The Friends, by Francis Hodgson.

The departure of Theodore to rescue his friend, and his parting with Ellen, are equally touching pictures; but as they occupy several pages (125, 6, 7, 8, and 9) they are too long for us to

*This is a bad line for a simple ballad-" coming to go" is very quaint; and the concluding line is a little absurd.

VOL. 4.]

The Friends, a Poem; by Francis Hodgson.

transcribe. The mention of the writings of ancient genius

not yet obscured

With clouds of Taste corrupt, by careless eyes endured,

leads to a passage with reference to the modern poesy of Britain which we

149

a blessing or a curse to humanity. We quit the theme willingly for a fine train of reflections on viewing the starry fir

mament:

Ye clustered glories of Night's awful reign,
Stars upon stars receding, backward yet,
(Like brilliant islands in a shoreless main)
Each in your round of rolling planets set,

quote with the warmest tribute of ap- To wake the verdant life that through them springs, proval and admiration :

Too many a blot already stained the page
Inspired by Britain's Muse-but foul misrule,
But barbarous boldness, in that fresher age,
Dared not to raise licentious Folly's school-
Nor yet the wholesome dread of thee was o'er,
Proud Wit!-but Dulness thrives, for Pope is now

no more.

And thou, Corruption, heavier far and worse,
Adulterate feeling of a German breed-
Oh! can an English soil sustain thy curse,
Conceit thy sire, and Infamy thy seed?
Where wondering Vice young Virtue's blush retains,
And robbers die like heroes, not m chains!

In tribes untaught, where India's waste of wood
Shelters her houseless savage, Hatred then,
And Vengeance, swift to shed a brother's blood,
Were deemed to dwell-but now-'mid polished

men

The fiends let loose from darkness, rise and claim,
Not rest, nor mercy, but applause and fame.

Veiled in bright robes of free and generous pride,
Wreathed with bright flowers of fair confiding
love;

By Beauty favoured, and to Truth allied,

O'er blighted realms the brave banditti roveSo round some Upas trunk might roses twine, Or Hell breathe odours of an air divine.

And warm their moving crowds of animated things

Say, will ye rush together from the skies,

And sink at once in fearful night obscure?
Or, as untired the immortal ages rise,

To prove the race ye hold, awhile endure;
Then die at different periods, till at last
One universal Now absorbs the past?

Oh! many are the mansions to receive

The emancipated crowds of every globe-
All who one Lord obey, one Lord believe,

Shall wear at length their amaranthine robe,
On those apportioned thrones of glory placed,
All their sighs hushed, and all their tears effaced.

There is a pretty little allegory, with which we shall close our extracts:

Placed in an Island on the main,

Where rolling waves for ever swell;
Chequering their hours with joy and pain,
Two lovely Nymphs together dwell.
The one looks back upon the past

With many a pensive sigh and tear-
Mourning the lights that would not last
To shine upon her brief career.

The other to the future still

Casts an assured, a sanguine eye-
Forgetful of recorded ill,

And careless of the griefs gone by.

Life is the speck that marks the void;

Space is the sea of boundless scope:
And those whose days are thus employed,
Pale Memory and glowing Hope.

1

This denunciation is becoming and just against that portion of the new school, which, from the Charles de Moor of Schiller to the latest products of (we are sorry to say) the British Muse, whether seen in the incestuous Rimini, agreeable to us to say any thing deterAfter these quotations, it is not the ruthless and bloody Corsair, the iorating of a poem presenting such Bertrams, Bertrands, or other human beauties, and altogether so admirable demons of our day, the favourite heroes in the principles it maintains. In jusof the drama and verse, is sure to enno- tice, however, we must state, that we ble the most atrocious villains with many of the purest virtues, and so con- the sense is obscure, and find few of frequently encounter passages in which found the evil with the good, that the the delineations, whether of animate or bewildered mind of the reader is una- inanimate nature, ble to distinguish if the cut-throat be a sound moralist or not, the infidel a Christian, and the crime-covered ruffian and desperado an honour or a disgrace,

more than mere

sketches, not finished with the care of perfect pictures.

BATTLE OF WATERLOO.

From the Literary Gazette.

Among the examples of intense suffering, and mi

[VOL. 4

"But we had no sooner passed raculous escape, which the eventful history of this through them, than we were attacked in

day disclosed, there is not one more calculated to

of his family, taken almost literally from his own

words; an account equally remarkable for its

affecting simplicity and moral reflection.

