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more indifferent to small sums than communities which are less at their ease; and a free people must be led into larger sympathies, by the conviction of a political interest common to all ranks, from the highest to the lowest. The very fact, also, of an inordinate pretence to charity, must tend to produce, in some increased degree, the virtue it claims. With what a profuse largess do our great merchants, our nobility, and landholders, rival each other in forwarding every public-spirited and every compassionate object; and when the most ample deduction is made for selfish and paltry motives, enough remains, if not for admiration, at least for approval. Yet, even for this pure and unmixed good, the nation is not entitled to take credit, so long as it is not accompanied by a corresponding liberality in opinion. As long as there is little that is generous and enlarged in the mind itself, pecuniary generosity can be justly regarded but as a monkish virtue. Thus, when we find the same people, who rushed forward to subscribe three hundred thousand pounds for the relief of the starving Irish, coming forward with equal eagerness to petition against Irish rights, and to perpetuate the causes of that distress which their charity had previously relieved, the admiration excited in the first instance, changes almost into disgust at such capricious inconsistency; and the most that can be conceded to the parties is a mere animal instinct of compassion, which, however convenient, has nothing in it either noble or exalted. One knows not whether to smile or to weep over that bastard liberality, which relieves the temporal distresses of a fellow-creature, while it coolly consigns him to eternal misery for a slight difference of creed, and then violently strips him of his civil rights on the strength of this inconsiderate condemnation. There is, likewise, in the upper classes of English society an haughty insolence, a lofty contempt for the mere people, that forms a large item of discount to be deducted from their reputation for liberality. There is little intrinsic difference between Blunt damning the poor and refusing them bread altogether, because Heaven "cannot love the wretch it starves," and those charitable aristocrats, who found almshouses, yet grind the poor wholesale by oppressive and monopolising laws. In liberality of opinion, England (I speak it with bitter regret) is far behind the rest of Europe. If exclusion be not (as the member for Newark lately said) a fundamental principle of our political constitution, it is of our moral complex. There is little expansive in the thoughts, feelings, or habits, of the mass of Englishmen. It is not only in religion that we are disposed to be damnatory; we are continually splitting into categories and predicaments, and shutting up ourselves in clubs and coteries, on all manner of pretences, each of which looks on the rest of the species as knaves and fools—if not as heretics and idolaters. The persecutions of fashion, if somewhat milder in degree, are not less narrow and bigoted than those of divinity; and the Lady-Patronesses of Almack's black-bean the deficient in bon-ton, exactly on the same principle as orator Irving sends our poets and reviewers to the regions of weeping and gnashing of teeth. In a like spirit, the physicians guard themselves against ungraduated merit, and corporations protect their apprentices from rivalry; the Clapham householders who keep their carriages, refuse to fraternize with those of their neighbours who travel by the stage; and Mrs. Grundy, who inhabits the one-pair back room, maintains her superiority over Mrs. Soapsuds, who lives in the two pair of stairs for

wards. So also an officer of cavalry looks down upon an officer of foot; and he of the line exhibits ineffable disdain of the commander of militia-men. To the same narrow spirit belongs the rigorous exclusion of strangers from public libraries, or the inconvenient and jealous terms on which they are admitted. We trace it also in the fees paid on visiting public buildings and collections of pictures; and it reigns paramount and lord of the ascendant over the sporting-grounds of country squires. It shines conspicuously in our pecuniary compensations for violated affections, and the action "per quod servitium amisit." Is there the slightest grain of liberality in the insolence, coldness, and paltry suspicion with which a true John Bull treats all foreigners but such as come over to sing for his amusement? or is the slavish sycophancy and lavish profusion he bestows upon a pretty prima donna one whit nearer to real generosity? Is there a spark of liberality in the base envy and remorseless sarcasm with which a thorough-going, home-bred John Bull regards the rising prosperity of our brethren in the United States? in the malignant laugh with which our theatres nightly echoed, during the run of Mathews's caricature of a genuine Kentucky-man? I speak not of the war against the liberties of France, which was the immediate cause of the atrocities of the Revolution, nor of the ill-usage of Napoleon at St. Helena; for these were more the work of a faction than of the nation at large, however much the credulity and the weakness of the people contributed to it. But the coolness and indifference with which Englishmen looked on at the treatment of Genoa, of Parga, and of the unhappy Sicilians who took parts in the constitution we forced upon their king, and the crawling adoration bestowed by a British public upon the Allied Sovereigns who visited London in 1815, are any thing but proofs of national liberality.—But I am again lapsing into gravity; the line between the foolish and the depraved is so slight, and the connexion between them so intimate! The multitudes of uneducated persons who flocked to the Continent after the Peace have betrayed our secret to foreigners; and the nation has lost much of the high character it formerly held in Europe. The imputed generosity of the Englishman, which caused the simplest gentleman to be esteemed above the princes of other nations, has been effaced from the imagination of our neighbours by a petty higgling and chicanery in the settling of tradesmen's bills; the fear of being cheated has made our travellers little better than cheats themselves; and the ridicule they have thus brought on their country has gone far to abate the admiration which the valour, the resources, and the power of the nation had inspired by the successful termination of a war unparalleled in history.

