"Athwart my face when blushes pass
To be so poor and weak,
I fall unto the dewy grass,
And cool my fevered cheek;
And hear a music strangely made,
That you have never heard,
A sprite in every rustling blade,
That sings like any bird.

Enjoy the breeze,-I rock with them, We' are merry brothers all.

"I do remember well, when first

I saw the great blue sea,—

It was no stranger-face, that burst
In terror upon me;

My heart began, from the first glance,
His solemn pulse to follow,

I danced with every billow's dance,
And shouted to their hollo.

"The Lamb that at it's mother's side
Reclines, a tremulous thing,
The Robin in cold winter-tide,
The Linnet in the Spring,

All seem to be of kin to me,
And love my slender hand,—

For we are bound, by God's decree,
In one defensive band.

"And children, who the worldly mind
And ways have not put on,

Are ever glad in me to find
A blithe companion :

And when for play they leave their homes,
Left to their own sweet glee,

They hear my step, and cry,' He comes, Our little friend,—'tis he.'

"Have you been out some starry night, And found it joy to bend

Your eyes to one particular light,
Till it became a friend?

And then, so loved that gliste'ning spot,
That, whether it were far

Or more or less, it mattered not,

It still was your own star.

"Thus, and thus only, can you know, How I, even scorned I,

Can live in love, tho' set so low,
And' my ladie-love so high;

Thus learn, that on this varied ball,
Whate'er can breathe and move,
The meanest, lornest, thing of all-
Still owns its right to love.

"With no fair round of household cares

Will my lone hearth be blest,

Nor can the snow of my old hairs
Fall on a loving breast;

No darling pledge of spousal faith
Shall I be found possessing,

To whom a blessing with my breath
Would be a double blessing:

But yet I always run,

As to a father's morning kiss,

When rises the round sun;

I see the flowers on stalk and stem,

Light shrubs, and poplars tall,

And waits upon my dreams;

A shape that floats upon the night,

Like foam upon the sea,

A voice of Seraphim,—a light
Of present Deity!

I hide me in the dark arcade,
When she walks forth alone,-
I feast upon her hair's rich braid-
Her half-unclasped zone :

I watch the flittings of her dress,
The bending boughs between,-
I trace her footstep's faery press
On' the scarcely ruffled green.

"Oh deep delight! the frail guitar Trembles beneath her hand,

She sings a song she brought from far,
I cannot understand;

Her voice is always as from heaven,
But yet I seem to hear

Its music best, when thus 'tis given
All music to my ear.

"She' has turned her tender eyes around And seen me crouching there,

And smiles, just as that last full sound
Is fainting on the air;

And now, I can go forth so proud,
And raise my head so tall-
My heart within me beats so loud,
And musical withal:-

"And there is summer all the while,
Mid-winter though it be,-
How should the universe not smile,
When she has smiled on me?

For though that smile can nothing more
Than merest pity prove,

Yet pity, it was sung of yore,
Is not so far from love.

"From what a crowd of lovers' woes, My weakness is exempt!

How far more fortunate than those
Who mark me for contempt!
No fear of rival happiness

My fervent glory smothers,
The zephyr fans me none the less
That it is bland to others.

"Thus without share in coin or land, But well content to hold

The wealth of Nature in my hand,
One flail of virgin gold-
My Love above me like a sun-
My own bright thoughts my wings-
Thro' life I trust to flutter on,
As gay as aught that sings.

"One hour I own I dread-to die
Alone and unbefriended-
No soothing voice, no tearful eye-
But that must soon be ended;
And then I shall receive my part

Of everlasting treasure,

pure and so profound-has sunk and is sinking into how many thoughtful souls-how many loving hearts!

And now for lunch. Virgin honey -we protest-clear as amber-but embalming no bees, for 'twas sliced off without injury to the wings of a single worker. The first of the season we have seen a composite of the essence of heather and of clover-in which the flavour of the clover must prevailfor the mountains are not yet empurpled. Such honey, such butter, and such oat-cake make a delicious biteand how the taste improves on the palate, qualified with a smack of the Glenlivet ! Most considerate of heaven's creatures! Genevieve has left on the salver a silver thimble-but a little too wide for her delicatest forefinger-and ever and anon from it we shall quaff the mountain-dew as Oberon may be supposed to lay his lips to the fox-glove bell, impatient for "his morning." Ignoramuses gulp Glenlivet from quechs-the Cognoscenti sipit from thimbles-thus-thus-thus "health-happiness-and a husband to Victoria, our gracious Queen!"

