heated his enemies and cooled his friends, his indeed may be called a scorn, but surely not a just scorn of his fellow-mortals.

But bidding adieu to politics, that extensive gulf whose eddies draw every thing that is British into their vortex, we follow with pleasure Childe Harold's wanderings up the enchanting valley of the Rhine:

'There Harold gazes on a work divine,

A blending of all beauties, streams, and dells,

Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine,
And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells

From gray, but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells.'

These ruins, once the abodes of the robber-chivalry of the Ger man frontier, where each free count and knight exercised within his petty domain the power of a feudal sovereign, call forth from the poet an appropriate commemoration of the exploits and character of their former owners. In a softer mood, the Pilgrim pours forth his greetings to one kind breast, in whom he can yet repose his sorrows, and hope for responsive feelings. The fall of Marceau is next commemorated; and Harold, passing with a fond adieu from the Rhin-thal, plunges into the Alps, to find among their recesses scenery yet wilder, and better suited to one who sought for loneliness in order to renew

'Thoughts hid, but not less cherished than of old,

Ere mingling with the herd had penn'd "him" in their fold.' The next theme on which the poet rushes is the character of the enthusiastic, and, as Lord Byron well terms him, ' self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau,' a subject naturally suggested by the scenes in which that unhappy visionary dwelt, at war with all others, and by no means at peace with himself; an affected contemner of polished society, for whose applause he secretly panted, and a waster of eloquence in praise of the savage state in which his paradoxical reasoning, and studied, if not affected declamation, would never have procured him an instant's notice. In the following stanza his character and foibles are happily treated.

LXXX.

'His life was one long war with self-sought foes,
Or friends by him self-banish'd; for his mind
Had grown Suspicion's sanctuary, and chose
For its own cruel sacrifice, the kind,

'Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind.
But he was phrenzied,-wherefore, who may know?
Since cause might be which skill could never find;
But he was phrenzied by disease or wo,

To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show.'

In another part of the poem this subject is renewed, where the traveller visits the scenery of La Nouvelle Eloïse.

Clarens, sweet Clarens, birth-place of deep love,

Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought,
Thy trees take root in love; the snow above
The very Glaciers have his colours caught,
And sun-set into rose-hues sees them wrought,
By rays which sleep there lovingly.'

There is much more of beautiful and animated description, from which it appears that the impassioned parts of Rousseau's romance have made a deep impression upon the feelings of the noble poet. The enthusiasm expressed by Lord Byron is no small tribute to the power possessed by Jean Jaques over the passions and to say truth, we needed some such evidence, for, though almost ashamed to avow the truth, which is probably very much to our own discredit,-still, like the barber of Midas, we must speak or die-we have never been able to feel the interest or discover the merit of this far-famed performance. That there is much eloquence in the letters we readily admit; there lay Rousseau's strength. But his lovers, the celebrated St. Preux and Julie, have, from the earliest moment we have heard the tale (which we well remember) down to the present hour, totally failed to interest us. There might be some constitutional hardness of heart: but like Lance's pebble-hearted cur, Crab, we remained dry-eyed while all wept around us. And still, on resuming the volume, even now, we can see little in the loves of these two tiresome pedants to interest our feelings for either of them; we are by no means flattered by the character of Lord Edward Bomston, produced as the representative of the English nation, and, upon the whole, consider the dulness of the story as the best apology for its exquisite immorality. To state our opinion in language much better than our own, we are unfortunate enough to regard this far-famed history of philosophical gallantry as an unfashioned, indelicate, sour, gloomy, ferocious medley of pedantry and lewdness; of metaphysical speculations, blended with the coarsest sensuality."* Neither does Rousseau claim a higher rank with us on account of that Pythian and frenetic inspiration which vented

'Those oracles which set the world in flame,

Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more.'

We agree with Lord Byron that this frenzied sophist, reasoning upon false principles, or rather presenting that show of reasoning

* Letter to a Member of the National Assembly.

which is the worst pitch of madness, was a primary apostle of the French Revolution; nor do we differ greatly from his lordship's conclusion that good and evil were together overthrown in that volcanic explosion. But when Lord Byron assures us, that after the successive changes of government by which the French legislators have attempted to reach a theoretic perfection of constitution, mankind must and will begin the same work anew, in order to do it better and more effectually, we devoutly hope the experiment, however hopeful, may not be renewed in our time, and that the fixed passion' which Childe Harold describes as holding his breath,' and awaiting the atoning hour,' will choke in his purpose ere that hour arrives. Surely the voice of dear-bought experience should now at length silence, even in France, the clamour of empirical philosophy. Who would listen a moment to the blundering mechanic who should say, 'I have burned your house down ten times in the attempt, but let me once more disturb your old-fashioned chimneys and vents, in order to make another trial, and I will pledge myself to succeed in heating it upon the newest and most approved principle"?

