and even contradictory crimes were combined in the same accusation; persons were executed for conspiring together, who never saw one another till they met on the scaffold; the majority of charges were vague and visionary, some unintelligible, and many even ridiculous. In the confusion of that continuous massacre, we find all that was interesting for youth and beauty, -venerable for age and virtues,-respectable for loyalty to the old constitution,-notorious for services to the republic, or distinguished for literature or talents. Nor was poverty, obscurity, or even turpitude, a protection: the indigent died with the rich-the artisan with the magistrate-the peasant with the princeand shameless prostitutes, furies of the guillotine,' with the amiable and heroic models of every female virtue.

If the energies of the Revolutionary Tribunal had been solely directed against the rich and great, whose hostility the government might have dreaded, we could have understood some motive for this incessant slaughter; but the examination of the procès verbaux proves that the great majority of the victims were of the middle and inferior classes, and consisted of persons who would probably have had no desire, and certainly had no power, to oppose the government. There was, no doubt, much private revenge and much pecuniary rapacity gratified in the course of those executions; but that could not have gone to any great extent, and would only have profited the underlings; for Robespierre had few personal enemies because he had few personal acquaintance, and he certainly was not sullied by any pecuniary corruption. The only rational explanation we can discover for the continuation of this frightful system is, that in the dark intrigues with which he was surrounded he was unable to pause, and still less to retreat; and the best we can believe of him is, that he continued the slaughter in the prospect of finding opportunities of including in it (as he had already done Hébert and Danton) the rest of the tigers, the Talliens, Collots, Bourdons, Barrères, Fouchès,-by whom he was surrounded. This conjecture is corroborated by the well-known fact, that his fall was caused by the certainty which these men obtained that he entertained designs for their immediate extermination.

When all is said that can be said of such heroes of the Revolution, what figures they remain! How inferior in genius, or courage, or personal chivalry, to the men of any movement whatever of similar importance! How petty in intellect compared with those who fell in the crisis of the Roman constitutionCato, Brutus, Pompey, Cicero! How miserable in character contrasted with those who shook the English monarchy-Hampden, Cromwell, or Vane! The two foremost men of the whole history were Mirabeau and Bonaparte; was it only an accident that both these men were of noble and ancient descent? We think otherwise; and, though it is hopeless to contend against rooted ignorance and prejudice, we believe that the world will think otherwise by and by. We are still on the threshold of the great subject of the causes and antecedents of the French Revolution, on which we wish Mr. Croker had bestowed some of the labour which he never wearied of bestowing on the details of its events. Since

*

De Tocqueville's book (though De Tocqueville was not the discoverer which some critics imagine), it has become popularly known, how much centralization had prepared the way for revolution, by destroying the local life of France, and isolating its noblesse from its people. But justice has still to be done to that noblesse, and the first step will have been taken, when some inquirer tells us how many historic houses were left in 1789, and what proportion of the families which had made aristocracy hateful to the people were the mere creatures of despotic favour, without a drop of feudal blood in their veins, and only ennobled by modern parchment.

The best books are so rapidly forgotten in our days, that a paragraph on this point from Madame de Stael's "Considerations sur la Revolution Française," will probably have all the effect of novelty, especially since nobody has thought it worth his while to show that this famous lady anticipated much that was hailed as new in the recent work of Montalembert :

"Another inconvenience of France was that mass of gentlemen of the second order, ennobled the other day, whether by letters of noblesse that the kings gave, or by the venal offices of secretaire du roi, &c., which associated new individuals with the rights and privileges of ancient gentlemen. The nation would have submitted willingly to the historic families, and I do not exaggerate in affirming that there were no longer more than two hundred of these in France. But the hundred thousand nobles, and the hundred thousand priests, who wished to have privileges equal to those of Messrs. de Montmorency, de Grammont, de Crillon, &c., revolted people generally."

A remembrance of this fact is necessary to the honour of historic aristocracy, and may help to explain why the "mass of gentlemen did nothing more effectual than they did against the Revolution. Small as the number of historic houses was, they produced Mirabeau, Talleyrand, and Chateaubriand. Can the whole Revolution, from 1789 to the Restoration, show three equally great French names?

