and a tent-like ridge in the larger. A fairer scene you have not seen in all your wanderings: without going from our own grounds, we have all landlord, who dwells next door, has a respectable that can please a human being. As to books, my library, which he has put with mine-histories, encyclopædias, and all the modern gentry. But then I can have, when I choose, free access to the princely library of Sir Guilford Lawson, which contains the noblest collection of travels and natural history of perhaps any private library in England: besides this, there is the cathedral library of Carlisle, from which I can have any books sent me that I wish; in short, I can truly say that I command all the libraries in the country." their ever-varying shapes of beauty-read | Gebir, and wrote half a book of Thalaba." Southey quotes this passage from an old letter of his in his preface to the last edition of Thalaba, because he had introduced the sea-anemones into the part of Thalaba then written, and because he wished to record the fact that he "was sensible of having derived great improvement from the frequent perusal of Gebir at this time." In a letter to Taylor (October 22, 1799,) he asks him, "Have you seen a poem called Gebir? It appears to me the miraculous work of a madman. Its intelligible passages are flashes of lightning at midnight, like a picture in whose ob- Southey still wished for a warm climate. scure coloring no plan is discoverable, but in Portugal would be the place which he himevery distinct touch you see the master self would have chosen, but there seemed to hand. Writing to Coleridge immediately have been some facilities for obtaining for before his voyage, he says, "I take with me him the office of secretary to an Italian legafor the voyage your poems, the Lyrics, the tion, and in expectation of this he exulted; Lyrical Ballads, and Gebir; and, except a-why, think you? Let his letter to Grosfew books designed for presents, these make all my library. I like Gebir more and more. If you ever meet the author, tell him I took it with me on a voyage." In July, 1800, we have him at Cintra, riding jackasses, a fine lazy way of traveling, you have even a boy to beat old Dapple when he is slow. I eat oranges, figs, and delicious pears-drink Colares wine, a sort of half-way excellence between port and claret-read all I can lay my hands ondream of poem after poem, play after playtake a siesta of two hours, and am as happy as if life were an everlasting to-day, and that to-morrow was not to be provided for." In about a year he returned restored in health and strength, and found a letter form Coleridge awaiting his arrival. For a sentence from that letter we must make room, as "it describes briefly yet very faithfully," says Mr. Cuthbert Southey, "the place destined to be my father's abode for the longest portion of his life-the birthplace of all his children save one, and the place of his final rest." "Our house," says Coleridge," stands on a low hill, the whole front of which is one field, and an enormous garden, nine-tenths of which is a nursery garden. Behind the house is an orchard, and a small wood on a steep slope, at the foot of which flows the river Greta, which winds round, and catches the evening lights in the front of the house. In front we have a giant's camp-an encamped army of tent-like mountains, which, by an inverted arch, gives a view of another vale. On our right the lovely vale, and the wedge-shaped lake of Bassenthwaite, and on our left, Derwentwater and Lodore full in view, and the fantastic mountains of Borrowdale. Behind us the massy Skiddaw, smooth, green, high, with two chasms, venor Bedford answer. "It is unfortunate that you cannot come to the sacrifice of my one law-book, my whole proper stock, whom I design to take to the top of Mount Etna, for the purpose of throwing him down straight to the devil-huzza! Grosvenor, I was once afraid I should have a deadly deal of law to forget whenever I had done with it, but my brains, God bless them! never received any, and I am as ignorant as heart could wish. The tares would not grow." Southey did not go to Mount Etna to visit the devil, but to Ireland. FIRE, FAMINE, and SLAUGHTER had been there a year or two before, and, indeed, every year, for the last five hundred, and it seemed no bad place to go to for the purpose of burning his law-books. Well, away he goes. "I saw," says he, "the sun set behind Anglesea, and the mountains of Caernarvonshire rose so beautifully before us, that though at sea, it was delightful-the sun-rise was magnificent." Then comes a storm. At last they land at Balbriggen. Mr. Corry was Chancellor of the Exchequer in Ireland, and Southey was appointed his private secretary, with a salary of £400 a year. But before Southey reached Dublin, whom did he meet? "A man whose