Thus perished this ardent votary of liberty. No doubt many of his dreams of perfectability had vanished before this sad catastrophe; and the ruin of himself and friends, with the total discordance of the body politic, must have made him sigh for the good old times of the monarchy, when, if all was not consummate happiness, as great a share of contentment was alotted to his country as to any other under the sun.

S. B.

CRITICISM--FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

CUM TABULIS ANIMUM CENSORIS SUMET HONESTI.-Hor.

The Bride of Abydos, a Turkish Tale-By Lord Byron.—Philadelphia, 1814. pp. 72. 24mo.

THE author of the present beautiful little tale, has been for sometime past a favourite of the public, and is ever welcomed with shouts of gratulation and tears of pity. We admire the vigorous sallies of genius with which his writings abound, while we are irresistibly led to commiserate the unhappy state of the author's mind, darkened as it is by the cheerless gloom of infidelity. His felicity resides altogether in the past, and as he casts his desponding eyes upon the future, he dwells with a melancholy complacency on the dismal clouds by which he is surrounded, dashes aside with scorn the light of revelation, and rejects the resplendent beams. To see a young man with an understanding so vigorous and alert, in the midst of his hereditary dignity, resigning himself to the cheerless gloom of infidelity, is a spectacle painfully interesting. If the page reflect the character of the author in its true proportion, we may be enabled to solve this enigma.

Lord Byron appears from this evidence, to be a young man of keen and exquisite sensibility, capable of forming the strongest attachments. On these subjects, his sentiments are breathed with unusual energy, and with an intenseness of feeling. When he recounts his joys that are past, his constitutional sensibility presents them so fresh and so beautiful, memory loses its proper function, the wheels of time roll backward, and transport him to the hour

of actual enjoyment. It is a species of moral painting so descriptive, that the figure starts from the canvass, lives, looks, and breathes with the soul, which the author's own affections inspire. When the bard awakens from this reverie to the dreadful realities of the present state, the vision melts away, and leaves him disconsolate, forlorn, and more dejected, from the intensity of memory's enjoyment. The lyre which so recently resounded with his raptures, now utters no accents but those of dejection and despair. Not content with this, and hurried on by the phrenzy of the same ungovernable feelings, he seems to take a spiteful joy in aggravating the glooms of the future. With a sullen satisfaction he rejects the consoling truths offered by revelation, and lifts his murmuring voice against the majesty of Heaven. Such is the character of this writer: he plunges alternately, like the pencil of Carravagio, from noon-day to the glooms of night, and hoards his pleasures with no other view than to make his pains more excruciating. Destitute of that happy balance of the affections -his feelings form his creed, and because he cannot share the blessings he desires, renounces those which Providence has offered to his hands.

The fact which gave to the mind of this author this strange and melancholy bias, was, it seems, early love. The object of his affections was snatched away by the hand of death, and the desponding lover fled to the dark and comfortless shade of infidelity for relief.

The present volume, however, is not tinctured with any of these peculiarities: it has all that depth of sensibility which distinguishes the other works of this writer, without the infidelity. The story is shortly this:

Selim, the hero of the tale, while living with Giaffir, a Turkish pacha, with whom he passes as his natural son, falls in love with his daughter Zuleika. These two lovers meet in a cave by midnight, where Selim explains the mystery of his birth. It appears that he was the son of the brother of the pacha, who treacherously poisoned his father. The son still remaining under the care of his unnatural uncle, the reputed offspring of a stolen embrace, disdaining the soft and luxurious life he led, places himself at the head of a band of robbers. As the pacha had destined his daughter in marriage to a man averse to her wishes, Selim, after making this dis

closure of his character, implores her to unite her destiny with his. While she is wavering between her abhorrence of her father's harsh commands, her love for Selim and her detestation of his profession, they are both surprised by the guards of the pacha. Selim is slain before his band can arrive to his assistance, and Zuleika dies of a broken heart.

The author does not seem to have constructed his fable with much care, for it appears from the following beautiful lines, that he considered Zuleika as the lover, and not the sister of Selim. This young man had been reproached by the pacha with being born of a slave, who knowing as he did his father and his murderer, is now meditating vengeance against the assassin. This will account for his insensibility to the fond and innocent advances of Zuleika.

