My Dear Member—I send you a powerful petition,
For absolute, instant, entire abolition.
This question our Chamber is taking a lead in
Composed, as you know, of the Flowers of Dunedin,
Intelligent Druggists, rhetorical Quakers,
Broad acres—a few—but no want of wiseacres.
All are perfectly clear that these horrid restrictions
Are the proximate cause of our present afflictions,
Obstructing the bowels, as 'twere, of the nation,
And entirely deranging our whole circulation.
To expel these bad humours, we earnestly urge
A dose, night and morning, of Russell's new Purge;
Not the old wishy-washy affair of the fixture,
But the new out-and-out Morisonian mixture.
In the mean time 'tis well that the Noble concoctor
Has succeeded in ousting the family Doctor.
Peel's a perfect old wife—twaddles on about diet,
About exercise, air, mild aperients, and quiet;
Would leave Nature alone to her vigour elastic,
And never exhibit a drug that is drastic.
Doctor Russell's the man for a good searching pill,
Or a true thorough drench that will cure or will kill.
For bleeding and blistering, and easy bravado,
(Not to speak of hot water,) he passes Sangrado.
He stickles at nothing, from simple phlebotomy,
As our friend Sidney said, to a case of lithotomy:
And I'll venture to say, that this latest specific,
When taken, will prove to be no soporific.
Might I just hint how happy 'twould make me to be
Sole Agent down here for the great Patentee?
Entre nous, what can mean these unpleasant surmises?
I scarce know what prognosis to form of the crisis:
And our friends, quite perplex'd at this puzzling delay,
Can't imagine how scruples should stand in the way.
Must the grand Opus Magnum be brought to a fix,
Because some jarring drugs are unwilling to mix?
His lordship, I'm certain, would cut the thing shorter,
If he'd borrow a touch of my pestle and mortar.
Ere we part, I must give you a hint of the truth:
We Free Churchmen can't stomach your views of Maynooth.
If you value your seat, as a friend I would urge ye,
Steer clear of endowing the Catholic Clergy;
A bolus (or bonus) so very unhallow'd
Would in Scotland, I'm sure, not be easily swallow'd.
By an early reply we should all be elated,
And 'twould tell if from Windsor again it were dated.
Dear Druggist—-You've open'd your jocular vein,
And I fain would reply in the same pleasant strain;
But let those laugh who win—I have only to say,
That we are—as we were: and all done by Lord Grey—
The most arrogant, wayward, capricious of men,
(Though this last little sketch must not seem from my pen.)
Only think of objecting that Palmerston's name
In a fortnight would set East and West in a flame:
About mere peace or war a commotion to make,
When the Party's existence was plainly at stake!
When office was offer'd, to cast it behind,
And to talk of such trash as the good of mankind!
It is clear, my good friend, such a crotchety prig
Has but little pretence to the title of Whig.
On the part I have played in this luckless transaction,
I confess I look back with unmix'd satisfaction.
From the first I said this—and 'tis pleasant to feel
Thus at ease with one's self—"I'm for total repeal.
Stick to that, my Lord John, and all scruples I stifle:
Any office, or none, is to me a mere trifle;"
(Though, of course, my dear Mac, for the purest of ends,
I was willing to help both myself and my friends.)
"Any office I'll take, that can give you relief—
From the Whip of the House to Commander-in-chief."
Oh! If all of the party had acted as I did,
In how noble a band would Lord John have presided!
But—"'tis best as it is:" we may grieve, yet we shouldn't:
Peel can carry the measure—'tis certain we couldn't:
Though we hoped, if our reign was once fairly begun,
It might last till—we did what was not to be done.
I think, (though thus leaving old views in the lurch,)
We should not have establish'd the Catholic Church.
To speak for my colleagues, in me would be vanity:
They might differ; but I should have thought it insanity.
In the hope that our friends in Auld Reeky are "brawly,"
I remain yours, in confidence, T. B. Mac——y.
EAST AND WEST.
Sweet is the song, whose radiant tissue glows
With many a colour of the orient sky;
Rich with a theme to gladden ear and eye—
The love-tale of the Nightingale and Rose.
Nor speeds the lay less surely to the mark
That paints in homely hues two neighbours sweet,
Born on our own bleak fields, companions meet,
The modest Mountain-daisy and the Lark.
The fond attachments of a flower and bird!
That things so fair a mutual bond obey,
And gladly bask in love's delightful ray,
Who would deny, and doubt the poet's word?
Or who would limit love's and fancy's reign?
Their hardy growth here springs as fresh and fair,
Far from the sun and summer gale, as there
Where Gul for Bulbul decks her gay domain.
'Tis poesy, whose hands with kindly art,
Of kindred feelings weaves this mystic band,
To knit the Scottish to the Iranian strand,
And reach wherever beats a human heart.
AN APOLOGY FOR A REVIEW.
