Dear joy, how she loves him! A long year has passed
Since she kissed his pale forehead, and hung on his breast;
She looks in his face-'tis the same, still the same-
Still soft are those eyes as the dew on the sod:

No thirst for the game of wild battle or fame

Have lessened their love for her, thanks be to God!
But away they are speeding o'er mountain and moor--
O'er city, and forest-o'er tempest and tide ;

But little she heeds of their terrors, be sure,

While that son of her bosom seems still at her side.

Lo! at length they have passed the wild ocean, and stand

On a summit that looks o'er a desolate land;

Far off, the great fortresses loom o er the spray,

Anear, the black tents drift the slopes of the ground;
And a sense of decay fills the solitude grey,

For an army in ruins is scattered around.

"And is it for this," said the poor dreaming soul,

"My Dermot has wandered from home's blessed air?-
Here Death fills the wind blowing keen from the Pole-
Here the Pestilence strikes what the cannon may spare."
They passed through the streets of the tents lying still-
They passed by the trenches that ridge the brown hill-
They saw the pale faces that famine has worn;

They pace where the wounded lie lonely and lost-
Where the corse, cannon-torn, to its red bed was borne-
Where the poor frozen sentinel died on his post.
"Ah, why, Dermot, why did you cross the wide foam,
To fortune, my child, in this land of the dead?
Sure we'd plenty at home-there was better to come:
Why, for this, did you leave me, acushla?' she said.

"I thought as you grew fond and brave by my side,
No sorrow could cloud us-no fate could divide;

I fancied the day when our home would grow bright,
With the smile of some coleen I'd cherish for thee-
When I'd sing through the night by the hearth's ruddy light,
With your boy, my own Dermot, asleep on my knee;
And when, circled round by a few happy friends,

Old age drooped my head, after many a year,

As I passed to my God, through the death that he sends,

The kind Father would bless me, and you would be near."

Still close in the gloom seems he standing by her;
But hark! 'tis the drum, and the camp is astir;
And a sound fills the air, from the hill to the star,
Like an earthquake, along the wild bastion it runs,

While echoes afar roar the voice of the War,

As it doubles its thunder from thousands of guns,
And she wakes. In the gleam of the pale morning air
One gives her a letter-soon, soon is it read;
But a low piteous moan only speaks her despair-
"Ah, Mother of God! my own Dermot is dead!"

Diodorus

The next in order is "The First Pyramid." Siculus tells us that the pyramids were erected during the dynasty of a Scythian race, who having overrun Syria and Egypt, finally settled in Memphis and the neighbouring cities. The Poem, which is a long one, abounds in beautiful descriptions; an old man is represented as telling his youthful son, as they are both gazing upon the pyramid, the origin of its rise, which he declares to be owing to the death of the chieftain who conquered the country, and with whom he had marched hitherwards from Scythian realms, announcing that

it was erected as a fitting mausoleum over the bones of the departed hero. The beautiful passage we subjoin is descriptive of the country of Egypt, as seen for the first time by the invading host.

"Around its marge a realm of plenty glowed,

With breadths of corn and regions rich with dew:
While, to the south, a gloried City rose,

Deep harboured, and with many a marble round

Of citadel and turret, shrine and bower.

A space of splendour seemed it, a bright land

Of palaces and waters; by its shores

A wide armada, many-masted, lay

Glooming the sea; while inland stretching far,
Thick-fruited woods, with sultry tracts of spice,
Scented the sky up to the morning clouds.
Awhile, in wonder, gazed we on this scene,
Then pushing nearer to a shadowy steep,
That sentinelled the city, gazed below.

Broad through its streets a plenteous river flowed,
Fed with the rains of southern hills beyond,

And mirroring many a temple on its wave,

While conch-shaped barges ebon-ribbed with gold,
Came oared along the shining space beneath
The crimson floating of their gonfalons.

High o'er the roofs, just glittering in the morn,
A pillared shrine upon a steep arose,
White as some surging pile of Summer cloud,—
Levels of flashing steps ascending shone
Up to its spacious portal, swarmed with shapes
In many-coloured garbs, and glittering arms;
While rolling outward from its doomed hall,
Filled with the dawn, a golden gong swung forth
Its globe of tone, widening in circles down

O'er hill and river and across the sea,

As though a Sun were sounding; while afar,
Upon an azure-waved promontory,

The last of land that jutted oceanward,

An altar plumed with smoke arose, and priests
White-garbed around it in the sacred calm.

Our last extract shall be taken from the lively Poem, "China," descriptive of the habits and scenes, both urban and pastoral, of Chinese life; in this last the author of the "Versicles" will be found faithful to those fascinating beauties which stud his every page.

While soft the parting splendours fall
Upon each crescent pencill'd brow,
And eyes of glossy ebon small.
Now where yon blue pagoda's spires
Adown the hill their shadows fling,
The perfumes mist the altar fires,

The myriad bells of silver ring;
And on the spacious river bright

The fishing bird is seen to dive,
And through the thymy air and light
The bee sails toward the garden hive;
Till o'er the fretted temples brood

The sparkling orient stars, and soon
By many a stream and musky wood
Aflame with silver, floats the moon,
Though mighty azure ranges rolled,
Whence come from the Tartarean lea
The caravan with fur and gold,

The camel weighed with silk and tea.

