ence is of a plain and homely quality, which would impose a check on its flights and soarings; which affords no range for a discursive imagination; bounds roving fancies by an impassable fence, and confines the prying investigations of speculatists within a limited compass. It puts a stop to variety of plans and resolutions; reduces an interesting diversity of affairs to one fixed formula; and destroys the pleasure arising from change and rapid succession. Experience is the light in which the phantoms of speculation show to the least advantage.

Many are the unavailing blasts which theorists blow against the solid rock of experience; and, when nearest defeat, they exhale in a storm of noise and blustering. Many are the cries they raise of the omnipotence of Reason; of the power which a rational creature must and ought to possess; and bitterly do they complain of the way in which prejudice is allowed to influence men's minds. It has been somewhere observed, that ages and nations remarkable for theories and speculating, have been by many degrees practically inferior to others; for they have, in an utter contempt for prejudices, depended on the exercise of their intellect alone; a presumptuous faculty when left to itself, and one which will be too apt to reject old institutions, long-established customs, as the contemptible offspring of mere prejudice. And what is that which they call prejudice?-a zealous attachment to principles of honour and integrity, of upright feeling and conscientious behaviour, which guided our ancestors; a warm affection and reverence for those venerable institutions and time-tried systems which they have handed down to us; a respect for their memory, and admiration of their lofty sentiments, showing itself in our own national behaviour. May we never want such prejudices; may we never be set free from such shackles! not that we are to reject all independence of thought, all reasonable reliance on our own judgment, but that we do not make it our only guide, our only support; that we do not, proud in our own vaunted powers, despise the advice given us by the silent monitors of past ages, and make no further use of our knowledge of their deeds and their feelings than to hold them up to fashionable scorn, and make every century a figure on the dial of time for puny contempt to point the finger at. It is, indeed, a noble disregard of self, a sacrifice of our best interests, to assert that independence of mind which allows us to derive nothing from the accumulated stores of experience-a self-denial

truly astonishing, and only to be compensated by the satisfaction and pride of standing alone, unlinked and unconnected with the minds that have before thought deeply for our welfare. Yes! 'tis a noble thing to stand in the world alone; to reject, with indignation, the proffered advice of our ancestors, and to spurn away, in proud assertion of intellect, an old and trustworthy system-the growth of many a year, and the tried servant through a hundred dangers and difficulties. "But what," they will say, "is prejudice, but the thick and overhanging mist which gives notice of the approach of the shades of error and ignorance; a noisome exhalation, which darkens and tarnishes the intellect; an unseen, yet not unavailing shackle, which fetters the free and aspiring reason?" This our prejudice is a judgment formed on the authority of others--and those our ancestors and predecessors-begun in childhood, accompanying the growth of the mind, and matured by advancing years.

Nor is this peculiar to one nation, or to one habit of mind; prejudice must always hold an extensive, and, very often, a beneficial sway over the thoughts of men: public opinion, so condemned for vacillation and uncertainty, has often a foundation in reason and experience, though its origin is involved in obscurity. And, with such things as we allow on prejudice, reason may fail in endeavouring to discover the causes of them; reason may be unable to account for them; the causes may have sprung in distant ages, may be still operating, though hidden, not to burst forth till a future period. Man's very education, on which his future conduct so much depends, is conducted by prejudice; the first notions which he imbibes are not those which his reason can agree to or reject; he receives them on authority, and his mind is, even from its earliest infancy, imbued with the dye of prejudice. But when he can examine his feelings, trace their causes and their operations; if he find any vicious or faulty, though supported by the venerable usage of all antiquity, let him not hesitate to tear them up by the roots, even although they may have entwined themselves closely round his disposition, and spread far and wide into his habits and thoughts.

But let Englishmen, who owe so much of their sentiments of honour and integrity, of their upright independence of spirit, and manly dislike for what is mean and base, to the force of early prejudice, beware how they lightly condemn that which raises and

perpetuates in their breasts attachment to their religion and venerable institutions, which first instils into their minds affection for those spirits who acted well and nobly for their country's sake, and which is still so strong a bulwark for the preservation of their constitution and liberties; and, lest they raise up an idol of their own reason, to which they may proudly bow down, forgetting the glories and deeds of their ancestors, the fame and power of their happy country; let them beware of being led away by the phantoms of innovation, and let them shrink from pulling down those almost sacred edifices which many master-minds contributed to raise and preserve, and many ages to confirm in their strength and perpetuity.

SONG.