name any human beis as widely known as that of ing, except, perhaps, Bonaparte. He is not above five feet, but notwithstanding his figure, he soon became the most important personage of the party. Sir,' said he, as soon as he set foot on the vessel, 'I am a unique; I go anywhere, just as the whim takes me; this morning, Sir, I had no idea whatever of going to Dublin; I did not think of it when I left home, my wife and family knew nothing of the trip. I have only one "This vile reviewing still bird-limes me. shirt with me, besides what I have on; my I do it slower than anything else, yawning nephew here, Sir, has not another shirt to his over tiresome work;" yet, in the midst of the back; but money, Sir, money-anything rubbish which he had to clear away, as he may be had in Dublin.' Who the devil is best could, amid all his dreary journeywork, this fellow? thought I. We talked of rum- he never lost sight of the better purposes for he had just bought a hundred puncheons, which his nature fitted him; and he was the weakest drop fifteen above proof-of the wise enough also, in his dealings with the west of England, and out he pulls an Exeter booksellers, to reserve some share to himself newspaper from his pocket-of bank paper, of the future copyright in most of what he his pocket-book was stuffed full of notes, published. In 1807 we find him mentioning Scotch, Irish, and English; and I really am his history of Brazil, and his determination to obliged to him for some clues to discover print it at his own risk, rather than part with forged paper. Talk, talk, everlasting: he the copyright, for which he says he might could draw for money on any town in the obtain five hundred guineas; "but I will not United Kingdom-aye, or America. At last sell the chance of greater eventual profit. he was made known for Dr. Solomon. At This work will supply a chasm in history. night I set upon the doctor, talking of disease This is not all—I cannot do one thing at a in general, beginning with the Liverpool flux time; so sure as I attempt it, my health suf-which remedy had proved most effectual fers. The business of the day haunts me in -nothing like the cordial balm of Gilead. the night, and though a sound sleeper otherAt last I ventured to touch upon a tender wise, my dreams partake so much of it as to subject-did he conceive Dr. Brodum's me- harass and disturb me. I must always, theredicine to be analogous to his own? Not in fore, have one train of thoughts for the mornthe least, Sir-color, smell, all totally differ-ing, another for the evening, and a book not ent; as for Dr. Brodum, Sir, all the world relating to either for half an hour after supknows it, it is manifest to everybody, that his per, and thus neutralizing one set of associaadvertisements are all stolen, verbatim et lit-tions by another, and having (God be thankeratim, from mine. Sir, I don't think it worth while to notice such a fellow.' But enough of Solomon and his nephew, and successor that is to be-the Rehoboam of Gilead -a cub in training." On their route from Balbriggen to Dublin they saw no trees, all had been cut down for pike-handles. On being installed in his office, Southey found he had but little to do in what he regarded as his proper business, as secretary, but Corry expected him to act as private tutor to his children, and this did not answer the poet's purposes; so they parted company, and Southey took up his tent at Greta Hall. Coleridge went to Malta, as secretary to Sir Alexander Ball. "Mr. Smith says, Coleridge is making a fortune in his present situation, or at least, that any one but a poet would make one in it.' How amusing, that the author of Fire, Famine, and Slaughter,' should be a commissary fattening under war and Pitt !"* Southey speaks with impatience of his weary, weary work of criticism: Solemn as lead, Judge of the dead, Stern foe to witticism, * Taylor to Southey, Oct. 1805. ed!) a heart at ease, I continue to keep in order a set of nerves as much disposed to get out of order as any man's can be." Of Mr. Cuthbert Southey's work, enough has not been published to enable us to form any very decided opinion. It is written in an unaffected, unambitious tone, and in great kindliness of spirit to every one mentioned in it. Indeed, we think that in some cases, at this distance of time, there could scarcely have been occasion for the asterisks and blank lines which we now and then meet, filling up the places of omitted names. The passages should be left out or the names given. The great admiration with which Southey regarded Coleridge is often expressed in his letters. Of Lamb, too, and Wordsworth, we have frequent mention, and always in language of the strongest affection. It is really wonderful how, with his mind engaged in so many projects of his own, he could so fully appreciate the