TASSO has, perhaps, too much of the clinquant of his nation in various passages of his works. In one place, he paints the despair of one of his heroines, who is extravagantly in love, in the most ludicrous style: He mounts her on a gay palfrey, makes her ride full speed, with Cupid on one side, and Disdain on the other, like two greyhounds escorting her in her amorous peregrinations:

"Vassane e fugge; e van seco pur anco

Sdegno et amor, quasi duo veltri al fianco."

Rational beings will be apt to consider those puppies as a nuisance in the picture, while the admirers of the marvellous will exclaim" bravissimo! bravissimo!"

The Spaniards deal extensively in outré metaphor, of which let the following be proofs:

"Muchos siglos de hermosura,

En pocos annos de edad."

The lovely maid is young in years-but she possesses several centuries of beauty! A beauty of several centuries may be a very eligible object on the other side of the Pyrenees, but in this United Kingdom, it is more probable, that she would arrest the attention of the Antiquarian Society, than that of the bloods of any of the three capitals.

GONGORA, whom the Spaniards call the marvellous Poet, and the delight of the nation, is astonish

ingly metaphorical. In one of his high flying odes he says, that the Mancanares, the river which steals through Madrid, is the Duke of Rivulets, and the Viscount of Rivers.

"Mançanares, Mancanares,

Os que en todo el aguatismo
Estois Duque de Arroyos,
Y Visconde de los Rios."

The Poet's modesty would not allow him to call it a Grandee of Spain, for it is but a petty stream, which, in the summer season, is reduced to the fate of TANTALUS, ever calling for, and never obtaining, a drop of water.

The following abuse of metaphor is evident in the French Tragedy of "Pyramus and Thisbe ;” it is where, taking up the bloody dagger, with which her lover had killed himself, she exclaims

"Ah! voïci le poignard, qui du sang de son maître S'est souillé lâchement-il en rougit, le traître."

"Ah! coward blade, which drank, before his time, It's master's blood- -and blushes at the crime!"

To make a dagger guilty of a crime, is to intro duce a novel species of culprit into the court of APOLLO; but it must be a dagger of strange composition, indeed, of which the blade can be tinged with a blush.

Our own "Orphan of China" has, perhaps, too

much of this:

"The sabre's edge

Thirsts for his blood; then, let it's lightning fall
On his aspiring head,"

ATTORNEYS.

IT is a flagrant act of injustice to look upon every Attorney, as being more or less a knave; for it is well known that many of them are most respectable characters, and eminently qualified, both by their integrity and their amiable acquirements, to mix in the best and most refined circles. Whence, then, proceeds the calamity, of which the public have so loudly to complain, namely, the extensive and malignant influence, which Attorneys exercise, with impunity, over the minds and fortunes of his Majesty's subjects throughout the British empire? Without searching for any abstruse or latent cause for the evil, may it not be ascribable to one, or the other, or to all, of the three following reasons,viz. to the various interpretations to which the Laws of England are liable, on account of the equivocal language in which they are couched; to the accumulation of contradictory acts of Par liament; and "last, though perhaps not least," to the pettifogging propensities, and low machinations

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of a vast majority of Attorneys, who, sprung from the lowest order of society, are unacquainted with the laws of honour, and who, not being educated in the principles of strict morality, are not very scrupulous about the means they employ, so that they attain the end which they have in view, be it what it may !

The following is the golden rule, by which the gang of dishonest Attorneys are said to square their conduct:

"Be a true leech to your client, as long as there is any thing left to suck; but, lest he should compel you to disgorge-after you have dropped off, turn Viper!"

This calamity will exist no longer, when acts of Parliament cease to be ambiguous; when Law and Equity shall become synonimes; when only men of education, and of decent connexions, are admitted to be Attorneys; events reserved, no doubt, for a future golden age. Immoral Attorneys are the

Quacks of the Law.

IGNORANCE.

Ir is a fatal truth, that as we travel through life, we find more minds lying fallow, than we do tracts of territory!" Still it is the mind that makes the body rich." :

HUMANITY HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN A CArdinal virtuE!

RICHELIEU, while Minister of State to Louis XIV. was one day celebrating mass for the Royal Family. When he was about the middle of the office, an Aide de Camp from the army, booted, spurred, and splashed all over, came to the altar, for the purpose of asking his Eminence, what punishment should be inflicted on the garrison of a certain Spanish fortress, which was opposing obstinate resistance to his Majesty's arms, and which was expected soon to surrender? The Cardinal, in his Christian charity, sent the following written order to the besieging general:-" Quand vous aurez donné l'assaut, et que la place se rendra, passez la garnison, aussi bien que les habitans, hommes, femmes, et enfans, au fil de l'épée." When you shall have taken the fortress by storm, or that it shall have surrendered to you, put the garrison to the sword, as well as the inhabitants, men, women, and children! Then, as a ceremony of the service, he took water, saying, "Lavabo manus meas inter innocentes," &c. " I will wash my hands in innocency, and so will I compass thy altar, O Lord!"

THE SERENITY OF A PRINCE DISCOMPOSED.

I was at Hesse Cassel in the summer of 1795, and through military curiosity, went to the Sunday,.