expresses his want of the drawing; by touching the drawing, he expresses his want of the object.Signs are thus made the representations and symbols of things that are absent, and pave the way most commodiously for the knowledge of letters. This, in reality, is acquired by writing the letters, by which any of the above signs are spelt, against the drawings or signs themselves, and exciting and renewing the attention of the pupil to them till he is acquainted as deeply with their representative power as with that of the drawings or hieroglyphics. To acquaint him with the order in which they occur in the alphabet, and with the difference between vowels and consonants, he is gradually taught the idea that the former have a binding or connecting power over the latter, without the exercise of which they could never be united into words, or become symbolical of things. The letters of the alphabet, are, therefore, on this account, divided by M. Sicard into connecting and connected, as terms far more familiar and easy to be comprehended by his pupil than the terms vowels and consonants; the power of each vowel or connecting letter is discovered to him by frequent reference to a variety of words in which it occurs, and the meaning of which is first of all taught by introducing the things for which they stand, or their representative drawings. Some deviation is also made in the accustomed order of the consonants of the alphabet, for the sake of greater simplicity and expedition in learning: the pupil is instructed, in the first instance, to regard P and B as letters whose power, in pronunciation, is nearly similar; C, Q, K, and G, are, in like manner, regarded as characters of the same family, and between which it is not worth while at first to make any essential distinction; the same is represented betwen F and V, M and N, S and Z; by which means the initiating consonants for the deafly dumb pupil are reduced from nineteen to about seven or eight only, the powers and characters of which being few in number, and all of them widely distinct from each other, may be easily explained and comprehended. In a manner somewhat similar, and with equal ease, he is taught the science of numbers. For the Literary Magazine. SETTLEMENT IN MARRIAGE. AN advantageous settlement in marrriage is the universal prize, for which parents, of all classes, enter their daughters upon the lists; and partiality or self-complacency assures to every competitor the most flattering prospect of success. To this one point tends the principal part of female instruction; for the promotion of this design, their best years for improvement_are sacrificed to the attainment of attractive qualities, showy superficial accomplishments, polished manners, and, in one word, the whole science of pleasing, which is cultivated with unceasing assiduity, as of most essential importance. The end is laudable, and deserving of every effort that can be exerted to secure it; a happy marriage may be estimated among the highest felicities of human life; but it may be doubted, whether the means used to accomplish it are adapted to the purpose, as a first impression is by no means sufficient to determine the preference of a wise man. It is not then sufficient that a girl be qualified to excite admiration; her own happiness, and that of the man to whom she devotes the remainder of her days, depend upon her possession of those virtues, which alone can preserve lasting esteem and confidence. The offices of a wife are very different from those of the mere. pageant of a ball-room; and as their nature is more exalted, the talents they require are of a more noble kind: something far beyond the elegant trifler is wanted in a com panion for life. A young woman is very ill-adapted to enter into the most solemn of social contracts, who is not prepared, by her education, to become the participator of her husband's cares, the consoler of his sorrows, his stimulator to every praise-worthy undertaking, the partner in the labours and vicissitudes of life, the faithful and economical manager of his affairs, the judicious superintendant of his family, the wise and affectionate mother of his children, the preserver of his honour, his chief counsellor, and, to sum up all, the chosen friend of his bosom. If a modern female education be not calculated to produce these effects, as few surely will judge it to be, who reflect upon its tendency, it is incompetent to that very purpose, which is confessedly its main object, and must therefore be deemed imperfect, and require reformation. It may also be doubted whether the present system be better suited to qualify women for sustaining the other characters which they may be destined to fulfil. Those of widowhood and a single life are the allotment of many, and to support them with dignity requires peculiar force of mind. Adversity often places both sexes in situations wholly unexpected; against such transitions, the voice of wisdom admonishes each to be prepared by early acquaintance with those principles which fortify and enable it to sustain the unavoidable strokes of fortune with firmness, and to exert the most prudent means to obviate their consequences; but the bias given to the female mind by the present system encourages the keenest sensibility on the most trifling occasions, its chief design being to polish, rather than to strengthen. A well governed temper, is, of all qualities, the most useful to conduct us steadily through the vexatious circumstances, which attack, with undistinguishing violence, the prosperous and the unfortunate; and is eminently necessary to women, whose peculiar office it is to lessen the inconveniences of domestic life; though, as a moral obligation, equally incumbent upon men. A well governed temper is the support of social enjoyment, and the bond of conjugal affection; deficient in this, a mother is unqualified for conducting the education of her children, and a mistress unfitted to govern her servants. This self-command differs widely from that apathy which is the effect of constitution: in order to insure respect and love, we must possess an equability, which