"We'll name it John, and know with pleasure You'll stand"-Five guineas more, confound it!— I wish they'd call'd it Nebuchadnezzar, Or thrown it in the Thames, and drown'd it. What have we next? A civil Dun, "John Brown would take it as a favour”Another, and a surlier one, "I can't put up with sich behaviour." "Bill so long standing,"-" quite tired out,"- For once I'll send an answer, and in- This from my rich old uncle, Ned, His cook-maid Nelly-vastly pleasant! An ill-spelt note from Tom at School, Miss Pyefinch, with a stupid riddle. "If you was in the puddle," how I should rejoice that sight to see!"And you were out on't, tell me now What that same puddle then would be ?" "D'ye give it up?" Indeed I do! A note sent up from Kent, to show me, "I'll burn them by stacks down, blow me! Captain Swing." Four begging letters with petitions, I'll "execute a few commissions" In Bond Street," when I go that way," And "buy at Pearsal's, in the city, Twelve skeins of silk for netting purses, Colour no matter-so it's pretty; Two hundred pens" two hundred curses! From Mistress Jones: "My little Billy Goes up his schooling to begin, Will you just step to Piccadilly, And meet him when the coach comes in ? "And then, perhaps, you will as well see From Lady Snooks: "Dear sir, you know, For my new Album ?" Aid me, Phoebus! "My hint is followed by my second; "Were I but what my Whole implies, cry, "For then my head would not be on, My arms their shoulders must abandon, My very body would be gone, I should not have a leg to stand on!" Come, that's dispatch'd-what follows ?-stay- Jack, clap the saddle upon Rose, Or no-the filly-she's the fleeter; The devil take the rain-Here goesI'm off-a plumper for Sir Peter! HOMER'S HYMNS. I. THE POEM OF PAN. SING me a song about Pan, And darling of Hermes; who frisking it ran O'er woody cragg'd Pisa, in fun, And frolic, and laughter, with skipping nymphs after Him shouting out-Pan-Pan. Pan, merry musical Pan, Piping o'er mountainous top, Rough-headed, shaggy, and rusty like tan, Dancing where'er the goats crop, The precipice round, as his hoofs strike the ground, With their musical clōp-clop. Pan is the lord of the hills, With their summits all cover'd with snow; Pan is lord of the brooks, of the rivers, and rills, There he saunters along, and listens their song, Where the goats seem to hang in the air, And quick to descry, with his keen searching eye, Pan drives before him the flocks,- And gathers them round him; and under deep rocks And with out-piping lips he blows into their tips, Pan mighty wonders achieves To the honey-tongued nightingale, hid in the leaves For Pan, sweet musician, with grace and precision, As the swift-footed nymphs round the fountains And mock-loving echo bears off to the mountains Sly Pan he comes peeping, and daintly creeping O'er his back is the skin of the lynx, The nymphs to a soft meadow perfumed with pinks And there he rejoices in all their sweet voices, They sang of Olympus the blest, And of Hermes Inventor, much more than the rest, How seeking Cyllene, his own fair demesne, he Upon Arcady's stream-gushing rocks As he went into service, and tended the flocks, And the passion excited was duly requited, She bore him a wonderful son, With a strange visage curl'd into laughter and fun, For the nurse, in dismay, ran shrieking away, But Hermes he dandled the boy, And thought him the merriest imp, He feather'd his ankles with infinite joy, For he was not the godhead to limp; Then he wrapp'd him up snug in a hare-skin rug, VOL. XXX. NO. CLXXXII. 1 Jupiter sat not alone, But his time with his deities whil'd, When Hermes arrived and sat down at his throne, Raptures affected the gods, (On earth we should say to a man,) And Bacchus the most: winks, gestures, and nods 'Twas a * panto-mime to the gods sublime So they gave him the name of Pan. Pan, Pan, merry Pan― Pan, the dispenser of mirth, With thy horn, and thy hoof, and complexion of tan, And thy praise shall be long, though short is the song, * Because he pleased war, saith the original.-All being no play on the word Pan, I have chosen a word that has, and perhaps somewhat expresses the same idea. THE RIVER NIGER-TERMINATION IN THE SEA. LETTER FROM JAMES MACQUEEN, ESQ. SIR,-Last autumn you received an article from me containing a review of Clapperton's last, Lander's first, and De Caille's late travels in Africa, together with such farther information as I had obtained relative to the termination of the great river Niger in the Atlantic Ocean. This article was in types, and was to have appeared in your September Number, along with a corrected map of the course and termination of the Niger. The length of the article, and the way in which your columns have been occupied with important political discussions, have hitherto prevented the appearance of my communication in your widely circulated publication. I am now, however, better pleased that it should stand over till the publication of Lander's new work, as the whole subject of African geography can then be more satisfactorily brought forward in one view, that enterprising traveller having just arrived in England, with the confirmation, from personal research and ocular demonstration, of the important