If evil spring from thy deceitful wand, To snatch the scanty portion from my hand- • To Poverty. Base taunting humbler of the noble mind! Thou scanty clother of the poor man's bed, Alas! I feel a deeper sting of woe; Deeper, Oh! Poverty, than all thy pangs;- Dr. B. remarks that the reader will probably peruse these sonnets with wonder, when told that they were nearly all composed while the author's hands were busily employed at the loom, amid the din of a dozen stocking-frames, and the heterogeneous conversation or singing of as many workmen.' Art. 14. Julian; a Tragedy: in Five Acts. By Mary Russell Mitford. 8vo. 2s. Whittakers. 1823. Although this tragedy is highly creditable to the talents of Miss Mitford, it manifests no symptoms of pre-eminent dramatic genius. - It displays, if we mistake not, the extent of the fair writer's powers:it contains nothing to displease the ear, and little to fatigue the patience of the reader :-it can boast of a reasonable share of pathos, and a sufficiency of poetic language; —and yet, after all, we fear that it cannot enjoy a long existence.— The powerful dramatic spirit is wanting. It is a representation of various passions, not of individual characters. There is nothing, for instance, in the ambition of Melfi to distinguish him from the usual class of aspiring men, who, ever since a crown was invented, have placed their happiness within its circle. If we change but his name, he would with propriety fill the part of the ambitious man in any tragedy, whatever be the age and wherever be the scene. When a master dramatist would embody a passion, he engrafts it on and incorporates it with individual character. The ambition of Richard III. is not the ambition of any other man : it is a feeling peculiarly his own, and is intermingled with his personal qualities, even down to the deformity of his shape. In Julian,' the generalization of character runs through the whole of the persons: Annabel the heroine is the personification of a fond - fond and faithful wife; Julian, of an affectionate son, whose filial feelings are at variance with higher duties; and D'Alba is the true impetuous lover, who holds justice, mercy, and virtue all light in comparison with the gratification of his desires. The structure of the incidents, also, is but inartificial: they are evidently too pliant in the writer's hands, and occasionally they are somewhat melodramatic. Many passages of considerable literary beauty, however, are to be found in some of the scenes, though there are none that can lay claim to the highest excellence. The following lines, taken from the scene in which Julian contemplates the death of Annabel, in order to save her from the hands of D'Alba, are a favorable specimen of Miss Mitford's powers: Ann. So sadly on me? • Jul. Why dost thou gaze The bright stars, how oft They fall, or seem to fall! The sun look! look! Like thee-like thee - Dost thou remember once Intense and ardent flame, the doubtful line Wrought between earth and heaven, of life and death Straight to the Eternal Gates, didst pray to pass Look out upon the burning sky, the sea One lucid ruby - 'tis the very hour! Thou'lt be a seraph at the Fount of Light Before 'Ann. What! must I die? And wilt thou kill me? Canst thou? Thou cam'st to save • Jul. I shall die with thee. · Ann. To save thy honour! Oh no! no! live! live! If I must die-Oh it is sweet to live, To breathe, to move, to feel the throbbing blood And such a heaven, to look on thee! Young life Would'st live for D'Alba? I had forgot. I'll die. Quick! Jul. Ann. Jul. Ff 2 Jul. Jul. I cannot draw it. Ann. Now! I'm ready.' My sword! Art. 15. Lines written to commemorate the Accession of George IV., and recited at the Brighton Festival, January 29. 1823; also the Lines recited on the same Occasion in 1822 and in 1821. By B. H. Smart. 8vo. pp. 24. Hookham. Mr. Smart laudably speaks with great modesty of his own compositions, to which chance and a temporary occasion gave birth; and he declares that he will no more attempt the same theme, but leave it to others, who may treat it not with more sincerity, independence, and zeal, but with more variety.' Though we think that this resolution shews the good sense which is otherwise visible in Mr. Smart's compositions, yet his lines are very far from discreditable to him, with respect either to feeling or to poetic expression. We quote a few of the verses last spoken: Ah! what were Freedom's self, but sordid strife, And we we live (ah! show the recreant wight, We live when arts, and arms, and science, own And he who rules, our ornament and grace, Is first in manners as the first in place. We live when Erin's sons, the boon, the free, The brimming souls of hospitality, Have blessed their monarch on their own loved ground, We live when Caledonia hails the day That gave her sceptre to a George's sway; And, And, 'midst her children, lofty, thoughtful, staid, While one, the sweetest of her tuneful throng, An incidental note at p. 23. may a little surprize those visitors of Brighton who have known it only in late years: Some notion of what Brighton was within the memory of persons yet alive may be formed from the fact, that a few months ago, a witness was called to say whether a certain passage in the town, at a period within his recollection, was or was not a way for horses; on which he deposed, that at the time spoken of there was but one horse in the town, and that was a mill-horse.' POLITICS. Art. 16. An Address to the Members of both Houses of Parliament, on the Injury the Landholders sustain for the Want of a Protecting Duty on Imported Corn; and by the Inequality of their present Burthens for the Support of his Majesty's Government and the Poor. With a few Hints on the Expediency of equalizing the Poor-rates; and on the Propriety of adopting some Means to regulate the Proceedings at County Meetings; drawn up from the Fate of the late Meeting in Norfolk. By William Pettman of Ham, Kent. 8vo. 2s. Darton and Harvey. 