"He thought what fear it were to fall Into the pit that swallows all, to a chamois, deals with a chamoishunter. He describes one scaling "Catton's battlement" before the peep of day, and now at its summit. "Over the top, as he knew well, So down the other dreary side, With cautious step, or careless slide "And now he scans the chasmed ice; He stoops to leap, and in a trice His foot hath slipp'd,-O heaven! He hath leapt in, and down he falls Between those blue tremendous walls, Standing asunder riven. "But quick his clutching nervous grasp Contrives a jutting crag to clasp, And thus he hangs in air ;O moment of exulting bliss! Yet hope so nearly hopeless is Twin-brother to despair. "He look'd beneath,-a horrible doom! "Fifteen long dreadful hours he hung, And often by strong breezes swung His fainting body twists, Scarce can he cling one moment more, His half-dead hands are ice, and sore His burning bursting wrists. "His head grows dizzy,-he must drop, Unwing'd with hope and love; And when the succour came at last, O then he learnt how firm and fast Was his best Friend above." That is much better than any thing yet quoted, and cannot be read without a certain painful interest. But the composition is very poor. "O heaven! He hath leapt in !" Well-what then?" and down he falls!" Indeed! We do not object to "between those blue tremendous walls," but why tell us they were "standing asunder riven?" We knew he had been on the edge of the "chasmed ice." "O moment of exulting bliss!" No-no-no. "Many a rood"-perpendicular altitude is never measured by roods nor yet by perches. Satan "lay floating many a rood"-but no mention of roods when "his stature reached the sky." "His head grows dizzy"-aye that it did long before the fifteen hours had expired. "But stop, O stop" is, we fear, laughable-yet we do not laugh -for 'tis no laughing matter-and 66 never in life give up your hope" is at so very particular a juncture too general an injunction. "Be cool, man, hold on fast" is a leetle too much, addressed to poor Pierre, whose "half dead hands were ice," and who had been hanging on by them for fifteen hours. "And so from out that terrible place, With death's pale paint upon his face, They drew him up at last"— is either very good or very bad-and we refer it to Wordsworth. The con "They call thee, Pierre,-see, see them cluding stanzas are tame in the ex here, Thy gathered neighbours far and near, "And he came home an altered man, For many harrowing terrors ran Through his poor heart that day; He thought how all through life, though young, Upon a thread, a hair, he hung, Over a gulf midway: treme; "For many harrowing terrors ran Through his poor heart that day!" We can easily believe it; but never after such a rescue was there so feeble an expression from poet's heart of religious gratitude in the soul of a sinner saved. The "African Desert" and "The Suttees" look like Oxford Unprized Poems. The Caravan, after suffering the deceit of the mirage, a-dust are aware of a well. "Hope smiles again, as with instinctive haste And snuff the grateful breeze, that sweeping by What There is no thirst here—our palate grows not dry as we read. passion is there in saying that the camels rushed along the waste, "Swift as the steed that feels the slackened rein," could much mend it; but some of the most agreeable men we know labour under it, and we suspect owe to it no inconsiderable part of their power in conversation. People listen to their impeded prosing more courteously, And flies impetuous o'er the sounding and more attentively, than to the prate plain ?" "Not a bit." And still worse is "Eager as bursting from an Alpine source The winter torrent in its headlong course;" for there should have been no allusion to water any where else but there; the groan and the cry was for water to drink; and had Mr Tupper felt for the caravan, men and beasts, no other water would he have seen in his imagination-it would have been impossible for him to have thought of likening the cavalcade to Alpine sources and winter torrents-he would have huddled it all headlong, prone, or on its hands, hoofs, and knees, into the water of salvation. "The green oase, an emerald couched in gold!!" Water! Water! Water! and there it is! "That bow of hope upon a stormy sky!!!" They are on its banks-and “In silent rapture gaze upon the scene!!!" And then he absolutely paints it! not in water colours-but in chalks. Graceful arms of palms-tangled hair of acacia-scarlet tassels of kossoms in festoons-and the jewels of promise of the flowering colocynth!!! Stammering or stuttering, certainly is an unpleasant defect-or weakness in the power of articulation or speech, and we don't believe that Dr Browster VOL. XLIV. NO. CCLXXVIII. of those "whose sweet course is not hindered;" and thus encouraged, they grow more and more loquacious in their in argument or anecdote, and are the vivacity, till they fairly take the lead delight and instruction of the evening, as it may hap, in literature, philosophy, or politics. Then, a scandalous story, stuttered or stammered, is irresistible-every point tells and blunt indeed, as the head of a pin, must be that repartee that extricates not itself with a jerk from the tongue-tied, sharp