HUMORIS T. CONTENTS FOR AUGUST. Mr. AINSWORTH begs it to be distinctly understood that no Contributions what- *** SUBSCRIBERS are informed, that under the new postal arrangements, the NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE can henceforth be RECEIVED on the 1st of each month, postage paid, in any part of the United Kingdom. Orders received by all Booksellers and Newsmen. AINSWORTH'S MAGAZINE. A NEW AND REVISED EDITION OF CRICHTON: An Historical Romance, BY W. HARRISON AINSWORTH, ESQ. IS NOW PUBLISHING IN AINSWORTH'S MAGAZINE. ILLUSTRATED BY HABLOT K. BROWNE. CHAPMAN AND HALL, 186, STRAND. Banish the thought that man is fated, Abyss of ill; The gracious Power that first created, Will guide him still. His doubt, mistrust, and fear refuted, By worldly leaven, For earth's superior joys more suited, More fit for heaven! AN AUGURY. Audite juvenes senem quem senes audivère juvenem. ME, whom the Muse hath held in dalliance sweet, by haunted stream and flower-enamelled mead, and sunny glade and lone umbrageous copse, while the soft breeze drew music from the leaves, as if the twigs were harp-strings;-me, whom the cuckoo, like a plumed echo, heard and never seen, hath lured in vain pursuit through bushy tangles of the wood, by the strange charm of her two-noted flute ;-me, whom in younger days the Muse's witchery to classic scenes hath rapt, Thessalian Tempe, hallowed by the gods, or stretched me in thy shade, Olympian mount of pastoral Arcady! catching with Fancy's ear the song of Nymphs, or, from the distant sylvaury, the pipe of Pan ;-me, with such vain imaginings and inspiration, dear but frivolous, no more shall she beguile. Nor shall she now entice me, as heretofore hath been too oft her wont, to themes of frolic levity and idle tales. Matter of mirth enough, though there were none, To feed her foolish humour and vain jolliment. Not longer shall it be thus. Not these the times in which even a young and thoughtless amorist can excusably -Play with the tangles of Næera's hair, Or sport with Amaryllis in the shade. Nero might fiddle when Rome flamed, for only a single city was involved in the catastrophe, but who can be light of heart and debonair, who can indulge inopportune disport when half the capitals of Europe are engulphed in the vortex of revolution, and our own has not been unmenaced by a similar convulsion? Ancient and puissant thrones in triplyfortified and host-garrisoned cities are bowled down by an unarmed popu lace, as if they were but nine-pins for their pastime. They fall, like the walls of Jericho, to the mere shout of a rabblement, and the blowing of horns! Shirley, alluding to the inevitable process of death and time, exclaimed Sceptre and crown shall tumble down, With the poor crooked scythe and spade. But lo, the madness of a few weeks hath done the work of centuries, and throneless kings and powerless potentates are almost as common in our metropolitan thoroughfares as are the wind-strewn leaves after a storm in Valhambrosa. What drove the discrowned successor of Charlemagne from his kingdom, and instantly subverted every institution of a mighty empire?-An interdicted dinner! What has suddenly insanified so many other countries, arming race against race in ruthless truculence, Italians, Teutons, Sclavonians, Scandinavians, Saxons, Celts-the south against the north, and the east against the west ?--A revolutionary infection; the mere contagion of unprovoked revolt!--And who were the mighty sons of Anak at whose resistless onset princes and principalities fell prostrate in dismay,-who the dread giants that snatched weapons out of the hands of panic stricken veterans? Tatterdemallion urchins from the streets, a mob of crack-brained students Who bawl for freedom in their senseless moods, aided by gangs of plunderers professed, who find in every riot hope of rapine. O day and night, but this is wondrous strange !" If the gods who, "sit in the clouds and laugh at human folly" were to institute a commission de lunatico inquirendo, what other verdict could they give than this-"a mad world, my masters!" If we could avoid crying at the certain mischief and misery, we might be tempted to smile at the ridiculous inconsequence of these European vagaries, and to exclaim Democritus, dear droll! revisit earth, And with our follies glut thy heightened mirth. More becoming were it, however, to shed the drop of sorrowful apprehension, than to indulge in cynic sneers or simperings misplaced. Not to madness, not to folly, not to a groundless passion for innovation can we assign this wide and synchronous outburst of popular turbulence. King! Kaiser! Statesman! helpless victims of an unhelped mob! Lay not the flattering unction to your souls That not your trespass but their madness speaks. The fruit falls not from a child-shaken tree, unless it be rotten at the core and if it be not heavy with age, and ripe for the sickle, the corn is not laid grovelling by a casual wind-puff. If so wide extending a thronequake spring from a street riot in Paris; if "castles topple o'er their warders' heads," and palaces and pyramids be made to slope to their foundations by the mere huzzas of raggamuffins and schoolboys, be ye well assured that those foundations were previously undermined and tottering. Nothing is there miraculous, nothing even marvellous in the simultaneousness of these convulsions. Where they have occurred the institutions of the country were not adapted, either to the age of the |