tirpated, although the sheep are reported "clean," and frequently breaks forth again after a short disappear ance. At one time, the evil looked so serious, that the colonial Legislature attempted to check it by a sort of sheep quarantine, which, like all regulations of the kind, proved useless. Mr. Murray warns the emigrant who intends to become a sheep-farmer, against not only unclean sheep, but against the very ground where tainted flocks have ever browsed. The commercial embarrassments of this and the larger colony, have necessarily been reflected on the sheep-farmers; but Mr. Murray administers consolation, applicable at least to those who have sufficient capital or credit to be able to wait for the turn of the tide, when he says, So long as a market for wool is found in England, the sheep-farmer need not murmur loudly at his accumulating flocks for while their fleeces pay all expenses, he can afford to wait till better times arrive; more fortunate than those who must either effect sales or close their establishments in despair; and, in a word, all that I have seen of his present condition, has convinced me to the full, that he is placed in the situation of one who does not lose ground, but whose progress is merely suspended for a season. Showing the advantages and disadvantages of both kinds of stock, cattle and sheep, Mr. Murray leaves the emigrant to choose between them, and paints the life of the "gentleman farmer" in fairer colours than we have sometimes seen employed. But much depends on taste. To some men there is a resistless charm in the wild freedom of gipsy life. Danger from the Aborigines, or the more formidable Bushrangers, is held of little moment, while the ease and leisure of the farmer-proprietors are highly prized. And when this ease and absence of care extends to the mind, it cannot be prized too highly. That "Care killed a cat," was never so true in English society as at this time. "In truth," says Mr. Murray, 66 There are few vocations that, on the whole, make such slender demands on one's time and energies. Your morning's canter round the station being ended, the remainder of the day is at your disposal, either for pastime or other pursuits; or if of an active temperament, and indisposed to lounge away the hours as most of the settlers do, it will not be difficult to discover a multitude of occupations connected with your establishment which will fully occupy your spare time. . . . In fact, I can compare the settler's life to nothing so much as that of a country gentleman, who, from choice, takes an active management in the operations of his estate; and who, without being compelled to an unremitting superintendence, devotes himself to his pursuit, only so far as he finds consistent with his convenience. That such a life, therefore, has many charms, is readily to be imagined, when we reflect on the ease and independence which it confers on those who embrace it. With what feelings must the change be welcomed by the youth lately emancipated from some of the mercantile dungeons of London or Liverpool, and now free to range over the little domain he calls his own; his hours, his movements, and his will, for the first time, at his sole disposal. Having drawn a rather flattering picture of the life of the Bush, in all its wild freedom and inde pendence, he concludes, If this representation be truly drawn, it is applicable to three-fourths of the settlers, not only in the district of Port Phillip, but in every colony of Australia. The cruelties and atrocities that have been practised upon the Aborigines are not altogether veiled by Mr. Murray, nor at all vindicated; but they are either imputed to the convict servants of the settlers from Van Diemen's Land, or alleged to have been committed in self-defence. the cattle of the colonists have an instinctive It is a singular fact in natural history, that aversion to the presence of the natives, from whom they will flee, if at liberty; and that the a black fellow" will throw a bullocksight of " team into "the most admired disorder." Aware of this bestial prejudice, the natives take a mischievous pleasure in setting the herds of any settler at whom they have a grudge, a-scampering among those of his neighbours, to their mutual annoyance. Some measures have been adopted by the colonial government for the protection and civilisation of the natives; but, like the Red Men, and the Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land, in a few more generations they will probably have disappeared with the kangaroo and the emu. Mr. Murray concludes with some judicious advice to emigrants, whom he neither buoys up with extravagant hopes, nor unduly depresses. On an important head he remarks In fact, there are but two classes of individuals desired in the colony, and who alone have any chance of succeeding; viz., the individual with capital, and the individual with labour. Both of these have as wide a field open for will find their riches, whether lying in their coffers or in their respective qualifications as could be wished; both their thews and sinews, yielding a fourfold increase from being transplanted to this distant soil; both have within their grasp the attainment of opulence, by the exercise the colony will prove an El Dorado; but by all others of no more than common industry and prudence. To these, it ought to be understood, that the difficulties they expect to avoid by coming here, are not a whit less formidable and perplexing than in the mother country. Neither is this a place for those who rear their