Now donot, my very dear reader, get into a furious paroxysm of Bullism, and prove the extent of your own liberality by taxing the New Monthly Magazine with atheism, and jacobinism, and radicalism, and all possible isms (rheumatism included), for thus lifting a slight corner of the veil of nationality, which hides from your observation the little motes in your own eye (for beams are quite out of the question). The schoolmaster, you know, is abroad, and if he sometimes creep into Ministerial journals and Tory reviews, how is he to be kept out of our pages? All things taken into account, you are neither better nor worse than your neighbours. Man is frail; and Englishmen, like others, must pay the penalty of their nature. It is not our fault if we are a nation of shop

keepers, or if the aristocracy of wealth in the constitution, and the spi rit of ascendency in the religion bequeathed to us by generations less enlightened than our own, have done our natural disposition some mischief. God forbid that I should advise you to reform these particulars, or recommend you to practise the virtues you profess; all I ask is, that you do not render your peccadilloes too conspicuous by ill-timed boasting; and that when you are inclined to laud the liberality of your opinions, and the generosity of your dealings at home and abroad, you will pour out the overflowings of your heart to the family circle, or to some confidant more discreet than the reeds of Midas. M.

FAREWELL TO THE ALCAZAR.*

THE sun sinks low with golden gleam,
Lances are round Comares' gate,
O'er the Alcazar banners stream,

The Moor must yield to Spain and fate!
O Alcazar, black the day

We leave thee for the victor's prey!

Dark eyes are flowing!-they shall see
Grenada's stately gates no more,
Past Alpuxares must they flee,

To Afric's sandy desert shore!
Alcazar, nurse of Moorish fame,
And must we leave thy towers in shame!
Our native home! 'tis death to part;
The Spaniard comes, 'tis death to stay,
The blood is chill upon the heart,

That grieves for glory pass'd away;
Alcazar, palace of our race,

Where shall be now our dwelling-place!

Nurse of our kings, a last adieu !

By the cold moon to-night we go,
Weeping in vain, and vainly true:

Stain'd by the vile, unturban'd foe,
Thy towers no more our guiding star,
We leave thee, wanderers wide and far!
And when we cross the deep blue sea,
Back gazing for thy walls in vain,
Keen woe shall bathe our thoughts of thee,
Pavilion of our lovely Spain!—
Alcazar, mark our burning tears,
They're treasured for long coming years.
Long coming years!-and when gone past
All but the memory of thy name-
The Moor, still free, his glance shall cast
Upon the record of thy fame,
And see thy conquerors vile and base,
The scoff e'en of their Christian race!

The Alcazar was the palace of the Moorish kings of Grenada, and was surrendered to the Spaniards under Alphonso. The bitter grief with which the Moors parted from their capital, has been more than once made the subject of poetry: The history of the period abounds with touching anecdotes.

And he shall be avenged by time,
The Bourbon's and the priest's control,
While amid Afric's burning clime

The Moor lives master of his soul!
His fiery home unconquer'd still,
And lord of his unbounded will!
The sun is red in air above,

O'er an expiring empire's wail!
Adieu, thou palace of our love,

All save the memory of thy tale!
Alcazar! (day of misery,)

Eternally adieu to thee!

RAMBLINGS OF A DESULTORY MAN, NO. IV.
The Story of the Beauty of Arles.*

His own servant and the old grenadier came immediately to his assistance, and disengaged him from the horse; but it seemed as if their aid had been too late. The stranger was wholly insensible. At first they thought him dead, and it was some minutes before the yet lingering animation again made itself visible; but as soon as the old grenadier saw it, he went into the apartment where Villars and his daughter were, and simply told them that a young gentleman had been thrown from his horse at the gate, and he believed he was dying.

