make Art dictate lessons to Nature, instead of receiving instructions from her. In that case we shall realize the story of the mad painter, who was so enraptured by the production of his own pencil, that he called on Nature to make his piece her future model, and challenged her to a competition.

X.

FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

CHARACTERS FROM REAL LIFE.

Mr. Oldschool, I conceive that a variety of characters may be found in ordinary life, which although they develop no dazzling qualities, are so peculiarly marked as to merit a place in your miscellany. These men display such virtues or vices which all of us may imitate or avoid. If, sir, you agree with me in opinion that amusement or instruction may be gained from any quarter, I hope you will not object to the insertion of the following sketch, which attempts to do justice to a character now living.

X.

JEREMIAH CURRAN, was the son of a respectable mechanic, living in the city of Newyork. His father had, by his frugality and strict attention to his business, acquired a large and respectable fortune. As Jerry was his only child, and the heir of all this property his father would not have him brought up to any particular business or profession. He wished, he said, to make one fair experiment, whether a man might not be brought up in the character of a gentleman, without plunging into all the disgraceful excesses of a rake. He said, he could not believe, if his son was properly educated, that he would squander his paternal estate and turn bankrupt, merely because he had a fortune to spend. He did think it was possible, that a gentleman might mingle in polished life, and all its decent amusements, without forfeiting the character of a gentleman. The reader, will easily conjecture, from this slight and imperfect sketch, that the father was kind and indulgent. He gave his son all the advantages of a classical education, in which he became a respectable proficient. The father having thus far proceeded in his object, now turned to his son, the reverse of this picture, and set before him the infamy and disgrace, which would attend an

indulgence of low, grovelling appetites and passions. He warned him against these in the most solemn manner, and represented to him, that although his paternal estate would abundantly suffice all the purposes of decent enjoyment and chastened pleasure yet that the mines of Peru would not answer him, if he made his passions his law. These ideas he repeated, and in so many shapes, that if I may be allowed the expression, they were woven into the very constitution of Jerry. He was not by nature prone to such indulgences as his parent warned him against, and these admonitions coming in aid of his native indifference to such objects, occasioned them to be viewed by him with insurmountable disgust. The son thought it a great virtue to abstain from the perpetration of vices which no temptation would induce him to commit. He, in order to make his native assurance doubly sure, and to take literally a bond of fate, bound himself by a set of formidable resolutions, which he was determined in no exigency to violate. He would not for instance, learn the names of cards, because he dreaded the vice of gaming. He would not learn the exercise of the sword, because he abhorred the vice of mortal arbitrament, and became utterly ignorant of self-defence, lest he should by accident die in a duel. He would not learn to ride a horse, because he abominated horse-racing. Thus, while his father's stables were well provided with the fleetest coursers, the heir to all this estate would be seen performing from place to place pedestrian tours of duty. Being thus completely versed in the non-essentials of a gentleman, his father endeavoured by main force, to thrust him into company.— Accordingly he attended balls, and public assemblies, stalking about from room to room in the midst of all this blaze of mirth and hilarity, with a stride as solemn and as formal as if a marble statue had stepped from its pedestal. Neither the encounter of animated cheeks and sparkling eyes, as the parties swam down the dance together, the graceful evolutions of manly elegance, and female beauty, or the thrilling strains of music excited the drowsiest sensation of pleasure. His heart was an isicle, no ray of beauty could warm or enliven. He seemed all this while to be sighing for his father's chimney corner, and the old venerable domestic taby, inconsolable for the absence of her com

rade, was pouring forth lamentations that disturbed the quiet of the family. His father, at length, discovered, to his unspeakable mortification, that all his salutary lessons to Jerry, had taught him only how to save his estate, without enjoying it. He adopted every art, he resorted to every expedient to flap his dormant ambition from its yawn.