DEAR LADY B-----,

excite our sympathy, than the case of the Hon. Our turn before we could form, by about Colonel Ponsonby, of the 12th dragoons. The 300 Polish lancers, who had come following account was drawn up by a friend of down to their relief. The French arthat gallant officer, to satisfy the painful curiosity tillery pouring in among us a heavy fire of grape-shot, which, however, for one of our men killed three of their own : in the melée, I was disabled almost inYOU YOU have often wished for some stantly in both of my arms, and followwritten account of the adventures ed by a few of my men, who were and sufferings of your son, Colonel presently cut down, (no quarter being Ponsonby, in the Field of Waterloo asked or given,) I was carried on by the modesty of his nature is, however, my horse, till receiving a blow on my no small obstacle in the way. Will the head from a sabre, I was thrown sensefollowing imperfect sketch supply its less on my face to the ground. Recovplace until it comes? The battle was ering, I raised myself a little to look alluded to one morning in the library at round, (being, I believe, at that time, A, and his answers to many of the in a condition to get up and run away,) questions which were put to him are when a lancer passing by, exclaimed, here thrown together, as nearly as I Tu n'es pas mort, coquin,' and struck could remember in his own words :- his lance through my back; my head "The weather cleared up at noon, dropped, the blood gushed into my and the sun shone out a little just as the mouth, a difficulty of breathing came on, battle began. The armies were within and I thought all was over. eight hundred yards of each other, the "Not long afterwards, (it was then videttes, before they were withdrawn, impossible to measure time, but I must being so near as to be able to converse. have fallen in less than ten minutes after At one moment I imagined that I saw the charge,) a tirailleur came up to Buonaparte,and a considerable staff mo- plunder me, threatening to take away ving rapidly along the front of our line. my life. I told him that he might I was stationed with my regiment search me, directing him to a small (about 300 strong,) at the extremity of side-pocket, in which he found three the left wing, and directed to act dis- dollars, being all I had; he unloosed cretionally each of the armies was my stock and tore open my waistcoat, drawn up on a gentle declivity, a small then leaving me in a very uneasy posvalley lying between them. ture; and was no sooner gone, than "At one o'clock, observing, as I another came up for the same purpose, thought, unsteadiness in a column of but assuring him that I had been plunFrench infantry, (50 by 20, (1000,) or dered already, he left me; when an thereabouts,) which were advancing with officer, bringing on some troops, (to an irregular fire, I resolved to charge which probably the tirailleurs belongthem. As we were descending in a ed,) and halting where I lay, stooped gallop, we received from our own troops down and addressed me, saying, he on the right, a fire much more destruc- feared I was badly wounded: I replitive than theirs, they having began ed that I was, and expressed a wish to long before it could take effect, and be removed into the rear he said it slackening as we drew nearer when was against orders to remove even we were within fifty paces of them, they their own men, but that if they gained turned, and much execution was done the day, as they probably would, (for among them, as we were followed by he understood the Duke of Wellington some Belgians, who had remarked our was killed, and that six of our battallions had surrendered,) every attention

66

success.

1

in his power should be shown me. I Fathom, came into my mind, though complained of thirst, and he held his no women, I believe, were there ;) brandy-bottle to my lips, directing one several of them came and looked at me, of his men to lay me straight on my and passed on: at length, one stopped side, and place a knapsack under my to examine me. I told him as well as head he then passed on into the ac- I could, (for I could say but little in tion-and I shall never know to whose German,) that I was a British, officer, generosity I was indebted, as I con- and had been plundered already; he ceive, for my life—of what rank he did not desist, however, and pulled me was, I cannot say, he wore a blue great about roughly, before he left me. About coat. By and by another tirailleur an hour before midnight, I saw a solcame and knelt and fired over me, dier in an English uniform coming toloading and firing many times, and con- wards me; he was, I suspect, on the versing with great gaiety all the while; same errand. He came and looked in at last he ran off, saying, Vous serez my face; I spoke instantly, telling him bien aise d'entendre que nous allons who I was, and assuring him of a renous retirer; bon jour, mon ami.' ward, if he would remain by me. He

"While the battle continued in that said that he belonged to the 40th regipart, several of the wounded men and ment, but had missed it. He released dead bodies near me, were hit with the me from the dying man; being unballs which came very thick in that armed, he took up a sword from the place. Towards evening, when the ground, and stood over me, pacing Prussians came, the continued roar of backwards and forwards. At eight the cannon along their's and the British o'clock in the morning, some English line, growing louder and louder as they were seen at a distance; he ran to drew near me, was the finest thing I them, and a messenger was sent off to ever heard. It was dark, when two Hervey. A cart came for me. I was squadrons of Prussian cavalry, both of placed in it, and carried to a farm-house, them two deep, passed over me in full about a mile and a half distant, and trot, lifting me from the ground, and laid in the bed from which poor Gortumbling me about cruelly; the clatter don, (as I understood afterwards,) had of their approach, and the apprehen- been just carried out; the jolting of sions it excited, may be easily conceiv- the cart, and the difficulty of breathing, ed; had a gun come that way, it would were very painful. I had received have done for me. The battle was seven wounds; a surgeon slept in my then nearly over, or removed to a dis- room, and I was saved by continual tance the cries and groans of the bleeding, 120 ounces in two days, bewounded all around me, became every sides the great loss of blood on the field. instant more and more audible, succeeding to the shouts, imprecations, outcries of Vive l'Empereur,' the discharges of musquetry and cannon: now and then intervals of perfect silence, which were worse than the noise I thought the night would never end. "The man from the Royals was Much about this time, I found a soldier still breathing when I was removed in of the Royals lying across my legs, the morning, and was soon after taken who had probably crawled thither in to the hospital.

