burg, Tico Brache's rare gardens at Vraneburge, the garden at Copenhagen. Tho. Duke of Hostein's garden, &c. In Turkey, the East and other Parts. The grand Signor's in the Serraglio, the garden at Tunis, and old Carthage; the garden at Cairo, at Fez, the pensal garden at Pequin in China, also at Timplan and Porassen; St. Thomas' garden in the island neere M. Hecla, perpetually verdant. In Persia the garden at Ispahan: the garden of Tzurbugh; the Chan's garden in Schamachie neere the Caspian sea, of Ardebil, and the citty of Cassuin or Arsacia: the garden lately made at Suratt in the East Indias by the great Mogoll's daughter, &c. In America.-Montezuma's floating garden, and others in Mexico. The king of Azcapuzulco's, the garden of Cusco; the garden in Nova Hispania. Count Maurice's rare garden at Boavesta in Brasile. In England-Wilton, Dodington, Spensherst, Sion, Hatfield, Lord Brook's, Oxford, Kirby, Howard's, Durden's, my elder brother George Evelyn's in Surry far surpassing any else in England, it may be my owne poore garden may for its kind, perpetually greene, not be vnworthy mentioning. The Gardens mentioned in Scripture &c. Miraculous and extraordinary gardens found upon huge fishes' backs, men over growne with flowers &c. Romantique and poeticall gardens out of Sidney, Spencer, Achilles Statius, Homer, Poliphele, &c. All these I have already described, some briefly, some at large, according to their dignity and merite. But this paper, and my reverence to your greate patience minds me of a conclusion. Worthy Sir I am your most humble and 1. EUELYN. Lond. 28. Jan. Co. Garden. Sir, I beg the fauour of you when you see Mr. Paston to make my service acceptable, and to let him know how greately I thinke my selfe obliged to him for this civillity. I make bold to send you another paper of the chapters, because I have there added another chapter concerning Hortulan entertainements; and I intend another for wonderfull plants &c. If you thinke me worthy of the continuance of these fauours to your servant; your letters will infallibly find me by this addresse " For Mr. Iohn Euelyn at the hauke and feasant on Ludgate Hill, London." In the foregoing Letter we have scrupulously followed Evelyn's orthography, which will sufficiently account for the singular appearance that some very well-known places make in our present article. The Letter altogether may be considered as very curious, chiefly as it gives the most perfect list of celebrated gardens any where to be found, and again as it affords a fair idea of the plan of what, if executed, would have been one of our author's most interesting and delightful works. Among the MSS. at Wotton there are parts of two volumes with the running title of Elysium Britannicum, consisting of miscellaneous observations on a great variety of subjects, but nothing digested, except a printed sheet of the contents of the intended work. So Mr. Bray, who has given a copy of this printed sheet at vol. ii. pp. 90, 91. of the Memoirs, which shews that it is evidently the same alluded to more than once in the Letter to Sir Thos. Browne. Pour avoir des gardiens sûrs On prodigue l'or aux Suisses; On voit trop leurs cicatrices : Mandement des Vicaires-Generaux de Paris. The Champ d'Asyle" is free from moral objection, and shows that Beranger could have done better as a poet, if he had not made it his ambition to be sung in the cabarets. I think it may bear translation. * There is less mischief in these, because less disguise and insidious refinement, than in Parny's. The latter is the French Little. The same remark applies to the licences which these two poets take with religion. Highly wrought and polished blasphemy has in it more of malignity and guilt than burlesque irreverence. Beranger affects an Epicurean air; but his ridicule is pointed rather at the abuses of religion, as exemplified in the practice and preaching of the monkish priesthood, than at religion in itself. DEC. 1824. 2Q THE RETREAT. Un chef de bannis courageux, &c. 'Twas a chief of valorous exiles "That it is still quails the monarchs, "Albion trembled in her Indies, "From our ranks a man emerging "But he falls-his veteran soldiers May that country rise for ever From the Loire's fierce wreck and shame! Indians! listen-we are Frenchmen, Take ye pity on our fame. "He was silent. Then a savage Answer'd, God the storm hath stay'd:' Warriors! share ye in our treasures Rivers, fields, and forest-shade: Soil of refuge! thou art hallow'd! Here, perchance, our sons, relating Deeds that shall transcend our story, De la Martine, author of the Meditations Poetiques, is, as his title intimates, a serious poet. He is the most in vogue, as times are, for he blends adroitly loyalty and devotion: his address to the infant Duke of Bourdeaux will supply an instance in point. Quand des pasteurs la troupe errante De la nuit déchirant la voile No doubt the instinct of legitimacy. There is a strange rhapsody with the title of Desespoir: a title which is meant, I suppose, to give out that it is all pretend, as the children say.