The poem proceeds to describe, in a tone of great beauty and feeling, a night-scene witnessed on the Lake of Geneva; and each natural object, from the evening grasshopper to the stars, the poetry of heaven,' suggests the contemplation of the connexion between the Creator and his works. The scene is varied by the 'fierce and fair delight' of a thunder-storm, described in verse almost as vivid as its lightnings. We had marked it for transcript, as one of the most beautiful passages of the poem; but quotation must have bounds, and we have been already liberal. But the 'live thunder leaping among the rattling crags-the voice of mountains, as if shouting to each other-the plashing of the big rain-the gleaming of the wide lake, lighted like a phosphoric sea,-present a picture of sublime terror, yet of enjoyment, often attempted, but never so well, certainly never better, brought out in poetry. The Pilgrim reviews the characters of Gibbon and Voltaire, suggested by their residences on the lake of Geneva, and concludes by reverting to the same melancholy tone of feeling with which the poem commenced, Childe Harold, though not formally dismissed, glides from our observation; and the poet in his own person, renews the affecting address to his infant daughter :

CXV.

My daughter! with thy name this song begun-
My daughter! with thy pame thus much shall end.

I see thee not,-I hear thee not, but none

Can be so wrapt in thee; thou art the friend

To whom the shadows of far years extend:
Albeit my brow thou never should'st behold,
My voice shall with thy future visions blend,
And reach into thy heart,-when mine is cold,-
A token and a tone, even from thy father's mould.'

He proceeds in the same tone for several stanzas, and then concludes with this paternal benediction:

'Sweet be thy cradled slumbers o'er the sea,
And from the mountains where I now respire,
Fain would I waft such blessings upon thee,

As with a sigh I deem thou might'st have been to me.'

Having finished the analysis of this beautiful poem, we have the difficult and delicate task before us, of offering some remarks on the tone and feeling in which it is composed. But before dis charging this part of our duty, we must give some account of the other fasciculus with which the fertile genius of Lord Byron has supplied us.

The collection to which the Prisoner of Chillon gives name, inferior in interest to the continuation of Childe Harold, is marked, nevertheless, by the peculiar force of Lord Byron's genius. It consists of a series of detached pieces, some of them fragments, and rather poetical prolusions, than finished and perfect poems. › Some of our readers may require to be informed, that Chillon, which gives name to the first poem, is a castle on the lake of Geneva, belonging of old to the dukes of Savoy, employed by them during the dark ages, as a state prison, and furnished of course with a tremendous range of subterranean dungeons, with a chamber dedicated to the purpose of torture, and all the apparatus of feudal tyranny. Here the earlier champions of the Reformation were frequently doomed to expiate their heretical opi nions. Among the hardiest of these was Bonnivard, whom Lord Byron has selected as the hero of his poem. He was imprisoned in Chillon for nearly six years, from 1530, namely, to 1536, and underwent all the rigour of the closest captivity. But it has not been the purpose of Lord Byron to paint the peculiar character of Bonnivard, nor do we find any thing to remind us of the steady firmness and patient endurance of one suffering for conscience-sake. The object of the poem, like that of Sterne's celebrated sketch of the prisoner, is to consider captivity in the abstract, and to mark its effects in gradually chilling the mental powers as it benumbs and freezes the animal frame, until the unfortunate victim becomes, as it were, a part of his dungeon, and identified with his chains. This transmutation we believe to be founded on fact; at least in the Low Countries, where capital

punishments are never inflicted, and where solitary confinement for life is substituted in the case of enormous crimes, something like it may be witnessed. On particular days in the course of the year, these victims of jurisprudence which calls itself humane, are presented to the public eye upon a stage erected in the open market-place, apparently to prevent their guilt and their punishment from being forgotten. It is scarcely possible to witness a sight more degrading to humanity than this exhibition :—with matted hair, wild looks, and haggard features, with eyes dazzled by the unwonted light of the sun, and ears deafened and astounded by the sudden exchange of the silence of a dungeon for the busy hum of men, the wretches sit more like rude images fashioned to a fantastic imitation of humanity, than like living and reflecting beings. In the course of time we are assured they generally become either madmen or idiots, as mind or matter happens to predominate, when the mysterious balance between them is destroyed. But they who are subjected to such a dreadful punishment are generally, like most perpetrators of gross crimes, men of feeble internal resources. Men of talents like Trenck have been known, in the deepest seclusion, and most severe confinement, to battle the foul fiend melancholy, and to come off conquerors, during a captivity of years. Those who suffer imprisonment for the sake of their country or their religion have yet a stronger support, and may exclaim, though in a different sense from that of Othello

'It is the cause it is the cause, my soul.'

And hence the early history of the church is filled with martyrs, who, confident in the justice of their cause, and the certainty of their future reward, endured with patience the rigour of protracted and solitary captivity, as well as the bitterness of torture, and of death itself. This, however, is not the view which Lord Byron has taken of the character and captivity of Bonnivard, for which he has offered an apology in the following passage in the notes. When the foregoing poem was composed, I was not sufficiently aware of the history of Bonnivard, or I would have endeavoured to dignify the subject by an attempt to celebrate his courage and his virtues.' The theme of the poem is therefore the gradual effect of protracted captivity upon a man of powerful mind, tried at the same time by the successive deaths of his two brethren.

Bonnivard is represented as imprisoned with his brothers in a terrific dungeon in the Castle of Chillon. The second

pure of mind,

But formed to combat with his kind,'