The reader will have admired the highlywrought effect of that mysterious whisper, Mice! -startling the ear of kittenhood with dim in timations of an eventful future. The condensed They who trust this treacherous season Stays within, and takes a pill.—Punck. NEIGHBOR LONDON TO NEIGHBOR PARIS. "DEAREST NEIGHBOR, 66 Knowing that you were at least well satisfied with the hearty welcome and humble fare (for I confess it, I cannot cook as you can) offered to your distinguished friend on his late visit with his very beautiful wife; thinking that it would only make us the better friends, the better we treated each other's countrymen, I own I was a little hurt when I found myself spoken of in a manner, by one of your people, that I do not think I quite deserve. Now, mind, my dear PARIS, I dwell upon this in the best temper; and with no sourness, no ill-will whatever. Besides I know that lawyers will be abusive; nevertheless, I think even the lawyer went a little beyond his professional black, when very properly denouncing a very wicked man, by name PIANORI, and by trade a shoemaker-the lawyer said, "But a month ago he left London, that centre of the most audacious agitators-of those men whom rage and defeat have driven to madness, and who have come to such a point that appeal to crime is their only means to serve their ambitious designs, their material appetites, and their lust for power. "I confess it, when I found these very hard words flung at myself, I did for a moment feel in significance of that monosyllable is a masterly best to receive my Neighbor's exalted friend with a pucker. What, thought I, and did I do my hit. But it is nothing to the thrilling revelation smiles and cordiality, and am I to be considered which follows it-the awful roll, the ruthless reas a person who harbors the very wickedest of verberation of that other monosyllablepersons for the very worst of purposes. I know R-r-r-rats! We warrant, if Mr. Westwood has am hospitable; and more than that, I can't and ever recited this piece before a select home cirwon't help it. I know that many and many a cle of little ones, that he has been clamorously petitioned (the first sensation over and silence time, poor hunted, desolate creatures, have almost fallen down upon their knees, ready to kiss broken) to repeat the rolling r's, without bating my threshold; because, when there they were safe and sound, although roared and howled after as the sea roars and howls at times about my dwelling. a jot of the old emphasis. "Please do the R-r-r-rats over again!" And no wonder. A SONG OF SPRING. BY A SURGEON. SPRING'S delights are now returning, Lovely woman, prone to folly, Too soon her winter clothing doffs : And the doctor makes up jolly Lots of draughts for colds and coughs. Now gentle showers the hedges splash on, "And dear Neighbor, it is not my fault-but rather, I think, it is the excellence of my constitution, which the sea by the by, has ever done much to brace and strengthen-if I am alike hospitable to all sorts of people. Great Kings that have left their sceptres behind, and only come to me with cotton umbrella-Prime Ministers with only the one shirt upon the back turned at a minute's notice to their own country lawyer's clerks that have been dictators and have become as poor and helpless as lawyer's clerks again. All of these have been alike welcomed by me, and will be, always and forever. My sky is, I know, not as blue as yours! it is so often mixed with coal-smoke; and wash as one will, one cannot at times help having smutty spots upon one's face, but for all this, the air is very sweet and very comforting. Some say, it is the unrestrict ed quantity of printers' ink that is used, that, Essays, Ecclesiastical and Social. Reprinted mixing with the atmosphere, makes it mightily welcome. upon with Additions, from the Edinburgh Review. By W. J. CONYBEARE, M. A. Longman & Co. Now I know, that people will take advantage of this easiness, one's wish to be hospitable. It afford a sketch in outline of the main social feaThe six essays here enlarged and reprinted is the old story of ingratitude, as old as the poi-tures of the Church of England as seen from son in the frozen snake, brought home to the the author's point of view, that of a man both woodman's fire-place. Still, I will say, that I liberal and orthodox. The first essay is have always endeavored to preach peace and good the State of the Church in Wales, a subject manners to the strangers who have sought me. full of curious matter, and worthy of very seriAnd therefore, am I to be called the nurse of au- ous attention. The next, upon Church Parties, dacious agitators-the patroness of criminals and obtained much attention when it first appeared, madmen the easy looker-on of lunatics, lusting and gave, as will be remembered, great matter for bulrush sceptres, and diadems of straw! Iam of outcry to the "exaggerated Evangelical" sure, your excellent friend who lately visited me party, typified by the Record newspaper; the has no right to think this of me. I did my columns of that journal yielding to the reviewer best to give him a kind welcome; and began