and interest; and, whilst she commanded the applause of the world, she taught her name to be feared, and her friendship and alliance to be courted by every civilized power. The Roman Commonwealth never was insulted with impunity,the Roman monarchy was rarely respected with sincerity. The cause is obvious. The citizen of Rome felt every aggression offered to his country as an injury to himself; but the subject of an emperor chosen by the soldiery had nothing to do with his country's welfare, but to add to her necessities. Some of the emperors, indeed, are exceptions to this censure; they ruled with moderation and wisdom; and, by the vigour of their government, and prudence of their measures, prolonged, but could not prevent, the approaching fall of that noble ruin, on which their fame, and wealth, and power, were built. Happy is the feeling that comes with this reflection, when brought into contrast with our own country. England, with the freedom of the Roman Commonwealth,with a name, earned by the same prowess, that may vie with the proudest hour of Roman glory, combines in her constitution and government the magnificence of a monarchy, more glorious and substantial than that of Rome.

May this freedom, power, and glory, be long,-may it for ever be the lot of our country. She has anomalies and morbid parts in her constitution; but, as a whole, where or when has it been surpassed? Where or when has it been equalled? Where is liberty so great? Where is justice so pure? Where is wealth so abundant, and happiness so general? Is it in Italy, the enervated mother of degenerated and bigotted Romans? Is it in France, brought to the earth for her misdeeds, and loaded with shame? Is it in Spain, distracted by a hundred political parties? Is it in the sterile country of Sweden, or the gloomy government of Prussia? Is it in Turkey or Russia, where all alike are slaves in regular progression? Is it in India, or China, or Persia, where men have no minds but the will of their masters? They are found only in a speck in the ocean. To Albion, the mistress of the sea, the queen of the world,-the arbiter of other's rights, the maintainer of her own,-the parent of charity and of chastity, the valorous offspring of honour and of virtue, appertain these glorious prerogatives of power, and plenitude and praise. Bright is the sun of her glory; may it never set,-only when the world shall fall, may Britain decline; and be that the last hour of universal existence, when her name and her greatness shall depart,-ay, let all depart together into the darkness and abyss of eternity!

161

ODE.

WINTER.

THOU all-sufficient Traveller of the Sky!
Proud of thy native strength and beam,
Alone, in beauty, charioting on high,
The Son of the Supreme!

With emulation fir'd,

Oft hath my spirit to thy glorious height aspir'd.
But thou hast left us far behind,-

Alas! we mark thy parting step!

Say, now, what favour'd climes behold
Thy tresses rich of spheral gold?

Thy gem'd ambrosial curls, which sweep,

Before, the rolling dew, refin'd

From dross of night, celestial, pure,

Pregnant with life from earth's great womb obscure?
Where is thy fulgid lamp display'd?
What clime is in thy splendid vest array'd?
I ween not now,-for, oh, I see

These horrours chang'd for thine and thee!
-It rises from the dusky, northern seas,
Pond'rous, tremendous, vast, by slow degrees;
Procession gloomy! Whelm'd in cloud,
And eminent above the rest,
With high demeanour, aspect proud,
A sullen Chief, of brow comprest,
And hoary hair, and visage pale:
Altho' start not his orbs of sight,
Yet their sad and stedfast light,
Brooding within his swelling breast,
Speak fix'd, interminable hate,

Revenge, which burst, intendeth not to fail,

But pour its execution sure and swift as fate.

Incumbent on his spear, deep-stain'd with frequent war,
He stands tyrannic in his cumbrous, rolling car;
That car of ribs of ice up-pil'd,

And torrent-broken rocks, deform'd and wild ;·
'Tis sordid Winter, monarch grim!
Sullen he comes, and sad, and dim;
He blows a blast so loud and shrill,
That every heart it waxeth chill,
The trees they shake from every hill,

VOL. II. PART I.

M

His drear approach proclaiming!
Immediate round his chariot fly
Clouds that intercept the sky;
Dark, fleeting vapours, that congeal,

And stores of snow already framing,
Which the dangerous pit conceal,
Whose false path sinks the peasant deep,
Struggling with death amid the frigid heap!

Before him stalks a Gorgon vast,
Looking to stone the ocean fast;
And with the serpents of her hair
Branch and bole all scathing bare,
Past o'er by the preceding blast,
And, 'mid the desolation round,
Strikes Agriculture to the ground;
Regardless of her weeping eyes, and prayer,
On rolls huge Winter's wain upon her form so fair!
E'en now imagination shows,

Where seas of ice the ship inclose;
Long there the Gorgon keeps it chain'd,
Till to yield up her power constrain'd,
Then bursts, in angry mood, the crystal tide!
In rush the waters thro' the vessel's side,
While, flying thence, she with dire yell calls forth,
The signal known, the Spirit of the North;
The Spirit of the North forsakes his caves!
The Fury of the Tempest blind attends!
She the cest of peace unbinds
(Cerulean light!) that did inclose
Nature's combustion in repose:

He-he directs the steed of winds,
Forth riding in the chariot of the waves!
She, from her hand, at random, sends
The blue and blasting lightnings round,
And rolls the thunder's awful sound,
Confusion rousing from the depths of hell,
Whose mighty wings the mountain billows swell,
From nethermost abyss of ocean driven,
In urgent to the crystal battlements of heaven!

