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Dost thou still shed tears for the fair nymph

From venison rose the smoke of our
repast;
[was the wave.
Our drink from Treig; * our music
Though spirits shriek'd, and moun-
tains roar'd,
[our repose.
Stretch'd in the grot how sweet was

I see Benard, of fairest hue,
The chief of a thousand mountains;
Among its locks dream the harts;
Its head is the bed of clouds.

I see above thy vale, Scureilt,
Where first is heard the cuckoo's

sweet;

And blue Melall of thousand firs,
Of many herbs, and roes, and elks.

The wild-ducks swift and merry swim
Yon lake of water-lilies smooth,
That show their green leaves on its
face,

Its sides adorn'd with mountain ash.

The beauteous snowy-breasted swan
Swims graceful on the rising wave.
When she wings her flight aloft,
Among the clouds, she never tires.

Oft she flies across the main
To the cold haunt of many seals,
Where rises not to a mast a sail,
Nor oaken prow divides a wave.

Approach the place of my repose,
Thou who singest thy beloved's
dirge:

Lone swan, from the sea-bound land,
Let me hear thy music in thy flight.

What is the land whence blows the
wind

Which hither bears the plaintive words
Of the youth who roved afar,
And helpless left my hoary locks ?

Of softest grace and whitest hand? ‡
Endless joy to the tender cheek'd,
Who will never leave the narrow
bed!

Do thou arise with thy mournful lays
To tell me all the tales of woe.
Echo will listen to the music,

And send aloft the soothing strains.

Spread thy sails upon the deep,
And hither speed with all thy
might;

With pleasure shall my ear receive
The broken-hearted's songs of love.

Tell him, for my eyes have fail'd,
Tell where the feeble reed abides,
With mournful voice, beside the speck-

led fish,

Reclining on his useless shield.

Now lift me, ye whose arms are strong,
And lay me under fragrant boughs,
That when the sun has risen high,
Their virent leaves may shade afford.

Then come thou, O sweet memo ry!
That movest quick midst distant years;
Display the actions of my youth,
Recall to mind my times of joy.

O see, my soul! the damsel fair,
Beneath the oak, the king of trees;
Her showy hand among her golden
locks,

Her soft eye on the youth of her love.

He singing at her side; she mute,
With panting heart that in his music
joys-

To which stop to listen the deer-
Love wafted alternate from their eyes.

* There are a small lake and stream in Lochaber which still bear this name. † Gaelic, lon. This word is generally understood to mean an elk. It is now quite

obsolete, and is found nowhere but in old poems.

‡ The bard here addresses his son. The next three or four stanzas are obscure. Mr Clark translated from a different version. As the traditional account which he gives of this part may render it more intelligible, it is here subjoined.

"The bard, who was himself a chief, had an only son, who fell deeply in love with Lavinia, (Lavín?) the beautiful daughter of Thalbar. Lavinia was drowned as she was bathing in the lake of Triga, (Treig?) Morlav, the bard's son, becoming desperate, sailed for the Orkney Isles, hoping to fall in the wars of that prince, who was then at variance with the King of Norway. His valour and good conduct, however, gained him great fame; and after the Norwegians were defeated and expelled the Isles, the Prince, in consideration of his services and personal merit, offered Morlav his daughter in marriage, which he refused, and retired to a cave in a lonely isle, where his father heard that he still continued to mourn his lost Lavinia."

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Oh! bear me near the sounding fall, That pours with murmurs from the rock;

Beside me lay my harp and shell, And the shield which shelter'd my sires in war.

Come thou mildly over the deep,
O friendly gale! that movest slow;
And bear my shade upon thy wings,
With speed unto the Nobles' Isle.*

Where are the heroes that lived of
old,
Who, sleepless, listen to their songs?
Open your hall, Ossian and Dâlo;
By night the bard is no more!

But oh! before my shade depart
To the final abode of bards on high,
Give me once more my harp and
shell,

Then, loved harp and shell, adieu!

SONG SUNG AT THE SYMPOSIUM IN THE SALOON, 3D OF JANUARY 1840.

1.

ATTEND to my song, ye contributors all,
Now met to be merry in Ebony Hall:
Since justice has fully been done to the feast,
And the fury of hunger a moment has ceased,
Your hearts, I am sure, will allow it is fit

To drink, with due honours, a bumper to Kit!

2.

A bumper to him, whose illustrious name
For ever must float on the full tide of fame;
While our little bark in attendance may sail,
Pursuing the triumph, and sharing the gale:
The fame will be ours on our tombs to have writ,
Here lies, who contributed something to Kit!

3.

But while he is our head, and we're each but a limb,
He could do without us, though not we without him:
For were all his auxiliaries laid on the shelf,
He could knock off in no time a Number himself;
Let but steam and stenography help him a bit,
What tomes and what treasures might issue from Kit!

