And that pure ecstacy that finds
No kindred thrill in earth-born minds,
Attend thee to the poet's bower,
Where, on his couch of rushes laid,
He oft invokes thy secret aid,

And owns thy genial power.

A pensive lover thou art seen

Lone, lingering through some desert shade, Unmindful of the smiling green,

And all the magic of the mead.
Nature for thee no more hath charms,
Consign'd to passion's dread alarms,

The offspring of unwise desire;
The frantic glance, the absent thought,
The wistful look from passion caught,
Betray thy hidden fire.

Escap'd from Love's tyrannic sway,
With eagle glance I view thee rise,
Explore the empire of the day,

And claim thy own, thy natal skies.
With ardent flight thou dost intrude
On old Creation's solitude,

: Where space extends her boundless line;
Where other suns give life and light,
And other stars illume the night,
And other planets shine.

Oft dost thou stray where ocean's roar,
And all the horrors of the main
Tempestuous fulmined round that shore
Where first the Trojan chief felt pain.
Ꭰ .

More wild thy looks than his who braves
The savage strife of winds and waves,
While heaven is wrapped in awful gloom,
Save where the rapid lightning beam,
Darting its fearful, sudden gleam,
The scene of death illume.

Lured by Ambition's erring pride,
The aspiring youth thou dost invite
To regal favours yet untried,

And fancied treasures of delight:
Hope leads the way, and spreads her sail,
Secure while Fortune swells the gale,

And points to scenes of future power;

Yet every bliss to hope allied,
And every tribute paid to pride,
Must dwindle in an hour!

The terrors of sublime Affright,
The sympathetic pang is thine : \
Oh! nurse of pain and fond delight,
Be all thy mixed emotions mine!
Yet far from ocean's desert waste,
To scenes more tranquil let us haste,
Where silence and the shades prevail;

Where science waits us, to bestow
More luxury than wealth can know,

Or language can reveal.

Remote from courts and regal sway,
With thee, fair goddess, let me dwell;

With thee enjoy the pensive lay,

And court the humble, rustic cell,

Where pure content my soul may bless
With secret, silent happiness,

That mental feast to courts unknown;
There shall my yielding bosom find
Those kindling raptures of the mind
That linger round thy throne.

Europ. Mag

66

ETNA.-A SKETCH.

THIS sketch is from the "Poetical Sketches" of Alaric A. Watts. It is needless to say that it is a sketch of great sublimity, and that the beauty of the images are of that poetic character which is more easily felt than described. We do not think, however, that the black smoke" rolling down the side of "Cuma's height" can philosophically be said to produce "artificial darkness." Whatever is produced by natural causes cannot be the effect of art, in the production of which man must be always an agent. În one sense, however, we admit that the darkness was not natural,' if by natural we mean only effects proceeding from the fixed and general laws of nature; but we think the term equally applicable to effects arising from particular inversions of these laws, where there is no cooperation of man in producing the effect. We would also object to "towns and villages deserted of their habitants." Johnson, indeed, has marked no difference between habitants and inhabitants; but we think the latter is applied, and properly too, by all correct writers, to those who reside in some particular place. We say a habitant of the earth, but an inhabitant of a village. Crabb has taken no notice of these words in his Synonymes, but we believe the distinction we have made ought to be observed by every writer stu

dious of propriety. These, however, are mere verbal inaccuracies, and

He who expects a faultless piece to see,

Expects what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.

We must confess, however, we feel a certain grating sensation whenever we meet the adjective "fitful," and the adverb derived from it; not that we find it always misapplied, but that it is one of those hacknied words which are continually obtruding themselves upon our perhaps too fastidious ears. We believe it would be difficult to find a poem, however short, proceeding from the pen of any inferior writer, within the last half dozen years, in which this and a tribe of other epithets, which we shall occasionally notice, do not occur, particularly where external nature is described. The term is a happy one when properly applied; but we do not think the writer a very happy one, who is obliged to have recourse to it continually, because he can only do so by imitating those pedantic writers of the seventeenth century, and their predecessors, who were continually deviating from their subject to introduce some Greek or Latin quotation. That an unjust prejudice has been excited against the use of these quotations, and that their discontinuance in consequence of this prejudice is a serious evil, are truths of which we have long felt convinced. The use of quotations from foreign languages is now considered a mark of pedantry, as if English literature contained in itself every thing necessary to elucidate or confirm the arguments of a writer. Nothing can be more absurd. The works produced by English writers on subjects of general literature, philosophy, and metaphysics, though very numerous, are far, very far from affording all that knowledge, and satisfying all those doubts which are apt to suggest themselves to discriminating and analyzing minds. Hence it is, that in the Manuel du Libraire, published a few years ago in Paris, containing a catalogue of all works of merit on general subjects of literature, from all languages, not one work in twenty is selected from the English,

though it is certain, at the same time, that every work of merit which this country has produced is to be found in this catalogue. How absurd is it, then, to suppose that our domestic literature, or what is boastingly called our national literature, contains every thing necessary to satisfy an enquiring mind. That quotations from other languages were in too common request about one hundred years ago, and for many centuries before, and that the writers of the time went purposely in search of these quotations, by which they were obliged to deviate from their subject in order to make room for them, cannot be doubted; but it is equally certain that he who rejects them where they obviously present themselves, and are suggested by the subject, lest he should appear pedantic, yields to a false and effeminate taste, and leaves his readers unconvinced, where he might have convinced them had he supported his arguments by writers of the first authority. In general, all extremes in literature are equally dangerous; and it is difficult to say whether Cobbett or Montaigne are most in fault. In the former we never meet with a classical quotation, not even an allusion to the classics; in the latter we forget the writer's arguments and subject altogether, our attention is so frequently diverted from them by quotations from ancient and contemporary writers. Both these extremes are equally vicious, and equally to be avoided by every writer of good taste. There is a certain limit quem ultra citraque requit consistere rectum. He who can observe this medium in all things, has little to fear from the false taste, false morality, or false philosophy of the age in which he lives. If unmixed happiness has any residence upon earth, it can only dwell in the bosom of such an individual.

It was a lovely night: the crescent moon, (A bark of beauty on its dark blue sea) Winning its way amid the billowy clouds, Unoar'd, unpiloted, moved on. The sky

ED.