• SONNET,

Written on the Downs, near Brighton.
Dimmed by the distance and the hazy sky,
On ocean's furthest verge a vessel lay;

Long had I watched it on its gentle way,
Till now, scarce seen, it faded on the eye:
Wedded in thought and varying sympathy,
I communed with the souls it did convey,
And kind affection's and hope's cheering ray
Sent o'er the waters, with compassion's sigh.-
How little thought the solitary crew,

'Mid the lone ocean, of a friendly care,
Whose eye and heart still held them in its view,
And breathed for them a supplicating prayer:
Nor knoweth man what love his steps attend,
What unseen being is his guardian friend."

It is not too much to say that the foregoing sonnet would have done honour to Mr. Wordsworth; nor are we afraid to say the same of the following one

On viewing St. Paul's from Blackfriars' Bridge.
Rising o'er smoke, like wreaths from altars sent,
God's glorious temple meets the awe-struck gaze,
And o'er the boundless city free conveys

Feelings sublime of power pre-eminent;
Nor in transcendent loftiness content,

But wide and massive its bold form displays,

Like a dark mountain's strength, which evening's rays

Of clouded twilight blacken and augment;

While, from its western turret, o'er the stream,

Time sends his solemnly impulsive sound,

In bursts of murmuring grandeur floating round,
Awakening folly from her fevered dream;
And o'er the sinful city, towering high,

Speaks the bright cross in silent majesty.'-Townsend, p. 81. With this noble sonnet we leave Mr. Townsend, who (as we have just heard with a regret in which our readers will participate) is no longer curate of his dear Preston; but we must not close our paper without one quotation more from Mr. Rose's Epistle to Mr. Frere. It shall be from the latter part, in which he gives us a Brighton winter-piece :

'Speaking of hills and nibbling flocks that graze
Their russet lawns, I spoke of halcyon days;
When the sloop rides without the rocky ledge,
Or safely sails on ocean's utmost edge;
When his quick song the mounting skylark sings,
And marks its merry time with quivering wings.

VOL. LVI. NO. CXII.

2 E

But

But even when this music of mid sky
Is mute, and inland screaming sea-fowl fly;
Who, shrieking pitifully, seem to call

For help, and shelter from the coming squall,
Which overtakes them, wheeling left and right,

And blots heaven, sea and land, with sudden night;
Even when hollow winds are howling, when

The city pleases and the hum of men,

Our streets are warm; and neighbouring wood and weald

Choice fuel for the cheerful hearthstone yield,

Birch, beech, the "sailing pine," or "builder oak;"
And, flying greasy fog and sea-coal smoke,
We oftentimes may count among our lodgers
A Holland, Ryder, Hallam, or a Rogers.

'Asses succeed ('tis true) and we've a fresh rush
Of fools in summer; yet they're but a flesh-brush;
And (if I know you well) would do you good;
Would goad your spirits, stir your stagnant blood:
And you and I might groan from dawn to dusk
At mothers draped in pink and drugged with musk:
At her that for a turban leaves her cap,
And looks like Asia Minor on the

map:

At him that gives-priest, layman, saint, or sinner-
A chitter-chatter, clitter-clatter dinner;

And thinks that noise and numbers, port and sherry,
Might soothe the sad and make the moody merry;
Whose hireling waiter from hotel or inn
Grazes your shoulder with cod's tail or fin
Crude and uncrimped, more flaccid than a roach,
And sick with sitting backwards in the coach:
At guests that come to such Amphitryon's call,
Whose talk is not of bullocks, but Bengal :
At non-descripts delivered by steam-packets :
At fools of fifty with white hats and jackets:
At men that whistle, and hail those they follow
Or meet by steyne or street, with whoop and hollo;
At maie and female Hottentots that block

Your path, to look at Punch, print, coach, or clock ;
Mooncalves, whose thumbs are in their breeches' pockets,
Who stare with eye-balls starting from their sockets:

At mounted matron in red toque: M. D.'s

That sip raw shrub and sup on toasted cheese:
At bawling girls that bay the patient moon
To hoarse piano, pummelled out of tune;
And shameless men that shuffle cards at noon.
'Sometimes ('tis strange; and I'm at my wit's end
To find the cause) things please us which offend;
And seeking what offends, a devious path
Many have trod. In Cambridgeshire or Bath

To

To fix his home you would think Ansty loth,
From his Bath-guide; and yet he lived in both ;-
Gray too took earth at Granta, though a hater
Of the dry studies of his alma mater,

To endure the sober seniors' scorn, the noise,
Nonsense and naughty pranks of drunken boys;-
And thus, at strife with the retreat he chose,
At Brighton dwells your faithful William Rose;
Who sings the pleasures and the pains-as best
He can of his selected place of rest.
Nor think it strange if he that home commend
For pains as well as pleasures, to his friend.
A preacher (and he, like a saint of old,
Deserves the title of the mouth of gold)+
Says, that it steads not body more than soul

To infuse some bitter in the festive bowl;

Which makes the cup so seasoned, when 'tis quaffed,

A sounder, if less palatable draught;

So I into the beverage which I brew,

Like that brave preacher, cast a branch of rue.'-Rose, p. 14. There is much of the Horatian in this last extract-but perhaps more to remind one of the lighter style of Ariosto's Epistolary Satires. Now that Mr. Rose has finished his long labours on the Orlando, we wish he would enrich our literature by a translation of such of those charming compositions as have not been so fortunate as to engage the services of his friend Lord Holland. Such a task might help to occupy the hours of an invalid-but we hope neither it nor any other undertaking will wean him entirely from the habit of original composition, more especially in verse.