claims of others, and have his heart always awake to their interests. "My father," says Cuthbert Southey, "has yet to be fully known, and this I have a good hope will be accomplished by the publication of these volumes." We conclude with extracts from two poems * Southey to Taylor, April 18, 1807. THIS month of December has been ushered | But the life of Ebenezer Elliott appears, on in by the death of the highest, most power- retrospect, to have been complete in other ful, and most popular among the modern things besides this. He was born in a vil"Poets of the People"-we mean, of course, lage near the town of Sheffield; the son" of Mr. Ebenezer Elliott. His decease took a man of education and of great natural huplace on the 1st instant, at his residence, mor," who was a commercial clerk in an iron Argilt Hill, near Barnsley :—his age, we be- establishment. His father was also a stout lieve, being betwixt sixty and seventy years. Jacobin, and was persecuted and insulted as It is now eighteen years since a notice of the such by the yeomanry, who used "to amuse "Corn Law Rhymes," which appeared in the themselves periodically by backing their Athenæum [vide Nos. 189, 190, 198,] togeth- horses through his windows.' It was thought er with a like panegyric in the New Monthly a needless waste of time and money to beMagazine, then edited by Sir E. Bulwer Lyt- stow anything beyond the ordinary schooling ton, mainly assisted in bringing to light one of upon Ebenezer ; since the boy, after the fashthe most fierce, fervid, and eloquent men of ge- ion of greater poets, was idle over his book nius that ever entered the temple of poetical-given to kite-flying and bird-nesting rather fame through the " iron gate" of Politics. He lived to see the grievance which revealed his genius to himself and to his countrymen pass away among the sins and sorrows that have been. than to study. He was accordingly placed in a foundry in Sheffield; and for a while we are given to understand in the notice whence these memoranda are derived, lived much as his foundry-mates lived, till the accident of a botanical work falling into his hands rescued him from the ale-house and touched within him the chords of a higher taste and purer pleasures. Thenceforward they never ceased to vibrate through his verse--and hence the secret of its power: let its theme be never so grim and unpromising. With all the true energy which Elliott displayed in placarding, gibbeting, and otherwise "doing to death' the "accursed Bread Tax," he was probably never more sincere than when in the Preface to the third volume of the collected edition of his poems (1835) he expressed himself as "sufficiently rewarded if my poetry has led one poor despairing victim of misrule from the ale-house to the fields; if I have been chosen of God to show his desolated heart that, though his wrongs have been heavy and his fall deep, and though the spoiler is yet abroad, still in the green lanes of England the primrose is blowing, and on the mountain top the lonely fir is pointing with her many fingers to our Father in heaven." These aspirations were in Mr. Elliott's case accompanied by a firm resolution to be sufficient to his own independence. Successively (as he himself has acquainted the world) he rose from being a workman into becoming a small tradesman-married, and became the father of many children, whom he educated and put forward in life honorably. Some years since, we believe, Mr. Elliott retired from business; and one of the pleasant pages in Mr. Howitt's "Homes and Haunts" was that which described the writer's visit to his residence-pleasant as giving a picture of rest, competence, and cheerful intellectual exertion closing a life which had been busy, anxious, and not clear of storms. At the time of his death Mr. Elliott was occupied in collecting for the press an enlarged edition of his poems. These we cannot pretend to enu | merate at a moment's warning; their projected re-appearance rendering the task the less necessary. One of the first (if not the very first) entitled "Love," with another poem and a letter to Lord Byron, appeared in 1823 nine years before the "Corn Law Rhymes" made its writer famous. Betwixt the years 1830 and 1836 Mr. Elliott followed up his political pamphlet, with sundry other volumes of verse, dramatic, descriptive, and meditative; most of his new appearances being heralded by their page or two of nervous, angry, honest prose-none being without many pages of earnest, or pathetic, or commanding beauty. While on returning to Mr. Elliott's poems-we feel a certain incompleteness and want of proportion here and there, which mar our pleasure in them, we have been anew struck by their vigor, by their eloquence, and by their exquisite touches of local beauty. The latter alone will make them sought