printed in 1843), and wrote poems, one of which, The Election, humorous or even comic rather than Crabbean, was published in 1841. An earlier poem was The Sexton's Daughter; a later one, a serio-comic or Bernesque piece, unfinished, on Richard Coeur de Lion. For Maga he wrote The Palace of Morgana, a singular prose poem. There were also remarkable essays on Montaigne and on Carlyle, which showed he had drifted farther from Broad- Church semi-orthodoxy. He ultimately accepted some of the main positions of D. F. Strauss; and it is significant that the intimate of his later years, to whom he confided the guardianship of his son, was Francis William Newman. In August 1838 he founded the (later so-called) Sterling Club, among whose members were Carlyle, Allan Cunningham, G. C. Lewis, Malden, Mill, Milnes, Spedding, Tennyson, Thirlwall, W. H. Thompson, and Venables. Julius Hare edited his Essays and Tales (1848), with a Memoir, which seemed to Carlyle so inadequate, and as dealing with Sterling mainly as theologian and Christian clergyman, so misleading, that he himself undertook that masterpiece of biography which, more probably than any of Sterling's own writings, will preserve the memory of an interesting and significant personality.

Ballad.

A maiden came gliding o'er the sea,

In a boat as light as boat could be,

And she sang in tones so sweet and free,
'O, where is the youth that will follow me?'
Her forehead was white as the pearly shell,
Her form was finer than tongue can tell,
Her bosom heaved with a gentle swell,
And her voice was a distant vesper bell.
And still she sang, while the western light
Fell on her figure so soft and bright,

'O, where shall I find the brave young sprite
That will follow the track of my boat to-night?'

To the strand the youths of the village run,
When the witching song has scarce begun,
And ere the set of that evening's sun,
Fifteen bold lovers the maid has won.

They hoisted the sail, and they plied the oar,
And away they went from their native shore,
While the damsel's pinnace flew fast before,
But never, O never! we saw them more.

(From Arthur Coningsby.) Robert Vaughan (1795-1868), born in England but of Welsh descent, was Independent minister at Worcester and Kensington, Professor of History in London University 1830-43, and president of the Independent College at Manchester 1843-57. He founded the British Quarterly in 1845, and edited it till 1867. Among his score of books are, besides works in devotional and polemical theology, a Life of Wycliffe (1828), a History of England under the Stuarts (1840), and Revolutions in History (1859-63); and he edited an edition of Milton, with a Life.

Sir John Bowring (1792-1872) was born in Exeter, and on leaving school entered a merchant's office, where he pursued that course of polyglot study that enabled him ultimately to boast he knew two hundred languages and could speak a hundred. The national poetry of different peoples had special attractions for him, and he translated folk-songs of most of the languages of Europe, including not merely Dutch and Spanish, but Russian, Polish, Bohemian, Servian, and Hungarian (some of them by help of German ‘cribs'). In 1821 he formed a close friendship with Bentham, and in 1824 became the first editor of his Radical Westminster Review. After visiting Switzerland, Italy, Egypt, Syria, and the countries of the Zollverein, he prepared valuable government reports on their commerce; and he sat in Parliament for Kilmarnock (1835-37) and for Bolton (1841-49), actively promoting the adoption of Free Trade. From 1849 to 1853 he was British consul at Hong-kong; in 1854 he was knighted and made Governor. His active policy in the 'affair of the lorcha Arrow,' involving the bombardment of Canton (1856), nearly upset the Palmerston Ministry. In 1855 he concluded a commercial treaty with Siam, in 1858 made a tour through the Philippines; and his accounts of those two visits are about the most readable of thirty-six works. His own poems were accounted of less consequence than his translations (not merely the folk-songs, but from Goethe, Schiller, and Heine). But some of his religious poems and hymns found wide acceptance; and though in not a few his Unitarian theology repels the orthodox, the hymn 'In the cross of Christ I glory' is Catholic enough to have been written by Watts or Wesley, and is actually sung by Christians of all denominations. His Autobiographical Reminiscences (1877) are hardly so entertaining as might have been expected.

Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847), author of 'Abide with me' and some others of the bestknown English hymns, was born at Ednam near Kelso, in Scotland, but was the son of an English officer, a member of a very ancient Somersetshire family. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and for twenty-four years laboured faithfully, in spite of feeble health, at Lower Brixham in Devonshire. His best-known hymn was written on the evening of the Sunday on which he for the last time administered the communion to his congregation before starting for that sojourn at Nice whence he never returned. 'Jesus, I my cross have taken,' is another of his hymns; many of them are paraphrases of the Psalms, such as 'Pleasant are thy courts above,' 'Sweet is the solemn voice that calls,'' Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven,' and 'God of mercy, God of grace.' His Poems, chiefly Religious (1833), were reprinted as Miscellaneous Poems (1868). There is a Life prefixed to the Remains (1850).

Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854), son of a brewer at Reading, was educated at its grammar-school under the famous Dr Valpy, was called to the Bar in 1821, and in 1833 got his silk gown. As Serjeant Talfourd he was conspicuous for his popular eloquence and his Liberalism, and was Whig member for his native town 1835-41 and 1847-49; in 1849 he became a Justice of Common Pleas, and was knighted. He wrote much for the reviews, was dramatic critic to a monthly, and produced books or long articles on Greek and Roman history and Greek poetry. In 1835 he printed privately his tragedy of Ion, which was next year performed at Covent Garden Theatre. His next tragedy, The Athenian Captive (1838), was almost equally successful, as was also The Massacre of Glencoe (1840); The Castilian (1853) was only privately printed. He died of apoplexy while delivering his charge to the grand jury at Stafford. Ion, his highest effort, aims (somewhat ineffectively) at reproducing the grandeur of the Greek drama, and its plot is a story embodying the Greek conception of destiny. The oracle of Delphi had announced that the punishment of pestilence drawn down on the people by the misrule of the royal race could only be stayed by the destruction of the royal stock. Ion dedicates himself to the business of slaying the tyrant, who falls by another hand; and Ion, discovered to be himself the son of the king, recognises his doom and patriotically accepts it. The play is not without poetry or power, but is, like the author's prose, too copious and rhetorical. Not even Ion has lived on. Talfourd is remembered as the admirer and the faithful friend and literary executor of Charles Lamb (see page 72), and as having published in two sections Lamb's Memoir (Letters, 1837; Final Memorials, 1848). This work—the standard and authoritative life-appeared in one volume in 1875, and again in 1892. Talfourd helped Bulwer to edit Hazlitt's works; and he deserves honour for introducing in 1837 the Copyright Bill, which, amended, passed in 1842.

Ion.

Ion, our sometime darling, whom we prized
As a stray gift, by bounteous Heaven dismissed
From some bright sphere which sorrow may not cloud,
To make the happy happier! Is he sent
To grapple with the miseries of this time,
Whose nature such ethereal aspect wears

As it would perish at the touch of wrong!
By no internal contest is he trained
For such hard duty; no emotions rude

Hath his clear spirit vanquished-Love, the germ
Of his mild nature, hath spread graces forth,
Expanding with its progress, as the store
Of rainbow colour which the seed conceals
Sheds out its tints from its dim treasury,
To flush and circle in the flower. No tear
Hath filled his eye save that of thoughtful joy
When in the evening stillness lovely things
Pressed on his soul too busily; his voice,

If in the earnestness of childish sports
Raised to the tone of anger, checked its force,
As if it feared to break its being's law,
And faltered into music; when the forms
Of guilty passion have been made to live
In pictured speech, and others have waxed loud
In righteous indignation, he hath heard
With sceptic smile, or from some slender vein
of goodness, which surrounding gloom concealed,
Struck sunlight o'er it: so his life hath flowed
From its mysterious urn a sacred stream,
In whose calm depth the beautiful and pure
Alone are mirrored; which, though shapes of ill
May hover round its surface, glides in light,
And takes no shadow from them.

