O fair the lightly sprinkled waste,

O'er which a laughing shower has raced!

O fair the April shoots!

O fair the woods on summer days,

While a blue hyacinthine haze

Is dreaming round the roots!

In thee, O City! I discern
Another beauty, sad and stern.

Draw thy fierce streams of blinding ore,
Smite on a thousand anvils, roar

Down to the harbour-bars;
Smoulder in smoky sunsets, flare
On rainy nights, with street and square
Lie empty to the stars.

From terrace proud to alley base
I know thee as my mother's face.
When sunset bathes thee in his gold,
In wreaths of bronze thy sides are rolled,
Thy smoke is dusty fire;

And from the glory round thee poured,
A sunbeam like an angel's sword

Shivers upon a spire.

Thus have I watched thee, Terror! Dream!
While the blue Night crept up the stream.
The wild Train plunges in the hills,
He shrieks across the midnight rills;

Streams through the shifting glare,
The roar and flap of foundry fires,
That shake with light the sleeping shires;
And on the moorlands bare,

He sees afar a crown of light
Hang o'er thee in the hollow night.
At midnight when thy suburbs lie
As silent as a noonday sky,

When larks with heat are mute,
I love to linger on thy bridge,
All lonely as a mountain ridge,

Disturbed but by my foot;
While the black lazy stream beneath,
Steals from its far-off wilds of heath.

And through thy heart, as through a dream, Flows on that black disdainful stream;

All scornfully it flows,

Between the huddled gloom of masts,
Silent as pines unvexed by blasts-
"Tween lamps in streaming rows.
O wondrous sight! O stream of dread!
O long dark river of the dead!

Afar, the banner of the year

Unfurls but dimly prisoned here,

"Tis only when I greet

A dropt rose lying in my way,
A butterfly that flutters gay

Athwart the noisy street,
I know the happy Summer smiles
Around thy suburbs, miles on miles.
"Twere neither pæan now, nor dirge,
The flash and thunder of the surge

On flat sands wide and bare;
No haunting joy or anguish dwells
In the green light of sunny dells,
Or in the starry air.

Alike to me the desert flower,
The rainbow laughing o'er the shower.
While o'er thy walls the darkness sails,
I lean against the churchyard rails;
Up in the midnight towers

The belfried spire, the street is dead,
I hear in silence over head

The clang of iron hours:

It moves me not-I know her tomb
Is yonder in the shapeless gloom.

All raptures of this mortal breath,
Solemnities of life and death,

Dwell in thy noise alone:
Of me thou hast become a part-
Some kindred with my human heart,
Lives in thy streets of stone;
For we have been familiar more
Than galley slave and weary oar.

The beech is dipped in wine; the shower
Is burnished; on the swinging flower
The latest bee doth sit.

The low sun stares through dust of gold,
And o'er the darkening heath and wold
The large ghost-moth doth flit.

In every orchard Autumn stands
With apples in his golden hands.

But all these sights and sounds are strange;
Then wherefore from thee should I range?
Thou hast my kith and kin:

My childhood, youth, and manhood brave;
Thou hast that unforgotten grave

Within thy central din.

A sacredness of love and death
Dwells in thy noise and smoky breath.

These verses are evidence to our mind that Mr. Smith is capable of a higher degree of excellence than he has hitherto achieved, if he would confine himself to subjects with which he is really familiar. In his pictures of nature, there is nothing spontaneous-nothing resembling the fresh, unconscious utterance of our earlier poets the philosophic contemplation of Wordsworth, or the ripe and observant love of the Poet-Laureate. But in the poem above quoted there is a strong and easy flow of thought, and a chastened beauty, in which perhaps the only flaws are one or two mistaken metaphors, to which we have called attention elsewhere.

Of Mr. Smith's skill in the art of wordpainting, the whole of the " Boy's Poem " is an excellent example. We select a few passages :For Time is like the peacefulness of grass, Which clothes, as if with silence and deep sleep, Deserted plains that once were loud with strife; Which hides the marks of earthquake and of fire; Which makes the rigid and the clay-cold grave Smooth as a billow, tender with green light.

