ning, in short, to form an integral part of civilized and lettered Europe. It has been justly observed by a late writer, in reference to this very subject, that "Truth, in the search for it, in the possession of it, and in all its tendencies, presents, under so many forms, the idea of liberty, that, to an oppressed but intelligent race, every augmentation of learning touches a string that vibrates strongly in their hearts.*" Such a race cannot, nor ought they to remain as they are. The present is not the first attempt which has been made to cast off the brutal yoke, which has so long crushed and perverted the energies of the national mind. We trust it will be the last that history has to record. We trust, and we all but believe, that we shall live to see the emancipated intellect of Greece once more developing its powers, in the vigour of renovated youth, strong in the consciousness of liberty, gradually disengaging itself from the tangle of prejudice and superstition, and soaring higher and higher, and shedding down from its altitude, like the sun of its own land, beauty at once and blessings on the region it illuminates. But we are compelled to conclude; and we shall do it in the words of a great modern writer-words not indeed immediately bearing on our subject, but which may well be introduced here. "Reflect a little," says he, " on the history of this wonderful people. What were they while they remained free and independent? while Greece resembled a collection of mirrors set in a single frame, each having its own focus of patriotism, yet all capable, as at Marathon and Platea, of converging to one centre and of consuming one common foe? What were they then? the fountains of light and civilization, of truth and of beauty to all mankind; they were the thinking head, the beating heart, of the whole world. They lost their independence, and with their independence their patriotism. It has been well observed, that, after the first acts of severity, the Romans treated the Greeks not only more mildly than their other slaves and dependants; they behaved to them even affectionately and with munificence." After quoting Pliny's well-known letter to his friend the Proconsul of Achaia, he proceeds: "What came out of these men, who were eminently free' (Pliny's expression) without patriotism, because without national independence? While they were intense patriots, they were the benefactors of all mankind, legislators for the very nation that afterwards subdued and enslaved them. When, there 6 *"Christian Researches in the Mediterranean, by the Rev. W. Jowett," a work containing much curious as well as interesting information, and written in a spirit of unaffected liberality and Christian benevolence. fore, they became pure cosmopolites, and no partial affections interrupted their philanthropy, and when yet they retained their country, their language, and their arts, what noble works, what mighty discoveries, might we not expect from them? If the applause of a little city, a first-rate town, a small province, and the encouragement of a Pericles, produced a Phidias, a Sophocles, and a constellation of other stars scarcely inferior in glory, what will not the applause of the world effect, and the boundless munificence of the world's imperial masters? Alas! no Sophocles appeared, no Phidias was born; individual genius fled with national independence, and the best products were cold and laborious copies of what their fathers had thought, and invented in grandeur and majesty. At length nothing remained, but dastardly and cunning slaves, who avenged their own degradation and ruin by assisting to degrade and ruin their conquerors; and the golden harp of their divine language remained only as the frame on which priests and monks spun their dirty cobwebs of sophistry and. superstition!" Such were the Greeks-such, thank Heaven! they are no longer." E. H. SONNET. So, froward maiden, thou wilt quit for ever May'st thou do this; for thou art bound by ties Freedom, the Briton's birth-right; though the song And English wisdom vain, thou wilt not wrong. G. M. WHAT YOU WILL. NO. II. EDITED BY PETER ELLIS. BREAKFAST was just over; my aunt had retired to the nursery, and Charles to his brother's office; William stood at the window, watching the progress of an approaching stage amidst its retinue of dust; John lay reclined on the sofa, his attention divided between the unpromising aspect of the heavens and an old volume of the "Lady's Magazine," from which he was in vain endeavouring to extract something like amusement, with the air of a hungry silkworm prowling among a heap of withered mulberry-leaves; my sister was ostensibly engaged in re-perusing the thrice-conned county paper, but, in reality, deliberating on the expediency of her uncle's presenting her with a new and improved edition of her cousin's silk gown; my own meditations were of a graver cast, passing alternately from hexameters to diameters, from Thucydides to Euclid, according as the tripos or the medal presented itself to my mind's eye, with the feelings so well known to those who have the work of three years to do, with hardly three months to do it in. It was at this conjuncture of affairs that my friend, Heaviside, entered the breakfast-parlour, with dismay in his face, and an open letter in his hand. All stood aghast. "I told you how it would be, Ellis," said he, marching up directly to me, and making an unceremonious lodgment in my button-hole: "the press is at a stand; the editor is at his wits' end, and wonders at having received