Ion.

Am I indeed so pale?
It is a solemn office I assume,
Which well may make me falter; yet sustained
By thee, and by the gods I serve, I take it.—
[Sits on the throne.

Stand forth, Agenor.
Agenor.
I await thy will.
Ion. To thee I look as to the wisest friend
Of this afflicted people; thou must leave
Awhile the quiet which thy life has earned,
To rule our councils; fill the seats of justice
With good men, not so absolute in goodness
As to forget what human frailty is;
And order my sad country.

Agenor.

Pardon me-

Ion. Nay, I will promise 'tis my last request; Grant me thy help till this distracted state Rise tranquil from her griefs-'twill not be long, If the great gods smile on us now. Remember, Meanwhile, thou hast all power my word can give, Whether I live or die.

Agenor.
Die! Ere that hour,
May even the old man's epitaph be moss-grown!
Ion. Death is not jealous of the mild decay
That gently wins thee his; exulting youth
Provokes the ghastly monarch's sudden stride,
And makes his horrid fingers quick to clasp
His prey benumbed at noontide.-Let me see
The captain of the guard.

Crythes.
I kneel to crave
Humbly the favour which thy sire bestowed
On one who loved him well.

Ion.
I cannot mark thee,
That wak'st the memory of my father's weakness,
But I will not forget that thou hast shared
The light enjoyments of a noble spirit,
And learned the need of luxury. I grant
For thee and thy brave comrades ample share
Of such rich treasure as my stores contain,
To grace thy passage to some distant land,

Where, if an honest cause engage thy sword, May glorious issues wait it. In our realm We shall not need it longer.

Crythes. Dost intend

To banish the firm troops before whose valour Barbarian millions shrink appalled, and leave Our city naked to the first assault

Of reckless foes?

Ion.

No, Crythes; in ourselves,

In our own honest hearts and chainless hands,
Will be our safeguard; while we do not use
Our power towards others so that we should blush
To teach our children; while the simple love
Of justice and their country shall be born
With dawning reason; while their sinews grow
Hard 'midst the gladness of heroic sports,

We shall not need, to guard our walls in peace,
One selfish passion or one venal sword.

I would not grieve thee; but thy valiant troop-
For I esteem them valiant-must no more

With luxury which suits a desperate camp
See that they embark, Agenor,

Infect us.

Ere night.

Medon.

Think of thee, my lord?

Long shall we triumph in thy glorious reign.

Ion. Prithee, no more. -Argives! I have a boon To crave of you. Whene'er I shall rejoin

In death the father from whose heart in life
Stern fate divided me, think gently of him!
Think that beneath his panoply of pride
Were fair affections crushed by bitter wrongs
Which fretted him to madness; what he did,
Alas! ye know; could you know what he suffered,
Ye would not curse his name. Yet never more
Let the great interests of the state depend
Upon the thousand chances that may sway
A piece of human frailty; swear to me
That ye will seek hereafter in yourselves

The means of sovereignty: our country's space,
So happy in its smallness, so compact,
Needs not the magic of a single name
Which wider regions may require to draw
Their interest into one; but, circled thus,
Like a blest family, by simple laws
May tenderly be governed--all degrees,
Not placed in dexterous balance, not combined
By bonds of parchment or by iron clasps,
But blended into one-a single form
Of nymph-like loveliness, which finest chords
Of sympathy pervading, shall endow
With vital beauty, tint with roseate bloom
In times of happy peace, and bid to flash
With one brave impulse, if ambitious bands
Of foreign power should threaten.

That ye will do this!

Medon.

Swear to me

Wherefore ask this now?

Thou shalt live long; the paleness of thy face,
Which late seemed death-like, is grown radiant now,

In whose mild service my glad youth was spent,
Look on me now; and if there is a power,

As at this solemn time I feel there is,

Beyond ye, that hath breathed through all your shapes The spirit of the beautiful that lives

In earth and heaven, to ye I offer up

This conscious being, full of life and love,

For my dear country's welfare. Let this blow
End all her sorrows!