It is not our general practice to review books of travels; nor, in truth, in noticing these little volumes, do we introduce any exception to that general rule. Under what precise category in literature they may fall, would admit, as Sir Thomas Browne observes as to the song sung by the Sirens, of a wide solution. Plainly, however, in the ordinary sense of the term, travels they are not. They will form no substitute for Murray's admirable hand-books; for on the merits or demerits of competing hostelries, which Mr Murray justly regards as a question of vital importance—the very be-all, and often end-all of a tour—these volumes throw no light. In statistics they are barren enough. To the gentlemen of the rule and square, who think that the essential spirit of architecture can be fathomed by measurement, they will be found a blank. And though abounding in allusions, which betray, without obtruding, an intimate acquaintance with ancient literature, and sufficient in congenial minds to awaken a train of memories, classic or romantic, medieval or modern; they contain few dates, no dissertations, no discussion of vexed questions as to the ownership of statues, baths, temples, or circuses; or the other disputed points which have so long been the subject of strife in the antiquarian arena. And, really, when we consider the way in which, in the course of a century, all the old landmarks on the antiquarian map have been broken up, and the monuments of antiquity made to change hands; how Nibbi supersedes Winckelman, only to be superseded in turn; how a temple is converted into a senate-house; one man's villa into another; how Caracalla is driven from his circus to make way for Romulus; how Peace resigns her claim to a Pagan temple to make way for a Christian basilica of Constantine; how statues, arches, gardens, baths, forums, obelisks, or columns, are in a constant state of transition, so far as regards their nomenclature; and, to borrow the conceit of Quevedo, nothing about Rome remains permanent save that which was fugitive—namely, old Tiber himself; we rather feel grateful to the tourist who is content to take up the last theory without further discussion, and to spare us the grounds on which the last change of title has been adopted. What, indeed, matters it, in so far as the imagination is concerned, by what emperor, consul, or dictator, these mighty remains were reared or ruined? Whether these Titanian halls first echoed to the voices of Pagan or the chant of Christian priests? Whether this inexplicable labyrinth of vaults and cells, and buried gardens which overrun the Esquiline, where the work of art and nature is so strangely melted and fused together by "the alchymy of vegetation," really formed part of the golden house of the monstrous Nero; or of the baths of him, the gentlest of the Cæsars, who, when he had gone to rest without doing a good action, regretted that he had lost a day? Equally they remain monuments of the grandeur of the minds which gave them birth; mysterious, suggestive—perhaps the more suggestive, the more awakening curiosity and interest, from the very obscurity in which their origin, purposes, or fortunes are shrouded. And if individual associations become dim or doubtful, they merge in the clear light which these gigantic fragments, betraying, even in ruin, their original beauty of proportion and grandeur of conception, throw upon the lofty and enduring character of the Roman people.
These volumes, then, as we have said, will neither replace Murray, nor form a substitute for Eustace. Neither is their interest mainly owing to mere vivid or literal portraiture; by painting in words, as an artist would do by forms and colours, and enrolling before us a visible panorama, such as might present a clear image of the scenes described here to those who had never witnessed them. Their charm—for a charm, we trust, they will have to a considerable number of readers—arises simply from the truth with which they seize, and the happy expression in which they embody, the spirit of the spot; marking, by a few expressive touches, the moral as well as the physical aspect of the scene, and awakening in the reader a train of associations often novel in conception, as well as felicitous in expression; but which appear in general so congenial and appropriate, that we are willing to persuade ourselves they are a reproduction of thoughts, and dreams, and fancies, which had occurred to ourselves in contemplating the same objects. Hence it is to those, who have already witnessed the scenes described, that these volumes address themselves. They do not paint pictures, but revive impressions; they call up or steady imperfectly defined images; bring forward into light struggling memories;—and, by a union of brief description, classic or historical allusions, picturesque and significant epithets, and reflections hinted at, rather than wrought out, they very successfully accomplish their object—that of realizing to the eye of the mind that distinctive and prevailing expression which each aspect of nature, like each movement of the human face, wears in itself, and is calculated to awaken in others—cheerful, sombre, majestic, or awe-inspiring, according to the nature of the scene, the associations past and present with which it is surrounded, and the conditions, or, as a painter would term it, accidents under which it has been viewed.
While we say that Mr Whyte has generally been very successful in his aim, we must not be understood to express by any means an unqualified probation of the taste in which these volumes are conceived, or the plan on which they are constructed. The train of reflection is sometimes too obviously an afterthought—not spontaneously evoked at the moment by the influences of the scene, but evidently devised and wrought up into point and apparent application by a subsequent process. We have dreams which were never dreamt, and reveries which are any thing but involuntary. There are too many Tristram Shandy transitions, sundry cockneyisms in expression, (we use the word in a wide sense,) and one or two jokes which make the blood run cold. Lastly, we are compelled to say that we repose much more confidence in the writer's taste in architecture than in painting. It is enough to say that he evinces no feeling for the more simple and majestic compositions of Raphael; while the powerful contrasts, and magic of light and shadow displayed by Guercino and Tintoret, seem to exercise an undue fascination on his mind. It is only to the injurious effect produced by these blemishes that we can attribute the slender success with which the volumes have been attended; for at this moment we do not recollect having seen them noticed by any of those who assume to themselves the right of distributing the rewards and punishments of criticism.
Let us now look at one or two of Mr Whyte's sketches of Rome, or rather of the train of thought called up by wanderings among its ruins, tracing the broken sweep of its ancient walls, or wandering among the stately aqueducts and nameless tombs of its dreary Campagna.