the choice of words and epithets has not hindered the writer from giving distinct and generally correct character to the biographical subjects, as may be seen in the following examples, which are as remarkable for the truth and discrimination of the descriptions as for the ingenuity of the diction:

"Good Country Parson, cheerful, quaint,
Ever in thy life a saint,
O'er thy memory sweetly rise
R are old Izaak's eulogies,
Giving us, in life-drawn hue,
Each lov'd feature to our view.
"Holy Herbert, humble, mild,
E 'en as simple as a child,
Ready thy bounty to dispense,
Beaming with benevolence,
E ver blessing, ever blest,
Rescuing the most distrest;
Thy Temple' now is Heaven's bright rest.
"DRYDEN.

"Deep rolls on deep in thy majestic line,

"KNIGHT.
"Knowledge diffusing of most useful kind,
Not for the favor'd few, but striving many,
In philanthropic energy of mind,

66 SOUTHEY (NO. 1). "Serenely bright thy life's pure stream did glide, On sweet romantic Derwentwater's side, Under great Skiddaw — there, in Epic lays, Thou dream'dst a poet's dreams of olden days, How Madoc wander'd o'er the Atlantic wave, Eastern Kehama, Roderic the brave;

Y ears cannot from our fondest memory lave.

"SOUTHEY (NO. 2).

"9ound wisdom guided thy prolific pen,

O'er many a wide review of books and men,
Uttering bright thoughts in purest flowing prose ;-
The glorious deeds of Nelson' 'gainst our foes:
How Wesley' liv'd-and 'Cowper's' mournful close.
Exalted though thy great poctic name,

Y et does thy perfect prose add lustre to thy fame.

"WORDSWORTH.

"Wandering, through many a year, 'mongst Cumbria's
hills,

O'er her wild fells, sweet vales, and sunny lakes,
R ich stores of thought thy musing mind distills,
Day-dreams of poesy thy soul awakes: -
Such was thy life-a poet's life, I ween;
Worshipper thou of Nature! every scene
Of beauty stirr'd thy fancy's deeper mood,
Reflection calmed the current of thy blood:
Thus in the wide Excursion' of thy mind
High thoughts in words of worth we still may find.

Gives thee a place scarcely surpass'd by any ;
Handing thee down 'mongst knights of prouder name.
Thine, too, the praise of spreading Shakspeare's fame.
"MACAULAY.

"Masterly critic! in whose brilliant style

And rich historic coloring - breathes again—
Cloth'd in most picturesque costume the while-
All the dim past, with all its bustling train.
Under this vivid, eloquent painting, see,
Life given anew to our old history's page;
And in thy stirring ballad poetry,

Youth's dreams of ancient Rome once more our minds
engage.

"LONGFELLOW.

"Lays like thine have many a charm ;
Oft thy themes the heart must warm.
Now o'er Slavery's guilt and woes,
Grief and shame's deep hues it throws;
Far up Alpine heights is heard
'Excelsior,' now the stirring word;
'Life's Psalm' now, onward is inviting,
Longings for nobler deeds exciting ;
O'er Britain now resounds thy name,
While 'States unborn' shall swell thy fame.
"TENNYSON.

"Thy verse is like rich music to the ear;
Elegant, tender, sweet, thy varied lays :
Now, soft as lute, or as the clarion clear,
Now, pensive as some song of olden days.
Young fancy revels in thy poet dreams,
Steep'd in such melody of words as none

Of elder laureate bards have pour'd-it seems
Now, like Eolian strains from breezy zephyrs won.

"DICKENS.

"Delightful Novelist! lov'd by youth and age,
In many-color'd life' how rich thy page!
Comic, pathetic scenes alike to thee;
Kindliest benevolence in all we see,

Ennobling humble worth, and struggling poverty.
No sickly sentimental trash we find;

Sweet sympathy pervades thy bright, thy glowing
mind."

The series of acrostics commences with Homer, Cicero, and Virgil, and is followed in chronological order down to our own times. The dates, appropriate mottoes and occasional short notes being given, render the book more useful as an agreeable miscellany of bib graphical and historical sketches. It may further gain the interest of our readers for the work when we add, that it was composed "to relieve some of the many unoccupied hours that belong to that greatest of afflictions, the deprivation of sight."

