up to his subject, or lays about him and buffets sceptics, and gainsayers, arrests attention in spite of every other circumstance, and fixes it on that, and that alone, which excites such interest and such eagerness in his own breast! Besides, he is a logician, has a theory to support whatever he chooses to advance, and weaves the tissue of his sophistry so close and intricate, that it is difficult not to be entangled, in it, or to escape from it. "There's magic in the web." Whatever appeals to the pride of the human understanding, has a subtle charm in it. The mind is naturally pugnacious, cannot refuse a challenge of strength or skill, sturdily enters the lists and resolves to conquer, or to yield itself vanquished in the forms. This is the chief hold Dr. Chalmers had upon his hearers, and upon the readers of his "Astronomical Discourses." No one was satisfied with his arguments, no one could answer them, but every one wanted to try what he could make of them, as we try to find out a riddle. "By his so potent art," the art of laying down problematical premises, and drawing from them still more doubtful, but not impossible, conclusions," he could bedim the noonday sun, betwixt the green sea and the azure vault set roaring war," and almost compel the stars in their courses to testify his opinions. The mode in which he undertook to make the circuit of the universe, and demand categorical information "now of the planetary and now of the fixed," put one in mind of Hecate's mode of ascending in a machine from the stage, "midst troops of spirits," in which you now admire the skill of the artist, and next tremble for the fate of the performer, fearing that the audacity of the attempt will turn his head or break his neck. The style of these "Discourses" also, though not elegant or poetical, was like the subject, intricate and endless. It was that of a man pushing his way through a labyrinth of difficulties, and determined not to flinch. The impression on the reader was proportionate; for, whatever were the merits of the style or matter, both were new and striking; and the train of thought that was unfolded at such length and with such strenuousness, was bold, continuous, and consistent with itself.

Mr. Irving wants the continuity of thought and manner which distinguishes his rival-and shines by patches and in bursts. He does not warm or acquire increasing force or rapidity with his progress. He is never hurried away by a deep or lofty enthusiasm, nor touches the highest point of genius or fanaticism, but "in the very storm and whirlwind of his passion, he acquires and begets a temperance that may give it smoothness." He has the self-possession and masterly execution of an experienced player or practised fencer, and does not seem to express his natural convictions, or to be engaged in a mortal struggle. This greater ease and indifference is the result of vast superiority of personal appearance, which "to be admired needs but to be seen," and does not require the possessor to work himself up into a passion, or to use any violent contortions to gain attention or to keep it. These two celebrated preachers are in almost all respects an antithesis to each other. If Mr. Irving is an example of what can be done by the help of external advantages, Dr. Chalmers is a proof of what can be done without them. The one is most indebted to his mind, the other to his body. If Mr. Irving inclines one to suspect fashionable or popular religion of a little anthropomorphism, Dr. Chalmers effectually redeems it from that scandal.

"

1

THE PATRIOT AND THE APOSTATE'S DAUGHTER, OR THE GREEK LOVER'S FAREWELL.

Δούλος κεκλῆσθαι αἰσχύνομαι.--Εuripidis Hecuba.

'Twas on a lonely spot they met
And silvery moonbeams finger'd by,
To steal a light more lovely yet-
The light of weeping Beauty's eye.
""Tis done-the die of Fate is cast-
And when this meeting hour is gone,
O'er the wild visions of the past
Wave thy dark wing, Oblivion !
Why from a dying mother's arms,
Why was I borne a sickly boy;
And rescued from a thousand harms,
That sorrows might the man destroy!
Why was I, by the whim of Fate,
Cradled in infancy with thee-
And destined, by a like estate
Of life, thy equal here to be!
Why did our infant sports unite;
And, as the seasons o'er us stole,
Why did we twine, with fond delight,
The ties that bind us soul to soul!
Farewell-'twere vain to cherish hope;
And vainer still without it love:-
What with the will of Heaven can cope→→
Or what thy sordid father move?
Yes! sordid traitor! basely won

By treasure to the oppressing cause,
He would persuade all Hellas shun
The road to Freedom's sacred laws :
This Heathen Sultan's tyranny,

That ranks the Christian with the brute,
His purchased voice calls sanctity,

And bids us meet the scourger mute.
But, no! the soul of Greece is up-
Indignant fire plays o'er her heart-
The field shall drink each ruddy drop
That warms it, ere that fire depart :
This tyrant now shall gall no more-
Or, on a desolated plain,

Scourge limbs that stiffen in their gore,
And lord it o'er a nation slain.