Clemanthe [rushing forward]. Hold!
Let me support him-stand away—indeed
I have best right, although ye know it not,
To cleave to him in death.

I did not hope for-this is sweet indeed. Bend thine eyes on me!

Clem.

[Stabs himself.

And for this it was

Thou wouldst have weaned me from thee! Couldst thou

Henry Fothergill Chorley (1808-72), born of Quaker stock near Wigan in Lancashire, was educated at Liverpool, and became musical critic on the staff of the Athenæum, which he joined in 1833. He was also a literary critic, a verse-writer, a playwright, and a novelist, producing three dramas and four or five artificial and long-forgotten romances, the earliest of which were Conti (1835) and The Lion (1839), and the latest Roccabella (1859). His best work, and that by which he is remembered, is found in his Music and Manners in France and Germany (1841) and his charming Thirty Years' Musical Recollections (1862). He was a keen but rather acrid critic

of music and literature, and a strenuous foe of Berlioz and Wagner. His Autobiography was edited by H. G. Hewlett in 1873.

Eliot Warburton (1810-52), born at Aughrim, County Galway, was the son of the InspectorGeneral of Constabulary in Ireland. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was called to the Bar, but soon devoted himself to literature, travel, and the improvement of his Irish estates. In 1843 he made the tour in the East of which the record, first printed in the Dublin University Magazine (then edited by Charles Lever) in that year and the next, was issued at the end of 1844 in its finished form as The Crescent and the Cross. Singularly enough it was in 1844 also that Warburton's friend and fellow-pupil, Kinglake, published Eöthen, the book with which it is naturally compared and which it in many ways resembles-a book rather of impressions and experiences and opinions than of objective description and detail. From the first it was greeted with acclamation for its glowing descriptions of the East,' was by contemporary criticism voted equal to Beckford at his best, and was soon declared (by Sir Archibald Alison) to be 'indelibly engraven on the national mind.' Modern critics have said that it might well be used as a (glorified) guide-book to Egypt, and have found in it clear suggestions of improvements put into practice under the British occupation. The style is elaborate and eloquent, with too many purple patches and too much fine writing.' By the end of the century it had gone through a score of editions, and was still being from time to time reprinted. Warburton published in 1849 The Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers; in 1850 an unsuccessful novel, Reginald Hastings, dealing with the same period; and in 1851, shortly before starting on his last and fatal voyage, another historical romance, Darien, dealing with Paterson and his Scots fellow-adventurers, and, ominously, describing a fire at sea. He edited the Memoirs of Horace Walpole and his Contemporaries, by N. F. Williams; and Hochelaga, or England in the New World, a brightly written description of Canada by his brother, Major George Warburton, who was also the author of The Conquest of Canada and of a Memoir of the famous Earl of Peterborough. In 1851 Eliot Warburton (whose full name was Bartholomew Elliott George Warburton, though he used the abridged form as nom de guerre) had been deputed by the Atlantic and Pacific Junction Company to visit the Indians of the Isthmus of Darien, establish a friendly understanding with them, and make himself thoroughly acquainted with their country. He sailed in the Amazon steamer, and was among the passengers who perished by fire on board that ill-fated ship.

Woman in the Hareem.

The Eastern woman seems as happy in her lot as her European sister, notwithstanding the plurality of

