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There her wild arms the wandering ivy flings, Loosening each separate block to which she clings; And veils with mantle of insidious shade The ruins which her seeming love has made. There, where no turf can spring, the deadly yew Weeps the black droppings of her venom'd dew: And that strange plant, which of mysterious birth; Holds no communion with all-gendering earth; Chance-sown on other trees which seems to shoot Boughs without leaves, a stem without a root.' PP. 18-19. The remaining lines, which we have not room to insert, larkly convey the catastrophe of the poem.

• But virgin blood has stain'd that fearful wild!'

Mr. Smedley has evinced great judgement in throwing the sequel into the form of a narrative, after the manner of Racine, with this further advantage, that he is enabled by referring to t, as

'A tale so dark, so sad, of times of old,'

to cast additional obscurity and mysterious horror over the ineffaole tragedy.

We shall be glad to see, from Mr. Smedley's pen, something better than Scriptural Tales, or Prize Poems.

Art. VIII. The Sick Man's Friend: containing Reflections, Prayers, and Hymns, adapted to the different Circumstances of the Sick; and intended to form devotional Exercises, for the profitable Employment of their Time, and for a Preparation against the Hour of Death. By the Rev. J. Fry, A.B. pp. 119. 12mo. price 2s. 6d. Combe, Leicester: Hatchard, London.

THIS little work is particularly calculated for those situ.

⚫ations where the attendance of the Pastor or visitor cannot be so frequently expected as would be desirable, and where there is cause to fear a want of those instructions unto righteousness, and those consolations of religion, which are so necessary in these awful circumstances. The Prayers are selected, for the most part, from Sir James Stonehouse's Every Man's Assistant, and Mr. Jenks's Family Prayers. The Hymns are from various authors."

This manual of devotion is of a very serious and affectionate cast. The addresses are appropriate to the different characters which are represented, and the sentiments are strictly evangelical, Although, from the occasional introduction of parts of the Liturgy of the Established Church, it appears to be especially intended for the use of its members, yet it may without impropriety be recommended to the notice of the Christian public, as a 'proper VOL. III. N. S. Q

present for the hand of Christian benevolence to lay in the sick room of the poor.'

We would suggest to the pious Author of this work the propriety of making a few corrections in regard to the style, and also-as a further hint for the improvement of the next edition of the work-the insertion of references to passages of Scripture under the respective chapters, to which the afflicted might have recourse for instruction or consolation. 'Send thine holy 'Spirit,' would be better than send thine Holy Ghost'-p. 105. The personal pronoun should be substituted in several places for the neuter and in the invocations, at the bottom of p. 104. the same person of the verb should be used in each instance.

Art. IX. Time's Telescope for 1815, or, a Complete Guide to the Almanack: containing an Explanation of Saint's Days and Holidays with Illustrations of British History and Antiqui ties, and Notices of Obsolete Rites and Customs: To which is added an Account of the Fasts, and Festivals of the Jews; Astronomical Occurrences in every Month; comprising Remarks on the Phenomena of the Celestial Bodies: a History of Astronomy and the Naturalist's Diary; explaining the various Appearances in the Animal and Vegetable Kingdom. To which is prefixed an Astronomical Introduction. Illustrated with Cuts, 12mo. pp. xlviii. 336. price 9s. London. Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1815.

WE took a peep through "Time's Telescope" last year, and found that it brought within sight a prospect gratifying to our old eyes, and rapturous to young ones. This year we have looked through Time's new "Telescope," and find it equally good and equally pleasing. The copious title page extracted above, renders it unnecessary for us to enter into minute description.. Yet we cannot with a safe conscience withhold our recommendation. Books for the use of young persons abound; but many of them ought neither to be read by persons of any age, nor to have been written by persons of any age. One of the annual publications intended for youth is precisely. of this description Professing to furnish amusement' for every ' evening' in the year, it exhibits a dangerous theology, and an erroneous philosophy; and thus, instead of amusing or instrueting, actually deludes and injures. Not so the little work before us. It supplies accurate, though popular instruction, on a variety of topics. It is written in a correct and tasteful style, enlivened by many exquisite quotations from the poets of the day; and is interspersed with such reflections as flow naturally from the conviction that knowledge to be extensively beneficial either to is possessor, or to others, must be purified by Religion, manifested in benevolenee, and consecrated to God.

Art. X. Travels in the Pyrenees; containing a Description of the principal Summits, Passes, and Vallies. Translated from the French of M. Ramond. By F. Gold, 8vo. pp. 324. price 9s. Longman and Co. 1813.

THE Translator informs us, that in returning from Egypt

by the way of the Continent, he happened to be in France at the time when so many of our people were arrested. During his detention, from which he was, at length, liberated by the kind interposition of Dr. Jenner, he employed some of his time, it seems, in translating Ramond's Travels; but he would not have thought of printing the performance, had it not been suggested, that such a work would be particularly acceptable to the public just at the moment when so much interest was excited by our triumphant military transactions on one part of the Pyrenees.

This flattering circumstance might certainly give the book a better chance of catching the public attention; an advantage very fairly taken when the work has so much intrinsic merit. This circumstantial recommendation will soon become needless and forgotten, as the reader advances into descriptions of scenes the ancient majesty of which tends to throw a character of littleness and vanity on all momentary events, produced by frail and transient agents like man.

