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ROBERT BROWNING.

CHARLES LAMB in one of his essays once divided men into two classes, those who borrow, and those who lend: following his example, we are disposed to be as narrow in our classification of poets, whom we divide into those who are original and those who are not; the word orginal, however, by no means fully or correctly explains our meaning. Many poets are strikingly original in thought, whose mode of embodiment is as old as the hills. The common sense of mankind is disseminated from stereotyped plates, and so is more than half of all the different branches of English literature. There is no marked or radical difference in the style of Pope, Grey, Cowper, Wordsworth, and Southey:-difference there certainly is in expression, in the length and turning of periods, and a thousand minor points, but they all leave the same impression on the mind of the generality of readers, as far as their style is concerned. Not so however with Tennyson, Miss Bar. rett (now Mrs. Browning), and Robert Browning himself. The peculiarities and excellencies of the two former are mostly understood and appreciated, but the latter is comparatively unknown, especially in America, where his works have only been reprinted during the past year. We should not be surprised if he never attained general popularity anywhere: he is not a stereotype man, but bold and original, not to say bizarre in everything that he attempts. He evidently holds critics in utter contempt. He does not write for them nor for the world: he wants a "fit audience though few."

His plays are puzzles to the mass of readers: devoid of what is generaly considered plot and action and delineation of character, they seem, and to a certain extent are, obscure; but the obscurity lies as much in the reader as the poet: he needs a metaphysician to understand him thoroughly: he delineated the motives and working of the minds of his various characters without any reference to anything else, or anything tangible or earthly: he places himself in their different situations, and thinks as they would; thinks metaphysically, deeply, passionately, but not actively he never acts: there is no plot in any of his plays that would for a moment be tolerated on the stage: his characters are not men but minds, they wear no clay around them: "Paracelsus," one of his earliest efforts, is a con

versational, we can hardly call it a dramatic poem, in which he endeavors to depicture the struggles of a noble but restless nature, smitten with a thirst of knowledge, but scorning from the first human love. His bursts of exultation and confidence as to the divinity of his mission-his account of the growth of his desires, and the certainty of their success—his after depression and fear, uncertainty and disappointment, are finely but abstractly drawn: Paracelsus is perhaps too much of a logician, but we must remember that he is a student and dreamer.

The following passage is not over poetically expressed, but philosophically true:—

"Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe :
There is an inmost centre in us all
Where truth abides in fullness; and around
Wall upon wall the flesh hems it in,
gross
This perfect clear perception-which is truth:
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Blinds it, and makes all error, and To know
Rather consists in opening out a way

Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.

The lines below must have been written in the full flush and pride of youth :

"Make no more giants, God!
But elevate the race at once! We ask
Just to put forth our strength, our human strength,
All starting fairly, all equipped alike,
Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted-
See if we cannot beat thy angels yet!"

"Pippa Passes" is one of the finest efforts of the modern muse: the idea of the play is poetical and beautifully executed-Pippa, a poor ophan girl whose life is spent in the drudgery of a silk mill, has a holiday, and goes through Azolo, singing snatches of old songs and hymns. In different parts of the town, different characters have met for good or evil, and just at the turning point Pippa passes in the street singing something applicable their needs and desires-exerting as it were a mesmeric influence over those around her. The lines quoted below have been pronounced the greatest instance of imagination in Browning's works, "their fine audacity carrying us back to the elder period of the English drama."

"Buried in woods we lay, you recollect,
Swift ran the searching tempest overhead,

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ROBERT BROWNING.

And ever and anon some bright white shaft
Burst through the pine tree roof-burnt here and there
Asif God's Messenger through the close wood-screen,
Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture,
Feeling for guilty thee and me."

From a conversation between some poor girls we select the following passages, whose pathos and country-feeling have always made them favorites with us:

FIRST GIRL.

"Spring's come, and summer's coming, I would wear
A long low gown-down to the hands and feet-
With plaits here, close about the throat, all day:
And all nights lie, the long cool nights in bed-
And have new milk to drink-apples to eat,
Deuzans and junctings, leather-coats-ah I should say
This is away in the fields miles!

THIRD GIRL.

Say at once

You'd be at home-she'd always be at home!Now comes the glory of the farm among

The cherry-orchards, and how April snowed

White blossoms on her, as she ran why, foul !--
They've rubbed out the chalk-marks of how tall you were,
Twisted your starling's neck-broken his cage,
Made a dung-hill of your garden-

FIRST GIRL.

