The proud banner, that with prayer Had been consecrated there. And the nuns' sweet hymn was heard the while, Take thy banner!-may it wave Spare him-he our love hath shared- Take thy banner !—and if e'er Thou shouldst press the soldier's bier, To the tread of mournful feet, And the warrior took that banner proud, H. W. L LOVE ASLEEP. Wake him not, he dreams of bliss; He smiles, and on his opening lip He sighs, 't is not the sigh of wo; He speaks, it is his dear one's name; He wakes! the silly little boy, Oh! Love, renew thy dreams again. C. SONG. "Tis the season of joy and delight, The season of fresh-springing flowers; Fair Nature is loud in her transport of pleasure, And scatters the blossoms while tilting the spray; How mild is the Zephyr that blows! What fragrance his balmy wings bear He breathes as if fearful to brush from the rose The stream flowing gently beside the green cresses She seems some fond mother, who, while she caresses, Look out then on Nature awhile, Observe her inviting thee now,— Benevolence beams in her sun-shiny smile, And blandishment sits on her brow: Come stray with me, love, where the fountains are flowing, And wild flowers cluster to drink of the stream; While watching the lily and daffodil blowing, No moment of bliss shall so exquisite seem; While Nature invites thee, oh! why then delay; While Joy is still waking, away! love, away! D. CRITICAL NOTICES. Quarterly Review for March, 1825. MR GIFFORD, who, as our readers probably know, has been rather unsparing of his abuse of this country, closed his labours as editor of this work with the last number. It will hereafter be conducted by Mr J. Coleridge, brother of the poet. Assurances have been given and circulated pretty freely in our public papers, that the work will henceforth assume a different tone towards the United States; and we hope they have been given by those who are authorized to pledge the character of the most popular and extensively circulated journal of the kind printed in Great Britain. There is certainly nothing in this number to contradict the report; and a few sentences may be found, which seem to confirm it. It contains, besides several lighter and interesting reviews of popular books recently published, a long article on the "Funding System;" and another on the comparative advantages of " Canals and Rail-roads." It is shown conclusively, that the advantages are decidedly in favour of the latter, and on the following grounds: "The disadvantages of a canal are numerous. The frost at one season of the year entirely puts a stop to all conveyance of goods; and the drought at another renders it necessary to proceed with half cargoes. A rail-road is exempt from both these serious drawbacks; and even if snow-blocked, nothing can be so easy as to send forward a scraper at the front of the steam-carriage to clear it as it proceeds. "The speed, by which goods can be conveyed on a rail-road, can be so regulated as to be certain and constant, while boats are frequently delayed for hours at the lockages of a canal. This speed besides is limited on canals, as we shall presently show, but unlimited, as far as the power of steam can be made to exceed the power of friction, on rail-roads. To what extent, with safety and convenience, this advantage is capable of being carried, nothing but experience can determine. Rail-roads may be made to branch out in every direction to accommodate the traffic of the country, whatever be the nature of the surface ;* the possibility of carrying branches from a canal in any direction must depend entirely on the surface, and a supply of water. "In every case, with regard to speed and the weight to be moved, the rail-road has the advantage, except when that speed is less than 2.82 miles an hour, when it is in favour of the canal,-but even this small advantage is lost by the circuitous windings of the one, and the direct line of the other." A horse will draw, at the rate of two miles an hour, about three times as much upon a canal as upon a rail-road; but the expense of constructing the canal will also be three times as great; so that neither, in this point of view and under these circumstances, seems to have an advantage over the other. But when the speed is increased, the power of the horse is rapidly diminished, and, at thirteen miles per hour, he can exert no power at all. "A stationary engine will pass the wagons up and down any hill that may occur in the line." "But this diminution of strength in proportion to the speed of the animal is not the only disadvantage; the resistance of any body floating in the water increases as the square of the velocity; thus whatever power is required to move a floating body with any given velocity, it will require four times that power to give it twice that velocity, and nine times that power to give it three times that velocity. Nor is this all. The horse, when put to the speed of four miles an hour, can exert only a force of eighty-one pounds, a loss equal to that of two horses at that speed. It would therefore require no less than six horses to draw along a canal, at the rate of four miles an hour, the same load that one horse would draw at the rate of two miles an hour. "The application of steam to canal navigation, if practicable, would, to a certain degree, supply the irremediable defect of that of horses; that is to say, an engine of 16 horse power would drag the same load at the rate of eight miles an hour, that one horse would do at the rate of two miles an hour; but the result would be destructive to the canal. The rapid motion of the wheels would cause such an agitation of the water, as to wash down its banks. Several attempts have been made to move the barges in canals