The address to females of the rising generation is distinguished for its practical good sense. All those indeed who are actually employed in alleviating the miseries and in promoting the happiness of their poorer fellow-creatures, will find in this publication many useful hints and directions. Mrs. Cappe appears to understand thoroughly the practical part of that benevolence, which has the education and the preservation of females for its object.

We are bound at the same time to protest against some portions of the work, and especially the Appendix, as containing many absurd and mischievous opinions respecting the religious part of charitable education. Mrs. Cappe's opinions, however, are too openly stated to mislead any, but the weakest; the separation of the good from the bad is not a difficult task, we trust therefore that it will be made.

ART. XI. Familiar Poems, Moral and Religious. By Susannah Wilson. 18mo. pp. 161. Darton. 1814. OF the beneficial consequences which arise from educating, and giving religious feelings and habits to the poor, the author of this little volume affords an incontestible and striking proof. Though the laudable attention paid by her mother to these essential points, has not made her a poet, it has enabled her to become an estimable member of society: it has taught her to perform her duties with correctness and cheerfuluess, and to lighten her toils by intellectual amusement. In the preface, ker uneventful, but not uninstructive history, is given by the gentleman who has published her verses, under the idea that they will be "read with pleasure and edification by the juvenile part of the community." Susannah Wilson is of humble parentage: her father was a journeyman weaver, and her mother a very pious woman, who was anxious that her children should have an early acquaintance with the important truths of the bible; from whence it is evident that Susannah has drawn most of her sentiments and reflections. Susannah was born in Kingslandroad, in the year 1787. She learned to improve her reading at a Sunday school, and to write at an evening school. Her father, though industrious and provident, was rather averse to her mother's religious principles, yet left her to follow her own inclination in the education of her children, which she was assiduous in doing, to the best of her ability. For many years past, they lived in a little cottage in St. Matthew's, Bethnal Green, reared by her father, on a spot of garden-ground, which he hired at a

low

low rent, and where two of the daughters still reside, and pursue the weaving business, to which they were all bred. While thus engaged, she says, verses spontaneously flowed into her mind, which she took every opportunity of committing to paper. The cultivation of his little garden was a favourite employment of her father at leisure intervals, and afforded him a grateful relief from the labours of the loom. To use her own language, her "father was so fond of vine-dressing, that his little cottage was covered with fruitful vines:" for many years he lived under his own vine,' and under it he died;" at which period her parents had been married forty-six years. Her mother survived him only one year and sixteen days. Confined almost exclusively to the narrow range of her own family circle, Susannah worked at her father's business till about three years since; when, owing to a bad state of health, from excessive application to a sedentary business, she was recommended to seek a service, for the sake of more active employment. Providence directed her to the family at Hackney, with whom she still remaius, and fulfils the domestic duties assigned her, with conscientious fidelity. Hitherto her reading had been almost entirely confined to her. Bible, Dr. Watts's Hymns, and two or three other religious works; but, as she advanced in years, she took every opportunity of procuring books, and Milton, Young, and some other authors, fell into her hands, which she read with great avidity. She likewise had the advantage of acquiring a little knowledge of English grammar. This was a stimulus to poetical exertions, and she devoted almost all her leisure time to writing verses.

The verses of Susannah Wilson are sufficiently flowing; and the sentiments which they express are uniformly pious and benevolent. The following poem may be taken as a fair specimen,

"On a Flower opening to the Sun.

"Sweet flower! behold the rising sun-
Scarce has his morning race begun,
When thou dost ope thine eye;
What gentle voice or whisper soft,
Tells thee to rear thine head aloft,
And greet him in the sky?
"What secret power impels thy leaf
To close, and pass the time in grief,
When he has gone his round?
In vain the beauteous orbs of night,
The moon and stars in vain unite,
To raise thee from the ground.

"Astonished

"Astonish'd now, I stand and view-
Hast thou both sense and feeling too?
What wonders I behold!

The flower, I thought, would droop and die,
When darkness veil'd the midnight sky;
Now its fair leaves unfold!

"Thus conscious is my opening mind,
When the reviving rays I find
Of my more glorious sun;

My hopes revive, my spirits rise,
My faith salutes the smiling skies,
And thinks her warfare done.

"But when the evening shades return,
And I am left the light to mourn,
My spirit droops again:
Nor men, nor angels, all combin'd,
Could e'er relieve my burden'd mind,
Or ease me of my pain."

ART. XII. The Lay of the Poor Fiddler; a Parody on the Lay of the Last Minstrel, with Notes and Illustrations. By an Admirer of Walter Scott. Small 8vo. pp. 167. Crosby. 1814.