his

6

"The lances, from their length and weight, would have struck down my sword long before I lost it, if it had not been bound to my hand. What became of my horse I know not ; it was the best I ever had.

his weight, convulsive mo- "Sir Dennis Pack said, the greatest agony; tions, his noises, and the air issuing risk he run the whole day was in stopthrough a wound in his side, distressed ping his men, who were firing on me and me greatly, the latter circumstance my regiment, when we began to charge. most of all, as the case was my own. The French make a great clamour in It was not a dark night, and the Prus- the action, the English only shout. sians were wandering about to plunder; "Much confusion arose, and many (and the scene in Ferdinand, Count mistakes, from similarity of dress. The

152

Dr. Abel's Narrative.

[VOL. 4

Belgians, in particular, suffered greatly though there, as we have seen, every from their resemblance to the French, character displays itself. The gay are being still in the very same clothes they still gay, the noble-minded are still had served in under Buonaparte." generous; nor has the Commander, in Such, probably, is the story of many his proudest triumph a better claim to a brave man, yet to me it was new. our admiration, than the meanest of The historian, describing military his soldiers, when relieving a fallen enachievements, passes silently over those emy in the midst of danger and death. who go into the heat of the battle, W. MUDFORD.

DR. CLARKE ABEL'S NARRATIVE.

From the Literary Gazette, August, 1818.

NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY IN THE INTERIOR OF CHINA, IN 1816, &c. BY CLARKE ABEL, London, 1818.

TH THE Literary Gazette has already ities. With regard to the snake, the performed the Ko-tou to the various author seems to think that no story of interesting works which have emanated his powers in swallowing even human from the Chinese Embassy, and in beings and large animals too improbamore than nine of our Numbers will ble for belief. Thus he repeats, withbe found the bowings of our heads out attempting to discredit, the assertion over their pages. We do not regret of Andreus Cleyerus, that "he bought that we are again called upon to repeat one of these snakes of a hunter, and, on the ceremony, since nothing relative to dissecting it, found in its body an entire China can be otherwise than curious middle-aged stag, covered with its and amusing; and, though the charm skin; that he purchased another which of novelty be denied to this volume, it had swallowed a wild goat in spite of possesses many incidents and notices its large horns; and that he drew from which amply reward the task of its pe- the stomach of a third, a porcupine rusal. That it is not infinitely more armed with its quills:" he also menvaluable is to be attributed not to any tions, that "a pregnant woman was want of ability in the writer, but to two swallowed by one of these animals." unfortunate circumstances; the first, We suspect that our sceptical readhis illness during part of the journey; ers will refuse to swallow these tales, and the second, his irreparable loss of but there is far too strong a propensity the collection of Natural History, &c. in fire-side travellers to withhold their by the wreck of the Alceste in the belief from facts stated by more exStraits of Gaspar. Yet, in spite of cursive investigators, merely because these calamities, we find much to ap- they exceed the sphere of their own prove of in this book, which we shall limited experience. The habits of the accordingly, without further preface, snake which died on board the Cæsar, proceed to analyse for our readers. are thus described by Capt. Heyland, The early portion of the voyage to who had him several months in Java Madeira, Rio Janeiro, and thence to before he was embarked for England:Java, occupies no great space, and furThe animal was brought to me nishes little of novelty. The Java bat early in January 1813, and did not and great snake are here described: from that time taste food till the July the former with its well-known hideous following. During this period he genpeculiarities, and the latter with its tre- erally drank a quart of water daily, mendous swallow. Mr. Abel shot a and frequently passed a thick yellow male and female bat; their bodies excrement. The man who brought covered with long hair, resembling him, stated, that he had been seen to that of a fox in smell, colour, and form, eat a hog-deer the day before he had and that of a full grown rat in size; been taken. He was allowed to be at the wings, like those of a common bat, liberty in the grounds about my house. measured five feet between the extrem- One evening, early in July, hearing a