well deserved compliment. In itself, this was innocent; || Here and there along the track of time, great intellects but in its consequences, hurtful. Mrs. Flitwood was beguiled. Her taste for pleasure, quickened by brief indulgence, became as strong as ever. As this appetite revived, she grew cold towards her husband.

have risen and stretched out their hands across the wrecks of kingdoms and empires, transmitting to one another the torch of science and art, lit at the common sacrificial altar of earthly hopes and affections. What have not the gifted endured? Imprisonment, and torture, and exile, and scorn, and the withering coldness of the loved. The gems of thought we wear so care

orient pearls, by plunging beneath the wave and searching far in the depths of the soul. The world heeds not the struggle.

Mrs. Standish saw it, and with a mother's fondest vigilance, set herself to nourish the swelling bud of promise. She now felt herself licensed, and did not fail to use her liberty. She openly reproached Mr.lessly on our lips are procured and wrested for us like Flitwood, charged him with conjugal unkindness, and pointed to many pious gentlemen who mixed with the gay world, and gave their families full indulgence. This strengthened Mrs. Flitwood's erroneous impresIn long gone ages a blind bard wandered over the sions, and led her to view his conduct with strong dis-hills of Greece, and begging, sung to the passers-by the satisfaction. One other suggestion finished the evil melodious strains which yet echo clearly through the work. It was urged, with too much plausibility, that long aisles of the past. Dante sung in exile; Tasso in his rigor did not flow from principle, but from cruelty. the gloomy walls of a mad-house; Cervantes pined in "This is proved," said Mrs. Standish, "by his recent Algerine slavery; the eyes of Milton were upturned, conduct. When the temptation became violent, he but sightless; and it was during one of the most agitahimself could go to one of the gayest parties I ever ted periods in English history, where he as a patriot witnessed, and become master of ceremonies!" was called upon to act his part in the strife, that he 'plumed his spirit by abstinence and prayer to sing the praise of his Redeemer.' Socrates was condemned to die by the same people whom he had taught and loved; Gallileo languished in the dungeons of the Inquisition as a recompense for those discoveries which have rendered his name immortal.

"Sure enough," said Mrs. Flitwood, "he has led me into the world, and I will profit by his example." "Twas settled, and from that fatal moment, her only care was how and when to make her debut.

She reasoned well. If gayety is sinful, nothing should tempt us to it. Mr. Flitwood thought it sinful; yet an occasion of extreme interest overcame his fortitude, and sin and Satan triumphed. He was wrong. He should have practiced total abstinence, or granted his wife moderate freedom. By one act of indulgence he stripped himself of all authority. He still had power, but not the moral right to use it. Like Saul pursuing David, he grasped the scepter, but it trembled in his hand. His kingdom had departed. From his error we learn two things: First, that the wisest men may commit egregious blunders; second, that the best often contribute to their own misfortunes. (To be concluded.)

WOMAN'S MIND.

H.

But where shall we pause in enumerating those whose first rest has been in their graves? The history of genius is but the history of suffering; a record of sleepless nights, and weary days, and aching hearts. The same exquisite perception of all that can afford pleasure, which is their allotted portion, renders them the more keenly alive to all that can give pain; yet, as beautifully said by another, 'It would seem as if all their sufferings had but sanctified them; as if the death angel in passing, had touched them with the hem of his garment, and made them holy; as if the hand of disease had been stretched out over them only to make the sign of the cross upon their souls; and as in the sun's eclipse we can behold the great stars shining in the heavens, so in this life-eclipse have these men beheld the lights of the great eternity, burning solemnly CLASSIC.

THE following production is from the pen of a child-and for ever'" a Miss of 13-in Mr. Chase's Female Seminary, Middletown, Connecticut. The theme is,

"MISFORTUNE THE NURSE OF GENIUS.

Since first the bard of Greece was cradled in her arms, Genius has been the nursling of adversity.' In its early growth too delicate to bear the summer heat, she bends over and shelters it from the dazzling beam, and though her breath may be chill on its young brow, it hardens the muscle and strengthens the nerve.

༤་་-

FENELON, a very eminent French divine, and one of the most able of French writers and virtuous of men, was born, in 1651, at the Castle of Fenelon, in Perigord; studied at Cahors and Paris; and entered into holy orders at the age of twenty-four. The archbishop of Paris appointed him superior of the newly converted female Catholics, and his success in this

As he who stands in the deep cave sees stars at noon-office, and the merit of his treatises on Female Educaday, so the child of genius looks up from the depths of affliction and reads stars in the silent heaven of thought, undazzled by the glare of this world's sunlight.

tion and on the Ministry of Pastors, induced Louis XIV. to send him on a mission to Poitou to convert the Protestants. He died in 1715; leaving behind him Were not mind gifted with this power to rise supe- an imperishable reputation, as an eloquent writer, a rior, and even to derive nourishment from misfortune-conscientious prelate, and an amiable, enlightened, and creative as it is, it must have lost its proudest trophies. virtuous man.

LORD BYRON.

