THE DESTROYING ANGEL. THE sun had set on a fearful day, When the banner'd hosts of Assyria lay On the battle-field stretch'd in the soldier's sleep, They had vaunted their strength in their chariots' might, The tall cedar-trees-at their conquests wide Over nations laid waste in the march of their pride, From her city towers she had look'd o'er the plain, Where the swarm of her foes heaved like waves on the main; And the tramp of the horsemen had burst on her ears- "My arm," said the Lord, "shall the foemen engage, I will send him a remnant in number away, And the king of Assyria shall fly from his prey, And the spoiler forget his rage." 'Twas night, and no moon had lit up the sky, The hosts, wrapp'd in dreams, thought no danger nigh, While the darkness wax'd greater more and more The silence is fear-struck as night's noon comes by! The Angel of Death o'er the armed hosts is flying, Their prowess and strength defying. Swifter far than the flash 'mid the tempest's roar, Like grass upon Galilee's shore. There is silence of horror all over the plain There are few that arise from that couch of the slain; And they shout, but no comrade lifts his head They shout, and they shout in vain, There the steed and his rider, the chief of the sword, The wine-cup of wrath is pour'd, There are none that the burial-rites prepare The unsepulchred dead are the vultures' prey, And wolves the carnival share. PROSPECTUS OF A NEW WORK. "Etherias, lascive, cupis volitare per auras, To the Editor of the New Monthly Magazine. MARTIAL SIR, I have always been of opinion that a large part of the labours of man are lost, both to the individual and to society, from their not having been directed to some certain and well-defined scope. For this reason, from the moment I first entered College (now, alas! five-andthirty years ago), I determined to look about me, and fix upon some useful object, suited to my feelings and capacities, upon which I might concentrate all my powers, and produce something that might at once prove serviceable to my species, and procure me a name that may shine conspicuous when the art of the brass-founder shall be forgotten, and a medal or a bronze no longer remain in existence. I am a man, Sir, of much patient industry, of some shrewdness of remark, of profoundly retentive memory, and of extensive reading,-qualities of which I the less hesitate to boast, because they are pledges of my fitness for the task I have undertaken, and because it is in strict compliance with the received custom among the learned of the last age— the "mighty dead"-to announce themselves with a becoming confidence. If Horace and Ovid, indeed, were justified in singing of themselves," Exegi monumentum" and "Jamque opus," &c. on account of their poetry, how much more may a Gesner, a Baxter, or a Heinsius boast, whose labours have prevented these (so called) immortal works from perishing; who have restored these dilapidated "monuments," have explained their inscriptions, and rendered them intelligible to schoolboys and undergraduates: and here I may be permitted to remark, that this present age, which has added to the stores of English literature three first-rate poets, (Southey, Wordsworth, and the anonymous author of a MS. volume of Latin poetry penès me), to say nothing of the minora sidera, Byron, Campbell, Moore, &c. &c. it has, in its immense fertility, brought to light not one Commentator. Influenced by this reflection, and by the natural bent of my own genius, I no sooner knew myself, (e cœlo descendit, &c. &c.), than I determined to embark my hopes and my fortunes in the composition of a great literary work suited to my peculiar talents. My parents, indeed, were anxious that I should have entered upon some of the active professions, and figured in the busy haunts of men, a lawyer, a divine, or a physician. But what, Sir, are theologians or physicians? Men who confine themselves to one limited study, who survey nature in one only of its numerous aspects, and who, binding themselves to a single end, scarcely ever are found even to accomplish that. The lawyers are still worse: their reading lies wholly in a circle which nobody thinks of entering but themselves; and “scire tuum nihil est ;” the knowledge which you cannot display to others is only so much ignorance. A lawyer, Sir, ranks with a conjuror; more feared than estimated; worshipped only by the ignorant and the credulous, and carefully avoided by all who have the slightest regard for their quiet or their purse. My multifarious reading, which