ART. VIII.-Paris in 1815. A Poem. 8vo. pp. 75. London.

1817.

THIS is the work of a powerful and poetic imagination; but the style and expression are of very unequal merit. Occasionally uncouth, and frequently obscure, they nevertheless are often, perhaps we might say generally, suitable to the ardent inspirations which they are destined to convey.

The subject of the poem is a desultory walk through Paris, in which the author observes, with very little regularity, but with great force, on the different objects which present themselves. It is evident that he visited Paris already well imbued with the local history of the town, and more particularly with that of those most interesting events which for five-and-twenty years have rendered that capital equally the object of horror and curiosity.

The bias of the author's mind, both in religion and politics, is strongly adverse to the revolution and the revolutionists, and when he enters the scenes on which so many atrocious crimes have been committed, his descriptions are tinged with the deep and mellow colours of an enthusiasm against which no reader, we think, can easily defend himself.

Approaching from Mont Martre, the first object that strikes our poetical traveller is the British flag which, from that remarkable eminence, floated over the haughty capital of France.—The hurried fortifications raised here by Buonaparte, symbols of

What terror on the boastful land has been,

are well delineated; but the stanzas, which describe the feelings of the British army when they first scaled Mont Martre, and glutted their eyes with the view of conquered PARIS, appear to us to be of a still higher strain:

IX.

'War has its mighty moments:-Heart of Man!
Have all thy pulses vigour for a thrill

Prouder than through those gallant bosoms ran
When first their standards waved above that hill?
When first they strove their downward gaze to fill
With the full grandeur of their glorious prize-
Paris! the name that from their cradle still
Stung them in dreams; now, glittering in their eyes,
Now won-won by the Victory of Victories!

X.

For this, had bled their battle round the world;
For this, they round the world had come to war;
Some with the shatter'd ensign that unfurl'd
Its lion-emblems to the Orient star;

And some, the blue Atlantic stemming far;

And

And some, a matchless band, from swarthy Spain-
With well-worn steel, and breasts of many a scar;

But all their plains to their last conquering plain

Were sport, and all their trophies to this trophy vain.'-p. 5, 6. Before we proceed, we must take the opportunity of stating, once for all, that the author is sometimes extremely negligent in the construction of his Alexandrines. It requires more management than he is entitled to demand, on the part of his readers, to modulate the closing lines of the two stanzas just quoted (and there are many others ejusdem farinæ) into any thing like verse. This is a fault which no authority can sanction, and which, therefore, like the errors of Hamlet's strolling players, should be reformed all-together.

On entering Paris, the author changes his metre, (on which we shall say a word hereafter,) and gives the following striking picture of the first impressions created by a sight so new to his eyes.

'The barrier's reach'd-out reels the drowsy guard;

A scowl-a question-and the gate's unbarr'd.

And this is Paris! The postilion's thong

Rings round a desert, as we bound along
From rut to deeper rut of shapeless stone,
With many a general heave, and general groan.
Onward, still darker, doubly desolate,

Winds o'er the shrinking head the dangerous strait :
The light is lost; in vain we peer our way

Through the dark dimness of the Faubourg day;

In vain the wearied eyeball strains to scale

That squalid height, half hovel and half jail:
At every step the struggling vision bar

Projections sudden, black, and angular,

Streak'd with what once was gore, deep rent with shot,
Marks of some conflict furious and-forgot!

Grim loneliness!—and yet some wasted form

Will start upon the sight, a human worm

Clung to the chapel's wall-the lank throat bare,
The glance shot woeful from the tangled hair,
The fleshless, outstretch'd arm, and ghastly cry,
Halt forcing, half repelling charity.

Or, from the portal of the old hotel,

Gleams on his post the victor-sentinel,—

Briton or German,-shooting round his ken,

From its dark depth,—a lion from his den!'—pp. 12, 13. If, as we suspect, this passage should remind our readers of Mr. Crabbe, the following description of the lodging of one of Buonaparte's last-stake ruffians, the fédérés whom he attempted to arm in 1814, less in his own defence than for the overthrow of all order, will press the resemblance more strongly upon them.

' Heavy

1

'Heavy that chamber's air; the sunbeams fall
Scattered and sickly on the naked wall;

Through the time-crusted casement scarcely shown
The rafter'd roof, the floor of chilling stone,
The crazy bed, the mirror that betrays
Frameless, where vanity yet loves to gaze;
And still, the symbols of his darker trade,
The musquet, robber-pistol, sabre blade,
Hung rusting, where around the scanty fire
His squalid offspring watch its brands expire.
His glance is there;-another, statelier spot
Has full possession of his fever'd thought;
In the fierce past the fierce to-come he sees,
The day returned of plunder'd palaces,

When faction revell'd, mobs kept thrones in awe,

And the red pike at once was King and Law.'—p. 16.

We regret that our limits do not permit us to give the whole of
the vivid and energetic passage in which the author describes the in-
famous Abbaye, and exhibits the horrors of the massacres of Sep-
tember, 1792. The contrast between the present appearance of
the building, and the recollections which it inspires, are finely con-
ceived and forcibly expressed.

