The satire of the humourist seems almost permissible in a land so waste and desolated. H. Heine is the first poet his country has beheld since the death of Goethe, and he may be called the personification of the state of literature during the last few years: let this be his excuse. Now, however, that his eyes are closed on this perishing world whose miseries and contradictions have so much excited his ridicule, another world is opening before the eye of his mind. In that world there will be an end of misery, of torturing incongruities, of harrassing deceptions; all problems will be solved, all discord will be banished. Irony may be the faithful mirror of the things of this life, but in those regions which are now being disclosed to his view, there is room only for admiration and reverence. He has been seeking peace and calmness in raillery, but we know that it has not furnished the happiness he sought. Real tranquillity is only to be obtained by a firm belief in those noble truths he has affected to despise. Yet it is in vain for him to attempt to deceive us, in vain to attempt to deceive himself. The ceaseless evolutions of the humorist will not alter our opinions; whether to the last he delights in baffling the critic, or whether he acknowledges his real sentiments, it signifies little to us; we are convinced that he is gradually yielding to the natural impulses of his generous and noble soul, and that in the end the better, the religious feelings of his nature, will be completely triumphant.

One thing alone is wanting in the writings of H. Heine, that is order, rule, harmony--the indispensable concomitant of beauty. There are countless gems of pathos, candour, and, we may even add, of Christian tenderness, scattered throughout his various productions; we have been endeavouring to collect them. The task of the critic will, however, be vain, if you, oh, poet! do not lend your aid. You alone have the power of affixing the seal to it, and of concluding your life in a manner worthy of yourself. It is said that you are writing your "memoirs; " you are summoning before your

tribunal all the men with whom you have been associated, and all the literary and moral changes with which your history has been connected, during the first half of the nineteenth century. What a noble opportunity is thus afforded for the expression of the new sentiments which now fill your mind! What food for reflection-for information of every description! Follow the counsels of your inner monitor; shew us, with severe impartiality, the doubts, the failings, the lofty aspirations, and the complete development of your mind. By such a picture great truths will be taught, and the harmony to which your genius aspires, will be the merited crown of

your work. Is there not, in every season of life, a vein from which poetry can extract gold? Death to those who witness its approach brings many a lesson. Will not you clothe these lessons in verse and sublime images for the benefit of your fellow-men? Link together the various religious sentiments which lie concealed beneath your sarcasm; present to us the scattered fragments we have collected, in a perfect form and free from alloy. You have been the representative of the disturbed and revolutionary state of Germany: how well would it be were you also the type of its return to real peace and joy!

It is narrated that Dante, towards the close of his life, when wearied by its agitation and conflicts, was wont to walk in the cemetery, and when asked what he sought in that mournful spot, replied: "Peace! peace!" We need not remind you, oh, poet! who is the author of peace; you have yourself celebrated him, when, through the mists of the North Sea, you had so dazzling a vision of Jesus Christ: "Clothed in a white flowing garment, of colossal stature, he was walking on the sea and land. He extended his hands in the attitude of blessing over the earth and ocean, whilst his head reached unto the heavens. Like a heart in his bosom he wore the sun, the red flaming sun, and this flaming sun poured forth the rays of his grace, his lovely, blessed light, which illumined and renewed the universe."

VOL. I. N. S.

BB

WHO that has ever travelled through a rich and luxurious country, but has at one time or another alighted upon som locality which seems never to have been destined to be trodden by the foot of man, certainly never intended for his habitation? whose peculiar beauty scems to have marked it out as a temple in which nature is to be worshipped, or rather the God of nature, through his works; for the thing created, ought not, in man's estimation, to receive the honours belonging exclusively to the hand of Him who made it. And the very fact, that such spots as these owe nothing to the ingenuity of man, are neither arranged nor planted by him, but grow up spontaneously, as if to be enjoyed without labour and cost, should not be without its proper influence. How pathetically Milton laments the absence of that organ which deprived him of such gratification as the natural world reveals to us, and of the instruction it offers :-"Seasons return, but not to me returns

Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair,
Presented with an universal blank

Of nature's works, to me expunged and rased,
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out."

If the "light of the body is the eye," it is scarcely less the light of the mind, irradiating its darkness by the glorious shinings of the visible world, and imparting to it an intelligence which no one of our other faculties can give. But, unhappily, we are too often compelled to admit the want of a right appreciation of the beautiful as a teacher of wisdom; we close our hearts, if not our understandings, against its lessons. "The eyes of rich and poor, of educated and unlearned," said an cloquent Irish nobleman, Lord Dufferin, the other day, when addressing the patrons and pupils of the Belfast School of Design, "are too often shut up to the majesty and loveliness of nature; and we go forth upon our way, and pass along the beautiful earth, and hear the rushing winds careering in triumph over its bosom, and see the golden clouds heaped up in domes and towers, and girded at the far horizon with flaming walls, like the distant ramparts of lost Paradise; but our faces are bent upon the ground, and we perceive not the

glory and the good of these things and we hurry to the marts of men and are very eager in our affairs; and we return to our homes weary and unsatisfied, little reeking of the beautiful pictures nature has been painting for us, to win our love from this world, to remind us of the better world to come, and to speak to us the goodness of the great Being who, for the enjoyment of men, has hung the silent dome of heaven with lighted worlds, and called forth the lily on the face of the earth, more lovely in her purity than Solomon in all his glory, and the array and pomp of kings."

