mortal clay :
The past and present are our own; but eye
Of creature never pierced futurity."'—
"Yet what I can my master may command-
Know then that all the circling air is dense
With spirits, each his astrolabe in hand,
Searching the hidden ways of Providence.
For from his throne in Scorpio o'er the land
Now gloomy Mars sheds baleful influence,
Portending chances terrible and strange,
Treason and blood to man, to empires change.

66

"Yes, in that heavenly sign I see pourtray'd
The massacre of nations, and the fall

Of mighty states, and man by man betray'd,
And many a prince's bloody funeral.

Hast thou not mark'd yon comet, that array'd

In sanguine lustre rules this nightly ball?

All this and worse that sanguine beam foreshows,

A long interminable train of woes."

At last, however, the enchanter obtains the secret of the plot for the destruction of the French army, sends the dæmon for Rinaldo to Egypt, and hastens himself to Roncesvalles to give the alarm. He meets Oliver, and thus addresses him:

• Him when the enchanter saw, as on the brow
Of a projecting precipice he stood,
Fixing his eyes on empty space below
But inly rapt in his own gloomy mood,

Through

Through a disguise so strange he could not know;
And who had known, in that wild solitude,
With eyes so fixt and looks so wan and drear,
The flower of knighthood, gallant Olivier ?
• Like one unknown upon his path he came,
And thus in few and hasty words addrest :
"Go, wake yon eagle! for the aspiring flame
Already mounts, and fires his royal nest:
Treason hath writ in blood Orlando's name,
And Hell is busy with the coming feast.
Go, wake yon eagle! for the toils are spread,
And the proud fowler marks him for the dead."
Orlando also has a warning, but in vain :

"Arm, arm! Orlando, arm! Above, around,
On every side, his toils hath Treason traced."
Scared from his slumbers at the startling sound,
Soon has the valiant knight his armour braced,
And climb'd with toilsome speed the highest ground;
And thither Anselm, Sansonetto, haste;
Gualtier and youthful Baldwin too are there,
Astolpho, and the gentle Berlinghier.

Above, below, around, on every side,

They cast their eager and inquiring eyes;

But void and waste extend the mountains wide,
And void and waste the silent valley lies,

As at the hour when the Creator cried

"Be spread, ye valleys! and, ye mountains, rise!"-
"Oh Oliver! what vision, wild and vain,

My friend, my brother! hath disturb'd thy brain?"

• Another day, another night are o'er,

And Oliver his watch-tower mounts again:
The hills are void and silent as before,
And void and silent as before, the plain.
He warns Orlando of his fate once more,
And once again he finds his warning vain;
Then solitary and dejected strays

Till the third day-star o'er the mountains plays.
Above, below, around, on every side,
He turns his eyes; and sees reflected shine
The beaming light from war's advancing tide,
Sees o'er the hills the interminable line
Of steel clad squadrons wind in martial pride,
Seeming in one bright girdle to confine
All that devoted vale, the closing stage,
To many a knight, of earth's loved pilgrimage.
Too late Orlando owns the truth, too late
For wise retreat, or provident defence:
Yet not a signal of his coming fate

But swells his bosom with a nobler sense; REV. Nov. 1814.

X

And

And not a partner of his perilous state

But feels a martyr's holy confidence,

While, warm and strengthening like celestial food,
Flows from his lips the stream of Christian fortitude.'

The third canto opens with the battle:

But who shall speak the terrors of that hour,
When, as o'er Libya's hot and thirsty land
Moves, bursts, and falls, the self-erected tower,
And whelms whole armies in a waste of sand,
So dark and dreadful, o'er the Moorish power,
Hung great Orlando's desolating hand,
And, with unerring aim, where'er it fell,
Laid bare some new and fearful path to hell!
"From morn till noon, from noon till dewy night,"
With unabated rage the contest glow'd;
And not a Christian in that bloody fight
Gave up to Heaven the sacrifice he ow'd,
But first, in glorious witness of the right,
From Pagan breasts a plenteous current flow'd,
And ghastly heaps on heaps of slaughter'd foes
A monument of Heaven's stern justice rose.

The God of battles, that tremendous day,
Look'd from his throne of vengeance o'er the field,
And scatter'd wild confusion and dismay

From the red terrors of his blazing shield:
'Tis said,― (the crowd believes what zealots say,)–
The archangel's self, to human eyes reveal'd,

In radiant armour, on a snow white horse,

Thrice rallied to the charge the Christian force."

In the fourth canto, Rinaldo is conveyed from Egypt through the air to Roncesvalles, the sight of whom surprizes Orlando; yet the addition of this champion cannot turn the fatal tide of war. The poet, however, takes occasion to advert very happily to our recent successes in the Pyrenees:

Yet at the last a prouder day shall dawn,

O Roncesvalles ! on thy blighted name;

When Treason, to her secret haunts withdrawn,
Shall mourn her conquests past in present shame :
Fresh laurels shall o'ercanopy the lawn
With grateful shade, and fairest flowers of fame
Start from each barren cleft and sun-burnt cave,
To wreathe immortal chaplets for the brave.

