consequence. But may not this be too dearly | the railroad; and they have been so good as to bought? Is it always fairly tendered?-How say that the steam shall be generated from soft far must suit and service be demanded in re-water, with a slight infusion of camomile flow. turn?-What chance in such an atmosphere ers.

have originality and independence, as com- Timid Letters" we submit had small pared with mediocrity and pliancy?-How chance against such a patroness as this,—who, shall the nervous avoid being borne down and moreover, had a wondrous memory, overawed by the spirit of a circle so authori- brarian at her elbow to "refer," if aught was and a litative?-How may sincerity assert itself (ever said that did not please her. Sometimes she so modestly) among those who believe that met with her match;-there might arrive by they make the "sunshine" and the "latter chance, guests who, though untitled, were unrain" of a reputation ? A house such as Hol- awed by her splendors; and who could set land House is, we know, reputed to be a won- My Lady" right as to chapter and verse drous and potent party engine:-but the ex- when even the quotation in debate was a line tent to which Party in turn really serves and or two from "Hudibras." But this was not benefits the young and lofty and generous per- an everyday piece of good luck. The ordisons who matriculate in such a place is ques-nary tone of the circle was more arbitrary and tionable, and we fancy that the suspicious acquiescent. Here, in proof, is an outbreak, nature of such compacts will reveal itself in- from one of Sydney Smith's letters to Lady creasingly as the true purpose of literature is Holland, in which our wit showed impatience understood by the man of letters. It is no of the process by which fame was meted out treason to confidence if we say that some Bos- by the elect:

well or Burney to come may offer traits and

reminiscences of Holland House far different I am sorry we cannot agree about Walter in character and import from those by which Scott. My test of a book written to amuse is a Macaulay, a Talfourd, and (in these letters) amusement; but I am rather rash, and ought not a Sydney Smith have successively contributed to historical fame. Even the last-named panegyrist in more than one passage indicates "ifs" and "buts" analogous to those which we fancy exist in all great houses, ruled by hospitality and imperiousness. In one letter he tells of the "H. H. fever," meaning by this the fright which must needs be endured by such guests as were sent to sit below the "salt," and who, however mildly received by my Lord had to endure the

to say I am amused before I have inquired whether Sharp or Mackintosh is so. Whishaw's plan is the best: he gives no opinion for the first week, his chin; in the meantime he drives diligently but confines himself to chuckling and elevating about the first critical stations, breakfasts in Mark Lane, hears from Hertford College, and by Saturday night is as bold as a lion, and as decisive as a court of justice.

We

-No more committees like these sit on the month's "number" by Mr. Dickens or Mr. Thackeray, or the Laureate's last lay, or the hard questions and two roguish eyes oration by which a Layard or a Bright brings of My Lady, who was not always a merciful down the storm and troubles the waters. or considerate hostess! A few suggestive "oozhave no more Sydney Smiths, with a few hapings" of like import will be found in these let-Py hits of sensible nonsense, to settle what ters of Sydney:the timid or prosaic or self-important took so much time to adjust; but the day of a party autocracy, which gave and withheld diplomas with all the ceremony (and injustice) of some foreign Academy, is past.

I am going to dine with the Granvilles, to meet the Hollands. Lady Granville is nervous, on account of her room being lined with Spitalfields silk, which always makes Lady Holland ill; means to pass it off as foreign and smuggled, but has little chance of success.

-And we apprehend that the following refers to the same fair despot:

Let us now string together some of the honest thoughts and gay fancies with which these pages are crowded, without much attempt at classification of subject

-

A word or two concerning Female Education."Ah! what female heart can withstand a red-coat? has not yet signified her intentions I think this should be a part of female education; under the sign manual: but a thousand rumors it is much neglected. As you have the rocking reach me, and my belief is, she will come. I horse to accustom them to ride, I would have have spoken to the sheriff, and mentioned it to military dolls in the nursery, to harden their the magistrates. They have agreed to address hearts against officers and red-coats. * her; and she is to be escorted from the station Never teach false morality. How exquisitely abby the yeomanry. The clergy are rather back-surd to tell girls that beauty is of no value, dress ward; but I think that, after a little bashfulness, of no use! Beauty is of value; her whole prosthey will wait upon her. Brunel, assisted by the pects and happiness in life may often depend ablest philosophers, is to accompany her upon upon a new gown or a becoming bonnet, and if

she has five grains of common sense she will find this out. The great thing is to teach her their just value, and that there must be something better under the bonnet than a pretty face for real happiness. But never sacrifice truth.