* Truly I am glad of it. The poem is a sort of railing remonstrance with the Deity for his permission of moral evil and human suffering; groans, tears, shrieks,—and what is odd enough, blasphemies, it is broadly asserted in no very chosen terms, are the "incense" in which he particu larly delights. This dashing tone of Manicheism is, indeed, discovered by our modern poets and romancewriters to be the grand secret of the true sublime style: but I am at a loss to perceive by what right the author of "Desespoir" takes Lord Byron to task, and calls him "fallen angel." Let us look a little at this mentor of Childe Harold. Lorsque du créateur la parole féconde De son œuvre imparfaite il détourna la face, This it is to be a loyalist and a devotee: if poor Beranger had written this superb effusion, all the saloons in Paris would have cried out "ah l'impie!" De la Martine has the credit with our English critics of profound thoughts. The above, I take it, is one of them. I should rather call them far-fetched conceits. There is something of false sentiment and laborious artificial prettiness in his general poetry which betrays effort, and consequently weakness. His inquiry of a moonbeam, that straggles through the rift of a cloud, is in this taste, and, I doubt not, is quoted and petted with much lisping approba tion: Je songe à ceux qui ne sont plus Douce lumiére! es-tu leur ame? This glitters; and so does ice. He sometimes rings the changes on the same thought by way of eking out a stanza: and in his elegiac musings, he gets too often upon stilts, and tires himself with striving after great and surprising thoughts. Thus he talks of leaping up and clinging to the sun, and whirling with him round the hemisphere: and this is merely to tell us that however wide his light extends, it can discover no spot which is joyous in his eyes. A very common thought, which did not require all this contortion to express it, On another occasion, having com pared himself to a withered leaf, he suddenly puts on a stout air, as if he meant to be sublime in earnest; and, accordingly, he calls on the north winds to snatch him, Monsieur de la The poet relieves himself of a good portion of this hypothetical scepticism in the piece entitled La Foi; and then makes all square by describing himself as "exhalant la doute et le blasphème;" of which the following is a tolerable sample: Reponds moi Dieu cruel! s'il est vrai que tu sois, Martine, from the face of the earth. This profound way of writing has a name among us, and we call it Della Cruscan. Readers have been struck at first sight with an appearance of more observation of natural imagery than is common with French poets. There is a solemn soothing tone in his colouring, and a sort of romantic effect in his local scenery, which indicate pictorial and poetic feeling; but in the associated reflexions there is, as I have before hinted, a poverty of sentiment. There is a mixture of frippery and common-place in many of those lyrical meditations, which are intended to record either his own solitary reveries or the tender philo sophy of his mistress, while solilo- But is the temple voiceless? where the hymns Speaks in that silence: 'tis the reasoning thought Gives language to creation, and with things A still more favourable extract shall be given in the original verse. La mort m'entoure en vain de ses ombres funèbres, Ma raison voit le jour à travers ces ténèbres. C'est le dernier degré qui m'approche de toi, There would, indeed, be a 66 weariness of the flesh were I to comment on all the miscellanies in verse which catch the eye on the bookstalls of the Palais Royal in red or blue marble covers, with plates in which whiskered French poets, bene ocreati in Hessian boots, and with rigidly bent hats, are occupied, to the glory of Parisian costume and of lithography, in taking down lyres from cypress-trees. It will suffice to notice a few. Some are emeriti; others still eat salad. LA HARPE has put together enormous bundles of verses: Discourses in Verse, crowned by the Academie Française, odes, and other things. In tragedy he was the pupil of Voltaire, who said of him that "he could heat the oven, but did not know how to bake." Il sait chauffer le four, mais il ne suit pas cuire. His best play is the "Comte de Warwick," in which, however, he makes Warwick die fighting for the house of York instead of for that of Lancaster. In his "Cours de Litterature," (for which the French call him their Quinctilian, as they call Marmontel their Longinus, on the credit of his "Elemens de Litterature,") La Harpe bestirred himself to show that French literature was all |