hall of audience; the Prince Ferrukh Nezad (was introduced) on the occasion of the birth of his child, presented a petition and an offering of five rupees, which were accepted, and His Majesty signed an order on the said petition for a female dress of five pieces, and a brocade veil, with two dresses for children, and fifteen rupees, ready money; also on the petition of the Princess Noor al Nissa, an order for fifty rupees, addressed to Asherut Aly Khan (superintendent of the household). Raja Jay Sing Ray presented an account of the monthly allowance to the different persons of the palace, also a letter from Mr. Macpherson*, stating that the elder princes refused to take the allowance without an addition of money; after perusing it, His Majesty proceeded on a throne (carried by men) to Mahteb garden †, to visit the shrine of the Footstep of the Prophet, and according to daily custom, in commemoration of the death (of Mohammed) having prepared twelve bottles of rose-water and two baskets of flowers, he remained attentively for some time in the assembly of the Derveishes, and having blessed the sherbet, ordered it to be distributed. He afterwards gave five rupees to a Moghul lately arrived, and also bestowed four rupees and two rupees to each of the four Derveishes. His Majesty then proceeded to Noorghur, and having walked about the garden returned to the palace, having listened for some time to the representations of the attendants, performed the evening prayer, and having entered the haram, supped, and after a watch of the night was passed, went to rest.'

The value of this work is greatly enhanced by the lithographic plates, which contain specimens of Persian and Arabic writing, the figures called Rukkum, which will be useful to mercantile men, and the analysis of the Shekestch alphabet. These plates have been executed with great accuracy by Netherclift. The typographical part of the volume, which must have been attended with considerable difficulties, has been completed by Nicol in a style that entitles him to our commendation.

ART. XIV. College Recollections. 8vo. pp. 283. 9s. Boards. London. Longman and Co. 1825.

THIS

HIS is the work of an Irish country curate, who seems to have abundance of leisure on his hands, and to devote it, innocently enough, to the enjoyment of dreaming over the happy years which he spent at the University of Dublin. Confined to a narrow circle of existence, he seems to think the College where he was educated the most brilliant insti

* Superintendent of the royal estates.'

The different quarters of the palace have specific names: these places are all within the fortress.'

22

tution

tution in the world, and the friends, who were his usual associates, the most gifted and the most meritorious of mankind. It were cruel to disturb a vision, that seems to afford the individual who has conceived it so much delight, and which can, by no imaginable possibility, affect the interests or peace of any other of His Majesty's liege subjects. Let the author, therefore, rest assured that the nation has long waited with the greatest anxiety for these sketches, in which the portraits of his intimate college friends are so accurately drawn, under the feigned names of Lorton, Waller, Travers, Ormsby, and Sidney. We regret that we anticipated him, in some respects, by analysing, in the last number but one of this Review, the merits of Wolfe, who is here designated as Waller, and by paying a slight tribute to the character of the Historical Society. But the other portions of his work have, to us at least, all the gloss of perfect novelty.

With regard to that famous Society, indeed, the author's details are particularly copious and interesting. He furnishes us with a report, taken down in short hand, of that most important of all debates which took place on the last night' of its meetings, and which will leave no doubt on the mind of the reader, that the members who spoke and voted on that occasion for the extinction of the Society were the most eloquent, the most rational, the most noble-minded councillors that ever sat in deliberation. The Society was instituted chiefly for the discussion of historical questions. But impeachments of officers, and votes of approbation or censure relating to their conduct, which gave rise to magnificent discussions, and even to duels, soon superseded history, and the government of the University were so absurd and so tyrannical as to issue a mandate directing that the Society should limit itself to its original objects. Was ever such oppression heard. of? How could the Society exist for a moment longer with honour? The eyes of the whole world were upon it. The busts of the great men which decorated the hall of its sittings, refused to look any longer upon the Scene: their faces were (according to our author) turned towards the wall;' and the Society was dissolved!

That the institution thus prematurely lost to the world was the purest school of literary composition in these realms, is a fact which this little volume attests by its internal evidence. We subjoin a specimen which will at once illustrate its style, as well as its philosophy. It is unaffected in the diction, remarkably free from embellishment, and clear in its conceptions; and though the doctrine is perhaps in some degree peculiar, yet its truth and sublimity are unquestionable.

• I do

I do not know whether it is a peculiarity in my nature, that, in certain cases, when I meditate on departed friends, my thoughts do not revert to the circumstances in which I can remember them, but rather are carried onward, as if toward their present condition. I do not mean to say that my imagination bodies forth some form of light and glory, with shining robes and wings of immortal youth; but what is much more extraordinary, I seem to myself to have an idea or conviction of existence (how borne in upon my soul I know not) distinct from all the attributes by which it makes itself known through the senses. At this moment, I have my mind, whether thinking or feeling I cannot say, but in whatever state it is, conscious, I might almost assert, of the presence of Waller. I am not thinking of any scene in which, before he left this earth, he was conspicuous: I am not imagining that region of blessedness into which he has entered; and yet, without any definite image or remembrance, I find a thought or a feeling of him predominant in my soul. I have occasionally, for an instant, bright but only half revealed glimpses of a heavenly countenance glancing upon me, and then gradually fading, or suddenly withdrawn; but the impression upon the soul is steady, and seemingly quite independent of either memory or imagination.'

