horrors, or a rabble of undisciplined feelings. We shall hail the day, as a day of happy auspices for the moral muse, when our present fanatic race of poets shall have exhausted all their "monstrous shapes and sorceries," and the abused understandings of our countrymen shall break these unhappy spells, forsake the society of demons, and be divorced from defor mity. To us especially whose duty condemins us to the horrible drudgery of reading whatever men of a certain reputation may choose to write, it will be a great refreshment, if it be only for the novelty of the scene, to find ourselves once more, if not at the fount of Helicon, or on the summit of Parnassus, yet at least in a region where fog and gloom are not perpetual, and poetry is so far mindful of its origin and ancient character as to proceed in the path of intelligibility, and to propose to itself some meaning and purpose, if not some moral end.

Rotten principles and a bastard sort of sentiment, such, in short, as have been imported into this country from German moralists and poets, form the interest of this stormy and extravagant composition. The piece is so much in the taste of Lord Byron, that the public have let that nobleman into a large share of the credit of the performance. How that may be we dare not say, but we venture to advise the reverend dramatist, for the sake of the holy and immortal interests connected with his profession, to withdraw himself from all connexion with Lord Byron's tainted muse, and to the greatest distance he possibly can from the circle within which the demons of sentimental profligacy exert their pernicious incantations. The best amulet we can recommend him to use by way of security against the influence of these spells and sorceries, is the frequent, the perpetual per usal of the word of God, of which it is his happy privilege to be the organ and expounder. Let him bind it for a sign upon his hand, and let it be as a frontlet between his eyes, and he may set at nought all the fascinations of depraved poetical examples. In that source of sublimity, simplicity, and beauty, will be found the forms and models which the poet, and especially the clerical poet, may study with security, advantage, and delight there will be found a holy standard of moral perfection, a magnificent display of real grandeur, towards which the soul may erect itself in an attitude of correspondent elevation, and carry its views safely beyond the boundaries of material existence into regions of intellectual splendour, and among those happy inspiring objects which bear the poet aloft on seraph's wings,

"And wake to ecstacy the living lyre.”

The very dramatis personæ of this performance sufficiently announced to us what we were to expect, and particularly the ominous line at the bottom of the page, "Knights, monks, soldiers, banditti, &c. &c. &c." recalled to our minds the alarm which we felt on reading Lord Byron's motto to his last redoubtable performance-"Guns, trumpets, blunderbusses, drums, and thunder." The story of this piece is told in a very few lines. Count Bertram, a nobleman of Sicily high in the favour of his sovereign, was attached to Imogine, a young lady of comparatively humble birth, who returned his love with an equal passion. By a sad reverse, the consequence of his ambition and rebellion, the count is deprived of all his fortune and honours, and banished from his native land. With a band

of desperate followers he continues to keep the shores and the state itself in alarm. His great enemy and fortunate rival, to whose ascendency he was forced to give way, is St. Aldobrand, a valiant and a loyal subject, who, to complete the mortification of the discomfited rebel, btains the hand of Imagine in the absence of F first lover. The lady's excuse for this breach of constaney is the starving state of a parent, whose wants she is thus enabled to relieve. Count Bertram, with his desperate band of followers, is shipwrecked upon the coast near the monas tery of St. Anselm, and within a little distance of the castle of St. Alobrand. They are received at the monastery with the hospitality usual in such places, and soon after a message comes from the fair Imogine to invite the shipwrecked voyagers to the castle of St. Aldobrand, as being capable of affording them better accommodation and refreshment than the con vent. In the meantime, in a conversation with the prior of the convent, Count Bertram reveals himself, and makes a full declaration, with all the bitterness and rage of disappointed passion, of his deadly hate towards St. Aldobrand, and determined purpose of destroying him. He is made acquainted with the temporary absence of his enemy, then with the Knights of St. Anselm. Upon learning this he expresses a horrid joy, considering the opportunity as now arrived of satiating his vengeance. He goes to the castle of St. Aldobrand, where his followers are feasted. His interview with Imogine, and the dire impressions on his mind when the full disclosure of her situation is made to him, are exhibited in a scene of great tragic pathos and terror.

