sary bitters thrown into the cup of humanity. We do not mean that everybody must lose one of his children in order to enjoy the rest; or that every individual loss affects us in the same proportion. We allude to the deaths of infants in general. These might be as few as we could render them. But if none at all ever took place, we should regard every little child as the man or woman secured; and it will easily be conceived what a world of endearing cares and hopes this security would endanger. The very idea of infancy would lose its continuity with us. Girls and boys would be future men and women, not present children. They would have attained their full growth in our imagination, and might as well have been men and women at once. On the other hand, those who have lost an infant are never, as it were, without an infant child. They are the only persons who, in one sense, retain it always; and they furnish their neighbours with the same idea. The other children grow up to manhood and womanhood, and suffer all the changes of mortality. This one alone is rendered an immortal child. Death has arrested it with his kindly harshness, and blessed it with an eternal image of youth and innocence."

We have left ourselves no room to say what we had intended about Leigh Hunt's criticism and his poetry. We must be content, in few words, to express our belief that, after Coleridge, there is no critic to whom the young student of poetry has so much reason to be grateful as to Leigh Hunt. He has no pretensions to Coleridge's psychology, or power of philosophic analysis; but his expositions of the beauties of the great mastersfor it is this, the best and most beneficial kind of criticism, that he affects are full of taste and feeling; and his manner of imparting his views is so felicitous and charming, that the dullest reader, while he is in Leigh Hunt's company, is made to enjoy he coyest beauties of Chaucer and Spenser, and Keats and Coleridge, with something of the critic's own discernment and delicacy of perception. As he says of Ariosto, "instead of taking thought, he chooses to take pleasure with us; and we are delighted that he does us so much honour, and makes, as it were, Leigh Hunts of us all."

We may find some future opportunity of expressing our opinion of the poems. For the present, our limits are reached. One hing only we cannot leave unsaid, in justice to ourselves, our eaders, and our author. We must remonstrate with the editor of what bears to be a "complete and final edition of Leigh Hunt's poetical works," on the exclusion of some of the poet's est and most characteristic pieces. Leigh Hunt sometimes wanted, or forgot, the last and greatest art, the art to blot." There are, for example, some quasi-laureate odes which the world might lose without regret. But we are at a loss to conceive why sentence of excision should have been pronounced on "Abraham

The Fancy Concert.

379

and the Fire Worshipper;" and "Ronald of the Perfect Hand." As far as our own readers are concerned, we do our best to repair another unintelligible omission, by transferring to our pages as much as we have space for, of the "Fancy Concert:"

66 THE FANCY CONCERT.

"They talked of their concerts, their singers, and scores,
And pitied the fever that kept me in doors;

And I smiled in my thought, and said, O ye sweet fancies,
And animal spirits, that still in your dances
Come bringing me visions, to comfort my care
Now fetch me a concert-imparadise air.

Then a wind, like a storm out of Eden, came pouring
Fierce into my room, and made tremble the flooring,
And filled, with a sudden impetuous trample
Of heaven, its corners: and swelled it to ample
Dimensions to breathe in, and space for all power;
Which, falling as suddenly, lo! the sweet flower
Of an exquisite fairy voice opened its blessing;
And ever and aye, to its constant addressing,
There came falling in with it, each in the last,
Flageolets, one by one, and flutes blowing more fast,
And hautboys, and clarinets, acrid of reed,
And the violin, smoothlier, sustaining the speed,
As the rude tempest gathered, and buz ringing moons
Of tambours, and huge basses, and giant bassoons;
And the golden trombone, that darteth its tongue
Like a bee of the gods: nor was absent the gong,
Like a sudden fate bringing oracular sound
Of earth's iron genius, burst up from the ground,
A terrible slave, come to wait on his masters
The gods, with exultings that clanged like disasters;
And then spoke the organs, the very gods they,
Like thunders that roll on a wind-blowing day;
And, taking the rule of the roar in their hands,
Lo! the Genii of Music came out of all lands;
And one of them said, 'Will my lord tell his slave
What concert 't would please his Firesideship to have?'
Then I said, in a tone of immense will and pleasure,

Let orchestras rise to some exquisite measure;
And let there be lights and be odours; and let
The lovers of music serenely be set;

And then, with their singers in lily-white stoles,

And themselves clad in rose colours, fetch me the souls
Of all the composers accounted divinest,

And with their own hands, let them play me their finest.

Oh! truly was Italy heard then, and Germany,
Melody's heart, and the rich brain of harmony;

Pure Paisiello, whose airs are as new,

Though we know them by heart, as May blossoms and dew;
And Nature's twin son, Pergolesi; and Bach,

Old father of fugues, with his endless fine talk;

And Gluck, who saw gods; and the learned sweet feeling
Of Haydn; and Winter, whose sorrows are healing;
And gentlest Corelli, whose bowing seems made
For a hand with a jewel; and Handel, arrayed
In Olympian thunders, vast lord of the spheres,
Yet pious himself, with his blindness in tears,
A lover withal, and a conqueror, whose marches
Bring demigods under victorious arches;

Then Arne, sweet and tricksome; and masterly Purcell,
Lay-clerical soul; and Mozart universal,
But chiefly with exquisite gallantries found,
With a grove in the distance, of holier sound;
Nor forgot was thy dulcitude, loving Sacchini;
Nor love, young and dying, in shape of Bellini;
Nor Weber, nor Himmel, nor Mirth's sweetest name,
Cimarosa; much less the great organ-voiced fame
Of Marcello, that hushed the Venetian sea;
And strange was the shout, when it wept, hearing thee,
Thou soul full of grace as of grief, my heart-cloven,
My poor, my most rich, my all-feeling Beethoven.
O'er all, like a passion, great Pasta was heard,
As high as her heart, that truth-uttering bird.

