only give her time. But Mrs. Howard had no time to spare-that was the very thing; and thought she acted nobly by paying the girl a little more than the amount due to her, and dismissing her from her service. Mercy, mercy!" exclaimed Phebe, clinging to her. "I have no home, no friends; and have tried so hard to be good. You are a mother; mercy, for your children's sake, lest they also should one day supplicate it in vain." My children will never become thieves!" said Mrs. Howard, pale with anger. "And why is this?" asked the young dressmaker with flashing eyes, as she tied on her bonnet; "merely because their wealth shields them from the thousand temptations of hunger and poverty? We are all born with the same feelings. But come, Phebe dear, I have brought this trouble upon you, and we will bear it together. Mrs. Green can accompany us to your room, and see that we take nothing." her to peace and happiness; the want of it had brought her to this extremity of woe! It is terrible to feel alone in the world! In her desolation and despair, abandoned and cast off by her fellow-creatures, she forgot Him who could alone preserve her; and, yielding to the evil suggestions of her companion, plunged headlong into crime and wretchedness. When we first saw her, she was dying of a slow and lingering consumption, and wanting the common necessaries of life. Charlotte had been very kind it seemed to the last, and she related many a beautiful trait in the character of this unhappy girl that made one yearn over her with a tearful pity-but she was gone too: she was never very strong. Poor Phebe often said, but without bitterness, "Oh, if Mrs. Howard had but kept me with her! Those were my summer days; and there is nothing in the world I would not have done for her and the dear children. If she or any one had only spoken kindly to me! But when! told them I had no character, they turned me from their doors without another word; and I could not starve!" evident excitement of manner; "to make ar end of this sad story, Phebe Owen died. God help her, and forgive her destroyer !" 66 Amen," said we very softly; while the old man, as if he were still musing upon the subject in his own heart, once again repeated The girl's simple preparations were soon made, and she went forth without another word, or being even permitted to see the little children, to whom her heart clung with a strange yearning. Her dream of happiness “Well,” continued Professor N——, after a was ended for ever. Charlotte lost her situa-pause, and stirring the fire as he spoke, with tion, as she expected; and for some weeks they lived together upon Phebe's little earnings. Then came want and poverty and despair; and one by one they parted with almost every article of dress for bread to keep them from starving. What were they to do without character or friends? Many a time did Phebe trace the streets from morning till night in search of employment, resting on door steps for very weariness, while the rich and gay swept past her without a word or a glance. Upon one of these occasions she chanced to meet the children of Mrs. Howard walking with their new maid; the little boy recognized her in a moment, changed as she was; but his sister, a beautiful fair-haired child, about six years old, and poor Phebe's favourite among them all, held him back. "Hush, you must not speak to her, Freddy; she is a naughty, wicked girl." "I don't believe it," replied the sturdy little fellow. “Oh, but mamma says so, and everybody says so." The children passed on, and Phebe heard no more. It would have been some comfort to her to have seen how little Freddy, still doubting, looked back again and again with tearful eyes, but she stood perfectly unconscious, like one stricken into stone. The child's last words haunted her like a prophecy-"Everybody says so." "It's no use trying to be good," argued the wretched girl, as so many thousands have been driven to do, to their own destruction; "it's no use trying to be good; no one will trust, no one will take pity on me. It matters not what be comes of me!" Poor Phebe, she stood upon the very brink of ruin. A kind word might have yet recalled "Yes, certainly; THERE IS NO LAW LIKE THE LAW OF KINDNESS." THE PASSION FLOWER. Pale passion-flower-pale passion-flower, Like resting winds on roses. Pale passion-flower-pale passion-flower, In vain on thee the moon's soft eye it beameth, Far deeper than it seemeth. Pale passion-flower-pale passion-flower, I. R. W. L. POETS AND POETRY.