has extended over the whole range of literature, qualified me for nobler pursuits, and my ambition, or rather my instinct, led me to emulate the Bentleys, the Stevenses, and the Burmans, those universal geniuses, who threw the light of their erudition into the most tenebrous holes and corners of their author's obscurity. No sooner, then, had I attained the qualification of Dominus on the College boards, than I plunged deep into criticism, and determined to give my days and nights to the illustration of some learned author. The classic "world was all before me where to choose ;" but the choice was not easy. An esteemed author was not upon any terms to be had, who was not already so towsled and mumbled by the critics, as not to leave a "sed" or a "que" to the ingenuity of the present day; while an obscure and valueless writer would plunge his commentator into his own obscurity, and effectually impede him in his flight to immortality. For, though a commentator is intrinsically more worthy than his original, as the precious gums and essences are more valuable than the lifeless mass they embalm, still it is vain to comment, when men will not read. The old stock of authors was exhausted; the new discoveries of unrolled Pompeian MSS. and of Palimpsestic parchments had not yet furnished fresh matter of research: and I was upon the point of abandoning my schemes, and of embarking in some of the less useful walks of life-wasting my hours in chemistry or natural philosophy-when chance put into my hands, from among the MSS. of Trinity College, Cambridge, an invaluable and inedited fragment of Greek poetry, of which I shall only say, that it is the original of the celebrated English poem, which begins "Three children sliding on the ice," and which has been translated by some vile plagiary, and passed, unacknowledged in the literary world, as his own. As your lady readers do not understand Greek, I shall quote in what follows the English version alone. But, for the benefit of the learned, I shall throw the Greek text into a note.* No sooner was I in possession of this treasure, than I set about illustrating it; and having arranged the text to my own satisfaction, I enriched it, during the course of thirty years exclusive application, with a series of illustrations which leave little or nothing to desire. Κρυσταλλοπηκτους τριπτυχοι κοροι ῥίας Τοις πασιν, δυσφας εν δόμοις φυλασσετε. This beautiful morceau has been attributed to Professor Porson; but if the internal evidence of style did not prove its antiquity, the parchment and character of the MS. at least assigu it six centuries of existence. The precise number of volumes the work will occupy I am not prepared exactly to state; but the extent may be guessed with some approximation towards accuracy by any one acquainted with the manner in which such subjects are usually handled, when he shall have perused the sketch which I propose now to lay before your readers of that portion of my labours which is as yet ready for the press. PROGRAM. The first line of this wonderfully philosophic and profound specimen of Pythagorean lore (for such it is) embraces a great variety of subjects for elucidation, of which I propose to treat in the order of their Occurrence. "Three (1) children (2) sliding (3) on the ice (4)." (1) THREE-Beginning at the beginning, I propose to enter at large upon the consideration of the number three, which, from the remotest antiquity, has obtained a mysterious and recondite signification; as is abundantly proved (omitting other instances) by the three heads of Cerberus; the triple goddess Diana; Isis, Osiris, and Horus; the three wise men of the East; the three dynasties, and three consuls of France; the rule of three; the three dimensions of matter; the three angles of a triangle; the three Fates; the three witches in Macbeth; the three estates of the realm; the "three jolly pidgeons;" Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego; and the Three Gentlemen of Verona. I have diligently collated the poets for their use of this number; such as the "Ter conata loqui," "Trois fois heureux," and " Thrice to thine, thrice to mine, and thrice again to make up nine;" which last quotation introduces a few parenthetic observations on the multiples of three, and of that odd fraction the circulating decimal 9-which at the same time is, and is not, one. In reference also to the "triple tree," I have read through a most voluminous collection of the last speeches of the most celebrated " patibulaires," from which the reader will find copious extracts. I have also a word or two, en passant, on Mr. Canning's "Loves of the Triangles," a new translation of the Welsh Triads, and a critical history of the Three per cents. distinguishing the Consols from the Reduced, with a table of interest, a memoir of the house of Rothschild, notices of inscriptions in the grand livre of France, an engraving of Cobbett's gridiron, and a "Catalogue Raisonnée" of the authors on the great question of currency. (2) CHILDREN.