North Carolina Newspapers

The Mcse! whate'er the Muse inspires, My souHhe tuneful strain admires....scoTT. rv Jf V """If TOR 1. E WEsTEBS CASlOUSUi". ENIGMA. It rose with the worldwith the world it shall last: Appeared midst the flood, in ages long past, Thence, after the storm awhile it had breasted, Arrived at Mount Arrarat, where the ark rested; round refuge with Noah, took wing with the Dove, Return M with the olive-branch, soar'd then above ; "Whence, viewing the Dome, it sought for a home "With Komulus, founder and first king of I'omc : Where in such estiination'twasheldby the nation, That, doubtless, it soon was decreed an oration. With the heathens, of old, its name is enroll'd, Except with old Plutus, that lover cf gold, And Dla, and Mars, with a few others more, Who refused to adopt the badge which it wore. Yet with thundering Jove 'twas oft known to rove, And always was found amid the cool grove : "Where blust'ring JKolus, and mirth loving Momus, With tuneful Apollo, all joined in full chorus Its presence to greet: whilst encircled by Flora, And blushing Aurora, with witty Pandora, Its bliss seemed complete ; as sweet Echo resounding Around the gay wood-nymphs, who lightly ca?ne bounding, And knelt at its throne, with the fondest devotion, Whilst their leader exclaim'd, with tearful emo tion, Thou source of all order! thou centre cf good! If rightly thou art by frail men understood Without thee our race had, long since, been ex tinct, As our being with thine is insep'rably linkM. Exulting we greet thee, for thine we are ever, No faction can part us, no force dissever! And now, gentle reader, I bid you adieu, Since my problem thus clearly is brought to your fl view: yet should there a doubt in your bosom remain, In the following lines I more fully explain : 'Tis seen mid the clouds, of orbicular form, And ever appears in the midst of a storm. The pride of a florist that boasts no perfume, An unfading amaranth always i:i bloo m MADCLLi. Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its Havor. HISTORICAL. TUB CIlUS.iDES. Extracts from the History of the Crusades, for the recovery and possession of the Holy Land. By Charles JSIiUs London, 1320. , Fmm the Wissiojiari'.... Concluded.' The fifth crusade was promoted by the preaching of Fulk, of the town of Neuilly, in France, a worthy succes sor of St. Bernard, and by the patron age of Innocent III., who at the early age of 3G was seated in the papal chair. The French croises joined the Ital ian crusaders under the marquis of Montferrat, and finally arrived at Ve nice. But instead of proceeding on their first conceived enterprise, they were induced to assist the Venetians, in the sbujuguion of Zara, off the Dal matian coast, and afterwards, in com pany with the Genoese, in that cele brated attack of Constantinople, which led to its subjection "to the Latin em pire. A sixth crusade was set on foot by the same pope, Innocent, which was embraced with ardour by Hungary and the Lower Germany; and under the conduct of Frederick II. the city of Jerusalem was again taken, and the Holy Sepulchre recovered a second time from the Moslems. But nine years after the emperor had left Pales tine, the sultan of Egypt made head against the Christian force there, drove the Latins out of Jerusalem, and over threw the tower of David, which un til that time had always been regarded as sacred bv all classes of religionists. This was the signal for a new crusade. While the Asiatick Christians were bu sied in intrigues of negotiation, the English barons met at Northampton ; ;md in the spring of the vear 1240, liichard earl of Cornwall, William sur nxmcd Longsword, Theodore, the pri or of the Hospitallers, and many oth ers of the nobility, embarked at Dover. The earl of Cornwall, on his arrival in the Holy Land, marched to Jaffa ; but as the sultan of Egypt, then at war with Damascus, sent to offer him terms of pt nee, he prudently seized the benefits of negotiation, accepted a renunciation of Jerusalem, Bertius, Nazareth, Beth Jchem, and most of the IIolv Land ; and after taking active measures which led to the ratification of the treaty, hav ing accomplished the great object of this crusade, he returned to Europe, and was hailed in every town as the de liverer of the Sepulchre. For two years Christianity was the only religion established in Jerusalem, when a new enemy arose, more dreadful than the Moslems. The great Tartarian king, Jenghis Khan, and his