to matter that suggests now and then a recollecflatter myself with my success, but so it is; tion of Sydney Smith's articles on Methodism. when a lawyer opens his mouth, even LONDON The third essay deals with the great question of Ecclesiastical Economy, and enters freely is not safe. I know and own that, now and then, I have into a discussion of the respective incomes of I am so hospitable-harbored strangers who the dignitary and the curate. Here, we must have slipt away, and gone on board a boat, and confess, the author shows more love for the abmade themselves jolly with no end of cham-stract idea of a fat benefice, than we can share paigne, and afterwards made a great disturb with him. The next essay, upon Church rates, ance when they got to the other side of the advocates their abolition as a tax upon Dissensea; but for all that, I do not think that-espe- ters, and the formation in each parish of an cially after what's so lately happened, one of ecclesiastical system for the management of your lawyers should be allowed to abuse my church affairs by parochial synods and diocesan kindness, when certain people - for I'm above conventions. Mormons and Teetotallers are the naming names—have years ago done what they topics of the two succeeding articles, each furpleased with their knees, comforted at my fire- nishing illustrations of a fanaticism which the Church, Mr. Conybeare appears to think, if it had more life in its bones, could have controlled. The teetotallers confound, as everybody knows, religion and beer, in the oddest of all jumbles. Help us," quotes Mr. Conybeare from the Temperance Hymn Book side. “Now, my dear Neighbor PARIS, I'm not angry, only a little sad at what your lawyer has said; but I defy his words; and I can't help it-shall go on in my old way, opening my door to whatever stranger may knock, whether his name be AUGUSTUS CÆSAR, or JOHN SMITH; whether he comes with both his pockets crammed with gold snuff-boxes, or whether he doesn't bear his own likeness in a sous-worth of copper. 66 "Help us to show each hidden snare, To snatch the drunkard from despair, There is also, we may observe, a Vegetarian My dear Neighbor,-Let you and I con- hymn book in existence, in which we remember, tinue to love one another, and we may defy all among others, a hymn not to the object of all lawyers, though they should go on abusing hymning, but to the feeders upon beef and mutus, till their tongues were as black as the tongues ton, which began— of Poll Parrots. And so I remain Dearest PARIS, -- "Your Affectionate Friend and Neighbor, LONDON." "Meat eaters! . . . Did you only know Mr. Conybeare's essays, though upon grave subjects, are not in any degree heavy in their tone, and will surely be very welcome to the public in their present form.-Examiner. "P. S. Talking of gold boxes, and knowing how ready some folks are to take things in huff, I sent to my friend, my own LORD MAYOR, begging him not to think of what your lawyer had said of me, and not by any - Under the clock in means for my own LORD MAYOR is so sen- front of the Town Hall in the town of Bala, sitive-not to send back the gold box with the Merionethshire, North Wales, is the following diamond N. I was much relieved when my inscription : own LORD MAYOR sent me word to say that CLOCK INSCRIPTION. "Here I stand both day and night, From Household Words. the hail, the rain, the snow, the rainbow, the IF I succeed in the object I have proposed to wind and its circuits, the fowls that fly, and the myself in this paper, I shall consider that I am insects that hover-they have all had their poets, entitled to the gratitude of all poets, present and and too many of them. It to come. For I shall have found them a new Is there anything new in poetry, I ask, to be subject for verse: a discovery, I submit, as said about Love? Surely that viand has been important as that of a new metal, or of a new done to rags. We have it with every variety of motive power, a new pleasure, a new pattern dressing. Love and madness; love and smiles, for shawls, a new color, or a new strong drink. tears, folly, crime, innocence, and charity. We No member of the tuneful craft; no gentleman have had love in a village, a palace, a cottage, whose eyes are in the habit of rolling in fine a camp, a prison and a tub. We have had the frenzy; no sentimental young lady with an loves of pirates, highwaymen, lords and ladies, album will deny that the whole present do- shepherds and shepherdesses; the Loves of the main of poetry is used up-that it has been Angels and the Loves of the New Police. Cansurveyed, travelled over, explored, ticketed, ning was even good enough to impress the abcatalogued, classified, and analyzed to the last struse science of mathematics into the service of inch of ground, to the last petal of the last Poetry and Love; and to sing about the loves flower, to the last blade of grass. Every poet- of ardent axioms, postulates, tangents, oscillaical subject has been worn as threadbare as Sir tion, cissoids, conchoids, the square of the John Cutler's stockings. The sea, its blueness, hypothenuse, asymptotes, parabolas, and