“Don’t be surprised if I play all sorts of antics!  I am like a child with a new rattle!  Here is a letter from my friend Lord Byron, telling me he has dedicated to me his poem of the ‘Corsair.’  Ah, Mrs.——­, it is nothing new for a poor poet to dedicate his poem to a great lord; but it is something passing strange for a great lord to dedicate his book to a poor poet.”  Those who know him most intimately feel no sort of hesitation in declaring, that he has again and again been heard to express regret at the earlier efforts of his muse; or reluctance in stating, at the same time, as a fact, that Mr. M., on two different occasions, endeavoured to repurchase the copyright of certain poems; but, in each instance, the sum demanded was so exorbitant, as of itself to put an end to the negotiation.  The attempt, however, does him honour.  And, affectionate father as he is well known to be, when he looks at his beautiful little daughter, and those fears, and hopes, and cares, and anxieties, come over him which almost choke a parent’s utterance as he gazes on a promising and idolized child, he will own the censures passed on those poems to be just:  nay more—­every year will find him more and more sensible of the paramount importance of the union of female purity with female loveliness—­more alive to the imperative duty, on a father’s part, to guard the maiden bosom from the slightest taint of licentiousness.  It is a fact not generally suspected, though his last work, “The Epicurean,” affords strong internal evidence of the truth of the observation, that few are more thoroughly conversant with Scripture than himself.  Many of Alethe’s most beautiful remarks are simple paraphrases of the sacred volume.  He has been heard to quote from it with the happiest effect—­to say there was no book like it—­no book, regarding it as a mere human composition, which could on any subject even “approach it in poetry, beauty, pathos, and sublimity.”  Long may these sentiments abide in him!  And as no man, to use his own words, “ever had fiercer enemies or firmer friends”—­as no man, to use those of others, was ever more bitter and sarcastic as a political enemy, more affectionate and devoted as a private friend, the more deeply his future writings are impregnated with the spirit of that volume, the more heartfelt, let him be well assured, will be his gratification in that hour when “we shall think of those we love, only to regret that we have not loved more dearly, when we shall remember our enemies only to forgive them.”

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RETROSPECTIVE GLEANINGS.

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REGAL TABLET.

(For the Mirror.)

The following Synopsis of English Sovereigns, and their contemporaries, will, it is hoped, be acceptable to the readers of history.

JACOBUS.

(Normans.)

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR