The fire burst forth from her Numidian "Short solace, vain relief!-thought came veins, too quick, And whirl'd her brain to madness; she The very instant, till the change that cast Her sweet face into shadow, dull and slow, Glazed o'er her eyes the beautiful, the black Oh! to possess such lustre and then lack!" Don Juan in the meantime is carried aboard one of Lambro's vessels, where he is placed among a cargo of singers, who had been taken in going on from Leghorn to Sicily on a professional trip. The pirate destined' them for the Constantinople slavemarket, where in due time they arrive, favourite Sultana. Baba, the eunuch and Don Juan is purchased for the who made the bargain, carries him to the palace where she resided. "Baba led Juan onward room by room Through glittering galleries, and o'er marble floors, Till a gigantic portal through the gloom, Haughty and huge, along the distance And wafted far arose a rich perfume: It towers; seem'd as though they came upon a shrine, For all was vast, still, fragrant, and divine. "The giant door was broad, and bright, and high, Of gilded bronze, and carved in curious guise; P To ope this door, which they could really do, The hinges being as smooth as Rogers' rhymes; And now and then with tough strings of the bow, As is the custom of those eastern climes, To give some rebel Pacha a cravat; For mutes are generally used for that. "They spoke by signs that is, not spoke at all; And looking like two incubi, they glared As Baba with his fingers made them fall Toheaving back the portal folds: it scared Juan a moment, as this pair so small With shrinking serpent optics on him stared; It was as if their little looks could poison Or fascinate whome'er they fix'd their eyes on." Baba having opened the door, Juan is introduced into a magnificent room, where wealth had done wonders, taste not much. "In this imperial hall, at distance lay Under a canopy, and there reclined Quite in a confidential queenly way, A lady; Baba stopp'd, and kneeling sign'd To Juan, who though not much used to pray, Knelt down by instinct, wondering in his mind They trode as upon necks; and to complete Her state, (it is the custom of her nation,) She was a sultan's bride, (thank Heaven, A poniard deck'd her girdle, as a sign not mine.") She had seen Juan in the market, and had ordered him to be bought for her. The description of a seraglian love-making is touched with the author's gayest satire, but Juan, still quivering at the heart with the remembrance of Haidée, is very coy to the Sultana, and actually bursts into tears when she says to him, "Christian, can'st thou love." "She was a good deal shock'd; not shock'd at tears, For women shed and use them at their Her eyes another's eye could shed a tear. "But nature teaches more than power can spoil, And, when a strong although a strange sensation, Moves female hearts are such a genial soil For kinder feelings, whatsoe'er their nation, They naturally pour the wine and oil,' Samaritans in every situation; And thus Gulleyaz, though she knew not why, shown naked in company, but his Lordship pulls the very robe de chambre from both men and women, and goes as a barrister cross-questioning a chamon with his exposure as smirkingly ber maid in a case of crim. con. This, as nobody can approve, I must confess, is very bad, and I give you full liberty, Christopher, to drub him well for it in your next. You may also introduce a few parenthetical notices respecting the three hundred and fifty ricketty stanzas, of which he ought, as a versemaker, to feel as much ashamed as any carpenter ever did of a slovenly piece of work. But in your flagellation, be not so peremptory as you sometimes are.-Lord Byron may have his faults,-you may have your own, my good friend, but there is some difference between constitutional errors, and evil intentions, and propensities, it is harsh to ascribe to wicked motives what may be owing to the temptations of circumstances, or the headlong impulse of passion. Even the worst habits should be charitably considered, for they are often the re Felt an odd glistening moisture in her eye." What ensued I have not time at pre-sult of the slow, but irresistible force sent to tell, I must refer you to the of nature, over the artificial manners book itself, for I hear the postman's and discipline of society,the flowing bell passing the end of the street, and stream that wastes away its embankhe will be here before I can say half of ments. We know not what sins the what I would. I have, however, gi- worst men have mastered, when we ven enough from the poem to convince condemn them for the crime that subyou that Byron's powers are in no de- jects them to punishment. Man togree abated, and that there is some wards his fellow-man, should be at tendency to an improvement of man- least compassionate, for he can be no ners, in the manner, of