The Sun.
London, England, 1838-11-01 00:00:00

MAGAZINE DAY,

BLACKWOQD'S MAGAZINE.

Under the welcome and familiar title of " Our Pocket
Companions," Christopher North throws off this month
one of his most eloquent and discriminating criticisms on
Young's " Night Thoughts." He is belated, it seems, on
a Highland heath—no unusual thing with him ; darkness
is coming on ; he is ignorant of his whereabout : so
hurries under the first roof lie can find, which chances to
be a cotter's hut. Here he makes himself comfortable ;
sups wit's heartiest relish off such primitive and unsophis-
ticated edibles as bannocks and barley-meal ; and then,
over a stiff tumbler of whiskey•gror, amuses his leisure,
till the small hours of the morning, by penning an ar-
ticle for Maga. And a more entertaining—we may even
add, instructive—article, seldom or never has " the old
man eloquent" penned ! It is critical and imaginative,
sprightly and solemn by turns. 'Till we read it, we had
no idea that such treasures of thought, feeling, and fancy
were to be found in the works of the author of that
stately, methodical, and cast-iron tragedy, the " Revenge."
Here is a passage, taken, we suppose, from one of the
" Night Thoughts," which we give entire, for, we suppose,
it will be new to many of our readers :-
4" By Silence, death's peculiar attribute;
By Darkness, death's inevitable doom ;
By Darkness and by Silence, sisters dread
That draw the curtain round night's ebon throne,
And raise ideas solemn as the scene I
By Night, and all of awful night presents
To thought or sense (of awful much, to both,
The goddess brings !) By these her trembling fires,
Like VESTA'S, ever burning, and, like hers,
Sacred to thoughts immaculate and pure
By these bright orators, that prove and praise,
And press thee to revere the a:4y ;
Perhaps, too, aid thee, when revered awhile,
To reach his throne ; as stages of the soul,
Through which, at different periods, she shall pass,
Refining gradual, for her final height,
And purging off some dross at every sphere :
By this dark pall thrown o'er the silent world;
By the world's kings, and kingdoms, most renown'd,
From short ambition's zenith set for ever;
Sai presage to vain boasters, now in bloom;
By the long list of swift mortality,
From ADAM downward to this evening knell,
Which midnight waves in fancy's startled eye,
And shocks her with a hundred centuries,
Round death's black banner throng'd in human thought !
By thousands, now, resigning their last breath,
And calling thee—wort thou so wise to hear I
By tombs o'er tombs arising; human earth
Ejected, to make room for—human earth ;
The monarch's terror and the sexton's trade !
By pompous obsequies, that shun the day,
The torch funereal, and the nodding plume,
Which makes poor man's humiliation proud ;
Boast of our ruin—triumph of our dust
By the damp vault that weeps o'er royal bones ;
And the pale damp, that shows the ghastly dead,
More ghastly through the thick incumbent gloom !
By visits (if there are) &cm darker scenes,
The gliding spectre, and the groaning grave
By groans, and graves, and miseries that groan
For the grave's shelter I By desponding men,
Senseless to pains of death, from pangs of guilt'.
By guilt's last audit ! By yon moon in blood,
The rocking firmament, the falling stars,
And thunder's last discharge, great nature's knell!
By second chaos ; and eternal
BF, WISE."
If there be, in the whole wide circle of our Engli

literature, a passage more fully fraught with all the ele-
ments of sublimity than this, we, at least, know not where
to find it. The throng—the rush—of awful and imposing
images ; here abstract, and appealing to tho fancy; there more
practical, and taking humanity captive ; rising one above
the other, in solemn grandeur, till at last they attain that
point of elevation beyond which idea cannot go :—the con-
gregation of these various thoughts and images is truly
wonderful; Milton has no one passage that contains so
much variety ; and few, if any; that possess more sustained
intellectual power. Yet there are one or two alliterations,
and epigrammatic and antithetical single lines in it, that we
could well have dispensed with, for their only effect is to
disturb its simple and austere sublimity. " Tick on Scien-
tific Principles" is by Mr. Carlyle. There is no mistaking
his mixed Saxon and Gothic style. The essay is intended
to be facetious, but it is the drollery of a metaphysician
who is only half in earnest in his attempts to create a
laugh. Yet the article is well worth perusal—if only for
its manner, which has all the charm of novelty. The
relish for Mr. Carlyle's works is an acquired taste, like eat-
ing olives ; but when once acquired, it takes a stronghold on the
reader. His cursory allusions, in his present discursive
Tractate, to debt and debtors are ingenious, and remind 113
of one of the chapters in Rabelais' Voyage to the Holy
Bottle, where he makes Panurge express his opinion, that
a debtor is one of the greatest benefactors to society, and
one in whose well-being a large portion of the community
feel the deepest interest, and whose death they mourn in
sackcloth and ashes. " A Crustaceous Tour" is a sprightly
essay on Irish oysters, every sentiment in which might
make Dando's ghost lick its lips in the grave. " The
Onyx Ring" is a tale of an imaginative character, by
" Archoeus"—one of Malta's cleverest contributors. " Co-
lonial Misgovernment" contains a fierce and unwarranted
attack on Lord Glenelg.