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I am indebted to an accomplished Correspondent for the following elegant Copy of Verses, imitated from a French Poem addressed to Madame Buonaparte, when she was Madam Beauharnois. I do not remember to have read a more pleasing combination of beautiful Images and intelligible Allegory with a play of words. Those Hyper-critics, who will discover that two different meanings are confounded under one word, namely, Age and the sensation of Time, &c. will have caught a Fire-fly, as it was flitting to and fro in a Grove at twilight, to transfix it with a pin, and pore over it in broad day.

Destined with restless foot to roam,
Old TIME, a venerable sage,

Reaches a river's brink, and-" come,"
He cries" have pity on my age.
"What! on these banks forgotten I,
"Who mark each moment with my glass!
"Hear, Damsels, hear my suppliant cry,
" And courteously help TIME to pass."

Disporting on the farther shore,

Full many a gentle Nymph look'd on;
And fain to speed his passage o'er,

Bade Love, their boatman, fetch the crone :

But one, of all the group most staid,

Still warn'd her venturous mates" Alas! "How oft has shipwreck whelm'd the Maid, "Whose pity would help TIME to pass!"

Lightly his boat across the stream
LOVE guides, his hoary freight receives,
And fluttering 'mid the sunny gleam,
His canvas to the breezes gives :
And plying light his little oars

In treble now and now in bass,
"See, girls," th' enraptur'd Urchin roars,
"How gaily LOVE makes TIME to pass.".

But soon-'tis Love's proverbial crime→→→
Exhausted, he his oars let fall;
And soon those oars are snatch'd by TIME,
And-heard ye not the rallier's call?-
"What! tired so soon of thy sweet toil,
Poor Child! thou sleepest !—I, alas !

In graver strain repeat the while

My Song 'Tis TIME makes LOVE to pass!”

F. W.

SATYRANE'S LETTERS..

LETTER III.

RATZEBURG.

No little Fish thrown back again into the Water, no Fly unimprisoned from a child's hand, could more buoyantly enjoy it's element, than I this clean and peaceful house, with this lovely view of the town, groves, and lake of Ratzeburg, from the window at which I am writing. My spirits certainly, and my health I fancied, were beginning to sink under the noise, dirt, and unwholesome air, of our Hamburg Hotel. I left it on Sunday, Sept. 23d. with a Letter of introduction from the Poet Klopstock, to the Amptman of Ratzeburg. The Amptman received me with kindness, and introduced me to the worthy Pastor, who agreed to board and lodge me for any length of time not less than a month. The Vehicle, in which I took my place, was considerably larger than an English Stage Coach, to which it bore much the same proportion and rude resemblance, that an Elephant's ear does to the human. Its top was composed of naked boards of different colours, and seeming to have been parts of different wainscots. Instead of windows there were leathern curtains with a little eye of glass in each: they perfectly answered the purpose of keeping out the prospect and letting in the cold. I could observe little, therefore, but the inns and farm houses at which we stopped. They were all alike, except in size: one great room, like a barn, with a hay-loft over it, the straw and hay dangling in tufts through the boards which formed the ceiling of the room, and the floor of the loft. From this room, which is paved like a street, sometimes one, sometimes two smaller ones, are enclosed at one end. These are commonly floored. In the large room the Cattle, Pigs, Poultry, Men, Women, and Children, live in amicable community: yet there was an appearance of cleanliness and rustic comfort. One of these houses I measured. It was an hundred feet in length. The apartments were taken off from one corBetween these and the stalls there was a small interspace, and here the breadth was forty eight feet, but thirty two where the stalls were; of course, the stalls were on each side eight feet in depth. The faces of the Cows, &c.

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were turned towards the room; indeed they were in it, so that they had at least the comfort of seeing each others faces. Stall-feeding is universal in this part of Germany, a practice concerning which the Agriculturalist and the Poet are likely to entertain opposite opinions-or at least, to have very different feelings. The wood work of these buildings on the outside is left unplaistered, as in old houses among us, and being painted red and green, it cuts and tesselates the buildings very gaily. From within three Miles of Hamburg almost to Molln, which is thirty miles from it, the Country, as far as I could see it, was a dead flat, only varied by woods. At Molln it became more beautiful. I observed a small Lake nearly surrounded with groves, and a Palace in view belonging to the King of Great Britain and inhabited by the Inspector of the Forests. We were nearly the same time in travelling the thirty five miles from Hamburg to Ratzeburg, as we had been in going from London to Yarmouth, one hundred and twenty six miles.