without disturbing the water; and Mr Perkins has succeeded in this to a certain extent, by a sort of perpetual sculler at the stern, in the shape of the four arms of a windmill's sails, moving in pairs, in a contrary direction; but as increased speed must cause an accumulation of the water, which, on falling from the vessel against the banks of a narrow canal, would create the mischief complained of, it would seem that all improvement, as to speed on canals, is nearly, if not altogether, hopeless." The writer of an article on "Artizans and Machinery," though he acknowledges the correctness of the policy, which encourages an unrestricted system of trade, contends that the exportation of machinery is one of the cases wisely to be excepted from the wisest rule. "That considerable injury would accrue to the English manufacturer, by extending this system of free trade to machinery, seems almost universally admitted; and the principal reason hitherto assigned for the repeal is, that by withholding these machines from the French, we compel them to make them for themselves, and that ultimately they will equal ours in excellence. In the first place, they have as yet only made a small quantity, and those of a very inferior quality. In the next place, supposing that in process of time they will gain skill and experience, that seems scarcely a reason for giving them now, what it must cost them much time to acquire, nor for enabling them at once to profit by the numerous experiments, and the many years' labour of Great Britain, and by furnishing them with all our machinery, place them, in a single day, on that very elevation, to attain which has cost our manufacturers such an expense both of money and of time." The review of 66 Daru's Venice" is a rapid sketch of the origin, progress, decline, and final extinction of that interesting republic. In the article on "The Church in Ireland," we have a defence of the tithe system. It is contended, that the church have a right to their tenth prior to and stronger, than the landholders have to the remaining nine parts Because, amidst the revolutions in the history of the coun. try, the nine parts of the land have been repeatedly forfeited to the crown, and have changed owners by its authority; while the tenth has been steadily appropriated to the church. So on this ground the government itself could not abolish tithes in Ireland, without a more flagrant act of injustice to the church, than they would be guilty of by taking the other nine parts from the landholders, and appropriating them to other owners. And, although the country is indirectly admitted to be miserable in the last degree, it is contended, that its miseries are, and ever have been, to be attributed to other causes than the church, and principally to the landholders. The facts cited in this article differ widely, in some instances, from those cited in the article on the same subject in the last number of the Edinburgh Review, of which we gave a notice in our last. And the reasoning and conclusions differ still more widely from those of that article; but our limits forbid us to go into the same extended analysis, which we then indulged. The review of "Washington Irving's Tales" is interesting to us, as all foreign notices of American writers are interesting to Americans. We suspect, however, it would have been quite as agreeable to Mr Irving, as well as to his friends on this side of the water, if the reviewers had not seemed to take so much credit to themselves for their kindness and candour in admitting him to the " English guild of authorship." We quote a few sentences, which express as unqualified praise as any thing in the article. Of Knickerbocker's humourous History of New York, they say: "To us it is a tantalizing book, of which all that we understand is so good, and affords us so much pleasure, even through an imperfect acquaintance with it, that we cannot but conclude that a thorough knowledge of the whole point in every part would be a treat indeed. We may compare it now to a book of grotesque hieroglyphics, in a great measure unintelligible, but intrinsically diverting from the humour and imagination which their fantastical combinations display." The following is their estimate of Mr Irving's talents, and their very graceful and friendly leave of him. "It may be doubted, perhaps, whether Mr Irving would succeed in novels of a serious and romantic cast, requiring, as they do, heightening touches of the savage and gloomy passions. Every thing in his style and conceptions is of a happy and riant nature, except when saddened for a moment by those touches of pathos which come and pass like April clouds; and the darker shades of revenge, remorse, and ominous presage, which hang over the Bride of Lammermoor, like the thunder-cloud over Wolf's crag, appear never to gather over his mental horizon. But there is a class of novel for which he possesses every requisite, and which is at once popular and capable of great improvement: the art of blending the gay, the pensive, and the whimsical, without jarring and abrupt transitions, so as to take by surprise the stubborn reader, who resists the avowed design of making him wretched, is so rare a gift, as to have compensated in the case of Sterne, for want of plot, and digressions which often degenerate into stark nonsense; and combining, as Mr Irving does, so large a share of the indescribable humour of Sterne with a manly tone of moral feeling, of which the latter was incapable, we are convinced that moderate labour and perseverance might enable him to make material additions to our literature in the style to which we allude. "Whether or not however we are likely to see our wishes realized, |