Behold the face of kindred or of parents, Or clasp, yet once, those whom my soul

More than the shaft of death, the loss of O! this untimely death is bitter to me.

But Thor unbound his storms,
The winds among its branches roar'd,

The hail its foliage tore,

The lightning clave its heart in twain;
Yet still its bark shall live,
And the green offering pay
At summer's shrine;

Though in its mouldering trunk
The sullen toad abides;

The death-owl screams aloud.
Not so the blasted ivy's bough,
Its sear and faded leaf
Shall sprout no more.
Go. blasted ivy, go

To deck the hearse of death.
No tear thy green restores;
No dew of song restores.
Pale Hela bears thee hence
To works below.

"No! not to worlds below,"
The soaring sisters shout;
"Hail to her who fell in blood,
"Her the free maids have chose
"To grace Valhalla's bowers."

Edw. My lust is guilty of this chain of
honor.

H. Monarch, how wilt thou that this monster die ?

Edry. Let him escape. My heart is rent
in twain.

Alfather, grant me to devote the rest
Of this sad life to actions of atonement.
They say the Christian gods allow their priests
To pardon crime, and bind the wounded con-
science,

That bends the knee of penitence to heaven.
I'll send and ask their aid; for I am wretched.
(EDWARD and HAROLD go out separately.
Minstrels remain.)

Minstrels sing.

When on a land of crimes
Alfather frowns,

Black storm-clouds lour above,
Flames flash below;

Earth yawns-huge cities sink-
The steam of guilt ascends-
And o'er the widening waste
Hoarse thunders howl
The song of death.

And on these halls

Shall not Alfather frown,
And speak the words of wrath,
The doom that gods fulfill?
He shall he does.

From world to world
The awful sentence polls.

From cleaving skies the gods descend
The shades of mighty dead
Stand on the mountains round,
To view Pentasheworth's fall.
The father of slaughter has roar'd,
And shaken o'er Gwyneth his shield;
From her blue mountains pour
The bands of war.

No living soul escapes.
Huge Niord has heard in the deep,

And heaps on the shuddering shore
The terrible weight of his waves.
Surtur with flaming besom sweeps
The swarthy ruin round.

The giant sisters stalk on iron sole
Around the groaning palace-walls,
Bow the tall columns to the dust,
And crumble every stone.

(Hela,) was goddess of death, and guarded the hell hounds.

(The raven leads.) A raven decorated the Danish banner.

(Bridge of gods.) It was on the rainbow that the ghosts of heroes walked to Valhalla, (Iduna,) the wife of Braga, took charge of the apples of immortality.

(Tuisko,) the god of discord, presented armor to the heroes on their admission into Odin's hall. His arm was bitten off by the wolf Feuris. A one-handed idol of this god is shewn in the library of saint Genevieve at Paris by the name of Hercules Ogmius.

They

(Heimdal) kept the gates of heaven. gigantic virgins, whose office it was to exe(The equal sisters.) The Valkyrics were cute the orders of the superior deities. selected the slain in battle, punished the guilty, brought the chosen to Valhalla, and presented mead to the guests of Odin.

(Dance of May.) The games of Hertha celebrated at this season are not yet obliterated.

had these gloomy notions of the fate of those (The virgin that unwedded dies.) The Goths who died unmarried. See the For Skirnis in Sæmund's Edda

(Lok) was the god of evil: the charlock, a sort of thistle common on barren ground, still retains his name.

(Alfather) is the name attributed to the supreme god by the northern nations, after they had learned to separate him from their deified heroes.

(O'er Gwyneth.) Pentaskeworth was destroyed by Caradoc, a prince of Gwyneth who rebelled against Edward.

(Surtur) was chief of the deuses, or genii of fire.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

I

SIR,

TAKE the liberty to add a few words to Dr. Smith's letter in your last Magazine, as a somewhat fuller answer to your correspondent, p. 123 in the Ma. gazine for March.