BY J. E. SNODGRASS, M. D.

Ir is a pity logicians, in their classifications, had not, along with their "argumentum ad absurdum"-" ad ignorantium❞—and the like-given us an argumentum ad nauseam. Had they thus favored us, one would know where to class various arguments penned upon Byron.

Among the many opinions promulged upon the everlasting theme of his lordship's life and character, (if character he really had,) that is the most extraordinary which declares that "Milton has been styled the prince of poets; but, so far as true poetry is concerned, and semblances of nature, imagery, of fancy and imagination may be thrown into the scale, THE PRINCE OF

POETS WILL BE CAST INTO THE SHADE BY THE SUPE

take pains to hold up the mirror of his own thoughts
before the character of Byron. I have room for one
passage only, which must serve as a specimen of what
he has uttered, to the confirmation of the Scriptural
declaration, that out of the abundance of the heart the
mouth speaketh. The reader will find the passage to
which I refer, in one of his Lordship's letters, penned
upon the occasion of the death of Sir Samuel Romilly,
"one of the best and ablest men England has ever had
to boast." The only cause of offense was, having been
professionally engaged by Lady Byron's friends, and
the language of exultation-language more becoming
having done his duty towards her as a client. Here is

a FIEND than the worst of men:
"I have, at last, seen

shivered, who was one of

my assassins. When that man was doing his worst to uproot my whole family, tree, branch and blossomwhen, after taking my retainer, he went over to them

RIOR GENIUS AND TRANSCENDENT TALENTS OF LORD when he was bringing desolation upon my hearth and

G. N. BYRON!!"

destruction to my household gods-did he think that in less than three years, a natural event-a severe do

Reader, I have supplied the exclamation points— supposing the author of the sentiment surely had for-mestic, but an expected and common calamity—would gotten to use them in thus giving vent to his emotions, lay HIS CARCASS IN A CROSS-ROAD, or stamp his name in a verdict of lunacy! when contemplating the character of his great favorite.

Could any one have selected more expressive words for a burlesque panegyric? Surely not. For my own part, I have become sick of the eulogiums upon Byron, I am constantly meeting with. They are as nauseating as ipecacuanha. Seriously-for the matter is assuming an important aspect-is it not time the rank of this poet were settled? Or shall we permit his youthful admirers to render the very memory of his name disgusting to moral men-and thereby to unduly disparage his literary merits? Now, I am ready to admit, that he possessed talents of a high order. (How well he used them, were a very different question.) But I

have no notion of being humbugged into the belief that all the poetic talents granted to humanity were crammed into his cranium-large as the phrenologists have been so fortunate as to discover it to have been. If some of his more candid biographers and personal acquaintances have not belied him, the secret of the "fire of his genius" will have to be referred, not to the inspiration of the Nine, but of gin and water. Likely, it would have been fully as appropriate for his publishers to have placed, instead of the Roman characters, G. T. between the stanzas of Don Juan-which might have been either interpreted, "gin-toddy," or "gone to toddy." While penning parts of that poem, he is stated to have taken a glass of gin and water at the turn of almost every leaf of his MSS.-of which conduct one of his devoted attendants is reported to have spoken as "a very queer habit." Queer enough, indeed, for the poet whose fame is destined to eclipse even that of the "divine poet;" who, as he informs us, attempted no "middle flight," but sang of God and the angelic hosts!

It is time-high time-that the true character of this poetic rake and outcast were exhibited; and, if compatible with the design of these brief pieces, I should

grave and ** **** !”*

* But he is in his

The reader may readily imagine the words for which the five asterisks are substituted by the biographer, to mean something horrific-most likely, "in hell!" It is wonderful that any man, not destitute of the common attributes of humanity, could steady his pen sufficiently to inscribe such sentiments! He surely could not have been sober at the moment. Yet it was to this high

daring (perhaps I ought to call it low-daring) that his reputation as a poet is mainly attributable. He dared to pen what other poets could not venture. He indulged in fits of passion, and emotions ever-varying--hel

lishly profane, or hypocritically pious-thoughts which, if they ever found a home in the brains of other poets of the age, they were not sufficiently lost to propriety and virtue to utter them. Even the holy shrine of Christianity did not prove too sacred for the trampling feet of his literary charger. Indeed, he himself avows his willingness to sacrifice the glorious doctrines of our holy religion upon the altar of that very same ambition than littleness." He declared it to be his opinion, that which he declares, in his Napoleon ode, to be "less "no poet should be tied down by a direct profession of faith." Why? Let his own words answer, reader :"Metaphysics open a wide field-nature and anti-Mosaic speculations on the origin of the world, a wide range-and sources of poetry are shut out by Christianity."

Is this the creature who is to eclipse Milton? He found the best sources of poetry opened by Christianity-not "shut out."

As to the poetical abilities of Lord Byron, I boldly affirm, that they have been overrated-vastly overrated. His poetry is not natural-but forced. It could not

*Moore's Byron, vol. ii.

+ Medwin's Journal, p. 197.

QUEEN OF MAY.