But not for France shall swell the solemn strain
Of triumph; not, degenerate France, for thee!
Thy fame is past; and treason's foulest stain
Blots out thy light of ancient chivalry.

Lo!

Lo! Britain leads the glorious chase, and Spain
From all her mountain summits follows free,
Leagued in just vengeance for a blacker crime
Than e'er defiled the rolls of elder Time.'

Into the fifth canto, the bloody conflict between the Chris tians and the Moors is extended, and it concludes with the death of the far-famed Orlando: but this portion of the romance, though it closely follows the originals from which Mr. M. copies, is surely too outré for the most extravagant modern poetic faith.

Beyond all doubt, this poem displays great execution; and, though Mr. Merivale probably will not approve our endeavour to damp his passion for the Italian romance, we must say that we should be happy to find his Muse more nobly employed. We trust that he will afford us an opportunity of reporting of him,

"That not in Fancy's maze he wander'd long,

But stoop'd to Truth, and moralized his song."

ART. XI. Memoirs of the private and public Life of William Penne By Thomas Clarkson, M.A. 2 Vols. 8vo. pp. 1020. 11. 49. Boards. Longman and Co. 1813.

ON

N presenting for contemplation such men as William Penn and Thomas Clarkson, human nature seems indeed " ad sidera tollere vultus" with conscious dignity; and to overlook, in this proud moment, the dirt and filth of ordinary characters. We join these men together, because both appear to be imbued with the same spirit of Christian benevolence, both have equally despised the low cunning and corrupt policy of the world, and both have been alike strongly convinced of the importance of the pure and sublime principles of the gospel of Christ to the happiness of individuals and communities. No one could write the life of William Penn with more satisfaction to himself, and with more justice to his hero, than Thomas Clarkson, through whose soul the meek and amiable temper of Quakerism seems to be diffused; and, if. departed spirits are conscious of what is passing in this lower world, Penn himself must be delighted on having found so congenial a biographer.

Such a publication as that which is now before us is worth a thousand common memoirs. It affords a picture on which the philosophic Christian can dwell with pleasure; and which, in spite of surrounding baseness and profligacy, encourages a hope of the moral amelioration of the world. Indeed, the noble, example here displayed ought not only to teach us the high

moral

moral capabilities of the human mind, but it ought to be so emblazoned as to inspire, if possible, all classes of society with a conviction of the superlative excellence of virtue. Every opportunity should be embraced for exhibiting Man as he can be, and Man as he ought to be. Some writers, however, think that they are justified, while deploring the extreme prevalence of vice, in degrading human nature as inherently vile: not duly reflecting that a natural inaptitude or incapacity for virtue exonerates from crime; and that, on their view of the case, we can as little expect to give any moral brilliancy to the mind as polish to a block of Portland stone. Here we must reason from exceptions. Fallen or degraded as is the state of man, some luminous spots now and then appear as glorious proofs of the possibility of mental cultivation, on which we ought to fix our regards; and, if some instances convince us of the mean and vicious state to which human beings can be debased, let others instruct us to what an elevation of intellect and virtue they may be exalted. It must be confessed that, in the world as it is, more occurs to relax than to give a proper tone to the moral principle: but, if such a principle naturally exists, of which we can have no doubt, we should resist its relaxation and rouse its energies. By exhibiting the Memoirs of William Penn, the biographer, who, as we have said, is morally the counterpart of his hero, reads a lecture to the professing Christian world of which it is much in want, and which, we hope, will not be thrown away.

If something visionary pervaded the minds of William Penn and the first apostles of Quakerism, when they cherished the belief that they had a divine commission for the restoration of Christianity, and if something not clearly definable appertains to their cardinal principle of inward light, (unless they mean by this phrase a powerful impression of duty to follow the pure light of the spirit of God, as revealed in the gospel of Christ,) it must be recorded of them, to their immortal honour, that their creed contained no errors which debased or vitiated their own minds, or which operated to the injury of others. They may be regarded as a sect of Christian Stoics; who, in spite of the frowns and rebuffs of all around them, nobly preferred pure virtue and conscious integrity to all sublunary considerations; and who, in a manner rarely seen since the days of the apostles, evinced a degree of patience, equanimity, and meekness, under the most cruel and irritating sufferings, which excited astonishment and awakened remorse in the flinty hearts even of their persecutors. The first Quakers may be said to have vanquished their enemies by the placid dignity with which they met reproaches, buffetings, fines, and imprisonments;-a dignity