after, again and again, whenever the nooks and corners of our island, as described by its singers, shall be the theme. If Scott be the poet of Tweedside, and Wordsworth of the Lakes, to Elliott, assuredly, belong the heights and the dales of Yorkshire and, yet more, its "broad towns," in which Manufacture is unable to destroy or efface (as puny and faithless folk would tempt us to believe) the elements of poetry that lie in the human heart, "with all its dreams and sighs." One of Mr. Elliott's last appearances in rhyme was the biting stanza directed against the Socialists, which was cited in our columns last year. On the whole, his is a career which we can contemplate with sympathy. His, too, is an English name, which the men-whether working or thinking-of every shire of England may delight to honor. FRANCIS LORD JEFFERY. HE old in fame go from us; and we start, Learned in her pages, from the storied days ers They coped and conquered, gathering early bays Sought out in work-day paths, to gaze by stealth From the North British Review. EDINBURGH. A Letter to the Lord Provost on the Best Ways of Spoiling the Beauty of Edinburgh. By LORD COCKBURN. In common with every "right Edinburgh, man," we read the pamphlet thus whimsically entitled, not only with that pleasure which, from its singularly original and characteristic style, it must have occasioned even to a stranger, but with feelings of civic satisfaction and pride. We deem it nothing more than proper and seemly, on the part of a community so highly favored, that a sense of the hourly luxuries" to which Lord Cockburn refers, should thus from time to time be publicly avowed; and we regard it as a subject of no improper gratulation that one so gifted and so beloved, should have found time, in the midst of the engrossing duties of a high and responsible station, to offer, even in these few printed pages, a passing tribute to the beauty of our town. " Strange as it may seem to those of our readers whose imaginations have been in the habit of wandering to other lands in search of beautiful cities, we are willing to incur the charge of local vanity which may attach to the expression of our opinion, that in point of position, at all events, Edinburgh is not only unsurpassed, but is unrivaled by any city in Europe, with the possible exceptions of Corinth and Constantinople. To Rome, notwithstanding the seven hills, it is unquestionably superior both in picturesqueness and variety, and we prefer it to "Firenze la Bella," to Genoa, and even to Naples. Venice is more singular, but we suspect our good citizens, accustomed to the free exercise of their limbs, would soon feel the monotony of a dwelling in the sea. Vienna, the gay and cheerful Vienna that was (and we hope that is again), cannot vie with it; much less the sandy and arid Berlin. The vaunted capital of our Gallic neighbors has no upland range whereon her children might woo the genius of liberty, as they sing the Marseillaise to the mountain wind-no castled crag to remind them of that ultimate appeal from anarchy, of which they are often forgetful,-and its river, beautiful though it be, is but a sorry substitute for that noble arm of the ever-living sea, which stretches around us its protection whilst it brings us its treasures. With the tame surface of London, its besmoked and besooted parks, its never-ending squalid suburbs, its mean brick-built streets, and the singular infelicity of its architectural monuments, to say nothing of the vulgar bustle of its countless money-making and money-spending millions, we deign not for a moment to compare our bold, grand, poor little town; and Dublin is only a more comely because less plethoric reproduction of her English mother. Nor is it by comparison alone that we contrive to glorify ourselves. Sometimes we take an absolute instead of a relative view of the matter, and we say, not only has nature been thus bountiful to us beyond others, but she has positively adorned our city and its vicinity with nearly every charm which belongs to this region of the globe. When the man of Edinburgh issues from his door, be he poor or rich, if he be but the uncontrolled master of one short hour, he has only to consult his caprice as to whether it shall be spent in wandering luxuriously between corn-fields, rich as those of Lombardy, and even more fruitful, under trees that would do no discredit to the shady Albano; in scampering like a chamois hunter along breezy cliffs, where the moss and the rockrose find a scanty nurture; or in inhaling the invigorating breath of the "gladsome ocean,' and in cheering his spirits by the contemplation of "Ships and waves, and ceaseless motion, And men rejoicing on the shore." All this is "hourly" offered to him—the dweller in a city, the hand-worker or the head-worker, as the case may be; and thus |