mity, and general good conduct which seem to have prevailed during the voyage, equally creditable to the officers, and to those under their command. We must not close our observations without expressing our approbation of the illustrative plates, most of them conveying to the mind of the reader the full effect which the scene had produced on the eye of the artist, and particularly the plate which represents the ships laid up in Winter Harbour, in beholding which, the words of Aspatia, in the Maid's Tragedy,

"Paint me a desolation,"

involuntarily rose to our lips.

THE PROPHECY OF DANTE. BY LORD BYRON.

If ever poet deserved to be a prophet, it was Dante. Had he lived in ancient Jerusalem, instead of Florence, it is likely that Providence would have commissioned his intrepid and public-spirited genius to have stood pre-eminent among the masters of sacred oracle. Indeed, by the strength of his political sagacity he predicted future events in the history of Italy; and if he failed to communicate a portion of his own magnanimity to his country, he left writings calculated after the lapse of ages to revive a masculine tone of taste and sentiments in the breasts of posterity. Ever since a dawn of patriotism has shone during this and the last century upon Italy, the admirers of Dante have increased in number, whilst those of Petrarch have diminished. Dante applied his poetry to the vicissitudes of his own time, when liberty was making her dying struggle, and he descended to the tomb with the last heroes of the middle ages; whilst Petrarch lived among those who prepared the inglorious heritage of servitude for the next fifteen generations.--"Pride," says Ugo Foscolo, in his excellent parallel between the two founders of Italian poetry," was the prominent charac"teristic of Dante. The power of despising, which many boast, "which very few really possess, and with which Dante was "uncommonly gifted by nature, afforded him the highest delight, "of which a noble mind is susceptible. He was one of those "rare individuals who are above the reach of ridicule, and whose "natural dignity is enhanced even by the blows of malignity. "In his friends he inspired less commiseration than awe, in "his enemies fear and hatred, but never contempt.'

Every one knows the unfortunate outline of Dante's history. He was saved only by flight and exile from being burnt alive by a hostile faction of his countrymen. After an absence of many years from Florence, he received an offer of being re-admitted to his native state, on condition that he compounded with his calumniators, avowed himself guilty, and asked pardon of the Commonwealth. His letter in answer to this proposal has been recently discovered, and exhibits one of the noblest testi

monies of his spirit. "No! father," he writes to a friendly ecclesiastic who had communicated the offer; "this is not the way that shall lead me back to my country. I shall return with hasty steps, if you or any other can open a way that shall not derogate from the honour of Dante. But if by no such way Florence can be entered, then Florence I shall never enter. What! shall I not every where enjoy the sight of the sun and stars, and may I not contemplate, in every corner of the earth under the canopy of Heaven, consoling and delightful truth, without first rendering myself inglorious, nay infamous to the people and republic of Florence? Bread, I hope, will not fail me." Yet Dante was destined to eat bread embittered by dependence; and whilst Petrarch closed his life with the reputation of a saint, and Venice made a law against purloining his bones, and selling them as sacred relics, Dante's memory was persecuted by his countrymen. He was excommunicated, after his death, by the Pope. His remains were ordered to be disinterred and burnt, and their ashes scattered to the wind.

Such is the character whom Lord Byron aptly conceives as a prophet-bard revealing the destinies of Italy. The poem, which he has constructed on this idea, is divided into four cantos, and is written in Dante's own terza rima. His lordship's attempt to engraft this measure on our language does not seem to us felicitous. Dante's triplets, generally including a full and succinct portion of sense, remind us of the three-forked thunderbolt; whilst the rhyme in the poem before us is scattered in the midst of sentences, and rather breaks than strengthens the harmony of versification. The poem has great intrinsic beauty, but the style of its egotism is too diffuse to be a just imitation of Dante, whether we suppose him to act the part of a prophet or a poet. The imaginary seer says more about himself than about any other subject in the vision of ages which he conjures up; and, whilst Columbus is dismissed with a line or two, Dante occupies a whole canto with his own complaints. We select from the second canto the lines most likely to interest public feeling on the subject of Italy.

"Woe! woe! the veil of coming centuries

Is rent,

-a thousand years which yet supine
Lie like the ocean waves ere winds arise,
Heaving in dark and sullen undulation,
Float from eternity into these eyes:

The storms yet sleep, the clouds still keep their station,
The unborn earthquake yet is in the womb,

The bloody chaos yet expects creation,

But all things are disposing for thy doom;

The elements await but for the word,

"Let there be darkness!" and thou grow'st a tomb

Yes! thou, so beautiful, shalt feel the sword,

Thou, Italy! so fair that Paradise,

Revived in thee, blooms forth to man restored : Ah! must the sons of Adam lose it twice?

