equal number of men accustomed to combat with these amphibious monsters. Heliogabalus likewise had crocodiles brought to Rome, which, it is said, were fed upon pheasants and parrots! Towards the end of the year 1661, a very young crocodile was brought to Versailles, which died a month after its arrival. Valmon de Bomard, in 1766, saw an African crocodile in London; and, in 1783, he saw an American one in the Menagerie at Chantilly, which was about four feet in length.

A crocodile conveyed alive to Europe is an object of great rarity, and cannot be replaced, either to naturalists or the curious, by those stuffed skins which amateurs so ostentatiously suspend from the ceilings of their cabinets. A stuffed crocodile was presented, some years ago, to the Museum of Natural History at Paris, by the indefatigable botanist Michaux, who had killed it on the banks of the Mississippi, where, by his account, innumerable quantities of these frightful reptiles are to be seen.

The Mississippi, the most considerable river of Louisiana, swells periodically every year; it would overflow its natural limits, if the people who inhabit the banks did not guard against inun. dations by raising mounds from four to five feet high, and fifteen to twenty or even twenty-five feet thick, which serve as paths for foot passengers. But who would suppose that these strong dykes, capable of resisting the violence of the current, should frequently yield to the obstinate labour of the crabs with which the Mississippi abounds? These animals are continually occupied in digging subterraneous galleries, and if they succeed in penetrating to the other side of the dyke, and this accident should take place during the night, however small the aperture may at first be, it will increase in a few hours and afford a large passage to the impetuosity of the waters, which occasion the greater ravages because the ground on the other side of the dyke forms a declivity from the banks of the river. At the beginning of last May, an inundation produced by this singular cause, took place at three leagues from New Orleans, on the habitation of Mr. Macarthy; it soon covered twelve leagues of ground, and submerged two-thirds of New Orleans.

(To be concluded in our next.)

SIR,

TO THE EDITOR.

In this age of poets it is strange that no one attempts to gain the laurel wreath, (I do not mean the Laureate's,) tho' your correspondent “T." seems to intimate, that even nobles would be, in his own phrase, "glad of it," by awakening the slumbering lays of Cambria. We have had the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," and "Lays of the Scottish Minstrels," in abundance; we have had even an attempt to introduce "Yorkshire Minstrelsy ;" and yet no one will appear as the Minstrel of Gambria! how is this? Does it not possess all the requisites for poetic description-hills, whose heads touch heaven,' shrouded in mists and vapours, and throned in eternal snows;-Wild and trackless glens,---Mountain torrents, on whose dark and broken waters the sun but faintly gleams; dilapidated and awfully frowning ruins, the monuments of departed glory; and, above all, traditions innumerable for every glen and every valley, from Plyn Llymnon to the Cheviots, I will certainly allow that "red deer" are more picturesque animals than goats, (though Dr. Syntax may perhaps disagree with me on that point,) and that "Rhys ap Griffith” and "Llewellen ap Tudor," are not half such poetical names as "Fergus M'Ivur” and "Roderick Vich Alpine." Alas! for Cambria! Has the glory of her ancient bards past away, "like that of Babylon," for ever? And will no one strike the harp in behalf of " Snowdon and her hundred hills? Alas! barbarous Edward! with thy victory, past away her name in the annals of poesy: may we not exclaim with Gray

Her

"Ruin seize thee, ruthless king?" For with her ancient bards, died her minstrel fame; and no one of modern days seem desirous to revive it. peasants look calmly on the "blue mists of her hills," without one thought, that the spirits of their fathers may dwell in the shadowy vapours, and the winds sighing through the dark and gloomy ravines, are no longer listened to with awful veneration. as the "voices of the dead," sic transit gloria mundi!

You have often allowed me, Mr. Editor, a disengaged corner in your pages, but whether I deserved it or not, is not

for me to say; however, presuming on your goodness, I have enclosed a versification of one of the ancient lays of that interesting country. Not that I entertain the presumptious notion of arrogating to myself the title of her "Minstrel;" but in the hope that some one of abler hand and better powers, will strike the harp and awaken the genius of the Cambrian minstrelsy from her Lethean slumber.

The "Vale of Gwenystradd" was supposed by many historians to be somewhere in the southern parts of Scotland, "because it was not probable to be far from Reged, where Urien was sovereign;" and the poem on which the enclosed is founded, was composed by Taliessin" one of Cambria's most cele brated bards,

"The harp and diadem are from thee gone, Silence is now sole monarch on thy throne." Should you think it worthy of insertion, the first vacancy will oblige

The harp is still in thy fathers ball,
The spears are darkning on the wall,
And the wild Goats sleep on the silent shore,
For the war cry sounds in its glens no more.
Awake! then, son of the mighty! wake,
And the Saxon foes in their halls shall shake,
For their proudest heroes will shrink with fear
When Owain shall lift Urien's spear,

Shall the name of thy fathers in darkness sleep, And the band, o'er the fall of their brightness weep;

Oh no! in thy halls shall awake again,
The bard of thy fathers, minstrel strain,
And thou shalt go forth, as the tempest forms,
Like the eagle of Snowdon in darkness and
storms,

Thy sword shall be brighting the first of thy field,

And the blood of the foeman be dark on thy shield.

