have recited the above few remarkable words; but in every report that hath reached us of the connexion that subsisted between the American legislators and the citizens, there are to be found this purity and grandeur of style, which can only be inspired by the conscience of an honest man.

S.

THE FINE ARTS-FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

THE annexed engraving is from one of David's most distinguished paintings, The Passage of the Alps, which is in the Hospital of the Invalids at Paris.

NOTES OF A DESULTORY READER.-FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

It is thus that Silius Italicus in the 8th book of his epic poem on the Punic war, introduces his hero, Fabius, to the reader:

Primus Agenoridum cedentia terga videre

Eneadis dederat Fabius: Romana parentem

Solum castra vocant, solum vocat Hannibal hostem.

The sense of which lines, may be thus given in English:

First of the Roman chiefs whose martial might

Caus'd Punic bands to show their backs in flight,
Was Fabius: by his troops a father deem'd,

By Hannibal, sole worthy of his arms esteem'd.

To the historian we are indebted for the faithful recital of past and passing events, but more particularly to the poet, for the established decision of the world on these historical representations; and, in this view, in the merited praise bestowed on Fabius by his countrymen, how great the implied eulogium on the military talents of Hannibal!

There can be little doubt, that the prose style of a nation, is, in no inconsiderable degree fashioned by that of its poetry; and

perhaps no poet among the English, has had so great an influence in this respect as Shakspeare. His phrases are moulded into our every day compositions; and Mr. Burke, in his reflections on the French revolution, does more than once seem to have had him view, particularly his play of Othello. The exclamation of Othello's occupation's gone! with the Farewells which precede it, unquestionably gave form to the eloquent lamentation on the loss of chivalry, as noticed by Mr. Paine; nor can we doubt that the last speech of Othello was present to the mind of Mr. Burke, when he penned the concluding paragraph of his reflections. The structure of the sentences is the same, there is the same flow in the diction, the same melody in the cadence.

Then must you speak

Of one (says Othello) who lov'd not wisely but too well,
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,

Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand, &c. &c.

I have little to recommend my opinions (says Mr. Burke) but long observation and much impartiality. They come from one who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness, and who, in his last acts, does not wish to belie the tenor of his life. They come from one almost the whole of whose public exertion has been a struggle for the liberty of others; from one in whose breast, &c. &c.

As the style of our prose compositions partakes as observed of the manner of Shakspeare, so have the peculiarities of the English tragedy, been derived from his transcendant genius. Among these peculiarities may be reckoned the description of the apothecary and his shop in Romeo and Juliet, and that of the magic handkerchief in Othello, both master-pieces of picturesque and fanciful solemnity. Otway's wrinkled hag in the Orphan, is a portrait of the same school, and in its true manner and spirit.

The "Quidquid agunt homines, nostri farago libelli,” would be more appropriate to the works of this admirable author, than to those perhaps of any other that ever wrote. They are in fact the characteristics of man in every rank and situation of life. Nothing so minute as to escape his observation, of which the allusion of

Hamlet to the ridiculous affectation of writing a bad hand, is an instance.

I once did hold it as our statists do

A baseness to write fair, and labour'd much
How to forget that learning; but sir, now
It did me yeoman's service.

It is remarkable that so trifling a thing as the handkerchief of Othello and the muff of Sophia Western are the hinges on which the most important interests in their respective dramas, are in a great degree, made to turn. But their offices are very different, the one, being accessary to the creation of the "greeneyed monster which doth make the meat it feeds on," the other to the resuscitation of that train of joyous emotions, which makes "the bosom's lord sit slightly on its throne" and by which the desponding lover at once "revives and is an emperor." The incidents connected with the muff, are certainly among the happiest that were ever conceived by a novelist.

The readers of Richardson's novels, if haply such there be in the present teeming age of fictitious narration, will probably recollect the scene at Smith's the comb maker, where Lovelace suddenly seizing the fellow, that had been called down from his work by way of champion for the house, round the neck, eagerly calls for a knife to extract one of his teeth, to supply the loss of one he had had shortly before knocked from his man Will's jaws. If he does recollect it he will recognize it to be a very lively and diverting scene; but he will hardly deem it a circumstance so peculiarly characteristic of libertine levity, as to be worthy of being borrowed from another; and yet, I cannot read the following passage in the Don Juan of Moliere, without being persuaded, that it suggested to Richardson, the incident here alluded to. Sganerelle. Voila le soupè.

[Il prend un morceau d'un de plats qu'on apporte, et le met dans sa bouche.]

Don Juan. Il me semble que tu as la joue enflée, qu'est-ce que c'est? Parle donc, Qu'as-tu là?