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gaze of common men. Your delicacy was less exquisite, or your grief was less sincere. You howled by day upon the house-top; you called upon all the world to admire your song of lamentation, and to join their voices in its doleful chorus.

Under pretence of making us partakers in a fictitious or exaggerated grief, you have striven to make us sympathise with all the sickly whims and phantasies of a self-dissatisfied and self-accusing spirit. That you were, as you have yourself told us, a dissipated, a sceptical, and therefore, for there was no other cause, a wretched man, was no reason why you should wish to make your readers devoid of religion, virtue, and happiness. You had no right to taint the pure atmosphere of the English mind with the infectious phrenzies of the fever of debauch. Your misery was the punishment of your folly and your wickedness; why did you come to rack the eyes of the wise, the good, and the tranquil, with the loathsome spectacle of your merited torments? Could genius, a thousand times more splendid than yours, entitle the poor, giddy, restless victim of remorse, to make his art the instrument of evil,-to abuse the gifts of his God, by rendering them the engines of corruption and ruin among his fellow men? For shame! my Lord, for shame upon your manhood! If you had acted as became the dignity, either of your person or of your genius, you would have hidden yourself from the public gaze, until you had expiated, in the solitude of some congenial dungeon, the sins that had embittered your conscience, and degraded your muse. You had offended the eternal laws of virtue, and yielded up your self-condemning soul to be the play-thing-the action kivya-of doubt, and of derision. But although you felt within yourself the hell of conscience, why should you have assumed at once the malevolence of a demon? Alas! you have not even attained to the generosity of "the superior fiend." While the abject instruments of his rebellious rage found comfort in the companionship of many, the Satan of Milton preserved a nobler sentiment in the midst of his calamity. He scorned the vulgar consolation, and would have wished to have been alone in his sufferings, as he had been unequalled in his fault.

"His form had not yet lost All his original brightness, nor appeared Less than archangel ruined.

His face

Deep scars of thunder had entrenched, and care
Sat on his faded cheek.

Cruel his eye, but cast
Signs of remorse and passion, to behold
The fellows of his crime, the followers rather,
(Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned
For ever now to have their lot in pain,
Millions of spirits for his fault amerced
Of Heaven, and from eternal splendors flung,
For his revolt."

I have a singular pleasure, I know not how, in quoting to your Lordship the lines of Milton. You cannot listen to their high and melancholy music, without reflecting with repentant humiliation on your own perverted and dishonored genius. To his pure ear, the inspirations of the muse came placid and solemn, with awful and majestic cadences. She ruffled not, but smoothed and cherished the wings of his contemplation. She breathed the calm of a holier harmony into his unspotted bosom. Reason and imagination went hand in hand with virtue. He never forgot that his poetry was given him, only to be the ornament and instrument of a patriot and a saint. Beside your pillow the "nightly visitant" respires the contaminating air of its pollution. The foul exhalations of disorder and sensuality poison her virgin breath, and dim the celestial lustre of her eye. In despair of ennobling you, she becomes herself degraded, and lends her vigor to be the weapon of that violence, which, had its phrenzy been less incurable, her ministrations might have soothed and tempered. Milton is to you as his own cherub was to the apostate.

"That glory then, when thou no more wast good,
Departed from thee."

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His very name is to your unwilling ears a grave rebuke;" and you feel, when you reflect upon the beauty of his purity, as the revolted demon did in "the place inviolable."" "Abashed the devil stood,

And felt how awful goodness is, and saw

Virtue in her own shape more lovely; saw, and pined
His loss: but chiefly to find here observed
His lustre visibly impaired."

I give you credit for a real anguish, when you turn from the contemplation of this happy spirit, to that of your own "faded splendor wan."

Visible, however, as was your apostacy, and mean your vengeance, there was still something about you to create respect, even in those who comprehended the best your vices and your errors. If you were an immoral and an unchristian, you were at least a serious, poet. Your pictures of depravity were sketched with such a sombre magnificence, that the eye of vulgar observers could gain little from surveying their lineaments. The harp of the mighty was still in your hands; and when you dashed your fingers over its loosened strings, faded as was the harmony, and harsh the execution, the notes were still made for their listening who had loved the solemn music of the departed.

