the head. This is greatly to be deplored; for if one kind of development invariably accompanies high intelligence and moral cultivation, and another is concomitant with weak intellectual and moral powers, the best proofs and illustrations of the accuracy of delineations of manners would be found in the development of brain which accompanied them.

Plate 9. contains a representation of the skull of King Robert Bruce, taken from a cast made by Mr. Scoular, when the remains of Bruce were re-interred in 1819.

"On examining his skull," says Sir George, "we find, that while it indicates but middling talent, it exhibits all the qualities of the leader and the warrior; qualities which, in the time of Bruce, were more admired than any others which fall to the lot of man. We see Courage largely developed, and Firmness in great proportion; as well as Love of Approbation and Selfesteem. Destructiveness, too, is large; and there is no doubt that Cumming fell by the hand of Bruce. Secretiveness, so necessary to a man who undertakes the management of public affairs, is also large; but the sense of justice, even when love of approbation and destructiveness were inactive, seems to have been scarcely sufficient to guide him in the path of rectitude. Veneration is well marked. But Benevolence is not particularly prominent. The former led him to regret that he had not accomplished his purpose of visiting the Holy Land, and to direct that his heart should be carried thither after his death."" If the skull found be really that of Bruce, of which there is no reason to doubt, it is certain that, whatever his conduct may have been, his feelings were those of a man of quick perception, whose courage was equal to his ambition; his perseverance equal to his confidence in his prowess; his ferocity of temper subservient to these; and his intelligence no greater than to be sufficient to enable him to know how to manage the Scotch as they then were, and to make his own use of the name and character of a hero who had conquered the enemies of his country. He has been celebrated for nothing else; and no acts are ascribed to him, to mark him as a being possessed of superior wisdom, or of a character particularly amiable."

The remaining plates contain portraits of Dr. Spurzheim; Mr. Bewick, the celebrated engraver on wood; Handel; Mr. Watt; Professor Playfair; the Admirable Crichton; Louvel, the assassin of the Duc de Berri; and a celebrated literary character. Our limits prevent us entering into details respecting these portraits; but we can safely say, that many interesting observations on the coincidence betwixt their development and mental powers are contained in the work. The portraits are derived from authentic sources, and the forms are in general well expressed.

Viewing the work as a popular introduction to Phrenology, we are disposed to give it considerable praise. The subject itself appears to us well deserving of serious examination. The voice of ridicule has been strongly, although perhaps it may ultimately appear, inconsiderately, raised against it. A certain portion of moral intrepidity, therefore-a consciousness of the power of truth to triumph over every obstacle, and an enthu siasm in its cause, not occurring in every individual, are requi

site to enable an author to advance boldly to the defence of these persecuted opinions, to avow his belief in, and attachment to them, and to stake his reputation as a philosopher and a man of sense, on their merits; and such qualities Sir George Mackenzie undoubtedly displays, by the very circumstance of his publishing the work before us with his name prefixed, and a frank avowal of his readiness to abide the result of the most rigid inquiry. If the decision of intelligent men shall ultimately be adverse, the risk in reputation by such a step is incalculable; but if it shall be favourable, his merit will be proportionally great. He will then be acknowledged to have investigated while others scoffed, and to have advanced to the support of truth, when others shrunk, in fear, from the opposition it encountered. The work itself, also, is distinct and perspicuous, and the subjects selected are interesting. The quantity of new matter is not great, but the impulse to inquiry which the work communicates is considerable. On the execution of the plates we must make one remark: Viewed as productions in the fine arts, they are deserving of little praise. There is a coarseness and unfinished appearance about some of them, which is neither creditable nor agreeable. We do not ascribe the fault to the eminent artist by whom they are executed; but suspect he has been stinted in his limits. The publisher appears to have considered the chief object of the plates to be, what it undoubtedly is, merely to represent development; and to have thought that this end would be as well accomplished by coarse lines as by fine ones. It is advisable, however, when attraction is in view, to present as many points of pleasing contemplation as possible; and we trust that, in the quality of engraving, the next phrenological publication will be more closely allied with the fine arts than the pre

sent.