All this flapping, however, anwered no purpose; his son's ambition only seemed to snore more profoundly afterwards, for having been stimulated to a little temporary exercise. His parent was still inflexible in his endeavours, and now he regretted that he had ever given him any caution whatever, to preserve his property from being squandered away. With much expostulation, and, at length, by downright imperative commands, he succeeded in prevailing on his son to go on a journey in company with his old play fellows and associates. He was amply furnished with money, not only to meet his expenses, but to purchase whatever was curious or valuable. Jerry at length departed on his tour, punctiliously paid all his bills, but as he had no curiosity to see any thing curious, he deemed it the most prudent part, as it undoubtedly was, not to part with his money to purchase what he did not want. His father hoped, that he might by this jaunt, take by inoculation, some of that overflow of spirit, with which his fellow travellers abounded. All this was literally love's labour lost; his son lamented still his distance from the chimney corner, and he returned home and restored faithfully to his father's hands the money which he enjoined him to expend. At length Jerry's father died, and he came into possession of a noble estate. Nothing was now lacking but a capacity to enjoy those bounties that Fortune had so munificently bestowed.— Jerry would not marry, because he had not obtained a previous assurance from Fate, that he should not be afflicted with a scolding wife. He would not indulge himself in the pleasures of literature, because they require exercise, which would be incompatible with his yawning mode of existence. He would not receive company in a hospitable and munificent way, lest they should lead him into the excesses of gambling and the bottle, vices from which Nature had interdicted him. In this way he debars himself from the intercourse of every pleasure, lest it

should by accident introduce some kindred vice. The gray hairs now begin to thicken on his temples, and his existence has been almost exhausted between a dream and a yawn. He is now one of Nature's negatives, one of those wretched paupers which must be supported by good fortune or the parish.

FRENCH TRANSLATION OF MARMION.-FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

THE following is a very curious specimen of translation, and considering the extreme difficulty of the attempt, is highly honourable to the author's powers of versification. We could not indeed name any of our modern poets, who are so strictly and permanently British, as Mr. Scott. Besides the obstacles, which his very singular manner, his local allusions, and the quaint elliptic turns of expressions to which the shortness of his measure so often condemns him, oppose to his naturalization in any foreign language, there is a peculiar and untractable wildness about the names and jargon of his border heroes, which must resist, we imagine, the efforts of the most dexterous interpreter. If Boileau was terrified at the name of marshal Wurts, by what process does Mr. Davezac, hope to reconcile Parisian ears to " Hard riding Dick," or "Wilhomonswick," or "Sir Albany Featherstonhaugh," not to mention "Archibald Bell-the-cat," and other worthies, "mal nés pour les oreilles,' as the satirist declares. These difficulties will, however, we trust, rather animate than discourage the efforts of Mr. Davezac, who has rendered faithfully and poetically, many passages of Marmion, and who has our cordial wishes for his success.

MR. OLDSCHOOL,

THE poems of Scott have as many readers as perhaps any other book in the English language. A gentleman in Neworleans is about enlarging the sphere of their celebrity by a French translation. He has begun by Marmion, and afforded, as far as he has progressed, a specimen of fine French poetry, in which the characteristic descriptive power of his author is admirably pre

served. As very many of your readers understand the French language, I have thought that a few extracts from this manuscript might be agreeable; and have obtained the author's perpermission to send them to you.

There is a pleasure arising from the sense of difficulty surmounted in a literary work. To appreciate those which opposed the execution of this, the reader ought to be versed in French poetry, and to know the extreme severity with which certain words, certain turns of expression, admitted in the poesy of other nations, are excluded from the French. To please a French ear in the translation, and to preserve the turn of thought, and frequently the expression of such an author as Scott, was, therefore, no very easy task. Unless I am deceived, Mr. Davezac has executed it in a manner that will do honour to himself and his country, and afford the mere French reader a gratification, nearly equal to that which an Englishman receives in the perusal of this elegant work.

The introductory epistle of the third canto, is one of the most admired in the original. The following translation exceeds it in harmony, while it gives a faithful copy of every elegance of thought which characterises it.

Comme ces nuages errans,

Qu'on voit glisser dans l'atmosphère,
Chassés par les vents du printems,
Promènent leur ombre légère

Et leur image passagere

Sur nos sillons et dans nos champs;
Emblemes des trop courts instans
De notre inegale carriere:-
Comme l'onde qui des hauts monts,
Tantô précipite ses bonds,

* Like April morning clouds that pass,
With varying shadow, o'er the grass,
And imitate, on field and furrow,

Life's chequered scene of joy and sorrow;
Like streamlet of the mountain north,

Now in a torrent racing forth,

Now winding slow its silver train,

And almost slumbering on the plain;