conic depth, vastness, raininess, freedom, noisiness, sections-in short, all the Loves of the Triancalmness, darkness, and brightness; its weeds gles. Doctor Darwin gave us the Loves of the and waves, and finny denizens; its laughter, Plants, and in the economy of vegetation we wailings, sighings, and deep bellowings; the had the loves of granite rocks, argillaceous ships that sail, and the boats that dance, and the strata, noduled flints, blue clay, silica, chertz, tempests that howl over it; the white winged and the limestone formation. We have had in birds that skim over its billows; the great connection with love in poetry hearts, darts, whales, and sharks, and monsters, to us yet un- spells, wrath, despair, withering smiles, burning known, that disport themselves in its lowest tears, sighs, roses, posies, pearls, and other predepths, and swing the scaly horrors of their cious stones; blighted hopes, beaming eyes, folded tails in its salt hiding places; the mer- misery, wretchedness, and unutterable woe. maids that wag their tails and comb their tresses is too much. Everything is worn out. The in its coral caves; the sirens that sing fathoms whole of the flower-garden, from the brazen farther than plummet ever sounded; the jewels sun-flower to the timid violet, has been exand gold that lie hidden in its caverns, measure- hausted long ago. All the birds in the world less to man; the dead that it is to give up: could never sing so loud or so long as the poets the sea, and all appertaining to it, have been have sung about them. The bards have sung sung dry these thousand years. We heard the right through Lempriere's Classical Dictionary, roar of its billows in the first line of the Iliad, Buffon's Natural History, Malte Brun's Geoand Mr. Sharp, the comic singer, will sing graphy (for what country, city, mountain, or about it this very night at the Tivoli Gardens, stream, remains unsung), and the Biographie in connection with the Gravesend steamer, the Universelle. Every hero, and almost every steward, certain basins, and a boiled leg of scoundrel, has had his epic. We have had the poetical Pleasures of Hope, Memory, ImaginaAs for the Sun, he has had as many verses tion, and Friendship; likewise the Vanity of written about him as he is miles distant from Human Wishes, the Fallacies of Hope, and the the earth. His heat, brightness, roundness, Triumphs of Temper. The heavenly muse has and smiling face; his incorrigible propensities sung of man's first disobedience, and the mortal for getting up in the east and going to bed in fruit of the forbidden tree, that brought Death the west; his obliging disposition in tipping into the world and all our woes. The honest the hills with gold, and bathing the evening muse has arisen and sung the Man of Ross. All sky with crimson, have all been sung. Every the battles that ever were fought-all the arms star in the firmament has had a stanza; Saturn's and all the men-have been celebrated in numrings have all had their posies, and Mars, Bac-bers. Arts, commerce, laws, learning, and our chus, Apollo, and Virorum, have all been old nobility, have had their poet. Suicide has chanted. As for the poor ill-used Moon, she has found a member of the Court of Apollo musical been ground on every barrel-organ in Parnas- and morbid enough to sing self-murder; and the sus since poetry existed. Her pallid complex- Corn Laws have been rescued from Blue Books, ion, chastity or lightness of conduct, treacherous, and enshrined in Ballads. Mr. Pope has called contemplative or secretive disposition, her silver upon my lord Bollingbroke to awake, and “exor sickly smile, have all been over-celebrated in patiate free o'er all this scene of man ;" and the verse. And everything else belonging to the pair have, together, passed the whole catalogue sky-the clouds, murky, purple, or silver lined, of human virtues and vices in review. Drunk mutton. enness has been sung; so has painting, so has the ears of my mind, to take up the cry, to laugh music. Poems have been written on the Art of scornfully at the preposterous idea of their being Poetry. The Grave has been sung. The earth, possibly any such a thing as poetry connected and the waters under it, and the fearsome region with so matter-of-fact an institution as a Railunder that; its "adamantine chains and penal way, and to look upon me in the light of a fanfire," its "ever burning sulphur unconsumed," tastic visionary. its "darkness visible," its burning marl and But I have tied myself to the stake; nailed sights of terror. We have heard the last lays my colors to the mast; drawn the sword and of all the Last Minstrels, and the Last Man has thrown away the scabbard; in fact, I have writhad his say, or rather his song, under the aus- ten the title of this article, and must abide the pices of Campbell. The harp that once hung in issue. Tara's halls has not a string left, and nobody Take a Tunnel-in all its length, its utter ought to play upon it any more. darkness, its dank coldness and tempestuous Take instead, oh ye poets, the wires of the windiness. To me a Tunnel is all poetry. To Electric Telegraph, and