"Blest be the queen! Blest when the sun goes down;

When rises blest. May love line soft her

crown.

May music's self not more harmonious be, Than the mild manhood by her side, and sheMay she be young forever-ride, dance, sing, 'Twixt cares of state, carelessly carolling," etc. Or again, the description of the assemblage at the Prince of Wales' christening, the third and fourth lines of which are considerately explained in a note to allude to the late king of Prussia and Alexander von Humboldt:

"Young beauties mixed with warriors gray,
And choristers in lily array,

And princes, and the genial king,
With the wise companioning,

And the mild manhood, by whose side Walks daily forth his two years' bride,” etc. On the same principle, Mr. Hunt, in the notes, makes a general recantation of his jokes on the Lake poets. This is "coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb " with a vengeance, and would be pitiable if it were not so very common. The poetical development of individuals, no less than of nations, has a tendency to begin with prophecies and war-songs, and to end with glorified nursery rhymes in the language of adulation and compliment.

There are two thoroughly modern attributes which Mr. Leigh Hunt's poems possess; viz., obscurity of thought, and want of finish in composition. Whatever excuse may be made for either of these qualities taken separately, they make up a grave blemish when combined. Keats is sometimes quoted as the founder of a system according to which metre and sound are subordinated to the complete development of an idea. But if the ear is to be offended, the understanding should be propitiated, and the difficulties of syntax and prosody should be presented alternately. At all events, triple rhymes, trochees for iambics, and grammatical liberties, should be introduced only where there is a dignus vindice nodus, and the gush of inspiration may be supposed to have been too strong for the restrictions of form. But no such indulgence can be claimed for passages so tamely slipshod as the following::

"An aged nurse had Hero in the place,
An under priestess of an humbler race,
Who partly serv'd, partly kept watch and ward
Over the rest, but no good love debarr'd.
The temple's faith though serious, never cross'd
Engagements, missed to their exchequer's cost;
And though this present knot was to remain
Unknown a while, 'twas blessed within the fane,
And much good thanks expected in the end
From the dear married daughter, and the wealthy
friend.

sands,

Like some grave, mighty thought threading a dream,

And times and things, as in that vision,

seem

Keeping along it their eternal stands,-
Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd band
That roamed through the young world, the

glory extreme

Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam, The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.

“Then comes a mightier silence, stern and

strong,

As of a world left empty of its throng,

And the void weighs on us; and then we
wake,

And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along
"Twixt villages, and think how we shall
take

Our opinion of human nature is such that
we have more faith in the influence of com-
mercial considerations than in direct appeals
to humanity. People who might be moved
by the calm discussion of "War" in Mr.
Helps' essays, shake off the impressions pro-
duced by "Captain Sword and Captain Pen "
as they would shake off the harrowing recol-
lections of the sick-chamber or dissecting-
room, and relegate the subject to the hope-
less category of necessary evils.

In most of Mr. Hunt's poetry there is a delicacy of sentiment and a freedom from mannerism and straining after effect which redeems many faults. There is room in literature for the pleasing as well as for the acute and profound; and in these days it is a positive relief to read either prose or poetry in which point has not been studied to excess. The aggressive obtrusion of an author's cleverness is sometimes perfectly insulting, and mars that serene and genial temper of mind which the masters of litera

Our own calm journey on for human sake." One poem in this collection is remarkable, not so much for its artistic merit, as for the moral ends which it is designed to advance, and which are categorically announced in the prefatory remarks. The long and bloody wars arising out of the French Revolution had excited in sensitive minds a disgust for all warfare which can scarcely be conceived by the present generation. Traces of this are to be found in most of our poets during the latter half of George III.'s reign. "Cap-ture love to produce in their readers.

OUR readers may probably remember a charming little book, which appeared about two years ago, called "Letters of a Betrothed." These epistles purported to be the genuine compositions of a lady addressed to her future husband during a long engagement, and were professedly published to show that such a correspondence need not necessarily be of such a ridiculous nature as nisi prius revelations would lead us to believe. They also throw some light on the character of the lover-who, from various slight indications, would seem to have been a stiff,

harsh, priggish kind of man, and scarcely worthy of his very pleasant correspondent. Doubt, however, is now thrown on the genuineness of the work by the advertisement of a novel "by the same author," who turns out to be Miss Marguerite A. Power,-the niece, we conclude, of Lady Blessington. We say that this suggests a doubt, for we imagine that, though a lady might possibly publish her love-letters if it were quite certain that her name could not be known, yet that she would be scarcely likely to give her friends the power of identifying her as the author of them.-The Press.

three days there together, and when they leave are betrothed. The marriages are performed at the Feast of Annunciation, when they go in pairs to church, powdered to correspond with their mountains, and the bridegroom carrying a long sword. If it is a widow who marries, they choose a king, and bear him on their shoulders around the village, with great noise and shouting, finishing with theatricals, representing various scenes in their history.

"The well-meant, but ill-directed, zeal of the Reformers led them to forbid the dance and song and festive mirth, not knowing that, unless they substituted something in their place, they "A traveller relates that one day, when climbonly produced an aching void, which drove the ing the mountains, he met a young girl who had revellers to darker deeds. The human mind sole charge of the flocks and herds, no other cannot live on vacancy, and it must be one of marvellous construction that can support itself person being within miles of her. He asked her on solitude. Statistics prove that excitement milk belongs to my mother.' 'But I am very to give him a cup of milk. She answered, The does not cause so much insanity as meditation, thirsty,' said the wanderer. She looked down a and not so many cases of madness occur in great moment in deep thought, and then ran quickly cities as in rural solitudes. The first case of away, and soon returned with a foaming tanksuicide among these simple Alpine people was ard. He offered her money, and she said with known when they were condemned to practise serious surprise, 'You told me you were thirsty, the forms of a new religion without understand- and I gave you milk; what would my mother ing any thing of its spirit. Neither their minds

nor hearts had received any cultivation that say if I sold her milk?'"

fitted them for a serious and earnest life. What Of books of travel written by ladies this were they to do, or think about, suddenly con- is, in short, one of the most liberal and senpemned to idleness, with no food for thought, sible.