successors, had obliterated the vast empire of Kho- rasm; and the storm now rolled on ward to Egypt and Palestine. The walls of Jerusalem were in too ruinous a state to protect the inhabitants ; ma ny of them, with the' cavaliers, aban doned the city; and when the Khoras- mians entered it, they spared neither sex nor age. The successes of these barbarians gave birth to the eighth cru sade. Pope Innocent IV. convoked a council at Lyons, 1245; and Louis IX. of France, influenced by its deter minations, set sail three vears after for igypt, and captured Damietta. They were there joined by 200 English knights, under William Longsword, and took the road to Cairo. On their way they endeavored to storm Mas saura ; in the fury of the engagement, the count of Artois and the English leader were both slain. V amine and disease thinned the number of the sup vivers ; the king himself was made prisoner, and for his freedom he sur rendered the city of Damietta ; fre quent disappointments exhausted the spring of hope, and in 1254 he return ed to France. In 12G8 Antioch was taken by the Mamelukes ; and Louis again spread his sails for the Holy Land, GO,000 soldiers accompanying him. On his voyage he made a di version on the African coast, and took Carthage ; but in August he was smit, and cut off by a pestilential disease. Before the news of this calamitous event reached England, Edward Plan tngenet, with only a thousand men, had embarked for Palestine. All the Lat in barons crowded around his banner, and at the head of TOOO troops he as- sainted ana took iNazaretti. rrom Jaffa he marched to Acre. After he had been fourteen months in Acre, the sultan of Egypt offered peace. Ed ward seized this occasion of leaving the Holy Land ; for his force was too small for the achievement of any great action, and his father had implored his return. Gregory IX. made a last at tempt for a new crusade, but with his death terminated every preparation. In 1291 the Mameluke Tartars of E gypt took Acre, the last strong hold of the Christians. Such as survived the carnage fled to Cyprus and Palestine was forever lost to the Europeans. We have thus given a brief account of the most important events of the nine crusades. We feel no sorrow at the final doom of the crusades, because : in its origin the war was iniquitous and unjust. fc 1 he blood oj man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of more effectually to his poetical impul man. It is well shed for our family for ses, and not have reminded us so often our friends, for our God, for our kind, of the critic and rhetorician. There The rest is vanity, the rest is crime. Abridged from the London '1 Investigator." ritOX THE LONDON EXAMINER. THOMAS CA.MPUBLL. We learn, from a memoir of Mr. Campbell in the magazines, that he was born at Glasgow, in the year 1777, and christened by the hand of the ven erable Dr. Keid. He received the ru diments of education at the grammar- school of his native city, under the tui- J tionof Dr. David Alison, a man equal- j ly celebrated for the skill and kindness of his mode of imparting knowledge ; and at twelve, was removed to the Uni versity in the same place. Here he became so diligent and successful, that he gained prizes every year. He par ticularly distinguished himself by translations from the Greek drama ; some of which, perhaps, are those which he has preserved at the end of his Pleasures of Hope, The fondness is natural ; but they are hardly worthy of their place. At Glasgow he also attended the philosophical lectures of Dr. Millar, bv whom he is said to have been habituated to that liberality of opinion, which pervades all his wri tings. In these, we presume, are in cluded some anonymous ones of a po litical nature, which he is supposed to have written more from a sense of du ty than choice, but which are distin guished, we believe, for the fieedom of their politics Mr. Campbell being a Whig of the old school. On quil ting Glasgow, our author lived for a short time in Argyleshire, and then removed to Edinburgh, where he sur prised his new and eminent friends, Stewart, Playfair, and others, with the production of his Pleasures of Hope, a poem written at twenty, and publish ed at twenty-one. In 1S00, he made a tour in Germany, where he had the pleasure of passing a day with Klop stock. We have had the pleasure of fnllinnr into iTr. Cnmnhf1!!' rnmninv , . , . . , i i i several times, and think we have heard nim relate, that ne nacl tne singular