no answers to the five letters he has sent you, requesting contributions. I told you what would come of your racketting, and riding, and sporting, and idling talking metaphysics with Haselfoot, and eating oysters with Murray-sketching tragedies and organizing chess-clubs-quadrilling with your fair neighbours, and drinking radical toasts with your male ones! I told you, allalong, how it would be; I knew from the first." As I have a natural and inveterate dislike to the species of personage called Job's comforters, I interrupted my monitor with-This is quite in your way, Martin-laying the blame of every thing that happens upon my unfortunate head. Did not a fever nail me fast for three weeks, and Mrs. Crump and her family for a month? Did not Demosthenes make a deep VOL. I. PART II. 2 H incision into July, and Marriott's troublesome affair occupy half August? Have I not had to translate the Impudentiæ Encomium for Blackwood, besides reviewing Tomkins's work for the Monthly Censor?-a whole mortal week did that man's book take me, and he not satisfied after all. Then you talk as if I was the only culprit. Prate not to me of my particular delinquencies, as if I were the master-wheel in the machine, and every thing must needs go wrong without me. Another thing, you know that I" "Come, come," said Heaviside, cutting short my self-defence, 'tis no use arguing; all you can now do is to make the best of a bad matter, and sit down manfully to work. You have nothing else to do, and the rain" "To work!" exclaimed I, "why the magazine will be out on the first of October, and to-day is the twenty-third of September." "Pooh!" replied he, "surely you can manage half a sheet before dinner, prose or verse-Pemberton is going to town by the mail this afternoon, and he will take it." "But the carpenter has been at work in my study, and it is in a state of complete confusion." "Then write here." "Here! what, in the midst of tape, bobbins, and China crape my sister chattering to my cousin, and John whispering to my sister-William beating the Devil's tattoo with variations-women popping in and popping out-and yourself, Martin, peeping over my shoulder ever and anon, just to see how I get on,' a practice I detest mortally ?” "To cut a long matter short, it is determined that you shall not rise from the chair on which you are sitting, till you have manufactured eight statute pages of readable English, errors excepted. I beg leave to take the sense of the public on this matter." The question was accordingly put, and carried by the unanimous voice of the whole synod, with the exception of John, who had just left the room to countermand his orders for the morning's ride. Resistance was useless. My escritoire was ordered down from the study; Mary placed before me a quire of her own fragrant unsunned wire-wove, spotless as the ivory fingers which presented it; a pen was planted in my passive hand, and there I sat, the picture of sullen resolution, condemned to try, against my will, my friend Trismegistus's paradoxical experiment of "social silence and undisturbing voices." "Well then," said I, "since it is decreed that write I must, though my brain be as dry as a lemon-chip, and my fancy as barren as a Scotch metaphysician's, the next ques tion is, what shall I write? and in what form shall I embody my thoughts, or no-thoughts? shall it be ode, elegy, epigram, tale, sonnet, or pastoral-essay, dialogue, critique, sermon, oration, or argument? I am equally prepared for all, that is, equally unprepared." "Psha!" said Heaviside, "never mind the subject; write first, and choose the subject afterwards. Or-stay-why not strike off a description of last Thursday's ball?" I shook my head. "It would be encroaching on Peregrine's province." "Or an ode on the Spanish revolution?" said William, "But, for my part, I never like to meddle "Why not a sonnet on me, Harcourt?" said my sister. "A sonnet! why, bless your life, Mary, I have not written a fourteener these five years; let me see, not since the day Susan Willis married young Croft. (Here a parenthetical sigh to the memory of early but ill-placed attachment.) And, besides, you are only my sister, and I have left my book of rhymes at Cambridge; and-" 66 Apropos," interrupted Martin, "now you talk of Cambridge, what say you to College Sketches, or Recollections of an Academic Life?'" "I detest Cambridge," said I. 66 "So much the better. Fiction is the soul of poetry, as my friend the author of Lacon observed to me the other day." Besides, how can I recollect what is not yet past?" "Nothing more easy. You have only to imagine yourself a cross-grained old bachelor of fifty, full of discontent and hypochondria, looking back to the golden days when gout and spleen were not." Accordingly, after a little more hesitation and coy drawingback, I began as follows: "Of all the years of our life, there are none, perhaps, so delightful in retrospect as those spent at college. Our academic existence may be considered as a kind of blissful intermediate state, exempt alike from the petty restraints and annoyances of boyhood, and the oppressive cares of maturer life-an oasis between two deserts a green isle in the waste ocean of life. We sit down full of youth and spirits, exulting in our newly-acquired liberty, with enough to do, indeed, but under little or no restriction as to the time and manner of doing it, which makes all the difference-honour and emolument, and perhaps still sweeter rewards, in prospect-all one's old school friendships revived, and new ones formed-alas! |