At the next meeting of this luckless pair, which is at the convent of St Anselm, after much painful conflict, Bertram extorts a promise from Imogine to meet him under the castlewalls, and yield him an hour's intercourse. The appointment is kept, and in a wretched moment the stain of guilt is added to the sorrows of the unhappy wife. Immediately after the parting, Bertram hears that Lord Aldobrand had received a commission from his sovereign to hunt down the qutlawed Bertram. From this moment he forms an inexorable determination to murder (for whatever gloss is given to the act, in reference to the manner, place, and time of doing it, no other name could properly describe it) his devoted enemy. His horrid purpose is declared to the wretched wife, whose pitiable and mad despair, on being unable to move him from his purpose, is certainly a most distressing picture of female anguish. The murder is com mitted; and all that succeeds is the utter misery, madness, and death of Imogine, and the death of the count by his own hands.

That there is much deep distress in the story of this tragedy, very considerable force in the expression of feeling and passion, and both vigour and beauty in the imagery and diction, we are very ready to admit, but in dignity, proprie ty, consistency, and contrast, in the finer movements of virtuous tenderness, the delicacies of female sensibility, the conflict of struggling emotions, heroical elevation of sentiment, and moral sublimity of action, this play is extremely defi cient. The hero is that mischievous compound of attractiveness and turpitude, of love and crime, of chivalry and brutality, which in the poems of Lord Byron and his imitators have been too long successful in captivating weak fancies, and outraging moral truth. Let but your hero be wellfavoured, wo-begone, mysterious, desperately

brave, and, above all, desperately in love, and the interest of the female reader is too apt to be secured in his behalf, however bloody, dark, and revengeful, however hostile towards God and man, he may display himself in his principles and actions.

The cardinal crime on which the story turns, is the fatal act of infidelity committed under the walls of the castle of St. Aldobrand: and this crime is proposed and assented to by the contracting parties, in a manner as little consistent with common modesty in woman, and common generosity in man, as can well be imagined. But if that which ought most to soften a man towards the sufferings of a woman, be the consciousness that he himself has been the cause of it, then is this Bertram one of the worst specimens of a man and a soldier that we have yet encountered in the course of our experience. After cropping this fair flower, he treads it under foot, and scatters in the dust its blasted beauty. With ruthless delight and demoniac malice he spurns her soft and melting prayers in her hus band's behalf, whom he resolves to murder in his own mansion, in the presence or hearing of his wife and child, and, as it seems, while he rests on his couch after the fatigue of a journey. All this he resolves, and the deed is done, without any tender visitings of nature, and with less compunction or conflict in his bosom than Milton's devil expressed on the eve of destroying the felicity of paradise.

But ill as the lady Imogine was used by her sanguinary and brutal lover, we cannot say that her own character is such as to entitle her to much respect. The author has endeavoured in a very lame manner to support the credit of her constancy by the pretext, not a very new one, and in the present instance clumsily enough inserted, of a starving parent whose life was saved by the sacrifice: and after this first sacrifice to convenience or exigency, not unlike those which, in the coarse arrangements of ordinary life, parents are apt to require of their daughters, and daughters are apt very cheerfully to submit to, she makes another voluntary sacrifice of her honour, her husband, and her child, to another sort of convenience or exigency, which is created by the urgency of nature or the stress of passion. 'The events are of ordinary occurrence and of ephemeral frequency in vicious society; and though the author has raised them to tragic dignity by his manner of telling and describing them, and the vivacious touches of a very glowing pencil, yet the real substratum of the tale is one of those turbulent triumphs of passion over duty which mar the peace of families, and make the practisers in Doctors' Commons.

That this murderous fellow of a count is meant to engage our admiration and interest our sympathies, is but too apparent. After Bertram has revealed to the prior his bloody trade as the leader of a banditti, and his yet more horrible purposes, the holy man, as he is called, thus addresses him:

"Prier. High-hearted man, sublime even in thy guilt,"

And again, after the horrible murder, which certainly had as little sublimity in it as the murders of Radcliffe Highway, the saintly prior meets the bloody Bertrain with this exclamation:

"Prior. This majesty of guilt doth awe my spirit Is it the embodied fiend who tempted him, Sublime in guilt?"

Never was a murderer of a man in power let off so well. He walks abroad a chartered ruffian and he who but a little before had been pro claimed as an outlaw, and his life declared to be forfeited, is left, after the assassination of the greatest and most honourable man in the country, to hold a long parley with monks and friars, and at last to die at his own leisure, and in his own manner. What occasioned the fall of Count Bertram and his banishment is not disclosed, but we are at liberty to suppose it was rebellious and treasonable conduct. The prior, who seems to have known him well, alludes to the similarity of his case to that of the "star-bright apostate; and the main ground of his implacable hostility to Lord Aldobrand, is the patriotic office with which he is invested of preventing him, if possible, from infesting the coast as a marauder, and chasing him out of the woods wherein he and his banditti were secreting themselves. It does not appear that Aldobrand had vowed his destruction, but on the contrary the prior thus advises him:

"Flee to the castle of St. Aldobrand, His power may give thee safety."

