lofty stature, their great strength and courage; and then came the Norman as a second branch of the Norseman.

The military adventurers who followed the fortunes of the Conqueror were mostly of Gothic extraction, the descendants of the military order who vanquished the Romans. These admixtures of the Celt, the Phoenician, the Teuton, and the Roman, have left a mixed people. The various elements were destined in process of time to amalgamate and become a racial type; and the Anglo-Saxon has a composite character, in which are found the well-known characteristics of Englishmen. The features become marked, prominent, and distinct, or otherwise, according as the original racial types unite, amalgamate, or separate.

These various races, which have conjoined to form the English nation, appear to have met in the midland districts, and as the baronial castles of Warwick and Kenilworth would be awarded to the followers of the Conqueror, to make them lords over "tower and town," they would attract numerous dependants in their train; these again would ultimately become blended with the Anglo-Saxon. race, and will serve in some degree to explain the apparent anomalous facial contours seen in the Warwickshire people and their neighbours in the midland counties.

The Mask said to be from the face of Shakspere does not possess the broad characteristics of the Warwickshire type. The majority of the people have the Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic physiognomy-a broad-set body, full face, long upper lip, straight or composite nose, hazel eyes, and auburn hair. There is, however, another though less numerous type, blending elements of the Norman with the Anglo-Saxon characteristics, where the aquiline feature in the nose unites with other traits in the long upper lip and fair complexion of the Teuton or Frisian race. These are the marked characteristics of the Jansen portrait, and the mask said to be taken from the face of Shakspere, and also belong to the portraits to which I have drawn attention as likenesses of the family of Shakspere, and which formerly belonged on one side to the Harts, and on the other to the Hathaways.

(To be continued.)

London: FRED. PITMAN, 20, Paternoster Row, E.C.

Printed by J. WARD, Dewsbury.

Popular Lecturer and Reader.

Edited by HENRY PITMAN, Manchester.

New
Series.

N°. 20. (N)

AUGUST, 1864.

2d.

POETRY AND RELIGIOUS FEELING,

ILLUSTRATED BY THE WRITINGS OF BYRON AND SHELLEY.

BY THE

REV. F. W. KITTERMASTER, M. A.

[Continued from the close of Vol. 8, 1863.]

HAVE spoken so much of Byron that I have but little time left for Shelley. I may refer you, however, to his comparison of Sleep and Death, and his description of Night, both in "Queen Mab."

How wonderful is Death,—

Death and his brother Sleep!

One, pale as yonder waning moon,
With lips of lurid blue;

The other, rosy as the morn

When thron'd on ocean's wave,

It blushes o'er the world:

Yet both so passing wonderful!"

How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh
Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear,
Were discord to the speaking quietude

That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault,
Studded with stars unutterably bright,

Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,

Seems like a canopy which love has spread

To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills,
Robed in a garment of untrodden snow;

Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend,
So stainless, that their white and glittering spires
20.-AUG.

Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep,
Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower
So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it

A metaphor of peace ;-all form a scene
Where musing solitude might love to lift

Her soul above this sphere of earthliness;

Where silence undisturbed might watch alone,
So cold, so bright, so still.

Let us also take "The Cloud" and "The Skylark," which, for true poetry, stand unrivalled. It is seldom a poet is so happy in continuous conceptions as Shelley has been in both these poems. He thus speaks for the cloud :— I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noon-day dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under;
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls by tits:

Over earth and ocean with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me;

Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea :

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

The Spirit he loves remains ;

And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead:
As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, Its ardours of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,

With wings folded I rest on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn ;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,

The stars peep behind her and peer:

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun's throne with the burning zone,
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march

With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,

In the million-coloured bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove

While the moist earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky;

I pass through the pores of ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die :

For after the rain, when with never a stain

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.

I conclude my selections from Shelley with “The Skylark."

Hail to thee, blythe Spirit!

Bird thou never wert,

That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still, and higher,

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are brightening,

Thou dost float and run;

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;

Like a star of heaven,

In the broad day-light

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,

Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear,

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.