The chains of slavery must fall

From arms that nobly dare be free;

And in one dire convulsion all

Now welcome death or liberty.

Triumphant shouts shall ride the wind
Till trembling skies their echo drink-

Or, to eternal death consign'd,
Greece in gigantic ruin sink.

He, thy lascivious Prince, shall learn

How weak the link by tyrants forged

And, with despair's wild horror, turn

From fields with Turkish carrion gorged!

The Patriot and the Apostate's Daughter.

Thy father too, though now secure

In his o'erbearing patron's might,
May find that Greece, a slave no more, ⠀
Wields a dread sword in Freedom's fight.
Tell him from me, that there are some→→
Ay! thousands, too-and one am I-
Who, let what fate soever coine,
Will nobly do, or nobly die.
Tell him that we this oath have sworn→→
• Freedom or Death shall be our lot;'
And though our limbs are shackel-worn,
Our souls their rights have ne'er forgot.
We with our fathers' spirit glow;

And Hellas' sons will yet be free-
Her soil we tread; and every blow
Shall work us tombs or liberty.
'Tis fit alone for such as he-

Apostate from his Country's creed-
To bend the slavish minion's knee,

And kiss the hand that bids him bleed.
Nay-pardon me if I offend

With terms so rude that filial ear-
'Tis true, thy Sire was once my friend;
But has he proved his friendship here?
He knew I loved my native land-

Hail'd her revolt with joy elate-
Yet urged me, with a villain's hand
That native soil to desolate:
When my insulted pride rebell'd,
And spurn'd the mean advice he gave,
Thy beauty as a bribe he held,

And thought to bind me thus a slave.
But, Heavens! one hour of Freedom's strife,
Believe me, I would rather live,
Than drain a slave's protracted life
Mid all the joys thy love could give.
Then fare thee well-the bitter pain
Thus, thus of rending heart from heart,
This thought must lull-We meet again
Where angel-souls need never part;
Yet, stay! one kiss-ah, me! the last!
It makes my very blood congeal-
Oh, pangs of hell have ne'er surpass'd
The deepening agonies I feel!
This chilly sweat that's on my limbs-
Ah, that I could this minute die!
A tear-a tear-oh, Heaven! it dims,
But freezes ere it quits my eye.
I dare not stay this must not last→
And, now our farewell hour is gone,
O'er the wild visions of the past
Wave thy dark wing, Oblivion!".
They parted-she to seek a tomb

By sighs and he to mix in slaughter:

A bullet fix'd the patriot's doom

And grief cut down the Apostate's daughter.

195

FAREWELL TO AIRDRIE.
ALONE beneath the cloud of night,
A wretched, weary, wandering wight,
Spite of her tears I took my flight

From her I love in Airdrie.

Though doom'd her fond suit to deny,
'Twas languaged by the tell-tale eye,
How much my heart wish'd to comply,"
Nor leave my love in Airdrie,
Though mantled o'er with winter's snow,
And deem'd immersed in floods of woe,
I feel within Love's warmest glow

Whene'er I think on Airdrie,
"Forget me not*" when Helen sings,
Or Margaret's sigh remembrance brings,
Or Mary wakes the trembling strings,
My heart-my soul's in "Airdrie.

** **

PERSONAL IDENTITY.

"Imperial Cæsar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
O that that carth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw!"

HAMLET.

