knowledgment of antecedent rights; that our rights to territory belonging to us before the revolution were no more a grant from Great Britain to us, by virtue of the treaty, than the treaty was a grant by us of Canada and Nova Scotia. We state no views upon this head but such as were maintained by the American negotiators of the treaty of 1783 themselves. It was the opinion of Mr. Jay, respecting the easterly boundaries of the United States in particular, that they "ought, on principles of right and justice, to be the same with those of the late colony or province of Massachusetts." If both parties, therefore, are to be left equally at liberty to recur to their former positions before the arbitration, as it is insisted by the British government, and are to be alike restored to their original claims and pretensions, as they existed before the revolution, and independent of the treaty of 1783, the title of the United States is capable of being established to the whole provincial territory of Massachusetts, upon as high grounds, whether of public law or of natural equity, as any that could be set up on behalf of Great Britain, and might be maintained with at least an equally justifiable confidence. Such a pretension on the part of the United States would be advanced, however, not to the St. John, but to the St. Lawrence. We are quite sensible that possession, as intimated by Sir Charles R. Vaughan, affords a strong practical point in any case; and that military possession, moreover, is a still more potent one in a case of disputed claim. When possession was taken of the Penobscot by the British arms, during the last war, the first doctrine broached, in order to defend it, was, that all treaties with the United States, including that of 1783, were abrogated at all points. The envoys of his Britannic majesty professed themselves unable to comprehend why their sovereign "should be precluded from availing himself of his means to retain those points, which the valour of British arms might have placed in his power, because they happened to be situated within the territories allotted, under former treaties, to the government of the United States." This lofty ground, it is true, was afterwards abandoned; the tone was changed to that of negotiation; and the great demand, grounded on the laws of war, dwindled down to the milder form of requesting a cession of "only that small portion of unsettled country which interrupts the communication between Halifax and Quebec,"-adding, in the subdued shape of a query, "there being much doubt whether it does not already belong to Great Britain." This brought the matter back precisely to the sort of ground mentioned to have been taken by Lord Hillsborough with the agent of Massachusetts, just after the proclamation of 1763, but which never came to any thing further than as it was reduced to agreement in the treaty of 1783. It was to this demand for a cession of a very

limited portion of this since disputed territory, that the American commissioners at Ghent responded, that they had no authority to cede any part of the territory of the United States, and to no stipulations to that effect would they subscribe.

On this subject our own government has been obliged at last to deliver its ultimatum, that they can enter into no negotiation of boundary upon any other basis than the treaty of 1783. We believe it is not the wish of the United States, nor of any part of the Union, to extend its boundary upon the British provinces on this continent beyond the limits of that treaty. Great Britain has had ample proof of the good will of General Jackson, and the world has seen sufficient evidence of the energy of his will, and of the vigour, generally available, of his purposes. But this is an instance in which we see realised the force of the mythological fiction, that when the deities were commanded to give ground to Jupiter, Terminus alone made good his

resistance.

ART. IX. Poems by HARTLEY COLERIDGE. Leeds.

We love to meet occasionally with a new name in the annals of literature. For though there is a sovereign company to whom we never falter in our allegiance, yet for the honour of time present, and for the satisfaction of knowing that the best portion of the world is not standing still, we rejoice now and then to hail a new author. Under this designation we desire to be distinctly understood as not including that growing class of handicraftsmen who are engaged in the manufacture of what by courtesy are called books. When we speak of authorship, we mean that occupation which gives to a name an abidingplace in the history of letters. It is one of the evils of the accumulation of modern publications, that a man, unless gifted with supernatural reading powers, is compelled to be somewhat reserved in forming new literary acquaintances. He contents himself with his old friends-he retreats to the shelf of his library that has become endeared to hin-he finds his security among the familiar volumes, that he could lay his hand upon in the dark-he is shy of new-made gentry. Yet these very feelings probably enhance the pleasure of meeting with a volume

which bears the stamp of something above the mere mechanism of book-making.

It is an added pleasure to be able to greet a new poet. The world, we are apprehensive, is growing too prosy. We are haunted with a vague sort of alarm-more like a dream, or a night-mare, than a waking thought-that hosts of the tenants of this goodly green globe will turn into brokers and moneydealers. The hearts of men, we fear, will be in the stocks. It is one of the characteristics of the times, that whole communities are alarmingly utilitarian. Nothing is secure from the base uses of economists and calculators; no spot or edifice, however hallowed, is assured in its moral associations; no spectacle, however glorious by the work of nature, is safe from the rude touch of heartless speculation. Men have been found bold enough to lay their impious hands upon scenes the most awful in creation. The cataract and the cascade are measured for water-power-the mountain torrent is a feeder. A traveller, revisiting a district of country after a few years' absence, enquires after a waterfall as he does after an old inhabitant, and is no more surprized at finding that one has gone to his rest, than that the other has been turned to its work. Niagara has scarcely been secure. Presumptuous as modern "improvement" is, there need not, we suppose, be a rational fear that the ceaseless discharge of more than five inland seas might be perceptibly diminished; but that the matchless sublimity of that spot may be grievously impaired, we have greatly feared. Our last pilgrimage to that place of worship that shrine of the Almighty-was hastened by this apprehension. As we approached it, we heard of railroads to the Falls--of the " of the Falls"--of town lots, and of water-power. We saw, with a heavy heart, the actual plan of these devices. Alas! thought we, shall that voice of the Creator be silenced?--shall the deep that there crieth unto deep be hushed? But there came glad tidings that nature was avenged. The bold mortal-the Titan of the land-jobbers--who had dared to traffic with her glories, was laid prostrate in the very deed. We turned pagan for the nonce, and gave thanks to the spirit of the cataract, whom, in fancy, we beheld triumphing over the prostrate evil genius of speculation. It will, we fondly trust, prove a lesson against future presumption. We have no fear that man, with all the pomp, and power, and pride of mechanism, can draw more than a drop from that flow; yet he may most vexatiously intrude ;--the shrill accents of art may be mingled with the solemn tones of nature--a harsh accompaniment to the unison of voices of the great waters. The surrounding scenery may be sadly defaced, if touched by any hand which is not restrained by a sense of the sublimities of the place. As we

