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lous. If the English, who are really learned, were boasters, they might be more proud of not pretending to be so, than of setting up for men of letters. Men of learning, and writers are to be found in all conditions of life, from the peer of the realm to the mechanic: one to please himself, another for his amusement, and a third for his emolument. Those whose objects of study are the same, assist each other, and communicate together; but we do not see, as in other countries, the naturalist, the poet, and the mathematician, meeting to agree to praise each other, without being qualified to appreciate each other's merit.

Society does nothing in England for the sick; I mean the bed ridden. In France and Italy, a man goes a hundred miles to be at the bed side of his sick friend. Here, if he is in the house, he quits it. His disorder may be contagious; or the sick man himself wishes to be quiet. Perhaps they are right. I wish neither to praise nor to blame; I only mention the fact.

I have perhaps dwelt too much upon this subject: but I have thought that if these memoirs should one day become public, they would be as much read upon the continent as in England; and the state of society in this country being so different from others, and arising from its constitution, every one must be pleased with me for giving him a just and clear idea of it. I have carried the subject the further, because I never saw a traveller who did not complain of the difficulties he found in getting into company in London. I have said that it arose from the public business: I will add, that the spirit of party, which ordinarily prevails with more or less violence in company, and even creeps into families, produces obstacles which are fatal to the harmony of society, and which destroy all its charms.

Happily for myself, my condition and situation excused me from forming political opinions; and if I possessed them, I should be fully sensible that it was not proper for me to avow them openly in conversation. In consequence of this reserve, I have always had the good fortune to have friends among all parties; and however difficult it has sometimes been to maintain it, I think I have so far succeeded, as never to have forfeited the good-will of any one; except in the instance already mentioned, for which, I will venture to say, I never gave sufficient cause.

DEATH OF WIELAND, THE GERMAN POET. :

CHRISTOPHER MARTIN WIELAND, deceased at Weimar, the night of the twentieth and twenty-first of January, 1813, had seen three generations, during which, from the time of Gottsched to our present poetical period, he has contributed to give the greatest lustre to our literature. He had celebrated on the fifth of September last, not far from Jena, at the country seat of his ancient friend, madam Greesbach, the widow of the counsellor, the eightieth anniversary of his birth, to the great satisfaction and amidst the felicitations of all his friends at Weimar and Jena. The memory of this event has been preserved in a medal by Facius of Weimar, upon which the profile of our Anacreon is much better represented than upon a former one executed in 1783, by Abramson, at Berlin. Wieland afterwards returned to Wiemar, where he continued, with the ardour of youth, his favourite occupation, the translation of Cicero's letters, and was adding a sixth volume to that beautiful work, of which the fifth part had appeared in the course of 1812. He began to write early in the morning, and, as if he foresaw that the sand of time had but a few moments in reserve for him, he did not love to be interrupted in the employment. He had not altered in the least his ordinary mode of life; he appeared occasionally at spectacles, and frequently visited circles of friends. No person could have less concern about his health, until suddenly a slight change in his regimen, in the use of wine, to which he was accustomed, was followed by a kind of parellydis, attended with spasms, resembling, in their effects, those of the apoplexy. He was at times delirious, with lucid intervals, between which sparks of his poetic genius were still apparent.

The hall of the ducal palace in which his remains were exposed to view, is the same where, five years since, were placed those of the dutchess Amelia, whom he had so often der the name of Olympia.

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Wieland had for a long time expressed a desire that his grave should be placed by the side of his wife's, who was buried in 1799, in a rural spot which he owned at Ormanstadt, about a mile from Wiemar, between that city and Auerstadt, where was

also interred a little daughter of his ancient friend Sophie de la Roche. His wish is as sacred as a law to his family. It is to Ormanstadt that the German youth will go to pay a tribute of regret to the poet of the graces, and the minstrel of Oberon.

SELECTED POETRY.

MR. ROGERS, who began his poetical career many years since as the author of the Pleasures of Memory, has recently publish ed a collection of his works, containing, among other new pieces, "Fragments of a poem, called The Voyage of Columbus." When we recollect the nature of the subject, the acknowledged genius of the author, the labour and time which we understand he has devoted to this production-and particularly the anticipation of its singular merits, which preceded its appearance-we confess that we have been much disappointed in its general style and character. The stale device of giving to the poem the appearance of a translation from an ancient Spanish manuscript, the disjointed and loose texture of its fragments, and the almost puerile conceit of omitting, as if it were lost, one entire canto, detract most unnecessarily from the unity, and weaken the interest of the whole poem. Yet there are passages wrought with much elegance and taste, and many melodious lines, which recall the tender warbling of Mr. Rogers's early muse. The first canto is a very favourable specimen:

Night-Columbus on the Atlantic-the variation of the compass, &c.