Ir was a great stretch of imagination that led Shakspeare to this point of philosophy. For though the physical verity is set down" with modesty enough and likelihood to lead it," yet is the morality profound for the period at which our "divine bard" wrote. To follow the clay of "the world's great master" till it mends a cranny in some wretched hut inhabited by one of the canaille,—to "trace the noble dust of Alexander till it is found stopping a bunghole," was a most rare and unlooked-for reach of precocious democracy in the "queene's servante," amounting almost to a prophecy of those notions which give such uneasiness to the Allied Sovereigns, and which have stamped the age we live in with an indelible stain of disloyalty. Accordingly we of the latter time are prone to read the passage with much complacency, and to derive no small pleasure from the notion, that, let the mighty ones hector and storm as they will," to this complexion they must come at last."

That the dead should be reduced "to such vile uses," is a truth which, in reference to ourselves, is not painful: for, though some of us are very shy of a dissecting-room, join loudly in the outcry against resurrection-men, and would willingly hang a surgeon for his endeavours to discover and cure our inward diseases, yet very few trouble our heads to look farther into affairs, and inquire after the fate of the constituent parts of our bodies, when nature has played the anatomist with us, and, in spite of all our care, has resolved into its elements that charming combination of earths and gases, "our noble selves."

* A short ballad written by H. P., on presenting to a young lady, the little blac flower called Myosoles, Mouse-ear, Scorpion grass, or "Forget me not

But the case will not, perhaps, be procisely the same, when the reader comes to know that this dissolution, of which we think so little hereafter, is actually going on daily and hourly," here on this bank and shoal of time," and in our living bodies; and that there is no one capable of perusing these pages, who has not already been decomposed and re-formed so often, and changed over and over again so completely, that there is not a single particle of the original body he received from his mother remaining, by which he could in a court of justice prove his filiation, or lay claim to a property in his own person. Such, however, is the truth; and a truth so firmly demonstrated upon the surest basis of physiology, that the only doubt among the learned rests upon the exact time it takes for the soul to get rid of its old On this abclothes, and manufacture for itself an entirely new suit. struse point the opinion to which I am the most inclined is that which fixes on forty days for an entire revolution of our corporeal structure; and to this belief I am the rather led, inasmuch as it coincides precisely with the duration of Lent. For as the Catholic church, in determining upon this period of annual fasting and mortification, had an eye to the total eradication of the lusts of the flesh, it is to be presumed that she limited the consumption of cod and haddock to the exact time necessary for such a metamorphosis. Insomuch, that I do not hesitate to declare my conviction, that if the rule were observed in all its pristine strictness,—if we abstained rigidly from beef and mutton on every day of the week throughout Lent, we should by Easter Sunday arrive at such a pitch of piscatory perfection, as not to have a single grain of peccant quadrupedal matter upon our bones;-no, nor in our bones either.

We are," says a French writer, "really and physically like a river, The river is the same the waters of which pass in a continued stream. in its bed, in its banks, its source and its mouth, in every particular which is not the river itself; but in that which constitutes its essencethe water-it is undergoing an incessant change, so as to be absolutely exempt from all identity." Richerand prefers comparing the human body in this particular to the ship of the Argonauts; but a more familiar, and therefore more intelligible image of the truth, is to be found in the farfamed stockings of Sir John Collyer, which, having once been woollen, were at length mended till they became converted thread by thread into entire silk. The only point in which the comparison fails is, that we, on the contrary, begin life as silk stockings, and are gradually mended down to the coarsest yarn hose: a melancholy truth; and I for one most heartily wish it were otherwise.

This discovery, like all other innovations, will be found to affect Some interests it will cross most humanity in a vast variety of ways. provokingly; and the parties thus affected will, no doubt, be the first to deny the position, and to cry blasphemy against any person sufficiently imbued with the principles of the French school to uphold it. With other interests it will perhaps coincide; and these parties will as assuredly find that it is " part and parcel of the law of the land:" and i bus ew d both parties will be equally right; for,

SO

the worth of any thing
much
money as 'twill bring?

To those rovers in love who are perpetually railing against the "toujours