stately verses. We think we remem ber also, that he spoke of hearing the French army singing one of their na tional hymns before the engagement, and of seeing their cavalry enter the town, wiping their bloody swords on their horses' manes. But whether he related this of himself or indeed whether others told it us of him, we must leave among those doubtful re collections, which are apt, at a distance of time, to put one's veracity upon its candour. On his return from Germa ny, Mr. Campbell visited London for the first time ; and in 1803, upon mar rying, retired to Sydenham in Kent, where hehas resided eversince. His se cond and latest volumes of poems, con taining Gertrude of Wyoming, was pub lished in 1809. Not long afterwards, he accepted the appointment of Pro fessor of Poetry to the Royal Institu tion ; and he has delivered lectures in that character, which appear from time to time at the head of the New Monthly Magazine. In his person, Mr. Campbell is per haps under the middle height, with a handsome face, inclining to too much delicacy of features, and a somewhat prim expression about the mouth. His eyes are keen and expressive ; his voice apt to ascend into sharpness, with a considerable Scotch tone. He has experienced the usual sickness of i i i . : the sedentary and industrious. The writer of a sketch of Mr. Campbell's life in the Magazines, is inclined to attribute the best part of his poetry to his assiduous study at college ; and to doubt, whether he would have made so great an impres- sion on the public, "had he not receiv- cd precisely that education which he did. We are inclined to suspect, on the other hand, that Mr. Campbell's "precise" education was far from be ing the best in the world lor a man of imagination and feeling. We cannot but think we see in it the main cause why he has not impressed the public still more, and ventured to entertain it oftener. Doubtless, it must have found in him something liable to be thus con trolled. He had not the oily richness in him, which enabled Thomson to slip through the cold hands of critics and professors, and tumble into the sunnier waters. But we will venture to say. that if he had gained fewer prizes at college, or been less studious of Latin and lectures, he would have given way i was an inauspicious look in the title of his first production, the Pleasures of Hope. It seemed written, not only because Mr. Roger's Pleasures of Memorn had been welcomed into the critical circles, but because it was the next thing to writing a prose theme up on the Utility oj Expectation. A youth might have been seduced into this by the force of imitation ; but on reading the poem, it is impossible not to be struck with the willing union of the author's genius and rhetoric. The rhetoric keeps a perverse pace with the poetry. The writer is eternally balan cing his sentences, rounding his pe riods, epigrammatizing his paragraphs; and yet all the while he exhibits so much imagination and sensibility, that one longs to have rescued his too deli cate wings from the clippings and stintings of the school, and set him free to wander about the universe. Rhyme, with him, becomes a real chain. He gives the finest glances about him, and afar off, like a bird ; spreads his pinions, as it to sweep to his object ; and is pulled back by his string, into a chirp and a flutter. He always seems daunted and anxious. His versification is of the. most receiv ed fashion ; his boldest imaginings re coil into the coldest and most custo mary personifications. If he could have given up his pretty finishing com mon-places, his sensibility would sometimes have wanted nothing of I vigour as well as tenderness : Ye, at the dead of night, by Lonna's steep, The seaman's cry was heard along the deep ; There, on his funeral waters, dark and wild, The dying father blest his darling child : Oh ! Mercy shield her innocence, he cried, Jent on the pravcr his burstivtr hart, and died. fortune of witnessing, from the top of I rceze every standard-sheet, anahusli the drum ! , . ..i r u Horseman and horse confess d the bitter pang, a convent, the great battle of Hohcn- w arms audv:irriors fcH with hollow clang? linden, upon which he has written some Yet ere he sunk in nature's last repose, The following passage contains most of his beauties and defects : Yet there, perhaps, may darker scenes obtrude, Than Fancy fashions in her wildest mood ; There shall he pause, with horrent brow, to rate AVhat millions