Yet we still go

In these modern days of ours, printing has | knot the "Question d'Orient.” become a sort of “culte,” and the humble pro- on believing in Captain Pen; there are still those fession of literature is transformed, to use the among us who believe in Cheap Literature, "not cant transcendental phrase, into the "priesthood wisely, but too well." We still believe that of letters." Four years ago, Captain Pen went masses of print will do our business, spread light bragging about that he had done for his sturdy far and wide over the earth, and conduce to that rival Captain Sword; but the Exhibition of All" progress of the species" of which so much is Nations had not closed four months before Cap- said and sung. The whole nation suffers from tain Sword was the principal figure in a certain a plethora of print, and seems likely to suffer, coup d'état; and three years had not gone by, at least during our day and generation.➡ Specbefore, the pen failing in a rather lamentable fash-tator.

ion, the sword went forth to cut that famous f

From Gallenga's "Piedmont."

side of the woman who had wrought all the mis

SCENE IN THE HISTORY OF PIEDMONT.ery that awaited him. The Marchioness awoke

and bounded up with a scream; but she was hurried away in her scanty night attire, and conveyed first to a nunnery at Carignano, then to a state prison at the Castle of Ceva. Not a few of her relatives and partisans were arrested in the course of the same night.

"The Chevalier Solaro, one of the colonels, next proceeded to possess himself of the King's sword, which lay on the table by his bedside; and at length succeeded, not without great difficulty, in breaking the King's heavy slumbers.

"Victor sat up in his bed; he looked hard at the faces of his disturbers, and inquired on what into a paroxysm of fury; he refused to accompany errand they had come on hearing it, he burst them, to dress, to rise from his bed. They had to wrap him in his bedclothes, and thus to force him from the chamber.

"IN life's last scene what prodigies surprise!" After steering through all the depths and shoals of the wars of Louis the Fourteenth, and facing in the field the ablest of his Marshals, Victor the Second was wrecked by doting. At sixty-four he married the widow of Count St. Sebastiano an old flame of his youth, whom he created Marchioness of Spigno. Tired of business, and devoting himself to this new bride, he resigned the throne to his son, Charles Emanuel, after the manner of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, in spite of the entreaties of that son and the remonstrances of his subjects. But in a few months, weary of inaction, or stirred up by the ambition of the Marchioness, who wished to be a real Queen, Victor "It was a painful and an anxious moment. announced his intention to resume the sceptre. The soldiers had been chosen for their character Charles, a submissive son, called his Coun- of reliable steadiness and discipline, but were cil together, and intimated his willingness to not proof against the passionate appeals of the resign, but that he did not deem himself au- man who had so often led them to victory. Murthorized to do so without their assent. The murs were heard from the midst of them, and a laymen were apprehensive, but silent. The regiment of dragoons, addressed by Victor in the Archbishop Gattinara spoke out. courtyard, gave signs of open mutiny. The Colonel, Count of Perosa, however, with great "Gattinara strongly and at full length demon-presence of mind, ordered silence in the King's strated the unreasonableness of Victor's pretensions; when, at his persuasion, it was unanimously resolved that the tranquillity of the country did not admit of a repeal of that King's act of abdication. The apprehension of Victor Amadeus was next moved.

"Whilst they were yet deliberating, a note was handed to the King, by which the Baron of St. Remy, commander of the citadel of Turin, announced that at midnight Victor had come from Moncalieri, on horseback, followed by a single aid-de-camp, and asked for admittance into the fortress. The commander had firmly but respectfully answered that the gates of the citadel could not be opened without an order from the King; whereupon the old King, in a towering passion, had turned his horse's head back to Moncalieri.

"This last proof of Victor's readiness to resort to extreme measures determined the still wavering minds in the King's Council. An order of arrest against Victor was drawn up, which Charles Emanuel signed with trembling hand, with tears in his eyes.

name, and under penalty of death, and drowned the old King's voice by a roll of the drums. They thus shut him up in one of the Court carriages, into which he would admit no companion, and followed him on horseback with a large escort to the Castle of Rivoli.

“Rivoli was for some time a very hard prison to Victor Amadeus, with bars at the windows, a strong guard at the doors, and unbroken silence and solitude within. His frequent fits of ungovernable rage made his keepers apprehensive that reason had forsaken him ; and they treated him, though with marked respect, yet with untiring watchfulness, as a maniac. They show still or at least they showed till lately-a marble table which the strong old man cracked with his doubled fist in one of his paroxysms of anguish and fury. By degrees, however, loneliness and confinement did their work, and the storm of angry passions subsided into the calmness of deep-set melancholy. The rigor of his captivity slackened, though by no means the vigilance of his gaolers. He was allowed the use of books and papers, and intercourse with friends; presently, also, the soothing company of the Marchioness, the fair tempter who had wrought him all this woe. At his own request he was removed to Moncalieri, as he complained of the keen air of Rivoli: but the infirmities from which he

"The Marquis of Ormea, who had been raised to power by the father, who now conducted the affairs of the son, and was more than any man implicated in these fatal differences between them, took the warrant from Charles' reluctant hands, and, on the night of the 27th to the 28th of Sep-was suffering sprang from other sources than intember [1731], repaired to Moncalieri.