The Lake of Ratzeburg runs from south to north, about nine miles in length, and varying in breadth from three miles to half a mile. About a mile from the southermost point it is divided into two, of course very unequal, parts by an Island, which being connected by a Bridge and a narrow slip of land with the one shore, and by another Bridge of immense length with the other shore, forms a complete Isthmus. On this Island the town of Ratzeburg is built. The Pastor's house or Vicarage, together with the Amptman's, Amptschrieber's, and the Church, stands near the summit of a hill, which slopes/ down to the slips of land and the little Bridge, from which, through a superb military gate, you step into the IslandTown of Ratzeburg; This again is itself a little hill, by ascending and descending which, you arrive at the long Bridge, and so to the other shore. The water to the south of the town is called the little Lake, which however almost engrosses the beauties of the whole: The shores being just often enough green and bare to give the effect to the magnificent groves which occupy the greater part of their circumference. From the turnings, windings, and indentations of the shore, the views vary almost every ten steps, and the whole has a sort of majestic beauty, a feminine grandeur. At the north of the great Lake, and peeping over it, I see the seven Church towers!

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of Lubec, at the distance of twelve or thirteen miles, yet as distinctly as if they were not three. The only defect in the view is, that Ratzeburg is built entirely of red bricks, and all the houses roofed with red tiles. To the eye, therefore, it presents a clump of brick-dust red. Yet this evening, Octr 10th. twenty minutes past five, I saw the town perfectly beautiful, and the whole softened down into complete keeping, if I may borrow a term from the Painters. The sky over Ratzeburg and all the east, was a pure evening blue, while over the west it was covered with light sandy clouds. Hence a deep red light spread over the whole prospect, in undisturbed harmony with the red town, the brown-red woods, and the yellow-red reeds on the skirts of the Lake. Two or three boats, with single persons paddling them, floated up and down in the rich light, which not only was itself in harmony with all, but brought all into harmony.

I should have told you that I went back to Hamburg on Thursday (Sept. 27th.) to take leave of my Friend, who travels southward, and returned hither on the Monday following. From Empfelde, a village half way from Ratzeburg, I walked to Hamburg through deep sandy roads and a dreary flat: the soil every where white, hungry, and excessively pulverized; but the approach to the City is pleasing. Light cool Country Houses, which you can look through and see the Gardens behind them, with arbours and trellis work, and thick vegetable walls, and trees in cloisters and piazzas, each house with neat rails before it, and green seats within the rails. Every object, whether the growth of Nature or the work of Man, was neat and artificial. It pleased me far better, than if the houses and gardens, and pleasure fields, had been in a nobler taste: for this nobler taste would have been mere apery. The busy, anxious, money-loving, Merchant of Hamburg could only have adopted, he could not have enjoyed, the simplicity of Nature. The mind begins to love nature by imitating human conveniences in Nature; but this is a step in intellect, though a low one-and were it not so, yet all around me spoke of innocent enjoyment and sensitive comforts, and I entered with unscrupulous. sympathy into the enjoyments and comforts even of the busy, anxious, money-loving Merchants of Hamburg. In this charitable and catholic mood I reached the vast ramparts of the City. These are huge green cushions, one

rising above the other, with trees growing in the interspaces, pledges and symbols of a long peace. Of my return I have nothing worth communicating, except that I took extra post, which answers to posting in England. These North-German Post Chaises are uncovered wicker carts. An English dust-cart is a piece of finery, a chef d'oeuvre of mechanism, compared with them: and the horses! a Savage might use their ribs instead of his fingers for a numeration table. Wherever we stopped, the Postillion fed his cattle with the brown rye bread of which he eat himself, all breakfasting together, only the Horses had no gin to their water, and the Postillion no water to his gin. Now and henceforward for subjects of more interest to you, and to the objects in search of which I left namely, the Literati and Literature of Germany.

you; Believe me, I walked with an impression of awe on my spirits, as B and myself accompanied Mr. Klopstock to the House of his Brother, the Poet, which stands about a quarter of a mile from the City Gate. It is one of a row of little common-place Summer-houses, (for so they looked) with four or five rows of young meagre elm trees before the windows, beyond which is a Green, and then a dead flat intersected with several roads. Whatever beauty (thought I may be before the Poet's eyes at present, it must certainly be purely of his own creation. We waited a few minutes in a neat little parlour, ornamented with the figures of two of the Muses and with Prints, the subjects of which were from Klopstock's Odes. The Poet entered. I was much disappointed in his countenance, and recognized in it no likeness to the Bust. There was no comprehension in the forehead, no weight over the eye-brows, no expression of peculiarity, moral or intellectual on the eyes, no massiveness in the general countenance. He is if any thing rather below the middle size. He wore very large half-boots which his legs filled, so fearfully were they swotn. However, though neither B nor myself could discover any indications of sublimity or enthusiasm in his phisiognomy, we were both equally impressed with his liveliness, and his kind and ready courtesy. He talked in French with my Friend, and with difficulty spoke a few sentences to me in English. His enunciation was not in the least affected by the entire want of his upper teeth. The conversation began on his part by the expression of his rapture at the

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