run your tuneful fingers be suddenly snatched away from the light of over those chords. Sing the poetry of Rail day, from the pleasant companionship of the ways. But what can there be of the poetical, fleecy clouds, the green fields spangled with or even of the picturesque, element in a Rail- flowers, the golden wheat, the fantastically way? Trunk lines, branch-lines, loop-lines, changing embankments, now geological, now and sidings; cuttings, embankments, gradients, floral, now rocky, now chalky; the hills, the valcurves, and inclines; points, switches, sleepers, leys, and the winding streams; the high mounfog-signals, and turn-tables; locomotives, break-tains in the distance that know they are empervans, buffers, tenders and whistles; platforms, ors of the landscape, and so wear purple robes tunnels, tubes, goods-sheds, return-tickets, axle- right imperially; the silly sheep in the meadows, grease, cattle-trains, pilot-engines, time-tables, that gaze so contentedly, unweeting that John and coal-trucks all these are eminently prosaic Hinds the butcher is coming down by the next matter-of-fact things, determined, measured and train to purchase them for the slaughter-house; maintained by line and rule, by the chapter and the little lambs that are not quite up to railwayverse of printed regulations and bye-laws signed trains, their noise and bustle and smoke, yet, and by Directors and Secretaries, and allowed by that scamper nervously away, carrying their Commissioners of Railways. Can there be any simple tails behind them; the sententious cattle poetry in the Secretary's office; in dividends, that munch, and lazily watch the steam from the debenture's, scrip, preference-shares, and de- funnel as it breaks into fleecy rags of vapor, and ferred bonds? Is there any poetry in Railway then fall to munching again; to be hurried from time the atrociously matter-of-fact system of all these into pitchy obscurity, seem to me pocalculation that has corrupted the half-past two etical and picturesque in the extreme. It is like o'clock of the old watchman into two-thirty? death in the midst of life, a sudden suspension Is Bradshaw poetical? Are Messrs. Pickford of vitality-the gloom and terror of the grave and Chaplin and Horne poetical? How the pouncing like a hawk upon the warmth and deuce (I put words into my opponent's mouth) cheerfulness of life. Many an ode-many a are you to get any poetry out of that dreariest ballad could be written on that dark and gloomy combination of straight lines, a railroad:-tunnel-the whirring roar and scream and jar of straight rails, straight posts, straight wires, echoes, the clanging of wheels, the strange straight stations, and straight termini. voices that seem to make themselves heard as As if there could be anything poetical about the train rushes through the tunnel,-now in a Railroad! I hear Gusto the great fine art passionate supplication, now in fierce anger and Critic and judge of Literature say this with a loud invective, now in an infernal chorus of fiendsneer, turning up his fine Roman nose mean- ish mirth and demoniac exultation, now in a while. Poetry on a Railway! cries Proseycard, loud and long-continued though inarticulate the man of business-nonsense! There may be screech-a meaningless howl like the ravings some nonsensical verses or so in the books that of a madman. To understand and appreciate a Messrs. W. H. Smith & Sons sell at their stalls tunnel in its full aspect of poetic and picturesque at the different stations; but Poetry on or in the horror, you should travel in a third-class carRailway itself-ridiculous! Poetry on the Rail! riage. To first and second class passengers echoes Heavypace, the commercial traveller- the luxury of lamplight is by the gracious favor fudge! I travel fifteen thousand miles by rail- of the Directors of the company condescendingway every year. I know every line, branch and ly extended; and in passing through a tunnel station in Great Britain. I never saw any poetry they are enabled dimly to descry their fellowon the Rail. And a crowd of passengers, directors, travellers; but for the third-class voyager darkshareholders, engine-drivers, guards, stokers, ness both outer and inner are provided-darkstation-masters, signal-men, and porters, with, I ness so complete and so intense, that as we are am ashamed to fear, a considerable proportion borne invisibly on our howling way, dreadful of the readers of Household Words, seem, to thoughts spring up in our minds of blindness ; that we have lost our sight for ever! Vainly we have even gone through tunnels in those vile endeavor to peer through the darkness, to strain open standing-up cars, called by an irreverent our eyes to descry one ray of light, one outline public "pig-boxes," and seemingly provided by -be it ever so dim-of a human figure; one railway directors as a cutting reproach on, and thin bead of day upon a panel, a ledge, a win- stern punishment for, poverty. Yet I have dow-sill, or a door. Is there not matter for drunk deeply of railway poetry in a " pig-box." bards in all this?