* We have allowed a number of volumes of Poetry-yes, genuine Poetry-to accumulate during the past year; neglected here it is true, but not remaining with leaves uncut, pages unread, or their contents unknown or unthought of. Far otherwise; and though they look at us now with a sort of proud, yet reproachful disdain, our silence has not arisen from indifference or contempt. The actor, we are told, needs the encouragement of applause to sustain his efforts; the orator, the silent homage of breathless at tention; the Poet, surely some answer from his fellow-men to the glowing words struck out from his own "fire heart"! The reviewer can but play usher, and even he finds it a chilling task when but a feeble murmur rises-and that from a few tongues, and to die away soon-instead of the glad reverberating echo he fain would have. Why, in the present day, the Poet is coldly received by the world he instructs, exalts, and humanizes, it is almost vain to ask; we must presume that many causes have combined to bring about this significant result-a result, which in the large cycle of events, becomes itself a cause of much that is disastrous and degrading. To the mind which retains (with a perpetual thankfulness to the Most High for its chief #blessing) that sense which is an appreciation of the Poet's mission, an understanding that Poetry-properly so called-is the divinest gift vouchsafed to man, the very "salt" which saves his whole soul from corruption-to such a mind the present age appears the most poetical that the children of men have ever recorded. We know the throng are too busy to feel it thus; but be sure posterity will look back upon this wondrous transition-century-this age of bloodless revolution-as an exhaustless fountain! How poor a theme the triumph of olden warriors, compared with the great thoughts, which sown by the Almighty Hand in the human heart, a long peace has permitted to grow and ripen! What were the doings of barbaric chiefs, and mind-darkened beauties, compared with the unrecorded, daily, hourly, heroisms of private life which the dawn of a brighter day permits us to see in their true glory? What the inspiration of superstition and tradition, compared with the sublime, soul-exalting truths, revealed every day by Science? Science, which, properly con *THE PURGATORY OF SUICIDES; a Prison-Rhyme. By Thomas Cooper, the Chartist. (How.) 1845. FESTUS; a Poem. By Philip James Bailey. Second Edition. (Pickering.) 1845. BELLS AND POMEGRANATES: No. 7. By Robert Browning. (Moron.) 1845. POEMS. By James Hedderwick. (Rutherglen, Glasgow.) 1844. THE MIND; AND OTHER POEMS. By Charles Swain. Fourth Edition. (Tilt and Bogue.) 1844. sidered, is wedded indissolubly to Poetry-sustaining, teaching, and enlightening-the very help "meet" for her. 66 It is a curious thing to note that among this very throng who are too much "of the earth, earthy," to feel and comprehend the emotional age in which they live, there is, nevertheless, an unmeaning parrot cry abroad, "Why have we no great poet?" Have these simple folks ever heard the story of the visit to a theatre of a countryman, who gravely looked on, and when the performance was nearly over, inquired when the play would begin? Really their case is very similar. It is evident they do not know a poet when they find him; and while they cry a bard—a bard," are quite unconscious of the deathless voices which are singing around them. Be sure that such men would never by their own unassisted senses have discovered the divinity of the greatest poet that ever lived. True Poets are the prophets, piercing the future with far-seeing eyes, which are strong enough to look at Truth without blinking; or, as mountains catch the glory of morning and reflect the sunlight on the plain before itself receive the day-beams, so they, from their mental height, have a wider horizon; and if they teach new things revealed to them by virtue of the same, they must not expect to be comprehended by the many, until either the many are taught to climb, or the star of truth which the poet has recognised from afar rises high enough for the meanest to see. Now, the farther the range of the poet's vision, and the more wonderful the things he has to tell, the longer will be the time before the masses appreciate and understand him. The records of the past prove this, and if Byron be cited as an instance of instant appreciation and living popularity, we must remember that he was infinitely less a prophet of the future than the giants with whom he must rank have been. It is true that he stood on a height from which he might have been this prophet, had the atmosphere of the times been sufficiently serene. But the turbulent Present of his thirty-seven years was theme enough for the most thoughtful active life of four-score. What an age his was of European earthquakes and moral convulsions-the Consulate, the Empire, and the Restoration, with all the far-spreading eddies such whirlpools make! And yet so far he was the prophet that his deathless verse recorded with its "one voice" the complainings of "the many," which had lain well nigh mute in the breasts of the millions; but they knew the kindred and yet master spirit when he spoke, and answered like followers at the sound of a trumpet call! Gorgeous, thoughtinspiring as his language is, no one feels the happier for reading Byron, unless it be at the conviction that the atmosphere has cleared since his day, and that we live in healthier, better D times. In his verse how often does it seem as if a window of heaven were closed, which shut out a belief in the good and the great! and lofty aspirations seem ever like angels with broken wings, for which they can find nor cure nor balm. him his two years' sojourn in Stafford gaol, with such a muse for his companion. The poem is in the Spenserian stanza, and divided into ten books-or dreams if you will-in which the spirits of the departed converse on sublunary things. Although in many instances the opening stanzas of the