The Lydian dance upon Ismenus' bank,
Or at the fount Dircean joined the choir
Of virgins in the dirge of Semelè.'

We may perhaps accuse the author of some incongruity in blending the mythology of Greece with the history of Noah and the patriarchs. At all events, the praises of the first Bacchus were intitled to precedence of commemoration: but Mr. Tighe evinces both taste and judgment in the apparent ease with which he glides from one part of his theme to another; and in the pleasing manner in which he interweaves the mention of rural labours, collateral allusions, and the episode of Agnes and Albert, with the influence of and associations connected with the Vine, in the different periods of the human story. The pure and generous strain of his reflections is eminently characterized in the following lines:

Yes, let us leave the heroic field to such
As with unblushing front ascend the court
Of tyrants, and adore the bloody flag
Of conquest waved o'er war's relentless band.
No bays divine, but lurid sprigs impure
Of aconite, shall mark the apostate bard
Who gilds a nation's or a statesman's crime,
Who courts with shameless hymn meridian power,
Or with enervate ditties warms the pulse
Of flagging vice, and veils the sin he panders,
Foul else and odious in the light of truth.
But Truth and Virtue are the Muse's mates,
And Freedom guiltless of licentious song.
Such thine, ingenuous bard, who traced the powers
Which rule IMAGINATION'S fairy dream;

And thine, for whom each SEASON wove a crown

Which no successive years shall ever fade.'

The desolation of Funchal by a water-spout, which broke on it during the night, the former happiness of the alpine peasantry, and the French invasion of Swisserland, are scenes finely pictured; and we would not willingly suppress the ensuing apo strophe, which breathes the language of unfeigned affection: Where are ye now, companions of my youth, With whom full oft around the social board I sat, and listened to the playful thought, The unrestrained effusion of the soul Not tainted yet by falsehood and the world? But above all remembrance turns to thee, O Frederick, in whose congenial breast, My willing soul reposed an early store Of rare affection ; nor can time erase The cherished memory !—and to thee the Muse Would dedicate this wandering song; and wake

The

The ear of friendship with the strains of joy;
And call thee to the climes, where once we past,
In days less melancholy, Rhone's high banks,
Or shaded Arno's,more alluring vale.'

In the fourth canto, the author transports us to the Persian gulph, Arabia, the burning desarts, India, Palmyra, Egypt, Palestine, the banks of the Tigris, and the groves in the neighbourhood of Mount Atlas; recalling the appropriate scenery of those regions of the world, and the manners and sentiments of the inhabitants, especially as they are affected by the various species of palms. His portrait of Africa naturally suggests the forlorn condition of the weary wanderer over trackless sands, the too probable fate of Mungo Park, the abolition of the slavetrade, and the loss of that statesman whose memory can never perish but under the ruins of the British constitution:

With tedious footsteps through the shifting sand,
From Gambia's verdant wilderness, from Fez

Or Tripoli, some luckless traveller

May range to farthest Adel, and the shores
Of rich Melinda; him no tent at eve,
No friendly craal with salutation due
Receives; no unsuspicious charity
With social comfort counsels to repose:
Save where some generous female, as she plies
Her nightly task of labour o'er his bed
Of rushes, may recite an untaught dirge
Of pity as o'er thee, who first unveiled
The Niger widening in his eastern course

Was sung" Alas! poor stranger, faint and weary!
"The tempest roared; the torrents fell: he came
"And sat beneath our palm,-

-no home has he ;

"No wife with milk to cool his burning lips:

"No mother grinds his corn; no sister kneads
"His millet cake: poor stranger, faint and weary !”
And was no female near to prop thy head
In death, sad stranger! with one limpid draught
To bless thy panting breast; with one last smile
To bid thee sleep thy only sleep of peace!
Oh! in what poisonous shade, what flinty haunt
Of lions, or what serpent's loathsome den,

What monstrous wilderness, are thy bleached bones
Now scattered! or perchance in columns tost
Of fiery sand thy shrivelled mummy whirls
The restless sport of a tornado's rage.

But Afric shall with curses load no more
The gales which bear our vessels o'er her seas,
Ye nymphs of Afric! see, a brighter morn
Arises, and the sun of

peace ascends

T.

To scatter blessings o'er your harrassed shores.
Bind your crisp tresses with the white-flowered wreath,
Resume your song, resume your simple pipe,
Your many-waving attitudes of dance;

Whate'er there is on earth of joy be

yours.

Yet for one moment, o'er his fancied tomb,
Weep for the generous Statesman, who at once
Unbound your chains: who, when the piteous slave
From year to year had knelt at Britain's feet,

Ne'er mocked the wretch's hope, and made his power
All impotent for good. Oh! grace
his urn

With tears; shed, shed your lilies o'er his grave,
Ye nymphs of Afric, with your sisters fair
Of Europe!-Ere a few short months were past,
For our offence, the star of hope was set!
Else might our wounds have closed, and that repose
He gave to Afric have embraced the world.

And can the weakest of the Muse's train
Aspire to be the minstrel of our loss!