1823. Art. 17. A Letter to Mr. Canning, on Agricultural Distress. By a Country Gentleman. 8vo. Is. Longan and Co. 1823. The natural feelings of commiseration towards an individual, which any great reverse of fortune is calculated to inspire, may be a little blunted when the consideration is forced on us that it has chiefly arisen from his own misconduct. The great landlords must reckon on this effect with regard to them: they must expect to be reminded that, for five-and-twenty years, they supported the most lavish and extravagant expenditure of the public money at the beck of the minister of the day; and that the enormous debt, which is now pressing with intolerable weight on their own shoulders, could not have been contracted if they had not assisted in heaping it themselves. That tenants should have caught the mania for war and wastefulness from their landlords is less surprizing than it is to be deplored: but they, also, whose situation is now truly desperate, may be reminded that, when wheat was selling at a hundred and twenty shillings per quarter; when many of them had leases at half the value of their farms; and when the fund-holder was compelled by law to receive his dividend in Bank of England notes, which were depreciated ten, twenty, and five-and-twenty per cent. with reference to the standard coin of the country, for years together; that then the cry for an "equitable adjustment of contracts" was never once heard from their lips. We remember no county-meetings, held to petition Parliament to take into its consideration the hard case of the annuitant, who was obliged to give a discharge in full for a pound sterling on the receipt of a bit of paper worth fourteen or fifteen shillings; and who, at the same time, could not buy a quartern loaf under twenty-pence or two shillings:-nor does a single instance occur to us in which a tenant volunteered to his landlord an increase of rent, because agriculture was in a much more flourishing condition than either party had anticipated when their lease was arranged. These remarks are forced on us by the speeches made, and the resolutions passed, in various parts of the kingdom within the last few months. In Mr. Pettman's Address,' we find many distressing facts recorded, and much useful information, though we by no means assent to all his proposals: but the Country Gentleman's Letter to Mr. Canning' is querulous, and hardly calculated to repay the Right Honorable Secretary for the time and trouble of reading it. Machinery,' says the author very gravely, has contributed in a very great degree to the present alarming extension of the evil of the poor-rates. Machinery employs one man where manufacture-work done by the hand-employs twenty; nineteen, therefore, are thrown out of employment, and are obliged to have recourse to the parish for relief.' Hopeless, indeed, must be our condition if this is the case; for scarcely a day passes over our heads without facilitating human labor by the evolution of some latent power of mechanism. According to this reasoning, Dr. Church's new printing machine must be restrained by an injunction from the Lord Chancellor; nay the Country Gentleman' himself stands convicted of practical heresy against his own doctrine, by having submitted his Letter to the press. If he had wanted a thousand copies of it, he should have employed fifty transcribers to make twenty copies each. Although Mr. Pettman's pamphlet contains many useful suggestions, he pins his faith too closely on the sleeve of Mr. Webb Hall, whose excess of zeal and defect of judgment have probably much injured the cause of the agriculturists. In addition to the knowlege which Mr. P. has obtained in the capacity of a general agent for landed property, he is himself a practical farmer, and the owner of landed property which, under his own management, was lett for 4500l. five years ago. We may not entirely agree with him, perhaps, as to the causes which have led to the present calamitous state of agriculture: but let that pass; it may be more profitable to pay attention to his remedies. He advises reduction of rents: they have been reduced;-not because the reduction has been clamorously demanded by public writers and public speakers, but from the necessity of the measure on the part of those landlords whose tenants had no other capital than that which was invested in their farms; and from good feeling, and a sense of equity, on the part of others whose tenants may have had independent property. If a farm was lett when the price of wheat was eighty shillings per quarter, which afterward fell to sixty and again to forty, a reduction of twenty-five per cent. in the first instance, and increased to fifty in the second, would leave the tenant in statu quo, |