The Sun.
London, England, 1832-12-01 00:00:00

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

This magazine (no uncommon thing) has
reached us at so late an hour that we can do
little more at present than barely refer to its con-
tents. We have skimmed hastily over one or
two of the articles, and like much what we have
read. " Asmc,deus" contains some smart criti-
cism on that piece of aristocratic fillagree work
the Keepsake. Lord Dover, despite his title, is
sadly mauled, as Don Quixotte was by the cats
in the chamber of the weeping Duenna. The
cat, however, is not laid on without reason.
The opening paragraph of " Asmodeus" contains
some very beautiful and feeling ideas suggested,
by a recollection of Montaigne. We subjoin
them.

" Literary ease !—what a sentiment of happiness—
what a sense of quiet. of deep, of virtuous enjoyment is
conveyed in that expression ! How many classical recol-
lections throng around us, when we recall, in that one
phrase, the otiuna and the diynitas of the wise of old !
Tivoii crowded with its white retreats—Baite and its
Fountains—the Villa of Cicero—the G irdens of Pliny—
the magnificent Palace of Lucullus, equally learned and
voluptuous. Nor, for my own part, can I ever chew
the cud of that delightful phrase without especially bring-
ing to my niind's eye a certain antique and venerable
chamber in one of the grey Chateaux of Perigord,—
crowded with a medley of well-worn volumes—and the
light that enters from one high window resting on the
comely front of the Lord of Montaigne. That most per-
suasive gossip, who, among Essayists, is what Le Sage
was among Novelists—wisest while most trifling—and
most brilliant when most at ease—seems, to my fancy,
to have enjoyed the very ideal of a life of literary leisure.
He had seen enough of the actual world to be contented
with retirement ; and his natural disposition, so remote
from the dread hypochondriasm customary to men of let-
ters, made solitude the nurse no less of cheerful than of
p•ofound thoughts; the philosophy of a Happy Temper
smoothed the pillow of disease, and kept—if I may use the
term—the mental as the bodily veins, in a healthful and
lively flow—so that he drank in the blessings of leisure
without its ennui ; and study never wearied him with a
sense of its futility—nor solitude with that of its vegeta-
tive sameness. It has been my lot to cultivate letters from
my earliest youth—but I have never attained to the leisure
and the calm which should belong to the pursuit. At fits
and starts I have heaped together what learning I pos-
sess—and pardon me the vanity—before I was twenty the
elaborate Parr esteemed my correspondence as that of no
ordinary bookrnan--but the wheel at my heart always for-
bade me rest—and the Passions hurried me from books to
tnen—from study to pleasure—from contemplation to
action—with so fierce and restless an alternation, that the
life of ease—which I still covet—l have never, save at
hasty and brief intervals, enjoyed Sometimes, indeed,

I charm myself with pictures of a future never likely to
be mine—and imagine, that when the lasi days of mY
youth are over, and that tranquil period in which the
Autumn of Life steals over its hot and laborious summer
has cooled the pulses which now beat too wildly for re•
pose, some quiet retreat—the Tura et silentium—among
old books and green fields—may afford me the Utopia and
the Euthanasia of literary life. Then, too, I charm my-
self with the hope of weaving slowly and as a luxury, not
a task, some such work as the world shall not willingly
let die, and which may bind my name to something more
solid than those reeds blown to and fro by the breath of
popular opinion, which, as yet, are the only witness of
what I am. But, as I have said, the chances are that
such a future never will be reserved for fruition ; 0-1
mind has exhausted my body prematurely; and the gravel
perhaps, alreidy yawns for its prey ; but the spirit that is
within me will quail not to the last—and the despondency
of the nerves shall not dim the hope of the soul. 0 the
bright power of endurance that the Gre it Heart can evoke
from its own wrecks."

" Percy Bysshe Shelley" abounds in curious
minute traits of character, all tending to prove
Shelley's singular bon huinmie. " Ixion in
fleaven"we have barely had time to glance at, and
are scarcely competent, therefore, to form an or
pion. That it is by the author of Contartni
Fleming, is an argument in its favour. « Lord
Byron's conversations" are pleasant gossiping.