It is a singular fact, one scarcely to be accounted for, but it cannot have escaped the observation of some, that we are not unfrequently more impressed by a picture than by the reality; the shadow has greater power over us than the substance. The only solution we can offer of this seeming inexplicable question is, that in a natural landscape, for instance, the eye wanders over a large space of scenery without being able to take in at one view all the beauties it contains; while in a picture, the artist concentrates these beauties into such a compass that the vision embraces them all; added to which, he brings all his imaginative faculties to render the beautiful still more lovely; he clothes it with his own bright verdure, and throws his sunshine and his shadow where each will best contribute to his purpose. Is the world of art, therefore, more fitted for man's admiration than the world of nature? By no means: but the art is to be admired which can so set before us the material creation as to fill the mind with pleasure, and raise it, even by a single step, to a nearer approach towards Him who framed it; and the genius of the painter is to be envied which enables its possessor thus to become the minister of good.

All pictures that are really worthy of the name must, in a degree, exercise such an influence; but there are some especially calculated so to do, such as this oriental scene which Mr. Warren has painted. This artist, who is a distinguished water-colour painter, has passed much time in the east, in Syria and 'Arabia; most of his pictures are taken from the scenery of those countries, or illustrate the manners and customs of their inhabitants. He has alighted here upon a charmingly picturesque spot, which instantly recalled to our minds a

passage in Milton's description of the third day's creation :

"Forth flourish'd thick the clustering vine, forth crept

The smelling gourd, up stood the corny reed
Embattled in her field, and the humble shrub,
And bush with frizzled hair implicit last

Rose, as in dance, the stately trees, and spread
Their branches hung with copious fruit, or gemm'd
Their blossoms; with high woods the hills were
crown'd,

With tufts the valleys, and each fountain side;
With borders long the rivers; that earth now
Seemed like to Heaven, a spot where Gods might
dwell

Or wander with delight, and love to haunt
Her sacred shades."

Wherever this view was sketched, and it is doubtless from nature, it seems just the spot to attract the thoughtful by its glorious magnificence, and the pleasure-seeker by the tempta

tion it offers to luxuriant indolence; the artist has filled it with groups of the latter class. At the base of the distant mountains is a stately edifice, from which, it may be presumed, the party has sailed down the stream in a richly ornamented vessel, moored by the bank just beyond the tall group of trecs; to the left of these the slaves and menials are amusing themselves with the dance. In the foreground are the chiefs of the party variously engaged, and having for their companions peacocks and other birds of gorgeous plumage, whose brilliancy adds so materially to the splendour of an eastern landscape. The revellers in Watteau's fetes-champêtres were surrounded with more of the treasures of art and of the beauty which man has created, but the theatre' in which Mr. Warren has placed his, is of nature's own laying out and adornment.

THE RETURN OF THE LEBANON CHIEFS, AND
MY RECEPTION IN THE MOUNTAIN.

"Now upon Syria's land of roses
Softly the light of eve reposes,
And, like a glory, the broad sun
Hangs over sainted Lebanon."

MOORE'S Lallah Rookh.

WE had safely reached the termination of our voyage; the corvette lay snugly at her moorings off Beyrout, in the magnificent Bay of St. George; the "Sanita," or Board of Health, had duly paid us their accustomed visit, and, considering all things, let us off very cheaply with a few days' quarantine, including the period of our voyage: an indulgence usually granted to all such vessels of war, as, during their passage, have not experienced any casualty on board.

So rapidly and unaccountably, after our arrival, was intelligence spread abroad of the Tanta having brought back the exiled mountain chiefs, that scarcely had the boat containing the "Sanita" touched the strand, when crowds of people might be seen assembling on the mole, while boats shoved off in every direction from the shore, and hastily

Concluded from page 306.

pulled towards the corvette, on approaching which, the numerous passengers they contained gave way to the wildest manifestations of unbridled joy: shouting, singing, and discharging their pistols and firelocks into the air; many of which, being loaded with ball, seriously imperilled the safety of those whom they so clamorously welcomed back to their native land.

In this manner boat loads of visitors rapidly succceded each other; and, as the day advanced, the scene acquired additional interest, from the circumstance of many of the personal friends and relatives of the exiles having by this time arrived from the mountains, in order to greet, with all the hyperbole of Eastern enthusiasm, the return of those whom they had long since given up as lost to themselves and to the world-as buried alive in the far-distant mines of Sennaar-or whose bones might ere then have been bleaching under the intolerable heat of a central African sun.

Fruit, wine, and flowers, fresh meat and vegetables, dresses of honour, and changes of apparel-in short, everything which the most tender solicitude could suggest-were eagerly handed up the vessel's side, and the " guardian," who had been left by the "Sanita," ex