4.

It is true he is old; but 'tis easily seen,
Though his age may be gouty, it also is green :
He is garrulous, too, his detractors repeat;
But where was garrulity elsewhere so sweet?
Oh! never did old age and eloquence sit

Half so comely on Nestor as now upon Kit!

* Gaelic-Flad innis. The heaven of the old Scots. None of the Highland bards who lived subsequent to the universal prevalence of Christianity talk in this strain ; and therefore it is to be inferred that the author of this poem flourished previous to that period.

5.

And though thus resembling the Pylian Sire,
He has Ajax's force and Achilles's fire,
The softness that dwelt in Andromache's breast,
With the Ithacan's slyness to season the rest.
No wonder in Homer he made such a hit,
When Iliads and Odesseys centre in Kit!

6.

The Crutch!-what a weapon in Christopher's hand!
The wind of its waving what force can withstand!
Its wondrous achievements will ne'er be forgot
In quelling the Cockney and stunning the Stot:
It will crack you a crown as your nail would a nit-
Woe, woe, to the wretch that encounters with Kit!

7.

Yet think not his heart without pity or ruth,
Or the Crutch ever raised save for virtue and truth;
His motto is noble, proclaim it aloud-

To spare the submissive and punish the proud:
When his eye with benignity's beam is uplit,
What magic can equal the kindness of Kit!

8.

Ere Christopher came a new era to bring,
The prose of the press was a pitiful thing:
There was hardness of heart, or else thickness of skull,
The witty were wicked, the worthy were dull:
The bright reconcilement of wisdom and wit-
To whom do we owe it? - entirely to Kit!

9.

When riot and wrong seem'd to rule in our isle,
And the boldest and best held their breath for a while,
Still true to his country and true to his creed,
Was Christopher found in the hour of our need:
When the ship on the breakers seem'd ready to split,
The first boat to save her was mann'd by old Kit!

10.

The times are much mended, but some things remain
That may call for the hand of the hero again:

For what with the Chartists, and what with the Church,

The law is of late rather left in the lurch.

Then his patriot rage may he never remit,

Till he floors every foeman of order and Kit!

11.

Now may Christopher live, till in number we see
His years and his articles almost agree;
And may Maga's adherents, the high and the low,
Enjoy the best blessings her bounties bestow:
Even down to the devils, that never will quit,
But keep constantly howling for copy from Kit!

12.

And here let our QUEEN put a close to my song-
May her life and her love both be happy and long!
A health to the youth whom her choice makes our own,
May her heart prove a dow'ry more rich than her throne;
And may all bad advisers be soon forced to flit,
And replaced by true subjects and sages like Kit!

MISS MARTINEAU-DEERBROOK.

MISS MARTINEAU's name is very widely known-more widely, we think, than her works. Almost all those who have formed a judgment for themselves allow that she is a woman of genius, and we believe that her most bitter enemies have never raised a whisper against her personal character; yet among the better classes of society, and especially among women, her writings are looked upon with peculiar suspicion and dislike. Some part of her unpopularity she has no reason to regret; for she has incurred it knowingly, and must have been prepared for the malice and slander of the idolaters of almsgiving, or the pious promoters of pauper marriages: much of it has arisen from the systematic attacks which some of our contemporaries have long been in the habit of making upon her weak points, or even upon the pretended incon. gruity of her views with the assumed proprieties of her sex: but besides all this, there is a large residue of honest disapprobation to be accounted for, and we think that she has in most of her former works naturally provoked it, and in some justly incurred it.

In her first publication, Tales illustrative of Political Economy, Miss Martineau displayed a rare power of delineating character, and of presenting a succession of vivid and interesting pictures of the everyday occupations of life. Her skill in reducing to the concrete, the scientific propositions of Smith, Malthus, and Macculloch, showed that her ingenuity was as remarkable as her imagination; but there is a fundamental error in the attempt to combine creative art with instruction. We hope that most of her readers entered too heartily into the interest of her tales to tolerate the list of practical inferences, ὁ μυθος δηλοι's which she thought proper to append to each. Didactic poetry is no poetry except where it forgets to teach. The Georgics, of which the true subject is the praise of a country life, would form a perfect poem if it were possible to remove from them the agricultural precepts with which they are encumbered. The laws of supply and demand are peculiarly capable of being expressed in general formulæ, and proportionally liable to confusion when they are entangled with indivi