different scenes, in which the poet speaks more immediately in his own person, are among the most vigorous and profound in the volume. When he does condescend to mere imagery, he rivals the greatest and sternest of And such was the day! It is frightful to think of the sordid, selfish, suspicious spirit; the stupid, inhuman laws; the tyranny of the strong; and the Egyptian darkness of the masses which made up the tone of his day. Heaven knows we have too much of all this still pre-painters. Witness the following stanzas :— vailing; but the atmosphere has so far cleared, that the Hope of a Better Future is visible, a cheering star, a guiding beacon. A balm has been found for the bruised wing of aspiring thoughts; they may mount bravely once again. Is there much wonder that the great poets of this day delight in shadowing forth this Better Future, which from the height of their hill-tops they can see, rather than singing of those lower things which belong to the hour? And so it is that, when poets of the present day do touch upon such themes as those we glanced at in our opening paragraph, they do it commonly but as a starting point for the indulgence of thoughts which soar into pictures of a glowing future. This is essentially the case with the magnificent poem which we have placed first on our list. 66 The Purgatory of Suicides" is by Thomas Cooper, styling himself "The Chartist," a selfeducated man, who himself tells us that "he bent over the last and wielded the awl till threeand-twenty," that period being, if we reckon rightly from internal evidence, some fifteen or eighteen years ago. He was convicted in 1842 of seditious conspiracy, and he confessed himself guilty of "sedition, if it be to have advised the people to cease labour until the Charter became the law of the land." That he deprecated all acts of violence we have abundant evidence. We must speak of him, however, as a poet, not as a politician; although, as it may be supposed, his ultra views give a tone and colour to his work. Humanity and its mysteries make up the darling theme, and though rich in all the graces of fancy and imagination, it is by his deep knowledge of human nature, that priceless knowledge to be acquired only through suffering, and that indescribable sympathy with all human emotion which belongs only to the highest order of minds, that we recognize in him the Great Poet. In his preface he says, "the design of creating a poem, in which the spirits of suicides should be the actors or conversers, arose in my mind ten years ago; but a line might never have been composed except for my imprisonment." And it is easily to be understood that the very circumstances of his compelled seclusion must have braced up the energies of a mind strong alike in the powers of will and of endurance, and that the efforts of composition alternating with ample leisure for soul-feeding contemplation (a luxury so hard to snatch in the restless hurry of active life) must have been the sweetest relaxation. But for his bodily sufferings consequent on imprisonment, we can scarcely pity "Methought I voyaged in the bark of Death,— It seemed as if their rage that solemn signal quelled. Of myriad creatures, or their monstrous mould, Which 'thwart that dismal sea their hideous hugeness rolled." In the following the spirit of Nero addresses that of Marc Antony: "What wert thou but an upstart and an ape "And when thou hadst subserved their astute end build. Entire by us, the pusillanimous brood Of later days reared a divided throne, And lost the heritage whose amplitude "The Purgatory of Suicides" is fitly dedicated to our great and prophet-like teacher, Thomas Carlyle, whose far-seeing and heroic Comprised the general world's wealth, wisdom, har- spirit has won from the author a warm and dihood." It is not, however, our purpose to echo the sentiments of the celebrated suicides, from Sardanapalus to Lord Castlereagh, as here imagined in the realms of purgatory. Nor have we space for the poet's burst of glowing enthusiasm to the mighty spirits of the past-Chaucer, Shakspere, Milton, Luther. But we must find room for a few stanzas, whose parallel for truth and feeling it would be difficult to find: "Oh, Woman! how thy truest worth is slighted ;— Of Nature's garden-what rude storms thee bend! dower "Woman! what will thy sons be, when Man looks on thee no longer with the tyrant's ken ? "When chivalry's false homage is forgot- "That Mind is of no sex-when thou art freed, worth's sense, Our Baillie's truthful skill, Felicia's meed No more by Man, she will display with glow unsoiled. "And when her children see her move in joy, And yet in truest dignity-no more A slave-no more a drudge-no more a toy !When from her lips of love her spirit's store Of high exnobling wisdom she doth pour Into her offspring's ears-into their eyes, Ere speech be learnt, looks Nature's purest lore Of truth and virtue-shall not Man arise From error-nurtured thus-and loftiest good devise?" enthusiastic reverence. Perhaps it would be difficult to find a more striking contrast to the work we have just mentioned than that afforded by "Festus," a dramatic poem. And yet is it equally the production of a heaven-gifted mind; its purpose as high, and its meaning as