Thus idly busy rolls their world away;

Theirs are those arts that mind to mind endear,

For honor forms the social temper here.

Honor, that praise which real merit gains,

Or e'en imaginary worth obtains,

Here passes current: paid from hand to hand,
It shifts in splendid traffic round the land;
From courts to camps, to cottages, it strays,
And all are taught an avarice of praise.

They please, are pleased; they give to get esteem;
Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.

But while this softer art their bliss supplies,
It gives their follies also room to rise;
For praise too dearly loved, or warmly sought,
Enfeebles all internal strength of thought,
And the weak soul, within itself unblest,
Leans for all pleasure on another's breast.
Hence ostentation here, with tawdry art,
Pants for the vulgar praise which fools impart;
Here vanity assumes her pert grimace,

And trims her robes of frieze with copper lace;
Here beggar pride defrauds her daily cheer,
To boast one splendid banquet once a year;
The mind still turns where shifting fashion draws,
Nor weighs the solid worth of self-applause.
To men of other minds my fancy flies,
Embosomed in the deep where Holland lies.
Methinks her patient sons before me stand,
Where the broad ocean leans against the land,
And, sedulous to stop the coming tide,
Lift the tall rampire's artificial pride.
Onward methinks, and diligently slow,
The firm connected bulwark seems to grow;
Spreads its long arms amidst the watery roar,
Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore.
While the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile,
Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile:
The slow canal, the yellow-blossomed vale,
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail,
The crowded mart, the cultivated plain,-
A new creation rescued from his reign.

Thus while around the wave-subjected soil
Impels the native to repeated toil,
Industrious habits in each bosom reign,
And industry begets a love of gain.

Hence all the good from opulence that springs,
With all those ills superfluous treasure brings,
Are here displayed. Their much-loved wealth imparts
Convenience, plenty, elegance, and arts:

But view them closer, craft and fraud appear;
E'en liberty itself is bartered here.

At gold's superior charms all freedom flies;
The needy sell it, and the rich man buys;
A land of tyrants, and a den of slaves,
Here wretches seek dishonorable graves,
And calmly bent, to servitude conform,
Dull as their lakes that slumber in the storm.

Heavens! how unlike their Belgic sires of old!
Rough, poor, content, ungovernably bold;
War in each breast, and freedom on each brow:
How much unlike the sons of Britain now!

Fired at the sound, my genius spreads her wing,
And flies where Britain courts the western spring;
Where lawns extend that scorn Arcadian pride,
And brighter streams than famed Hydaspes glide.
There all around the gentlest breezes stray;
There gentle music melts on every spray;
Creation's mildest charms are there combined,
Extremes are only in the master's mind!
Stern o'er each bosom Reason holds her state,
With daring aims irregularly great;
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,

I see the lords of human kind pass by;

Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band,

By forms unfashioned fresh from nature's hand,
Fierce in their native hardiness of soul,

True to imagined right, above control,

While e'en the peasant boasts these rights to scan,
And learns to venerate himself as man.

Thine, Freedom, thine the blessings pictured here;
Thine are those charms that dazzle and endear:
Too blest, indeed, were such without alloy !
But fostered e'en by Freedom ills annoy:
That independence Britons prize too high
Keeps man from man, and breaks the social tie;
The self-dependent lordlings stand alone,
All claims that bind and sweeten life unknown.
Here, by the bonds of nature feebly held,
Minds combat minds, repelling and repelled;
Ferments arise, imprisoned factions roar,
Represt ambition struggles round her shore,

Till, overwrought, the general system feels,
Its motions stop, or frenzy fire the wheels.

Nor this the worst. As nature's ties decay,
As duty, love, and honor fail to sway,
Fictitious bonds, the bonds of wealth and law,
Still gather strength, and force unwilling awe.
Hence all obedience bows to these alone,

And talent sinks, and merit weeps unknown:
Till time may come, when, stript of all her charms,
The land of scholars and the nurse of arms,
Where noble stems transmit the patriot flame,
Where kings have toiled and poets wrote for fame,
One sink of level avarice shall lie,

And scholars, soldiers, kings, unhonored die.

Yet think not, thus when Freedom's ills I state,
I mean to flatter kings, or court the great:
Ye powers of truth, that bid my soul aspire,
Far from my bosom drive the low desire.
And thou, fair Freedom, taught alike to feel
The rabble's rage and tyrant's angry steel;
Thou transitory flower, alike undone

By proud contempt or favor's fostering sun;
Still may thy blooms the changeful clime endure!

I only would repress them to secure:

For just experience tells, in every soil,

That those who think must govern those that toil;
And all that Freedom's highest aims can reach,

Is but to lay proportioned loads on each.
Hence, should one order disproportioned grow,
Its double weight must ruin all below.

