to receive free institutions with advantage to themselves, to adopt them with moderation and wisdom, and to use without abusing them. Even amongst the most philosophic and enlightened people, dabbling in republicanism has always proved a dangerous amusement. When men but just removed from barbarism, and who are degraded and oppressed by popish bigotry and superstition in their worst and most revolting forms, attempt to do so, the experiment is nothing short of madness. We will not dwell on those parts of Mr. Stephens's work which are devoted to political events: they are detailed concisely and clearly, and with his accustomed vigour of description: we will also pass over, as lightly as he himself does, all his diplomatic doubts, difficulties, and annoyances. The tone in which he jests on his fruitless search for a government before which he could represent his masters, is judiciously adopted, as it disarms the ridicule which might otherwise have attached to his official failure; and indeed, as we have before remarked, we are inclined to believe that as long as volcanic mountains and ruined cities were within his reach, his political cares sat very lightly upon him.

In preference to all such matter, we shall take our readers as rapidly as we can to the next scene of his antiquarian labours; though there are some passages of so much merit, and which stand so much in our path, that it is with difficulty we can pass them by. His discription of lazzoing, of the fête of La Concepcion, and of a novice taking the black veil, are masterly. The latter subject is a hackneyed one, but we have never met with it so simply and so effectively given; and we would recommend its study to all the novel-writing public as an example how much picturesque power is gained by an absence of exaggeration, and ambitious labouring after point.

After remaining a fortnight at Guatimala, Mr. Stephens sets out on a short excursion to the shores of the Pacific; and in his route ascends the Volcano de Agua, the height of which is 14,450 feet above the level of the sea. On his return to the capital he was alarmed by the receipt of a letter from Mr. Catherwood, dated from Esquipulas, and informing him that he had been robbed by his servant; had been so ill as to be obliged to leave the ruins and to take up his abode at

the churlish Don Gregorio's, who, however, had at length softened down into some degree of hospitality, and had treated him well; and that he was then on his journey to Guatimala. Greatly distressed by this news, Mr. Stephens resolved, after a day's rest, to set off in search of his sick friend; but the next day he made his appearance, armed to the teeth, but looking pale and thin, and just in time to partake of the Christmas gaieties of Guatimala.

On the 5th of January, 1840, our author set out with the intention of going to San Salvador, which was formerly, and still claimed to be, the capital of the confederation; or rather to Cojutepeque, to which place the seat of government had lately been transferred, on account of the earthquakes at San Salvador. The disturbed state of the country, and the jealousies of the contending factions, rendered it advisable that he should go by sea; and he therefore a second time proceded to Istapa, to which place Mr. Catherwood accompanied him; and thence, after suffering severely from ague and fever, the effect of the almost pestilential climate, he went on to Zouzonate. There, as he facetiously expresses it, he stumbled upon the government he was in chase of, in the person of Don Diego Vigil, the vice-president of the republic.' The information he received from this gentleman induced him to give up his intention of visiting San Salvador for the present, and he determined to proceed by sea to Costa Rica, the southernmost division of the confederacy, the state of his health rendering a sea voyage desirable; and thence to return by land and explore the line of the projected canal between the Atlantic and Pacific by the lake of Nicaragua.

Landing at Caldera, he proceeded in the first instance to San José, which he notices as being the only city which has grown up or even improved since the independence of Central America, and which has now superseded Cartago as the capital of the new State. On his route he inspected the works of the 'Anglo-Costa-Rican Economical-Mining-Company,' and its 'New German machine for extracting gold by the Zillenthal patent-self-acting-cold amalgamation-process.' The mine, it appears, had been in operation for three years without losing

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anything, which was considered doing so well that it was about to be conducted on a larger scale. He visited the old capital of Cartago for the express purpose of ascending the volcano, at the foot of which it stands the especial attraction being the hope of beholding from its summit, at one glance, the two mightiest waters of the globe :