There is music yet in the silent chord,

Of the harp that slumbers beneath the sword,
And tho' age has tamed the Minstrels hand
Since first its still loved chords he spanned,

Yet the son of the mighty shall hear the strain, Awake in Urien's halls again.

There is glory dwelling around the name,
Of those, who went forth in the light of their
fame,

With him; the bravest! at morning tide
To dim the light of the Saxon's pride.
The wild duck started from marsh and fen,
And the red deer sprang from the heathy glen;
As the war cry rose on the morning gale,
To break the calm of Gwenystradds vale.
There were thousands rush'd in their darken'd
pride,

O'er Gwenystradds rocks and its monntain tide,
And dark and deadly that strife might be
Like the meeting waves of a shoreless sea,
For the Saxon crest, and the British shield
Were mingling alike on that bloodstain'd field;
And when might Britain forgo the strife,
But with his triumph or his life;
And he, the bravest, no other name
Can the minstrel give to Urien's fame?
His path was marked on the battle's tide,
By the fallen crests of the Saxon pride;
And the sword that now rests in young Everyll's

bower,

Was dimin'd by the blood of the Saxon's flower.
Oh! Ella, watched in her Saxon hall,
For the step that no more on her ear should fall,
And long might the cheek of the maid be pale
For Cedric slept in Gwenystradds vale.
Oh many a warrior found a grave,
In the mountain torrents darken'd wave,
And the grey stream leapt on the bossy shield,
That had shone brightest in the Saxon field.
The stranger shall come to Harold's hall,
But the grass shall wave on the mouldering
wall,

And the harp that had rung in his lorldly tower
Shall lie unstrung in the storm and shower,
For his blue eyes closed in the torrents roar,
And his mother shall bless their light no more;
But there was no cloud on thy fathers fame
And the foeman shrunk 'neath his sword of
flame,

The blood ran back on the mountain stream,
And 'ere the close of the sunsets beam,
The Saxons fled from Urien's sword!
And the warrior bards of Reged's Lord,
Gave the song of joy to the mountain gale,
For the triumph gain'd in Gwenystradds vale.

WOMEN AND THE MOON. (By Lord Byron.)

I've oft been sorely puzzled and perplex'd, When thinking of the Sun and Moon, and so

on,

To know what principle, when they were sex'd,
Those who first fixed their gender chose to go on.
I will not say that I've been ever vex'd
When this same thing I've chanc'd a thought
to throw on;

But it hath given my reasoning powers some pother,

Why we should He the one and She the other.
The Moon and Woman'-there may be I own
Points of resemblance more than one or two,
Twenty, for ought I know, might even be shewn
I'd state them if I'd nothing else to do,
But as I have, I'll leave the theme alone-
And yet, on second thoughts, I'll give a few,
Lest carping critics, who are apt to chatter,
Should say I never thought about the matter,

Imprimis, then, they both shine most at night,

The one on earth, the other in the sky;

I might say both reflect a borrow'd light,
But this perhaps the Ladies would deny,
And they, I own, have an undoubted right

To know what charms they borrow or they buy;
Besides, whenever any thing is bought
And paid for 'tis its owner's as it ought.

But passing this discussion, as a theme
Too delicate to dwell on, I must say

That whether both dispense a borrowed gleam
Or not, there's much resemblance in the ray
Which shines from each: though beautiful the
beam,

It is not steady like the light of day,
But an uncertain fascinating splendor,
A little coolish too, when man grows tender.

Another point of likeness to my view,
Being, I think, an accurate beholder,
Is this-when Ladies and when Moons are new,
They're both a little coy; but when grown older,
They don't salute you and then bid adien
Both in a breath, but, grown a little bolder,
Are more disposed to give you time to admire,
And are in no great hurry to retire.

Let's try again. The Moon, it has been said,
Has a strange influence on folks half crack'd;
And I have either heard or somewhere read
Of the "Lnnatic and lover all compact,"
Which seems as if 'twere thought by some ill-
bred,

(Though two such wretches should be straightway rack'd,)

That 'tis not till man's reasoning powers are gone,

Woman can claim his noddle as her own.