And was it a voice?-or what was it?-say,
That, like a fallen angel, beginning to pray,
Was the soul of all tears, and celestial despair!
Paganini it was, 'twixt his dark flowing hair."

We quote these fine verses, because they are characteristic in every way; in the sympathetic enjoyment, which inspires them; in depth and delicacy of feeling; in richness, and power of expression; in the musical flow of the versification; and also, as it seems to us, in certain little peculiarities of diction, which are not quite so admirable. Since the space at our disposal is insufficient for anything like adequate criticism, we leave Leigh Hunt's poetry for the present without farther remarks. We do our readers a greater service in enabling them to enjoy the "Fancy Concert."

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381

ART. IV.-1. A Voyage to the South Sea, and along the Coasts of Chile and Peru, in the years 1712, 1713, and 1714. By Monsieur FREZIER, Engineer in Ordinary to the French King. London: Jonah Bowyer, 1717.

2. El Mercurio Peruano. Lima, 1798.

3. The Edinburgh Review. Vol. XIII. January, 1809. 4. The United States Naval Astronomical Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere, during 1849, 1850, 1851, 1852. Two Vols. Vol. I., Chile. Washington, 1855.

5. Biography of General Miller. London, 1826.

6. La Dictadura de O'Higgins. By MIGUEL LUIS AMUNATEGUI. Santiago, 1853.

7. Memoria Historica. By DOMINGO SANTA MARIA. Santiago, 1858.

8. Investigaciones sobre la Influencia Social de la Conquista, y del Sistema Colonial de los Espanoles en Chile. By J. V. LASTARRIA. Santiago, 1844.

9. Historia Constitucional del Medio Siglo. By J. V. LaSTARRIA. Vol. I. Valparaiso, 1853.

10. La Constitucion Politica de Chile, comentada. LASTARRIA, Deputy for Copiapo and Caldora.

1856.

By J. V. Valparaiso,

11. Comentarios sobre la Constitucion Politica de 1833. By MANUEL CARRASCO ALBANO. Valparaiso, 1858.

12. El Mercurio. Daily Newspaper, Valparaiso.

13. La Revista Catolica. Santiago de Chile.

14. El Catolicismo, en presencia de sus Disidentes. By JosE IGNACIO VICTOR ÉYZAGUIRRE, Presbitero.

Paris, 1855.

Two Vols.

15. Los Intereses Catolicos en America. By JOSE IGNACIO VICTOR EYZAGUIRRE. Two Vols. Paris, 1859.

PERHAPS no region of the world is so little known to AngloSaxons as the South American Continent. At the same time, there is none to whose physical characteristics so much interest attaches. Its majestic rivers, the eternal snows and flaming volcanoes of its stupendous Cordillera, the luxuriant vegetation of its tropical division, the waving plains of its Argentine provinces, the myrtle groves and smiling valleys of its Chilian Republic, present features of surpassing grandeur. Ignorant as most readers are of these, they know still less of the social condition, the moral and religious aspect, the resources and commercial capabilities of its several states.

It is well known that in the sixteenth century the bold and

chivalrous adventurers of Spain and Portugal possessed themselves of the whole of this region, as well as of Mexico, and of what is now called Central America. Portugal contented herself with Brazil, leaving the rest to Spain, her powerful neighbour and rival. The Spaniard at that time excelled all other men in enterprise and valour, and nothing was too arduous or too hazardous for him to undertake. Freedom of thought had not yet been entirely crushed under the iron hoof of tyranny; and so the days of Columbus, of Pizarro, and of Valdivia were great and glorious days for old Spain.

But we are not now to deal with the stories and legends of the Conquest, nor with the more remote history of the Spanish American dependencies. Looking back, however, for a moment through the vista of three centuries, we see these Spanish dependencies inhabited almost exclusively by the Indian races. The Spanish conquerors had begun to occupy the land in considerable numbers, and it was beginning to yield up to them its abundant stores. Its vast mineral wealth soon came to be disclosed; and we fear that, in many instances, avarice was unscrupulous in the modes of its extraction. The Indian vassals, at a very early period after the conquest, were reduced to the most abject servitude. The exactions of the hacendados, or landowners, on the Indians given them in commendam, and the sorrows of the poor downtrodden vassals who were drawn from the Peruvian parishes, according to a custom called Mita, and sent to die in the dismal mines of Potosi, must even yet awaken a feeling of commiseration. The annual setting out of fresh levies on the feast of Corpus Christi-many of the men with wives and children-is touchingly described by Frezier (than whom, Humboldt excepted, a more observant or accomplished traveller has never visited the coasts of South America); and a bondage, the prospect of which, he tells us, filled their dull eyes with tears, and their broken hearts with unavailing sorrow, may even yet bring the tear to our eyes. And it must be borne in mind, that although some of the Indian races of South America were barbarous and degraded, these Peruvian Indians were not so. Whoever reads Prescott's Histories of the Conquests of Peru and Mexico, will find that the Peruvians and Mexican Indians had made considerable advances in the arts, and in a rude civilization. The Indian remains found in Perutheir paintings, edifices, and household utensils-all attest this fact; and, judging from the ruins of their works of irrigation, it seems pretty clear that the extent of ground they had under cultivation at the time of the conquest, was greater than it is at the present moment. It seems the fate of the Indian races to pass from the face of lands they once called their own, unheeded