"Friends, be not hard-hearted. Man may be a hypocrite, a villain, a fool,—we ourselves may be one or the other of these before we die ;who knows what he shall yet come to? Man may be old and poor, with all his hypocrisy and folly; but man is man for all that'; and, as such, while life is in him, nature loudly declares to us, that between his kind and him, the cord of sympathy shall not be broken. In the contemplation of the present, the past, if not totally forgotten, is, and ought to be, obscured by the veil of human charity.

"For me, I cannot look on an old man, whatever he may have been, without tenderness, and pity, and veneration, at once rising up and demanding their places in my bosom. If he be poor and helpless, charity also asks to be admitted, and to intercede for him.

"Creation hath ten thousand things that demand our veneration,— the bare and hoary mountain, the ever-enduring sea, the unchangeable heavens over our heads, even the fading yet majestic old oak of the moor: but of all things beneath the sun, MAN, in his decline, is infinitely the most venerable. To think how the mind has been broken, the heart has been subdued! How the delights of childhood and youth have passed! How the world, in which we rejoice, has become a blank to him! To think of all the joys that are passed-of all the misery that is

now!

"Nature gives us all good hearts at our birth: but the world meddles therewith, and sends them back to the grave ruined.

"William Spowage, I give thee my last groat!'

"As I said this, I passed the old man by a thorn hedge-side, as he was hobbling along through one of the most rural and beautiful parts of England. It was south of the Trent, not more than five miles from the old town of Nottingham. Little did it enter my mind, at that moment, that I should never see him again; that he would never reach his destination that night. But so it was.

"This was about sunsetting. I had been enjoying a country ramble since shortly after daybreak the same morning. I had passed through many villages, through many pastoral districts, through valley, field, and over mountain; but amongst them all did I find nothing to be compared for beauty of situation and variety of scenery, to this delightful village of Clifton, which was destined to be the last reposing place of the bones of William Spowage.

*

"A beautiful evening it was; and one which the events of the night that followed served to impress more fully on my memory.

"I sate on an old bench at the door (of the village alehouse), the church on one hand, a wide grove of mast-like trees on the other, from the depths of which the melancholy wood-pigeon cooed hollowly and mournfully, while the blackbird and linnet, from some far low hedgetop, sent their evening songs along the uplands, like the voice of Nature herself, bidding the soul of the dwellers there be at rest and peace. Before me, and far below, at the foot of the high precipitous hill on which the grove is situated, swept the broad waters of the river Trent, while over its quiet surface flew a thousand swallows and sand martins,

which annually make their homes in the high bare precipice which terminates the western end of the grove. Overhead, between the parted branches, the eye caught a few glimpses of the warm and bright blue zenith; while below, level with the sight, the extremity of the western sky shone between a hundred slender stems, like a chequered work of jet and gold. Everything amid this scene was perfectly still; even the gentle wind, which, while the sun was up, had tempered the heat of the day, had now died all away, and left the leaves, drooping from the beech and sycamore, unstirred, and the tall seed stems of the rank grass beneath, as quiet and untrembling as though they were carved in alabaster.

"An eternal sabbath seemed to reign there, but for the ploughman or the sower seen on the surrounding hill-sides, or the resounding of the woodman's axe being heard now and then from the depths of some faroff plantation.

"It was an hour for reflection; and, influenced in the train of my thoughts by the unhappy object I had shortly before passed on the hedge-row side, I considered pensively on the life of man, the fate to which he is born, the end and purpose of his whole existence.

* "As my thoughts ran thus, the object who had excited them came along the village, cottage after cottage, begging his bread. "Still, I felt the weight of sorrowful thoughts. They of whom he begged were little better than he. It is hard to beg; it is harder to turn away the beggar. The heart can more easily be subdued to humility, than hardened to unkindness. A beautiful truth, this, in the page of natural humanity. May it ever be so !

"I watched him so long as the disposition of the cottages and the direction of the road allowed him to remain in sight; sate musing another hour in the gathering gloom, while the bat flitted awkwardly along the air, and the owlet screamed from the steeps of the grove; and then retired for the night to an humble pallet prepared for me beneath the roof of that rustic inn.

"On arising early next morning, the first intelligence I received was, that one of the villagers, having gone down to the Trent at daybreak to water his horses, had discovered the body of the old beggar, who was asking charity in the village the preceding day, lying in very shallow water, quite dead. Such then, was the end of William Spowage."

Having thus gone over and placed in strong contrast the bulk of the literary changes of the present day, their spirit and their probable results, we proceed to the remaining portion of our task, the cheap sheets, and the reprints of standard works of literature. In these we have the most unqualified satisfaction. If we were to draw our opinion of the morals, no less than of the literary taste of the time, from the trumpery and tinsel character of the publications, which we have here found it necessary to condemn, we should necessarily pronounce the age to be both frivolous and corrupt. We should regard it as devoted to mere dissipation and heartless folly: we should suppose that every thing

