228 News from Parnassus.—No. X . [Oct 1, 
la ling’ring hope, somewhere perchance to 
spy, 
Within the silent world, some living thing, 
Crawling on earth, or moving on the wing, 
Or man or beast:—alas ! was neither 
there ?— 
Nothing that breath’d of life in earth or air. 
'Turns a vast silent mansion , rich and gay , 
Whose occupant ivas drown'd the other 
day ; 
A church-yard , where the gayest flowers 
oft bloom 
Amid the melancholy of the tomb ; 
A charnel house , where all the human race 
Had pil’d their bones in one wide resting- 
place, 
Sadly he turn’d from such a sight of w oe, 
And sadly sought the lifeless world below!” 
In the portrait of the renegade, we 
hare an excellent description of mere 
personal courage, unconsecrated by any 
virtuous feeling: 
“ One sole and lonely virtue still he had, 
That only made the villain doubly bad, 
’Twas courage, not that virtue of the brave 
That lives on fame, and conquers still to 
save— 
But a blood-thirsty instinct, wild and rude, 
That fear and clemency alike subdu’d, 
Andlull’d the only conscience villains have, 
The fear of death, the reck’ning of the 
grave.” 
Perhaps the whole poem contains no¬ 
thing superior in effect to the following 
passage: it is one to which we think 
the epithet of sublime, so often per¬ 
verted, may with strict justice he ap¬ 
plied: 
“ In such a scene, the soul oft walks abroad. 
For silence is the energy of God ! 
Not in the blackest tempest’s midnight 
scowl, 
The earthquake’s rocking, or the whirl¬ 
wind’s howl $ 
Not from the crashing thunder—rifted 
cloud, 
Does his immortal mandate speak so loud. 
As w T hen the silent night around her throws 
Her star-bespangled mantle of repose j 
Thunder and whirlwind, and the earth’s 
dread shake, 
The selfish thought of man alone awake ; 
His lips may prate of Heaven , but all his 
fears 
Are for himself, though pious he appears . 
But, when all nature sleeps in tranquil 
smiles, 
What sweet, yet lofty thought, the soul be¬ 
guiles ! 
There’s not an object ’neath the moon’s 
bright beam, 
There’s not a shadow dark’ning in the 
stream, 
There’s not a star that jewels yonder skies, 
Whose bright reflexion on the water lies, 
That does noti nt he lifted mind aw r ake 
Thoughts that of love aud Heaven alike 
partake. 
While all its newly-waken’d feelings prove 
That Love is Heaven , and God the soul of 
Love ! 
The lines which follow appear to have 
been suggested by a well-known passage 
in Lord Byron’s “ Giaour,” but the imi¬ 
tation is certainly no servile one: 
“ The Pagan Indian, and his Christian foe. 
Slayer and slain, slept peaceably below; 
And arms that erst in bloody tug had 
join’d, 
In loving fellowship now lay entwin’d— 
The great peace-maker, Death, makes all 
men friends, 
The league he signs and sanctions never 
ends!” 
The writer is not devoid of satirical 
talent, as his ridicule of the profound 
researches of Virtuosi, concerning an¬ 
tiques, which we possess in a very 
u questionable shape” will evince : 
“Some mutilated trunk, decay’d and worn, 
Of head bereft, of logs and arms all shorn ; 
Worthless, except to puzzle learned brains, 
And cause a world of most laborious 
pains, 
To find if this same headless, limbless 
thing, 
A worthless godhead was, or worthless 
king.’’ 
In the interview between the Savage 
prophet and Christian missionary, the 
author has introduced a trait in the 
discriminative exercise of the “ tender 
mercies” of war, equally novel and 
affecting: 
“ The prophet gaz’d upon the bloodless 
sage, 
And rev’renc’d the divinity of age. 
Were he an infant, still his blood should 
flow, 
For helpless babes to sturdy warriors grow; 
But time can ne’er the old man’s strength 
restore, 
Or wake the sleeping vigour of fourscore.” 
He has likewise touched, with 
wholesome severity, upon the disposi¬ 
tion shewn by some of his countrymen 
to foster the exotic abuses and absurdi¬ 
ties of European uations. 
“ Yes! the bright day is dawning, when 
the west 
No more shall crouch before old Europe’s 
crest; 
When men who claim thy birthright, Li¬ 
berty, 
Shall burst their leading strings, and dare 
be free; 
Nor, while they boast thy blessings, trem¬ 
bling stand, 
Like dastard slaves before her, cap in hand, 
Cherb.li her old absurdities as new, 
And all her cast off follies here^enew.” 
Our piratical attack upon Washing¬ 
ton, 
