necessity, and a confidence that it was essential to the support of their falling monarch. Such are the excuses for measures the most brutal and unjust, which will constantly be made by those who have been familiarized to the accompanying horrors of war; and such was the devotion of the French army to their great commander, that they were always satisfied with themselves, if the cause of Napoleon could be pleaded in justification of their conduct.

By the side of Jourdan stood two others of the men, whose names have been so familiar to us-Soult and Suchet. These are not so old as Jourdan; but they will soon be numbered with the former generation. The men of the Revolution, and of the wars, its consequence, have faded from the scene, whilst its fame and theirs has lost but little of the painful interest which it once excited. As well as Ney, Davoust, Massena, and Mortier, who lie here side by side, Berthier, Murat, and a host of others, are gone. "The soldiers now paid their last tribute of respect to the memory of their general. Company brought up after company, in almost endless succession, fired over his tomb. The loud and frequent report echoed and reechoed through the garden, and strangely altered the peaceful character of the scene. The horrid thunders of war seemed bursting over the mansions of the departed generals, and calling on them to rejoice in the music in which they once delighted. The troops were at length gradually withdrawn to an open spot near the gate, where they soon formed in their accustomed ranks, and then, followed by the crowds which their presence had collected, they marched away, leaving Père la Chaise as still and peaceful as before."

"TIME'S TAKINGS AND LEAVINGS.

BY BERNARD BARTON, ESQ.

Thus fares it still in our decay;

And yet the wiser mind

Mourns less for what Age takes away,

Than what it leaves behind.-WORDSWORTH.

"WHAT does Age take away?

Bloom from the cheek, and lustre from the eye,
The spirits light and gay,

Unclouded as the summer's bluest sky.

What do years steal away?

The fond heart's idol, Love, that gladden'd life;
Friendships, whose calmer sway

We trusted to in hours of darker strife.

What must with time decay?

Young Hope's wild dreams, and Fancy's visions bright;
Life's evening sky grows gray,

And darker clouds prelude Death's coming night.

But not for such we mourn :

We knew them frail, and brief their date assign'd:-
Our spirits are forlorn

Less from Time's thefts, than what he leaves behind.

What do years leave behind?

Unruly passions, impotent desires,

Distrust, and thoughts unkind,

Love of the world, and self—which last expires,

For these, for these we grieve!

What Time has robbed us of we knew must go;

But what he deigns to leave

Not only finds us poor, but keeps us so.

It ought not thus to be;

Nor would it-knew we meek Religion's sway

Her votary's eye would see

How little Time can give, or take away.

Faith, in the heart enshrined,

Would make Time's gifts enjoy'd, and used, while lent;
And all it left behind

Of Love and Grace a noble monument!"

WHY, in the name of all the gods that have any thing to say to money-getting, do you not write for the Annuals? The people of "The Keepsake," they say, have given Scott five hundred pounds for two or three tales; and Moore has resisted the temptation of a guinea a line for his verses. Now for any thing you will consign to my facttorship, I undertake to procure you a bidding that even Southey would wag his lips at. Or why do not you and W- set up one of your own. The Shepherd, I see, is coquetting with all of them.

I send you an early copy of Pringle's volume, which your old friend K edited last year. Pringle has got more sentiment and less fun together, for the trade say that the pretty ladies, who principally read these things, have no taste for fun. The Della Cruscans certainly carry it with most of them. Pringle, however, has done his volume well. By the way, he is much esteemed amongst us here; he has talents and modesty, a somewhat rare union, as you know, for a Scotsman in London. I am not acquainted with a more spirited description than his account of a lion hunt in the notes to his little volume of poems just published, always excepting some of your bits, and of the Professor's.