The morn rose blue and glorious o'er the world;
The steamer left the black and oozy wharves,
And floated down between dark ranks of masts.
We heard the swarming streets, the noisy mills;
Saw sooty foundries full of glare and gloom,
Great bellied chimneys tipped by tongues of flame,
Quiver in smoky heat. We slowly passed
Loud building-yards, where every slip contained
A mighty vessel with a hundred men
Battering its iron sides. A cheer! a ship

In a gay flutter of innumerous flags
Slid gaily to her home. At length the stream
Broadened 'tween banks of daisies, and afar
The shadows flew upon the sunny hills;

And down the river, 'gainst the pale blue sky,

A town sat in its smoke. Look backward now! Distance has stilled three hundred thousand hearts, Drowned the loud roar of commerce, changed the

proud

Metropolis which turns all things to gold,
To a thick vapour o'er which stands a staff
With smoky pennon streaming on the air.
Blotting the azure too, we floated on,
Leaving a long and weltering wake behind.
And now the grand and solitary hills
That never knew the toil and stress of man,
Dappled with sun and cloud, rose far away.

*

I and my cousins started in the morn
To wander o'er the mountains and the moors.
How different from the hot and stony streets!
The dark red springy turf was 'neath our feet,
Our walls the blue horizon, and our roof
The boundless sky; a perfect summer-day

We walked 'mid unaccustomed sights and sounds;
Fair apparitions of the elements

That lived a moment on the air, then passed
To the eternal world of memory.

O'er rude unthrifty wastes we held our way
Whence never lark rose upward with a song,
Where no flower lit the marsh: the only sights,
The passage of a cloud-a thin blue smoke
Far on the idle heath-now caught, now lost,
The pink road wavering to the distant sky.
At noon we rested near a mighty hill,
That from our morning hut slept far away
Azure and soft as air. Upon its sides
The shepherds shouted 'mid a noise of dogs;
A stream of sheep came slowly trickling down,
Spread to a pool, then poured itself in haste.
The sun sunk o'er a crimson fringe of hills:
The violet evening filled the lower plain,
From which it upward crept and quenched the
lights-

Awhile the last peak burned in lingering rose,
And then went out. We toiled at dead of night
Through a deep glen, the while the lonely stars
Trembled above the ridges of the hills;
And in the utter hush the ear was filled
With low sweet voices of a thousand streams,
Some near, some far remote-faint trickling sounds
That dwelt in the great solitude of night
Upon the edge of silence. A sinking moon
Hung on one side and filled the shattered place
With gulfs of gloom, with floating shades, and threw
A ghostly glimmer on wet rock and pool.

A few lines on his alleged plagiarism, and we have done. The truth seems to be, that when

ever any idea particularly strikes his fancy he is unwilling to let it go. He repeats himself as habitually as other writers. A large number of epithets and similes in the City Poems are to be found in the Life Drama. This fact renders his obligations to other writers at once both a greater and a smaller blemish than ordinary plagiarism. It is smaller because it shows that the habit may be due to another cause as well as poverty of invention. And it is greater of course, because, if that is the case, it betrays an indifference to the dignity of his art which is lamentable. We have ourselves noted two or three additional instances of this failing, which, as far as we know, have not yet been pointed out, as page 119 of the City Poems, The misty mountain top.

Again at 110,

I've built a home

Beside the river which we used to love.
The murmur of the City reaches here,-

vide Gardener's Daughter. Also at page 138, the lines,

My heart stood up to greet the distant land,
Within the hollows of whose mountains lochs
Moan in their restless sleep,

bear a singular resemblance to a passage in Professor Arnold's Cromwell. The coincidence between a very long passage in scene 111 of the Life Drama and Shelley's Alastor, is still more obvious, and probably less undesigned.

In our opinion the young writer is fortunate whose errors are severely censured. We again give utterance to a hope that Mr. Smith will yet redeem his popularity. Let him take as a model Mr. Tennyson's Dora. Let him shun word-painting for the present as he would the plague; and he may yet find out that his accusers have been his best friends.

