ND this place my forefathers made for man! This is the process of our love and wisdom. To each poor brother who offends against usMost innocent, perhaps and what if guilty?

["Of all our writers of the briefer narrative poetry," says Leigh Hunt, "Coleridge is the finest since Chaucer, and assuredly he is the sweetest of all our poets. Wallis's music is but a court flourish in comparison; and though Beaumont and Fletcher, Collins, Gray, Keats, Shelley, and others, have several as sweet passages, and Spenser

Is this the only cure? Merciful God!
Each
pore and natural outlet shrivelled up
By ignorance and parching poverty,
His energies roll back upon his heart,

And stagnate and corrupt, till, changed to poison,
They break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot.
Then we call in our pampered mountebanks;
And this is their best cure! Uncomforted
And friendless solitude, groaning, and tears,
And savage faces, at the clanking hour,

Seen through the steam and vapours of his dungeon
By the lamp's dismal twilight! So he lies,
Circled with evil, till his very soul

Unmoulds its essence, hopelessly deformed.
By sights of evermore deformity!

With other ministrations thou, O Nature,
Healest thy wandering and distempered child :
Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,

Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,
Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,
Till he relent, and can no more endure

To be a jarring and a dissonant thing

is, in a certain sense, musical throughout, yet no man has written whole poems, of equal length, so perfect in the sentiment of music, so varied with it, and yet leaving on the ear so unbroken and single an effect." SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, whose works are unsurpassed for grandeur of imagination and command of expression, was born at Bristol, in 1771, and educated at Christ's Hospital, and afterwards at Cambridge. After a long and chequered career, at one period of which he served as a private in a cavalry regiment, he died at Highgate, in 1834. It is related of him that, on his enlistment, the captain of his troop asked him if he could run a Frenchman through the body. "I do not know," replied the valiant poet," but he shall run me through the body before I will run away."]

THE NEGLECTED CHILD.

Amid this general dance and minstrelsy,
But, bursting into tears, wins back his way,
His angry spirit healed and harmonised
By the benignant touch of love and beauty.

COLERIDGE.

47

48

THE NEGLECTED CHILD.

How blessed are the beautiful!

Love watches o'er their birth;
O Beauty, in my nursery

I learned to know thy worth;
For even there, I often felt

Forsaken and forlorn;

And wished-for others wished it too—

I never had been born!

I'm sure I was affectionate,--
But in my sister's face

There was a look of love that claimed

A smile or an embrace.

But when I raised my lips, to meet
The pressure children prize,
None knew the feelings of my heart-
They spoke not in my eyes.

But oh, that heart too keenly felt
The anguish of neglect !
I saw my sister's lovely form
With gems and roses deck'd;
I did not covet them; but oft,
When wantonly reproved,

I envied her the privilege
Of being so beloved.

But soon a time of triumph came

A time of sorrow too,

For Sickness o'er my sister's form

Her venomed mantle threw ;

THE NEGLECTED CHILD.

The features, once so beautiful ;
Now wore the hue of death,
And former friends shrank fearfully

From her infectious breath.

'Twas then, unwearied, day and night,
I watched beside her bed,

And fearlessly upon my breast

I pillowed her poor head.

She lived and loved me for my care!
My grief was at an end;

I was a lonely being once,

But now I have a friend.

BAYLEY.

49

[THOMAS HAYNES BAYLEY (born 1797, died 1839) has not produced any poem of sufficient merit to entitle him to a position among our great poets; but many of his productions, scattered throughout annuals and magazines, display a considerable amount of grace and feeling. The popularity of many of his poems has certainly been somewhat evanescent.]