City

wandered about the neighbourhood, a group of Indians glided across our path;-a young Tuscarora, with a very unabated look, and his squaw with her infant peering out of its cradle on the mother's back: by the by, an Indian mother's love should be exceeding deep, we surmise, for her dear little savage is borne so much more than the infants of the sophisticated matrons in civilized communities. As we looked at them, a thought came into our mind that the traces of the world as it has been were not yet quite effaced-that something was still left untouched by the restless, feverish hand of covetousness. We gazed upon the savages as the Ancient Mariner did upon the bright water-snakes:

"A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware;

Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware."

We have no ambition to be sentimentally conservative; but we do lament that the spirit of change is restrained by no higher consideration than a distrust of investment, and that it has no fear of assaulting the bounds set by nature or by moral association. It is only when it transgresses its lawful limits as in the glaring instance we have adverted to-that we deplore the progress of improvement so called. The world would be all the better, we fancy, if the practical fit, which is on it, were somewhat abated. A factitious standard has been introduced by the self-sufficient wisdom of the day, which tests all things by what is called a practical character-which means, we believe, the quality of teaching men to make money, or to increase the crops, or to multiply the fabric of "stuffs," under which latter denomination may be included a large proportion of the products of the press. Books are valued according to the same standard. Now we most thankfully greet any literary effort which recognizes a higher aim and a nobler end. Surely there is a practical character of a better kind than that which is indicated by the ordinary acceptation of the term; surely something more is to be done than to administer to man's physical wants; he is to be supplied with something more than food, and clothing, and the trash called "light reading" by those who look upon books as mere allies against time. A writer, elevating himself above the lower spheres of authorship, is worthy of a more than ordinary welcome. We delight, therefore, we repeat, to meet with a new poet.

The name of Hartley Coleridge will probably be new to many of our readers. He is the son-the first-born--of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poet and philosopher: we always hesitate which to call him, and regret that the language supplies

no word comprehensive of both titles. Mr. Hartley Coleridge has therefore a patrimonial reputation. How far, however, that species of inheritance may be available to a man's own reputation is, we think, somewhat questionable; for it is quite as apt to induce an invidious comparison as a willingness to trace the ancestral power. It has the effect of interesting public curiosity, but beyond that the heir's own fame must be earned by his own efforts.

It is pleasing to find any instance in which the strength and qualities of the mind have descended from father or mother to the offspring. The likeness has much greater interest than those physical similitudes, in which there is often so carefully transmitted the shape of a nose or a mouth, or the twist of an eye-brow, or that most imperishable of all traits, which is rarely` quenched by the lapse of less than three or four generations, a head of red hair. A case of intellectual inheritance is an agreeable exception to the general tendency to degeneracy. The necessity of crossing the breed seems to make such brutes of us that it is not a pleasing theory. The instances of hereditary talent in literature are, however, we are obliged to acknowledge, of rare occurrence. After a few minutes' labour of recollection, the only examples we are able to call to mind are King David and Solomon, and the two Drs. Sherlock. The latter of these cases is not of sufficient note, and the circumstance of inspiration obviously puts the former out of the question, for it might probably be regarded as an exception to a general rule rather than an illustration of it. Poetic genius especially is so delicate a combination, that it is likely to be destroyed by any change in its constitution. Two of Dryden's sons attempted to follow in their father's path, but the spirit of "glorious John" had fled, and what they wrote the world has willingly let die.' Spenser left two sons,--one with a name at least that might well befit a poet, "Sylvanus Spenser," the other with a name that would have suited one whose walks were on the highways of prose, "Peregrine Spenser." What, by the by, had become of the poet's own beautiful name, "Edmund Spenser ?" Perhaps the child was so named, that perished in the flames when Spenser's dwelling was fired by the Irish rebels, and he driven

'Perhaps in the constitution of the sons there was too large a proportion of the mother's character; a letter from Dryden's wife, the Lady Elizabeth, as she was styled from her noble lineage of the Howards, has been preserved, in which the following passage occurs:-"Your father is much at woon as to his health, and his defnese is not wosce, but much as he was when he was heare; give me a true account how my deare sonn Charlles is head dus."