We may follow this by a letter of farewell advice to a young lady, somewhat different in tone to the wisdom of Fordyce and Chapone, but more practical and not less poetical:

Court will grow bolder; a struggle will commence, and if it ends as I wish, there will be Whigs again, or if not, a Whig will be an animal described in books of natural history, and Lord Grey's bones will be put together and shown by the side of the monument, at the Liverpool Museum. But when these things come to pass, you will no longer be a Warden, but a brown and impalpable powder in the tombs of Dulwich. In the meantime, enough of liberty will remain to make our old age tolerably comin the perennial and pleasing delusion that the fortable; and to our last gasp you will remain Whigs are coming in, and will expire mistaking the officiating clergyman for a king's messenger. But whatever your feelings be on this matter, mine for you will be always those of the most sincere respect and regard.

How to receive criticism.-" As for the Quarterly Review, I have not read it, nor shall I, nor ought I-where abuse is intended, not for my correc

"Lucy, Lucy, my dear child, don't tear your frock; tearing frocks is not of itself a proof of genius; but write as your mother writes, act as your mother acts; be frank, loyal, affectionate, simple, honest; and then integrity or laceration of frock is of little import. And Lucy, dear child, mind your arithmetic. You know in the first sum of yours I ever saw there was a mistake. You had carried two (as a cab is licensed to do), and you ought, dear Lucy, to have carried but one. Is this a trifle? What would life tion, but my pain. I am, however, very fair be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors? game: if the oxen catch the butcher, they have You are going to Boulogne, the city of debts, a right to toss and gore him." peopled by men who never understood arithmetic; by the time you return, I shall probably have received my first paralytic stroke, and shall have lost all recollection of you; therefore I now give you my parting advice. Don't marry anybody who has not a tolerable understanding and a thousand a year, and God bless you, dear child.

The parting benediction is a coin from the same mint as, another day, opened itself to another friend of Sydney Smith's about to proceed to foreign parts: "God bless you," said he, warmly, on taking his leave of the "I have every confidence in your traveller, indiscretion." Ere we have done with education let us give Sydney's estimate of " the establishment" suitable for a "scion of the nobility:"

The fling at foreign travel, addressed to Lady Davy, whom the writer wanted back in London, is very droll,-in its turn of phrase almost Walpolian: -

I am astonished that a woman of your sense should yield to such an imposture as the Augs burg Alps; surely you have found out, by this time, that God has made nothing so curious as human creatures. Deucalion and Pyrrha acted with more wisdom than Sir Humphrey and you; for being in the Augsburg Alps, and meeting with a number of specimens, they tossed them and women.

over their heads-and turned them into men You, on the contrary, are flinging away your animated beings for quartz and feldspar.

The following bit, too, from Sydney's own Horace" in its neatness:— travelling notes, reminds us of "Strawberry

The usual establishment for an eldest landed baby is, two wet nurses, two ditto dry, two aunts, two physicians, two apothecaries; three female friends of the family, unmarried, advanced in life; French savant lives; you find him at his books, It is curious to see in what little apartments a and often in the nursery, one clergyman, six flat-covered with snuff, with a little dog that bites terers, and a grandpapa! Less than this would not be decent.

The privileges of gout.-I observe that gout loves ancestors and genealogy: it needs five or six generations of gentlemen or noblemen to give it its full vigor. Allen deserves the gout more than Lord Holland. I have seen the latter personage resorting occasionally to plain dishes, but Allen passionately loves complexity and artifice in his food.

Having accidentally stumbled on the name of Lord Holland's librarian, let us extract a letter of Whig prophecy, bearing date New Year's Day, 1813, addressed to that gentle

your legs.