I THINK of thee, when rosy day

First clothes with light the distant hill,

As sadly by the brook I stray,

And fondly deem thou'rt with me still.
Yet bower and brook have lost their charm,
In nature's sweets no joy I see;
The lark's gay song hath ceased to warm

A heart that's dead to all but thee.'

I think of thee, when evening grey

Comes stealing o'er the enchanting scene;

As, pensive still, I take my way

In silence o'er the village green.

There joy I meet on every side,

And looks and tones of wildest glee;

And vainly still I seek to hide

The tears that come with thoughts of thee.

I think of thee, when silent night

Hath spread her pall o'er earth and sea;
As, 'neath the pale moon's gentle light,
I wander forth to muse on thee.
There's not one hour wherein my heart-
How sad soe'er the task may be-

Since thou and I have learned to part,

Shall ever cease to think of thee.

C. H. H.

THE ROBBERS.

(Translated from the German of Friedrich Von Schiller.)

ACT IV.

SCENE I.-A Country Place near Moor's Castle.

R. MOOR and KOSINSKY. (In the distance.)

R. MOOR.

Go before and announce me. You know all that

you must say? Kos. You are the Count Von Brand, come from Mecklenburg; I your servant. Care not, I will play my part. Farewell. [Exit. R. MOOR. Earth of my fatherland, I greet thee. (Kisses the earth.) Heaven of my fatherland! Sun of my fatherland,-and flowers, and hills, and streams, and woods, I greet ye all, all, from my heart. How sweetly breathes the air from my native hills!—what delight streams from ye towards the poor fugitive!— Elysium, world of poetry! Stay, Moor, thy foot wanders in a holy temple. (Comes nearer.) Look there, even the swallows nest in the castle-yard, and the garden gates, and this corner in the hedge where you used so often to hide; and there the meadow, where you, the hero Alexander, used to lead your Macedonians to battle at Arbela; and next to it the grassy hill, from which you cast down the Persian satraps, and your conquering banners waved high! (Laughs.) The golden spring-time of boyhood lives again in the soul of the wretched. Thou wast so happy, so perfectly, so cloudlessly glad; and now—there lie the ruins of thy projects! Here shouldest thou have dwelt, a great, noble, and respected man; here have lived thy boyhood's life a second time in Amelia's blooming children,—here, here, the idol of thy people. But the foul fiend frowned upon it. (Starting.) Why have I come here? That I may feel as the prisoner whom the clanking of his chain awakens from his dream of freedom? No, I go back in my wretchedness! The prisoner hath forgotten the light, but the dream of freedom gleams over him, as the lightning's flash in the night, that leaves it darker. Farewell, ye valleys of my fatherland; once saw ye the boy Charles,--and the boy Charles

was a happy boy. Then saw ye the man,—and he was in despair. (He goes quickly to the other side, suddenly stands still, and looks sorrowfully towards the castle.) Not see her, not one look? and only a wall between me and Amelia. No, see her I must, I must, -though it crush me. (He turns round.) Father! Father! thy son approaches. Away with thee, black reeking blood! away, hollow, shuddering gaze of death! Leave me but this hour free. Amelia! Father! thy Charles approaches! (He goes quickly to the castle.) Torment me when the day dawns; leave me not when the night comes; torture me with fearful dreams! but poison not this my only pleasure! (He stands at the gate.) How is this, Moor? Be a man! Death-Dread- (He goes in.)

SCENE II.-Gallery in the Castle.

R. MOOR. AMELIA.

AMEL. And are you sure that you shall recognise his picture among these paintings?

R. MOOR. Quite sure; his picture was always living in my mind. (Going round.) This is not it.

AMEL. Right! This was the head of our house, and he received his nobility from Barbarossa, whom he served against the pirates.

R. MOOR. This is not his; nor this,-nor that; it is not among them.

AMEL. HOW? Look better; I thought you knew him.

R. MOOR. I knew my father no better. There wants the gentleness of feature about the mouth, that marked him out of a thousand;-it is not him.

AMEL. I am astonished. How? Eighteen years since you saw him, and yet

R. MOOR, (quickly.) This is it. (He stands as if struck by lightning.)

AMEL. An excellent man!

R. MOOR, (gazing.) Father, Father! forgive me!—Yes, an excellent man!-(he wipes his eyes)-a godlike man!

AMEL. You seem to take much interest in him.

R. MOOR. Oh, an excellent man;—and he is gone. AMEL. Gone! as our best joys go. (Taking his hand.) Dear Sir Count, blessedness ripens not in this world.