Strange that with all our love of nature, and of art, we never were a Painter. True that in boyhood we were no contemptible hand at a Lion or a Tiger-and sketches by us of such cats springing or preparing to spring in keelavine, dashed off some fifty or sixty years ago, might well make Edwin Landseer stare. Even yet we are a sort of Salvator Rosa at a savage scene, and our black-lead pencil heaps up confused shatterings of rocks, and flings a mountainous region into convulsions, as if an earthquake heaved, in a way that is no canny, making people shudder as if something had gone wrong with this planet of ours, and creation were falling back into chaos. But we love scenes of beautiful repose too profoundly ever to dream of "transferring them to canvass." Such employment would be felt by us to be desecration

though we look with delight on the work when done by others the picture without the process-the product of genius, without thought of its mortal instruments. We work in words, and words are, in good truth, images, feelings, thoughts; and of these the outer world as well as the inner is composed, let materialists say what they will. Prose is poetrywe have proved that to the satisfaction of all mankind. Look! we beseech you how the little Loch seems to rise up with its tall heronry-a central isle -and all its sylvan braes, till it lies almost on a level with the floor of our Cave, from which in three minutes we

could hobble on our crutch down the inclining greensward to the Bay of Waterlilies, and in that canoe be afloat among the Swans. All birches-not any other kind of tree-except the pines, on whose tops the large nests re

pose and here and there a still bird standing as if asleep. What a place for Roes!

Why, we are absolutely writing an article, and to fill a sheet how pleasant to have recourse again to such a man as Milnes! Thus

THE MEN OF OLD.

"I know not that the men of old

Were better than men now,

Of heart more kind, of hand more bold, Of more ingenuous brow:

I heed not those who pine for force

A ghost of Time to raise,

As if they thus could check the course Of these appointed days.

"Still is it true, and over true,
That I delight to close

This book of life self-wise and new,
And let my thoughts repose
On all that humble happiness,
The world has since foregone,
The daylight of contentedness
That on those faces shone !

With rights, tho' not too closely scanned,
Enjoyed, as far as known,-
With will by no reverse unmanned,-
With pulse of even tone,-

They from to-day and from to-night
Expected nothing more,

Than yesterday and yesternight
Had proffered them before.

"To them was life a simple art

Of duties to be done,

A game where each man took his part, A race where all must run;

A battle whose great scheme and scope
They little cared to know,

Content, as men at arms, to cope
Each with his fronting foe.

"Man now his Virtue's diadem

Puts on and proudly wears,

"A man's best things are nearest him,
Lie close about his feet,

It is the distant and the dim
That we are sick to greet:

For flowers that grow our hands beneath
We struggle and aspire,-

Our hearts must die, except they breathe The air of fresh Desire.

"But, Brothers, who up Reason's hill
Advance with hopeful cheer,—
O! loiter not, those heights are chill,
As chill as they are clear;

And still restrain your haughty gaze,
The loftier that ye go,

Remembe'ring distance leaves a haze
On all that lies below."

Think not that we should have wearied of our own company in this Cave, had we been without a material book. In our mind is a library of other substance-and we are always in a state of clairvoyance. We have been reading Milnes now with the palm of our hand-but that is merely because the volume happens to be on the table-we see through Shakspeare, and Milton, and Spenser, and Wordsworth, in the niche yonder-nor need they be there-for with shut eyes we can read in to ourselves the Paradise Lost, and the Excursion, and the Fairy Queen, and the Tempest, in editions out of print, and that we never saw-what think you of that, Dupotet? Doctors Elliotson and Lardner, pray hold your peace.

We tie our black silk neckerchief round our eyes-till we are as blind as a mole, a bat, or as an impostorturn you up "Poems of many Years" -correct us if we err in a single syllable and hearken to Christopher in his Cave-spiritually not animally

them,

Like instincts, unawares:
Blending their souls' sublimest needs
With tasks of every day,

They went about their gravest deeds,
As noble boys at play.-

"And what if Nature's fearful wound They did not probe and bare,

For that their spirits never swooned

To watch the misery there,

For that their love but flowed more

fast,

Their charities more free,

the Humble"-with his thumb!