visions of emisions may be regarded as either overstocked, or as so nence upon their abilities. . . . . All the profesfeebly supported as to hold forth no inducements for fessional gentlemen who, finding in Melbourne no scope their practice. In the bush there are numbers of profor their avocations, have wisely turned sheep-farmers, and retired thither, where their presence, especially that and the surrounding districts. Of those who have reof the medical fraternity, confers a benefit on their own mained in town, there are none, unless rendered independent by other means, who succeed in deriving more therefore, that the idea of acquiring wealth ought never than a bare competence from their occupations. I repeat, to be entertained by him who cannot bring pecuniary resources to his aid. The possession of £5000, or upwards, of capital, enables a man to make a rapid fortune. He need not invest it all in stock. Loans upon mortgages bear from 10 to 15 per cent interest, and are represented as equally safe as in England. With the present low rate of interest in England, and its vast amount of nearly useless capital, it is surrising that the rate of interest keeps up so long in these colonies. The influx of British money, though the late "commercial crisis" will not accelerate its flow, must speedily tend to equalize the rate of interest; if "commission" and "agencies" were once placed upon a sound and proper footing. A GOSSIP ON SENSUOUS INFLUENCES. that it was hurled into the air, at the moment of its formation, accompanied with hisses and sounds; that the birth had been watched by a Druid in full pontifical robes, mounted on a white horse; that, at the moment it was hurled into air, he sped WITHOUT advocating any one of the abstruse doctrines concerning Mind, which have from time to time absorbed the attention of philosophers, or presuming to point out the relative value of the material emanations of Epicurus, the phantoms of Aristotle, the archetypes of Plato, the vision-forward, and caught the treasure in an unsullied ary nonentities of Berkeley, the acquired ideas of Locke, or the bumps and hollows of the Gall-ic philosophy, in solving the enigma of the Human Mind, we will venture on the recital of a few illustrations, which serve to show the deep and mysterious influence which external incidents have had in the formation of character, in the masses and in the individual. In doing this, we do not wish to imply that "man is the creature of circumstances;" for with the universally-quoted Shakspere we agree: ""Tis in ourselves that we are this or that; our bodies are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners so that, if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce, or set hyssop, or weed up thyme, either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry, why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills." Guarding, then, against any misconception on this point, and allowing the beauty and truth of the passage quoted, we shall yet find that individuals have been much led by external pageantry; often kept in thraldom by the same; and at other times have gathered, from a passing incident, facts and principles which have established their fame, and blessed mankind. Wherever it has been the object of interested parties to mask truth or conceal error, there has the imagination been appealed to by a thousand scenes, and the excited feelings enlisted to their service. We see this forcibly illustrated in all matters of religion. Wherever it has been wished to convert the innate feeling of reverence to God into a mere agent for acquiring command or gaining wealth, there the magic of external influences has been brought into play to bewilder the fancy and intoxicate the mind, which would, if uninfluenced, descry truth, and be led to a deep adoration of its loveliness, simplicity, and beauty. In considering, for instance, the character of the early Britons, and the knowledge that was then existing in our island, we are struck with the amount of superstition that then prevailed. There must have been some elaborate machinery at work to keep the mind in such dark subjection. History teems with much that is wondrous and startling. It tells us of mighty eaves and gloomy forests, stupendous altars, and magie incantations. But let us enter a little into the superstitious rites of this extraordinary race of men. The Druids had as many orders and grades of rank, or nearly so, as the hierarchy of the present day; and their dress was modified and regulated by individual rank. Each suffered his beard to grow to the greatest possible length; and around his neck wore the mysterious serpent-egg. Wonderful and magic powers were ascribed to this. It was reported that each egg was the product of a number of serpents rolled together in a coil, and tunic ere it had been polluted by a touch of earth; the darkening influence which such agency has ever had upon the mind and intellect of man! So much has it lent its magic aid to the propagation of error, the concealment of truth, and the aggrandizement of selfishness, that a reflex action has ere now been excited: and there have not been wanting those who were for dinging down the cathedrals," banishing the organ as a mere kist of whistles," and spoiling with ruthless hand the productions of a Raffaelle or an Angelo! But extremes are dangerous. Painting may be made subservient to the cause of devotion. For who can gaze on that sweet production of Corregio's, the "Ecce Homo," without emotion? That face so full of holy love and