But we are travelling beyond our strict bounds. It remains to recommend Mr. Croker's Essays, as sharp critical studies of the Revolution, by a professed enemy of it, worth reading for their knowledge and acuteness, but always to be read as the compositions of a partisan. We have expressed freely enough

A gentleman who early discerned the real nature of the despotic centralization seems to be nearly forgotten now, the Comte de Boulainvilliers, whom Voltaire described as the most learned gentleman in France.

of intellect and luxury is unfavourable. Every one now is a professor of æsthetics; and even the Russian war was powerless to produce a poet of the old stamp-though it brought forth plenty who could trill exquisite melodies to tickle the ear of Dives as he loiled in his easychair, with peaches and claret by his side. He took his poetry as he took his peach; both were very nice and refreshing, and made him glad it was an article that money could purchase, and why should he, Dives, be without it? The popular substitute for objective poetry will not be found in the simple subjective school, like Wordsworth's-Wordsworth was never popular, and is less so than ever now. Mr. Smith's poetry, therefore, we should define as the florid-subjective style.

Satisfied with a succession of beautiful phrases, felicitous epithets, and superficial sentiment, the readers of the present day look not for purpose or moral. To do so would require thought they wish to be amused only. A few years ago we heard much of the decline of high art. Those complaints were laughed down; and paintings which appeal to the senses, and never to the imagination, are still the most popular of all. A reaction, however, has commenced in art which has not yet extended to literature; for, as we have already stated, Mr. Smith's condemnation by the critics has been based upon totally different grounds. This condition of the public taste must offer incalculable encouragement to the dexterous manipulator of words. A beautiful picture is demanded, and a beautiful picture is produced; but whether it is mirage, or whether it is reality, who will take the trouble to inquire?

There is now a third condition to be glanced at. Our prosperity has outstripped our education. There are men amongst us worth fifty thousand pounds who can barely sign their own names. The growth of this class is dangerous to our intellectual welfare, and their friendship is worse than their enmity; for the neglect of good writers is not half so injurious to literature as the encouragement of bad. The wives and daughters of this class must of course read the poets, and they naturally like best those whom nobody understands-for so they do not find themselves singular. Besides which, the physical beauty, if we may so speak, visible in Mr. Smith's poems, would be more likely in them to touch a sympathetic chord than any higher quality. Much the same may be said of the class immediately below themWith this addition: that obviously if we set about the education of ignorant men by working on this sense of beauty, which is what we do when we educate them through art, we inevitably create a frame of mind to which

mere beauty is every thing. And such a taste, in the only stage to which a working man can bring it, can scarcely fail to strengthen the position, and increase the numbers of the wordpainters.

Whether we have guessed rightly or wrongly of the cause, there can be no doubt, we think, of the fact. Three-fourths of the poetry which is written at the present day, is either mere wordpainting or nothing. We find no fault with this accomplishment in the abstract. The power of representing natural objects in verse with minute fidelity is in itself admirable; and, in the hands of a true poet, becomes an instrument of great and lasting pleasure. It is the dishonesty of those writers who counterfeit its results of which we complain; who, seeing the delight afforded by the exquisite little pictures of Mr. Tennyson, and not comprehending the patient and loving study of nature which alone has enabled him to produce them, would endeavour to draw from imagination what can only be drawn from imagination and memory combined. With an ear for rhythm and an eye for the picturesque, very striking effects may thus be obtained; and striking effects, as we have above asserted, is all that our lazy reading public now requires. Independently of which, a large class of readers that has lately sprung up, could not if they would penetrate the falsehood of these pseudo-picturesque writers. This is not their own fault. A life of city toil is an insuperable obstacle to the development of such taste as we desiderate; and the fact that this class is gradually superseding those who have better opportunities, as the arbiters of popularity, is one of the most ominous features of the time. The spread of Schools and Mechanics' Institutes, however unquestionable a blessing, does undeniably tend to the formation of a half-educated multitude, just sufficiently cultured to enjoy the sweets of poetry, but not enough to distinguish truth from tinsel, or the hues of nature from the brilliancy of art. Such an audience as this must be fatal to simplicity of style, and a dangerous snare even to such writers as have worthy conceptions of their calling.