The ascent was rough and precipitous; in one place a tornado had swept the mountain, and the trees lay across the road so thickly as to make it almost impassable: we were obliged to dismount, and climb over some and creep under others. Beyond this we came into an open region, where nothing but cedar and thorns grew; and here I saw whortleberries for the first time in Central America. In that wild region there was a charm in seeing anything that was familiar to me at home, and I should perhaps have become sentimental, but they were hard and tasteless. As we rose we entered a region of clouds; very soon they became so thick that we could see nothing; the figures of our own party were barely distinguishable, and we lost all hope of any view from the top of the volcano. Grass still grew, and we ascended till we reached a belt of barren rock and lava; and here, to our great joy, we emerged from the region of clouds, and saw the top of the volcano, without a vapour upon it, seeming to mingle with the clear blue sky; and at that early hour the sun was not high enough to play upon its top. . . . . The crater was about two miles in circumference, rent and broken by time or some great convulsion; the fragments stood high, bare, and grand as mountains, and within were three or four smaller craters. We ascended on the south side by a ridge running east and west till we reached a high point, at which there was an immense gap in the crater impossible to cross. The lofty point on which we stood was perfectly clear, the atmosphere was of transparent purity, and looking beyond the region of desolation, below us, at a distance of perhaps two thousand feet, the whole country was covered with clouds, and the city at the foot of the volcano was invisible. By degrees the more distant clouds were lifted, and we saw at the same moment the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This was the grand spectacle we had hoped, but scarcely expected to behold. My companions had ascended the volcano several times; but on account of the clouds had only seen the two seas once before. The points at which they were visible were the Gulf of Nicoya and the harbour of San Juan, not directly opposite, but nearly at right angles to each other, so that we saw them without turning the body. In a right line over the tops of the mountains neither was more than twenty miles distant, and from the great height at which we stood they seemed almost at our feet. It is the only point in the world which commands a view of the two seas.'- vol. 1. pp. 364-366. (To be continued.)

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

PART V.

WORDSWORTH.

To appreciate rightly the character and merits of any school of poetry, to estimate the effect it may produce in its own, or to calculate its probable chance of endurance and immortality in future ages, it is not sufficient to examine it as a single and unconnected phenomenon. The Apostle tells us that one star differeth from another in glory; and it demands the eye of the Astronomer, educated by the sublime science which furnishes him with a scale deduced from the position or the revolution of the bodies he is examining, to marshal the celestial host in its different ranks and orders, where the gaze of the benighted peasant beholds only a multitude of luminous orbs, glimmering with an equal radiance in the dark expanse of Heaven.

That class of poetry, of which Lord Byron was at the same time a chief leader, and a true type, viewed in this light, may be said to have originated in the convulsions and violence of the times-that « Sturm- und Drang-Periode, to use the expression of a great German philosopher-in which it appeared. Society was, by the tremendous events which preceded, accompanied, and followed the wonderful career of

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Napoleon, stirred up from its deepest abysses; from the yeasty depths of this wild and tempest-tossed ocean not only were treasures « rich and strange cast up, but, as might be expected, foul and loathsome monsters shocked our eyes, then for the first time evoked from their dark abodes. The vigour, the passion, and the intense feeling of the Byronian poetry was alloyed by baser elements; the vigour was but too often polluted with profanity, the passion with vice, and the feeling excited rather by the agonized pangs of unrepentant and selfish pride, than by the pure and inexhaustible sympathies of virtue and of truth.

At the same time it must be confessed that the prevalence of this style tended powerfully to destroy the illusions of that false and artificial mode of thought and language which resulted from feeble imitations of Pope, diluted gradually to the puerile elegance of Hayley; and recalled the aspirants after poetical renown once more to that source so long and so unaccountably neglected-that source so fresh and so inexhaustible, the great English writers of the Elizabethan Era.

Crabbe, indeed, had begun to show us that the faithful representation of the virtues, the sorrows, and the crimes of peasants could be a subject of the highest, though, alas, sometimes of the most painful interest poetry at this period may be said to have put off the tinsel trappings of an unnatural and artificial courtliness; and to have proved that the poor man's voice could pour forth accents as touching and as deep as are echoed by the gilded roofs of the noble and the proud.

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B

The early and melancholy death of Byron, at a period of life, when he had not gathered all his fame; when his powers were gradually reaching their highest vigour and flexibility-the mists of Missolonghi which dimmed our shining star when approaching its very plenitude of brightnessthe sad fate of that great and noble spirit, at a moment when, as in the case of Shakspeare, his intellect was but reaching its meridian, and was gradually dispelling the errors and imperfections which clouded its early career, yet left us not desolate; another star, of soft and cheerful light—a « fair

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