NO. CCXCII, VOL, XLVII,

dual cases. What should we say of Tales illustrative of the Rule of Three? They are not, indeed, mere fictions of the moment. Who does not rememberthe long and interesting statements of conditions which enlivened thearithmetic books of our childhood? the imaginary walls that were built by so many men in so many days, that other problematical walls, by help of more men, might be built in fewer days? above all, the ever-recurring horsedealer, who, at the rate of a farthing for the first nail in his horse's shoe, and a halfpenny for the second, realized we know not how many thousands, the established hero of geometrical progression? It is not, how. ever, for the sake of science that we deprecate the attempt to popularize it by representing it in practical operation. A tale of Miss Martineau's is worth more than many argumentative essays, and we regret that they should involve an error in their original conception. The scientific instruction which is conveyed by them is, after all, contained principally in the conversations, which the characters are more or less awkwardly made to hold with each other, on poor-laws, corn-duties, and currency restrictions-matters utterly inappropriate to fiction, as they are independent of individual feeling and character. In a good fiction every part ought to be objective to the writer, and subjective to the dramatis persona; the introduction of the absolutely objective places the hero in the same category with the author-that is, it makes him external to the plot. This rule is incontrovertible; but the converse of it is very often adopted in the practice of novelists. Sir Lytton Bulwer, for instance, constantly dwells upon reflections or feelings which are subjective to himself, and therefore external to his fictitious characters. Sir Walter Scott and Miss Austin seldom or never violate the rule. The most glaring examples of the absurdity of doctrinal fiction may be found in the theological volume of Tremaine, and in Sterne's publication of his sermons under the character of his own Yorick.

If, however, Miss Martineau had confined herself to the illustration of admitted or demonstrable propositions, none could have been offended, though some might have been tired; but, un

M

luckily, the questions on which she writes are in many cases still undecided; and it cannot be agreeable to a disputant who has enough to do in maintaining his ground against argument, to find his opinions dramatically personified in characters who are represented as combining every kind of meanness and folly with the primary crime of heretical illiberality. We think Miss Martineau in most of her politico-economical views clearly right, in a few utterly wrong; but we can conceive ourselves to have differed from her far more frequently, and are by no means flattered by the moral and intellectual character of the fictitious representatives whom she would in that case have assigned to us.

After all, the faults of the Tales are trifling in comparison with their great and varied excellencies; and we believe that the authoress would in a short time have outlived the partial dislike which they occasioned against her literary character. Her next work of importance had far graver faults and peculiarities, which made it more obnoxious to the higher classes of English society. She went to America with an evident determination to find good results, and to attribute them to the institutions, which, by an a priori process, she had already determined to be good. Now this was in itself no more than the spirit of partisanship in which Mrs Trollope idolized the paternal government of Austria, or the honest enthusiasm with which Lord Londonderry admired the parades and jewels of the Czar. We might regret that Miss Martineau should so far diminish the weight of her authority; but we could not deny that her opinions, however hastily adopted, were in themselves natural and plausible. But, unfortunately, there runs through all her eulogies of America, a meaning bitterness which shows that she delights in preferring it to England. We will not enter on the vast question of the relative superiority of the two countries: let her retain her opinion; it is not ours; and we might perhaps claim some toleration for doubts as to the prospects of America, which were felt by Niebuhr, which are admitted by De Tocqueville, which are almost universal among educated Englishmen, and which seem on her own showing to spread in America itself, wherever knowledge and refinement extend. We are sorry that

Nation

Miss Martineau should be intolerant, but we blame her for being anti-national: on this point we can listen to no argument. If England were the meanest of nations, it would be our duty to abide by her, to borrow institutions, if necessary, from America or from Japan, but not to speak of her with contempt or with alienation. Σπαρτην έλαχες, ταυτην κοσμει. ality is too sacred a thing for sophistry or speculation. England is more to us than any theory of despotism or pantisocracy, and we have no right to make our patriotism dependent on the improbable casualty that our government should embody ideal perfection, When Miss Martineau gives a zest to her six volumes by sneers directed against her country, and even hunts out stray instances of steam-boat rudeness, for the purpose of showing that the perpetrators were Englishmen, we think that her opponents are excusable for some warmth of criticism, and her admirers for disapproval and regret.

In

But of all her work on America, the most objectionable part was the inconsiderate chapter on religion. She advocates no particular sect or class of opinions, but an unbounded indifferentism to all-a many-coloured heresy for the sake of heresy. formertimes heresy was like treason, "when it prospered, no one called it" heresy; but Miss Martineau has discovered that its spread in all directions is a proof of the advance of truth. We are satisfied that she is historically wrong: schism has often proceeded from religious earnestness, but multifarious refinements of belief never-the sophists of Socrates' time were essentially heretics, but they cared too little about the truths they undermined to become separatists-the Lutherans, Calvinists, and Socinians of the 16th century were indeed heretics to each other, and to the church which they left; but their primary object was never to establish speculative propositions, but to form for themselves a saving rule of faith, The meaning of this loose phraseology must be collected from the general views of religion which accompany it. The clergy of all denominations are attacked-hopes of a new reformation are expressed, and every kind of fixed institution is considered as pernicious, (which impedes the separation of the pure spiritual essence of Christianity from its outward forms and symbols.

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