The "Friendship's Offering" opens with the usual assortment of names-Montgomery, and Mrs. Hemans, and Miss Mitford. I saw "The Wanderer of Switzerland" a few months ago, and he looked as melancholy as if he had just escaped from "The World before the Flood." Do you ever meet " Felicia" in the North? Miss Mitford must be amazingly elated just now (if such a sensible and good-humoured person could be elated with so vain a thing as literary reputation) for she has a tale in almost every Annual, and a running tragedy at Drury-lane. "The Author of the Subaltern" is a great hand at these matters;and so between his recollections of war, which he publishes in all forms, and his Sermons, which Murray is about to publish in a post octavo, he will keep pretty much in the public eye. Pringle has got

hold of a clever new hand, who gave us a volume of "Fitful Fancies" -was not that the name? about a year ago. He is unquestionably a promising lad; and "My Early Days," a pretty book for children, shows what he can do in prose. I think you know Clare; we hear of the swain only in these Christmas revisitings, and I therefore hope he is at plough, which I am sure is a better trade than authorship.

Henry Mackenzie is writing here. Is he "the Wandering Jew," for unquestionably he will never die? Heavens! what a host he has seen out. He has lived through half-a-dozen literary revolutions. What a changed thing this world of letters is since he first took the field. As you know, we now have a guinea for tact and a shilling for genius; and the question is, not what is excellent, but what will sell. Allan Cunningham has taken to Annual-making, and has turned out a volume, the "Anniversary," which may lift up its head with the best of them. I am not quite sure that his songs are as good as they used to be; but you and I must wish him all success, in spite of the nonsense people talk to him about Burns, which, however, does not turn his brains. I am glad to see the Shepherd writing for "The Friendship's Offering."-Does he still believe himself to be the author of the Chaldee MSS.

Read that clever French tale "La Fiancée de Marques." The author, De George, is a high-spirited fellow (something too much of a liberal for you, but one who does not swear that Napoleon was the greatest man that ever trod the earth.) We are all getting wiser upon this matter, 'but do not let us run to the opposite extreme. De George is in great odour with us just now, for he has been to France in the most romantic way in the world, to take his trial for high-treason.

The accusation against him was fighting against "les alliés de la France," whereas, he fought with them: for what he did was joining the constitutionalists in Spain, against the army of the Faith, while the French still had an ambassador at Madrid. M. de Villele, however, jumped from his feigned to his real policy so suddenly, that I suppose he forgot the exact date at which he ceased to lie. Our friend left Spain when the French armies entered it: not liking to trust the tender mercies of the then ministry, he came to this country, where, while they were condemning him par contumace, we were petting him into very pretty authorship. This year, he took advantage of the better state of things under the present government in France, went back, took his trial, and has been acquitted. C'est un bon enfant.

There is a little paper in this volume, "on Contradiction," by the author of an Essay on Housekeepers. That Essay is by one of your old coadjutors in the London, and is certainly one of the most irresistible pieces of humour that I ever lighted upon. It was printed in the same work last year.

Lend this volume to your children when you have looked at it. I think these Annuals are doing a great deal of good in accustoming our public, and more especially our young public, to a correct taste in art. It is a capital thing to have forty or fifty thousand of such plates as they now give us, scattered about the country, instead of the trashy prints in books which used to be miscalled embellishments. These Annuals have afforded more real encouragement to painters and

engravers, and have done more to improve the eye of the people, than fifty exhibitions of that parasitical, partial, prejudiced, pampered Royal Academy. Indeed, I know not what good those people do, except it be to foster the growth of personal vanity in maids of honour and aldermen, and to render Art a dirty, sneaking hireling, who would do all for lucre, and nought for love.

Why do you not send us an article, for "auld lang syne" in two ways? Never fear our politics.

We must cater again for our patrons.

"LOVE AND SORROW.

BY THE LATE HENRY NEELE, ESQ.

"MOURN not, sweet maid, nor fondly try
To rob me of my sorrow;

It is the only friend that I
Have left in my captivity,

To bid my heart good morrow.

"I would not chase him from my heart,
For he is Love's own brother;
And each has learn'd his fellow's part
So aptly, that 'tis no mean art

To know one from the other.