awful suffering,—of that warm charity which breathed the prayer, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," and the agony which made the blood start in drops from his person, and for a moment shook the grand and lofty purpose of his mission? But let this pass. The mind is too frequently dazzled by external splendour, and disqualified by its intoxication for cool reflection and deliberate thought. Thus the glitter of martial array ap its foster-parent; but no human hand has yet polluted it by a touch. Its fall is gently checked by the slender wand of the Arch-Druid, and it is caught in a white cloth to be borne with solemn pomp to the temple of the Terrible Power to whom the groves are sacred. The bulls are now slain; the viscera are examined, and divination succeeds. But other sacrifices are demanded, and the slaughtered animals are yet to be burnt on the altars of the temple. The groves are retrodden with solemnity as before, and the rude, hideous, gigantic pile is once more reached. The god requires a human sacrifice, and one has been kept for the occasion. Deep in the earth a dungeon has been prepared, and there the condemned culprit has been immured, through many a dreary week, for the express purpose of forming a sacrificial offering. He now comes forth, pale, weak, and thin. His sandy hair has grown lank and wiry, and the ochre-stained lines of his body and his face, though somewhat faded, form a ghastly contrast to the blanched appearance of the rest of his person and visage for his eyes are sunk in their orbits, and his cheek is haggard with fear. Dark days spent in awful musings, long nights of pain-peals to every heart. Multitudes are won by its ful watching or frightful dreams, have exhausted fascinations, as easily as a bird by the fabled every energy, and made him a weak, trembling, powers of the snake. We will single out some emaciated wretch. But he comes forth to be sober hamlet embosomed amid hills and green victimized as a sacrifice. A Druid robed in a sur- fields, far remote from cities, and ignorant of the plice, and bearing a long wand, precedes the stormy political movements of the great world unhappy creature, and brings him to a group of around them. We know many such; where other priests, with the Arch-Druid standing before the change of ministers, the wordy wars of St. them. The high priest points to a withered oak, Stephens, the political schemes of parties, the at a short distance. Thither the prisoner is led. agitated question of corn laws, and Chartism, A huge osier basket is at his side, containing the come, and go, and pass away, without being once remains of the slaughtered bulls, but a vacancy chronicled " among the short and simple annals of remains. The multitude are in breathless suspense. the poor," or causing a single pause in the daily The priests, with the Arch-Druid at their head, round of the quiet peasant. Let a recruiting march forward, bearing golden sacrificial knives and party enter. See the shrill, sharp, quick sounds white wands. The hands and arms of the unhappy of "the ear-piercing fife," and the beat of the man are pinioned over his head; and now, after spirit-stirring drum," have been heard." The a slight pause, a priest plunges a sabre into his village is in an uproar. The inhabitants have midriff. He falls. The white-robed Druids gather quitted their cottages, and are crowding around round him, watch the convulsions prompted by his the strangers. The patriarch of the place, with agony, and minutely scan the crimson torrent as "his lyart haffets wearing thin and bare," and it flows from his chest. These frightful appear his aged dame, are there, with great-grandchildren ances having passed away, the body is laid open, full of awe and wonder, clinging to coat and and the entrails, reeking with life, are exhibited apron. The "bonnie lassies," too, the pride of to the contemplation of the Arch-Druid, who pre- the village, have given a glimpse at the glass, and tends to gather from these things omens of events run hurriedly to look at the soldiers. Old and to come, and divines accordingly. The body is young are there. Gaudy ribbons are flaunting in now plunged into the osier basket, dragged to the the wind, and the flowing sash and nodding plume stony altar, and hoisted thereon. The fire is lighted, bewilder the peasantry. Many fine youths have and Druidical worship, with all its gloomy horrors, determined to join them; but we will single out is carried on. Such is a short and imperfect one. He is determined to quit the home of his sketch of the external influence which was made fathers. The scenes of his childhood appeal to to bear upon the minds and feelings of our rude him in vain. He is fascinated by the spell of forefathers, and by which they were long kept fife and drum, of shining arms, and gaudy coin superstitious darkness and under the thrall of a lours. Yon aged woman is wrung with woe at proud and cruel priesthood. In all lands wherever the thought of his leaving. She has hung over Paganism lived or lives, a pageantry as awful is him in infancy, ministered to the sports of his carried on. The bloody worship of Moloch in childhood, and watched with anxiety his manSyria, the rites of Typhon and Isis in the land hood's prime. This very morn, her mother of the Pyramids, the ghastly revels of Odin in Scan-heart glowed with gladness as she looked on his dinavia, the superstitions of the South Seas, the robust form, his stalwart limbs, and cheeks flushed crushing system of Juggernaut in India, display with