360 CRITICAL NOTICE. 



his moat-encircled and solitary mansion, or less intelligible than the con- 

 struction of his family-motto, now spends his leisure and his fortune in 

 collecting the writings, or cultivating an acquaintance with the history, 

 of those master-spirits, who, by their genius or achievements, in times 

 gone by, have shed light and glory upon their country. The '* Agricul- 

 tural Chemistry," of Davy is now seen upon his table. The works of 

 Linnaeus and of Cuvier, of Loudon and of Smith, conspire to fill up the 

 hideous vacuity which before existed in his library and his brain. Lace- 

 machine and spinning-jenny, ship-canal and rail-road, gigantic plans of 

 inter-provincial communication and of national improvement, exclusively 

 exercise the ingenuity of the aspiring mechanic, and absorb the intellect 

 and capital of the commercial adventurer. The delicate fingers of beauty 

 now quit the curling-irons and the harp for the more rugged grasp of 

 mineralogical specimen. Aerial speculations on sentimental — are ex- 

 changed for more solid experiments upon chemical affinity ; the study 

 of personal — for that of magnetic attraction. The female eye is far less 

 expert in tracing the tear- worn characters of a sickly love-scroll, or 

 drivelling sonnet, than in determining the genus and species of some ob- 

 scurely marked plant, or shell, or insect. We have heard the tongue of 

 childhood enumerate the joints of the antenna of the splendid musk- 

 beetle, and the stamens and pistils of a Ranunculus, with a precision, and 

 lisp " Cerambysc'* and ** Polyandria,'' and "larva" and **germen," with 

 a fluency, never heretofore surpassed in telling the beads which formed 

 the necklace of its favorite doll, or in pouring forth the artless tale of its 

 buoyant hopes, and its transitory sorrows. 



Such, indeed, is the march of Intellect, — such the progress of Science, 

 that the temple of the Muses, themselves, cannot long be safe from the 

 splendid profanation ; nor the children of song escape the mighty infec- 

 tion of the age. Metrical introductions to Algebra and Mathematics, 

 and illustrations of Phrenology* and Animal Mechanics, in hexameter 

 verse, must, alas, soon supersede those strains of poetry to which the 

 national ear has so long listened with delight, — to which the national heart 

 yet remains so passionately attached. From the shrill throat of the bal- 

 lad-singer, — that despised and degenerate representative of the ancient 

 and once proud and popular minstrelsy of our land, the simple but af- 

 fecting ditty of love and madness, and battle and enchantment, and 

 death and glory, will no longer be warbled in our streets. For " Mary's 

 Dream," breathing the very soul of poetry and of music, and never heard 

 by the impassioned spirit without an emotion bordering upon agony. 

 Dr. Ferriar's new " Theory of Apparitions" will now be scientifically 

 chaunted in the ears of our wonder-stricken market-women ; and a poe- 

 tical description of the structure and economy of the genus Strix or 

 Curruca be substituted for the vulgar recital of the complaints of the 

 bird of darkness to the moon, or the lamentations of the solitary nightin- 

 gale to the evening-star. 



From the deep reverie into which we had, one gloomy autumnal 

 evening, insensibly fallen, while reflecting upon the mighty impulse thus 

 given to the human mind, and the impossibility of assigning a limit to 

 its gigantic progress, we were suddenly aroused by the delivery of the 

 monthly parcel from our very worthy and most punctual bibliopole. 



* Scarcely had this prophetic sentence dribbled from our pen, when we were 

 informed, by an announcement in the Literary Gazette, that the celebrated Author 

 of the ** Vision of Judgment,'^ and the " Book of the Church,^' is about to favour 

 the literary world with an elaborate exposition of the ** Craniological System of 

 Doctors Gall and Spurzheim, in hexameter verse P** It will be entitled To Bi^Xjoy 

 TouK;«»»otf, or " The Book of the 5*uW." — Reviewer. 