THE LAY OF THE HUMBLE.

"I have no comeliness of frame,
No pleasant range of feature ;
I'am feeble, as when first I came
To earth, a weeping creature ;
My voice is low whene'er I speak,
And singing faint my song;

But though thus cast among the weak,
I envy not the strong.

"The trivial part in life I play

cast

Into the evil sea.

On other men, who, night or day, For me are never caring;

I hide me in the dark arcade,
When she walks forth alone,-
I feast upon her hair's rich braid-
Her half-unclasped zone :

I watch the flittings of her dress,
The bending boughs between,-
I trace her footstep's faery press
On' the scarcely ruffled green.

"Oh deep delight! the frail guitar Trembles beneath her hand,

She sings a song she brought from far,
I cannot understand;

Her voice is always as from heaven,
But yet I seem to hear

Its music best, when thus 'tis given
All music to my ear.

"She' has turned her tender eyes around And seen me crouching there,

And smiles, just as that last full sound
Is fainting on the air;

And now, I can go forth so proud,
And raise my head so tall-

My heart within me beats so loud,
And musical withal:-

"And there is summer all the while,
Mid-winter though it be,

How should the universe not smile,
When she has smiled on me?
For though that smile can nothing more
Than merest pity prove,

Yet pity, it was sung of yore,
Is not so far from love.

"From what a crowd of lovers' woes, My weakness is exempt!

How far more fortunate than those
Who mark me for contempt!
No fear of rival happiness

My fervent glory smothers,

The zephyr fans me none the less
That it is bland to others.

"Thus without share in coin or land, But well content to hold

The wealth of Nature in my hand,

One flail of virgin gold-
My Love above me like a sun—
My own bright thoughts my wings-
Thro' life I trust to flutter on,
As gay as aught that sings.

"One hour I own I dread-to die Alone and unbefriended

No soothing voice, no tearful eye-
But that must soon be ended;
And then I shall receive my part

Of everlasting treasure,

pure and so profound-has sunk and is sinking into how many thoughtful souls-how many loving hearts!

And now for lunch. Virgin honey -we protest-clear as amber-but embalming no bees, for 'twas sliced off without injury to the wings of a single worker. The first of the season we have seen a composite of the essence of heather and of clover-in which the flavour of the clover must prevailfor the mountains are not yet empurpled. Such honey, such butter, and such oat-cake make a delicious biteand how the taste improves on the palate, qualified with a smack of the Glenlivet ! Most considerate of heaven's creatures! Genevieve has left on the salver a silver thimble-but a little too wide for her delicatest forefinger-and ever and anon from it we shall quaff the mountain-dew as Oberon may be supposed to lay his lips to the fox-glove bell, impatient for "his morning." Ignoramuses gulp Glenlivet from quechs-the Cognoscenti sip it from thimbles-thus-thus-thus "health-happiness-and a husband to Victoria, our gracious Queen!"

The

And now we shall be communicative, and whisper into your ear a secret about Christopher in his Cave. Twenty years ago the Lord of the Castle died the Lady did not long survive him-and till within a few summers it stood silent as their tomb. sons and daughters were absent long and distant far from their hereditary home, and the heart of the Highlands sighed for the return of the brave and the beautiful. From Eastern climes the Chief returned at last-in the prime of manhood-rich and honoured

for he had the gift of tongues, and genius, and a commanding intellect, and his wisdom imposed peace on the native princes. The younger brother had entered into the naval servicefought at Algiers-and on voyage of discovery circumnavigated the globe. Here for a while he has cast anchorready at any hour to slip his cableand go to sea. The youngest is in orders-and has come to the Castle for a month "from the beautiful fields of England," and brought his bride. And thou-the beloved of thy Father's

liest of Christian ladies-what name so blessed as thine among the mountains-in hall, in hut, in shieling "mine own dear GENEVIEVE!"