The last lingering talisman which secured to you the pity, and almost the pardon, even of those that abhor red your guilt,-with the giddiness of a lunatic, or the resolution of a suicide,-you have tossed away. You have lost the mournful and melancholy harp which lent a protecting charm even to the accents of pollution; and bought, in its stead, a gaudy viol, fit for the fingers of eunuchs, and the ears of courtezans. You have parted

"With what permissive glory, since that fall,

Was left."

You have flung off the last remains of the "regal port;" you are no longer one of "the great seraphic lords," that sat even in Pandemonium, in their own dimensions like themselves." You have grown weary of you might gain easier access, and work paltrier mischief. your fallen grandeur, and dwarfed your stature, that You may resume, if you will, your giant-height, but we shall not fail to recognise, in spite of all your elevation, the swollen features of the same pigmy imp whom we have once learned-a lasting lesson-not to abhor merely, and execrate, but to despise. You may wish, as heretofore, to haunt our imaginations in the shadowy semblance of Harold, Conrad, Lara, or Manfred: you may retain their vice, and their unbelief, and their restlessness; but you have parted irretrievably with the majesty of their despair. We see you in a shape less sentimental and mysterious. We look below the disguise which has once been lifted, and claim acquaintance, not with the sadness of the princely masque, but with the scoffing and sardonic merriment of the illdissembling reveller beneath it. In evil hour did you step from your vantage-ground, and teach us that Harold, Byron, and the Count of Beppo are the same. I remain, my Lord, with much pity, and not entirely without hope, your Lordship's most obedient, most humble servant, PRESBYTER ANGLICANUS.

CHARLATANERIE DES SAVANS. In an old French work, called 'La Charlatanerie des Savans,' is the following note. "D'autres ont proposé et résolu en même temps des questions ridicules-par example celle-ci. Devroit-on faire souffrir une seconde fois le même genre de mort à un criminel qui apres avoir eu la tête coupée, viendroit a résusciter?"

"Others have proposed and at the same time answered ridiculous questions-for example the following. Can a criminal be made to suffer a second time the same kind of death, who after having been beheaded, should come to life again?"

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AGENTS FOR THE SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.

Hill & Dabney, General Agents for Virginia.
Thomas L. Jones, General Agent for Western and
South Western States.

Thomas Shore, P. M., Petersburg, Va.
Richard Northington, Norfolk, Va.
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Col James Page, P. M., Philadelphia, Pa.
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RICHMOND AND CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA.

The subscribers wish to inform the public, that the old Mail Line, between Richmond and Charlottesville, Va. (long known as E. Porter & Co.'s Line,) is still in successful operation.

Whatever advantages other Lines may possess, it must be taken into consideration that this is decidedly the nearest, cheapest, safest, and we believe the best route altogether between Richmond and Charlottesville, at which place it connects with the balance of the Mail Line through Staunton, by the Virginia Springs, &c. to Guyandotte, on the Ohio river.

The Stages from Richmond on this Line, pass through several villages; through some of the most fertile portions of the State; in sight of the noble James river; alongside of the great Richmond and Kanawha Canal, now in progress; thence along the banks of the Rivanna river, meandering through the mountains; in sight of the home of the late Thomas Jefferson;-and, indeed, generally in view, with a pleasing variety, of some of the most romantic and beautiful scenery in Virginia.

Seats may be procured in the regular Daily Mail Line, or Extras may be obtained, by ap plying at the old Stage-Office in the Eagle Hotel, Richmond, Va.

The whole

Fare from Richmond to Charlottesville by this Line is reduced to Four Dollars. trip of nearly eighty miles will be accomplished in one day; but Extras will travel pretty much to suit the wishes of their occupants.

RICHMOND, VA. 1838.

BOYD & EDMOND.

P. K. CHAMBERLAYNE, late of Richmond, Virginia,

ATTORNEY AT LAW,

CARROLLTON, PICKENS COUNTY, ALABAMA.

WILLIAM F. RITCHIE, late of Richmond, Virginia,
ATTORNEY AT LAW,

VICKSBURG, MISSISSIPPI.

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