Wherefore should I complain? Why feel despair,
When after three long years' unceasing wear,
My coat and breeches, once as black as coal,
Are rusty grown and pierced with many a hole?

THE SEPARATION.

To D. S.

ABEL.

FAREWELL!-the wizard Time hath thrown
A separating spell around us,
And broke that magic chain of soul

Which late in brightest union bound us!
Oft from my lips a pensive sigh,

Like Autumn's dying wail, is stealing, As memory wakes, with trembling touch, The slumbering harmonies of feeling. In lettered solitude immured,

Or dancing round the shrine of Pleasure, My heart will turn with pious care

To sweeter themes and blither measure. For oh, when absence looks through space, Each object shines with richer splendour; Eyes flash with more impassioned love,

And lips have charms more sweet and tender. February 4th, 1819. G. FEIST.

SONNET TO JUNE.

JUNE, thy gay glories may delight thy throng
Whose hearts have never felt keen Sorrow's touch,
Whose days glide on with music and with song,
With not a cloud of thought;---oh yes, to such
Thou art delightful; but for me, whose breast
With many a care, with many a pang is riven,
Whom joy awaits not here, whom even Heaven
Seems bent to punish (such its wise behest),
Can I feel pleasure in the summer scene?

Can I rejoice when Nature thus is gay?—
Ah no; the painful thought will intervene
That thus it was when she was snatched away,
She whom my soul delighted in ;-my heart,
Throb not, we yet shall meet, where Death no more
can part.

J. Arliss, Printer, London.

"Man's inhumanity to Man,

Makes countless thousands mourn."-BURNS.

IT is universally acknowledged that the condition of man in this life is full of misery and pain; that his enjoyments are few and his griefs many; that he who is the most fortunate must expect at best but a greater degree of exemption from the infelicities which are the lot of those around him; and that he can be more happy only in proportion as he is less miserable than his fellows.

This conviction of the general destiny, it might be imagined, would induce all to assist in endeavouring to ameliorate it; would show that as all are equally liable to suffer, all are equally bound, by duty and by interest, to comfort the afflicted; that as all may need assistance, all should be ready to afford succour; and that as all are guilty, all should be merciful. Such a disposition would indeed lighten the woes of humanity; it would infuse hope into the bosom of despair, and gladden the heart of the widow and the orphan;

VOL. III, No. XVII.

Y

it would remove those griefs which are occasioned by poverty, and lessen those which are caused by the ravages of death; it would restore him who had once erred, to the paths of virtue, and render him again an useful member of that society whose laws he had broken.

But, alas! how far different from this is the conduct of the greater part of mankind to each other! Instead of succouring distress, they render calamity more poignant by persecution; and treat the unfortunate always as criminal. Instead of poverty being considered as a claim to compassion, it is thought a licence for insult; and the cries of misery, instead of exciting them to afford relief to the sufferer, only move them to ridicule his misfortunes, to reproach him with imprudence, to delay assistance until it can no longer be useful; and, when he has perished by their neglect, to boast of their humanity, and to upbraid him with applying too late for that aid, which, when solicited, was retarded or refused.

Hapless indeed is the lot of him whom unforeseen calamity, venial imprudence, boundless generosity, or unsuspecting and ill-placed confidence, has reduced to be dependent on the bounty of others: his own kindness will avail him nothing; those whom he has benefited will consider, not his former favours, but his present inability to bestow others; they will consequently determine, that, as nothing can be gained by assisting him, he should be left to perish without assistance; that as he was prodigal in prosperity, it is fit that he should learn economy by adversity; and that, as it is the duty of every one to provide, in the best manner he can, for himself, it would be imprudent and blameable to employ that in serving another, which at some future period they may themselves be in need of.

But if the unfortunate are thus persecuted, what may the criminal expect? Can it be supposed that he whose heart is steeled against the sufferings of the virtuous, will be melted to pity by the groans and tears of the guilty? No; the opportunity of indulging the innate love of revenge and cruelty, disguised under the specious appellation of justice, is too gra

tifying to be allowed to escape. Hence that innumerable host of laws, by which man presumes to deprive his fellow-creatures of that existence which is the gift of the Deity, and which should never be lightly forfeited, or wantonly taken away. As the indigent or the profligate may be tempted to plunder those whose diligence and economy have been crowned with the possession of wealth, some penalties are undoubtedly necessary to restrain them, lest industry lose the stimulus which urges to exertion-the reward which ever ought to follow meritorious efforts. But surely the laws which, to preserve to one man the possession of the most trifling article of his property, deprive another of his life, must be considered unjust and sanguinary. Nor are they alone unjust and sanguinary, they are also impolitic and ineffective.→We have daily and melancholy proofs of their inefficacy to prevent crime, which prevention ought to be the motive of all punishment. Certainly, then, some alteration is necessary in those laws which punish guilt without benefiting innocence, and sacrifice the offender without affording security to the offended.

The disregard of man for the life and happiness of his fellow-men, is also mournfully proved by the desolating wars which alternately rage in every quarter› of the globe. What is their cause? The ambition, perhaps, of a man who is impatient to add millions of slaves to the millions he already oppresses; who is unhappy because other men are free; and who cannot be satisfied unless they are rendered miserable. To accomplish this object he arms thousands of his subjects;-misled by a false notion of glory, or compelled by the wild mandates of tyranny, they march to the field; they attack with a hellish fury those whom the laws of God and of nature command them to love; they murder without remorse the aged and the young; they are themselves slain in the commission of the most heinous crime; and they rush before the tribunal of an Almighty Judge, foul with the blood of their brethren, loaded with guilt, without repen. tence, without a single prayer to Him who is just as well as merciful, who will as surely punish the wicked: as he will reward the righteous. The scene of slaugh

ter is over, and the victors, by an awful perversion of reason, presume to ascribe the success of their murderous attack upon their fellows to a Being who has given existence to all, and who will not allow the meanest of his creatures to be deprived of that gift with impunity.

These are, indeed, the most dreadful proofs of the cruelty of mankind to each other; these are the effects of that lamentable and short sighted policy, which, instead of regarding the whole earth as one nation, and its inhabitants as one family, descended from one common stock, and inheriting life and sustenance from one great source, bound by their mutual interest, and ordered by the divine command to love one another, and to work together for the common good, considers the intervention of a river or a mountain sufficient for ever to divide those whom their Creator has placed on the one side from those on the other; to render them the most inveterate enemies; to justify them in rejoicing at the calamities of each other; to give each a right to ravage, to murder, and to destroy, all that is dear to the other.

But these animosities between nations, however much to be lamented, are less distressing than those domestic feuds, occasioned by some difference of opinion on points whereon men are naturally disposed to diversity of notions, which rend the vitals of social intercourse, which destroy friendship, and love, and duty, for a name; for the service, perhaps, of a royal monster, who, when he has gained the object of his destructive ambition, will reward loyalty with a dungeon, and patriotism with death-or those begun on a still worse pretext, the service of religion; when men sacrifice thousands of their fellow-creatures, who worship the same Eternal God, but with a trifling difference of ceremony, to purchase the favour of a Deity, whose most distinguished attribute is infinite mercy and kindness, and who has declared a pure heart to be the noblest sacrifice, and the practice of virtue the most excellent form of worship.

Innumerable other proofs might be adduced in support of our assertion, but want of time prevents the recital, and their obviousness renders it unnecessary.