a new settlement mutually to help each other, by accepting labour in return for las bour. There is thus no outlay on either side, every one affording another a degree of assistance equal to what he has received from him. A man, perhaps, bor rows a waggon for a day from his neigh bour, and repays him by lending his oxen for an equal length of time. A new settlement is sometimes twenty or thirty miles distant from a mill, and the roads are generally so bad, that the person who carries grain to it waits till it is ground although he should be detained several days. When this is the case, each individual, by turns, conveys to the mill the grain of three or four of his neighbours, and thus the great waste of labour, which would be occasioned, were every one to take his own produce there separately, is avoided. From these simple facts the advantage of living in a settlement must be very evident.

When the farmer is able to raise a larger quantity of produce than is required for the support of his family, there are several ways in which he may dispose of the surplus. In many new settlements the influx of emigrants is so great, as to produce a demand for grain more than equal to the supply. In Talbot Road, the average price of wheat has of late years been 4s. 6d. per bushel, while in most other parts of the country it was selling for 3s. and 3s. 6d.; shew ing evidently that the farmer will some times find the best market at his own door. But should there be no demand of this kind, he may carry his pro duce to the merchants. They will give him, in exchange, broad-cloth, implements of husbandry, groceries, and every sort of article that is necessary for his family, and, perhaps, even money, at par ticular times. He will likewise often have it in his power to barter wheat for live stock of different kinds, and can hardly fail to increase his means, although without a regular market for his surplus produce, if he gets initiated into the system of traffic prevalent in the country.

The emigrant must not expect to live very comfortably at first. Pork, bread, and what vegetables he may raise, will form the chief part of his diet for perhaps two years. To these articles, how ever, he may occasionally add venison, if he is a tolerable sportsman. The various kinds of grain which farmers raise, enable them to enjoy a great many sorts of bread that are not known in Britain. Buck-wheat, rye, and Indian corn, make

excellent cakes; and they have several ways of using flour, besides that of baking it into loaves. All the above-mentioned articles, conjoined with vegetables, poultry, and milk, which every settler can have in the course of time without much trouble or expense, afford sufficient materials for the support of an abundant and comfortable table. In Upper Canada; the people live much better than persons of a similar class in Britain; and to have proof of this, it is only necessary to visit almost any hut in the back woods. The interior of it seldom fails to display many substantial comforts; such as immense loaves of beautiful bread, entire pigs hanging round the chimney, dried venison, trenchers of milk, and bags of Indian corn. Many of the farmers indeed live in a coarse and dirty manner; but this arises from their own ignorance, not from a want of those things that are essential to comfort and neatness.

Our extracts have extended so far, that we cannot venture to present our readers with any additional quotations from Mr Howison's work. We would willingly, for example, have given them some specimens of the slang language at present current among the native Americans; and, indeed-with the exception of Mr Fearon's admirable work, which has all the life and attraction of the most exquisite and natural drama-we have no book from which a better idea may be obtained of the rude and insolent, but improving, mode of living, which prevails in the United States: For, it must be added, that to his Sketches of Canada, the author has added Recollections of the United States. We can only, however, recommend it to the reader to peruse these Recollections. He will find Mr Howison an intelligent and candid guide, with a considerable share of good taste; and though, perhaps, not very profoundly inform ed, yet always judicious enough în his remarks-though his attempts at wit, or jocularity, are by no means of the best kind. The book, however, is, upon the whole, both instructive and pleasing, and, considered as a first fruit, promises well of that harvest, which, we hope, is yet to be matured.

THE fury of Lord Byron, and the imbecility of Barry Cornwall, have had the same fate in tragedy. But two tragedies at once, aye, and a Mystery, and in the space of half a year after the publication of Marino Faliero, a tragedy, is the astounding crop produced by Lord Byron's fertile mind. Hitherto it had been supposed that culture, as well as fertility, was necessary for the production of tragedy; but Lord Byron has discovered, that he is privileged from the labour of cultivation, especially since he has undertaken to prove that Pope is the first of poets, because his execution is the most elaborate. We wish much that Lord Byron's imagination had had power and honesty enough to have represented to him the looks and feelings of the fastidious bard of Twickenham, enduring a rehearsal of his Lordship's tragedies, before he thrust them upon public observation. This had been but his duty to himself and to the public. He has not done his duty. We shall endeavour to do ours.

