of his application, he made a tour through various parts of India, in the course of which he wrote The Enchanted Fruit, or Hindu Wife,' a poetical tale, and a Treatise on the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India.' He also studied the Sanscrit language, being unwilling to continue at the mercy of the Pundits, who dealt out Hindu law as they pleased. Some translations from oriental authors, and original poems and essays, he contributed to a periodical established at Calcutta, entitled The Asiatic Miscellany.' He meditated an epic poem on the discovery of England by Brutus, and had matured his design so far as to write the arguments of the intended books of his epic, but the poem itself he did not live to attempt. In 1789, Sir William translated an ancient Indian drama, 'Sacontala, or the Fatal Ring, which exhibits a picture of Hindu manners in the century preceding the Christian era. He engaged to compile a digest of Hindu and Mohammedan laws; and in 1794 he translated the Ordinances of Menu,' or the Hindu system of duties, religious and civil. motive to this task, like his inducement to the digest, was to aid the benevolent intentions of our legislature in securing to the natives, in a qualified degree, the administration of justice by their own laws. Sir William died April 27, 1794. Every honour was paid to his remains, and the East India Company erected a monument to his memory in St. Paul's Cathedral. The attainments of Sir William Jones were so profound and various, that it is difficult to conceive how he had comprised them in his short life of forty-eight years. With respect to the division of his time, he had written in India, on a small piece of paper, the following lines:

Sir Edward Coke:

Six hours in sleep, in law's grave study six,
Four spend in prayer-the rest on nature fix.

Rather:

Seven hours to law, to soothing slumber seven,
Ten to the world allot, and all to heaven.*

An Ode, in Imitation of Alcaus.
What constitutes a state?

Not high-raised battlement or laboured mound,
Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned;
Not bays and broad-armed ports,

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;

Not starred and spangled courts,

Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride.

No: men, high-minded men,

With powers as far above dull brutes endued

In forest, brake, or den,

His

As respects sleep, the example of Sir Walter Scott may be added to that of Sir Wil liam Jones, for the great novelist has stated that he required seven hours of total unconsciousness to fit him for the duties of the day.

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude;

Men who do their duties know,

But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain,
Prevent the long-aimed blow,

And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain:
These constitute a state,

And sovereign Law, that state's collected will,
O'er thrones and globes elate

Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill;
Smit by her sacred frown,

The fiend Discretion like a vapour sinks,
And e'en the all-dazzling Crown

Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks.

Such was this heaven-loved isle,
Than Lesbos fairer, and the Cretan shore!
No more shall Freedom smile?

Shall Britons languish, and be men no more?
Since all must life resign,

Those sweet rewards, which decorate the brave,
"Tis folly to decline,

And steal inglorious to the silent grave.

A Persian Song of Hafiz.

Sweet maid, if thou wouldst charm my
sight,

And bid these arms thy neck enfold;
That rosy cheek, that lily hand,
Would give thy poet more delight
Than all Bokhara's haunted gold,
Than all the gems of Samarcand.

Boy, let yon liquid ruby flow,
And bid thy pensive heart be glad,
Whate'er the frowning zealots say:
Tell them, their Eden cannot shew
A stream so clear as Rocnabad,
A bower so sweet as Mosellay.

Oh! when these fair perfidious maids,
Whose eyes our secret haunts infest,
Their dear destructive charms display,
Each glance my tender breast invades,
And robs my wounded soul of rest,
As Tartars seize their destined prey.

In vain with love our bosoms glow:
Can all our tears, can all our sighs,
New lustre to those charms impart ?
Can cheeks, where living roses blow,
Where nature spreads her richest dyes,
Require the borrowed gloss of art?
Speak not of fate: ah! change the theme,
And talk of odours, talk of wine,
Talk of the flowers that round us bloom:

"Tis all a cloud, 'tis all a dream;
To love and joy thy thoughts confine,
Nor hope to pierce the sacred gloom.