But pause! what pile athwart the crowded way
Frowns with such sterner aspect? The Abbaye!-
Gay in the sight, the shadow of that pile,
The meagre native plays his gambol vile.
Above, tolls out for death the prison knell,

Below, dogs, monkies, bears, the jangling swell;
The crack'd horn rings, the rival mimes engage,
Punch in imperial tatters sweeps the stage;
The jostling mob dance, laugh, sing, shout the rhyme,
And die in ecstasies the thousandth time.
And look! around, above, what ghastly row
Through bar and grating struggle for the show,
Down darting, head o'er head, the haggard eye,
Felons! the scarcely 'scaped,-the sure to die!
The dungeon'd murderer startles from his trance,
Uplistening hears the din, the monkey-dance,
Growls at the fate that fix'd his cell beneath,
And feels the solid bitterness of death.
Yes, 'twas the spot!-where yonder slow gendarme
Sweeps from his round the loitering pauper-swarm;
Where up the mouldering wall, that starveling vine
Drags on from nail to nail its yellow twine;
For ornament! Still something for the eye;

Prisons, nay graves, have here their foppery.'—pp. 19, 20.

He then proceeds to a more detailed description of those dreadful nights; it is all good, particularly the account of that most

awful

awful scene in which a priest ascended a kind of pulpit in the prison, and gave the last admonitions of piety and the last consolations of religion to the mixed and melancholy crowds of fellow sufferers who knelt before him :-but we must limit ourselves to such passages as may be most easily disconnected from the context. The following incident in that dreadful tragedy is not more powerfully given than the rest, but it is an insulated episode which will lose nothing by being quoted alone. After sketching, with the hand of a master, the bloody and drunken tribunal of that night, (drunk with wine as well as blood,) he goes on

، And now, a prisoner stood before them, wan
With dungeon damps and woe-an aged man,
But stately; there was in his hoary hair
A reverend grace that Murder's self might spare.
Two of the mob, half naked, freshly dyed

In crimson clots, waved sabres at his side.
He told his tale,-a brief, plain, prison tale,-
Well vouch'd by those faint limbs and features pale:
His words were strong, the manly energy

Of one not unprepared to live or die.

His judges wavered, whispered, seemed to feel
Some human touches at his firm appeal.-

He named his king!—a burst of scoff and sneer

Pour'd down, that even the slumberers sprang to hear;
Startled, to every grating round the room

Sprang visages already seal'd for doom;

Red from their work without, in rush'd a crowd,
Like wolves that heard the wonted cry of blood.

He gazed above,—the torch's downward flame

Flash'd o'er his cheek ;-'twas red,-it might be shame,
Shame for his country, sorrow for her throne;-
"Twas pale,-the hectic of the heart was gone.
His guards were shaken off;-he tore his vest,
A ribbon'd cross was on his knightly breast,-
It covered scars;-he deigned no more reply;
None, but the scorn that lighten'd from his eye.
His huddled, hurried judges dropp'd their gaze;
The villain soul's involuntary praise!

He kiss'd his cross, and turn'd him to the door

An instant, and they heard his murderers' roar!'-pp. 24, 25. The dreadful continuance of these scenes, and the long line of victims immolated, are thus beautifully described:

The evening fell,-in bloody mists the sun

Rush'd glaring down; nor yet the work was done;
"Twas night;-and still upon the Bandit's eye
Came from their cavern those who came to die;
A long, weak, wavering, melancholy wave,
As from the grave, returning to the grave.

'Twas

'Twas midnight;-still the gusty torches blazed
On shapes of woe, dim gestures, faces glazed;
And still, as through the dusk the ghastly file

Moved onward, it was added to the pile !—p. 26.

From this heart-touching subject, the poet turns to the royal procession to Notre Dame in 1815; and here again his description of the objects that move before his eyes is exquisitely tinged with the colour of the thoughts that pass through his memory, and of the feelings that arise in his heart.

When the Mousquetaires who had accompanied the king to Ghent (and who have been therefore, we believe, since disbanded) appeared in the procession, the applauses of the crowd (mob as it was) rent the air.

6 'Twas the heart's shout-the vilest of the vile
By instinct bow before the virtuous brave.'

The fatal night of the departure of this gallant band from Paris, and the melancholy festivity in which at Ghent they renewed the pledges of their devotion, are finely imagined, and (with the exception of the last line) forcibly expressed.

XXXII.

'It was a dreary hour; that deep midnight,

Which saw those warriors to their chargers spring,

And, sadly gathering by the torch's light,

Draw up their squadrons to receive their king:
Then, thro' the streets, long, silent, slumbering,
Move like some secret, noble funeral;
Each forced in turn to feel his bosom wring,
As in the gloom shone out his own proud hall,
His own no more ;- -no more!-he had abandon'd all!
XXXIII.

'And when, thro' many a league of chase and toil,
With panting steed, red spur, and sheathless sword,
At last they reach'd the stranger's sheltering soil;
They saw their country, where they saw its lord.
All ruin'd now, they fenc'd his couch and board,
But with still humbler head, and lower knee;
And scorn'd the tauntings of the rebel horde;
Nay, in the hour that seal'd the base decree
Of exile, pledged their faith in proud festivity.
XXXIV.

'I love not war; too oft the mere, mad game
That tyrants play to keep themselves awake.
But 'tis not war-it earns a nobler name-
When men gird on the sword for conscience' sake,
When country, king, faith, freedom are at stake.
And my eye would have left earth's gaudiest show,
To see those men at their poor banquet take

The