ment as the Philharmonic alone can supply, to take the first stands, these festivals could never have been carried into effect as they are at present. The immense stimulus given to art throughout the country by their means, and the consequent sources of benefit and enjoyment that have been opened, we need scarcely stop to comment upon. Last, but not least, the Philharmonic may be looked upon as the only solid point d'appui for talent in England. Here it is welcomed, and appreciated, and acquires it best reward in the authority which places it at once upon its proper level, and in the applause of kindred spirits. It is the nucleus round which all that is best and highest in art aggregates. May it long retain the power, which hangs pretty much (we say it out of no disrespect to rising talent) on the lives of its present supporters!

The Philharmonic, however, has its enemies,-secret enemies,-for neither are their grounds of attack sufficiently strong, nor their reasons for it sufficiently clear to admit of openness. Yet, as the rats are said to forsake a vessel at the approach of danger, the cavillings even of such frivolous critics should not be despised. Though, as we have said, at its zenith, the society ought not, for the sake of the art, to lose one iota of the high character it now holds. Its performers and performances should all be first rate; but we could point out both instrumental solos and songs, besides a concerted piece or two, that have been admitted with too much facility during this season, while perhaps the taste of their more than half professional audience might be better cultivated, and their knowledge enlarged by a more extended research for music that is less known, especially amongst that for stringed instruments. We would also suggest one alteration in the arrangement of the bill,-that the most striking or attractive symphony of the evening should begin the second act instead of the first. The approach to languor that is perceptible in the audience when this piece is over, point out clearly that its place should be later in the evening. In conclusion, we shall say to the directors of the Philharmonic, that in their hands still rests the real musical reputation of the country, and, for the sake of that reputation, they must neither lose their high ground by good-natured concessions nor satiate the public appetite by too constant an adherence to old favourites. The medium is difficult, but it must be found and followed.

"Hail, holy Sound! thy plaintive tone
Follows the weary in his gloom,
When, sever'd from the world, alone
He sinks into the silent tomb.

Thou breath'st into the languid ears

Of the bereaved,-a welcome guest;
Unto the tearless giving tears,

Whisp'ring' the lost one shall be blest.'
"Hail, holy sound! Oh, be thou of the dreams
Of that mysterious realm that o'er us gleams,
Or but the child of endless space, unknown,
Untried, a messenger of peace sent down,-
Forsake me not!-but in thy breathings bland
Glad me with tidings of thy lovely land,
And waft me to the home that gave thee birth,
Spite of the chains that bind me down to earth."

We do not offer this as a literal translation, but it is a faithful transfer of the poet's ideas from his own language to ours; and we think our readers will agree with us, that it is as suitable a canvass for musical painting as Dryden's Alexander's Feast, or Milton's Allegro.

TO THE MONKEY THAT DEScended in a PARACHUTE*.

"Teach me like thee, in various nature wise,
To fall with dignity, with temper rise."-POPE.

INTRODUCTORY SONNET.

"Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour."
Thine 'twas, oh! Prince of Poesy, to sing
Of Satan's scarce imaginable spring,

Horrid descent, through space; and of the flower
Of Human hope that fell in Eden's bower.
Oh! that the smallest feather of thy wing
For me were left; or that a wish could bring
To my dry pen one drop of thy rich shower.
Then might I tell, and taste of Fame's sweet fruit,
Not of descents that dazzle and appal,

Of spirits doom'd and stars that downward shoot,-
Of Lucifer, or angel-flights at all;

Not of the fall of Man, but of a brute :

Oh! then might I relate-the Monkey's Fall!

Oh! for a line as long as his renown,

Or equal to the height at which he sat,
(Ye short hexameters, come up to that!)
But yester-eve, above the tiptoe town;
Eager before to see him mounting up,
More eager now to see him toppling down,
With Death to sup!

Few minutes then had pass'd, since I had seen
The creature, there like Mahomet's coffin hung,
Borne round the gardens with a conscious mein
That spoke as with a tongue,

And seem'd in native dialect to say

I, and two human things, ascend to-day!"
And from his car of wire he freely flung

Glances to all the fair, and grins to men,
With nutshells now and then.

"'Tis no mere monkey that you here survey,"
(By looks said he,)

"The lion of the gardens you may see
Even in me!

Who listens to the roaring of the others?
Or minds the Hungarian brothers?

They may for once confess themselves defeated.
And as for Green-he's really too conceited,
If he believes on him these thousands wait;
I pity his poor human vanity.

I am the hero of Victoria's fête,

Whate'er my fate, on coming down, may be."

And so he was! Oh, parish of St. James,

Oh, Court, exulting in your bright attire,

How he eclipsed your gaudiest dukes and dames!
Oh, Aristocracy! were he your sire,

*On the occasion of the fête given at the Surrey Zoological Gardens in

honour of the birth-day of the Princess Victoria.

66

Pronounce a sentence," bid " prepare,"

Yet no wish 'scapes him that the bears had got 'em!
How would a little biped work his grinders,
And storm, and shriek, and tear,

And kick, and curse his binders!
But he he leaves them almost unupbraided,
He in no clap-trap call on freedom raves,
When thus the subject's liberty 's invaded;
Nor once cries "Britons never will be slaves!"
Nor talks of equal rights and equal laws,
Nor rants about his "cause;"

Nor promises to read

Dread lessons to the tyrannizing factions;
Nor threatens Mr. Cross with fifty actions;
But lets his foes proceed,

And never says a word about " proceedings."

His doctrine still-though doom'd to such a distance From all his hopes of future fun and feedings

Passive obedience and non-resistance !