Thou art betrothed, and even now thy stately lover is by thy side. But in its happiness thy heart is kind to the old man who kissed thine eyes the day thy father was buried, and told thee that Heaven would hush thy sobs and dry thy tears. She it was who furnished for the Hermit this his Cave and led him into its twilight-and sat by him in this niche for an hour and more, with her hand in his and left him here to his meditations-gliding away, and turning ere she reached the woods, to wave him so many short and cheerful farewells! And where are her brothers and their friends? On the Great Loch—or by the River or in the Forest. The late Floods have brought up the salmon from the sea-and we heard from our turret, soon after midnight, the red deer belling among the cliffs.

'Twas feared the family would fall into decay-and they were widely. scattered after their parents' deaths. But the brother of the late chieftain was a faithful steward-and the fortunes of the house were more than restored. The Prince is in his palace. Last night how beautiful the array in that illumined hall! There sat Genevieve at her harp-harmonious far beyond the clarshech-and sung, while all was hush, lays of many lands, each to its own native music-but noneso spake her tearful or kindling eyes -so dear to the singer's soul as the wild Gaelic airs breathed down by tradition from the olden time that first heard them in the wilderness, as from the voice of one exulting for a triumph, or of a weeper seeking by its own music to solace her grief!

What other pretty book is this? "The Seraphim, and other Poems, by Elizabeth Barnett, author of a Translation of Prometheus Bound." High adventure for a Lady-implying a knowledge of Hebrew-or if not of Greek. No common mind displays itself in this Preface pregnant with lofty thoughts. Yet is her heart humble withal-and she wins her way into ours by these words-" I assume no power of art, except that power of love towards it, which has remained with me from my childhood until now. In the power of such a love, and in the event of my life being prolonged, I would fain hope to write hereafter better verses; but I never can feel more intensely than at this moment

nor can it be needful that any should -the sublime uses of poetry, and the solemn responsibilities of the poet.'

We have read much of the volume, and glanced it all through, not without certain regrets almost amounting to blame, but far more with love and admiration. In "The Seraphim" there is poetry and piety-genius and devotion; but the awful Idea of the Poem -the Crucifixion-is not sustainedand we almost wish it unwritten. The gifted writer says "I thought that, had Eschylus lived after the incarnation and crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ, he might have turned, if not in moral and intellectual, yet in poetic faith, from the solitude of Caucasus to the deeper desertness of that crowded Jerusalem where none had any pity; from the faded white flower' of the Titanic brow, to the 'withered grass' of a Heart trampled on by its own beloved; from the glorying of him who gloried that he could not die, to the sublimer meekness of the Taster of death for every man; from the taunt stung into being by the torment, to His more awful silence, when the agony stood dumb before the love! And I thought how, 'from the height of this great argu. ment,' the scenery of the Prometheus would have dwarfed itself even in the eyes of its poet-how the fissures of his rocks and the innumerous smiles of his ocean would have closed and waned into blankness,—and his demigod stood confest, so human a conception as to fall below the aspiration of his own humanity. He would have turned from such to the rent rocks and darkened sun-rent and darkened by a sympathy thrilling through nature, but leaving man's heart untouchedto the multitudes, whose victim was their Saviour-to the Victim, whose sustaining thought beneath an unexampled agony, was not the Titanic I can revenge,' but the celestial I can forgive!'"

The poems that follow are on subjects within the compass of her powersthere is beauty in them all-and some of them, we think, are altogether beautiful. From the Poet's Vow," "The Romaunt of Margaret," "Isobel's Child," compositions of considerable length, might be selected passages of deep pathos-especially from the last, in which the workings of a mother's love through all the phases of fear,