We now bid farewell to Charles Mackay and Thomas Irwin, and in doing so, we take the liberty of wishing them God speed in their journey up

"The steep, where Fame's proud Temple shines afar."

Both have their faults as well as their beauties, and strangely enough, one possesses in extravagant abundance a quality in which the other is often singularly deficient; in the one instance, the pruning shears must be used with no dainty fingers; in the other, the plants must be cultivated with care, well watered, and a warmer atmosphere induced. The essential properties of the poet belong to both, and with them it rests to use them in such a manner as may win for each an exalted rank among their tuneful brethern. What we have said as to the absence of mystification in Irwin, applies equally to Mackay, and it cannot be too often mentioned to the honor of these men, that when almost every poetical writer of the day, from Tennyson to the humblest poetaster, has been mumbling like the inmate of a mad-house, they have kept aloof from the "profanum vulgus," and maintained inviolate, the dignity and majestic simplicity, which was bequeathed to them by the bards of a more inspired age. They have other claims upon our gratitude, and those are that they have evinced some deference to human sympathies and inclinations in the choice and treatment of their subjects; that they have succeeded in imparting instruction, as well as in giving pleasure; and above all, that they have been firm in their maintenance of truthful principles, cheerful hope, and sound morality. They are not indeed transcendental theorists, or the founders of chaotic systems, but they are the lucid expositors of those sublime realities, which are ever renewing and transforming, like the earth, their freshness and their beauty; and which like it possess at all times, new food for contemplation, new themes for wonder, new reasons to excite our love for him who has established them. They are not seekers after the philosopher's stone, nor do they chamelion-like aspire ardently for the possession of those realms somewhere mid-way between earth and sky, where everything is subject to atmospheric influences, and where they may watch for ever the habits and customs of the stars; but on the contrary, their endeavour is to demonstrate how happily we may live in our own planet, and how, to use a homely but a golden saying, "we may go

farther and fare worse." They seemingly prefer to unite more closely the bonds of universal love, to remove the fetters from our kindly impulses, and to scatter broadcast the seeds of a more generous confidence in each other, than to encourage scepticism in theological matters, openly promulgate pantheism, or insidiously endeavour to shake our faith in one another, and in God.

We have truly become very learned! There is an immense amount of enlightenment in this nineteenth century; nevertheless, we are no very sincere believers in the efficacious tendency of every phase of this learning, and of this enlightenment. We labor under "the atrocious crime of being a young man," and to us would not be applicable the proverb, senes laudant antiqua;" yet it is not at all so evident to us that there is more solid happiness in the world now than formerly. We do not sigh for Arcadian bliss, and the mellifluous sounds produced by shepherds' reeds; but to our poor simple taste, men lived more wisely, and more pleasantly, before the remorseless chains of restraint flung their chilling links around us, checking the genial, healthy flow of social intercourse, and substituting pomp, prudery, and an artificial elegance, for natural grace and majesty, unaffected modesty, and the easy interchange of ideas. We shall soon become as stiff as mediaeval painting, and will require all the assistance of our vaunted science to give us the use of our limbs again; it is well for us, no doubt, that our locomotives form such a contrast to our languishing manners, or we know not in what it would all end. We fear the earth in its rotations would leave us behind it, and that we should roll down its sides, rather precipitately, into that "broad space," of which we have lately become such enthusiastic admirers. One thing appears to us quite clear, and that is that until we have unlearned much of our present so-called knowledge, we should not seek the acquisition of more; we know a great deal upon matters which are neither calculated to improve our minds or to encrease our happiness, and utter obliviousness of such attainments would not be attended with the slightest disadvantage. We must endeavour to become more natural in an intellectual view, as well as in a social one, less guided by conventional rules, and more by kindly impulses; more swayed by ideas which grow out of the consideration of humanity, than by those of an abstractedly mental order.

We must substitute practical philanthropy, for idle vapouring; acts coming from the heart, for words proceeding from the lips; candor for equivocation, and simplicity for affectation. If we can succeed in achieving this reformation, our literature will have "renewed its youth like the eagle," and will enter again into the possession of that freshness, that lucidity, and that vigor, which formerly adorned it. Our ambition must be truly great, if it aspires at outrivalling our predecessors in the sphere of poetry; but if such be the object of its aim, strict adherence to the rules which guided them is the sole method by which it can be attained. We can only hope and pray for the speedy arrival of such a desirable result, and should we be so fortunate as to behold its realization, no inconsiderable source of pleasure will be afforded to us in the fact, that in our humble way we have been among the very few, who have boldly and frequently held up to public reprehension, the fatal, and rapidly extending vices which distigure the pages of our Poets of the present day.

N. J. G.

ART. IV. THE REV. CHARLES WOLFE.

A close investigation into the annals of literature, would, we believe, have the effect of shewing that many of the choicest productions in prose and verse, have emanated from authors, who, in their life-time, were scarcely known beyond the narrow circle of family relations, and personal friends. It is not, however, our intention to examine into the causes of that neglect, which so many writers have experienced, until death has rendered them famous; still less, to make any allusion to the now thread-bare topic of the "calamities of authors," they are familiar to everyone in the least acquainted with the histories of the literary worthies of modern days. The subject of the present memoir was a striking exemplification of our opening remark. His life, spent as it was in the quiet retirement of a student, and the unobtrusive discharge of his sacred functions, presents scarcely an incident of any interest for his biographer to recount; and were it not for the fame he