In

wives that her lord indulges in or ventures upon. her 'public opinion's law' there is no more disparagement in occupying the second place as a wife than there is in Europe as a daughter. The manners of patriarchal ages remain in Egypt as unchanged as its monuments; and the people of Cairo think as little of objecting to a man's marrying a second wife as those of Memphis of questioning the legitimacy of Joseph. The Koran, following the example of the Jewish doctors, allows only four wives to each Mussulman, and even of this limited allowance they seldom avail themselves to its fullest extent. Some hareems contain two hundred females, including wives, mothers-in-law, concubines, and the various slaves belonging to each; but these feminine barracks seem very different from what such establishments would be in Europe; in the hareem there is as much order and decorum as in an English Quaker's home: it is guarded as the tiger guards his young; but its inmates consider this as a compliment, and fancy themselves neglected if not closely watched. This cause for complaint seldom occurs, for the Egyptian has no blind confidence in the strength of woman's character or woman's love. He holds to the aphorism of Mahomet in this matter, 'If you set butter in the sun, it will surely melt,' and considers it safer, if not more glorious, to keep her out of the reach of tempta tion than to run the chance of her overcoming it when exposed to its encounter.

Born and brought up in the hareem, women never seem to pine at its imprisonment: like cage-born birds, they sing among their bars, and discover in their aviaries a thousand little pleasures invisible to eyes that have a wider range. To them in their calm seclusion the strifes of the battling world come softened and almost hushed; they only hear the far-off murmur of life's stormy sea; and if their human lot dooms them to their cares, they are as transient as those of childhood.

Let them laugh on in their happy ignorance of a better lot, while round them is gathered all that their lord can command of luxury and pleasantness: his wealth is hoarded for them alone; and the time is weary that he passes away from his home and his hareem. The sternest tyrants are gentle there; Mehemet Ali never refused a woman's prayer; and even Ali Pasha was partly humanised by his love for Emineh. In the time of the Mamelukes criminals were led to execution blindfolded, because if they had met a woman and could touch her garment they were saved, as by a sanctuary, whatever was their crime. Thus idolised, watched, and guarded, the Egyptian woman's life is nevertheless entirely in the power of her lord, and her death is the inevitable penalty of his dishonour. No piquant case of crim. con. ever amuses the Egyptian public; the injured husband is his own judge and jury; his only 'gentlemen of the long robe' are his eunuchs, and the knife or the Nile the only damages. The law never interferes in these little domestic arrangements.

Poor Fatima shrined as she was in the palace of a tyrant, the fame of her beauty stole abroad through Cairo. She was one amongst a hundred in the hareem of Abbas Pasha, a man stained with every foul and loathsome vice; and who can wonder, though many may condemn, if she listened to a daring young Albanian who risked his life to obtain but a sight of her? Whether she did listen or not, none can ever know; but the eunuchs saw the glitter of the Arnaut's arms as he

leaped from the terrace into the Nile and vanished in the darkness. The following night a merry English party dined together on board Lord Exmouth's boat as it lay moored off the Isle of Rhoda; conversation had sunk into silence as the calm night came on; a faint breeze floated perfumes from the gardens over the starlit Nile, and scarcely moved the clouds that rose from the chibouque; a dreamy languor seemed to pervade all nature, and even the city lay hushed in deep reposewhen suddenly a boat, crowded with dark figures among which arms gleamed, shot out from one of the arches of the palace; it paused under the opposite bank, where the water rushed deep and gloomily along, and for a moment a white figure glimmered amongst that boat's dark crew; there was a slight movement and a faint splash, and then-the river flowed on as merrily as if poor Fatima still sang her Georgian song to the murmur of its waters.

I was riding one evening along the banks of the Mareotis; the low land, half swamp, half desert, was level as the lake: there was no sound, except the ripple of the waves along the far extended shore, and the heavy flapping of the pelican's wings as she rose from the water's edge. Not a palm-tree raised its plumy head, not a shrub crept along the ground; the sun was low, but there was nothing to cast a shadow over the monotonous waste, except a few Moslem tombs with their sculptured turbans: these stood apart from every sign of life, and even of their kindred dead, like those upon the Lido at Venice. As I paused to contemplate this scene of desolation, an Egyptian hurried past me with a bloody knife in his hand; his dress was mean and ragged, but his countenance was one that the father of Don Carlos might have worn; he never raised his eyes as he rushed by. My groom, who just then came up, told me he had slain his wife, and was going to her father's village to denounce her.