"He had encompassed the castle with troops, summoned from the neighborhood of the capital, and charged four colonels with the conduct of the dangerous expedition.

"These walked without resistance into the old King's apartments; where he was found plunged in one of his fits of sound, lethargic sleep, by the

clemency of sky or climate. His mind and body were equally shattered under the consequences of the violent scenes he had passed through. He now turned his thoughts to Heaven, and prepared for coming death. He wished for a reconciliation with his son, and, through the confessor that this latter had sent him, sued for an interview. Charles Emanuel instantly ordered his carriage

to the palace-door, and wished to hasten to his | prevent an encounter which might lead to disafather's summons. But his Ministers and the greeable explanations. The carriage was counQueen had most probably a strong interest-and termanded. The King shed tears, but father and by their remonstrances they had the power to son never met again in this world.”

conquered there were dead long since; but the reg iment still lived, its history still lived, its honor lived; and that history, that honor, were his, as well as those old dead warriors'; he had fought side by side with them in spirit, though not in the flesh; and now his turn was come, and he must do as they did, and for their sakes, and count his own life a worthless thing for the sake of the body to which he belonged; he, but two years ago the idle, selfish country lad, now stumbling cheerful on in the teeth of the iron hail, across ground slippery with his comrades' blood, not knowing whether the next moment his own blood might not swell the ghastly stream. What matter? They might kill him, but they could not kill the regiment; it would live on and conquer; ay, and should conquer, if his life could help on its victory; and then its honor would be his, its reward be his, even when his corpse lay pierced with wounds, stiffening beneath a foreign sky. - Kingsley's Sermons for the Times.

CHANGE IN A RECRUIT, AND WHY.-A year or two passes, and you meet the same lad again -if indeed he is the same. For a strange change has come over Him: he walks erect, he speaks clearly, he looks you boldly in the face, with eyes full of intelligence and self-respect; he is become civil and courteous now; he touches his cap to you "like a soldier " ; he can afford now to be respectful to others, because he respects himself, and expects you to respect him. You talk to him, and find that the change is not merely outward, but inward; not owing to mere mechanical drill, but to something which has been going on in his heart; and, ten to one, the first thing that he begins to talk to you about, with honest pride, is his regiment. His regiment! Yes, there is the secret which has worked these wonders; there is the talisman which has humanized and civilized and raised from the mire the once savage boor. He belongs to a regiment; in one word, he has become the member of a body. The member of a body, in which if one member suffers, all suffer with it; if one member be honored, all rejoice with it. A body, which has a life of EFFECTS OF STEAM ON SEAMANSHIP. A steam its own, and a government of its own, a duty voyage is no school for seamanship. A young of its own, a history of its own, an allegiance officer may cross the Atlantic half-a-dozen times, to a'sovereign, all which are now his life, and never see a manoeuvre beyond the simplest his duty, his history, his allegiance: he does routine. An enterprising youth, ambitious of not now merely serve himself and his own distinction in his profession, might study sea selfish lusts he serves the Queen. His nature manship with more advantage on the pier at is not changed, but the thought that he is the Hungerford. Through the charm of a few magmember of an honorable body has raised him ical sentences "ease her," "back, her," above his nature. If he forgets that, and thinks" stop her," "" turn ahead," -a kind of marine only of himself, he will become selfish, sluttish, abracadabra, all the feats of nautical skill drunken, cowardly, a bad soldier; as long as he and science are now performed by any man who remembers it, he is a hero. He can face mobs has the average ability of a cabman. As regards now, and worse than mobs: he can face hunger the seamanship of the service, the delight of the and thirst, fatigue, danger, death itself, because thing is gone; the interest is quenched by the he is the member of a body. For those know utter simplicity and facility of the task..... little, little of human nature and its weakness, Formerly the conversation in the ward-room was who fancy that mere brute courage, as of an of winds and currents, of the prospects of the angry lion, will ever avail, or availed a few short voyage, the progress of the ship. Now all this is weeks ago, to spur our thousands up the steeps at an end. The huge steamer gets under way; of Alma, or across the fatal plain of Balaklava, officers devoutly pray for a foul wind, to save athwart the corpses of their comrades, upon the bother with the sails; the course is givendeadly throats of Russian guns. A nobler feel-"turn ahead " ; the good ship proceeds on her ing, a more heavenly thought was needed (and steady, undeviating track, and the most enthu when needed, thanks to God, it came), to keep siastic seaman is beat by the monotony of the each raw lad, nursed in the lap of peace, true to thing. "What is she doing?" "Eight and å his country and his Queen through the valley half, and I think it's going to rain." The nauof the shadow of death. Not mere animal tical conversation can get no further, and is fierceness; but that tattered rag which floated given up. The crew, to divert their minds from above his head, inscribed with the glorious mischief, are kept laboring in vain to scrub the names of Egypt or Corunna, Toulouse or Water-great blackamoor white; and, as far as seamanloo, that it was which raised him into a hero. ship is concerned, the whole vehicle might just He had never seen those victories; the men who as well be an omnibus.- Cambridge Essays.