as the point of a needle. We beg to assure Mr Tupper, that his sympathy with the "Stammerer," would extort from the lips of the most swave of that fortunate class, who, it must be allowed, are occasionally rather irritable, characteristic expressions of contempt; and that so far from thinking their peculiarity any impediment, except merely in speech, they pride themselves, as well as they may, from experience, on the advantage it gives them in a colloquy, over the glib. If to carry its point at last be the end of eloquence, they are not only the most eloquent, but the only eloquent of men. No stammerer was ever beaten in argument-his opponents always are glad to give in-and often, after they have given in, and suppose their submission has been accepted, they find the contrary of all that from a 3 H Therefore, we cannot but smile at "the Stammerer's Complaint"-as put into his lips by Mr Tupper. He is made to ask us "Hast ever seen an eagle chained to earth? Heaven preserve us! is the world so ill off for woes-are they so scant that a Poet who indites blank verse to Imagination, can dream of none worthier his lamentations than the occa sional and not unfrequent inconveniences that a gifted spirit experiences from a lack of fluency of words? "I scarce would wonder, if a godless man, (I name not him whose hope is heavenward,) We have; but what is all such sights A man whom lying vanities hath scath'd Mr Tupper's Stammerer then is made to say, "Hast ever felt, at the dark dead of night, Some undefined and horrid incubus We have; but what is all that to the to his native land of Nod. We ourselves have what is called an impediment in our speech-and do "make wry faces," but we never thought of exclaiming to ourselves, And long for his dark hope,-annihilation." Mr Tupper is a father-and some of his domestic verses are very pleasing-such as his sonnet to little Ellen, and his sonnet to little Mary; but we prefer the stanzas entitled "Children," and quote them as an agreeable sample, premising that they would not have been the worse of some little tincture of imaginative feeling-for, expressive as they are of mere natural emotion, they cannot well be said to be poetry. We object, too, to the sentiment of the close, for thousands of childless men are rich in the enjoyment of life's best affections; and some of the happiest couples and the best we have ever known, are among those from whom God has withheld the gift of offspring. Let all good Christian people be thankful for the mercies graciously vouchsafed to them; but beware of judging the lot of others by their own, and of seeking to confine either worth, happiness, or virtue, within one sphere of domestic life, however blessed they may feel it to be; "For the blue sky bends over all,' and our fate here below is not determined by the stars. We like the following lines still better-and considered "as one of the moods of his own mind," they may be read with unmingled pleasure. WISDOM'S WISH. "Ан, might I but escape to some sweet spot, Where rural virtues are not yet forgot, And good old customs crown the circling year; "Some smiling bay of Cambria's happy shore, And looking down on valley fair and wide, "There would I dwell, for I delight therein ! With health and plenty crown'd, and peace within, "There, from the flowery mead, or shingled shore, And learning nature's Master to adore, Know more of Him who came the lost to save; "No envious wish my fellows to excel, Nor meanly grand among the poor to shine: With those cheap pleasures and light cares of thine, "Rescued from cities, and forensic strife, And walking well with God in nature's eye, And, when I'm called in rapturous hope to die, But the best set of stanzas in the volume are those entitled Ellen Gray. The subject is distressing, and has been treated so often-perhaps too often-as to be now exhausted or if not so, nothing new can be expected on it, except either from original genius, or from a spirit made creative by profoundest sympathy and sorrow for the last extremities of human misery. ELLEN GRAY. "A starless night, and bitter cold; And cheerlessly the frozen sleet Swept onward thick and fast; "When crouched at an unfriendly door, Faint, sick, and miserably poor, A silent woman sate; She might be young, and had been fair, "Was I to pass her coldly by, Leaving her there to pine and die, The live-long freezing night? The secret answer of my heart Told me I had not done my part In flinging her a mite. "And for a home,-would I had none ! The home I have, a wicked one, They will not let me in, Till I can fee my jailor's hands "I see your goodness on me frown; Tell the sad story of her grief,- "My mother died when I was born: Upon the workhouse floor; "And I was bound an infant-slave, A friendless, famish'd, factory child, "My heart was pure, my cheek was fair, Had eaten out its way! For soon my tasker, dreaded man, To mark me for his prey. "And month by month he vainly strove "She look'd her thanks,--then droop'd To light the flame of lawless love her head; In my most loathing breast; So basely kind, so smoothly grim, "Thenceforward droop'd my stricken head; I liv'd, I died, a life of dread, Lest they should guess my shame; Of wrath and ruin came; |