earnest. Indeed, in its lavish wealth of brilliant imagery, and exhaustless profusion of striking and original similes, we know nothing of modern times with which it may compare. The plan of the poem is founded upon Goethe's "Faust," and we grant that a human soul, especially exposed to the temptings of the Evil One, and the supposition that its workings are laid bare for the reader's instruction, is as fine a conception as poet has ever made evident to the world. But where, as now, the Deity is made one of the dramatis personæ, and human words and human thoughts proceed from Him; where the angelic host confer much as mortal counsellors might do; and the Prince of Darkness assumes a garb but a little more dignified than the monkish Satan of the middle ages-like him at whom Luther threw that wondrous specific, an ink-bottle-where such things are, we cannot but feel that spirit is materialized. Let not our remarks, however, appear presumptuous; for even Milton and the greatest have, to our poor judgment, thus errèd; and though we approach them with most loving reverence, it is right that if a voice be raised at all, it should express its own honest convictions. 'Festus" is the outpouring of a mind taught, we should say, less by suffering than by reflection; regretful of the sorrow that dwells in the world rather than hopeful of a better earthly future. He loves to dive deep into the mysteries of life without striving, as so many shallower writers have striven, to fathom them; while throughout every page such trustful, hopeful religion of the heart is visible, that a holiness seems to pervade it entirely. We do not deny that the poem has many of the obscurities of which the transcendental writers are not unjustly accused. And perhaps some consciousness of the fact dictated the following passage :— FESTUS. He wrote a poem. Well, but, who said what? FESTUS. Some said that he blasphemed; and these men lied To all eternity, unless such men But still the word is lied; though it were writ Unholy breeding in it, but doth bless Rather the tongue that utters it; for me, I ask no higher office than to fling My spirit at Thy feet, and cry Thy name Yet if the author's thoughts be sometimes obscured-like sunrise by the morning mist-he has the power of terseness and most distinct expression, if he wills to use it. What can be more to the point than the following?— FESTUS. All mankind are students. How Hard, through the hours of the sad midnight watch, comes, And more than all our troubles pays us powers; mer, Until convulsed, condensed, in lightning sport, Perhaps to Philip James Bailey we owe one of the best definitions of poetry; he puts into the mouth of Festus these words: "Poets are all who love-who feel great truths, And tell them." One more extract and we have done. It will prove that the author of " Festus" can command all the lighter graces of fancy and language, as well as wrestle with the strongest heart throes: FESTUS. The dead of night: earth seems but The soul seems but a something dreaming. Of song, and sky, and loved one's breast; The murderer of calm home joys; The weak are dreaming endless fears- Of his life-dreams the sacrifice- The truth that made him more than man; The earth is dreaming back her youth; Next on our list (and were it made out in systematic order, he might have stood first) comes Robert Browning. It is easier to contrast him with Bailey and Cooper than compare him. His poems are the outpourings of a serener mind than either of those evince. Serenity, wonderfully allied to the keenest and most electric sympathy, with all that is great and good and beautiful. Under the fanciful title of "Bells and Pomegranates" he has published a series of dramatic poems and lyrics; not all of which, however, have come under our notice; and only with this seventh number will we at present deal. No author, either poet or prose writer, has more completely a style of his own_than Browning; he thinks for himself, without let or hindrance from custom or prejudice; and he disdains to be a copyist even in manner. The consequence is that his fresh thoughts come out in their own fresh coinage, startling us for a moment, till we make room in our minds, till we let in the light of his new method, and then what a feast is before us! As a descriptive poet his words seem cut in crystal, with such exquisite clearness does he image the scenes he would call up: especially is this the case in a romantic poem, too long for extract, called "The Flight of the Duchess," which is full of graceful fancies, and most perfect picture painting. The Duke and the Duchess, and Jacynth and the Gipsy, and the story-teller himself-surely we should know them anywhere if we might but meet them face to face. Indeed his genius is highly dramatic, as at least one most successful play has proved (not that we would lose sight of the difference between dramatic power and the lesser talent of theatrical adaptation). How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix," is another instance of vivid description; yet we better love those poems of a deeper meaning. Here is one to the eye and ear thrown off lightly enough; yet may it take some readers down "to the depth of the soul, where the passion fountains burn" |