O then how blind to all that truth requires,
Who think it freedom when a part aspires!
Calm is my soul, nor apt to rise in arms,
Except when fast-approaching danger warms;
But when contending chiefs blockade the throne,
Contracting regal power to stretch their own,
When I behold a factious band agree

To call it freedom when themselves are free,
Each wanton judge new penal statutes draw,
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law,
The wealth of climes where savage nations roam
Pillaged from slaves to purchase slaves at home,
Fear, pity, justice, indignation start,

Tear off reserve, and bare my swelling heart;
Till half a patriot, half a coward grown,

I fly from petty tyrants to the throne.

VOL. XVIII. -7

Yes, brother, curse with me that baleful hour
When first ambition struck at regal power;
And thus polluting honor in its source,

Gave wealth to sway the mind with double force.
Have we not seen, round Britain's peopled shore
Her useful sons exchanged for useless ore?
Seen all her triumphs but destruction haste,
Like flaring tapers brightening as they waste?
Seen opulence, her grandeur to maintain,
Lead stern depopulation in her train,

And over fields where scattered hamlets rose
In barren solitary pomp repose?

Have we not seen at pleasure's lordly call
The smiling long-frequented village fall?
Beheld the duteous son, the sire decayed,
The modest matron, and the blushing maid,
Forced from their homes, a melancholy train,
To traverse climes beyond the western main;
Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around,
And Niagara stuns with thundering sound?

Even now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim strays, Through tangled forests and through dangerous ways, Where beasts with man divided empire claim,

And the brown Indian marks with murderous aim; There, while above the giddy tempest flies,

And all around distressful yells arise,

The pensive exile, bending with his woe,

To stop too fearful, and too faint to go,
Casts a long look where England's glories shine,
And bids his bosom sympathize with mine.

Vain, very vain, my weary search to find
That bliss which only centers in the mind:
Why have I strayed from pleasure and repose,
To seek a good each government bestows?
In every government, though terrors reign,
Though tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain,
How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!
Still to ourselves in every place consigned,

Our own felicity we make or find:

With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.
The lifted ax, the agonizing wheel,
Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel,
To men remote from power but rarely known,
Leave reason, faith, and conscience all our own.

THE LIMITATIONS OF PICTORIAL ART.

BY LESSING.

(From the "Laocoon.")

From

The

[GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING, poet and dramatist, was born at Camenz, Silesia, January 22, 1729; died at Brunswick, February 15, 1781. He was educated at the Fürstenschule of Meissen; studied theology at Leipsic, 1746-1748; and worked as a journalist and critic in Berlin, 1748-1752. Meanwhile he became deeply interested in the drama, published several successful plays, and in 1767 was made official playwright, and director of the Hamburg theater. 1770 until his death he was librarian of the ducal library at Wolfenbüttel. comedy "Minna von Barnhelm " (1765) was the first national drama of Germany, and the tragedy "Emilia Galotti" (1772) is considered his dramatic masterpiece, but the noble philosophic drama "Nathan the Wise" (1779) is the only one that lives. His masterpiece, however, is "Laocoon" (1766), a short fragment on the principles of art, which has been, and still is, of world-wide influence. His other works are: "Wolfenbüttelsche Fragmente" (1777), "Anti-Goerze" (1778), "Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts" (1780), and "Ernst und Falk" (1778-1780).]

UPON examining the reasons alleged for the sculptor of the Laocoon being obliged to exercise moderation in the expression of bodily pain, I find that they are all to be attributed to the essential nature of his art and its inherent exigencies and limitations. They would therefore hardly be applicable to poetry.

Without attempting here to decide how far the poet can succeed in describing physical beauty, it will not be disputed that, as the whole infinite realm of perfection lies open to his imitation, this visible garb, in which perfection becomes beauty, forms but one of the least of the means by which he can awaken our interest in his characters. He often neglects to make use of this means at all, feeling assured that, if his hero has won our regard, his nobler qualities will either engage our attention to such a degree that we shall bestow no thought on his bodily form; or that, if we do think of it, they will so far prepossess us that we shall, in our own minds, attribute to him an exterior, if not beautiful, at least not unpleasing. At any rate, he will not allow himself to pay any regard to the sense of sight, in any single trait that is not expressly intended to appeal to that sense. When Virgil's Laocoon shrieks, does it occur to any one that a widely opened mouth is required for shrieking, and that such a mouth is ugly? It suffices that clamores horrendos ad sidera tollit produces a powerful effect upon the ear, be its impression upon the eye what it may.