THESE tracts were originally collected at the suggestion of the late Edward Copleston, Bishop of Llandaff, who was every inch a gentleman and a scholar-a gentleman of ancient descent, and a scholar of exquisite Latinity. Like Gray, and Scott's friend Surtees, the historian of Durham, and some other distinguished men, he combined the classic with the feudal tastes loved his Horace as he did his pedigree-and delighted to clothe the ruins of antiquity, whether Greek or Medieval, with the green ivy and wild flowers of a rich fancy. Charles's

escape after Worcester seems to have interested his imagination very much; and accordingly he wrote to Mr. Hughes, our editor, requesting him to make a thorough investigation of the subject, and to give the story to the world in an accurate bit of history. Mr. Hughes-whose style proves him to have been worthy of the good bishop's friendship-undertook the task, and the result of his labours is now before us in a second edition. He reprints the early pamphlets on the subject-and Clarendon's elegant narrative and the king's account dictated

to Pepys; and gives us, with these, a diary of his own composition, in which the whole adventure is chronologically detailed. This is surely a pleasant contribution to the lighter kind of historical literature; and as such may well claim a place in the libraries of the rich and the learned.

Copleston's letter to Mr. Hughes opens the volume, and as we are convinced that the only way of checking the mean, mechanical tendency of modern opinion, is to interest the youth of England in the past of England-we begin by borrowing some excellent remarks from it on the natural pleasure of the human mind in historical truth

But the fact, I believe, is, that the precise nature of the pleasure we derive from such inquiries, is not rightly understood by the generality of those who write or who read historical romances. It is a province of criticism which appears to have been but little explored, or rather, I should say, altogether unknown in its relation to taste. And yet I am persuaded that under it lies a source of pure intellectual pleasure, springing from the very constitution of our minds, and well worthy of being studied in all its peculiarities. There is, undoubtedly, implanted in us a love of truth, a desire to know what has actually happened, merely because it has happened, independently of the nature or the importance of the things themselves. If the things we hear told be avowedly fictitious, and yet curious, or affecting, or entertaining, we may indeed admire the author of the fiction, and may take pleasure in contemplating the exercise of his skill; but this is a pleasure of another kind-a pleasure wholly distinct from that which is derived from discovering what was unknown, or clearing up what was doubtful. And even when the narrative is in its own nature such as to please us, and to engage our attention, how greatly is the interest increased if we place entire confidence in its truth! Who has not heard from a child, when listening to a tale of deep interest-who has not often heard the artless and eager question, "Is it true?"

So strong indeed is this instinct that, if much encouraged and indulged, it sometimes acquires an ascendancy perfectly ridiculous-a passion which is best exemplified, perhaps, in the frivolous pursuits of local antiquaries; or in violations of the sacred repose of the dead, for the sake of ascertaining some insignificant point about which history is either contradictory or silent.

In

But being, as it clearly is, an original principle of our nature, it is entitled to its share of cultivation and of exercise; and it is never exercised more innocently or rationally than in endeavouring to correct errors, or bring to light facts connected with the principal events of our national history. this department, the whole value of the object of our search depends upon its truth. Let the historical work be ever so grand, it is better to leave the subordinate parts blank, than to introduce any thing spurious or of doubtful authority. But when the outline is not only traced with precision and fidelity, but from time to time fresh lines are added, which tend to give fulness and animation to the subject, the value of each successive addition is to be estimated, not merely by its intrinsic importance, but by the improved effect given to all around it. Truth is a quality essential to the whole; but the accession of each part respectively operates, not as if

We may add, in illustration of what is here so lucidly said, that even the fiction of a nation originally grows out of its history-just as its fairy mythology does out of its religion. Sir Walter Scott points out, in his Essay on Romance, that early romances are based on real historical events. And there is something akin to this in the fact observed by Whately (who, we suspect, took the first hint of it from a passage in Aristotle's Politics *), that games themselves are originally imitative of serious transactions,- -so earnest is the natural love of mankind for reality! If it be observed here, that the fashion now is to contrast the real as dull, with the ideal as beautiful, we answer that, in delighting so to do, our age is pronouncing its condemnation out of its own mouth. In the youth and freshness and glory of races, their own people and their own story seem noble enough to supply material for all that can be expressed in romance or song.