Spare him, oh! spare the creature yet, good Cross;
He is aggrieved, and you'll be sorely grieved.-
Think what must be your loss,

If the false parachute should come down closed!
State-and the statement may be well believed-
The principal performer's indisposed.

What evil has he done

That he should be the one!

Why have him " taken up ?" You never can
Possess the right-he may be maim'd past cure;

Before he makes this dread ascent for man,

You of his own assent should feel secure.

"You bought him, he is yours?" Why, that is true,
And this idea in your mind may swim,
That he should willingly come down for you,
Because you came down handsomely for him!

No more, break off! Mercy, you plead too late,—
The cords are loosen'd, the balloon is up!

Up, up it goeth at a glorious rate,

And with it draws, depending from a line
E'en as the thread of spider frail and fine,
The Feature of the Fête.

Oh! he hath surely drain'd life's latest cup !
We gaze with mingled feelings! with the scoff
There comes a shudder, pity checks the gibe:
Never was monkey yet so " taken off,"

Even when Landseer took off all the tribe!
On, on, they eastward sweep, and still they soar,
And lessen more and more;

The monkey swings with them where'er they go,— How can we treat our " poor relation" so!

"Sweet little cherub" sitting up aloft,

With Green above you and with green below,
'Twixt man and man, may your descent be slow,
Your tumble soft!

What are his thoughts?-that he shall go, perhaps,
Back to his woods, and kinsmen for him grieving;
Or, as he rises, thinks what little chaps

He now is leaving.

Ha! he returns,-for see, that spider's thread

Is severing from the car;-Green now leaves go; The height appears at least a mile or so!

Down, down the Monkey comes, and o'er his head The parachute-unspread!

Is he alive, or no?

His rocket-flight must surely end in gloom.
Another moment,-now you can descry
His snow white plume

In the blue sky;

No wonder the "white feather" he is showing-
Gods! how he's going.

Now nearer see him, looking like a doll,

Not to be class'd, I fear, with breathing things. Pinion'd,-ah! would instead that he had wings!

What was thy fall to this, oh son of Sol?

But see, look quick, how moves the parachute!
The air has caught, and opens every flute,-

Lo! 'tis expanded o'er the little brute!

How exquisite the gentleness, the grace,

The novel beauty of that calm descending!
Keep it, sweet element, at this same pace,
And we will scarcely fear an evil ending!
Less awful grows the space;
One almost sees his face,

Peering about in little fright or pain,
Alone with his umbrella, without rein.

Nearer the earth!-safe, almost safe is he,

Much musing on his vehicle's easy action,—
For what should monkeys know of "gravity,"
Though something of "attraction ?"
An instant more,-and now the farthest tree
Concealeth the airy-voyager from view:
Again he's on the earth!

Now is it mourning, Mr. Cross, or mirth?
Soon, soon as feet can fly a mile or two,

He's here,-alive-unhurt-most gently hurl'd,—
The living Monkey that has seen the World,

All who would moralize life's ups and downs,
The rise of caps and bells, the fall of clowns,
To thee, full many an admiring trope owe,
Illustrious Jacopo!

ተ ቀ

OUR tents were pitched in the vestibule of the house of Croesus, on the natural terrace which was once the imperial site of Sardis. A hump-backed Dutch artist, who had been in the service of Lady Hester Stanhope as a draughtsman, and who had lingered about between Jerusalem and the Nile till he was as much at home in the East as a Hajji or a crocodile; an Englishman qualifying himself for "The Travellers';" a Smyrniote merchant in figs and opium; Job Smith (my inseparable shadow), and myself, composed a party at this time (August, 1834), rambling about Asia Minor in turbans and Turkish saddles, and pitching our tents, and cooking our pilau, wherever it pleased Heaven and the inexorable Suridji, who was our guide and caterer.

I thought at the time that I would compound to abandon all the romance of that renowned spot, for a clean shirt and something softer than a marble frustum for a pillow; but in the distance of memory, and myself at this present in a deep morocco chair in the Library at "The Travellers'," that same scene in the ruins of Sardis does not seem destitute of interest.

It was about four in the lazy summer afternoon. We had arrived at Sardis at mid-day, and after a quarrel whether we should eat immediately or wait till the fashionable hour of three, the wooden dish containing two chickens buried in a tumulus of rice, shaped (in compliment to the spirit of the spot) like the Mound of Alyattis in the plain below, was placed in the centre of a marble pedestal; and with Job and the Dutchman seated on the prostrate column dislodged for our benefit, and the remainder of the party squatted in the high grass, which grew in the royal palace as if it had no memory of the foot-prints of the Kings of Lydia, we spooned away at the saturated rice, and pulled the smothered chickens to pieces with an independence of knives and forks that was worthy of the "certain poor man in Attica." Old Solon himself, who stood, we will suppose, while reproving the ostentatious Monarch, at the base of that very column now ridden astride by an inhabitant of a country of which he never dreamed (at least it strikes me there is no mention of the Yankees in his philosophy),-the old greybeard of the Academy himself, I say, would have been edified at the primitive simplicity of our repast. The salt (he would have asked if it was Attic) was contained in a ragged play-bill, which the Dutchman had purloined as a specimen of modern Greek, from the side of a house in Corfu; the mustard was in a cracked powder-horn, which had been slung at the breast of old Whalley the regicide, in the American revolution, and which Job had brought from the Green Mountains, and held, till its present base uses, in religious veneration; the ham (I should have mentioned that respectable entremet before) was half enveloped in a copy of the " Morn