2. We now come to the second of the two questions proposed. When a new writer who excels in the art of word-painting first comes before us, there are three questions which his poems should be forced to answer. First-Has he any thing new to tell us; or, as is commonly said, does he write "with a purpose;" or is his only object the delivery of pent-up emotions, or the expression of that sense of beauty and goodness with which the universe inspires him? Either are legitimate reasons for writing. But then we must pause for a satisfactory reply to

our second interrogation-Are his sentiments, his emotions, and his imagery clearly spontaneous-not forced or invented for the occasion ? Thirdly-We must ask, is he clear? Do his words convey any distinct image either to his own mind or to the minds of his readers; and is the image like reality? Are we sure that he has not shaken up the phraseology of other poets in a bag, and tumbled it out again for his own use? Now, how will Mr. Alexander Smith abide the application of these tests ? Is he one of the mere word-painters above mentioned, or is he something more?

It is difficult to detect any moral purpose running through Mr. Smith's writings; if there be any, it must belong to the school of modern French social reformers, though expressed with less openness.

That love can atone for guilt, whether in man or woman, is a doctrine that certainly finds some countenance in the Life Drama, and City Poems as well. But it would, perhaps, be unjust to the author to suppose that he ever deliberately set himself to the propagation of this lesson, and we should prefer to believe that, in "resolving to be a poet,” he had no design of assuming the dignity of a teacher. Certainly, as philosophic or didactic compositions, his poems are husks and straw.

Mr. Smith, we presume, would have us to suppose that he writes from the fulness of his being, (as he would express it, perhaps,)--from an overflowing torrent of emotions which find vent in music. This we have admitted to be fair ground for the poet to occupy; but can Mr. Smith justify his claims to it? Can he shew us in his writings that heartfelt, spontaneous utterance which is the soul of such poetry? With one or two rare exceptions we are compelled to answer in the negative. He appears to us to have gazed upon the beauties of nature with the set purpose of using them for poetry-which is to that noble art exactly what the familiar term "pot-hunting" is to real sport. We have been led to this opinion by the frequent recurrence of similitudes which could never have suggested themselves to a mind that was not on the rack to hit out something uncommon; by the constant untruthfulness of these; and by the great variety of combinations in which he presents natural objects to our eyes, as if he was determined to get as much as he could out of them. shall now proceed to give some examples of our meaning, premising that we do not at all dispute the ingenuity, and in many cases the elegance, of Mr. Smith's fancies. We say they are overdone, and such as, having once read and admired, we do not care to recollect.

Ah! he was brightest at the noon of night.
His mind by day was like a common dell,

We

Through which the clown goes whistling with his cart;

You looked around, but could see nothing more,
Than in a thousand places that you knew:
But with the night, there stole from every leaf,
Where they lay coiled in sleep, dim troops of sylphs,
Fays, and all frolic shapes, and 'neath the moon
Stood Queen Titania and her fairy court.

The stream of my existence boils and leaps Through broken rainbows 'mong the purple fells, And breaks its heart 'mid rocks, close-jammed, confined,

And plunges in a chasm black and blind,
To rage in hollow gulfs and iron hells,
And thence escaping, tamed and broken, creeps
Away in a wild sweat of beads and bells.
Though his slides lazy through the milky meads,
And once a week the sleepy slow-trailed barge
Rocks the broad water-lilies on its marge,
A dead face wavers from the oozy weeds.
It is but little matter where we dwell,
In fortune's centre, on her utter verge;
Whither to death our weary steps we urge.

You knew me when my fond and ignorant youth
Was an unwindowed chamber of delight,
Deaf to all noise, sweet as a rose's heart:
A sudden earthquake rent it to the base,
And through the rifts of ruin sternly gleamed
An apparition of grey windy crag,
Black leagues of forest roaring like a sea,
And far lands dim with rain.

To these may be added the celebrated comparison between the sun and moon in the Life Drama-commencing, "The sun is dying like a cloven king."