Now, Charles the Second was not a romantic character in the ancient sense, nor a respectable character in the modern one; but about this flight of his after Worcester, there lingers the last gleam of the old English romance of history. With the Civil Wars that strange element vanishes. We have clever menpleasant men; and there is a kind of piquancy in contemplating the wigs, the canes, the snuffboxes, the ruffles, and so forth, of the eighteenth century. But there is a poetry about the civil war and its doings, which time has not conferred even on the generations immediately

after it. Prior and Steele are far less delicious than Suckling and Waller; and the young Walpoles and Stanhopes do not touch the heart like the cavaliers. Charles's escape closed that epoch, and if he had died in the battle, or in the sea-passage which followed it, his memory would have had a halo round it like that which hangs about the heads of his ancestor who died fighting at Flodden, and his ancestor who died broken-hearted just as Mary was born.

It may amuse the reader-for the details of Charles's escape are not familiarly remembered just now-if we trace the king's flight after the fatal field.

Worcester ran red with good blood, that 3rd September, 1651. The Duke of Hamilton and Sir John Douglas fell, mortally wounded; and the English cavaliers, Lord Talbot, the Blounts, Lord Cleveland (a Wentworth), &c., fought desperately after it was clear that

Compare note to Whately's Rhetoric with Aristot. Pol., 7. 17.

the game was up.

This

But the odds both of number and of discipline were against the king (who showed high courage, by the way, himself); and, when all was over, he rode off, with about sixty adherents, towards Kidderminster. At Kinver Heath a consultation was held (about five or six miles from the last-named town), where it was determined that the king should take refuge in Boscobel House. was a seat of the Giffards of Chillington-an ancient Catholic family, and descendents, we presume, of the great baronial house of Giffard, well-known to the England of the middle ages. Lord Derby, who had fought at Worcester, had before experienced the secret hospitality of this place, and hence the choice; while the earl himself (as we may, en passant, remind the reader) set off on his own adventures elsewhere, and fell into the enemy's hands.

The king was first taken care of by a family of humble tenants of the Giffards-the Penderels ; five of whom were living on their demesnes of Boscobel and White Ladies. Disguised in a leathern doublet, like a woodman's, Charles left the latter of these places, and took refuge in a wood on the Boscobel estate. Here he passed the day after Worcester-a dismal rainy day— crouching under a tree, and feeding on eggs and buttermilk. At nightfall off he started again, with honest Dick Penderel, to Madeley, seven miles from Boscobel, and there slept on straw in a barn. Again came night, and again they set off. Charles now stained for complete disguise with walnut leaves, and returned to Boscobel. But during this day, Lord Wilmot (the famous "Rochester's" father, and, we need not say, a much better man) had managed to communicate with the Lanes of Bentley. What a blessing women are at such times of trial! "Mrs. Jane Lane," the Flora Macdonald of this escape, was just about to set off to visit her sister, Mrs. Norton of Abbotsleigh, near Bristol; she had a pass for herself and a male attendant, and she at once agreed to take Wilmot with her. While that nobleman was gone, on the 6th September, to Moseley Hall, Charles had joined Major Carlis (one of the last men who left Worcester field) in the wood by Boscobel. Here the king sheltered himself in that famous Royal Oak, which was so familiar to our ancestors, and became the sign of a thousand taverns-no bad way of being immortalized in a country so fond of good ale! We shall draw on the Tracts for a passage or two at this point. The queer old antiquary, Mr. Thomas Blount, has the following bits in his "Boscobel," very illustrative of the tone of these days :

Richard [Penderel] having acquainted the colonel [Carlis] that the king was in the wood, the colonel, with William and Richard, went presently thither to

give their attendance, where they found his majesty sitting on the root of a tree, who was glad to see the colonel, and came with them into the house, where he eat bread and cheese heartily, and (as an extraordinary) William Penderel's wife made his majesty a posset of thin milk and small beer, and got ready some warm water to wash his feet, not only extremely dirty, but much galled with travel.

