Before Mr. Gifford had cast this general slander upon the legislatures of Europe, I wish he had taken the trouble to examine into the authorities upon which his law is founded. I can find none. That a prejudice commonly exists of this kind, even at the present moment, is well known, and it is one of the objects of this essay to destroy that prejudice. It was probably believed by Massinger, who, like Shakspeare, and all our early poets, looked no further than their own country for the manners of the place where the scene was to be laid; and an instance of it now exists, remarkable for its notoriety and its absurdity. At Westminster abbey, the guide who shews the curiosities of the place, exhibits, in a small chapel or cell, near to Henry the Seventh's brazen tomb, a couple of old coffins, covered with red velvet, which he gravely tells you contain the bodies of two ambassadors, whose remains were arrested for debt, and not suffered to be buried.* I know not which to admire most, the folly of the inventor of this fable, or the credulity of the fools who do not immediately perceive its absurdity. For, in the first place, by the law of nations, the persons of ambassadors are sacred and inviolable, dead or living, and in the next, it is hard to say that these men were denied christian burial, when their coffins are placed carefully in that sacred temple, in which are deposited, in similar coffins, the ashes of a long race of kings and heroes.

Massinger wrote at the time of Lord Coke, and it is plain that the law, in his time, could not have been as it is here represented; but, in order to relieve my readers from all doubts upon the subject, and that they may all retire to rest without any idle apprehensions that their precious reliques, when dead, may be violated by the hands of rude bailiffs, to the terror of their wives and children, I shall here extract, from a modern book of reports, the words of the present chief justice, Lord Ellenborough, upon the subject, in which he held, that even a promise to pay a debt, extorted from a person through fear of a dead body being arrested, was illegal, being without consideration, and void; which it could not be, if the threatened arrest were legal.

"Now as to the case of Quick v. Copplestone; in that case the promise was made through fear of being arrested, and it is so ⚫ He tells you it is for this reason that they are not placed in a vault or tomb.

+ The statute of Queen Anne upon this subject, was enacted merely to appease Peter the Great, and is generally understood to be only declaratory of the common kw.

stated in the declaration; and Hyde, C. J. held, that a forbearance to sue one who fears to be sued, is a good consideration;' and he cited a case in the common pleas, when he sate there, where a woman, who feared that the dead body of her son would be arrested for debt, promised, in consideration of forbearance, to pay; and it was adjudged against her, though she was neither executor nor administrator. But the other judges doubted of this. And I think it would be bad even after verdict, for it appears vicious upon the face of it. Such a means of extorting a promise is not to be endured. It is impossible to look upon that as a good promise, which is made in consideration that a person will forbear to do a violent and unlawful act; that he will forbear to do a violent injury to the feelings of all the relations of the deceased." See 1. Smith's Rep. 195. Jones v. Ashburnham. B. R. Hilary term, 1804. See also East's Reports, H. 44. Geo. 3. S. C.

With respect to the similarity of the law of Asychis, the grandson of Cheops, in imitation of which, according to Mr. Gifford, the supposed law of Europe has been introduced, I confess I am but a novice in the antiquities of Egypt, compared with that gentleman; but I should submit to him that the imita tion is very remote and improbable, and the copy, at best, very unlike the original. Like all copies, if it ever existed, it would be a copy without the spirit of its prototype. It was customary in Egypt to embalm the bodies of the deceased, or to make mummies of them, and it is probable he who possessed the most of these precious remains, was most honoured for his high birth. The mummy was then a moveable piece of goods, a valuable testimonial of nobility, like the statues of the Roman patricians; and to pledge these, was to give a man an actual security for the money, which was advanced expressly upon that pledge, and apportioned to the natural value of it. But this was a stipulated pledge by the son, not an ordinary execution on the body of the father, and however odious it may now appear in the spendthrift heir, was more reasonable than the pledge, which the law is supposed to give of the dead body of the debtor, which must necessarily impose upon the creditor, who was to keep it unburied, the task of reviving, not the dead body, but the long lost art of em balming, which is nearly as hopeless an experiment.

Yours, &c.

J. P. S.

METRICAL CHARACTER'

OF

THE LATE ISAAC REED, ESQ.

BY A LITERARY GENTLEMAN.