They destroy

My garden since I left them?-well-perhaps !
I would have done so, so I hope they have!-
A fig-tree curled out of our cottage wall-
They called it mine, I have forgotten why,
It must have been there long ere I was born:
Cric-cric-I think I hear the wasps o'erhead,
Pricking the papers strung to flutter there

And keep off birds in fruit time-long coarse papers,
And the wasps eat them, prick them through and through.

"Colombe's Birth-day" and "The Blot on the Scutcheon" are our favorites of all the plays. The first is full of chivalrous sweetness and subdued passion, the growth of which is equal to anything in Shakspeare. The last is full of love and sorrow, and contains the only flesh and blood characters that Browning has yet given the world. Dickens considered it the finest poem of the century. We know not where to find more sweetness, more intensity of love, more of the feelings of youth and first grief, than is scattered through its simple and pathetic scenes. We never read it without tears.

The minor poems—“ Dramatic Lyrics" he calls them are, perhaps, the most peculiar and bizarre of all Browning's writings. They are for the most part lyrical in expression, but always dramatic in principle, and the utterances of so many

imaginary persons, rather than the author's. Some of the mare singular enough-"The last Duchess" has been pronounced by one of the first dramatic poets of the age, to be the finest piece of dra. matic acting of the century-the story, and peculiarities of the story teller, are developed without any apparent effort: in this respect Browning stands unrivaled, and may challenge comparison with the old masters of the stage.

"Count Gismond" is a fine piece of narrative verse, exquisitely managed. "The Soliloquy in the Spanish Cloister" is very characteristic of the author. "Artemi's Prologueizes" reads like a translation from the Greek tragedians: the blank verse is sounding, stately, and simple. "The Bishop orders his tomb at St. Praxed's Church" is fully equal to the "St. Simeon Stylites" of Tennyson, though differently treated: "Porphyria's Lover," "How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix," "The Italian in England," "The Englishman in Italy," "The Flight of the Duchess" and "Saul" are all fine, and characteristic poems.

"The Pied Piper of Hamelin" is a specimen of Browning's diablerie and humor. The following is a good specimen of its style and versifica

tion:

"RATS.

"They fought the dogs, and killed the cats.

And bit the babies in the cradles,

And ate the cheeses out of the vats,

And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,

Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats."

"Meeting at Midnight," with which we must close our extracts, has many of the characteristics of Tennyson, and gives the feeling of "the place and hour."

I.

The grey sea, and the long black land;
And the yellow half moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that toss
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed in the slushy sand.

II.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears:
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

EARTH'S OLDEST SON.

BY REV. DR. CHEEVER.

THE youth of the world was the season of man's greatest age; perhaps also it was the season of man's greatest wickedness. Three things we know with certainty, amidst all the darkness that hangs over the life of the antediluvians; they lived to a great age, they rose to a great height of depravity, and, except Enoch, they all died. The assurance of a very long life would be to any man either a great temptation to sin, or a great means of holiness; most likely the former. Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. The character written for our instruction of the race of man in the world before the flood, that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, corresponds unerringly with the inspired declaration by the mouth of Solomon. The sentence of death, deferred for so many ages, was almost unknown, and came at length to be utterly discredited; they thought not of it; nay, so hardy and secure had long centuries of vigorous existence made them, that, as long as Adam lived, they might have dreamed of indefinite centuries yet to come, the limit of man's life, in all probability, not having been made the subject of precise revelation. For more than seven antediluvian generations no death is recorded in the scriptures. There may have been mortal diseases, and even the crime of Cain may have been not unfrequently repeated, for the earth was filled with violence.

But, for aught we know, the funeral of Adam was the first which his posterity attended for nearly a thousand years. There was, indeed, another funeral; the murdered Abel was buried; but the parents were the only mourners. With his own hands Adam dug the grave of his youngest, best beloved son; with his own hands he buried him; and Eve planted the sacred enclosure with flowers, and watered it with her tears. The simplest things were then matters of revelation; death and its consequences were so little known, that the angels would have to show Adam what he must do with the bleeding corpse of Abel; the language of Abraham, bury my dead out of my sight, could only spring from experi

ence; for if death left the bodies of those we love as uncorrupted and as beautiful as life, we should wish to keep them by us, though inanimate and lifeless. The ancient Egyptians had a strange custom of doing this, as it was. They sometimes kept the dead bodies of their friends standing upright in their houses, embalmed so carefully, that every feature remained as it was in life; they kept them, Diodorus tells us, "in costly habitations, for the pleasure of beholding them for ever."