The colonel pulled off his majesty's shoes, which were full of gravel, and stockings, which were very wet; and there being no other shoes in the house that would fit him, the goodwife put some hot embers in those to dry them, whilst his majesty's feet were washing and his stockings shifted.

Being thus a little refreshed, the colonel persuaded his majesty to go back into the wood (supposing it safer than the house), where the colonel made choice of a thick-leaved oak, into which William and Richard helped them both up, and brought them such provision as they could get, with a cushion for his majesty to sit on; the colonel humbly desired his majesty (who had taken little or no rest the two preceding nights) to seat himself as easily as he could in the tree, and rest his head on the colonel's lap, who was watchful that his majesty might not fall. In this oak they continued most part of the day; and in that posture his majesty slumbered away some part of the time, and bore all these hardships and afflictions with incomparable patience.

Humphrey Penderel was this Saturday designed to go to Shefnal, to pay some taxes to one Captain Broadway; at whose house he met with a colonel of the rebels, who was newly come from Worcester in pursuit of the king, and who, being informed that his majesty had been at White Ladies, and that Humphrey was a near neighbour to the place, examined him strictly, and laid before him, as well the penalty for concealing the king, which was death without mercy, as the reward for discovering him, which should be one thousand pounds certain pay. But neither fear of punishment, nor hope of reward, was able to tempt Humphrey into any disloyalty; he pleaded ignorance, and was dismissed, and on Saturday night related to his majesty and the loyal colonel at Boscobel what had passed betwixt him and the rebel colonel at Shefnal.

This night the goodwife (whom his majesty was pleased to call " my dame Joan") provided some chickens for his majesty's supper (a dainty he had not lately been acquainted with), and a little pallet was put into the secret place for his majesty to rest in; some of the brothers being continually upon duty, watching the avenues of the house, and the road-way, to prevent the danger of a surprise.

After supper, Colonel Carlis asked his majesty what meat he would please to have provided for the morrow, being Sunday; his majesty desired some mutton, if it might be had. But it was thought dangerous for William to go to any market to buy it, since his neighbours all knew he did not use to buy such for his own diet, and so it might beget a suspicion of his having strangers at his house. But the colonel found another expedient to satisfy his majesty's desires. Early on Sunday morning he repairs to Mr. Wm. Staunton's sheepcot, who rented some of the demesnes of Boscobel; here he chose one of the best sheep, sticks him with his dagger, then sends William for the mutton, who brings him home on his back.

That night the king slept in the priest's hiding-hole at Boscobel; and next day set out for Moseley Hall, the seat of the Whitgreaves. We quote the next passage from the editor's

diary this time, because it reveals a characteristic touch in Charles. Sometimes he forgot the morals-scarce ever the manners-of a gentleman:

His body-guard consisted of the five Penderels, and Yates, their brother-in-law, all armed with bills and spike-staves, as well as with concealed pistols, and determined to defend their royal charge at any hazard. The king, not yet recovered from his fatigues, complained of the rough motion of Humphry Penderel's mill horse, on which he rode, surrounded by his defenders. Can you blame the horse, my liege," said the honest miller, "to go heavily, when he has the weight of three kingdoms on his back?" On reaching Penford Mill, below Cotsall, to which point they had proceeded by lone byways, for the greater security the party separated; William, Humphry, and George returning with the horse, while the king, accompanied by the rest, took the footpath to Moseley. After a moment's recollection, Charles called the three brothers back, and gave them his hand to kiss. My troubles," said he, "make me forget myself; I thank you all.”

66

Blount, in giving Humphry Penderel's bonmot, as narrated in this passage, observes that it was "beyond the usual capacity of a miller,”one of those simple remarks which reveal more about old times than much pompous ostentation could.