It is a remarkable fact, that every one of the author's friends was at one time or other in love, and that, with one exception, they were all deserted by the objects of their early passion. It is still more marvellous that either from the inspiration of gypsies, from presentiment, or dreams, they were forewarned of their fates. Ormsby, for instance, in the first ardour of his affection for a certain Julia, was blessed with a superb vision, which the author relates with the most charming simplicity. Ormsby's agitations having rocked him into slumber,' he dreamt that

'He was wandering through those sequestered walks, and by those unfrequented waters where he loved of late to indulge his melancholy musing; his melancholy had returned upon him, and he stood in a pensive mood above the smooth dark water. A beautiful shadow meets his eye, reflected in the quiet stream on which his tears had so often fallen, and, as if he had just awakened from a horrid dream, he turns to fold to his bosom the fair creature who stands with such a sweet smile beside him. Night rises on his dreams, but not a night of darkness: bright clouds are hanging in the sky, and heavenly forms lean forward, and fair round arms are bent gracefully down, scattering through the air scrolls with shining star-studied [qu. studded?] inscriptions, and radiant boys have caught them as they fell, and borne them along in a thousand various directions; and all the skies, wherever the delighted eye was turned, were gloriously illuminated, and every where the inscription was sparkling, Je vous aime, Je vous aime; and these were the words that seemed ringing upon his ear from the voice of one of those heavenly youths who came to summon him away to a

splendid

splendid triumph, until the increasing loudness of the watchman's voice had transformed his nocturnal heaven, with its gorgeous illumination, into the cold reluctant light in which the early morn arrays herself.

even

That watchman ought to have been knocked down. The rascal, with his unpoetic rattle to disturb so fair, so resplendent a vision as this! At least the fellow ought to have been taken before the magistrates-and-and-; but on reading a little farther we observe that he did not perpetrate any very serious mischief after all, for we find that with the [approach of] day would not Ormsby's visions depart ;' his mathematical diagrams became roses and true-love knots; and when he turned for refuge to his Greek, it seemed to recede before his ardent imagination, as the waters_shrunk from Kehama.' This was not all. The page of Demosthenes seemed to discharge all its characters, and to be impressed with a new stamp (the old one, probably, not having been sufficiently yielding); and sometimes there appeared a fair, wide space in the middle of the page, where the motto which haunted his imagination was vividly displayed, and the Greek characters had withdrawn (as they were at liberty to do, since they had been already discharged,) on every side, and formed a kind of wild and mysterious frame-work to enclose the three magical words, Je vous aime.' These three charmed words, it appears, the "soft enthusiast" had found one evening written on a card which was mysteriously left on his table, and they haunted his imagination ever after.

The reader has perhaps already discovered that we are great admirers of the chaste and simple style in which this volume is written. There is, indeed, a peculiarity in its character which a mischievous critic would be apt to impute to the national genius. He might say that the passages we have quoted are glorious specimens of " Irish eloquence." Perhaps he might find some persons credulous enough to agree with him, although we do not remember many sentences in the work resembling any thing in Swift, Goldsmith, Burke, Sheridan, or Plunkett. To us it appears that the author of the Recollections is more indebted to the Historical Society for his diction and sentiments, than to the antiquated prosers just mentioned; and where could he have sought a more inspiring model? His friend Sidney, whom he very appropriately calls the eagle of his tribe,' seems to have been the particular object of his admiration. How fortunate his selection, if one may judge from a little relic of that great man's eloquence which the author records! In a debate, which occupied the Society on a most engaging subject,

sensibility, Sidney thus painted the consolations of the poet : "His friends may forsake him, and the world may desert; and yet, even in such calamities, he finds a solace in his genius. Yes, Sir, like the prophet of old, he finds joy in the wilderness, and his muse is the bird that brings him food from Heaven." If these were not degenerate days, Sir Walter Scott, and Mr. Moore, and Mr. Campbell, and Mr. Southey, would betake themselves to the wilderness, and live upon this celestial food, instead of the coarse venison and champagne, towards which they are said to have so downward a propensity. We hope that Sidney, at least, is an example of the great sublime he drew. As to our author, we have no doubt that he has spent a few months in the wilderness, and that it is to that happy period of his manhood we are indebted for this little volume, which the reader will find to be the most melancholy and amusing work that has lately seen the light.

ART. XV. Attic Fragments. Sketches of Manners, Scenery, and Politics, in Great Britain. By the Author of "Modern Athens." 8vo. Boards. London. Knight and Lacey.

1825.

IN N our notice of "Babylon the Great," a recent work by the author of Attic Fragments,' we murmured at the striking disproportion which the scantiness of its materials presented to the promise of its ambitious title. The present volume is characterised by as manifest a diversity between the contents and the denomination which is assigned to them. The articles which are occupied with a variety of subjects, according to the distribution of the title-page, amount to about fourteen in number; and though in scrupulous phrase we might not contend, that every paper is accommodated with a beginning, a middle, and an end, yet with reference to its obvious design, and to the general regularity of our author, the subject-matter appears to us in each instance to make its consistent progress forwards in unbroken order, and to exhaust itself in a mature and seasonable close. In short, there is such an approximation to method and coherency, as rejects the interesting character which is implied in the word 'Fragment.' And whether or not the concomitant epithet Attic' is chosen with a becoming deference to the constituent properties of the work, the reader shall have an opportunity of deciding.

Political discussion embraces no fewer than six out of the above enumerated articles; and of these, two papers are de