died that Ca:sar might be great ! Or learn the fate that bleeding thousands bore, March'd by their Charles to Dnieper's swampy shore : First, m his wounds, and shivering m the blast, ; The Swc JIsh soIdier sunk and -iWd his last ! I File after hie the stormy showers benumb, Ere life's warm torrent to the fountain froze, The dingvman to Sweden turn'd his eye, Thought of his home, and closed it with a sigh ! Imperial I'ride look'd sullen on his plight, And Charles beheld nor shudder'd at the sight! Here is an event of so deep and na tural an interest, that the author might surely have had faith enough in it to leave out his turns, his hyphens, and his Latinitics. The dying man think ing of his home, which is well bor rowed from Virgil, the awful cir cumstance of the drum's hushing, and those three common words, " the bitter pang," are in the finest taste ; but the horse and horseman must confess this pang, because confess is Latin and critical. Horrent brow is another un seasonly classical! ty, which cannot pos sibly affect the reader like common words ; and the antithesis, instead cf the sentiment, is visibly put before us in the pause of the last line. In the concluding paragraph of the poem Mr. Campbell has ventured upon giving one solitary pause in the middle cf his couplet. It has a fine effect, and the whole passage is deservedly admired ; yet the last couplet, in our opinion, spoils the awful generalization of the rest, by introducing Hope again in her own allegorical person, which turns it into a sort of vignette. We should not have said so much of this early poem, had the line been ! more strongly marked between : .I.-- l l : - i the powers that produced it, and those oi his later ones; The Gertrude of Wyoming, however, is a higher thing, and has stuff in it that should have made it still better. The author here takes heart, and seems resolved to return to Spenser, and the i uncritical side of poetry ; but his heart fails him. He only hampers himself with Spenser s stanza, and is worried the more with classical inversions and gentilities. He does not like that his hero should wear a common hat and boots ; so he spoils a beautiful situation after the following critical fashion : A steed, Avhose rein hung loosely o'er his arm, lie led dismounted; ere his leisure pace, Amid the brown leaves, could her ear alarm, Close he had come, and worshipped for a space Those downcast features : she her lovely face Uplift On one whose lineament and frame Were youth and manhood's intermingled grace : Iberian sec?nd his boot his robe the same, And well the Spanish plume his lofty looks became.- This is surely arrant trifling, and makes us think of the very things it would have us forget. Yet how pretty is his worshipping a space tk those downcast features !" We are in love, and al ways have been, with his Gertrude, being very faithful in our varieties of attachment. We have admired, ever since the year 1809, her lady-like in habitation of the American forests ; albeit she is not quite robust enough for a wood-nymph. She is still, and will for ever be found there, in spite of the author's report of her death, and as long as gentle creatures, who can not help being ladies, long to realize such dreams with their lovers. We like her laughing and crying over Shak speare in her favourite valley, the " early fox" who u appeared in mo mentary view," " the stock-dove plain ing through its gloom profound," the aloes with 41 their everlasting arms," and last, not least, the nuptial hour " ineffable," "While, here and there, a solitary star Flush'd in the darkening firmament of June. Lines like these we repeat in our sum mer loiterings, as we would remember an air of Sacchini or Paesiello. We like too what every body likes too, the high-hearted Indian savage, "the stoic of the woods the man without a tear ;" not omitting the picture of his bringing the little white boy with him, which the critics objected to, "like Morning brought by Night." As to the passage which precedes the wild descant into which he bursts out, when the prostrate Waldegrave, after the death of his bride, is observed con vulsively shivering with anguish under the cloak that has been thrown over kirn, our eves dazzle whenever we read it, and we are glad to pick a quarrel with the author for ever producing any thing inferior. He certainly has the faculties of a real poet ; and it is not the fault of the poets of his country that he has net become a