lost his beloved son, of whom a copious memoir is given in the present volumes. From this period, until his death in 1820, Hayley lived very much in retirement. . He was, however, tempted, in the year 1808, to adventure once more upon the perilous sea of matrimony; but the speculation was unfortunate, and in a few years after their union the parties separated. Nothing in Hayley's temper, which was very mild and cheerful, seems to have occasioned either this or his former separation, but his studious habits were, probably, not very agreeable to his com panions. He produced several works in addition to those which have been mentioned: an Essay on Old Maids, in 3 volumes-a work full of gay amusement, and evincing a considerable extent of reading; several comedies in rhyme; a Life of Romney the Painter, and many other minor compositions.

The Memoirs contain many original letters, some of which possess considerable interest, and also several unpublished poetical pieces, which do not rise above the ordinary level of Hayley's genius. As a short specimen, we shall select a copy of verses addressed to Miss Hannah More, which, from the tone of them, must certainly have been written in the last century. There is something peculiarly piquant in the idea of the excellent author of " Calebs" and "Moral Sketches" being addressed in the following strain :—

To Miss Hannah More.

THY verse, sweet sister of the lyre!
A hapless poet found,

His brain oppress'd with feverish fire,
His eyes in darkness drown'd:

But with a magical control
Thy spirit-soothing strain
Dispels the langour of his soul,
Annihilating pain.

If to relieve the sickly hour,

Thy distant hand can frame

A tuneful charm of such high power

To kindle pleasure's flame;

How may he scorn all human charms!

How blissful his condition!

Who shall encircle in his arms
So lovely a magician!

One of Hayley's critical friends imagined the conclusion of these verses "rather too warm," but the poet himself conceived them to be "perfect water-gruel," and thought that the fair object of them must be

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very prudish indeed" if they offended her. In fact, Hayley's pen never trespassed beyond the bounds of delicacy, and yet it is singular enough that a comedy which he had written in French, and which was offered to one of the Parisian theatres, was rejected on account of an alleged impropriety in the introduction of a lady upon the stage whose character was not altogether unblemished. Upon the appearance of the Essay on Old Maids, also, the nice sense of propriety in some of the sisterhood was scandalized at several passages in that work, which were not in,truth at all calculated to offend decorum.

A very useful lesson upon the unsubstantial nature of literary popularity may be gleaned from these volumes, which furnish abundant in

stances calculated to make many of our living authors tremble for their posthumous reputation. Several individuals are mentioned by Hayley in glowing terms of praise, whose very names have long since faded from the public ear. Who, for example, in the present generation ever heard of "the immortal Mundy?" In the same manner Miss Seaward is eulogised so warmly as to justify, in some degree, Porson's satirical verses. "The celebrated Miss Seaward," and "the sublime Muse of Lichfield," sound rather amusingly to modern ears. Hayley appears to have measured the reputation of this long-forgotten lady by her own standard; and a more fallacious mode of estimation could not have been adopted. We may here notice the very extraordinary habit in which "the Poet of Eartham," as he styles himself, indulged, of describing his friends by some strange periphrasis, a practice which deteriorates much from his otherwise pleasing style. He appears to have felt an unconquerable aversion to surnames, for after having once mentioned them, he avoids the repetition of them with the most amusing ingenuity. In his letters he frequently denominates himself "William of the Turret," from a cottage residence to which he had given that name; or, "the Hermit ;" or, in the earlier part of the Memoirs, "the young Poet of Sussex.” Gibbon is "the Roman Eagle." Helen Maria Williams "the young Muse," and Mrs. Opie "the excellent Amelia of Norwich." The reader is occasionally at a loss to determine the identity of the personages thus described, and is puzzled between "the amiable Physician of St. Alban's" and "the admirable Physician of Derby."

Nothing is more remarkable in the literary character of Hayley than the strong propensity he displayed for writing epitaphs. No tomb-stone was too haughty or too humble for this exertion of his talents. He was unfortunate in losing many of his early friends by death, but the mournful pleasure which he enjoyed in celebrating their virtues in an epitaph appears always to have afforded some consolation to his grief. Cowper -his nurse-his footman-Bishop Watson-and a parish clerk (who was lucky enough to die during the Poet's residence within the parish), were all commemorated in very smooth verse. Upon one occasion Dr. Johnson happened to have composed an epitaph upon a lady, to whose manes our Poet had already rendered the same, service. Johnson, on seeing the rival lines, without being informed of the author's name, exclaimed, “It is unequal, but the man has much poetry in his mind." "If," adds Mr. Hayley, with great simplicity," he is the very envious being he is generally supposed to be, he will detest me most cordially."