Here are two bits from a letter, announcing another foreign journey to a lady, from whom he asked a route to Paris, and help in the matter of providing a travelling attendant to Mrs. Sydney Smith:

:

Many thanks. The damsel will not take to the water, but we have found another in the house who has long been accustomed to the water, being no other than our laundry-maid. She had some little dread of a ship, but as I have assured her it is like a tub, she is comforted. ** We have had charming weather; and all who come here, or have been here, have been delight ed with our little paradise,-for such it really is My dear Allen. * * As to politics, every-except that there is no serpent, and that we wear thing is fast setting in for arbitrary power. The clothes.

man:

That looked through his window. He thought to Sent by his Queen; 'tis there the wounded

From Chambers's Journal. CHARLES KINGSLEY AS A LYRIC

POET.

of the Ironsides, still throbs in his writings. For example, here is a lyric worthy to have been chanted by a company of the Puritan soldiers the night before a battle, and their loftiest feelings might have found in it fitting utterance:

THE DAY OF THE LORD.

The Day of the Lord is at hand, at hand,
Its storms roll up the sky.
A nation sleeps starving on heaps of gold,
All dreamers toss and sigh.
When the pain is sorest the child is born,
And the day is darkest before the morn

Of the Day of the Lord at hand.
Gather you, gather you, angels of God—

Come, for the Earth is grown coward and old—
Chivalry, Justice, and Truth;
Come down and renew us her youth.
Freedom, Self-sacrifice, Mercy, and Love,
Haste to the battle-field, stoop from above

To the Day of the Lord at hand.

Gather you, gather you, hounds of hell-
Famine, and Plague, and War;
Idleness, Bigotry, Cant, and Misrule,
Gather, and fall in the snare.
Hirelings and Mammonites, Pedants and Knaves,
Crawl to the battle-field-sneak to your graves

In the Day of the Lord at hand.

Who would sit down and sigh for a lost age of gold,

FEW readers acquainted with the prosewritings of Mr. Kingsley can be ignorant of the fact, that he is a true poet. The stream of his prose continually reveals the golden sand of poetry sparkling through it. In his pictures, taken from the many-colored landscape of life, and in his transcripts of natural scenery, we feel that he has selected with the poet's eye, and painted with the hand of a poetic artist. But it is not as a writer of poetry in prose we purpose speaking of him now, so much as a writer of poems-in fact, as a lyric poet. The Saint's Tragedy, which was Mr. Kingsley's first literary work, contained great poetic promise, both dramatic and lyric. It evinced a subtle knowledge of human emotion especially of the mental workings and heart-burnings of humanity, wrestling with the views inculcated by Catholic ascetics. In addition to its dramatic interest and truthful delineation of character, there were scattered throughout it some drops of song, which, minute as they were, seemed to us to mirror the broad, deep nature of a lyric poet, even as the dew-drops reflect the overarching span of the broad, deep sky. In his prose works, Mr. Kingsley has also printed several fine lyrics, the beauty and strength of which have been the subject of almost universal remark. Alton Locke contains a ballad, Mary, go and call the Cattle Home, which is akin in its simplicity to those old Scotch ballads that melt us into tears with their thrilling, wild-wailing music. In Yeast appeared the Rough Rhyme on a Rough Matter. It is the cry of a poacher's widow, the passionate protest of a broken heart against the game-laws -poured forth to the great silence of midnight as she is sitting near the spot where her hus- The next quotation will illustrate how perband was killed. It is distinguished by in- fect is Mr. Kingsley's mastery over the lyric as tensity of feeling, and a Dantean distinctness, a form of expression, and with what consumnot frequently met with in the sophistication mate ease he has put a tragedy into three of modern poetry. Few that have read it stanzas. will ever forget it. The lyrics we have mentioned are probably all the reader will have seen of Mr. Kingsley as a lyric poet: other pieces, however, have appeared in print. The chief of these were published in the Christian Socialist, a journal started by the promoters of Working-Men's Associations some few years ince, which had but a small circulation and a brief existence. It is from these we select For men must work, and women must weep, most of our specimens of our author's lyrical And there's little to earn, and many to keep, Though the harbor bar be moaning. genius, although not all of them.

Mr. Kingsley is the descendant of a family of fervent Puritans, and the spirit which lived in them still flashes out: the hot, earnest life which beat so impetuously beneath the armor

While the Lord of all ages is here?
True hearts will leap up at the trumpet of God,
And those who can suffer, can dare.

Each past age of gold was an iron age too,
And the meekest of saints may find stern works
to do

In the Day of the Lord at hand.

Is this not grand writing? The martial swing and the religious soaring of it make the soul rock to its rhythm.

