Scarcely had the Doctor pronounced these hexameters, than he was startled by a voice from behind, saying, Come, and behold.' salutation somewhat

That this unexpected

startled the Doctor, he candidly admits, and as we conceive without any impeachment of his courage. The peculiar circumstances, with which this extraordinary invitation were accompanied, is a sufficient apology for any momentary trepidation; for, in addition to the tremendous noise, which resembled the rushing of winds and the roaring of waters,' our bard 'felt a stroke as of lightning;' and he not only lost his strength, thought, sight, hearing, and sense,' but so sudden was the seizure, 'that in the twinkling of an eye, all the electric stores of his brain were expended.'

After passing through a vault, the Laureat recovers his senses, and the first object he beholds after arriving in Heaven, is George the Third, Mr. Perceval hurries forward with all the alacrity of a courtier to greet his Sovereign ' with joyful obeisance,' and a conversation immediately ensues on the state of parties, Mr. Perceval assures the King that the Regent had kept in the old Administration; that Napoleon was confined in a rocky isle of the ocean,' and the Bourbons established on the throne of France.

The fifth section is headed The Accusers,' and we venture to say that the annals of literature do not contain a more atrocious and revolting mass of impiety. Before perusing this blasphemous production, we could not have believed that any man would have dared to depict the Judgment Seat of God; and our surprise was converted into horror, when we found that the Deity was enlisted into the service of the Treasury Benches, and made to utter the sentiments of a placeman!!! The deceased Monarch is put upon his trialan angel blows a trumpet, and calls upon the accusers of George the Third to come forward to the Judgment Seat. A demon comes forth at the summons—a many-headed and monstrous fiend, by whom the late reign had been disturbed

'Clamours arose as he came, a confusion of turbulent voices,

Maledictions, and blatant tongues, and viperous hisses;

And in the hubbub of senseless sounds, the watchwords of faction,

Freedom, invaded rights, corruption, and war and oppression,

Loudly enounced were heard.'

When the fiend had arrived in the presence of the Supreme Judge, he drew forth from the nethermost depths of hell, two of the prime movers and agents of mischief,' and exhorted

them to show themselves faithful to the cause. His encouragements prove unavailing; and here the Laureat bursts forth in a tone of loud exultation at the humbled and dismayed appearance of Junius and Wilkes :

Wretched and guilty souls, where now their audacity?
Where now

Are the insolent tongues so ready of old at rejoinder?
Where the lofty pretensions of public virtue and freedom?
Where the gibe, and the jeer, and the threat, the envenoméd
invective?

Calumny, falsehood, fraud, and the whole ammunition of malice?

Wretched and guilty souls, they stood in the face of their

Sovereign,

Conscious and self-condemned; confronted with him they had injured,

At the judgment seat they stood."

To detail a conversation between two individuals on politics; to represent an eloquent writer and a spirited assertor of popular rights, as sunk in the lowest depths of hell; to taunt them on appearing before the Judgment Seat of God, with being confounded in the presence of George the Third, whose reign they are described to have molested and disturbed by insolent clamours, and false pretences to patriotism; minutely to designate Mr. Wilkes 'by the cast of his eye oblique,' and, in the acrimonious spirit of a Quarterly Reviewer, to

charge him with being actuated by factious disloyalty; to represent Junius with a visor of iron rivetted round his forehead, shrinking from the eye of the King: these are the blasphemies which pervade the Vision of Judgment, these are the impieties which have escaped the vengeance of the Attorney-General and the Vice Society, whose holy zeal for social order and morality, however it may incite them to harass the poor libeller with the vexations of the law, totally disappears when the sanctity of religion is abused by a Ministerial hireling, and the Deity enlisted into the cause of Toryism

We shall give one more extract from this section, and leave the reader to decide whether we are not justified in saying that the work of Doctor Southey is as fit a subject, for prosecu tion as the Age of Reason, the Principles of Nature, or Queen Mab. Wilkes and Junius are brought to the Judgment Seat, and they are described not only as being unable to meet the eye of the monarch, but to be so completely overpowered by a consciousness of their own guilt, as to be incapable of uttering à single word in extenuation of their conduct. This silence is interpreted into an acknowledgment of their crimes, and they are instantly consigned to hell. I shall quote the passage which contains their sentence at full length, in order that the friends of "morality and

decency, and social order," may be enabled justly to appreciate the truly Christian piety and benevolence of the Laureat :

Caitiffs, are ye dumb? cried the multifaced demon in

anger;

then by shame to shorten the terms of your pe

Think ye nance?

Back to your penal dens! and with horrible grasp gigantic, Seizing the guilty pair, he swung them aloft, and with venge

ance,

Hurl'd them all abroad, far into the sulphurous darkness. Sons of faction, be warned! and ye, ye slanderers, learn ye Justice, and bear in mind, that after death there is judgment.

Whirling away they flew. Nor long himself did he tarry, Ere from the ground where he stood, caught by a violent whirlwind,

He too was hurried away; and the blast with lightning and thunder,

Vollying a-right and a-left amid the accumulate blackness, Scattered its inmates accurst and beyond the limits of ether, Drove the hircine host obscene; they howling and groaning, Fell precipitate, down to their dolorous places of endurance.'

The poem of Lord Byron, which was written for the express purpose of satyrizing the hexameters of Mr. Southey, was selected for prosecution, while the original production was unnoticed. We have shown sufficient grounds for prosecuting the Laureat, and the fact of his having escaped, justifies us in saying, that this indulgence was extended to him on account of