The English public possess very little information relating to the Pyrenees. They have not been a favourite region of our adventurers, even in times when there were no political causes to render them inaccessible; while we have innumerable descriptions of the Alps, circulating in our most familiar literature. The confessedly superior grandeur of the Alps, may have been one cause of the comparative indifference towards a chain of mountains hardly deemed magnificent enough to be their rivals. This volume, however, will shew that the most passionate admirers of gloomy sublimity and daring adventure, may find more than enough among these noble though secondary eminences, to absorb their strongest feelings, and employ and sometimes defy their utmost powers and courage of enterprise. We think that Mr. Gold, though he might easily have given a better finish, and a diction more purely English, to his translation, deserves acknowledgement for throwing this interesting work into the channel of our literary amusement. As it is in a form so easily attainable, we shall do little more than express this general recommendation, and add two or three extracts.

The journey, or maze of journeys, appears to have been undertaken in 1787. The traveller, who was previously familiar with the wonders and dangers of the Alps, is equally a man of science and of fancy. He describes as well as he speculates.

While inquisitively observing all the facts referable to geology, ascertaining the relations of the mountains to one another, examining the component substances, the positions of the strata, the formation of glaciers, the traces of ancient or of recent changes and catastrophes, his mind is retained in full and delicate susceptibility to all the graces and solemnities of the scene. He muses and romances while gazing at the cataracts and the dark aspects of desolation. He is captivated into poetry at sight of the hideous ruins of fallen mountains, or of the ethereal celestial tints on the summits of those that are still sublime above the clouds. A simple flower, a solitary butterfly, is not lost upon him ; much less the wild appearances and habits of the mountaineers.

He ascended, with a toil and dexterity of which he gives animated descriptions, the highest of these mountains, the Pic du Midi, the Maladetta, and the Marboré. Of this last, the highest point is denominated Mont Perdu, which he judges to be the most elevated summit in the whole of the grand chain. The snow rendered it impossible to attain this transcendent point; a circumstance which every reader will regret, after seeing to what excellent purpose he could look around him from the lower ones. It was a great object with him to ascertain from these lofty positions, the general arrangement and gradations of the whole combination of ridges and summits.

The traveller's reflections are not always perfectly clear of obscurity, and they sometimes partake of the fantastic. We will quote as a specimen of his ambitious and original manner, some musings in which he indulges on the sublime but most desolate and dreary Maladetta, the very meaning of which denomination is 'cursed.' He is dwelling on the work of dilapidation and ruin which nature is carrying on continually among mountains. He proceeds,

Such is at present the condition of the heights which command the globe. Time, which lightly flies over the rest of the earth, impresses here the deepest traces of his passage; and while elsewhere he conceals from us the rapidity of his course, by hurrying us on more swiftly than the objects which surround us; in the mountains he displays his terrors, by shaking under our eyes an edifice which to our weakness would appear immoveable, and by changing in our presence those forms which at a distance we were accustomed to regard as eternal. In the plains, an entire year has scarcely the power of awakening us to a sense of its being plunged into the abyss of the past, for Time appears to stop, when he bestows existence, when he develops life, or supports it: we only learn that he is passing on when we see him destroy his work. It is not the spring with her profusion of flowers; it is not the autumn, prodigal of her fruits; it is not the brilliant succession of sunny days, which remind as that the seasons pass away. The melancholy sentiment of their

instability affects us only when the leaf is falling, when the days are shortening, and when Nature has shut up the circle of her reproductions. In the rocks, on the contrary, in the mountains which are girded with the frosts of an eternal winter, there is nothing to distract us from the contemplation of the ravages of time. The fatal clepsydra, unadorned with flowers, runs on with an uniform rapidity. Each minute marks upon them its passage; each instant stamps them with the traces of its flight; the snow destroys them without respite; the torrent ravages them without intermission: their ruins are tumbling without an interval. Insensible to the spring, and faithful to their own tendency, to perish is their only business; and their front, which dissembles nothing of the power of years, has death alone to speak of; while the rest of nature seems inebriated with a plenitude of life.' p. 284.

The propriety of some of these observations will be more apparent after reading his numerous striking descriptions of the marks of convulsion, disruption, and enormous ruin, which displayed themselves to him among the chasms and ravines of the mountains, where vast masses of fallen rocks were flung and heaped in hideous disorder.

But however gloomy and almost horrific may be the appearance in some of these scenes among the bases of the mountains, where Nature seems to have been so torn as to disclose parts of its unsightly and enormous skeleton, the aspect of the highest summits has a beauty that seems almost to belong to another world. At Gavarnie our Author came suddenly on one of the views of the Marboré, of which the volume and the height,' he says, would make it appear to be very near;' but

its colour, which partakes of the azure of the high regions of the atmosphere, and of that golden light which lies upon distant objects, is a good warning, that before it can be reached, there were many vallies yet to pass. It is a magnificent picture, set, as it were, in the nearer mountains; and contrasting with them both in form and tint, appears to have been coloured by a more brilliant, a lighter, and more magic pencil; for such as are not acquainted with the mountains of the first order, can have no idea of that golden and transparent hue, which tinges the highest summits of the earth. It is often by this alone, that the eye is informed of their prodigious elevation: for, deceived in its estimation of heights and distance, it would confound them with every thing which, either by its form or situation, is capable of imitating their magnificence, did not this species of celestial light announce that their summits inhabit a region of perpetual serenity.' p. 89.

This picture is placed almost close, though without any intention of contrast, to one of a very different kind, taken at the base of the Comelie.

Here we have nothing but ruins, and these ruins are enormous. A vast declivity of blocks of granite, confusedly piled together, de