like the plain old English character was gone; that we were arrived at that stage of national luxury, that corruption of morals and of taste, which all history has shown to precede a national decline. This, however, would be unjust. That a corruption of taste and manners, of morals, and modes of thinking, does exist in this country, as it must among all wealthy nations, is too true: but we have only to turn to the publications which circulate amongst the middle classes, amongst the vast mass of those who may be said to afford a true sample of the majority-and we shall be at once convinced that this corruption is comparatively partial. We shall see that the frivolous and heartless productions, so much puffed and paraded, by reviewers and publishers, are merely addressed to the frivolous and the heartless; and that there is an ample demand, from the thinking, the inquiring, the sober and the religious public, for works of a higher and a better class. There never was a time, when a greater number of excellent volumes was diffused through the families of the middle classes in this country, and, as we have already said, when the influence of sound reading and enquiry extended itself so far down into the very cottages and dwellings of the poor. Literature has been made as cheap and accessible as it was possible for an extensive demand, stereotyping, and steam-presses to make it. A multitude of sheets, containing a mass of the most valuable information, and distinguished by a high moral tone, have been circulated at the price of one penny, or three halfpence, each, and have thus been enabled to make their way, for the first time, through the lowest alleys of crowded cities, through field and forest, and over moor and mountain, to the huts of the labourer, the miner, the shepherd, and the fisherman. Nor has the information, conveyed in such publications as the Penny Magazine,* and Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, been confined solely to the poor. These works have been emphatically gleaners,-gleaners from all books of art, science, philosophy, and general literature: they have collected facts, that lay wide asunder, and beyond the reach of thousands; and they have, by this means, recommended themselves to the attention of persons in every rank of society. In fact, they have attempted, and we think, successfully, to awaken a spirit of enquiry, and a more intellectual tone of feeling, in society. Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, in particular, contains articles on morals, social manners, historical, and even antiquarian, subjects, of the most interesting description; and, as a

We are glad of this opportunity to correct an unintentional error in the first number of this Review. The remarks, made at page 173, in disparagement of the Penny Magazine, were intended for another publication. They certainly do not apply to the " Penny Magazine."

proof of its popularity, can already boast, that it circulates the enormous number of upwards of seventy thousand copies per week.

This, then, is a literary fashion evidently pregnant with the most important consequences to the community: the other, and the last which we have to notice,-the reprints of standard works in monthly volumes, is not less remarkable, either as an indication of popular taste, or as tending still farther to regulate and improve it. This mode of publication was first attempted in the small Cyclopædias, or Libraries. There was the 'Family,' the 'Classical,' the Sunday,' and the Novellist's Libraries; the Library of Romance,' of Entertaining Knowledge,' of Useful Knowledge,' of Natural History;' Constable's Miscellany,' Lardner's Cabinet Library,' and 'Cabinet Cyclopædia,' &c. &c.: and these, by a very natural transition, led to the adoption of that plan, which is likely to lay a more lasting and beneficial hold on the public mind, the reprints of some of the best works of our standard English writers. This important change commenced with the Waverly Novels, and has been pursued through all the works of Sir Walter Scott. We have already had, under this system, handsome editions of the works of Byron, Crabbe, Shakspeare, Milton, and Coleridge: we have in progress, those of Cowper, Wordsworth, Pope, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and others; and we are already informed, that these are to be followed by a series of what the publisher calls our Imperial Classics,' to commence with Burnet's History of His Own Times.' It is evident that a more general acquaintance with the works of our best writers, will be the necessary consequence of this fortunate innovation.

6

As we have mentioned the reprints of our standard writers, we cannot part from the subject, without noticing, among those which have already appeared, The Life, Letters, and Poetical Works of Cowper. The subject, indeed, is one, to which, on a future occasion, we shall probably revert in a separate article. In the meantime, however, we cannot forbear adverting to it in a few concluding remarks; for it is too closely connected with our present topic, to be entirely passed over in silence. It is, in fact, by such publications as this, that we are enabled to vindicate the national taste, and to prove, that, with all the meretricious frivolity of certain classes, England is still sound at heart, still full of happy and intelligent families, where every thing that is simple, every thing that is pure, every thing that is characterized by sound sense, and sound morality, is yet valued and enjoyed.

What a striking contrast, indeed, does the spirit, and even the outward form, of these volumes present, to the spirit and fashion of the works, which we were lately noticing! There, all was showy

and unsubstantial. There wanted the heart and the soul of sound writing: the breathings of pure domestic affection, and the aspirings after the improvement of the race. We read for the most part without satisfaction, and often with disgust. But here, we find ourselves, at once, in the very sanctuary of domestic love, amongst spirits of intelligence, and beings of unvitiated tastes. We feel around us an atmosphere of true English worth. The personages recommended to our admiration are worthy of it: they are specimens of the true gentility of England; simple, yet elegant, living in the very heart of peace, in the beautiful retirements of our fair country, with books, and music, and hospitality, and refined enjoyments about them; while the chief character is ever employed on subjects calculated to crown him with a pure immortality, and become an everlasting legacy of high thoughts and ennobling feelings to future generations. What a contrast is here! And yet, it is in this very contrast that we discover the proudest vindication of the taste and character of the people. If there are some, who sigh over the tawdry and unmeaning trash, which we have had occasion to condemn, there are more who feel their minds exalted, and their spirits raised, above "the earth that compasseth them," by the "sweet songs" of Cowper. With these, who are emphatically the nation, his name is as " a household word:" his song and his sufferings are entwined in their affections; and they hail the fortunate occasion, which is about to make his virtuous musings "familiar things" among their families.

We have no design to institute a comparison between the two editions of Cowper, simultaneously issuing from the press. Southey's is the one before us, and as we have not seen the other, it is the only one of which we can be expected to speak. On the editor's qualifications for his task, it would be superfluous to dwell. In a knowledge of English literature he is second to none; his industry is proverbial; and from his poetical and domestic tastes, he is the very man to comprehend, and do justice to, Cowper. Yet, we felt not the full extent of Southey's powers, of his indefatigable disposition, and, when uninfluenced by any immediate religious or political antipathy, of his candid and discriminating spirit, until we had risen from the perusal of these volumes. Besides the life of Cowper, we have biographical notices of each distinguished contemporary that came within its sphere, together with a mass of notes, which, in the depth of their research, and the interesting nature of their details, have been seldom surpassed. At every point, the writer has prepared us to take a just view of the position of the man, and of the labours of the poet. In the history of English poetry, suggested by the mention of