Now, no one can deny that there is a certain sort of beauty in all these passages; and it may not be easy, within our limited space, to make our readers clearly comprehend why we condemn them. But they must remember that the only charge we have brought against Mr. Smith is, that he is neither more nor less than a very skilful word-painter. There are marks of fabrication-of the chisel and the hammer-about these passages as they stand. The context affords grave suspicion that the author had composed them separately, kept them ready for use, like Sheridan's bon-mots, and then deliberately wrote up to them. These opinions might, no doubt, be charged with hypercriticism if there were no other evidence to support them than we have here adduced. But the second and third counts of our indictment will go far, if we are not mistaken, to sustain the first; and we shall now quote some instances of unsound metaphors which have convinced ourselves that a fundamental insincerity pervades the bulk of these poems.

At midnight, when thy suburbs lie

As silent as a noonday sky,

When larks with heat are mute,

The impropriety of these images scarcely require exposure. We sometimes say that noon is as still as night, but not that night is as still as noon. The kiss of kings would not usually be suggestive of the kiss of lovers. The comparison between the skiffs and the crows is perhaps less objectionable; but we doubt if it would have suggested itself to any mind not on the look-out for poetical capital. The laburnum is not lachrymose; few trees have a gayer or gladder aspect. Mr. Smith's only justification here is a mathematical one: that as things which are equal to the same are equal to one another, and both blossoms and tears have been likened to a shower of rain, therefore blossoms may always be likened unto tears. The embers of a fire glow but they do not glimmer, or rather glitter, like the track made by a boat; and as for a helpless wave, Mr. Smith is, we should think, the first poet on whom the break of the ocean has produced a sensation of weakness. Do not these quotations seem to prove that Mr. Smith has studied the book of nature in translations? That he knows something of the original is, of course, past question; but he knows about as much of it as Pope knew of Greek. Pope has given us something very pretty, but it is not Homer; and Mr. Smith has given us something very pretty, but it is not nature.

Another feature of this poetry that would lead us to the same conclusion, is the very limited circle of objects from which he draws his illustrations. Both in the Life Drama and the City Poems the moon is, in stage language, a mere "utility lady." Now she is a naked swimmer-now she is a pale prophetess whom the sun has seduced; and, as Mr. Smith is fond of describing her as naked, it is not an improbable catastrophe. The sun, the stars, the sea, and the seashore, about make up Mr. Smith's

repertoire, and all are equally versatile. The shore is sometimes white-breasted, and sometimes tawny; sometimes the sea's bride, and sometimes his jailer. But we cannot hope to convey any adequate sense of the motley brilliance which pervades Mr. Smith's poems

to those who have not read them-those who have, will, we are certain, at once recognise the justice of our objections.

The general conclusion, then, to which we arrive is this:-That it is as yet doubtful whether Mr. Smith is the more unjust to himself or to the public. Has he through indolence, and a desire of speedy popularity, prostituted real poetic power to the depraved taste of the day? Or has he in reality shown himself destitute of the true fire, and only a skilful master of rhythm, language, and arrangement? We are as yet unwilling to answer this question to Mr. Smith's disadvantage. We think we see in occasional passages evidence of something better than the majority of critics give him credit for. We will lay before our readers the poem of "Glasgow," in support of this asser

tion.

GLASGOW.

Sing, Poet, 'tis a merry world;
That cottage smoke is rolled and curled
In sport, that every moss

Is happy, every inch of soil;-
Before me runs a road of toil,

With my grave cut across.
Sing, trailing showers and breezy downs-
I know the tragic hearts of towns.
City! I am true son of thine;
Ne'er dwelt I where great mornings shine
Around the bleating pens;
Ne'er by the rivulets I strayed,
And ne'er upon my childhood weighed
The silence of the glens.
Instead of shores where ocean beats,
I hear the ebb and flow of streets.
Black Labour draws his weary waves,
Into their secret-moaning caves;

But with the morning light,
That sea again will overflow
With a long weary sound of woe,
Again to faint in night.

Wave am I in that sea of woes,
Which, night and morning, ebbs and flows.
I dwelt within a gloomy court,
Wherein did never sunbeam sport;

Yet there my heart was stirr'd-
My very blood did dance and thrill,
When on my narrow window-sill,

Spring lighted like a bird.

Poor flowers-I watched them pine for weeks,
With leaves as pale as human cheeks.
A far, one summer I was borne;
Through golden vapours of the morn,
I heard the hills of sheep;

I trod with a wild ecstasy
The bright fringe of the living sea:
And on a ruined keep

I sat and watched an endless plain
Blacken beneath the gloom of rain.