My boat was moored in the little harbour of Assouan, the old Syene, the boundary between Egypt and Ethiopia; opposite lies Elephantina, the 'Isle of Flowers,' strewed with ruins and shaded by magnificent palm-trees; the last eddies of the cataract of the Nile foam round dark red granite cliffs, which rise precipitously from the river, and are piled into a mountain crowned by a ruined Saracenic castle. A forest of palmtrees divides the village from the quiet shore on whose silvery sands my tent was pitched. A man in an Egyptian dress saluted me in Italian, and in a few moments was smoking my chibouque, by invitation, and sipping coffee by my side: he was very handsome; but his faded cheek and sunken eye showed hardship and suffering, and he spoke in a low and humble voice. In reply to my question as to how a person of his appearance came into this remote region, he told me that he had been lately practising as a surgeon in Alexandria; he had married a Levantine girl, whose beauty was to him as 'la faccia del cielo :' he had been absent from his home, and she had betrayed him. On his return he met her with a smiling countenance; in the evening he accompanied her to a deep well, whither she went to draw water, and as she leant over it he threw her in. As he said this he paused and placed his hands upon his ears, as if he still heard her dying shriek. He then continued: I have fled from Alexandria till the affair is blown over. I was robbed near Siout, and have supported myself miserably ever since by giving medical

advice to the poor country people. I shall soon return, and all will be forgotten. If I had not avenged myself, her own family, you know, must have done so.' And so this woman-murderer smoked on, and continued talking in a low and gentle voice till the moon was high; then he went his way, and I saw him no more.

The Egyptian has no home-at least, in the English sense of that sacred word; his sons are only half brothers, and generally at enmity with each other; his daughters are transplanted while yet children into some other hareem; and his wives, when their beauty is gone by, are frequently divorced without a cause, to make room for some younger rival. The result is, that the Egyptian-a sensualist and slave-is only fit to be a subject in what prophecy foretold his country should become-the basest of all kingdoms.'

The women have all the insipidity of children without their innocence or sparkling freshness. Their beauty, voluptuous and soulless, appeals only to the senses; it has none of that pure and ennobling influence

'That made us what we are-the great, the free-
And bade earth bow to England's chivalry.'

The Moslem purchases his wife as he does his horse: he laughs at the idea of honour and of love: the armed eunuch and the close-barred window are the only safeguards of virtue that he relies on. Every luxury lavished on the Odalisque is linked with some precaution, like the iron fruit and flowers in the madhouse at Naples, that seem to smile round those whom they imprison. Nor is it for her own sake, but that of her master, that woman is supplied with every luxury that wealth can procure. As we gild our aviaries and fill them with exotics native to our foreign birds in order that their song may be sweet and their plumage bright, so the King of Babylon built the Hanging Gardens for the mountain girl who pined and lost her beauty among the level plains of the Euphrates. The Egyptian is quite satisfied if his Nourmahal be in good condition :' mindless himself, what has he to do with mind?

The Egyptian woman, obliged to share her husband's affection with a hundred others in this world, is yet further supplanted in the next by the Houris, a sort of she-angel, of as doubtful a character as even a Moslem paradise could well tolerate; nay, more, it is a very moot point among Mussulman D.D.s whether women have any soul at all, or not. I believe their chance of immortality rests chiefly on the tradition of a conversation of Mahomet with an old woman who importuned him for a good place in paradise. 'Trouble me not,' said the vexed husband of Cadijah; 'there can be no old women in paradise.' Whereupon the aged applicant made such troublous lamentation that he diplomatically added, 'because the old will then all be made young again.' I can find no allusion to woman's immortality in all the Koran, except incidentally, as where all men and women are to be tried at the last day,' and this is but poor comfort for those whom 'angels are painted fair to look like.'

Women are not enjoined to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca, but they are permitted to do so. They are not enjoined to pray; but the Prophet seemed to think that it could do them no harm, provided they prayed in their own houses and not in the mosques, where they might interfere with or share the devotion of those who had real business there.