With brass-rib'd loins, there Danger comes,
Where the tempest highest foams,

With huge, gigantic, lengthen'd stride he roams!
Or on the top of tallest masts,
Splinter'd by the uproar of the waves,
His horrid form he laves,

And thence the giddy ship-boy casts,
Or hurls himself in senseless sleep,
Dreadfully hanging o'er the deep,

On the loosen'd verge of a ridgy steep,
Which the warring surges sweep!

See! ah, see! frantic Fear!

Wildly she starts from strand to strand!
Ah! see, ah! see her there,
Where Danger takes his stand!

And with her blasted hope, now smiling,
Then with frown and scorn reviling!

These circle Winter and his train,—
His train, a world of monsters, comes amain!
First, Idleness, tho' seeming strong,
Yet chains his hands, and trolls his feet along:
Pale Mischief next, with panoply and arms;
Ever and anon she sounds alarms:
Now meets she Agriculture on the ground,
Delight for her hath every gory wound,
Which she most wantonly afflicts again!
See, Poverty, with iron hands,
By Discontent and Envy stands;
And ills appear, so cluster'd, all abroad,
That, with their terrors overaw'd,
The Muses cannot name,-
Till last, a figure, quite rapacious, came,
High-flying, like an harpy, and attended
With numerous hideous forms:

But, when her victim's past, she soon descended,
And with relentless fangs blood-stain'd,

Tore out, and gnaw'd their hearts, till nought remain’d!
Her name is Famine, worse than storms!

For she, when mariners have 'scap'd their shock,
Riots off them upon some barren rock!

Tho' in the rear, now her my fancy views

But rav'ning few, whom sterner fate upyields;
Yet should just Heaven the harvest-growth refuse,
Exulting she beholds the prostrate fields,
And, bounding to the front, in wider sphere,
Pain universal spreads, and huge Despair!
Then with loud clamour, counterfeited, wild,
Rebellion calls, tho' mighty, soon beguil'd,—
He comes! with Mars in furious eddies hurl'd!
They shake their javelins, and defy the world,
High thro' imagin'd wrong! They deem to end
Pale Famine's desolating reign;

She, secret seeing, blasts what they intend,
Yet hurries them to do their councils vain;
Heaps war on war, confusion and dismay,
Fills the wild yell, then makes them all her prey!

O, Thou!-of Heaven and Earth First-born!
The Sovereign of the glowing morn!

this time, indeed, the Romans were particularly watchful over their privileges. The Commonwealth, though not arrived at maturity, was yet in its vigour; and any, the least encroachment on a government and constitution they had formed with so much care, and established by so much blood, was sure to call forth the displeasure, and oftentimes the vengeance of the people. They banished a consul, because he was a collateral branch, and bore the name of the royal family of Tarquin, whom they had justly dethroned and expelled. Another consul was obliged to raze his house to the ground, because its superior magnificence seemed to be incompatible with the pretensions of a citizen. Were these acts of oppression? So far as regards the individuals, perhaps they were. But, although we may condemn the particular injustice, who can fail to admire the tenacious care with which the republic was thus continually guarded. It is in this way that the insidious inroads of tyranny are effectually barred. Whilst the Romans slept, the enemy had nearly taken the capitol: when they had totally sunk into vice and effeminacy, the republic was lost altogether.

Porsenna, the general and king of the Etrurians, was so astonished at the valour of a Roman soldier, who singly defended the entrance of a bridge against the whole body of the enemy, that he recalled his army, and no longer dared to encounter the Romans. It was thus that they won their greenest laurels in the public spirit of her people, Rome found a bulwark impervious to numbers and to difficulties. Had this man loved himself better than his country, the Roman army would have been defeated and disgraced. His personal safety was nothing, weighed against the honour of his native land; that he saved, and gave to his country security,-to himself, immortality.

At a much later period, we meet with examples of public spirit, which shew that the virtue and patriotism of this wonderful people had, in the course of many years, suffered no diminution. The Roman territory was subject to the inroads of the barbarians, who, having tasted the luxuries of Italy, and felt the soft influence of her mild and fortunate climate, could not but prefer a permanent settlement in that country to the inhospitable accommodation and stern rigour of their native forests. Wherever they found opposition or impediment, they repelled it with the frenzied valour and indiscriminate slaughter of savages; and Rome, distressed and weakened by internal commotions, experienced the worst, and almost the last effects of the repeated incursions of the Goths.

Camillus, one of her wisest senators and ablest generals,