So that, upon the whole, there seems to be a want of a sufficient provocation to the horrid crime which Bertram committed, except a tendency by nature to acts of blood and cruelty be supposed to have pre-existed in his mind, and to have prepared the way to the villainy which followed. And when all this is properly weighed, the desperate love towards such a restless, ill disposed person, in the mind of a gentle lady, unsubdued by a union with a kind and noble husband, distinguished by public fidelity and private worth, the fruit of which union was a child, the tender object of the love of both its parents, stands pretty much without defence, even at the bar of that tribunal where love holds its partial sessions.

On the stage, there should be no tampering with the majesty of Heaven. Neither appeals, nor addresses, nor prayers, nor invocatious to the King of Kings, nor images taken from his revealed word, or from his providences, or his attributes, can be decorously or safely introduced on the stage, or adopted for the purposes of mere poetical effect, or pretended situations. Objects of such tremendous reality are not the proper appendages of fiction: they were. intended only for hallowed uses, and not for entertainment or ornament, Upon these grounds it seems to us to be a practice that cannot be justified by any prescriptive usage of the drama, to blend the pure idea of heaven, and heaven's King, with the corrupt display of human passions, and representations of earthly turmoils and distractions. We do not mark the play before us as peculiarly deserving of censure in this respect; but the passage which follows, has given us the opportunity of boldly declaring ourselves on this subject, whatever credit we may lose by it in the opinion of the more liberal critics of these times.

"Imo. Aye, heaven and earth do cry, impossible!
The shuddering angels round the eternal throne,
Veiling themselves in glory, shriek, impossible!
But hell doth know it true.'

But the play of Bertram is a production of undoubted genius. The descriptive as well as the pathetic force of many passages is admirable, and the rhythm and cadence of the verse is mu sical, lofty, and full of tragic pomp. As the

header has observed, we have many serious objections to the piece, and we cannot but greatly regret that a mind like that of its author should have lent itself to the trickery of Lord Byron's cast of characters, and employed itself in presenting virtue and vice in such delusive colours, and unappropriate forms.

Anecdote of Viscount Barrington.

A young officer, who had not been included in a recent promotion, waited on Lord Barrington, and in a very decided and unequivocal manner demanded satisfaction for the affront. His Lordship replied-"Young gentleman, if I had made it a rule to fight every officer who was disappointed on every general promotion which took place, I should not have been now able to wish you a very good morning;" and beckoning to his attendant to open the door, parted with his doughty and offended visitor.

Silliman's and Simond's Travels. We select the following remarks on Silliman's and Simond's Travels in England, from the last number of the Quarterly Review, not yet republished in this country :-

The "Journal" of Monsieur Simond has no illiberality, no hostile feeling, and few prejudices of any kind. The writer indeed, being born in France, having resided twenty years in America, and married an English woman, was so connected with the three countries, as to have the strongest moral reasons for wishing the prosperity of all. He spent two years in England, without any other object than that of seeing the country; and few travellers have seen so much of it. His book has appeared under some disadvantages in England; it was ushered into the world with a pert, puffing advertisement, and is disfigured with paltry prints, containing some of the very worst representations of noted places that we ever remember to have seen.—

There is also a self-sufficiency in the writer, detracting something from the respect to which his general good sense largely entitles him; he has no relish for Handel, none for Raphael or Niccolo Poussin, none for Milton; and he speaks contemptuously of the greatest musician, the greatest painter, and the greatest poet, without suspecting any deficiency in his own ears and eyes and intellectual faculties. But, in the main, the book bears marks of an observant, candid, and intelligent mind; to other countries it will impart much information respecting the real state of England; in this it must necessarily be read with less interest than elsewhere, but it is one of those works

which derive value from time; that which conveys no knowledge, and imparts little amusement to the present generation, may communicate both when this age shall have past away, and its momentous annals become a tale of the times that are gone.

Mr. Silliman visited Europe with the pleasant and honourable commission to. purchase philosophical and chemical apparatus, and books for Yale College, in Connecticut. Coming in this character, the American traveller brought with him such feelings as became a man of letters and a member of that commonwealth in which all distinctions of country should be forgotten, or remembered only when principles and paramount interests are at stake. His Journal represents England to the Americans as it is, and exhibits to the English a fair specimen of the real American character.