"Thus, Love will fold his arms, and moan,
And sigh, and weep, like Sorrow;
And Sorrow has caught Love's soft tone,
And mixed his arrows with his own,
And learned his smile to borrow.

"Only one mark of difference they

Preserve, which leaves them never;
Young Love has wings and flies away,
While Sorrow, once received, will stay
The soul's sad guest for ever!"

"TROPICAL SUN-SETS.

BY THE REV. DR. PHILIP.

"A SETTING sun between the tropics is certainly one of the finest objects in nature.

"From the 23° north to the 27° south latitude, I used to stand upon the deck of the Westmoreland an hour every evening, gazing with admiration upon a scene which no effort either of the pencil or the pen can describe, so as to convey any adequate idea of it to the mind of one who has never been in the neighbourhood of the equator. I merely attempt to give you a hasty and imperfect outline.

The splendour of the scene generally commenced about twenty minutes before sun-set, when the feathery, fantastic, and regularly crystallized clouds in the higher regions of the atmosphere, became fully illumined by the sun's rays; and the fine mackarel-shaped clouds, common in these regions, were seen hanging in the concave of heaven like fleeces of burnished gold. When the sun approached the verge of the horizon, he was frequently seen encircled by a halo of splendour, which continued increasing till it covered a

large space of the heavens: it then began apparently to shoot out from the body of the sun, in refulgent pencils, or radii, each as large as a rainbow, exhibiting, according to the rarity or density of the atmosphere, a display of brilliant or delicate tints, and of ever changing lights and shades of the most amazing beauty and variety. About twenty minutes after sun-set these splendid shooting rays disappeared, and were succeeded by a fine rich glow in the heavens, in which you might easily fancy that you saw land rising out of the ocean, stretching itself before you and on every side in the most enchanting perspective, and having the glowing lustre of a bar of iron when newly withdrawn from the forge. On this brilliant ground the dense clouds which lay nearest the bottom of the horizon, presenting their dark sides to you, exhibited to the imagination all the gorgeous and picturesque appearances, of arches, obelisks, mouldering towers, magnificent gardens, cities, forests, mountains, and every fantastic configuration of living creatures, and of imaginary beings; while the finely stratified clouds a little higher in the atmosphere, might readily be imagined so many glorious islands of the blessed, swimming in an ocean of light.

"The beauty and grandeur of the sun-sets, thus imperfectly described, surpass inconceivably any thing of a similar description which I have ever witnessed, even amidst the most rich and romantic scenery of our British lakes and mountains.

"Were I to attempt to account for the exquisite enjoyment on beholding the setting sun between the tropics, I should perhaps say, that it arose from the warmth, the repose, the richness, the novelty, the glory of the whole, filling the mind with the most exalted, tranquilizing, and beautiful images."

THE ANNIVERSARY.

To Miss EG, Dresden.

WHEN I SAW you for those few brief days in the spring, I was delighted not only with your love, but your knowledge, of art-“ an excellent thing in woman.' I shall not easily forget the impressions which our beginnings of a National Gallery made upon you; and that visit to the Dulwich pictures will be long numbered amidst my white days. You have now got back to your own quiet and happy city; and though you have Retsch to talk with, and the king of Saxony's pictures to look at, a remembrance and a token of our literature and our art will not be unacceptable to you.

our

I send you" The Anniversary," one amongst the most splendid of "Annuals." You perhaps saw its editor, Allan Cunningham, when you went to Chantrey's. He lives in that atmosphere of high art, sculpture being his profession, though he divides his time between that and literature; and in either capacity he contrives to acquire for himself as much good will as falls to the lot of most men in these jealous times. Some of our really great authors and artists are happy to call honest Allan their friend, as you may see from this volume. For this reason, especially, I know no one so likely to secure, in good time, the best contributors for his work.

You will luxuriate in the splendid plates of the book I send you. Take it at once to Retsch. You cannot follow the good and happy man to his little country house, when he walks out after his simple meal, (as you have described him to me,) with his wife on his arm,