The Muse may wish, and in her wish delight,
To crown his tomb with every beauteous wreath
Which freedom, fame, benevolence or worth,
Social or civic, ever twined for man!
But little is the meed her hand can strew,
One passing flower, still trembling in her tears,
One transient offering, while she views the grave
Of him beloved though on the seat of power;
True son of Britain, by the world revered,
Whose value Europe saw, and Afric felt.'

The pathetic interest of this part of the poem is, moreover, heightened by the digressive stories of Zamora and Muzabba, and of Otao and Ulama: but we cannot make room for the insertion of them.

Could the admirers and abettors of commercial interdicts be swayed by reason, humanity, or verse, we should earnestly press on their meditations the sentiments and aspirations of this enlightened poet":

Such commerce Nature destined for the sons

Of men and Ocean in one vast embrace

:

Circled the kindred nations of the earth,
That social man should interchange and feel
The native blessings of his varied lot:
For this arose the oak, for this the pine
On Norway's beetling cliff. Oh! banish War,
Who grinds his axe and fells the long-loved shade,
The shepherd's scene, the villager's delight,
To rib the floating fortress and sustain
The batteries of death! The cottage loom,

Perverted

Perverted too, with rural canvas wings

The corsair's mast; and, from his tranquil field,
The peasant innocently pulls the stem,

Which rears o'er hostile flects their labouring shrouds !
Oh! banish war! set navigation free,

Free as the gale that wafts her! He who cast
His shackles o'er the sea, returned alone

Despised and fugitive.

When shall the sons

Of Adam cease to ply their anxious thoughts

To heap a world with misery?- when shall man
Confess that in the bliss he can bestow

Lives the true secret of his own content!

The selfish will is that corroding worm

Nurst in the heart, which, here uncrushed by Love,
Shall on its victim prey in worlds of fire.'

Mr. Tighe concludes this classical effusion in a strain of animated piety, predictive of the final accomplishment of the views of Providence, and of the happiness of the soul when

restored to Paradise.

We purposely forbear from adverting to the notes and observations; which, though they occupy about one half of the volume, are intended either to explain and illustrate the text, but which present us with theological views that might invite to tedious and unprofitable discussions.

ART. IV. Observations on Mineralogical Systems. By Richard Chenevix, Esq. F.R.S. &c. Translated from the French, by a Member of the Geological Society. To which are now added, Remarks by Mr. Chenevix on the Reply of M. D'Aubuisson to the above Observations. 8vo. pp. 142. 5s. Boards. Johnson and Co. 1811.

A

N advertisement by the translator informs us that these ob servations were originally published in the 65th volume of the Annales de Chimie, in 1808, and appeared about the same time in the form of a separate memoir, during the author's residence in Paris. While Mr. Chenevix declined compliance with the request of those friends who solicited an English edition, from his own pen, he offered whatever assistance he might have it in his power to give, should any one value them so highly as to undergo the labour of translation.' Such a person has been found; and he appears to have executed his task with precision and ability. When we add that the observ ations themselves bespeak much acute thinking, and much perspicuous and forcible reasoning, the candid inquirer after truth will admit the propriety of their being submitted, in a correct and suitable form, to the judgment of the British public; notwithstanding

notwithstanding a certain tone of undignified harshness, which occasionally mingles in the author's language of disapprobation.

From the title of this essay, the reader, who is unapprized of its nature and contents, would naturally expect to encounter a review of the different systems of mineralogy which have been proposed for adoption: but the writer's obvious design is to impugn that which has been framed by Werner, and to advo cate the cause of crystallography as expounded by the Abbé Haüy. In justice to the learned and celebrated Professor of Freyberg, it behoves us to remark that he has neither published nor completed any sytematical arrangement of mineral substances, but that he merely sketched the principles of a plan which his pupils, with various success, have attempted to realize; and that the faults of the scholar may often not be attributable to the master. His scheme, as exemplified by some of the most zealous and distinguished of his followers, is certainly remote from perfection; and we have more than once adverted to the cumbersome and unphilosophical mode of its distributions. Yet various considerations should powerfully dissuade us from pressing on its weaker parts with all the weapons of criticism. One of its most formidable antagonists (for such we conceive the present writer to be) admits that, by the distinctions and classification of the external characters, a great advance has been made, which, if it has not led directly to the object in view, shews at least the difficulty of the task;' that during a residence of eighteen months at Freyberg, he had daily occasion to admire the precision and accuracy with which the learned Professor recognized minerals at first sight; that the system of external characters by Werner, in the form in which it is made known to us by the books that treat of it, is infinitely superior to any thing of the kind that ever appeared before it ;' and that it must be of the greatest utility to the miner.' We might add that every individual, who has paid the slightest attention to the study of mineralogy, must be convinced of the great difficulty of discriminating the unorganized portions of matter by permanent specific characters. Some of the most profound naturalists, who have appeared in modern times, have even hinted their doubts of the real existence of species in the vegetable and animal kingdom; because the multiplied discoveries in these departments seem only to approximate former distinctions by intermediate shades, and to prove that marked lines of separation are unknown in nature. However this may be, it is at all events certain that mineral substances are much less susceptible of distinct definition than plants and animals; and that he who enables us to recognize them, by