The enemy's soldiers, meanwhile, were searching the country every where. Charles himself, as he told Pepys, had seen them peering about the coppice while he was perched in his Oak. While he was at Moseley, Boscobel House was strictly searched, and William Penderel's life threatened. On the 9th of September he started to Bentley Hall, it having been arranged that he was to go Bristol-wards, as Jane Lane's servant. As he left the good old mansion of the Whitgreaves, poor, disguised, hunted, down went squire and priest on their knees to kiss his hand and pray for him.

Will ever

family meet such loyalty as that doomed race did again?

Charles Stuart now became "Will Jackson," body-servant to Mrs. Jane Lane, gentlewoman travelling. They began their journey at daybreak, 10th September, passed through Stratford that day, and slept at Mr. Tombs' of Long Marston, four miles beyond it. Two good stories belong to the 10th. Charles related to Pepys, that

lle

We had not gone two hours on our way but the mare I rode on cast a shoe; so we were forced to ride to get another shoe at a scattering village, whose name begins with something like Long- And as I was holding my horse's foot, I asked the smith what news. told me that there was no news that he knew of, since the good news of the beating the rogues of the Scots. I asked him whether there was none of the English taken that joined with the Scots. He answered that he did not hear that that rogue Charles Stuart was taken; but some of the others, he said, were taken, but not Charles Stuart. I told him that if that rogue were taken he deserved to be hanged more than all the rest,

for bringing in the Scots. Upon which he said that I spoke like an honest man, and so we parted.

Blount shall tell us the other- -a story which has counterparts in a score of myths, springing up in every village he passed through.

That night (according to designment) Mrs. Lane and her company took up their quarters at Mr. Tombs' house, at Longmarston, some three miles west of Stratford, with whom she was well acquainted. Here Will Jackson being in the kitchen, in pursuance of his disguise, and the cookmaid busy in providing supper for her master's friends, she desired him to wind up the jack; Will Jackson was obedient, and attempted it, but hit not the right way, which made the maid in some passion ask, What countryman are you, that you know not how to wind up a jack?" Will Jackson answered very satisfactorily, "I am a poor tenant's son of Colonel Lane, in Staffordshire; we seldom have roast meat, but when we have, we don't make use of a jack;" which in some measure assuaged the maid's indignation.

On the evening of the 12th they reached Abbotsleigh, three miles beyond Bristol. Here is another example (from the "Diary") of the piquant hazards and queer excitements of royal vagabondism :

Saturday Sept. 13.-The king, with an appetite which bore out his [assumed] character as a convalescent, rose early, and repaired to the buttery, where several guests were assembled, and ale and sack were not wanting as the concomitants to a solid breakfast. One of these persons professed himself to have served in Charles's own regiment at the battle of Worcester, and described minutely the particulars of the action to his circle of auditors. The king, he said, was a man taller by three fingers than Jackson; who, nevertheless, feeling the comparison come rather home to his own person, took the first opportunity of leaving the buttery. But Pope, who had been a member of his household when Prince of Wales, and had afterwards served in Charles the First's army, and whose recollections were probably awakened by the conversation which had just occurred, communicated, in the course of the day, his suspicions to Miss Lane. After consulting with his protectress and Mr. Lascelles, the latter of whom assured him that he would trust his own life to the tried fidelity of this domestic, the king wisely decided on confiding in him. Accordingly, Pope was introduced to Charles, whose hand he kissed as his sworn liegeman, and during the rest of the king's stay proved invaluable from his honesty and

discretion.

It was Charles's wish to embark from Bristol; but no safe chance presented itself, and his next move (16th Sept.) was southward again, towards Trent, the seat of the Wyndhams in Somersetshire. Colonel Wyndham received his sovereign with all the loyalty to be expected from the son of that Sir Thomas Wyndham who had charged his five sons on his death-bed not to forsake the crown, "though it should hang on a bush." Memorable words!-which would not have disgraced the finest orator.

At Trent the king remained several days in seclusion, and endeavoured to negotiate for a passage to the continent from Charmouth or Bridport. This failed, through an alarm taken