Look back into your own souls, ask your hearts, consult your consciences, and submit to their dictates.

The gospel, a monument of peace, happiness, and compassion, which prescribes no laws but those of love, is like a heavenly gate, from which sublime voices alone proceed, and which only opens on palaces of glory.

Whatever be the rank or name of mortals—whatever genius heaven may have conferred on them, suffering is always the lot of life; it is like a funeral pall, which endeavours, under its glittering decorations, to conceal its black texture.

Nature and religion, equally sublime, both powerful comforters, possess a secret balm for the heaviest sorrows.

It almost always happens, that men's good, as well as bad, qualities, are proportioned to the elements of their existence. Great men have great faults; nothing do they possess but

in extremes.

A nation degraded is half conquered.

Every thing changes form and place, but nothing in the universe perishes.

God places adversity among men, as a monarch opens a tournament; laborious combats are presented, in order that He may bestow glorious rewards.

Often does the unfortunate, who thinks he appeals to a feeling soul, dash his own heart against a rock.

The human heart, tormented with its greatness, is always empty, unless the mysteries—the wonders-the promises of heaven and eternity, find a place there.

He, who can brave the rage of mortals, may laugh at the fury of tempests.

Take hope and expectation from the course of human life, and what remains?

EPITAPH. FROM THE FRENCH.

Here lies a good prelate, who died low in purse,
During life fond of gaming, and what is there worse?
Why his case was so bad, for his projects were cross'd,
He ne'er made a bet, but he certainly lost;
So that if he has gain'd now the mansions of God
His friends are all sure it will be something odd.

T. C.

ON THE POETRY OF CAMPBELL.

BY WASHINGTON IRVING, ESQ.

That Mr. Campbell has by any means attained to the summit of his fame, we cannot suffer ourselves for a moment to believe. We rather look upon the works he has already produced, as specimens of pure and virgin gold, from a mine, whose treasures are yet to be explored. It is true, the very reputation Mr. Campbell has acquired, may operate as a disadvantage to his future efforts. Public expectation is a pitiless task-master, and exorbitant in its demands. He, who has once awakened it, must go on in a progressive ratio, surpassing what he has hitherto done, or the public will be disappointed. Under such circumstances, an author of common sensibility take up his pen with fear and trembling. A conciousness that much is expected from him, deprives him of that ease of mind, and boldness of imagination, which are necessary to fine writing, and he too often fails, from a too great anxiety to excel. He is like some youthful soldier, who, having distinguished himself by a gallant and brilliant achievement, is ever fearful of entering on a new enterprize, lest he should tarnish the laurels he has won.

We are satisfied that Mr. Campbell feels this very diffidence and solicitude, from the uncommon pains he bestows upon his writings. These are scrupulously revised, modelled, and retouched over and over, before they are suffered to go out of his hands, and even then are slowly and reluctantly yielded up to the press. This elaborate care may at times be carried to an excess, so as to produce a fastidiousness of style, and an air of too much art and labor. It occasionally imparts to the muse the precise demeanour and studied attire of the prude, rather than the negligent and bewitching graces of the woodland nymph. A too minute attention to finishing, is likewise injurious to the force and sublimity of a poem. The vivid images which are struck off at a single heat, in those glowing moments of inspiration, "when the soul is lifted up to heaven," are too often softened down, and cautiously tamed, in the cold hour of correction. As an instance of the critical severity which Mr. Campbell exercises over his

productions, we will mention a fact within our knowledge, concerning his Battle of the Baltic. This ode, as published, consists but of five stanzas,-these were all that his scrupulous taste permitted him to cull out of about a dozen, which we have seen in manuscript. The rest, though full of poetic fire and imagery, were timidly consigned by him to oblivion.

But though this scrupulous spirit of revision may chance to refine away some of the bold touches of his pencil, and to injure some of its negligent graces, it is not without its eminent advantages. While it tends to produce a terseness of language, and a remarkable delicacy and sweetness of versification, it enables him likewise to impart to his productions a vigorous conciseness of style, a graphical correctness of imagery, and a philosophical condensation of idea, rarely found in the popular poets of the day. Facility of writing seems to have been the bane of many modern poets, who too generally indulge in a ready and abundant versification, which, like a flowering vine, overruns their subject, and expands through many a weedy page. In fact most of them seem to have mistaken carelessness for ease, and redundance for luxuriance: they never take pains to condense and invigorate. Hence we have those profuse and loosely written poems, wherein the writers, either too feeble or too careless to seize at once upon their subject, prefer giving it a chace, and hunt it through a labyrinth of verses, until it is fairly run down and overpowered by a multitude of words.

Great, therefore, as the intrinsic merits of Mr. Campbell are, we are led to estimate them the more highly when we consider them as beaming forth, like the pure lights of heaven, among the meteor exhalations and false fires with which our literary atmosphere abounds. In an age when we are overwhelmed by an abundance of eccentric poetry, and when we are confounded by an host of ingenious poets, of vitiated tastes and frantic fancies, it is really cheering and consolitory to behold a writer of Mr. Campbell's genius, studiously attentive to please, according to the established laws of criticism, as all our good old orthodox writers have pleased before; without setting up a standard, and endeavouring to establish a new sect, and inculcate some new and lawless doctrine of his own.