When Methusaleh was born, Adam was six hundred and eighty-seven years of age. When Adam died, Methusaleh was two hundred and eighty-two. The oldest man lived in the society of the first man 282 years. Methusaleh was the grandfather of Noah; and when Noah was born, Methusaleh was 369 years old. Methusaleh and Noah were therefore contemporaries during the long space of 600 years. Noah had never seen Adam; the father of the second race of mortals had never seen the father of the first. But Lamech, Noah's father, and the first born of Methusaleh, had lived, while Adam was yet alive, 95 years; and he, as well as Methusaleh, could describe to Noah, from personal knowledge and recollection, the teachings and the venerable grandeur of the Father of them all.

The death of Adam took place - just eightyseven years before Noah's birth. Of the death of Eve no mention is made in the Scriptures. How long she remained on earth with our great father, by what angelic messengers or revelations from the Almighty they were both prepared for their departure, or what blessings and prophetic warnings they left with their posterity on leaving the world, we know not. Of all possible circumstances we have but one, and that the universal record of man, he died. Nor is the name of any woman of the posterity of Adam, from Seth to Noah, handed down to us, nor any glimpse of information as to the part which the wives of the antediluvian patriarchs might have played in the education of their children. Who was the mother of Methusaleh? and what the lessons taught him in his infancy? Was the help-meet of Enoch chosen for her piety? and did she walk, like him,

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with God are questions which curiosity, pausing upon the life of the world before the flood, would be glad to have answered. But not a ray of information comes down to us, nor is even a loop-hole left for conjecture, save that the character of men like Enoch and Noah is sufficient ground for the supposition, that so far as their minds were left to be moulded by their mothers, the examples set before them, and the influence exerted upon them, must have been holy,

And now, could we call up the shades of Methusaleh, and converse with the oldest man, what would be the lessons of his experience? Would they be greatly different from ours! Would the thoughts and feelings, the events and circumstances, of men whose life was of a thousand years' duration, be very diverse from those of ordinary mortals, whose span is only threescore years and ten, or would one little limit of existence vary from theirs only as a miniature does from a portrait, where the features, the passions, the expression, are the same, and only the dimensions of the canvass, the size of the painting, are different? The temptations of Methusaleh must have been like ours; his christian conflict was the same; his faith was the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But were his trials as heavy as ours, or has the primeval curse gathered a strength in the progress of six thousand years, not known in the world's infancy? What indeed was affliction, disease, old age, with the antediluvians? Were their trials spread over a larger portion of existence than ours? Did colds and fevers rack the body with pain for a time proportionally longer? Ere the close of life, did the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they were few, and were those that looked out of the windows darkened? Was their infancy extended into our childhood, and their childhood into our manhood, so that their youth was our age, and the child died being an hundred years old? Was the flight of time with them as rapid as with us, and notwithstanding their long life, did they leave it with as strong unwillingness, with as deep regret, with as many plans incomplete, and purposes betrayed, as we do ours? The unerring truth of Scripture has made one thing certain; that, as they grew in years they grew in wickedness, despising the goodness of God, and filling up life with impiety, till all flesh had corrupted their way, and become fitted only for the destruction of the deluge. Their passions were the same as ours, and they gave them their full swing of indulgence; and in the long sweep of nine hundred years they must have gathered

a prodigious power, and raged and burned like a flaming volcano.

The extreme conciseness and paucity of detail in the sacred history concerning the antediluvians are remarkable. We may draw from them a salutary lesson. Their space in the world's existence amounted almost to one third of its whole being thus far; for, of the sixty centuries that have nearly elapsed, from creation's dawn to the present moment, their busy transit occupied not much less than two thousand years; and of the four thousand years over which the Bible ranges its sacred perspective, the wickedness of the antediluvians consumed almost half; and yet not a two hundreth part of the inspiration of the Scriptures is conceded to their notice. If they themselves could have drawn up for future times even an abridgement of all that they expected to be known, and thought worthy to be known in regard to them, the history of the world before the flood would have occupied more space than that of all ages since; and we should have had an antediluvian Bible, emblazoned all over with the record of their glorious achievements; and doubtless it would have been a most striking, a most extraordinary history. All elements of human greatness, as well as of human wickedness, would have entered into its composition; for there can scarcely be a doubt that the intellectual faculties of men wrought on a scale as gigantic as their passions, so that, by the time the flood came, the earth must have been covered with memorials of most surpassing grandeur. The very first born of Adam, the murderer of his brother, when the volcano of passion had a little burned out, and he had somewhat recovered from the tempest of madness and remorse of conscience, builded a city, impressing upon its stupendous architecture all the energy of a mind of gigantic strength, and instead of giving it a name that might have connected it sacredly with heaven, indulged a mixture of paternal fondness and ambition, and called it after the name of his first-born son. But of all the grandeur that might have grown in time to be characteristic of the first city, and of all the countless temples and palaces whelmed beneath the deluge, not a vestige was preserved for after admiration, even in description; and of all monuments of genius, in history, poetry, biography, or whatever other shape the mind of antediluvian antiquity might choose for its creations, though there may have been libraries larger than that of all the Ptolemies, it is doubtful if Noah deigned to take one solitary leaf into the ark, to be preserved amidst the waste of waters. Over all achievements of fame, all wonders of genius,