this, in so judge of the instincts and the impul many respects, felicitous work. It will ses of action, he can only see effects. certainly help to redeem his poetical reputation from the effects of that lumbering mass of waggon-wheeled blank verse, "The Doge." But to those who suspect him of "a strange design, Against the creed and morals of the land, And trace it in this poem every line," it will be found as bad as ever; indeed, with all my own partiality, Christopher, for this singularly gifted nobleman, I dare not venture to approve of some of his allusions in these cantos. He shows his knowledge of the world too openly; and it is no extenuation of this freedom that he does it playfully. Only infants can be "Tremble thou wretch That hast within thee undivulged crimes, Unwhipped of justice: Hide thee, thou bloody hand; Thou perjured, and thou simular mar of That art incestuous: Catiff, to pieces shake, Rive your concealing continents, and cry self, and believe me truly yours, HARRY FRANKLIN. AN EXPOSTULATORY ROUND-ROBIN FROM FOURTEEN CONTRIBUTORS. BELOVED CHRISTOPHER, Certain individuals, not acting in concert, having betaken themselves, according to your prescription, to the seaside, it was found, by an indescribable sort of freemasonry, that each was labouring under the same distressing symptoms of one species of the love of fame, aggravated to an intermittent fever by a constipation or improper secretion of their several productions in your escritoire. We therefore form a little knot of fellow-sufferers in the same way, although indeed we are but a mere frustum from that immense body of mankind which forms the mass of your contributors"-a mere block or two of the stately pile which is growing under your architectonic skill. Having been all disappointed of relief from the short statement you made in your July Number, when there was a chance that you would be explicit, we have at last determined to lay our complaints before you. We have conferred with one another, and each has submitted to all the rest the compositions of his or her's, which are lying in your hands, and they have been taken into impartial consideration. We trust we have herein acted ingenuously, honestly, and honourably. Each author laid down a copy of such articles as are candidates for entrance in your Magazine, and it was made a sine qua non that the writer should be absent while the rest heard the work read, and then discussed it, and passed sentence on it; each of us in succession thereby becoming examiner and examinee. A perpetual board of green cloth, with interchangeable claimants and referees, thus sat for more than a month; and as many of the articles were of great length, and each member too fearful that his own progeny might be over hastily dealt with, if he grudged his time and attendance, by decreeing a summary rejection of any thing, so it was rather a tedious business. We have got through all the compositions of the party written and transmitted previously to the 15th July, subsequent ones being pronounced inadmissible at our sittings, lest they might never terminate; for we found that many of us, while our elder-born were coram judice, helped off the weary time by another literary parturition. An end was made of the committee at last essay, tale, and letter, song, sonnet, canto, and pastoral, vanished one by one, with our painstaking mark of approbation or condemnation affixed to it. Persons not well acquainted with the circumstances may think us partial, and so we may be individually, each to his or her own performance, but that solemn quorum, from which the immediate author was excluded, scanned with severer eyes the labours of their absent competitor, in which condition every one by turns was placed. Where we commend we have done it from a sense of justice; and where we found reason to reject, those compositions are entirely passed over in the present statement. Having thus explained ourselves, we trust that the aggregate commendation of so impartial a body will induce you, if not to introduce the articles, discriminated beneath, into your Magazine, yet at least to give them the preference of a decision. DOMESTICUS. X. M. O. M. (Signed) Mon 'སྙམ་ན་སྡེ PHILOLIMNESTES. (1.) As Mr Ballantyne would find it difficult to get into our page a circle of sufficient diameter to contain the address with the names of our fourteen well-beloved contributors, sticking on the outer edge like the monsters of the zodiac about a globe, we have given orders that it be printed in the ordinary manner; and though we must of necessity put some signatures before, and some after others, yet to all and singular the circumscribers, the rights and immunities enjoyed in the round-robin shape of address are hereby guaranteed without let or gainsay; wherefore the public is warned, that Mr Domesticus, the foremost man, is not more