MILTON AND BEN JONSON. Those who have more faith in parallelism than myself, may trace Satan's address to the sun in 'Paradise Lost' to the first lines of Ben Jonson's Poetaster: "Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, Wishing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness!" But even if Milton had the above in his mind, his own verses would be more fitly entitled an apotheosis of Jonson's lines than an imitation. STATISTICS. We all remember Burke's curious assertion that there were 80,000 incorrigible jacobins in England. Mr. Colquhoun is equally precise in the number of beggars, prostitutes, and thieves in the City of London. Mercetinus, who wrote under Lewis XV. seems to have afforded the precedent; he assures his readers, that by an accurate calculation there were 50,000 incorrigible atheists in the City of Paris! Atheism then may have been a co-cause of the French revolution; but it should not be burthened on it, as its monster-child. MAGNANIMITY. The following ode was written by Giordano Bruno, under prospect of that martyrdom which he soon after suffered at Rome, for atheism: that is, as is proved by all his works, for a lofty and enlightened piety, which was of course unintelligible to bigots and dangerous to an apostate hierarchy. If the human mind be, as it assuredly is, the sublimest object which nature affords to our contemplation, these lines which portray the human mind under the action of its most elevated affections, have a fair claim to the praise of sublimity. The work from which they are extracted is exceedingly rare (as are, indeed, all the works of the Nolan philosopher), and I have never seen them quoted:-- 'Daedaleas vacuis plumas nectere humeris Concupiant alii; aut vi suspendi nubium Alis, ventorumve appetant remigium; Aut orbitae flammantis raptari alveo; Bellerophontisve alitem Nos vero illo donati sumus genio, Ut fatum intrepedi objectasque umbras cernimus, Ne caeci ad lumen solis, ad perspicuas Naturae voces surdi, ad Divum munera Ingrato adsimus pectore. Non curamus stultorum quid opinio De nobis ferat, aut queis dignetur sedibus. Alis ascendimus sursum melioribus! Quid nubes ultra, ventorum ultra est semita, Vidimus, quantum satis est. Illuc conscendent plurimi, nobis ducibus, Per scalam proprio erectam et firmam in pectore, Quam Deus, et vegeti sors dabit ingeni; Non manes, pluma, ignis, ventus, nubes, spiritus, Divinantum phantasmata. Non sensus vegetans, non me ratio arguet, Non indoles exculti clara ingenii; Sed perfidi sycophantae supercilium Absque lance, statera, trutina, oculo, Miraculum armati segete. Versificantis grammatistae encomium, Buglossae Graecissantum, et epistolia Lectorem libri salutantum a limine, Latrantum adversum Zoilos, Momos, mastiges, Hinc absint testimonia!