can only result from reflection and habitual culture. Such a subjection of the angry passions to reason and duty accommodates itself to circumstances, and the disposition of others with whom we are connected; it gives superiority in every contest, and is of inestimable value to the possessor on every trial. For the Literary Magazine. THE NIGHTINGALE AND MOCK BIRD. WE Americans who have never passed the ocean, and many of us, indeed, who have crossed it, are utter strangers to the nightingale, except in description. In this way, indeed, there are few objects more familiar to us; since, in all the descriptive poets of the old world, from Virgil to Cowper, the nightingale is a perpetual theme of panegyric; and hence we have naturally imbibed a most profound veneration for this chief of natural musicians. I own I have always had a good deal of curiosity about this bird. I have for many years enquired, whether it has ever been imported into our hemisphere? whether the bird retains its musical powers in exile ? or, whether any of our native birds are qualified, by their note, to convey any idea of the song of the nightingale? Hitherto all my enquiries have been fruitless, and I cannot find that a nightingale has ever taken a voyage to America, or that, should one of them be turned adrift in our woods, he would recognize, among our native warblers, any one that spoke his own language. Such being my curiosity, I was highly pleased in meeting, the other day, with some curious particulars of the nightingale, drawn up by one whose experience and veracity are equally worthy of respect. This person informs me that the nightingale seems to have been fixed upon, almost universally, as the chief among singing birds, which superiority it certainly may boldly challenge: one reason, however, of this bird's being more attended to than others is, that it sings in the night. Hence Shakespeare says, The nightingale, if she should sing by day, When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. The song of this bird hath been described and expatiated upon by several writers, particularly Pliny and Strada, and, by all describers, ancient and modern, the palm of superior melody has always been conferred upon it, a pre-eminence to which it is well entitled. In the first place, its tone is infinitely more mellow than that of any other bird, though, at the same time, by a proper exertion of its musical powers, it can be excessively brilliant. When this bird sings its song round, in its whole compass, I have observed sixteen different beginnings and closes, at the same time that the intermediate notes were commonly varied in their succession with such judgment, as to produce a most pleasing variety. The bird which approaches nearest to the excellence of the nightingale, in this respect, is the sky-lark; but then the tone is infinitely inferior in point of mellowness: most other singing birds have not above four or five changes. The next point of superiority, in a nightingale, is its continuance of song without a pause, which I have observed sometimes not to be less than twenty seconds. Whenever respiration, however, became necessary, it was taken with as much judgment as by an opera-singer. The sky-lark, again, in this particular, is only second to the nightingale. I describe a caged nightingale, because those which we hear in the spring are so rank, that they seldom sing any thing but short and loud jerks, which consequently cannot be compared to the notes of a caged bird, as the instrument is overstrained. My nightingale is a very capital bird; for some of them are so vastly inferior that the bird-fanciers will not keep them, branding them with the name of Frenchmen. But it is not only in tone and variety that the nightingale excels; the bird also sings, if I may so express myself, with superior judgment and taste. My nightingale begins softly, like the ancient orators; reserving its breath to swell certain notes, which, by this means, had a most astonishing effect, and which eludes all verbal description. I have indeed taken down certain passages which may be reduced to our musical intervals; but though by these means one may form an idea of some of the notes used, yet it is impossible to give their comparative durations in point of musical tune, upon which the whole effect must depend. I once procured a very capital player on the flute to execute the notes which Kircher hath engraved in his Musurgia, as being used by the nightingale; when, from want of not being able to settle their com parative duration, it was impossible to observe any traces almost of the nightingale's song. The names given, by bird-trainers, to the various bars in this bird's song, are formed from a supposed affinity between the name and the thing signified. They are sweet, sweet jug, jug sweet; water-bubble; pipe-ratttle, bell-pipe, skroty; skegskeg-skeg; swat-swat-swatty; whitlow, whitlow, whitlow, Sc. I have often considered whether the nightingale may not have a very formidable competitor in the American mocking-bird; though almost all travellers agree, that the concert in the European woods is superior to that of the other parts of the globe. As birds are now anually import. ed in great numbers from Asia, Africa, and America, I have frequently attended to their notes, both singly and in concert, which, certainly are not to be compared to those of Europe. Thomson the poet (whose observations in natural history are much to be depended upon) makes this superiority in the European birds to be a sort of compensation for their great inferiority in point of gaudy plumage. Our goldfinch, however, joins, to a very brilliant and pleasing song, a most beautiful variety of colours in its feathers. It must be admitted that foreign birds, when brought to Europe, are often heard to a great disadvantage; as many of them, from their great tameness, have certainly been brought up by hand. I have, however, chanced to hear the mock-bird in great perfection. In the course of a minute he imitated the wood-lark, chaffinch, blackbird, thrush, and swallow. He was able, too, to bark like a dog, so that the bird seems to imitate blindly, and without choice. He performed, too, in a rich mellow whistle, a simple Scots air, in adagio time, of seventy-six notes. This pipe comes nearest to the nightingale of any bird I ever met with. I have little doubt this bird would be fully equal to the song of the nightingale in its whole compass; but then from the attention which this feathered mimic pays to any casual and disagreeable noise, these capital notes would always be debased by a bad mixture. VOL. III. NO. XXI. For the Literary Magazine. ON PERSIAN POETRY AND HAFIZ. OF late years, there has been a good deal said about Persian poetry, and several translations have been made from its volumes, from which many persons are inclined to infer, that this language is as well stored with genuine poetical treasure as any ancient or modern tongue of Europe. Whatever may be my taste, I have very strong poetical inclinations, and I have accordingly taken great pains to acquire as intimate an acquaintance with the Persian poetry, as my ignorance of the original language will permit. The Persian poetry is chiefly of the lyric kind, and its brightest ornament seems to be Hafiz. Perhaps some of your readers, whose curiosity resembles mine, may be gratified by such an account as I have been able to collect of this bard and his productions. The lyric odes of Persia and indeed of all the Asiatics, are denominated ghazels, or gazels. They are generally dedicated to love and wine, and are occasionally intermixed with moral sentiments, and reflections on virtue and vice. Like the Italian sonnet, the gazel is limited in its length and its rhymes: yet, unlike the sonnet, which consists but of one thought, the gazel admits the most sudden and abrupt change in every beit or stanza of which it consists. In a legitimate ode these stanzas are never fewer than five, nor more than eleven, beyond which number it assumes the name of rasside, or elegy. Some, indeed, maintain, that the gazel may extend to thirteen beits, without forfeiting its purity; and that it is still a pure and classical gazel, if protracted to not less than eighteen. To European readers, the abrupt and unconnected sentiments of which these different beits consist, give the Persian ode the appearance of disorder and obscurity; but the bard of Iran is not within 3 the jurisdiction of our tribunals, nor subject to the same system of laws, and consequently we have no right to condemn him for deviations from a code to which he will not submit. All oriental poetry exhibits something of this sudden and precipitous wandering from thought to thought, from subject to subject; and it is impossible to peruse even the Song of Solomon, which has considerable pretensions to regularity, and is the finest pastoral that ever was writen, without perceiving some degree of the same poetical disorder. The gazel has some apology to offer for such abrupt transitions. It pretends to be an extemporaneous rhapsody, spoken at a public banquet, and over the most delicious wines, when imagination takes the lead of judgment, and the whole soul yields itself up to the capricious sallies of wit, and the swift emotions of love. Darwin has compared the detached pictures of which his poem consists to festoons of flowers united by a fine and delicate riband; and the comparison, if we wanted one, would equally apply to the disjunctive and independent couplets of the gazel. Several translations have been made, of some of the gazels of Hafiz, into Greek and Latin, and the most judicious critics are inclined to imagine, that these are the best, if not the only languages, the genius of which is sufficiently adapted to the Persian, for the purposes of elegant translation. The characteristic of the Persian is its facilty of creating compound epithets, and hereby of exciting ideas, either altogether original, or more delicate, and, at the same time, more powerful, than can be roused by the disjunctive use of the radicals of which those compound epithets consist. But the Greek tongue has this happy peculiarity nearly in an equal degree with the Persian itself; and, from its unrivalled mellifluence possesses by far the advantage of the Latin. Among modern languages, the English and German are said to be preferable to all others, for this use. The Persian itself has not a greater aptitude of creating compound adjuncts than the German, and the English is not far behind it in the possession of this curious felicity. The Italian, undoubtedly, has the advantage in volubility and softness, but, like the Latin, it is extremely deficient in this treasure of inestimable value. The harsh and guttural genius of the German may be supposed, at first sight, to make it an inadequate vehicle for the elegance of Persian sounds; but under the dedalian power of Gesner, the gazel of Iran might be translated into German prose, and of Klopstock into German metre, without any great detriment to its acknowledged euphony. At the same time, the German tongue is naturally less musical than the English, and on this account the latter is doubtless preferable to any modern tongue for conveying to foreign ears the melody of Hafiz. This poet was born, passed his life, and died, at Shiraz, in Persia. His death took place in 1394, and his tomb is still seen, and is still enthusiastically venerated in the neighbourhood of that city. His poems, which were never perfectly arranged during his life time, were collected after his death into one volume, by Seid Cassem Anovar, and have become the subject of universal admiration among the nations of the east. To a rich variety and brilliancy of thought, which is all the poet's own, they often unite the sublimity of Ferdosi, and the benevolence and morality of Sadi. The popularity of Hafiz, however, seems to have depended on his gazels alone; for, notwithstanding his retirement, he by no means kept himself unspotted from the world. The pleasures of "the ruby-coloured wine" were too powerful for his resistance; and his voluptuous wanderings among the fair did not constitute, if we may credit his own writings, the most criminal of his amours. To rescue him, however, |