OF that kind of burlesque which endeavours to degrade and throw ridicule on those things and feelings, which are in themselves virtuous and sublime, we confess that we are no admirers. Nor, of course, do we think that the spreading of a taste for it is at all to be desired. We fear, however, that this taste "bas increased," and "is increasing," and if it have and be so, we are quite sure, that it "ought to be diminished." Of its increase the numberless songs, parodies, and travesties, which have appeared of late years, seem to us to furnish an irrefragable proof. No sooner does a poem of merit issue from the press, than fifty doggrel writers are at work to produce a ludicrous imitation. Even Shakespeare himself is not safe from these profane jackpuddings; a fact to which ample testimony is borne by some recent travesties of his finest plays. It would not at all surprize us, were we soon to see the Paradise Lost treated in a similar manner.

In spite of the general favour with which works of this kind are received, we contend that they ought not to be encouraged, and even that the encouragement which is given to them reflects

disgrace

disgrace on those who give it. Nothing that elevates, or softens, or purifies the mind, ought to be made the theme of vulgar mirth. The fine affections, the dignified emotious, should be religiously kept sacred from all contamination. They are like female honour, which, in some degree, suffers im peachment, merely from its possessor being seen in the company of those persons, the spotlessness of whose honour is doubtful. When the mind is accustomed to associate light and low ideas with great ones, the latter will inevitably be regarded with less reverence than they should be; and from diminished respect to utter contempt the distance is small and speedily passed over. In our opinion, every thing that is in itself essentially serious, is an improper object of ridicule. It is not laughter that we object to, for, in defiance of Lord Chesterfield, we can laugh as heartily as most men; but we think that there is an abundance of laughable subjects, which may be fairly treated in a burlesque style; and that there is as little necessity to violate dignified subjects, as there is propriety of feeling and delicacy of taste in those who do it.

The hoary sinner, who calls himself Peter Pindar, was one of the first, and we believe the very first, of late years, to indulge in the hateful practice of which we complain. There is scarcely a tender or pious sentiment which he has not strenuously laboured to render ridiculous. We remember reading, long ago, with extreme disgust, a part of one of his poems, in which he draws a deeply-pathetic picture of a consumptive husband, on the verge of the grave, lamenting in the dead of night his approaching separation from a beloved wife, and, while he deems her asleep, breathing his fondest prayers over her; upon which she turns round in bed, and, muttering to herself, "wonders the filthy fellow is not dead."

Examples of folly and vice are never long unimitated. We have since been inundated by a deluge of similar brutal productions. It is with a blush for the thoughtlessness, to give it no harsher a name, of playhouse audiences, that we call to mind the bursts of laughter which have been excited by the vulgar doggrel of "Miss Bailey." The charm of this song we are wholly at a loss to discover. What are the subjects of this delightful ditty? Seduction, consequent suicide, remorse of conscience, and the appearance of a guilty disembodied spirit. Excellent food indeed for risibility! When this trash was first sung, had those who applauded it had a proper sense of their duty, they would have hooted it indignantly from the stage.

It may, perhaps, be said, that as we dislike this species of burlesque, we are incapacitated from doing justice to it when, in its way, it really has merit. This we deny. We may not like, for

instance,

instance, the nastiness of a Dutch painter, and yet may be able to form a good judgment as to the skill of the artist. Of the kind, we do not think the Lay of the Last Fiddler the worst burlesque that we have ever seen. The composition is exceedingly slovenly in many places, but it has good parts; and from some specimens which he has given, we are induced to believe, that the author has also talents for serious writing. The notes are not ill executed. The following made us smile, and therefore, as we like to communicate pleasure, we lay it before our readers. It is a note accounting for the irresistible propensity which impels Scotchmen to travel in a southern direction.

"Where'er you go, by dale or hill,

You'll find them journeying southward still."

"This is a known fact, and well worthy the attention of the learned, as philosophers have never yet, I believe, given any satisfactory explanation as to the cause from whence the emigration

arises.

"It will be unnecessary to notice the various hypotheses which have been framed in order to account for this seeming anomaly, as I shall without more delay, proceed to give what appears to me a very probable and satisfactory solution of this once difficult problem, which will, I hope, set things in their true light, and, by a simple mathematical illustration, render as clear as noon-day what has hitherto been enveloped in the darkest shadows of the night.

"Philosophers now seem to be pretty well agreed as to the figure of our earth being an oblate spheroid, flattest at the poles, the equatorial parts being higher than the polar regions in the proportion of 230 to 229.

"The following quotation from Dr. Rees's Cyclopædia, relative to the figure and motion of the earth, will, at the same time, explain our present difficult and important question.

As the earth revolves about its axis, all its parts will endeavour to recede from the axis of motion, and the equatorial parts where the motion is greatest, will tend less towards the center than the rest, their endeavours to fly off from the axis about which they revolve, taking off part of the tendency that way, so that these parts will become lighter than such as are nearer the poles, and the polar parts will therefore press towards the center.

Granting this, it seems no longer wonderful that bodies from the north should press forward in the southerly direction,—or that Scotchmen should leave their native homes, to wander like exiles in a foreign land."

ART.