of a ring-leader in this business than Mr and Mrs Crux, the lattermost, nor are Messrs Viator and Twitch, though now holding a middle station, less worthy of being the anteriors, or posteriors, in the array, than the gentry aforesaid. For this Note, and for the others following, we announce, according to editorial usage, that we hold ourselves responsible; since we differ in some measure from the autocritical junto who are willing to dictate to us, hitherto held to be autocratorical in this department. C. N. "Hearth-Rug and Fender Promptings," Nos. I. II. III. by Domesticus. -Although Shakespeare said, "homekeeping youths have ever homely wits," these essays bear no marks of it; they seem to us to possess strong claims to your regard, for they surpass Mr Leigh Hunt's celebrated Day by the Fireside."(2.) "Future Times of Yore,"-X. By no ordinary hand."(3.) "On the moral and intellectual tendency of pincushion-making," by Minimus M'Nip, Fell. Phil. Soc. Ups. Downs, Cork, Lead, &c. &c. A curious but somewhat subordinate question in Political Economy, ably and luminously investigated and demonstratively settled. "The Imperturbable Patten-maker," "The Polyandrian Marriage," and "The Demon of the Salt-box," translated from the German, by M. O. M.-Spirited versions of interesting tales. "Lament over the laziness of Dr Scott, Timothy Tickler, Esq. William Wastle of that Ilk, Esq. and others of paramount prowess in wit and warfare," signed P. Q. R. Risibly severe, and which we should hope would prove as expergifacient as a sternutatory to the parties addressed. (4.) "Dirty Nat, the Pig-boy," a lyrical ballad, to be classed among" Poems of Sentiment and Reflection," although, by an easy transfer or commutation, it may be included among those of "Imagination;" signed Philolimnestes.-A gem of the first water. (5.) "Sonnet on seeing some dead frogs galvanized; with a Supplementary Half-Sonnet, being the overflow of the images and feelings which it was found impossible to compress within fourteen lines," by Hortentius Twitch.Deep-thoughted, nervous, and imaginative. (6.) "Specimens of Euclid's Elements in Madrigals," like Ovide en Rondeaux, signed P. P.-Ingenious, perhaps useful. (7.) SHILLING FARES; or the sights seen, characters observed, conversations heard, pleasures enjoyed, and accidents undergone, in the stages plying about the environs of the metropolis; by Alice Field, formerly of Durham, afterwards, Semptress in Chancery-lane, and now retired from business, in a series of parts." We fear that these journies have heen stopped by the Steam-Boat; but surely Mr Duffle would be sorry to find himself an obstacle to a lady's telling her story. Mrs Field begs us to say, that she is not " the wearyful woman." (8.) "The Three-legged Stool," à dramatic scene. Of overpowering tenderness; and "Decapitation," another gracefully sportive, both by V.D.B.(9.) "The Poet's Celestial Tour," by (2.) Although our invalided toe holdeth sweet accord with the hearth rug, and there hath been dalliance of an intimate nature betwixt it and the fender, yet Master Domesticus's promptings mislike us grievously. We print not from the prompter's book—it may be a merit in farces, but not in magazines. (3.) Most true, we recommend that he be forthwith elected Poet Extraordinary to any hospital for incurables which wants such an appendage. (4.) P. Q. R. must favour us with his address, or come and hear our reasons in propria persona. In his cruet-stand, the vinegar-bottle of sarcasm is not dulcified by the neighbourhood of the oil-flask of courtesy. The omission may be supplied. (5.) We wash our hands of it. (6.) Deep thoughted with a vengeance! Ecce signum,—— Threads sensitive, which form a thrilling warp From distaff physiologic finely twined, &c. (7.) We beg the ingenious author will send them to the Gentleman's Diary; they very happily combine matter now spread over two distinct departments of that publication,the poetical rebuses and the prose mathematical demonstrations. Thus by P. P.'s device will hard-headed students be enticed into the primrose path of poesy, and spinsters, who used to puzzle themselves to no purpose, will now unwittingly become dexterous geo metresses. (8.) We shall bring them out, if Mrs F. has but moderate patience. Indeed we have had our eye on Mrs Field ever since her first journey, when her cloak was twisted betwixt nave and spoke," being much struck with her sensibility, evinced by her grief at the loss of the old one and joy at the new, which, we are glad to assure our readers," the Host" (we forget of which house in Durham) was honest enough to buy," of duffil grey, and as warm a cloak as man could sell." She paid no “" Shilling Fare" there, so the history of that journey does not come within her present work. (9.) We could be well content to lay aside our gravity, and see Mr V. D. B. slip off |