From The Economist, 3 Nov.
ENGLAND AND AMERICA.

is caused by the reckless conduct of politicians, who have their own temporary ends to serve by spreading smoke and fanning I cannot be denied, however much it is flame; and for the control and cessation to be regretted, that the state of feeling sub- of this, we can only look to the moral dissisting between the United States and this gust and reprobation which such proceedcountry is by no means as harmonious as it ings must excite in the better-minded citiought to be. Our friendship is rarely cordial zens of both States. Much, too, of the bad at the best of times, and at the present mo- feeling we speak of is unreal, or at least ment it is even less so than usual. Yet there partial: — that is, it does not exist between never were two nations whose amity, it should the two nations, but only in a section of one seem, ought to be closer or sincerer. The of them, and is repudiated and contradicted relationship of blood is near; the similarity by the sound and respectable body of the of institutions approaches almost to iden- people. This, though very regretable, is tity; the differences of national character curable, and is not the dangerous portion. are rather those belonging to youth and age The residue, which we feel least sanguine than to any more innate discrepancy; both of dispelling, springs from the unwarrantare free, both are progressive, both are pow-able designs entertained and attempted by erful; both stand in the van of civilization; Americans, which we feel we must, and they both are essentially naval and commercial; know we shall, resist and condemn. But the trade between us is enormous, because surely, in all these cases, plain and frank each produces what the other wants; and language, uttered in a friendly and temperate if we are rivals in industry and enterprise spirit, may do much towards bringing about and compete in many markets of the world, harmony between two peoples, whose rupwe do so only as one Manchester manufacture, or whose coolness even, would be about turer or one New York merchant competes the saddest and widest calamity which could with another; and why, then, should we befal the world.

distrust or dislike each other more than rivals And, first, we observe among our transwho live in the same town or have their ware-atlantic brethren a touchiness as to their houses and counting-houses in the same position and the estimation in which they street? There is no real collision of interest are held, very natural in a young nation, between the two countries: any imagined or but scarcely dignified in a great nation. artificial ones must arise from the baseless They have something of the feeling of misconceptions of one nation or the unwar- parvenus, who fancy that their proper place rantable projects of the other. is not given them, that everybody is disNow, it most especially concerns the wel-posed to neglect or slight them, and that only fare of the two peoples, as also the interests constant self-assertion can secure them due of humanity at large, that this ill-feeling deference and respect. They fancy especially should, if possible, be soothed away, and be replaced by a generous mutual appreciation and a hearty unity of action; that where it arises from misunderstandings, those misunderstandings should be cleared up; that where it results from inadmissible pretensions on either side, those pretensions should be frankly surrendered or withdrawn; that where it is due to defective institutions, those institutions should be carefully scrutinized, and their defects, as far as may be, amended; and that where, as is too often the case, it is created and goaded by malignant and designing firebrands, those firebrands should be silenced and discountenanced.

that Englishmen look down upon them. Conscious of vast energy, proud of their wonderful progress, and sanguine as to a far-reaching and lofty destiny, they yet perpetually torment themselves with the notion that we do not recognize all this, or that if we admit it, we do so in a grudging manner and with a reluctant spirit. They imagine contempt in our language and jealousy in our hearts. Let us assure them that, whatever may be the tone occasionally assumed by some portion of the Press in this country, such sentiments are utterly foreign to the vast majority of Englishmen. They are suspicious of our supposed non-appreciation. Let them set their susceptible minds at rest on that score. Their greatness is too patent for any nation to ignore or deny it; and England is great enough to be able to admit it without the slightest pang of jealousy. So far from any feeling of this kind, we rejoice in their progress almost as if it were our own. We are proud of their youthful energy, of their indomitable vigor, of their native genius, of their splendid achievements: