the happiest manner, the peculiar powers of Mr. Moultrie's genius. He is most at home in the tender and pathetic, and in the illustration of the domestic affections.

NOTE. These Miniature Outlines are merely a collection of brief notices written for the editorial department of a literary journal. They are very incomplete, and are perhaps open to the charge of dogmatism and pretension, coming as they now do from an individual author. As editorial criticisms a certain air of assumption and decision was in some degree excusable. There are many admirable writers, of whom no mention is here made, but who ought to have found a place in this collection, had it been intended as a full account of the literati of the day.

THE PAST YEAR.

DEPARTED Year! now sunk to rest
On dark oblivion's dreamless breast;-
Lost offspring of mysterious Time!
What mortal crowds of every clime,
In youth and infancy and age
That 'companied thy pilgrimage,
With thee beyond the limits lie
That mock the keenest human eye!

What eager thoughts and golden schemes,
And prospects fair and flattering dreams,
Vanished before the morning light

That scared thy latest living night!
What change of actors and of scene
Within thy narrow span hath been!
And yet though brief thy path, too long
It seemed to those in Life's wild throng,
Who looked towards thy closed career
With hopes now withered on thy bier!

TEN YEARS AND MORE.

ΤΟ

I.

TEN years and more-ten years and more,

Ten years and more-ten years and more!—

A cloud is on my heart!

For like the knell of pleasures o'er

When Life's best dreams depart,

These words from drear Oblivion's pall
Dim throngs of shrouded hopes recall.

III.

Ten years and more--ten years and more !These breathings of the past-

These murmurs on Time's twilight shore

Far heard o'er memory's waste,'

Arrest awhile the dreaming ear

Like sounds that home-sick wanderers hear.

IV.

Ten years and more!-ten years and more!-

With sad reverted gaze

I mark the long road travelled o'er
In anguish and amaze !

How many a fearful path was crost!

How many a dear companion lost!

V.

Ten years and more!-ten years and more

Have all been overcast ;
And yet 'tis idle to deplore

The darkness of the past;

'Twere better that my soul should hail
The stars that pierce the future's veil.

STANZAS,

ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG OFFICER IN INDIA.

OH! dear were the beautiful dreams of his youth,
When young Hope was deemed the fair daughter of Truth!
The bright star of glory had led him astray

And shed its first glimmer of light on his way!

But life's sun is sunk, from the scene it hath passed,
And the bright tints of morn are but shadows at last.
The victim of sickness, dread scourge of the land,
He sleeps the last sleep on a far foreign strand!

SONG.

I.

O'ER the lake's smiling surface when kissed by the moon-
On the green hills at sunrise-in still woods at noon-
In isles fairy-haunted-in caves on the shore-

Hath the poet oft heard mystic music before.

II.

But Oh, never, Oh, never have tones such as thine

So entrancing and dream-like-so truly divine-
Ever breathed in his ear, or with magical art

So bewildered his spirit, or melted his heart!

III.

If the fragrance of spring when the dew's on the ground,
And the fair hues of flowers, were turned into sound-

If the rich glow of sunset-the gay tints of morn,
Could speak a sweet language to scenes they adorn-

IV.

If the looks of the lovely-if virtue and worth-
And all that is brightest and best on the earth-
Were but made in one musical spell to combine,
It would seem, dear Enchantress, an echo of thine!

SHYLOCK.

Ir is strange how rarely the character of Shylock has been justly represented on the stage. I have seen it performed by many respectable actors, but Kean was the only one who personated the Jew with judgment and fidelity;-other actors seemed to forget that Shylock is supposed to have lived in a time and country in which his tribe were bitterly persecuted, and kept in a state of subjection and alarm. The Jews were regarded as a species of moral lepers, with whom it was dangerous and disgraceful to associate. Shylock himself repeatedly avows, that he had been exposed to the most intolerable insults from the Christians, and until the incident of the bond, which showed more ingenuity than boldness, he does not appear to have once dared to retaliate. Had he attempted to take the law into his own hands, he would have been crushed like some obnoxious animal. His tribe were despised and defenceless outcasts. The Christians thought it no sin to treat them as pariahs. Antonio

"A kinder gentleman walks not the earth"

had spit upon Shylock's beard and called him dog; yet he applies to him in his necessities without a moment's hesitation, as if nothing likely to excite the active hostility of a Jew had occurred between them. He even replies to Shylock, when he reminds him of these indignities,

"I am as like to call thee so again,

To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too."

He then continues the pecuniary negociation, and when Shylock offers him the money, and says he will take "no doit of usance," but merely stipulate for the bond in "

a merry sport," this un