In the preface to the tragedies we are informed, that "the author has, in one instance, attempted to preserve, and, in the other, to approach the unitics;' conceiving that, with any very distant departure from them, there may be poetry, but can be no drama." This is told to us in the same preface in which it is said, that "the tragedies were not composed with the most remote view to the stage." Will not every reader lament that Lord Byron should give us drama without poetry, and without the most remote view to the stage? We have indeed the "unities," but without poetical effect, or dramatic representation. The noble lover of the unities may bewail the issue of his experiment in the language of the scholastic: Meya inu ωθην ότε γαρ έμαθε μη τρωγείν, τότε aba. We are not sorry for the speedy death of his Lordship's hobby, for the prolongation of his meagre existence could only expose his Lord

ship's neck to repeated perils. It is conceivable, that as the poet never read Milton since he was twenty years of age, the tragedian may never have read Dr Johnson's preface to Shakespeare at all. Let him obtain it from his publisher, and learn that "there is no reason why an hour should not be a century, in that calenture of the brains that can make the stage a field." If the unities be essential to drama, why should not the sacrifice of a goat be essential to tragedy? With any entire neglect of the goat, there may be poetry, (the ode to Bacchus,) but there can be no tragedy, (an ode sung on occasion of sacrificing a goat.) A pointed Johnsonian period well becomes a peer or a poet, but it would be all the better of a little foundation in truth, for fear the Grub-street rabble should laugh; and, what is worse, laugh with reason against the martyr for Pope.

SARDANAPALUS is the first in order, and incomparably the best of the three pieces published in the volume before us. The argument is shortly thus: The Sovereign of Assyria, devoted to the elegant and soft enjoyments of imperial luxury, neglects at once his amiable and affectionate wife, and his extensive and distracted empire. All his love is engrossed by MYRRHA, an Ionian slave; and his favourite maxim of state is, to drink wine instead of shedding blood. ARBACES, a Mede, availing himself of the effeminate reputation of the emperor, and instigated by the ruthless prognostications of BELESES, a Chal

can soothsayer, aspires to the empire. SALEMENES, brother-in-law to the emperor, discovers the plot, and obtains, with difficulty, power to seize the authors; but, while in the act of overpowering the desperate resistance of ARBACES, the emperor, equally brave and dissolute, interposes his personal authority, and pardons the traitors. They avail themselves of his magnanimity to make an attempt upon his life. He fights like a hero, and repells the conspirators. A general engagement soon follows, in which SALEMENES is slain, and SARDANAPALUS forced to retire within his palace. He dismisses all his slaves, manumitted and enriched with his treasure, having, previously

So far as the merit of this plot is concerned, all that historical truth has to answer for, is, that Sardanapalus, sunk in every species of impotent luxury, had resolution enough to escape from the insults of his conqueror, by the conflagration of himself and his palace. In this he shewed himself no ways superior to Cleopatra. The great historian of imperial Rome records, as a reproach, the reluctance of Messalina to die: Lucullianis in hortis prolatare vitam, componere preces, nonnulla spe, et aliquando ira. Evodus raptim in hortos progressus, reperit fusam humi, assidente matre Lepida; quæ florenti filiæ hand concors, supremis ejus necessitatibus ad miserationem evicta erat: suadebatque ne percussorem operirertur. transisse vitam, neque aliud quam morte decus quærendum sed animo per libidines corrupto, nihil honestum inerat: lacrymæque et questus irriti ducebantur. And an emperor, only not thus base and spiritless, is the hero in whose fate Lord Byron would interest us, and in whose sentiments he would wish us to sympathise! The character, as drawn by his lordship, is, in the first place, unnatural, and such as never did exist in this our world: in the next place, it is infatuated and cruel, though represented by the author as wise and generous: and, in the third and last place, it is as uninteresting in a tragedy, as it could be in a sermon. But to the proof: Sardanapalus is first introduced, in the description of Salemenes, thus: -In his effeminate heart

There is a careless courage which corrup

tion

The negligence the apathy-the evils Of sensual sloth-produce ten thousand tyrants,

Whose delegated cruelty surpasses
The worst acts of one energetic master,

However hard and harsh in his own bearing.

In the two first cantos of Childe Harold-a work of labour and power -Lord Byron denounced the faith and practice of Christians with the vivid force of the very highest poetry. Religion and war, the scull in Athens, and the armies in Spain, suggested the sublimest flights of a powerful, but irregular mind. Unhappily for his reputation as a poet and a man, and for the dignity and authority of his writings, he has lately added another theme to those which formerly inspired his poetical indignation. The verses which the hero is made to utter in reference to his faithful and affectionate wife, convey the most detestable sentiments which the coldest-hearted sensualist could harbour, and the hardiest contemner of natural affections could avow. Far, very far indeed, be it from us to insinuate that they have the slightest approbation from the real disposition of Lord Byron's mind. We would only reprobate the perverse ingenuity which produced, without exposing such a declaration as this:

She has all power and splendour of her station,

Respect, the tutelage of Assyria's heirs, The homage and the appanage of sovereignty:

I married her as monarchs wed-for state, And loved her as most husbands love their

wives;

If she or thou supposed'st I could link

me,

Like a Chaldean peasant to his mate,
Ye knew nor me, nor monarchs, nor man-

kind.