Say who first pass'd the portals of the west,

And the great secret of the deep possess'd;
Who first the standard of his faith unfurl'd

On the dread confines of an unknown world;

Sung ere his coming-and by Heav'n design'd

To lift the veil that cover'd half mankind!

'Twas night. The moon, o'er the wide wave, disclos'd
Her awful face; and nature's self repos'd;

The poem opens on Friday, the 14th of September, 1492; and it is remarkable that the writer, who represents himself as having sailed with Columbus, never deviates from the track of the old chroniclers, but to discover from behind the

When, slowly rising in the azure sky,

Three white sails shone-but to no mortal eye,
Entering a boundless sea. In slumber cast,
The very shipboy, on the dizzy mast,

Half breath'd his orisons! Alone unchang'd,

Calmly, beneath, the great commander rang'd,

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Thoughtful not sad. Thy will be done!" he cried.*

Then, by his lamp, to that mysterious guide,

On whose still counsels all his hopes relied,

That Oracle to man in mercy giv❜n,

Whose voice is truth, whose wisdom is from Heav'n,

He turn'd; but what strange thoughts perplex'd his soul,
When, lo! no more attracted to the pole,

The compass, faithless as the circling vane,
Flutter'd and fix'd, flutter'd and fix'd again!—
At length, as by some unseen Hand imprest,
It sought, with trembling energy, the west!f
"Ah no!" he cried, and calm'd his anxious brow.
"Hl, nor the signs of ill, 'tis thine to show.
"Thine but to lead me where I wish'd to go!"

Columbus err'd not. In that awful hour,
Sent forth to save, and girt with Godlike power,
And glorious as the regent of the sun,§
An angel came! He spoke, and it was done!
He spoke, and, at his call, a mighty wind,¶
Not like the fitful blast, with fury blind,
But deep, majestic, in its destin'd course,
Rush'd with unerring, unrelenting force,

From the bright east. Tides duly ebb'd and flow'd;
Stars rose and set; and new horizons glow'd;

scene, as it were, some of that preternatural agency to which they refer so continually.

*It has pleased our Lord to grant me faith and assurance for this enterpriseHe has opened my understanding, and made me most willing to go.' See his Life by his son, Ferd. Columbus, entitled, Hist. del Almirante Don Christobal. Colon. c. 4 & 37.

+ Herrera, dec. I. lib. i. c. 9.

When these regions were to be illuminated, says Acosta, cum divino consilio decretum esset, prospectum etiam divinitus est, ut tam longi itineris dux certus hominibus præberetur. De Natura Novi Orbis.

§ Rev. xix. 17.

¶The more Christian opinion is, that God, at the length, with eyes of compassion, as it were, looking downe from Heaven, intended even then to rayse those wyndes of mercy, whereby....this newe worlde receyved the hope of sal vation.-Certaine Preambles to the Decades of the Opean.

Yet still it blew! As with primeval sway,

Still did its ample spirit, night and day,
Move on the waters!-All, resign'd to fate,
Folded their arms and sat; and seem'd to wait
Some sudden change; and sought, in chill suspense,
New spheres of being, and new modes of sense;

As men departing, tho' not doom'd to die,

And midway on their passage to eternity.

And again-canto fourth, the continuation of the voyage,

Still, as beyond this mortal life impell'd

By some mysterious energy, he held
His everlasting course. Still self-possess❜d,
High on the deck he stood, disdaining rest;
Fathom'd, with searching hand, the dark profound,
And scatter'd hope and glad assurance round.
At day-break might the caravels* be seen,
Chasing their shadows o'er the blue serene;
Their burnish'd prows lash'd by the sparkling tide,
Their green-cross standards† waving far and wide.
And now once more to better thoughts inclin❜d,
The seaman, mounting, clamour'd in the wind.
The soldier told his tales of love and war;
The courtier sung-sung to his gay guitar.
Round at primero sate a whisker'd band;
So Fortune smil'd, careless of sea or land.

Yet who but he undaunted could explore
A world of waves-a sea without a shore,
Trackless and vast and wild as that reveal'd
When round the ark the birds of tempest wheel'd;
When all was still in the destroying hour—
No sign of man! no vestige of his power!

• Light vessels, formerly used by the Spaniards and Portuguese.

† F. Columbus, c. 23.

+ Among those, who went with Columbus, were many adventurers and gentlemen of the court. Primero was the game then in fashion, See Vega, p. 2. lib. iii. c. 9.

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