health and happiness. She was proud of her 66 child. But the fond charm is gone the spell of love is broken the darling of her age-the joy of her existence the prop on which she leaned, has been bewitched by the pageantry of war; enchained by the glitter of an "external influence," and escape is impossible. He gives a "good bye," and the tears start up as he views his feeble, weeping mother totter to her home, his own birth-placehis little world, the hitherto one sole tie of all his earthly love. The drum and the fife beat up, there is no time for grief-indulgence; he nods to the motley group, and with a forced merriment joins the march. We may smile at this poor fellow's simplicity; yet how many are bewildered by the same. The highest ornaments of dress betoken this; and even the tender-hearted female, carried away by the poetry and chivalry that are thrown around it, listens with delight to the tale of contending armies. The agonies of the dying are forgotten; the parched throats and writhing limbs of the maimed are hid in the tramp of moving battalions; the smoke, the carnage, and the din are covered by floating pennons and nodding plumes; and even the poor soldier rushes to the death-fight under the infatuation of the "neighing steed, the shrill trump, the spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, the royal banner, and the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war," and grapples in fierce animosity with his brother-man! The widow's groan, the mother's agony, the sister's grief, the misery and pain, the ruin and the loss that beset millions, and make many a heart desolate, all, all are forgotten in the mad rejoicings of success, and are drowned in the bell-ringing and gun-firing which celebrate the victory! And after all the suffering and all the woe, after all the floating of flags and showy parades, and the slaughter, death and glory, how little more can often be said for it, than by old Kaspar in Southey's exquisite little poem, the "Battle of Blenheim!" J "It was the English," Kaspar cried, "But everybody said, quoth he,' That 'twas a famous victory. › "And everybody praised the Duke Why that I cannot tell," said he, But 'twas a famous victory." In descending from general to individual influences, the lives of our poets and painters furnish us with many instances of important results springing from a casual impression made on the outward sense. Every child is familiar with the tale of Newton, and the fall of an apple; while the story of Archimedes discovering the method of detecting the imposition in his sovereign's crown by the sudden overflowing of the bath, will occur to the memory of every classic reader. Galileo furnishes us with an interesting example of how slight an incident may be turned to account by the observant mind of genius. He was walking along the aisles of the Cathedral Church at Pisa, when a lamp suspended by a chain from the roof had been ac cidentally struck and thrown into motion. Its oscillations arrested the philosopher's attention, and he fancied that each beat occupied equal time, that the velocity diminished with the distance of its movement, and that thus an equilibrium was kept up, as regarded the interval occupied by its movements. Galileo seized upon the fact, put it to the test of experiment, and invented the pendulum. The genius of West was brought into play by the beautiful smile of a child. He had been placed by his mother to guard her sister's babe, while the mothers strolled to a distance; the beauty and expression that played upon its tiny features attracted the notice of the embryo-artist, and, with a piece of charcoal, he endeavoured to convey it in lasting characters on a board; and the portrait was so far good as to induce his aunt to exclaim, "Dear me, if Ben has not made a likeness of little Sally." From that moment, West was smitten with a love of art, and his father's doors and "shutters" bore evidence of his zeal and assiduity in the practice of it. The beautiful painting of the "Canterbury Pilgrims" might have never existed had not some "fine prints in an obscure village in Yorkshire" fallen under the notice, won the love, and excited the emulation of Stothard; and the lamented Chantrey and Wilkie were induced to follow their respective professions, the one from viewing some rude carving in an old picture-frame, and the other from being amused with the serio-comic face of a schoolboy " on that bad eminence the stool of shame." Canova, we learn, felt his genius flag when removed from the warm skies and loved scenes of his fatherland; and if the climate of other lands did not paralyze his arm, or benumb his fingers, it rendered his chisel inert, for it spread a gloom across his mind ; and no visions of beauty, no ideal forms of loveliness rose before him to which he could give a tangibility and a form. It was the stupendous ruins of Rome that first inspired Gibbon with the wish to write her history. Around him were scattered the trophies of great men; and the genius of architecture seemed to plead for a perpetuation of their memory. Many a massive column, and time-worn pillar were jutting out in the moonlight, and chequering with light and shade the revered spots where "Romulus stood, Tully spoke, or Cæsar fell"; but it was a different locality that awoke the slumbering energies of a Tacitus in the mind of Gibbon, and induced him to write "The Decline and Fall of Rome:" for he writes-" It was at Rome on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amid the ruins of the capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, now the Church of the Franciscans, that the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the city first started in my mind. But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city rather than the empire, which my further reading induced me to prosecute." What scene roused the soul of Burns, and made him pour forth that song which thrills the heart like a trumpet? What filled the Ayrshire Ploughman with a zeal, an energy, and a battlesong worthy of Tyrtæus before the embattled walls Danté gathered inspiration from the form and "There is a tomb in Arqua, reared in air, The bones of Laura's lover: here repair His litz, but the innocent, happy school-boy at Brientz; and dismounting from his horse, he seated himself on the stump of an old tree, and, to the astonishment of Rapp, who relates the circumstance, burst into tears." Our gossip, "a thing of shreds and patches," is too long to tell of young Fergusson's early wonder at the power of the lever, and his thus acquired fondness for Natural Philosophy, and of other like sensuous influences which have lit up a love for specific pursuits; but we cannot forego to speak of the influence of scenery on the mind, by pointing to the death of the restless Rousseau, who, a few minutes before he breathed his last, spoke thus to his wife: "Be so good as to open the window, that I may have the pleasure of seeing once more the verdure of that field. How beautiful it is! How pure the air! How serene the sky! What magnificence in the aspect of nature! Look at the sun, whose smiling aspect seems to call me hence! God himself opens to me the bosom of his paternal goodness, and invites me to taste and enjoy, at last, that eternal tranquillity which I have so long and so ardently panted for." It was on the Lake of Geneva that Byron composed the most beautiful portions of Childe Harold: the soft beauties of the place seemed, for a time, to woo him from the reckless career he too much loved; for, in the 85th verse of the 3d Canto, he writes "Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake With the wide world I dwelt in, is a thing Torn ocean's roar ; but thy soft murmuring That I, with stern delights, should e'er have been so moved." And speaking of the exquisite loveliness of Clarens, he sings for "He who hath loved not, here would learn that love, Many, familiar with his well-sung woes, The pilgrims of his genius." Beethoven loved to wander forth by himself. The hollow moanings of the coming storm, the whistlings of the agitated trees, the flowing stream, the gushing waterfall, the song of birds, the hum of voices, and the thousand things which fall upon the ear, filled him with delight, and imbued him with those wild and wondrous combinations which astonish and please every lover of music. The grand compositions of Handel were suggested by the hum and noise of London, as he himself states in a letter to Lady Luxborough; while Gluck, the composer of the operas, "Artaxerxes," "Demetrius in Venice," and "The Fall of the Giants," was accustomed to have his pianoforte carried, on a fine day, into some beautiful meadow, fancying himself more capable of composing when under the influence of flowers and sunshine. Sarti, the Imperial Chapel Master at St. Petersburg, loved the mysterious gloom of a badly-lighted. room; and the eloquent Bossuet, and the no less brilliant Curran, prepared for their oratorical display by wild and extemporaneous airs on the violoncello. Music is a sensuous influence which powerfully excites the mind; even the philoso-influence of mountains :-" We involuntarily give phic Bacon found his ideas more rife, and his capacity for writing increased, by having an organ played in the adjacent room; and, happily, music is not limited to the pealing tones of the organ, the soft breathings of the lute, the stirring appeals of the trumpet, or the lively strings of the violin there is music in the passing breeze and gushing rill, in the song of birds and hum of bees, and in the village bells, as they echo along the plain; and even on the battle-field has their influence been felt for "who forgets the anecdote of Napoleon and the village bells of Brientz?" "He was riding late one day over a battle-field, gazing, stern and unmoved, over the dying and the dead that strewed the ground by thousands round about him, when, suddenly, those Evening Bells' struck up a merry peal. The Emperor paused to listen: his heart was softened-memory was busy with the past he was no longer the Conqueror of Auster "Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought." Enough! We sum up this wearisome gossip by an eloquent peroration from William Howitt on the to the mountaineer heroic and elevated qualities. He lives amongst noble objects, and must imbibe some of their nobility; he lives amongst the elements of poetry, and must be poetical; he lives where his fellow-beings are far, far separated from their kind, and surrounded by the sternness and the perils of savage nature; his social affections must, therefore, be proportionally concentrated, his home ties lively and strong; but, more than all, he lives within the barriers, the strongholds, the very last refuge which Nature herself has reared to preserve alive Liberty in the earth, to preserve to man his highest hopes, his noblest emotions, his dearest treasures, his faith, his freedom, his hearth, and his home."-"Thanks be to God for Mountains, and for the Leonidases, the Tells, and the Hofers, that have lived and died among them." J. H. |