That portion of the work which has fallen to the lot of the present editor matches exceedingly well with the prior part of the volumes. It contains some details of the last years of the Poet's life, and a summary of his character, upon the whole, fair and candid. We have only space to add, that the "Memoirs of Thomas Alphonso Hayley" present an account of a very amiable and clever boy, who was well entitled to fill a place in Klefekerus's Bibliotheca Eruditorum præcocium. An affectionate father, who lost a child like this, in the very bloom of his promise, may be pardoned in consecrating to his memory so copious a memoir as the present.

BABYLON.

RESPLENDENT the morn of her last day shone
On the cloud-capp'd tower of Babylon;
And her lofty walls rose in proud array,
And her terraced gardens look'd green and gay,
And the stream of the river of Paradise

Flash'd a flood of light to her clear blue skies;
She stood in the strength of her haughty sway,
The pride of the turretted Cybele,

Yet the sentinel sees from her battlements high
The Medes and the Persians before her lie,
And their steel helms blaze in the full sun-beam,
Far, far as his vision can catch their gleam:
And long by her hundred gates they had sate,
While she laugh'd in contempt at their battle-state,
And trusting to bulwark and massy wall,
Gave her days to pleasure and festival.

But her time is come-the last sun hath shone

On the tower of magnific Babylon

The day that shall see her the spoil of the foe,
And trample the strength of the mighty low.

"Tis midnight, and the feast is done, The revellers wrapp'd in sleep;

The long-drawn streets of Babylon
Are hush'd in silence deep;

And her palace floors are floating in wine,
And purple and gold in the pale moonshine
Bestrew them in many a heap :—

The guards are stretch'd drunk in the marble hall,
That no more shall wake at the trumpet's call ;

And glozing courtiers lie tranquil there,

That no more in the crimes of a court shall share;

And fair girls repose in the harem's bound,

That no more shall dance to the timbrel's sound.

The monarch alone on his golden bed

Tosses sleepless, and fever'd, and hurried.
He had seen at the revel a phantom hand,

Unearthly in hue, and of outline grand,
On the banquet-wall trace in letters of light
The doom of his kingdom, and fall of his might.
But wherefore?-was not every gate

Of brass, and guarded well?—
And if his trusty guards were beat,
Their shouts and cries must tell-

He had thousands to aid them as brave as their foe,
Then why should danger be threatening him now,
And fear unloose her spell?—

He starts, then he listens-no sound-not a breath!
Up, king! 'tis the silence that harbingers death.

They have turn'd the Euphrates, its channel is dry,
And the arm'd host is entering privily;

The soldiers of Cyrus, the lord of the East,

Are entering the chambers of revel and feast,

And pouring forth blood mix'd with wine on the floors,

Ere the inmates awake or the battle-din roars.

Now the tumult begins, and lock, bolt, and bar,
Give way to the conqueror's cimeter,

And cries, and shrieks, and groans of despair,
Ascend to the skies with the flame's red glare;
And Belshazzar prepares like a satrap to die,
Rolling fierce in rage his fiery eye,

And grasping his sword (for he knows no retreat),
The victors assail him-

-The dream of his state

The glory of Babel the proud, is no more!-
She hath perish'd as lesser things perish'd before;
She is desolate now and the dragon crawls

O'er the muddy heaps of her ruin'd walls;
And the serpents creep and wild beasts stray

Where her chambers of state and her proud halls lay-
And nothing is left, save a tale of her fame,
The dream of her glory and wreck of her name !

THE PHYSICIAN.NO. IX.

Of the Instincts of Nature in Diseases.