I therefore shall with brevity pass over
Various resemblances between the twain,
How both, when skies are clear, smile on a
lover,

And leave him in the lurch in clouds and rain;
As well as many a theme I might discover
In either's rise or set, or wax or wane;
But as I might be prolix, I forbear,
Besides, I must their difference now compare.
The Moon and Woman differ then in this :
The first is true to nature and its laws,
It never leaves its sphere, nor does amiss,
It apes no artful wiles, asks no applause,
In all its changes still unchanged it is
In loveliness and beauty from this cause;
Since first created it has cheated no man:
1 fear we cannot say all this for Woman.

New Books.

LIFE OF WM. HEY, Esq. F. R. S. &c. BY JOHN PEARSON, F. R. S. &c, Price 18s. 1 Vol. 8vo.

THERE is not in the whole course of the liberal arts so difficult a branch as Biography,nor, yet, one where imperfections are so soon and so easily passed over. The subject of a memoir, in the common estimation, takes all the interest; to him the reader clings; and upon what is recorded of him, the public often founds its opinion of the work:the style is scarcely thought of, whether good or bad, and the sole praise or blame is attached to the departed; whilst the writer, like a servant, follows in the train, and is treated merely as a subordinate being. That this is the general-we will not affirm, invariable case, we need only to listen to the every day conversation of those around us to be convinced; but we cannot on this account pass over the worst of faults in a Biographer -impotence of style, inadequacy of conception, and coarseness of feeling, in the work before us, without reprehension. A man's name is either immortalised or ruined by a Biographer:-there is no spell so pow erful as a spirited account of a man's conduct, written in a pleasing and attractive style; there is no damp so deathly, no blast so chilling to his name, as his memoirs written in an uninviting or repulsive manner. It is not

enough to narrate the external appearance of facts in a dull heap of inapplicable and incompatible words: there must be a consanguinity of feeling, an enthu siasm of soul that can enter into the heart of the departed; act as he acted, because it feels as he felt; speak with confidence from a feeling of dependance upon his own powers, and a certainty that he is tracing the motive to its right cause. Hence it is that soine works of this kind, make us feel by every linegive us a notion that we should have done exactly as the departed did, and in spite of our pre-conceived prejudices creates in us a fear of acting otherwise. Biography, when thus written lays the subject of it under eternal and irredeemable obligations; but when written in

re

all the cold formality of duty that fears to say too little, and is therefore always saying common place things over again --afraid of venturing a single opinion which has not before been broached by others- and too inanimate in his feelings to support him through a single sentence without touching and re-touching till it becomes a heterogeneous mass of unmeaning and unfeeling phraseswhen thus written, what is the work, the author, the shade of departed worth, and the lacerated feelings of the friends of the deceased, to look for? The work for neglect the author, for the " proach which lies at the very door of the imitator"-the departed, for all the injuries of an unamiable and undomesticated character-and the hearts of those he leaves behind, for a blasting of their proudest and most honourable feelings by the sunken estimation in which the biographer has left his subject. In short it is his province, his invariable province, to either clothe his subject with additional loveliness and dignity, or to strip him of all the glory that he had himself acquired. We will not go so far as to assert that this is the case with the work before us, but certainly the author has not done justice to so superlatively great and good a character as Mr. Hey.

"To pass by minute objects, but to treat of great ones minutely, is a secret in fine writing, which seems always to have been known only to a few," says an eminent critic of the last century; and certainly the remark applies to the writers of biography, in the present day, with peculiar force, and to Mr. Pearson particularly. He has not every qualifiration for the task he has undertakenalthough we may infer from the honorary titles he affixes to his name;-he is to use a pun of the late Doctor Johnson's, "" a man of letters." But, seriously,

when we reflect on the manner in which honours are attained-like chaff blown about in the tempest, where every man that pursues may have them-we cannot feel so much veneration for titles and diplomas as we did, when they were given with a sparing hand, and after mature examination into the abilities of the man on whom they were bestowed However, be this as it may, we again affirm that Mr. Pearson was in our opinion, an unfit gentleman for such an undertaking.

According to his own account, his

knowledge of Mr. Hey's domestic character must have been very limited, as it was formed at a time when he was least capable of forming a correct estimation of him-when he was Mr. Hey's pupil. We grant that he may see Mr. Hey in his retired moments-see him when the scrutinizing eye of the world was removed-see him in the regular fulfilment of the most difficult of his duties, his domestic-see him when he was under the immediate eye of Him who "searcheth the heart and trieth the reins of the children of men:- but the objection is, that Mr. Pearson was at that time too immature in his own judgment, too unfixed in his own view, too dissimilar in his own emotions, to form a notion of Mr. Hey's real character. The unbridled head-strong tide of native passion in a youth, would look upon the salutary restraints, sober experience and manly views like those of Mr. Hey, as so many instances of something nearly allied to severity: and this impression would not easily wear off, but haunt his lonely musings upon that great man. Mr. Peason doubtless feels himself under obligations to Mr. Hey for professional advice and assistance, and it is probable that but for that eminent man he would not have attained the honours he seems to have done in the medical world: yet we doubt not in the least but that Mr. Pearson's feelings towards Mr. Hey, originally moulded at the time we have alluded to, have not been favourable to what may strictly be termed friendship, but a sense of obligation, and to this we attribute his undertaking the work, and his failure in it also.