Pity's purest dwelling is in a woman's breast. Without thinking, Julie started up, and in a moment had flown to the assistance of the stranger. Villars followed more slowly. It was a Roman duty to aid a fellow-citizen, and he proceeded to obey it.

Every man who has fallen off a horse, stunned himself, and broken his arm, must, or at least ought, to undergo the same treatment. Let us suppose then the duties of humanity paid; let us also imagine that the stranger, in some degree recovered from his fall, had told them that his name was Charles Durand, the only son of Villars' old friend and early companion-there was a softness even in the memory of those young days which melted, in a degree, the sternness of the old soldier. It was more so when he found that Durand, though in place and in power, and basking in the beams of courtly favour, had not forgotten him, and had directed his son, in passing by Arles, to inquire for his old companion-and offer him his services at court, the young man added, but his voice rather faltered as he said it. It might be that he knew the emptiness of such promises in general, or perhaps that he was too well acquainted with his father's character, or it might be that his hurt pained him at the moment; but, however it was, when he saw Julie standing by the couch on which he was stretched, and attending him with the kindness of a sister, he almost blessed the accident which had given him a title to her care.

I know not how it is, but amongst all the wild theories and dreams that have been formed about the human heart and its passions, none ever suited itself to my fancy so well as that,-it is an Eastern one, I believe,--which supposes the hearts of two persons destined to love each other, formed by the angel, whose task it is, out of the same clay; so

* Concluded from page 36.

that in whatever regions they may be placed, and in whatever different state of life, when they do meet, there is always a world of undefinable sympathies between them, and affections apart from all the rest of earth. Perhaps it is only a few, and those by especial favour, that the angel forms of these twin hearts; all the rest must wander about the world without any soft companionship of feeling. Be that as it may, from the very first moment that Charles Durand had met Julie Villars, new sensations had been born in his bosom. She was lovely, the loveliest perhaps he had ever seen, though he had been long accustomed to mingle with the bright and the fair; but in her there was the beauty of simplicity, the charm of native unaffected innocence, and that was what he had seldom met with at all, and certainly never before so rarely combined. There were many more

But what is the use of searching any farther for that which made him love her from the first? Grant but the Eastern supposition to be true, that their hearts were formed of one clay, and the matter is settled at once. A little superstition, and a few good broad theories, save man a great deal of trouble and research, and perhaps lead him as right as any of the hundred roads which philosophers and moralists are always busy paving for him.

During his illness, which was severe from the accident he had met with, his attachment had time to become fixed, and he did not lose the opportunity of endeavouring to excite a return. In truth, it was not very difficult; Julie's heart was cast in Nature's gentlest mould, and this was the first time that any thing like affection had approached it. From her infancy she had formed for herself companionship from whatever was near her. She had watched each individual flower as it blossomed, till she loved it, and loved it only to mourn the fall of its fragile beauty. She had taught the birds to know her, and to sing their wild notes in her path without fear. But now it was something far, far beyond any thing she had ever felt or even dreamed of. What a new bright state of existence became hers, when Charles Durand's love first flashed upon her mind! She painted to herself all the charms of reciprocal attachment in its brightest state. She knew nothing of the world and its falsehood; she knew nothing of human nature and its weakness, and she fancied it all without a cloud. She invested every thing in the verdant colouring of her own heart, and lighted it up with the sunshine of her own mind; and it made a picture she could have gazed on for ever.

Before she was aware of his affection, she had looked forward to his recovery with mingled emotions. There was certainly a good deal of pleasure on his account in the speculation ; but she did not like to think of his departure, which would be the natural consequence. Now that she knew herself loved, and that she could look upon her own attachment for him without fear or shame, she never dreamed that a separation was possible, She yielded her whole soul to the delight of the moment, and saw nothing before her but one bright, interminable track.

Durand's mind was not so much at ease. There were some blighting thoughts that would come and wither his opening happiness. He knew his father's ambitious nature, and feared to ask himself how it would brook his union with the simple girl of Arles. Brought up amidst scenes of profligacy and vice, though with a heart naturally good and pure, Charles might have formed some less honourable scheme for ob

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