The contrast between these writers in taste and feeling, is curiously shown by their remarks upon Oxford. M. Simond "it looked old, dusty, and wormsays, eaten, the streets silent and deserted.""No place," says Mr. Silliman, " ever impressed me with such feelings of admiration and awe, and I presume it is with.. out a parallel in the world. Instead of the narrow and dirty lanes of trading towns, and the confused noise of commerce, there are spacious and quiet streets, with fine houses of stone. The whole town has an unrivalled air of magnificence and dignity." M. Simond accredits the refuted calumnies of what he is pleased to call

tion," and says, that when Oxford ceased a certain illustrious literary associa thing at all in their stead. Mr. Silliman, to teach exploded doctrines, it taught no on the contrary, inquires farther, and is better satisfied, and affirms that the English universities have been greatly misre presented in America. They cannot, he says, be fairly compared with the more circumscribed institutions in his own country:-if the parallel were to be made, it should be with some individual

college, then the American institutions would have less reason to shrink from the comparison,-comparatively his own colleges are more respectable than he had imagined, although in many things certainly inferior. We cordially join him in the hope and expectation that the American colleges will become more and more honourable and useful to their country. Let the seeds of knowledge and improvement be sown where they will, the fruits are for all mankind.

M. Simond concludes his Journal with a parallel between the French and English nations, drawn with moderation, discernment, and in the spirit of good will...... towards both.

NEW-YORK, January 22, 1817.

spectable individuals, who aided them by their counsel and their contributions, the congregation owes, under God, its pro sperity and the handsome building which they enjoy, to some young men; who, at

State of New-York.

A wood engraving of this Church, by Anderson, from a drawing by Mr. J. L. D. Mathies, is placed on the cover of this number, and will be introduced as a vignette in the title-page to the volume. The Church at Canandaigua is considered a remarkably neat and beautiful building in the Gothic style, and may serve in some measure as a model for other Churches. The exertions and zeal of the congregation merit also all the distinction which the pages of the Journal can confer upon them. In but little more than six months, they have completed an edifice that attracts the notice and admiration of every visitant to the beautiful and flourishing village which it adorns. In the year 1812, when Bishop Hobart first visited Canandaigua, there was no Episcopal Congregation organized. Through the blessing of Heaven on the exertions of the Missionaries in that quarter, a congregation was soon after collected. In the year 1815, at his second visitation, Confirmation was administered in the Court-House, where they regularly assembled for worship; and in December last, assisted by the Rev. Mr. Clark, Mr. Welton, and Mr. Onderdonk, whose labours had contribut ed to this pious work, and by the Rev. Mr. Johnson, the Missionary in Genessee County, he enjoyed the high satisfaction of consecrating a building, which, while it presents a beautiful and imposing exterior, is calculated, in its internal arrangements, for the celebration of the holy ordinances of our religion with solemnity and effect.

But it may be asked, is the erection of a building for worship, by a congregation in a new settlement, so extraordinary an event that it must be celebrated with such display and panegyric? We answer, that it is extraordinary that Episcopalians should exhibit so much munificence in the religious edifices which they erect, because, in many instances, they are very few in number, and of limited wealth, compared with other religious congregations. In the village of Canandaigua, with the exception, it is believed, of a few re

animated by the presence of the Rev. H. U. Onderdonk, their present Missionary, with an enterprise not to be discouraged, and a perseverance not to be baffled, have con. ducted, through many discouragements and many difficulties, the affairs of their religious society to a most prosperous issue. We trust God has been with them hitherto for good. May he bless them in the services of that temple which they have devoted to his glory; and prepare them, by the mercy and grace of its sacred ordinances, for his temple above.

We confess, we dwell on the subject.... with pleasure; we are not ashamed to say, with some enthusiasm; for we know no higher enjoyment than to behold the services of that Church which, in its doctrine, its ministry and worship, we firmly believe is a sound and pure member of the mystical body of the Redeemer, send. ing forth their holy influences, to gladden, with the light and comforts of salvation, every part of our land.

