d despitefully
stolen, the pleasing idea of the repetition of "down, down, down," from
the equally pathetic and instructive ditty of "up, up, up," in Tom
Thumb; the exordium or prolegomena to which floweth _sweetly_ and
_poetically_ thus:--

"Here we go up, up, up,
And here we go _down, down, down_!"

In taking leave of Mr. Shelley, we have a few observations to whisper in
his ear. That he has the seedlings of poetry in his composition no one
can deny, after the perusal of many of our extracts; that he employs
them worthily, is more than can be advanced. His style, though disgraced
by occasional puerilities, and simpering affectations, is in general
bold, vigorous, and manly; but the disgraceful fault to which we object
in his writings, is the scorn he every where evinces for all that is
moral or religious. If he must be skeptical--if he must be lax in his
human codes of excellence, let him be so; but in God's name let him not
publish his principles, and cram them down the throats of others.
Existence in its present state is heavy enough; and if we take away the
idea of eternal happiness, however visionary it may appear to some, who
or what is to recompence us for the loss we have sustained? Will
scepticism lighten the bed of death?--Will vice soothe the pillow of
declining age? If so! let us all be sceptics, let us all be vicious; but
until their admirable efficacy is proved, let us jog on the beaten
course of life, neither influenced by the scoff of infidelity, nor
fascinated by the dazzling but flimsy garb of licentiousness and
immorality.--_The London Magazine_.

ADONAIS. _An Elegy, on the Death of Mr. John Keats_. By P.B. Shelley.

We have already given some of our columns to this writer's merits, and
we will not now repeat our convictions of his incurable absurdity. On
the last occasion of our alluding to him, we were compelled to notice
his horrid licentiousness and profaneness, his fearful offences to all
the maxims that honorable minds are in the habit of respecting, and his
plain defiance of Christianity. On the present occasion we are not met
by so continued and regular a determination of insult, though there are
atrocities to be found in the poem quite enough to make us caution our
readers against its pages. Adonais is an elegy after _the manner of
Moschus_, on a foolish young man, who, after writing some volumes of
very weak, and, in the greater part, of very indecent poetry, died some
time s