was still left untouched by the restless, feverish hand of coveteousness. We gazed upon the savages as the Ancient Mariner did upon the bright water-snakes :—

We have no ambition to be sentimentally conservative; but we do lament that the spirit of change is restrained by no higher consideration than a distrust of investment, and that it has no fear of assaulting the bounds set by nature or by moral association. It is only when it trangresses its lawful limits-as in the glaring instance we have adverted to that we deplore the progress of improvement so called. The world would be all the better, we fancy, if the practical fit which is on it were somewhat abated. A factitious standard has been introduced by the self-sufficient wisdom of the day, which tests all things by what is called a practical character,-which means, we believe, the quality of teaching men to make money, or to increase the crops, or to multiply the fabric of "stuffs," under which latter denomination may be included a large proportion of the products of the press. Books are valued according to the same standard. Now, we most thankfully greet any literary effort which recognises a higher aim and a nobler end. Surely there is a practical character of a better kind than that. which is indicated by the ordinary acceptation of the term; surely something more is to be done than to administer to man's physical wants; he is to be supplied with

something more than food, and clothing, and the trash called "light reading" by those who look upon books as mere allies against time. A writer elevating himself above the lower spheres of authorship is worthy of a more than ordinary welcome. We delight, therefore, we repeat, to meet with a new poet.

The name of Hartley Coleridge will probably be new to many of our readers. He is the son-the first-bornof the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poet and philosopher: we always hesitate which to call him, and regret that the language supplies no word comprehensive of both titles. Mr. Hartley Coleridge has therefore a patrimonial reputation. How far, however, that species of inheritance may be available to a man's own reputation, is, we think, somewhat questionable; for it is quite as apt to induce an invidious comparison as a willingness to trace the "ancestral power. It has the effect of interesting public curiosity, but beyond that the heir's own fame must be earned by his own efforts.

It is pleasing to find any instance in which the strength and qualities of the mind have descended from father or mother to the offspring. The likeness has much greater interest than those physical similitudes in which there is often so carefully transmitted the shape of a nose or a mouth, or the twist of an eyebrow, or that most imperishable of all traits, which is rarely quenched by the lapse of less than three or four generations, a head of red hair. A case of intellectual inheritance is an agreeable exception to the general tendency to degeneracy. The necessity of crossing the breed seems to make such brutes of us that it is not

a pleasing theory. The instances of hereditary talent in literature are, however, we are obliged to acknowledge, of rare occurrence. After a few minutes' labour of recollection, the only examples we are able to call to mind are Kings David and Solomon, and the two Drs. Sherlock. The latter of these cases is not of sufficient note, and the circumstance of inspiration obviously puts the former out of the question, for it might probably be regarded as an exception to a general rule rather than an illustration of it. Poetic genius especially is so delicate a combination, that it is likely to be destroyed by any change in its constitution. Two of Dryden's sons attempted to follow in their father's path; but the spirit of "glorious John" had fled, and what they wrote the world has willingly let die.* Spenser left two sons,

-one with a name at least that might well befit a poet, "Sylvanus Spenser," the other with a name that would have suited one whose walks were on the highways of prose, "Peregrine Spenser." What, by-the-by, had become of the poet's own beautiful name, "Edmund Spenser'? Perhaps the child was so named that perished in the flames when Spenser's dwelling was fired by the Irish rebels and he driven from the country.†

Perhaps in the constitution of the sons there was too large a proportion of the mother's character. A letter from Dryden's wifethe Lady Elizabeth, as she was styled, from her noble lineage of the Howards-has been preserved, in which the following passage occurs:-"Your father is much at woon as to his health, and his defnese is not wosce, but much as he was when he was heare. me a true account how my deare sonn Charlles is head dus." †This calamity is mentioned by Southey, in his notices of the early British poets, in a manner rather peculiar ::-"When Tyrone's

Give

a

Unless that child, over whose untimely and disastrous fate the poet's broken heart beat its last throbs, inherited some of the parent's spirit, his boundless imagination came not down to others of the name. Milton's son-John Milton, junior-died in his infancy; but, we dare say, had he lived longer, he would have been literally 66 mute, inglorious Milton." Certainly his early death is not to be deplored, if we may conjecture what his character would have been from that of Milton's daughters, who grew aweary of their intellectual attendance upon the blind old bard, and longed for the humbler tasks of needlework. It is an ugly page in female history that records how they turned away from their communion with the spirit of their sire. "The irksomeness of their employment could not always be concealed, but broke out more and more into expressions of uneasiness; so that at length they were all sent out to learn some curious and ingenious sorts of manufactures that are proper for women to learn, particularly embroideries in gold or silver."* The glory of Shakspeare's name began and ended with himself,—his own unheritable self. We hope that the name is not desecrated by the wear of any modern mortal, for it has passed above the common uses of men's names. How anomalous would a "Mr. or Mrs. Shakspeare" sound, and what perfect contradictions in terms would "the little Shakspeares" be! When the Rev. Mr. Dyce, one of Shakspeare's biographers, visited Stratford-onAvon, in 1820, for the purpose of gathering traditions,

rebellion broke out, Spenser's house was burnt by the rebels, and in it his papers and one of his children.”—Southey's "British Poets." *Life of Milton, by his nephew, Edward Philips.

he found a woman upwards of eighty years of age, named Mary Hornby, who gained a livelihood by showing the house in which the bard was born. She claimed a descent from Shakspeare, her maiden name being Hart, and had evidently inherited a full share of his love of the drama. Her high ancestral feeling manifested itself by her saying, "I writes plays, sir," and producing a tragedy entitled "The Battle of Waterloo." The old woman, who had better been at her prayers, was, we presume, well read in the three parts of Henry VI.; she had assuredly selected a famous theme for "Alarums -Enter English and French, fighting-Exeunt, fighting -Alarums." So far as syntax is concerned, she seems to have been what the French critics in their ignorance are so fond of calling her great progenitor," a wild, irregular genius." Such fallings off may well serve to rebuke man's pride. It was one of the trials of the calamitous life of the sainted Jeremy Taylor to witness the debased career of his own children. Who could have thought that the offspring of one whose spirit dwelt so habitually in the regions of an aspiring devotion would have declined to such degenerate ways? One fell in a duel, staining his dying hand with the blood of his antagonist; the other, with a slower but as deep a perfidy, became a favourite companion of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. One more of these melancholy instances of degeneracy: Izaak Walton, the great piscator, left an only son, bearing too his honoured name. He, an Izaak Walton, turned away from the banks of the sedgy Lea, became a travelled gentleman, studied the Fine Arts in Italy, returned to one of the English universities, and devoted himself to assisting