The Sun.
London, England, 1830-12-01 00:00:00

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE,

" Thoughts and Facts respecting' the Civiliza-
tion of Africa" are avowedly from the pen of
Mr. Thomas Campbell, and contain much that
is just in thought, and sound in reasoning.
" The Princess of the Bright Shadow" is a
clever and ingenious tale by John Galt, written
after the style and fashion of the Arabian story-
tellers. It has an excellent moral appended to
it. " Conversations with an Ambitious Student
in 11l Health" is a very superior article, as re-
spects both matter and manner. There is no
little metaphysical ability displayed in it, and
much healthy sentiment. The following is a fair
sample of the character of the thought, it will be
seen that it is full of feeling and reflection :
" Here our discourse was interrupted by the entrance of
a female relation of L—'s; she came with his medicine,
for though he considers himself beyond human aid, he
does not affect to despise the more sanguine hopes of those
attached to him. Let him think,' said he, 'that they
have done all they could for me : my boat is on the water,
it is true, but it would be ill-natured if I did not loiter a
little on the strand. It seems to me, by the way, a sin-
gular thing that, among persons about to die, we note so
little of that anxious, intense, restless curiosity t 3 know
what will await them beyond the grave, which, with me,
is powerful enough to conquer regret. Even the most
resigned to God, and the most assured of revelation, know
not, nor can dream, of the nature, of the life, of the hap-
pines., prepared for them. They know not how the
senses are to be refined and sublimated into the faculties of
a spirit ; they know not haw they shall live, and move,
and have their being; they know net whom they shall
see, or what they can hear ; they know not the colour,
the capacity of the glories with which they are to be
brought face to face, Among the many mansions which
is to he their.? All this,. the matter of grand and of no
irreverent conjecture ; all this, it seems to me, so natural
to revolve—all this I revolve so often, that the conjecture
incorporates itself into a passion, and I ion impatient to
pass the Ebnn gate, and be lord' of the eternal secret.
Thus, as I approach nearer to death, Nature, and the face
of things, assume a more solemn and august aspect. I
look ul on the leaves, and the grass, and the water, with a
sentiment that is scarcely mournful; and yet I know not
what all else it may he called, for it is deep, grave, and
passionate, though scarcely sad. I desire, as I look on
those, the ornaments and children of earth, to know
whether, indeed, such things I shall see no more—whether
they have no likeness, no archetype in the world in which
my future borne is to be cast ; or whether they have their
images above, only wrought in a more wondrous and dr.
lightful mould. Whether, in the strange land that knoweth
neither season nor labour, there will not be, among all it.
glories, something familiar. Whether the heart will not
recognise somewhat that it has known, somewhat of 'the
blessed household tones,' somewhat of that which the clay
loved and the spirit is reluctant to disavow. Besides, to
one who, like us, has made a thirst and a first love of
knowledge, what intenseness, as well as divinity, is there
in that peculiar curiosity which relates to the extent of the
knowledge we are to acquire. What, after all, is Heaven
but a transition from dim guesses and blind struggling with
a mysterious and adverse fate to the fullness of all wisdom
—from ignorance, in a word, to knowledge—but know-
ledge of what order ? Thus, even books have something
weird and mystic in their speculations, which, some years
ago, my spirit was too encumbered with its frame to re •
cognize—for what of those speculations shall be true—
what false? How far has our wisdom gone toward the
arcanum of a true morality; how near has souse daring
and erratic reason approached to the secret of circulating
happiness round the world, Shall He, whom we now
contemn as a visionary, be discovered to have been the
inspired prophet of our blinded and deafened race ; and
shall lie, whom we now honour as the lofty saint, or the
profound teacher, be levelled to the propagator and sancti-
fier of narrow prejudices; the reasoner in a little angle of
the great and scarce-discovered universe of Truth ; the
that his Empire fills the map of
maiteiravlvoCrl;dii:esaeg,idsuppipaocainiig
placing
under an interdict the improve-
ments of a nobler enlightenment ?"

" Sketches of the Ganges" is so-so, and the
" Enthusiast" a piece of mock tinsel sentiment
which we profess not in the slightest degree to
understand. " 11y First Tragedy" is an amus-
ing quiz, from the pen of Mr. Poole, anti con-
tains one or two capital hits at that paragon of
saints, Mr. George Colman the younger—as
he culls himself at seventy years of age—author
of " Broad Grins and Poetical Vagaries," two
of the vulgarest and most obscene books in this
or any language,