ART. VI.-Herinneringen uit Japan. Van Hendrik Doeff, ond Opperhoofd der Nederlanders in Japan, op het Eiland Decima. Haarlem, 1835. Quarto.

(Recollections of Japan. By Hendrik Doeff, formerly President of the Dutch Factory at Decima.)

ALTHOUGH two works upon the Japanese empire have been recently brought under the notice of our readers, we think ourselves warranted in drawing for their use some further information on the same subject from that source which alone can supply it, the contemporary literature of our Dutch neighbours. Reviewing Mr. Fischer's narrative, we made some allusion to his account of the Japanese and Dutch Lexicon of the writer now before us:

* Jeremy Taylor.

+ Chrysostom.

2 E 2

'It

'It was (says Fischer) Mr. Doeff's chief employment in the solitary Decima, during the war in Europe, and the occupation of the Dutch colonies by the English. For several years, thus separated from the rest of the world, without the sight of a sail or the receipt of a dispatch from Europe, he devoted to this undertaking his long experience, his talents, and his diligence. A combination of circumstances could alone make such a task feasible: the friendship of the natives, a knowledge of their manners and usages, and an advanced instruction in the language, all were necessary, and all were his. Above all, however, patience and assiduity were requisite, as must appear, when we consider that this work, following the Dutch and French dictionary of Halma, is illustrated by examples wherever a word of double meaning occurs, and comprises an amount of 2500 pages. The original exists in Japan, but the copy privately written out by Mr. Doeff was lost on his return to Europe, by the foundering of the ship in which he had sailed. An accident led me to discover the traces of this work in 1823, and procured me opportunity for making a copy, which, in 1829, I brought to a close-but which is less complete than the original. It is now in the library of the Royal Institution at Amsterdam.'

Returning to Europe after nineteen years of arduous service in a distant region, during which he appears to have laboured in the cause of his country's political interests, as well as that of literature, under circumstances of painful difficulty, Mr. Doeff saw the results of his studies, and the curiosities collected during his exile, go down in the Admiral Evertsen, from which vessel he had scarcely time to save himself and a wife, who survived the catastrophe only four days, and carried a promised offspring to the grave. Such have been the labours and the lot of the author of the volume now before us, in which, under the title of Reminiscences of Japan, he has endeavoured to repair, in some degree, the loss of submerged diaries, journals, and other materials for works of greater magnitude. We have to regret, not merely as Englishmen, but as labourers in the wide vineyard of literature, that so great a proportion of it is devoted to the subject of certain collisions with our own countrymen. It is some consolation for the scantiness of his positive additions to our knowledge of Japan, that his opus magnum has been saved to Europe by Mr. Fischer's exertions; for we can hardly hope that the Imperial Library of Jeddo will, in our time, become accessible to foreigners, or that its rules of admission will appear in the Report of the British Museum Committee. Could we even look forward to the time which our wise men anticipate, when the beds of existing oceans shall have effected an amicable exchange with present continents, and when fossil seventy-fours shall engage the attention of future Coles and Murchisons, we could hardly hope that even a semi

Dutch

Dutch manuscript dictionary, whatever might be its propensity to descend to ocean's quietest depths, would remain legible to our posterity, and we echo Mr. Fischer's wish for an early edition of the treasure he claims to have saved.

Mr. Doeff's remarks on the constitution and practice of the Japanese government would lead us to attribute to the Sjogfoen (or reigning Emperor) more influence and more of personal interference in the affairs of administration than was conceded to him in the works which we formerly reviewed. He also supplies an important defect in those two works, by giving us some information as to the mode by which the members of the great council of state are elevated to their seat in that assembly. It may be difficult to ascertain to what extent the measures and decisions of that assembly originate with, or are controlled by the sovereign; but as in that body are concentrated all the executive powers of government, as every imperial order goes forth under their countersignature, it is important to know that they are selected by the sovereign from a particular race of the nobility, viz., the descendants of the principal supporters of the usurper Jjegos or Daifoesama, on whom the title of Gonge was conferred after his death, and from the date of whose prosperous usurpation the peace of the empire has been uninterrupted. The descendants of those who opposed the establishment of his power are, on the contrary, excluded from the council.

The hereditary principle which pervades the institutions of Japan is strongly apparent in this mode of organizing the moving power of the executive machinery. Investigation, however, usually modifies general conclusions. Mr. O'Connell has elicited the fact that the Crown of England is elective; we learn from Mr. Doeff that in Japan a parent may select a successor to office from his children, or, being childless, may adopt and invest with his own family name the scion of another house, the child of such adoption being prohibited thenceforth from addressing his real parents by that title on any public occasion. The present sovereign has afforded a curious illustration of this practice. His predecessor had the misfortune to lose his only son, in consequence of a fall from a wild Persian horse, an unlucky gift from the gentlemen of the factory. The prince now flourishing was adopted by the bereaved Sjogfoen during his own father's lifetime. On an occasion subsequent to his accession, he addressed his parent in public by the accustomed, but forbidden title. The president of the council, Matsoe Dairi Isoe no Cami, instantly remonstrated, and in so doing was himself guilty of a violation of the rule which forbids any one to gainsay or rebuke his superior in rank. He immediately quitted the council, placed himself in arrest in his own house, and besought his associates in writing to lay the case before