To their praise be it spoken, the Epis copalians who remove to the new settlements, seldom relinquish their attachment to their Church. Many of them indeed are Connecticut Churchmen, who, wher. ever they go, rank among the foremost in knowledge of the principles of the Church, and in zealous and devoted affection for her; and but for whom, she would have been unknown in many places, where, thanks to God, she now displays her evangelical and apostolic services. Not only in Canandaigua, but in Auburn, Manlius, Granville, Oxford, New-Berlin, and in other towns, a mere handful of Episcopalians, within a few years, have organized congregations which are now flourishing; and with their comparatively scanty means erected neat and commodious edifices for worship. They have contributed, individually and collectively, with a liberality which exceeds even city munificence.The Episcopalians in the country, and particularly in the new settlements of the state, are generous and zealous in their contributions to their Church. They only ask their more wealthy and favoured brethren to aid them for a short time with

Missionaries, until they can maintain Clergymen themselves.

The Protestant Episcopal Church in deed must have nurseries for Clergymen în theological schools; and the means of sending them out as Missionaries, with Bibles, and Prayer Books, and Religious Tracts; or her progress and prosperity will be seriously affected, and her influence confined to a few of the most populous towns. An immense field already invites her labours in our own state; and when we look beyond it to the new districts where civilization is rapidly subduing the forests of the wilderness, we ought to feel that it is the highest duty even of humanity, to use the most vigorous and unwearied efforts for the diffusion, in the pure and primitive form in which our Church professes them, the truths of that religion, without whose controlling and salutary influence civilized man would become worse than the savage, and the scenes of social life be desolated by the human passions.

We only want Clergymen, and the means of supporting them as Missionaries, to extend our Church, and with it the blessings of salvation throughout every part of this extensive country. Alas! that Episcopalians, so distinguished as many of them are for their wealth and their influence, while they are "doing good unto all men," seem, in some cases, to forget the peculiar and paramount duty of doing good unto those who are of their own "household of faith."

We record as an instance of pious munificence, that a member of the congregation of Trinity Church waited on Bishop Hobart, and without any suggestion or solicitation, contributed $250 for the support of a Missionary.

The Protestant Episcopal Missionary Society of Young Men.

The young men of our city who are attached to the Protestant Episcopal Church, discover a zeal for her interests, from which the most favourable results may be anticipated. They established a Bible and Common Prayer Book Society, which, by their industry and perseverance, has already produced extensive benefit; and within these few days they have organized a Missionary Society. By the Canons of the Church in this state, the Mission

ary business is intrusted to the Bishop, in conjunction with a Committee appointed by the Convention. The mode by which this Society proposes to aid the ecclesiastical authority in the important work of employing Missionaries, is very correctly settled by the following article of their Constitution; which also makes the Bishop President, ex officio. All interfer ence with the ecclesiastical authority is thus prevented, and unity of operation sccured.

“The object of this Society is to assist, but not in any degree to interfere with the established authority of the Church in the support of Missionaries. It is therefore. declared, that in whatever shall be done, that authority shall be conformed to. Ac cordingly, the monies raised by this Society shall be paid to such body as, by the Constitution and Canons of the Protestant Episcopal Church in this State, may have the appointment of Missionaries: provided that the Missionaries who may de. rive their salaries from the funds of this Institution, shall be designated as 'Mis sionaries aided by the Protestant Episcopal Society of Young Men in the City of New-York?" and the President, ex officio, shall be requested to lay before the Board of Managers of this Society, from time to time, the names of the Missionaries aided by the funds of this Society, and such information in regard to them as he may deem proper, with the reports of these Missionaries, which may have been presented by him to the Convention of the Church.”

At a meeting held on Monday evening last, in the Vestry-room of Trinity Church, for the purpose of forming a Protestant Episcopal Missionary Society of Young Men-Dr. Gerardus A. Cooper being called to the chair, and Alexis P. Proal appointed Secretary; a Constitution was adopted, and the following gentlemen were, elected as a Board of Managers for the ensuing year; viz.

Right Rev. JOHN H. HOBART, (ex officio}
President.

John Watts, junior, 1st Vice-President.
Floyd Smith, 2d Vice-President.
Gerardus A. Cooper, 3d Vice-President.
Don Alonzo Cusliman, Treasurer.
Ferris Pell, Corresponding Secretary.
J. Smyth Rogers, Recording Secretary.
Geo, R. A. Ricketts, Luther Bradish,
David R. Lambert, Cornelius R. Duffie,
Francis B. Winthrop, William Baker,
W. Onderdonk, jun.
William Osborne,
Jonathan Goodhue,
Warmuldus Cooper.

jun. Louis Loutrel, Alexis P. Proal, Edward Hitchcock,

GERARDUS A. COOPER, Chairman, ALEXIS P. PROAL, Secretary. New-York, January 21st, 1817..