Inscription to be placed under Romney's portrait* of Isaac Reed,

IN aspect though solemn, in temper sedate,

There are times when this picture hangs too much of weight,
On that brow and those eyes, as from sight they recede,
To present a true semblance of kind-thoughted Reed.
Those times by his club-mates not few will be found,
When the glass and the jest circle cheerily round;
While to many a tale, in the memory pent,
His side-long allusions give sociable vent:
But the tale must be guileless, the inference just,
Or Isaac will listen to both with disgust.
"Twas hence that arch Steevens oft met a rebuff,
When his sallies were check'd by a moral quan. suff

As a critic his candour will ne'er be surpast,
And his reading, if not universal, is vast.
Most keen to remark, with comparative eye,
What common observers pass heedlessly by,
And exact to record, with oracular pride,
Whatever the press or the pen has supplied,
Or the brain has in travail brought secretly forth,
Unown'd or unpublish'd, he'll tell you its birth,
Its parentage, history, scope, and design,
And perhaps (if you press him) its author define.

As a man, as an editor, frugal and chaste,
In words or in wit he lets nothing run waste;
For of manners reserv'd, and in voice somewhat rough,
The shortest of answers he deems long enough:

And so blunt are his words, that a stranger must err
Who the drift of his heart from his speech should infer.
The cocoa-tree thus might a novice repel,

Who should guess at the fruit from a glance at the shell;
And dreamt not that sweetness and milkiness too,
Gave worth to the kernel conceal'd from the view.

The original whence our engraving is derived.

THE YOUNG SHEPHERD.

DAMON is the most charming shepherd, that waters his flocks at yonder stream. He plays so sweetly on the mountain reed, that while at eve he tunes his pipe among the shades of the refreshing grove, the nightingale forgets its wonted notes, and imitates his song. Graceful as the towering pine, or beauteous as the vine loaded with autumnal fruits, Damon surpasses all other swains in those perfections which adorn the fairest of nature's works.

A

While the love-sick maiden shades her eyes with each its silvery lash, Damon allows her unheededly to pass, nor entertains one solitary wish to press the coral of her lips. At certain intervals, when all who dwell upon the neighbouring lands enjoy the sprightly dance around the bespangled hill, Damon is tuning his pipe in some bewildering, melancholy strain, hid in the recesses of the thickset grove.

Damon has an aged mother, and she resides in a cottage situated on the margin of yonder lake. Beauteous trees and sweetly scented flowers surround this loved retreat: here Damon rests his wearied limbs, and here he rapturously dwells upon the notes of his dulcet pipe. There is a bower in the garden, where, at eventide, he stretches himself upon the mossy floor. He formed and fashioned it in his early youth, and now it shades him from the oppressive heat of the refulgent sun. From this spot he beholds a vast, extended landscape, variegated with lofty trees and silvery lakes, with herds and flocks, and shepherds' dwellings. Here does he banquet his revelling eye, until the mild clouds of placid night shield the different objects from his view. With a mind unalloyed by harrowing care, he then flies to his couch, and reposes his frame in refreshing slumbers. The early messenger of morn no sooner alarms the feathered tribe, than Damon renews his peaceful occupation; he unfetters his flocks, and the lambkins bound with agile limbs along the flowery mead. How sweet is liberty to every plant in nature's garden! Without it life seems to me but as a tiresome void.

While his flocks are nipping the tender herbage, Damon seats himself beneath the spreading oak, and seizes on his pipe, with which he daily banishes a tedious hour. Surrounded by

blushing roses and the modest violet, with the sweetly-scented briar, and the roaming honeysuckle, he tunes his morning hymn. The ewes collect themselves together, and listen to the tender strains, while the frolicsome lambs bite at their parents' woolly coats, and then skip away as light and airy as the looks of love.

The sun hastens to the western world, and Damon puts his flocks in motion. Conducting them to other pastures, he pens them for the night, then hastens to his cottage; there his parent receives him with pleasant smiles, and spreads before him a frugal repast. Refreshed with food, exhilirated by a mother's tenhe recounts the actions of the day, and the variations in the shepherd's life.

der

care,

Would to Heaven I passed my life with as little cause for regret as this shepherd. A stranger to ambition and the vice of worlds, his residence is Paradise, and his days form one constant spring. Ease and contentment are his helpmates; and when, loaded with autumnal years, he hastens to the grave, he will quit existence, mourned by those, who, alive both to his worth and virtues, knew not how to envy him those invaluable gifts. They will say," thus died the most charming shepherd of the surrounding plains."

SECRET CORRESPONDENCE.

FROM THE BRITISH PRESS.

LEOPOLD.

A

YOUNG lady, newly married, being obliged to shew her husband all the letters she wrote, sent the following to an intimate friend:

"I cannot be satisfied, my dearest friend!
❝blest as I am in the matrimonial state,
"unless I pour into your friendly bosom,
"which has ever beat in unison with mine,

"the various sensations which swell
"with the liveliest emotions of pleasure,
my almost bursting heart. I tell you my dear