EARTH'S OLDEST SON.

all events of history, in which the actors anticipated an immortality of glory, the pen of inspiration draws a blank; it is a parcel of insignificant rubbish; it is like the chaos of an unformed world; it is all passed over in forgetfulness, and the record of their life is comprehended in the merest affirmation of mortality-he died.

Only one event is recorded alike of them all, no matter what may have been their situation in life, whether princes of the earth, surrounded with grandeur, or beggars in rags upon the dunghill. They may have amassed wealth beyond the possibility of computation, they may have enlarged the bounds of science, and filled the world with the fame of their discoveries, they may have traveled into distant lands, and brought back volumes of knowledge, they may have possessed an eloquence like that of angels, they may have written poetry worthy the abodes of Paradise, they may have founded empires, and given systems of law to communities, they may have been poets, orators, statesmen, philosophers, they may have done all that makes the name of mortals great, they may have been the Homers, the Virgils, the Newtons, the Bacons, the Shakspeares, the Miltons of their age;-but with all this, the history of their life is reduced down to the bald, unvaried epitaph, he died. There would be all varieties of existence among them as among us; some whose rank and connections in life would place them at the summit of society, and others whose powers of conversation made them the admired in every circle, and others whose days were crowded with events of wonder, and others whose domestic relations were full of beauty and tenderness, and others of a glowing imagination, and others of a vast reach of mind, and others of angelic symmetry and strength of body;-and yet it is all annihilated in that one simple record, he died.

There would be, in the progress of antediluvian existence, all materials that ever combine to raise the record of a man's days from obscurity and insignificance, all that we ever look upon as constituting fit stuff for the tissue of a magnificent history, or a grand and glowing biography; they must have attained all that in the world's view is worth living for; they must have accomplished all that in the eye of ambition constitutes a ground for that immortality of fame which the fallen mind thirsts after; actions to draw a world's applause, inventions and discoveries of surprising ingenuity, systems of science and philosophy, all forms of greatness realized;-and yet it is all disposed of and confined within the annals of two words, he died.

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Now it is scarcely possible to read a more affecting and instructive lesson than the Holy Spirit has thus transmitted for our consideration, as to the worthlessness of all mere mortal grandeur in the eye of God. The pleasure, wealth, power, knowledge, glory, of ten centuries crowded into one life, with all the changes and shows of a human existence, continued through a period which with us suffices for the transit of nearly thirty generations, are just as unnoticed as if they had never had an existence. Except so far as

these things bear upon our eternal destiny, it is absolutely regarded as of no account whatever, whether a man were poor or rich, learned or unlearned, lofty or lowly, wise or ignorant, whether he were a Newton or a Hottentot, a Milton or a chimney-sweep, a Bacon or the inmate of a mad-house, an Alexander or a beggar in the street. Considered apart from the fact of his probationary state, the enjoyments or events in the life of the most distinguished of mortals, though it were protracted to a period beyond that of the oldest antediluvian, are absolutely of no more importance, in comparison with the idea of an endless duration, than the movements of a new-born babe the first day of its existence. You might compress the possession of all the royalty and luxury of all the monarchs of the earth, and all the glory of the whole world's warriors, statesmen and nobility, and all the wisdom and fame of all the world's poets and philosophers, into the experience of one mind, and the period of one life, and yet, in itself, and for itself, without reference to God, it is nothing, absolutely not worth naming; considered with reference to eternity, it dwindles to a point; with reference to happiness, it is gone like the ticking of a clock, and is of no more value than the pulsation in the veins of the smallest microscopic insect. The only thing of absolute value is that which connects us with God, and makes us partake of his holiness; all things else are baubles. Crowns are playthings, dukedoms and dominions of no more importance than the grains of sand that go to make up an ant-hill.

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