-in the length of the tunnel, There is something grand, there is something its darkness and clamor; in the rage and fury epic, there is something really sublime in the of the engine eating its strong heart, burnt up gradual melting away of the darkness into by inward fire, like a man consumed by his own light; in the decadence of total eclipse and the passions; in the seemingly everlasting duration glorious restoration of the sun to his golden of the deprival from light and day and life; but rights again. Standing up in the coverless car a deprival which ends at last. Ah, how glad you see strange, dim, fantastic, changing shapes and welcome that restoration to sunshine is! above you. The daylight becomes irriguous, We seem to have had a sore and dangerous like dew, upon the steam from the funnel, the sickness, and to be suddenly and graciously per- roofs of the carriages, the brickwork sides of the mitted to rise from a bed of pain and suffering, tunnel itself. But nothing is defined, nothing and enter at once into the enjoyment of the fixed: all the shapes are irresolute, fleeting, rudest health, with all its comforts and enjoy- confused, like the events in the memory of an ments, with all its cheerful pleasures and happy old man. The tunnel becomes a phantom tube forgetfulness of the ills that are gone, and un--a dry Styx-the train seems changed into conscious nescience of the ills that are to come, Charon's boat, and the engine-driver turns into and that must come, and surely. the infernal ferryman. And the end of that awWhenever I pass through a tunnel I meditate ful navigation must surely be Tartarus. You upon these things, and wish heartily that I were think so, you fancy yourself in the boat, as Dante a poet, that I might tune my heart to sing the and Virgil were in the Divine Comedy; ghosts poetry of railway tunnels. I don't know whether cling to the sides, vainly repenting, uselessly lathe same thoughts strike other people. I sup-menting; Francesca of Rimini floats despairing pose they do, I hope they do. It may be that by; far off, mingled with the rattle of wheels, are I muse more on tunnels, and shape their length, heard the famine-wrung moans of Ugolino's and blackness, and coldness and noise, to sub- children. Hark to that awful shrilly, hideous, jects fit to be wedded to immortal verse; be- prolonged yell-a scream like that they say that cause I happen to reside on a railway, and that Catherine of Russia gave on her death-bed, almost every morning and evening throughout and which, years afterwards, was wont to haunt the week I have to pass through a tunnel of pro- the memories of those that heard it. Lord be digious length,-to say the truth, nearly as long good to us! there is the scream again: it is the as the Box Tunnel, on the Great Western Rail- first scream of a lost spirit's last agony; the way. Morning and night we dash from the cry of the child of earth waking up into the fair fields of Kent,-from the orchards and the Ever and Ever of pain; it is Facinata screaming hop-gardens, from the sight of the noble river in her sepulchre of flames-no, it is simply the in the distance, with its boats and barges and railway whistle as the train emerges from huge ships, into this Erebus, pitch dark, nearly the tunnel into sunlight again. The ghosts three miles long, and full of horrid noises. vanish, there are no more horrible sights and Sometimes I travel in the lamp-lit carriages, and noises, no flying sparks, no red lamps at interthen I find it poetical to watch the flicker- vals, like demon eyes. I turn back in the ing gleams of the sickly light upon shrouded "pig-box," and look at the arched entrance to figures, muffled closely in railway rugs and man- the tunnel we have just quitted. I seemed to tles and shawls, the ladies who cower timidly fancy there should be an inscription over it bidin corners; the children, who, half-pleased, ding all who enter to leave Hope behind; but half-frightened, don't seem to know whether to instead of that there is simply, hard by, a placard laugh or cry, and compromise the matter by sit- on a post relative to cattle straying on the railting with their mouths wide open, and incessant- way. ly asking why it is so dark, and why there is A railway accident! Ah, poets! how much such a noise. Sometimes, and I am not ashamed of poetry could you find in that, were you so to confess, much more frequently, I make my minded. Odes and ballads, sapphics, alcaics, journey in the poor man's carriage-the" parly," and dactylics, strophes, chorusses and semior third class. In that humble "parly" train, choruses might be sung-rugged poems, rough believe me, there is much more railway poetry as the rocky numbers of Ossian; soothing attainable than in the more aristocratic compart-poems, "soft pity to infuse," running "softly ments. Total darkness, more noise (for the sweet in Lydian measure upon the woes of windows are generally open, and the reverbera- railway accidents, the widowhoods and orphantion consequently much greater), more mocking ages that have been made by the carelessness of voices, more mystery, and more romance. Ia driver, a faulty engine, an unturned "point,' 93 |