Beauty has such resistless power,
That even the chaste Egyptian dame
Sighed for the blooming Hebrew boy:
For her how fatal was the hour,
When to the banks of Nilus came
A youth so lovely and so coy!

But ah! sweet maid, my counsel hear-
Youth should attend when those advise
Whom long experience renders sage-
While music charms the ravished ear;
While sparkling cups delight our eyes,
Be gay, and scorn the frowns of age.

What cruel answer have I heard?
And yet, by Heaven, I love thee still:
Can aught be cruel from thy lip?
Yet say, how fell that bitter word
From lips which streams of sweetness fill,
Which nought but drops of honey sip?

Go boldly forth, my simple lay,
Whose accents flow with artless ease,
Like orient pearls at random strung:
Thy notes are sweet, the damsels say;
But oh! far sweeter, if they please
The nymph for whom these notes are
sung!

The Concluding Sentence of Berkeley's Siris imitated.
Before thy mystic altar, heavenly Truth,
I kneel in manhood as I knelt in youth;
Thus let me kneel, till this cull form decay,

And life's last shade be brightened by thy ray:
Then shall my soul. now lost in clouds below,
Soar without bound, without consuming glow.*

Tetrastic-From the Persian.

On parent knees, a naked new-born child,
Weeping thou sat'st while all around thee smiled:
So live, that sinking in thy last long sleep,

Calm thou may'st sinile, while all around thee weep.

NATHANIEL COTTON.

NATHANIEL COTTON (1721-1788) wrote 'Visions in Verse,' for children, and a volume of poetical 'Miscellanies.' He followed the medical profession in St. Albans, and was distinguished for his skill in the treatment of cases of insanity. Cowper, his patient, bears evidence to his well-known humanity and sweetness of temper.'

The Fireside.

Dear Chloe, while the busy crowd,
The vain, the wealthy, and the proud,
In folly's maze advance;
Though singularity and pride
Be called our choice, we'll step aside,

Nor join the giddy dance."

From the gay world we'll oft retire
To our own family and fire,

Where love our hours employs;
No noisy neighbour enters here;
Nor intermeddling stranger near,
To spoil our heartfelt joys.

If solid happiness we prize,
Within our breast this jewel lies;

And they are fools who roam:
The world has nothing to bestow;
From our own selves our joys must flow,
And that dear hut-our home.

Of rest was Noah's dore bereft,
When with impatient wing she left
That safe retreat, the ark;
Giving her vain excursion o'er,
The disappointed bird once more
Explored the sacred bark.

Though fools spurn Hymen's gentle
powers,

We, who improve his golden hours,

By sweet experience know,

That marriage, rightly understood,
Gives to the tender and the good

A paradise below.

The following is the last sentence of the Siris: He that would make a real progress in knowledge must dedicate his age as well as youth, the latter growth as well as the first-fruits, at the altar of Truth.'

To be resigned when ills betide,
Patient when favours are denied,

And pleased with favours given;
Dear Chloe, this is wisdom's part;
This is that incense of the heart,

Whose fragrance smells to heaven.

We'll ask no long-protracted treat,
Since winter-life is seldom sweet;
But when our feast is o'er,
Grateful from table we'll arise,
Nor grudge our sons with envious eyes
The relics of our store.

Thus, hand in hand, through life we'll go;
Its checkered paths of joy and woe
With cautious steps we'll tread;
Quit its vain scenes without a tear,
Without a trouble or a fear,

And mingle with the dead:

While conscience, like a faithful friend,
Shall through the gloomy vale attend,
And cheer our dying breath;
Shall, when all other comforts cease,
Like a kind angel, whisper peace,
And smooth the bed of death.

WILLIAM COWPER.

WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800), 'the most popular poet of his generation, and the best of English letter-writers,' as Southey has designated him, belonged emphatically to the aristocracy of England. His father, the Rev. Dr. Cowper, chaplain to George II., was the son of Spencer Cowper, one of the judges of the court of Common Pleas, and a younger brother of the first Earl Cowper, lord chancellor. His mother was allied to some of the noblest families of England, descended by four different lines from King Henry III. This lofty lineage cannot add to the lustre of the poet's fame, but it sheds additional grace on his piety and humility. Dr. Cowper, besides his royal chaplaincy, held the rectory of Great Birkhamstead, in the county of Hertford, and there the poet was born, November 15, 1731. In his sixth year he lost his mother-whom he tenderly and affectionately remembered through all his life-and was placed at a boarding-school, where he continued two years. The tyranny of one of his school-fellows, who held in complete subjection and abject fear the timid and home-sick boy, led to his removal from this seminary, and undoubtedly prejudiced him against the whole system of public education. He was next placed at Westminster School, where he had Churchill and Warren Hastings as schoolfellows, and where, as he says, he served a seven years' apprenticeship to the classics. At the age of eighteen he was removed, in order to be articled to an attorney. Having passed through this training-with the future Lord Chancellor Thurlow for his fellow-clerk-Cowper, in 1754, was called to the bar. He never made the law a study: in the solicitor's office he and Thurlow were constantly employed from morning to night_in_giggling and making giggle,' and in his chambers in the Temple he wrote gay verses, and associated with Bonnel Thornton, Colman, Lloyd, and other wits. He contributed a few papers to the Connoisseur' and to the St. James's Chronicle,' both conducted by his friends. Darker days were at hand.

Cowper's father was now dead, his patrimony was small, and he was in his thirty-second year, almost unprovided with an aim,' for the law was with him a mere nominal profession. In this crisis of his fortunes his kinsman, Major Cowper, presented him to the office

He

of clerk of the journals to the House of Lords-a desirable and lucrative appointment. Cowper accepted it; but the labour of studying the forms of procedure, and the dread of qualifying himself by appearing at the bar of the House of Lords, plunged him in the deepest misery and distress. The seeds of insanity were then in his frame; and after brooding over his fancied ills till reason had fled, he attempted to commit suicide. Happily this desperate effort failed; the appointment was given up, and Cowper was removed to a private madhouse at St. Albans, kept by Dr. Cotton. The cloud of horror gradually passed away, and on his recovery, he resolved to withdraw entirely from the society and business of the world. had still a small portion of his funds left, and his friends subscribed a further sum, to enable him to live frugally in retirement. The bright hopes of Cowper's youth seemed thus to have all vanished: his prospects of advancement in the world were gone; and in the new-born zeal of his religious fervour, his friends might well doubt whether his reason had been completely restored. He retired to the town of Huntingdon, near Cambridge, where his brother resided, and there formed an intimacy with the family of the Rev. Morley Unwin, a clergyman resident in the place. He was adopted as one of the family; and when Mr. Unwin himself was suddenly removed, the same connection was continued with his widow. Death only could sever a tie so strongly knit-cemented by mutual faith and friendship, and by sorrows of which the world knew nothing. To the latest generation the name of Mary Unwin will be united with that of Cowper, partaker of his fame as of his sad decline:

By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light.

After the death of Mr. Unwin in 1767, the family were advised by the Rev. John Newton—a remarkable man in many respects-to fix their abode at Olney, in the northern division of Buckinghamshire, where Mr. Newton himself officiated as curate. This was accordingly done, and Cowper removed with them to a spot which he has consecrated by his genius. He had still the river Õuse with him, as at Huntingdon, but the scenery is more varied and attractive, and abounds in fine retired walks. His life was that of a religious recluse; he ceased corresponding with his friends, and associated only with Mrs. Unwin and Newton. The latter engaged his assistance in writing a volume of hymns, but his morbid melancholy gained ground, and in 1773 it became a case of decided insanity. About two years were passed in this unhappy state. The poet, as appears from a diary kept by Newton, would have been married to Mrs. Unwin but for this calamity. On his recovery, Cowper took to gardening, rearing hares, drawing landscapes, and composing poetry. The latter was fortunately the most permanent enjoyment; and its fruits appeared in a volume of poems published in 1782. The sale of the work was slow; but his friends were eager in its praise, and it received the approbation of