THE THREE FISHERMEN.

Three fishers went sailing out into the West,

Out into the West as the sun went down; Each thought of the woman who loved him the

best,

And the children stood watching them out of the town;

Three wives sat up in the light-house tower,

And trimmed the lamps as the sun went down, And they looked at the squall, and they looked

at the shower,

And the rack it came rolling up ragged and
brown!

But men must work, and women must weep,
Though storms be sudden, and waters deep,
And the harbor bar be moaning.

Three corpses lay out on the shining sands
In the morning gleam as the tide went down,
And the women are watching and wringing their
hands,

For those who will never come back to the
town;

For men must work, and women must weep,
And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep-
And good-by to the bar and its moaning.

a double meaning-to make a sigh or a sob speak more than words-to hint more than can be uttered-to express the inexpressible by veiling the mortal features, as did the old Greek artist:

The merry, merry lark was up

and singing,

And the hare was out and feeding on the lea,
And the merry, merry bells below were ringing,
When my child's laugh rang through me.
Now the hare is snared and dead beside the
snow-yard,

And the lark beside the dreary winter sea,
And my baby in his cradle in the church-yard,
Waiteth there until the bells bring me.

This is a true ballad. It is clearly con- If these specimens are not sufficient to ceived, clearly finished, simply worded, and it prove that a powerful lyrist is among us, we contains neither metaphor nor conceit. These do not know what evidence would be neces two lyrics alone will amply shew that their au- sary. "Tell Mr. Kingsley to leave novels, thor possesses the fire and force, the cunning and write nothing but lyrics," said one of our art and the beauty of expression, of a lyrical greatest living writers to us the other day, master-in addition to which qualities, his when we showed him some of these songs. Muse has at times a wondrous witchery and Often has the distinguished Chevalier Bunsen, most subtle grace. Some of his dainty little in speaking of the song-literature of Germany lilts of song are so full of melody, they sing and its influence on the people, urged Mr. of themselves, which is the rarest of all lyrical Kingsley to devote his powers to becoming a attributes. They remind us of the sweet things done by the old dramatists, when they have dallied with airy fancies in a lyrical mood.

Here is one :

SONG.

There sits a bird on every tree,
With a heigh-ho!

There sits a bird on every tree,
Sings to his love as I to thee;

With a heigh-ho, and a heigh-ho!
Young maids must marry.

There blooms a flower on every bough,

With a heigh-ho!

There blooms a flower on every bough,
Its gay leaves kiss-I'll show you how:
With a heigh-ho, and a heigh-ho!
Young maids must marry.

Poet for the People, and a writer of songs to be sung by them. England has no Burns, no Béranger, not even a Moore: she waits for her national lyrist. Although not as yet, perhaps, thoroughly tried, we know no man who appears to be so fittingly endowed to ascend into this sphere of song, that is dark and silent, awaiting his advent, as Mr. Kingsley. He is an intense man, large in heart and brain, a passionate worshipper of truth and beauty. His heart has a twin-pulse beating with that of the people; his song has a direct heart homeness, and is that of a singer born. The verses we have given, be it remembered, do not constitute the choicest picked from a larger quantity: they are the most of what we have seen, and are taken as they came. We claim for them the rare merit of originality: there is no echo of an imitation, no reverberation of an echo. The melody has a bird-like spontaneity. It will be found that each repetition serves to increase their beauty. Observe, too, how essential everything is that belongs to them: there is nothing accidental. Mr. Kingsley has the self-denial to reject all that is superfluous in thought or word, which is a most We conclude our quotations with a brief rare virtue in a young poet, and without it no strain of pathetic minor music, so like the ten- one can ever become a writer of national derness of some Scottish music, which must songs. He has also acquired the young writer's have been struck out of the strong national last attained grace, simplicity. Many of our heart, like waters out of the smitten rock, young writers seek to clothe their thoughts through rent and fissure. These eight lines all in purple words, thinking thus to become bring out another quality of the lyric poet-poets. A man might just as well think of bethat of suggestiveness-the power to convey coming king by putting on the royal purple,

The sun's a groom, the earth's a bride,
With a heigh-ho!

The sun's a groom, the earth's a bride,
The earth shall pass-but love abide,

With a heigh-ho, and a heigh-ho!
Young maids must marry.