Vanity and bloated self-conceit contribute as much to the vices as to the follies of men. A monarch may trample on the principles of moral rectitude and true enjoyment, (for they are inseparable,) because he is a monarch; a poet, because he has genius; an alderman, because he has wealth; a beggar, because he hath nothing but rags. But when a poet degrades his calling so far as to palliate the insolent licentiousness of any of those orders, he invites and merits the severest censures of criticism. "Poetry has not often been worse employed than in dignifying the amorous fury of a raving girl.' Dr Johnson could find worse employment of poetry in the reign of George the Fourth.

Of the destructive fallacy which consecrates conquerors, and emblazons war, the following is a very poetical exposure:

The ungrateful and ungracious slaves! they murmur

Because I have not shed their blood, nor led them

To dry into the deserts' dust by myriads, Or whiten with their bones the banks of Ganges,

Nor decimated them with savage laws.

If then they hate me, 'tis because I hate not;

If they rebel, it is because I oppress not. Oh, men! ye must be ruled with scythes, not sceptres.

Yet this amiable and generous prince relieves his patriotic yearnings, by a dialogue with his favourite Myrrha, upon the value of woman's heart, and most bewitchingly tells her :

Salemenes has declaredOr why, or how, he hath divined it, Belus,

Who founded our great realm, knows more than I

But Salemenes has declared my throne
In peril.

Come, we'll think no more on'tBut of the midnight festival.

This really appears to us worse than the worst drivelling of the mast

babyish novelist. An indolent man may be roused to great exertion; a diffident man to desperate resolution; a luxurious man to valiant daring: but the lazy, torpid sensualist, was ever yet selfish, ungenerous, cruel. The passion for effeminate enjoyments was never found in company with the love of humankind, or with reluctance to occasion human misery.:

For, oh! it hardens a' within, And petrifies the feeling. Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Henry the Eighth, Charles the Second, and many others, amply illustrate the remark. Lord Byron may have all the benefit of drunken Claudius's insensibility to good or evil. Otho is in fact more like the hero of this tragedy than the Assyrian Sardanapalus; but we shall by-and-by point out the difference between the delineations of Tacitus and the fictions of Lord Byron. The wonderful discoveries of Baron Munchausen, whether of men carrying their heads in their hands, or of brutes acting the part of men, may supply Christmas pantomimes, but they will never form materials for genuine tragedy, even with the aid of Lord Byron and the unities.

The second act opens with a description of the setting sun, which Bowles would praise, though he would not assign the right reason for his praise. Beleses, the traitor-priest, addresses his deity :

The sun goes down: methinks he sets more slowly,

Taking his last look of Assyria's empire. How red he glares amongst those deepening clouds,

Like the blood he predicts!

• "Tis the furthest Hour of Assyria's years. And yet how calm!

An earthquake should announce so great a fall

A summer's sun discloses it. Yon disk,
To the star-read Chaldean, bears upon
Its everlasting page the end of what
Seemed everlasting; but oh! thou true
sun!

The burning oracle of all that live,
As fountain of all life, and symbol of
Him who bestows it, wherefore dost thou
limit

Thy love unto calamity? Why not
Unfold the rise of days, more worthy

thine VOL. X.

But does not the same sun that portends the death of Sardanapalus, "dart a beam of hope athwart the future's years," for Arbaces his conqueror. The same vision which represents the lifeless corpse of Pompey, on the sands of Nile, assures Cæsar of undisputed empire.. Good fortune has its omens and precursors, as well as calamity. Hope and joy, too, unborrowed from the sun, gilá the life of man. To a pious man we would quote the Bible; to Lord Byron we quote Pope:

Meanwhile opinion gilds, with varying rays,

Those painted clouds that beautify our days;

Each want of happiness by hope supplied, And each vacuity of sense by pride: These build as fast as knowledge can de

stroy;

In Folly's cup still laughs the bubble joy. Sardanapalus, having interposed between Salemenes and Arbaces, who had defied Salemenes, and openly avowed his resolution to " die a king, at least of his own breath and body,' acts a part infinitely more ridiculous than the pedant James could have done among a conclave of theologians. 0