His head was leant upon his hand,

His

eye look'd o'er the dark blue water,
That swiftly glides and gently swells
Between the winding Dardanelles;
But yet he saw nor sea nor strand, ·
Nor even his pacha's turbaned band

Mixt in the game of mimic slaughter;
Careering cleave the folded felt
With sabre stroke right sharply dealt-
Nor marked the javelin-darting erowd
Nor heard their Ollahs wild and loud-
He thought but of old Giaffir's daughter.
No word from Selim's bosom broke-
One sigh Zuleika's thought bespoke-
Still gaz'd he through the lattice grate,
Pale-mute--and mournfully sedate.-
To him Zuleika's eye was turned,
But little from his aspect learned;
Equal her grief-yet not the same,
Her heart confessed a gentler flame-
But yet that heart alarmed or weak,
She knew not why, forbade to speak—
Yet speak she must-but when essay--
"How strange he thus should turn away!
"Not thus we e'er before have met,
"Not thus shall be our parting yet."--
Tt

VOL III.

Thrice paced she slowly through the room,
And watched his eye-it still was fixed-
She snatched the urn wherein was mixed

The Persian Atar-gul's perfume,
And sprinkled all it's odours o'er

The pictured roof and marble floor-
The drops, that through his glittering vest
The playful girl's appeal addrest,
Unheeded o'er his bosom flew,

As if that breast were marble too--
"What sullen yet? it must not be-
"Oh! gentle Selim, this from thee!"
She saw in curious order set

The fairest flowers of Eastern land-

"He loved them once--may touch them yet, "If offered by Zuleika's hand."

The childish thought was hardly breathed
Before the rose was pluck'd and wreathed--
The next fond moment saw her seat

Her fairy form at Selim's feet-
"This rose to calm my brother's cares
A message from the Bulbul bears;
It says to-night he will prolong,
For Selim's ear his sweetest song-
And though his note is somewhat sad,
He'll try for once a strain more glad,
With some faint hope his altered lay
May sing these gloomy thoughts away.

"What--not receive my foolish flower?--
Nay then I am indeed unblest:

On me can thus thy forehead lower?

And know'st thou not who loves thee best! Ob, Selim dear!-Oh, more than dearest!

Say, is it I thou hat'st or fearest?

Come lay thy head upon my breast,

And I will kiss thee into rest,

Since words of mine-and songs must fail,
Even from my fabled nightingale.

I knew our sire at times was stern,

But this from thee had yet to learn-
Too well I know he loves thee not,
But is Zuleika's love forgot?

Ah! deem I right? the pacha's plan-
This kinsman bey of Carasman
Perhaps may prove some foe of thine--
If so I swear by Mecca's shrine,
If shrines, that ne'er approach allow
To woman's step, admit her vow-
Without thy free consent, command-
The Sultan should not have my hand!
Think'st thou that I could bear to part
With thee-and learn to halve my heart?
Ah! were I severed from thy side,
Where were thy friend-and who my guide?
Years have not seen--Time shall not see
The hour that tears my soul from thee-
Even Azrael from his deadly quiver

When flies that shaft-and fly it must-
That parts all else-shall doom forever
Our hearts to undivided dust!"

He lived--he breathed-he moved--he felt
He raised the maid from where she knelt--
His trance was gone-his keen eye shone
With thoughts that long in darkness dwelt-
With thoughts that burn-in rays that melt.
As the stream late concealed

By the fringe of it's willows-
When it rushes revealed

In the light of its billows,

As the bolt bursts on high

From the black clould that bound it

Flash'd the soul of that eye

Through the long lashes round it.
A warhorse at the trumpet's sound,
A lion roused by heedless hound;
A tyrant waked to sudden strife

By graze of ill-directed knife,
Starts not to more convulsive life
Than he, who heard that vow, displayed,
And all, before repressed, betrayed.

"Now thou art mine, forever mine,

With life to keep, and scarce with life resign;-

Now thou art mine, that sacred oath,

Though sworn by one, hath bound us both.

Yes, fondly, wisely, hast thou done,

That vow hath saved more heads than one:--