ART. VI.-Julia Alpinula, with the Captive of Stamboul, and other Poems. By J. H. WIFFEN, Author of "Aonian Hours," &c. London: John Warren, Old Bond Street. 1820. Pp. 249. 12mo.

GOOD taste, it is our opinion, should have forbidden all amplification of the exquisite epitaph upon which the first poem in this volume is founded. When Lord Byron removed the moss, for the second time, from its simple tablet, his fine tact bestowed upon it a very few lines of verse, and a short note in prose; feeling, assuredly, that no more was necessary to enwreathe

with a garland of the poet's best-loved images, the name of Julia Alpinula. The music of that name-the touching sentiment on her monument, as if her gentle spirit breathed it from her tombinstantly call up a series of the most fascinating associations, pictures, and feelings that can regale the understanding, the imagination, or the heart. All that is innocent, and affectionate, and dutiful, and devoted, is embodied in the image of a female of the rarest beauty, halo'd with the sanctity of the purest-perhaps the only pure priesthood of the heathen world-bending her throbbing head at a tyrant's feet to supplicate a father's life, and repulsed to die on a father's grave-not a reproach uttered by her lips, to live engraved on her tomb-" Exorare patris necem non potui," telling her simple and pathetic tale and "vixi annos xxIII." not only marking the fact, but indicating the cause of her early death, in the spirit of the most perfect meekness. In all this there is a charm altogether irresistible. It is delightful to connect the ancient world with our own in such a picture, and claim kindred with it, in the best and fairest features of our common nature. It is because we are intensely interested by proofs of this extension of our sympathies, that it has been so often said that something equivalent to the modern novel,—a lively picture of ancient private life,-would attract us more than all the public histories of Greece and Rome. Here is a tale of private life, with the additional charm of truth, exceeding in simplicity and beauty the most exquisite episodes of Virgil himself; and, more impressively than Virgil's verse, recording, that the tenderest feelings occasionally found their home in the human heart, in times, as it may be said, of heroic virtues alone, or heroic crimes, when the kindly affections, the peculiar growth of a brighter dispensation, were almost necessarily sacrificed at the shrine of a cruel superstition. No heroine of modern fiction is to us so attractive as the beautiful, the gentle, the affectionate, the devoted, and withal the real Julia Alpinula.

From these more refined thoughts" of the soul's soft green," the mind's eye glances to others of sterner cast. Julia sank beneath the iron stroke of Roman despotism,―amid the gorgeousness of Roman magnificence, the vastness of Roman power, and the terror of Roman revolutions. But Julia had lived, too, amid the glories of Helvetian nature; loved the sublime mountain with its eternal snows, and the lovely valley with its purple vines: and beheld with delight, the same tints, and blooms, and mighty shadows, and boundless foliage, that charm the modern visitor of the enchanting region of Switzerland. Nor is the thought without its magic, that the sublimer features of the landscape are identical. Unchanged as when Julia gazed upor

its height, Mont Blanc looks down upon an ever-changing world, and tempts the spectator to address to it,-with the variation of one word,-Byron's splendid apostrophe to the ocean,

"Time writes no wrinkle on thy azure brow,

But as thou toweredst then, thou towerest now."

If it was "in fatis" that Julia's tragedy was to be amplified, we think we know poets whom the task would have suited better on the whole-always presuming that Byron declined it. We need only name Mrs. Hemans, who has wrought up so many of the striking incidents in history into the most powerful poetry. Although her taste and judgment would have produced a poem, with a vastly smaller sum of faults and a larger of beauties, we at the same time readily allow that the poem before us has passages of a very high order of merit. We were perhaps the more struck with these, that we arrived at them after making our way, somewhat irksomely, through a great deal of composition-for poetry or even verse we cannot call it-positively bad. In many a structure like unto stanzas, we found ourselves in confusion and obscurity inextricable; contending with strained thoughts, small conceits, prettinesses, and babyisms, and an endless and repulsive variety of affectations in language. We were likewise sorely tried in our rhythmical sensibilities by a greater quantity of hobbling measure, as well as bad rhyme, than we have met with in the same compass in any recent metrical composition. We think, however, that much of all this is yet curable, and had we space and time, we think we could assist the author, by a sort of index of his faults; and clear the way to his beauties, by separating the husks and shells of his defects.

The tale is the simplest upon which a poem could be founded. Julia was the daughter of Julius Alpinus, or Alpinulus, chief or governor of Aventicum, the capital of Helvetia, then an important Roman province. She was early dedicated to Diana, the tutelary goddess of Aventicum, and had the rank of priestess of her temple. In her twenty-third year, as her epitaph bears witness, the catastrophe happened which was alike fatal to her father and herself. Julius Alpinulus was the friend of the Emperor Galba, and took arms against the usurper Otho, who was advancing to Italy with the legions of Germany, which had proclaimed him Emperor. The profligate and vindictive Aulus Cecina, who, from personal hatred to Galba,-by whom he had been prosecuted for embezzling the public money,-had been chiefly instru mental in instigating that grand revolt, preceded Otho with a large force; and, traversing Helvetia, defeated Alpinulus, secured

his person, and, in spite of the prayers of the interesting daughter of his victim, put him to death. As the friend and partizan of Galba, Julius had the less chance with a conqueror who is recorded to have taken prompt and unsparing vengeance on his enemies. The inference from the epitaph is, that Julia died heart-broken, in consequence of this judicial murder of her beloved father. The inscription was discovered two centuries ago, and is one of the most exquisite Latin epitaphs ever inscribed on tablet. As Lord Byron's reading was obviously inaccurate,— and indeed, it had occurred to many to alter an important word or rather letter in its penult line *,-we make no apology for giving the inscription a place, on the authority of Gruter, the learned collector of the "Inscriptiones antiq; totius orbis Romani," who has furnished a fac-simile of the tablet, as well as the inscription. It runs thus:

AVENTICI.

JULIA. ALPINULA. HIC. JACEO.
INFELICIC. PATRIS. INFELIX. PROLES.
DEE. AVENT. SACERD.

EXORARE. PATRIS. NECEM. NON POTVI.
MALE. MORI. IN. FATIS. ILLI. ERAT.

VIXI. ANNOS. XXIII.

Mr. Wiffen commences his poem with some general reflections on the ceaseless course of time-a topic neither very new, nor handled by him in a very original way; to say nothing of his making Time not only course on, which he is known to do, but send wind and showers.

"With rapid wing, in ceaseless flight, Time sweeps along, and leaves in night,

Each brilliant aim of life's short

span,

The joys and agonies of man.
The storied arch that Glory rears,
He mantles with the moss of years;
O'er Beauty's urn in ivy creeps;
Shatters the tomb where Valour
sleeps;

And quenches, ne'er to burn again,
The fire in Freedom's awful fane.
He sends the beating wind and shower
Proudly to battle with the tower,

And when in ruin they have rent
Frieze, portico, and battlement,
With scoffing lip he seems to say,
Weak worm! thou too shalt be as
they;

'Soon passion's fire, shall leave thine
eye;

Ambition fade, and feeling die; 'Hope faithless find its splendid trust, Thy pride claim kindred with the dust,

And nothing more of thee remain, "Than what remembrance views with pain,

'A startling Vision, void and vain." In the next section there is much of what we plainly call nonsense. Time, says the poet, sends likewise the spring, the dew, the summer, and the autumn. Now, the dew Time does not send; and the seasons are only measured portions of Time, limbs or quarters of that allegorical personage, which it is a solecism to say he either bestows or withholds. This

From ille to illi.