It is a wise maxim, not to speak before we think; and one equally wise, not to assert a fact for which there is not undoubted proof. Your correspondent seems little acquainted with the several volumes published by the illustrious Swede himself, or he would not have inzarded the assertion that he had discarded the word Linnæus and adopted a Linné,

or Von Linné I happen to be possessed of several letters from him, in which the former name is constantly used. In the titles of more than twenty volumes published by himself, he constantly retains it. I hope therefore the more barbarous appellation will now be Jaid aside; and the Linnæan society discard their moderu, but fanciful orthography, in imitation of their illustrious founder; who, both before and after he received those honorary distinctions due to his excellent character, used the first appellation.

Whilst I have the pen in hand, allow me just to remark, that it has long been matter of regret that such a number of uncouth and unclassical names are introduced into the nomenclature of botany. Taste must be disgusted with their annual, nay their monthly, increase. We already see the pages of botanists filled with Crowæa, Gemphena, Geodia (for Goodenough), Celebreshia, Elshelttzia, Blackstonea, Sowerbæa, Hebenstrelia, Fortkola, Woodfordia, Woehenderfia, Dillwyria, and Wiggii; and we soon expect Crabbæa, Wagstaffea, Humphreyia, Edwardsia, Pitchfordia, Hailstenea, Scrimshiria, Beckhensia, Robsonia, and a long list of others. I wish some more unexceptionable method could be devised to perpetuate the labours of ingenious men. How must the lovers of pure Latin be disgusted with such barbarisms! April 7, 1810.

H. C.

For the Monthly Magazine. On GENIUS; extracted from the JOURNAL of a REFLECTOR.

I

N commerce with the world, by which is meant perpetual intercourse with the fashionable, it is difficult to preserve enthusiasm or cherish genius; nor is there an instance of a mind which exclusively preferred this circle, and long retained either.

"Powder, and pocket-glass, and shew," belong to a class little distinguished by reason, imagination, or magnanimity, It must be observed, we are speaking of philosophical, and of the higher order of poetic genius; for painting and music have eminently flourished in the soil Ridicule and wit of luxury and courts. inay be said to be in their proper ele ment, amidst objects which afford such ample materials; witness the reign of Charles II., which teemed with authors of this description; but the superior mind, the profound thought, seeks for ober scenery and other associates,

Nature in its sublimity, is its congenial sphere: the rising and the setting sun, the impervious desert, and the majestic waves of a stormny sea, awaken its enthusiasm; it delights in the tremendous rock, the massy ruin; in thunders, whirlwinds, and volcanos; its powers unfold within the pale shrines of Gothic superstition, and its fancy revels amidst the dreariness of enchantment. Nor are Pope, Swift, and the other bright luminaries of the age of queen Anne, exceptions. On a close examination of their works it will be found, that they all possessed more of wit than genius; and, moving in a circle of artificial splendour, became incorporated with it, and cultivated talentsa s different from the sublime, as water-works from Niagara.

Wits are born convivial: they love the busy hum of men, the festive board, the jovial glee; variety and folly are their element; multiplicity of objects forms their delight Genius has but one: to this it adheres with undistracted force; and no less keen than its sensations are strong. Wit has perception without feeling; and merriment and scoff being parts of its nature, nothing is unwelcome to its taste, or unattainable to its efforts, but the sublime.

But what is genius? Of all the terms to which strong signification is annexed, opinion has been most varied concerning its definition. The ancients believed it inspiration: the moderns, every thing but this. Montesquieu considers it as an effect of climate; Helvetius, of a favourable education: and the French critics deny it to every author who writes equally well on all subjects.

That climate has some effect on the imagination cannot be denied. Natives of Switzerland and St. Giles's, (even supposing it possible to preserve morals in the district of the latter,) would form very different modes of thinking, from the different objects presented to their senses: but objects, however influential on character, or favourable to genius, would not create it; and when we retrace the authors who have written sublimely, or philosophers who have thought profoundly, in situations the least analo gous to their subjects and circumstances, the most depressive to their fancy, we cannot admit climate to be an efficient cause of genius.

Thomson the poet composed his Seasons in London; Wieland cultivated his rural muse in the air of Versailles, and amidst the marshes of Flanders;

and