geographical fact, which, from long and patient enquiry, and from good authority, (authority which has not been, because it could not be, contradicted,) I had so often, and so many years ago, laid before the public. Justice to myself and justice to the important subject, however, require of me at this moment to draw, and as shortly as possible, the attention of the public to the facts concerning this case. Sixteen years ago, I pointed out in a small treatise, published in this city, that the Niger terminated in the Atlantic Ocean in the Bight of Benin and Biafra, and it is exactly eleven years since I laid before his Majesty's government, in the several public departments, a memorial, accompanied by a map, upon a very large scale, pointing out the important fact, and shewing the course of the Niger and its principal tributary streams through the interior of Northern Africa, downwards to the Atlantic Ocean. This memorial also went into the commercial advantages which this country might obtain by planting a settlement on the island of Fernando Po, a healthy and commanding position as a commercial de pot, to carry on trade with the interior of Africa, by means of the navigable stream of the Niger, and it offered to bring forward a commercial company ready to undertake the work. The pernicious influence, however, exercised by Sierra Leone, baffled the commercial object then had in view. In the following year, 1821, I published a small volume, accompanied by a map upon a reduced scale, shewing the course and termination of the Niger, with my authorities for the same, and also at considerable length pointed out the trade and commerce which was carried on by the nations of the interior with the Moors and Arabs across the Great Desert, the trade with the Europeans on the south-western shores of Africa, and also the trade and commerce carried on by the nations of the interior amongst themselves. This volume was published by Mr Black wood, Edinburgh. In June, 1826, and subsequent to the appearance of Denham and Clapperton's Travels, I inserted in your Magazine an article correcting the geography of the courses of the rivers in Eastern Sudan, about which I had felt some doubt and difficulty in the volume alluded to, while the travels of our countrymen just mentioned, enabled me more clearly to demonstrate the passage of the Niger southward to the Atlantic, with only this difference, that the bed of the stream in its southern course, was, as I suspected in my first publication, about a degree and a half more to the westward, than it had there been laid down. I had, as I have already mentioned, prepared last autumn another article, accompanied by a corrected map, on a reduced scale, with the addition of some rivers and places which Clapperton's last, and Lander's first journey enabled me then to lay down, and the map is now given with this letter. This map will give the reader a correct idea of the course and termination of the river Niger, and several of its tributary streams through Northern Central Africa, and, consequently, render any lengthened nar rative on these points, by me, at this moment unnecessary. I think it right, however, to state, that I had, many years ago, received from different individuals, who had traded up the rivers in the Delta of Benin, to a considerable distance, positive information, that these rivers communicated with each other by numerous branches, and that the whole were only branches of one great river, which descended from the northward; and down which stream, these informants told me, large canoes, carrying a great quantity of merchandise, and a great number of people, descended from interior countries, distant one, two, and even three months' journey, and with which natives they were in the constant habit of carrying on a considerable trade, by bartering European goods for African productions, while the foreign slave-traders received almost all the slaves they exported from Africa, at the trading stations on the mouths of the different rivers in the Delta, to which stations these slaves had been brought down from distant countries in the interior, and chiefly by a water conveyance. It is with considerable satisfaction, therefore, that I find all the labours and researches, and they were neither few nor light, which I undertook to demonstrate the truth, and establish the fact, that the long-sought and great River Niger terminated in the Atlantic Ocean, has been within these few days confirmed beyond the possibility of cavil or dispute; and also, that it runs through that portion of Africa where I had delineated its course to be; and no one can hail with greater satisfaction than I do, the arrival of the two brothers, Landers, with this pleasing intelligence, nor be more ready to render them the praise that is due to their enterprise and exertions. It is painful to reflect upon the number of valuable lives which have been lost by clinging to erroneous theories, in endeavouring to solve this great geographical problem, which any one, who turned his eye to the Delta of Benin, and to the numerous rivers which enter the sea in that quarter, must have solved in a moment. It is humiliating and distressing in the extreme to a great |