Thou, Italy! whose ever golden fields,

Plough'd by the sunbeams solely, would suffice
For the world's granary; thou, whose sky heaven gilds
With brighter stars, and robes with deeper blue;
Thou, in whose pleasant places Summer builds
Her palace, in whose cradle Empire grew,

And form'd the Eternal City's ornaments
From spoils of kings whom freemen overthrew ;
Birthplace of heroes, sanctuary of saints,

Where earthly first, then heavenly glory made
Her home; thou, all which fondest fancy paints,
And finds her prior vision but portray'd

In feeble colours, when the eye-from the Alp
Of horrid snow, and rock, and shaggy shade
Of desert-loving pine, whose emerald scalp
Nods to the storm-dilates and dotes o'er thee,
And wistfully implores, as 'twere, for help
To see thy sunny fields, my Italy,

Nearer and nearer yet, and dearer still

The more approach'd, and dearest were they free, Thou-Thou must wither to each tyrant's will :

The Goth hath been,-the German, Frank, and Hun
Are yet to come, and on the imperial hill
Ruin, already proud of the deeds done

By the old barbarians, there awaits the new,
Throned on the Palatine, while lost and won
Rome at her feet lies bleeding; and the hue
Of human sacrifice and Roman slaughter
Troubles the clotted air, of late so blue,
And deepens into red the saffron water

Of Tiber, thick with dead; the helpless priest,
And still more helpless nor less holy daughter,
Vow'd to their God, have shrieking fled, and ceased
Their ministry: the nations take their prey,
Iberian, Almain, Lombard, and the beast
And bird, wolf, vulture, more humane than they
Are; these but gorge the flesh and lap the gore
Of the departed, and then go their way;
But those, the human savages, explore
All paths of torture, and insatiate yet,
With Ugolino hunger prowl for more.

Nine moons shall rise o'er scenes like this and set;
The chiefless army of the dead, which late
Beneath the traitor Prince's banner met,

Hath left its leader's ashes at the gate;

Had but the royal Rebel lived, perchance

Thou hadst been spared, but his involved thy fate. Oh! Rome, the spoiler or the spoil of France,

From Brennus to the Bourbon, never, never Shall foreign standard to thy walls advance But Tiber shall become a mournful river.

Oh! when the strangers pass the Alps and Po,

Crush them, ye rocks! floods, whelm them, and for ever! Why sleep the idle avalanches so,

To topple on the lonely pilgrim's head?

Why doth Eridanus but overflow

The peasant's harvest from his turbid bed?

Were not each barbarous horde a nobler prey ? ❤

Over Cambyses' host the desert spread

Her sandy ocean, and the sea waves' sway
Roll'd over Pharaoh and his thousands,-why,
Mountains and waters, do ye not as they?

And

you, ye men! Romans, who dare not die, Sons of the conquerors who overthrew

Those who overthrew proud Xerxes, where yet lie
The dead whose tomb Oblivion never knew,
Are the Alps weaker than Thermopyla?
Their passes more alluring to the view
Of an invader? is it they, or ye,

That to each host the mountain-gate unbar,
And leave the march in peace, the passage free?
Why, Nature's self detains the victor's car
And makes your land impregnable, if earth
Could be so; but alone she will not war,
Yet aids the warrior worthy of his birth

In a soil where the mothers bring forth men:
Not so with those whose souls are little worth;
For them no fortress can avail,—the den

Of the poor reptile which preserves its sting Is more secure than walls of adamant, when The hearts of those within are quivering. Are ye not brave? Yes, yet the Ausonian soil Hath hearts, and hands, and arms, and hosts to bring Against Oppression; but how vain the toil,

While still Division sows the seeds of woe And weakness, till the stranger reaps the spoil. Oh! my own beauteous land! so long laid low, So long the grave of thy own children's hopes, When there is but required a single blow To break the chain, yet-yet the Avenger stops, And Doubt and Discord step 'twixt thine and thee, And join their strength to that which with thee copes ;

What is there wanting then to set thee free,

And show thy beauty in its fullest light?
To make the Alps impassable; and we,
Her sons, may do this with one deed-Unite!"

END OF VOL. I.

s. & R. BENTLEY, DORSET STREET,

Salisbury Square, London.

TO THE

FIRST VOLUME OF THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE,

AND LITERARY JOURNAL.