-On this word will be noted, inter alia, the Abbé Quillet's Callipædia; the Pædotrophia of St. Marthe, physician to Henry III. of France; the Cyropædia of Xenophon; Fenelon's Telemachus; and the Chevalier Ramsay's Travels of Cyrus. Notices will be given, likewise, of Peter the Wild Boy, and other wild children; of Les enfans trouvés, and foundling hospitals of most European nations; the Garry Owen boys; the Bluecoat boys; the children in the wood; the young Roscius and Miss Clara Fisher; the Lancastrian system; Pestalozzi and Fellenburg; the "Così al egro" of Tasso, which he stole from Lucretius-a theft the less excusable as Lucretius has twice repeated the simile, totidem verbis, to mark it the more certainly as his own. In order more completely to illustrate this portion of the text, I shall give remarks on second childhood, or old age; remarks on Shakspeare's and Churchill's ages of man, the golden age, the Augustan age, the middle ages; Lord Byron's "Age of Bronze," with an original treatise on the use and abuse of that happy exordium, " In this (as the case may be) learned, pious, sceptical, revolutionary, or degenerate age." (3) SLIDING.-Upon sliding I shall introduce a dissertation on the antiquity of the practice, and an inquiry into the invention of scates; a secret history of sliding panels and doors covered with tapestry, taken from the most approved and authorized novels; observations on sliding rules, sliding boys, avalanches, and "versi sdruccioli!" notes on eels, sophists, political rats, and other slippery animals; including memoirs of Ch-t-br-nd, the Bm family, and Mother L- ; some account of the slips at the theatres, and in the dock-yards, lapsus linguæ, the slips of my aunt Dinah not original (Sterne's plagiarism), on backslidings and "faux pas" in general, with an account of the newest method of soaping a pig's tail. (4) ICE.-This is a word of much obscurity, and requires ample illustration. I shall notice only a few of the points which will be touched upon in this part of my work. The chemical history of ice, with the most approved theory of heat; on icebergs, glaciers, and voyages to the North Pole; memoirs of the Humane Society, and lives of persons drowned in the Serpentine; on ice-creams, Roman punch (glacé), French dramatic poetry, iced champaigne, artificial frigorific mixtures, the late Lord Londonderry's speeches in Parliament, &c. &c. with a new receipt for making cool-cup; account of a burning-glass of ice; the ice palace on the Neva, and Moore's Holy Alliance; the burning of Moscow, the retreat through Russia, and the surgical treatment of frost-bitten limbs; on the Iceni, or men of Kent, an excursus. The second line of this extraordinary poem furnishes no less occasion for research than the first. "All on (5) a summer's (6) day (7)." (5) ALL ON.-Rise, progress, and fall of this phrase in English poetry, with philological researches, and etymologies; the "tractatus de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis ;” the inscriptions "put on" and "put off," on our way-sides, mistaken by foreigners for a remnant of Catholic superstition, and supposed to refer to the hat; spirituous compound called "All sorts" not to be confounded with omnium or scrip; "All the talents ;""All Lombard-street to an egg-shell;" treatise on the use of "On," in epitaphs and epigram writing; outline of modern ON-tology; memoirs of Tommy Ox-slow; "On, Stanley, on !" stolen from the "en avant" of the French, &c. &c. (6) SUMMER. I shall here touch on Thomson's and Delille's Seasons, with citations from all known poets, descriptive of the four quarters of the year; on seasoning, with anecdotes of the cook's oracles, Le Cuisimier François, L'Almanach des Gourmands, and a life of Hannah Glasse; notes on Bologna sausages, "jambon de Westphalie," partridge pye, &c. &c. That highly seasoned dish, a mock pig, will introduce an inquiry into the antiquity of sucking-pigs, with the whole law of tithes : Esau's sale of his estate for a mess of pottage typical of modern Am |