greater. ANECDOTES FROM LADY MORGAN'S "ITALY." This relic (in the Church of Saint Daminick, at Bologna) is the body of St. Dominick, who died in his own adjoining convent in 1221 ; at least, it was universally believed that the body had kept its ground, until the revolu tion, when, among other efforts made to disturb social order, suspicions were expressed that the body of Saint Dom inick never had inhabited his shrine: and it was further declared that the body was then in Spain, though the head was buried under the great altar of the church at Bologna. The pious took the alarm ; the tributary votarists, who had hung the shrines with silver hearts and golden crosses, trembled lest they had misplaced their treasures, and, on the restoration, the Pope, to silence surmises again renewed, depu ted a Cardinal to visit the shrine of Saint Dominick, to descend into his tomb, and to report accordingly. The. Cardinal, with his search-warrant from St. Peter's, was received most pontifi cally at the gates of the Church, by the choir, conducted with solemnity to the mouth of the tomb, and permitted to descend alone. The resurrection of the body of St. Dominick could scarce ly have excited a more intense curios ity than was exhibited by the populace, who awaited for the re-ascension of the Cardinal. His Eminence at last arose ; but, whatever were the "Secrets of the prisonhouse" he had penetrated, they remain to this day unknown, nor " Pass'd those lips, in holy silence seal'd." En-aitendant, the Bolognese were or dered to do homage to the body of the Saint till further orders. The well known Abbate Mezzofante Librarian to the Institute of Bologna, was of our party; Conversing with this very learned person on the subject of his " Forty Languages ," he smiled at the exaggeration ; and said, though he had gone over the outline of forty languages, he was not master of them ; as he had dropped such as had not books worthreading. His Greek Mas ter, being a Spaniard, taught him Span ish. The German, Polish, Bohemian, and Hungarian tongues,- he originally acquired during the occupation of Bo logna by the Austrian power; and af terwards he had learned French, from the French, and English by reading and by conversing with English travel lers. With all this superfluity of languages,- he spoke nothing but Bolog nese in his own family. With us he always spoke English, and with scarce ly any accent, though, I believe, he has never been out of Bologna ; his turn of phrase, and peculiar selection of words, were those of the Spectator, and it is probable he was most conver sant with the English works of that day. The Abbate Mezzofante was Professor of Greek and Oriental lan guages under the French ; when Bo naparte abolished the Greek Professor ship, Mezzofante was pensioned; he was again made Greek Professor by the Austrians, again set aside by the French, and again restored by the Pope. Bologna, subdued by force as she now is, has enjoyed all the distinction which might have made the glory of a greater state, and more extended do minion. Renowned for her ancient love of independence, and struggles to maintain it ; for the comparative libe rality of her government, whatever name or form it assumed ; for the im mortal school which produced her Ca racci, her Guido, and her Domenichi no ; for the learning of her University, and the amenity and taste of her ele gant Literati ; and last, and not least, for her lovely women she has, in all periods of Italian story, formed a prom inent figure ; and as she has been the last to suffer the degradation which eventually must fall upon the enslaved, so she will rise amongst the foremost to rally when those destructive despot isms shall fall, whose continuance would amount to a violation of the laws of Nature. When the epoch of Italian deliverance shall arrive, the central position of this city, and the awakened character of its inhabitants, will render it a nucleus of public opin ion, and will give to it a decided influ ence upon the destinies of the Penin sula. THE SMALL ACTOR. "When any sentence in a play happens to hit on an author's peculiarit', the effect is sometimes very ridiculous. In a part which Mr. Garrick used to perform, and in vhich he had to pro nounce a long speech to the fair and cruel object, of his afFections, which ends with I fear I may seem xittle in your eyes " D d odd, if you don't," bawled a fellow from the upper gallery. Carrick never repeated the lines afterwards.