FEMALE CHARACTERS OF SCRIPTURE. A SERIES OF SONNETS. BY MRS HEMANS. Your tents are desolate; your stately steps, Hang round you in the spirit's pictured halls, INVOCATION. As the tired voyager on stormy seas Invokes the coming of bright birds from shore, To waft him tidings, with the gentler breeze, Of dim sweet woods that hear no billows roar : So from the depth of days, when Earth yet wore Her solemn beauty, and primeval dew, I call you, gracious forms! Oh! come, restore Life's morning dreams. Come with the voice, the lyre, Ye of the dark prophetic eastern eyes, Imperial in their visionary fire; Oh! steep my soul in that old glorious time, When God's own whisper shook the cedars of your clime! INVOCATION CONTINUED. AND come, ye faithful! round Messiah seen, As in calm clouds of pearly stillness bright Showers weave with sunshine, and transpierce their slight Ethereal cradle.-From your heart subdued All haughty dreams of Power had wing'd their flight, And left high place for Martyr-fortitude, True Faith, long-suffering Love.-Come to me, come! THE SONG OF MIRIAM. A SONG for Israel's God !-Spear, crest, and helm, With her lit eye, and long hair floating free, A song for God's own Victory!--Oh, thy lays, RUTH. The plume-like swaying of the auburn corn, THE VIGIL Of Rizpah. "And Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest, until water dropped upon them out of heaven; and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night."-2 Sam. xxi. 10. Who watches on the mountain with the dead, No, a lorn Woman!-On her drooping head, So, night by night, her vigil hath she kept THE REPLY OF THE SHUNAMITE WOMAN. "And she answered, I dwell among mine own people."-2 Kings, iv. 13. "I dwell among mine own,"-Oh! happy thou! Nor for the olives on the mountain's brow; Nor the flocks wandering by the flowery line Of streams, that make the green land where they shine Laugh to the light of waters :-not for these, Nor the soft shadow of ancestral trees, Whose kindly whisper floats o'er thee and thine; Oh! not for these I call thee richly blest, But for the meekness of thy woman's breast, Where that sweet depth of still contentment lies: Weaving from each some link for Home's dear Charities. LYRICS OF THE EAST. BY MRS GODWIN, No. V. DYING REQUEST OF A HINDU GIRL. Azla, for my spotted fawn, Let my playful lorie rest. Gently round my lonely bower, Train yon Camalata flower. Mora, to thy care I leave Flowers that shed their sweets at eve, And all timid birds that tune Melodies beneath the moon. Thou, sweet sister, art like them, Keep, my friends, when I'm no more, No. VI. THE RUINED FOUNTAIN. Flow on, limpid fountain, though deserts surround thee, Thy waters sweet melody have; Though the weeds of neglect in their cold arms have bound thee, And birds dip their wings in thy wave. Thy marble so bright through the dank moss betrayeth A gleam of thy destiny gone, But the clear wave hath ruin'd the urn where it playeth, It may be, thy music, in ages departed, The proud Courts of royalty cheer'd, While shapes of the lovely, the brave, the light-hearted, But now, of the grandeur that was, not a token Like a wreath of wan vapour the breeze hath just broken, Thou only art spared, even as virtue endureth, When pride, wealth, and beauty decline, For the life that dwells deep in thy centre ensureth Lone fount of the wilderness! broken and slighted! Oh! how many like me in thy flow have delighted, VOL. XXXIII. NO. CCVII. 2 Q Aberdeen. MY GRAVE. FAR from the city's ceaseless hum, When his course is nearly run, To soothe my shade at twilight dim! Save bending towards the house of prayer; Save words of grace or solemn psalm! There pause, in musing mood, and all R****y. EDMUND BURKE. PART II. THE death of George II., in 1760, closed one of the most successful reigns of England. At home, the popularity of the Stuarts, first broken down on the field of battle, had been extinguished on the scaffold; abroad, the continental hostilities, often threatening the overthrow of British influence, had closed in a series of encounters which gave the last honours to the British military name. The capture of Calcutta by Clive, in 1757, had laid the foundations of an empire in India. The successes of Amherst and Johnson at Crown-Point and Niagara, followed by the capture of Quebec in 1759, had completed the conquest of Canada, and laid, in a country almost boundless, the foundations of a western empire. To complete the picture of triumph, the victory of Hawke in Quiberon Bay, had destroyed the chief fleet of France within sight of her own shore. In the midst of all those prospects of national prosperity, the old King suddenly died, at the age of seventy-seven, after a reign of thirtythree years. The King's character had been fitted for the time. He was a firm, temperate, and sincere man, steady to the possession of his power, but unambitious of its in crease; not forgetting his natural ties to the place of his birth, but honest to the obligations of his throne, -attached to Hanover, but proud of England. History has now passed sentence upon him, and it will not be reversed by time. "On whatever side," says a narrator of his reign, we look upon the character of George II., we shall find ample matter for just and unsuspected praise. None of his predecessors enjoyed longer felicity. His subjects were still improving under him in commerce and arts; and his own economy set a prudent example to the nation, which, however, they did not follow. He was in temper sudden and violent; but this, though it influenced his private conduct, made no change in his public, which was generally guided by reason. He was plain and direct in his inten tions, true to his word, steady in his favour and protection to his public servants, not parting with his Ministers till compelled by the force of faction." If to this we add, that, through his whole life, he appeared to live for the cultivation rather of useful public virtues than of splendid ones, we shall have a character which might well and worthily sustain the functions of British royalty. He might not attract popular admiration, nor be a pillow for personal friendship to repose on. He might be neither an Alfred nor a Charles II. But he might, and did, conduct manfully, with integrity, and in the spirit of the Constitution, a constitutional empire. The great Minister of his latter day was Lord Chatham —a splendid innovation on the routine of ministry. A new political star, which had shot down to give new energy to the state, and throw sudden brightness over the decaying system of the Newcastle Administration. Chatham was the Premier on the accession of George III.; but his power was not of a nature to last. His personal haughtiness had grown by success until it alienated his friends, and, finally, estranged his sovereign. A division in the Cabinet on the question of a Spanish war, shewed him that his dictatorship was at an end, and arrogantly, to be less than the embodied ministry, he threw up the seals. His successor, Lord Bute, was overthrown in his turn by three causes, each of which at other times would have led the way to fortune,-the favour of his King, the favouritism of the King's mother, and his being a Scotsman. The rapid succession of ministerial changes which, subsequently, for some years left England with but the name of a government, had the disastrous effect of teaching the people to look with scorn upon ministerial ambition. When public men trafficked alternately with the necessities of the King and the passions of the people, the nation soon learned to consider office as a trade. All revolutions are tests of character; |