NATURE has implanted in man, as well as in all other animals, a cerain medical instinct, which is by no means to be disregarded. It laid the foundation of the whole practice of physic, and preceded the discovery of that science. There existed very skilful physicians before doctors were created, and these physicians were indiscriminately men and brutes. Nature, knowing the weakness of her creatures, could not possibly abandon them thus to their fate, for in that case they must soon have perished. The instinct of self-preservation, with which she endowed them when she gave them life, was combined with a certain discrimination, which causes them to select and delight in things tending to promote their well-being, and to avoid and reject such as threaten them with danger and destruction. So deeply has Nature interwoven this secret feeling with the whole mechanism of the animal powers that they can scarcely ever develope themselves in their operations in any other manner than is consistent with our preservation. Too vivid a light, which would injure the eyes if suffered to shine into them, produces from its nature such an effect upon them that they must of necessity contract and thus exclude the redundant rays, without our having occasion to form previously any resolution on the subject, nay, even without our being able to avoid it if we would. When we inhale acrimonious vapours, which, if they were to remain in the lungs, would corrode their delicate texture, we are compelled, by the laws of the animal mechanism, to set in immediate motion all the machinery of respiration, in order to expel these vapours from the chest by an incessant coughing, and this effect takes place absolutely and even against our will. When there is in any of our vessels an obstruction of viscid humours, which by their rapid putrefaction might infect the whole frame, the sensitive machine is enjoined by the laws of Nature to inclose this dangerous spot with an inflammation, which prevents the putrefaction of the obstructed humour, by converting it into a mild and innocent pus. If we attempt to perform an action that would do a dangerous violence to our limbs, pain is commisioned to warn us to desist, and in spite of our firmest resolution we are VOL. VI. No. 32. 1823.

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obliged to submit. When any of our passions exhausts by its vehemence the energies of our nature, that very exhaustion has the effect of reducing, cooling, and moderating it. If we carry the instinct of self-preservation to excess by means of artificial excitements; and are induced, for example, by the smell of savoury viands to overload the stomach, this very gratification of the instinct produces a disgust, a loathing of more food; and if that cannot correct the fault, the stomach is forced to employ its own powers in a way contrary to its original destination, and to discharge the superfluous food by a vomiting, in which our resolution has no share. In short, all our actions and movements, as far as they are animal, are governed by this law of animal nature, and all tend to our preservation. All imaginations, conceptions, and desires, in as much as they are felt, excite in the machine peculiar movements, proportionate to their vivacity; and I know not whether it be more absurd to infer thence that the body of animals is actuated by an essence which obeys the law of their preservation, or that it accomplishes all this by the very same mechanical laws by which those machines move that are not animated by feelings. Of the two notions, that of Stahl is incontestably more rational and more consonant to nature than that of Des Cartes. Still both are erroneous; for I have shewn in the above instances, that the effects which by so wise an arrangement take place in the animal economy, though they tend to its preservation, still do not proceed from the considerations of a rational essence which governs it, but that they in general either precede such considerations, or happen in opposition to our own resolutions. In short, they take place according to the laws of animal mechanism, which are totally different from other known mechanical laws; and instead of explaining them by numberless errors, philosophers ought to have been content to have first made themselves acquainted with them. Thus the natural philosopher is not ashamed first to study the laws of physical phenomena, or the mechanic to observe the laws of mechanical effects, and then to explain such as he is capable of explaining, and to leave those which are incomprehensible to him where he found them.

As, then, it appears from the preceding observations, that all animal machines receive the various impressions, which are either serviceable or detrimental to their preservation, in so decided a manner that they themselves labour for their well-being and against their destruction; so we thence deduce this incontestable inference, that, according to the laws of animal mechanism, every animal body must take in what is beneficial in a very different manner from what may be pernicious to it, and this is the foundation of the natural dietetic and medical instinct innate in all animals. The impression made by a poisonous vegetable on the senses of an animal excites, even in the most hungry, an instantaneous nausea, on which account it loathes and rejects that vegetable. If its senses be impaired, and it should by mistake eat any poisonous food, no sooner has it reached the stomach than it compels that organ to exert its powers in a manner totally the reverse of its natural functions, in order to ret rid of it by the shortest way; but, should its efforts fail, the effects of this poison on the animal body produce such movements as direct the senses and imagination to other things which are antidotes to it. In like manner the overloading of the stomach takes away the appetite from all animals, and if they then force themselves to take