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It

may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
Our equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

Vol. ii. pp. 90, 91.

The following little piece, entitled "Circumstance," appears to us to breathe very much of the breadth and terseness of the ancient Greek epigram-in days when the epigram was something more than a mere sparkling vehicle for a closing point of wit, if not for a sting :

"Two children in two neighbour villages,

Playing mad pranks along the heathy leas;
Two strangers meeting at a festival;
Two lovers whispering by an orchard wall;
Two lives bound fast in one with golden ease;
Two graves grass-green beside a gray
church-tower,
Wash'd with still rains and daisy-blossomed ;
Two children in one hamlet born and bred;
So runs the round of life from hour to hour."

Vol. i. p. 67.

We cannot close our remarks on these interesting volumes, without noticing one department, in which we think the author particularly excellent, and particularly qualified to excel. He can write a real simple and natural ballad. This is no light, and no vulgar praise. It indicates a power, which we consider very uncommon; and the degree of it, in the present instance, is such as to make it still more so. We have been much moved by the Ballad of "Edward Gray ;" and it deserves no common emotion. "The Lord of Burleigh" is a more expanded and more pathetic version of the same tradition of the Exeter family, upon which Moore has written a well-known romantic melody. On comparing them, we like Mr. Tennyson's much better: twenty years ago, perhaps we should have thought differently. Other poems might be referred to, which belong less to the same class, yet which indicate the same power;but we will give the conclusion of what we think a very genuine and noble ballad-worthy of the days of Otterburn and Sherwood. We should premise, that "Lady Clare," on the eve of her union with Lord Ronald, is informed by her nurse, that

she is not a lady born, nor the heiress of the lands she owns, but her own daughter, substituted by herself for the real heiress, who, given to her to nurse, had died in infancy, and brought upon her the curse of a temptation too strong for her virtue. Lord Ronald, she is told, is the true heir in blood, and her mother only makes this revelation because her child is the choice of his heart, and about to become his bride. We give the conclusion at length-and rejoice in giving it.

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"Yet give one kiss to your mother dear,
Alas, my child, I sinned for thee.'
'O mother, mother, mother,' she said,
So strange it seems to me.

"Yet here's a kiss for my mother dear,
My mother dear, if that be so,
And lay your hand upon my head,
And bless me, mother, ere I go.'

She clad herself in a russet gown,
She was no longer Lady Clare :
She went by dale, and she went by down,
With a single rose in her hair.

"Down stept Lord Ronald from his tower:

'O Lady Clare, you shame your worth! Why come you about like a village maid, That are the flower of the earth?'

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Not quite a Ballad-nor quite a Song-but yet a thing most exquisite in its melancholy music (through which we seem to hear the sullen plash of the sea), is the following little poem without a name;-with which we must finish our present extracts from these volumes :

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Yet there are parts of these volumes which appear to us objectionable. We would rather avow than conceal, that we do not like Mr. Tennyson's Muse, either in her bitterer or in her more jocular moods. Of the former kind there is indeed very little; but were it less it would be too much. Of the latter we cannot help thinking, that any specimen in these books is a proof of a deficiency in poetical self-knowledge. We can weigh them in no balance in which they are not found wanting. To us, we confess, the volumes would have lost nothing, and gained much, if every thing of this nature were extracted and destroyed. The Beautiful needs not the assistance of the Sarcastic, nor the Tender to be seen in contrast with the Ludicrous.

J. J.

ART. VII.-NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

I. A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Edited by Wm. Smith, Ph. D. Taylor and Walton.

ALL the parts of this Work are now out, and the result is a handsome octavo of 1121 pages, containing more full and accurate information on the subject of Classical Antiquities than has ever yet been presented to the English Reader. The Editor says, that the earlier writers on this subject "wrote about antiquity as if the people had never existed: they did not attempt to realize to their own minds, or to represent to those of others, the living spirit of Greek and Roman civilization." The Germans in this, as in almost all other matters of deep historical or metaphysical research, have taken the lead of Europe, and have endeavoured to breathe life and reality into a study, hitherto so dissociated, except in the mind of the individual student, from moral sympathy. But these labours among the Germans are spread over a wide field, and pursued with the minutest nicety—a single point or question often occupying an entire treatise, or an entire volume. The gathering up therefore of the results, would require a library and a life. It was with a view of putting the student in possession of these results in a more available and generally useful form, that the Editor was induced to combine the exertions of a variety of distinguished scholars in this country, and present to the English Public the volume now before us. Each contributor attaches his initials to the articles which he contributes, and thus the character of each is pledged to the accuracy of his part of the undertaking. A list of the names in full, to the number of twenty, is prefixed, and their respectability vouches for the value of the Work. Among them are those of James Yates, Charles Rann Kennedy, William Ramsay, Professors Key and Long. The references for those who desire more information on the subjects successively treated, are abundant; the wood-engravings in illustration of the text, numerous. air of interest is imparted to the articles, by frequent quotations from the ancient authors, in their own words (translated), which introduces the reader, as it were, into their society, and makes him feel at home amidst their customs and modes of

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