The monotony of style in the present production is not its least fault, though it is fault enough

"To rouse the ocean into storis,

To waft a feather, or to drown a fly;" to speak with as much emphasis of the most trivial thing as of the most exalt ed; to write with such indistinct views of the comparative importance of things as to spend three shillings' worth, or one sixth of his compositions in a prefacewhich, to say the best of it, is better fitted for the substance of a funeral sermon, than for the preface to a work like this.

The great fault of the work is, that Mr. Pearson's soul was not in the undertaking-this is a sort of generating fault to which all the others may be referred as

their origin. The author had none of those emotions which invigorate, nor lofty conceptions which consecrate, the stlye; he had none of those tender recollections which ardent and unalloyed friendship loves to dwell upon; no lingering feelings like the last beam of summer, which seems lovelier than all the rest, playing round the memory of a dear and departed friend. Indeed, how could he, seeing that Mr. Hey was to him a master and an instructor-besides, a man of unbending firmness in the exaction of all those relative duties which Mr. Pearson's situation called upon him for? Notwithstanding the assertion p xx, that the author numbers the three years he spent under Mr. Hey's roof" among the pleasantest periods of his life," there is none of that effusion of grateful feeling which would support the assertion apparent in his manner of expression, all is cold and dull, as the madeup matter-of-course vote of thanks to the chairman of a public-meeting for sitting still so long, and less enthusiasm is shown in the cause he has undertaken than if he had been drawing up a report of the "National Vaccine Establishment," or any other professional document where nothing but his own credit was concerned.

That Mr. Hey was a man of singularly energetic powers of mind we have always believed; that his motives to action, and his mode of deducing conclusions as to the common affairs of life was altogether original, we never doubted; and that he had formed the nicest balance between his feelings and his judgment, all his actions prove: but all these things Mr. Pearson appears to have had a very inadequate notion of, and could find nothing in his own composition bearing the same character-no chord of the art is touched as it were by the same hand as touched one in Mr. Hey's-no corresponding emotion excited by the same operative causes, or similar train of reflection or of sensibility called into being, when he gave way to the reveries of an unbending mind. In short, between Mr. Hey and Mr. Pearson there is a dissimularity of native character, that renders the emotions, reflections, designs, and actions of the former, no subject of investigation or description for the latter the refinement of Mr. Hey's feelings would never have their counterpart in the emotions which his memory would

raise in Mr. Pearson's bosom, and if he attempted to create in his own breast any thing like enthusiasm, his heart would recoil from the task, and he like a school-boy to his theme, would again begin to heap a multitude of words together to hide his want of complacent feeling, and to make atonement for a conscious want of spirit.

We have said thus much concerning the author's inadequacy; and we have also hinted at the consequent effects; -that the praise or blame of the biographer will be transferred by common feeling, and consequently by common consent, to the late Mr. Hey; and that the repulsive coldness of style observable in every paragraph of this work, will throw an undeserved imputation of coldness upon the character of that excellent man-like the sun's half-hidden meridian gleam on a wintry day, it enlightens a little, but chills more, and rather serves to deform the face of nature by too strong a contrast, than to cheer the heart by any loveliness, which under other circumstances it may exhibit.

How unfortunate then, that a man so generally and so deservedly esteemed should have presented to his memory such an icy monument as repels whoever approaches it!

Having given our opinion of the style of the work, and what we conceive to be the causes of its indifferent execution, we shall proceed to give a short analysis, which from our circumscribed limits we must do very briefly.

After a short memorial of the parents of Mr. Hey, we come to "William Hey, of the village of Pudsey, in the parish of Calverley, near Leeds, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, was born August 23rd. O. S. (September 3) 1736." This is a pretty fair specimen of the method of detail observed in the composition of the work-a method which, though it may plead cold correctness and undeviating perspicuity, is yet deficient in that animating principle, that promethean fire, which can alone say to the dry bones, "live!" Several anecdotes of his youth are related with a circumstantial minuteness of detail very unpleasant to the feelings of the man of taste and not likely to increase the admiration of a wondering multitude who look for something superhuman even in the boyhood of such a man. Who, for instance feels interested