SATAN'S ADDRESS TO THE SUN.

O thou, that, with surpassing glory crown'd,
Look'st from thy sole dominion like the god
Of this new world, at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminish'd heads, -to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,
O sun! to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere,
'Till pride and worse ambition threw me down,
Warring in heaven against heaven's matchless King!
Ah! wherefore? he deserved no such return
From me, whom he created what I was
In that bright eminence; and with his good
Upbraided none: nor was his service hard.
What could be less than to afford him praise,
The easiest recompense, and pay him thanks,
How due! yet all his good prov'd ill in me,
And wrought but malice; lifted up so high,
I disdain'd subjection, and thought one step higher
Would set me highest, and in a moment quit
The debt immense of endless gratitude-
So burdensome still paying, still to owe!-
Forgetful what from him I still received;
And understood not that a grateful mind
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and discharged; what burden then?
Oh, had his powerful destiny ordain'd
Me some inferior angel, I had stood
Then happy; no unbounded hope had raised
Ambition. Yet why not? some other power
As great, might have aspired; and me, though mean,
Drawn to his part: but other powers as great
Fell not, but stand unshaken; from within

Or from without, to all temptations arm'd.
Hadst thou the same free will and power to stand?
Thou hadst: whom hast thou, then, or what to accuse,
But Heaven's free love dealt equally to all?
Be, then, his love accursed! since, love or hate,
To me alike, it deals eternal woe!

Nay, cursed be thou! since, against his, thy will
Chose freely what it now so justly rues.
Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell! myself am hell!
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven!
Oh, then, at last relent! Is there no place
Left for repentance? none for pardon left?
None left but by submission; and that word
Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame
Among the spirits beneath, whom I seduced
With other promises and other vaunts
Than to submit, boasting I could subdue-
The Omnipotent! Ah me! they little know
How dearly I abide that boast so vain;
Under what torments inwardly I groan,
While they adore me on the throne of hell!
With diadem and sceptre high advanced,
The lower still I fall; only supreme
In misery. Such joy ambition finds!
But say I could repent, and could obtain,
By act of grace, my former state-how soon
Would height recall high thoughts-how soon unsay
What feign'd submission swore! Ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void-
For never can true reconcilement grow,

Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep

Which would but lead me to a worse relapse
And heavier fall; so should I purchase dear
Short intermission bought with double smart!
This knows my punisher; therefore as far
From granting he, as I from begging peace!
All hope excluded thus, behold-instead
Of us out-cast, exiled!-his new delight,
Mankind created, and for him this world.
So, farewell hope! and with hope, farewell fear!
Farewell remorse! all good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my good! by thee, at least,
Divided empire with heaven's King I hold-
By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign,
As man ere long, and this new world shall know!

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

GREAT and rapid as have been the changes in all that constitutes the moral, political, and productive power of England, not one among the varied features of her character, has, within the same space of time, undergone so thorough a revolution as her literature. It is as different now from the state in which it was a century ago, both in the number and nature of its productions, not merely as at any two periods in the history of the same country, but as the literature of any two civilized and co-existing nations could possibly be. Whether the change has been for the better or the worse, may possibly in some minds admit of doubt; but of the certainty of the change itself, there can be but one opinion.

The main cause of this, has been the increased wealth of the higher, and the increased knowledge of the lower orders of the people. These gave the first impulse to a demand for an increased number of books; and the very circulation which supplied such demand, served only to create fresh desires: so that cause and effect, continually revolving in a circle, have gone on producing and re-producing, with such an accelerating speed, that if we continue thus to advance in almost geometrical progression, we may contemplate, at no very distant period, such an accumulation of literary productions, as to verify, without hyperbole, the Oriential peroration of the Evangelist, who apprehended that "even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written."

To the increased production of food, the limited surface of the earth sets bounds. To the increase of population, disease, poverty, and crime, operate as checks. And even if either of these attain, at any one period, a considerable superabundance, forth stalks the destroying angel in the shape of famine, pestilence, or war, to sweep away the surplus, and bring back things to what, in the language of the modern school, is called "their healthy and natural level." Since the days of Omar, however, who burned the Alexandrian library-because all the books it contained, were, if they accorded with the Koran, unnecessary; and if differing from it, pernicious!-we have had no barbarian-destroyer sufficiently powerful to stay the torrent of light and knowledge that is now fast covering the whole earth. Men die and disappear; the most skilful productions of their ingenuity or labour perish, and are forgotten; and even the most colossal monuments which their admiring contemporaries or successors erect, to carry down their names and deeds to posterity, crumble into dust. But books and books onlycan be made to endure for ever. The pyramids may be razed to the level of the rock on which they were erected, or buried in the sands of the surrounding desert; an earthquake would effect the one, and a whirlwind accomplish the other. But the books in which the mysteries of the Egyptians, the history of the Jews whom they held in bondage, and the destruction of Pharaoh and his hosts, are described,

can never perish. The Acropolis of Athens is in ruinsthe statue of Olympian Jupiter is no more the Parthenon is fast hastening to destruction and the Athenæum, that sacred edifice dedicated to Minerva, in which the poets, orators, and philosophers of Greece, recited their several compositions, lives but in name! Yet Homer, Hesiod, Anacreon, and Theocritus-Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and Sophocles-Heroditus, Xenophon, Plutarch, and Thucydides, are still existing-still our own; the constant companions of hundreds, the occasional administrators of instruction and delight to thousands; and nothing short of that great conflagration, in which

"The globe itself,

And all which it inhabit, shall dissolve,"

can destroy these precious records of ancient wisdom, genius, and taste.

CASABIANCA, THE ADMIRAL'S SON.

THE boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but him had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck,
Shone round him o'er the dead:

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;

A creature of heroic blood,

A proud, though child-like form.

The flames roll'd on-he would not go,
Without his father's word;

That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.

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