The

And now we shall be communicative, and whisper into your ear a secret about Christopher in his Cave. Twenty years ago the Lord of the Castle died the Lady did not long survive him-and till within a few summers it stood silent as their tomb. sons and daughters were absent long and distant far from their hereditary home, and the heart of the Highlands sighed for the return of the brave and the beautiful. From Eastern climes the Chief returned at last-in the prime of manhood-rich and honoured

for he had the gift of tongues, and genius, and a commanding intellect, and his wisdom imposed peace on the native princes. The younger brother had entered into the naval servicefought at Algiers-and on voyage of discovery circumnavigated the globe. Here for a while he has cast anchorready at any hour to slip his cableand go to sea. The youngest is in orders-and has come to the Castle for a month "from the beautiful fields of England," and brought his bride. And thou-the beloved of thy Father's

Worthy of ARCHEUS himself whose "SEXTON'S DAUGHTER"-SO

liest of Christian ladies-what name so blessed as thine among the mountains-in hall, in hut, in shieling - "mine own dear GENEVIEVE!"

Thou art betrothed, and even now thy stately lover is by thy side. But in its happiness thy heart is kind to the old man who kissed thine eyes the day thy father was buried, and told thee that Heaven would hush thy sobs and dry thy tears. She it was who furnished for the Hermit this his Cave and led him into its twilight-and sat by him in this niche for an hour and more, with her hand in his and left him here to his meditations-gliding away, and turning ere she reached the woods, to wave him so many short and cheerful farewells!

· And where are her brothers and their friends? On the Great Loch-or by the River or in the Forest. The late Floods have brought up the salmon from the sea-and we heard from our turret, soon after midnight, the red deer belling among the cliffs.

'Twas feared the family would fall into decay-and they were widely scattered after their parents' deaths. But the brother of the late chieftain was a faithful steward-and the fortunes of the house were more than restored. The Prince is in his palace. Last night how beautiful the array in that illumined hall! There sat Genevieve at her harp-harmonious far beyond the clarshech-and sung, while all was hush, lays of many lands, each to its own native music-but noneso spake her tearful or kindling eyes -so dear to the singer's soul as the wild Gaelic airs breathed down by tradition from the olden time that first heard them in the wilderness, as from the voice of one exulting for a triumph, or of a weeper seeking by its own music to solace her grief!

What other pretty book is this? "The Seraphim, and other Poems, by Elizabeth Barnett, author of a Translation of Prometheus Bound." High adventure for a Lady-implying a knowledge of Hebrew-or if not-of Greek. No common mind displays itself in this Preface pregnant with lofty thoughts. Yet is her heart humble withal-and she wins her way into ours by these words-" I assume no power of art, except that power of love towards it, which has remained with me from my childhood until now. In the power of such a love, and in the event of my life being prolonged, I would fain hope to write hereafter better verses; but I never can feel more intensely than at this moment

nor can it be needful that any should the sublime uses of poetry, and the solemn responsibilities of the poet." We have read much of the volume, and glanced it all through, not without certain regrets almost amounting to blame, but far more with love and admiration. In "The Seraphim" there is poetry and piety-genius and devotion; but the awful Idea of the Poem -the Crucifixion-is not sustainedand we almost wish it unwritten. The gifted writer says "I thought that, had Eschylus lived after the incarnation and crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ, he might have turned, if not in moral and intellectual, yet in poetie faith, from the solitude of Caucasus to the deeper desertness of that crowded Jerusalem where none had any pity; from the faded white flower' of the Titanic brow, to the

withered grass' of a Heart trampled on by its own beloved; from the glorying of him who gloried that he could not die, to the sublimer meekness of the Taster of death for every man; from the taunt stung into being by the torment, to His more awful silence, when the agony stood dumb before the love! And I thought how, from the height of this great argument,' the scenery of the Prometheus would have dwarfed itself even in the eyes of its poet-how the fissures of his rocks and the innumerous smiles of his ocean would have closed and waned into blankness,-and his demigod stood confest, so human a conception as to fall below the aspiration of his own humanity. He would have turned from such to the rent rocks and darkened sun-rent and darkened by a sympathy thrilling through nature, but leaving man's heart untouchedto the multitudes, whose victim was their Saviour-to the Victim, whose sustaining thought beneath an unexampled agony, was not the Titanic I can revenge,' but the celestial I can forgive!'

The poems that follow are on subjects within the compass of her powersthere is beauty in them all—and some of them, we think, are altogether beautiful. From the "Poet's Vow,” “The Romaunt of Margaret," "Isobel's Child," compositions of considerable length, might be selected passages of deep pathos-especially from the last, in which the workings of a mother's love through all the phases of fear,

and hope, and despair, and heavenly consolation, are given with extraordinary power, while there is an originality in the whole cast and conception of the strain that beyond all dispute proves the possession of genius. But they are all disfigured by much imperfect and some bad writing-and the fair author is too often seen struggling in vain to give due expression to the feelings that beset her, and entangled in a web of words. "I would fain hope to write hereafter better verses and we do not fear that her hopes

"

will not be fulfilled-for she "hath that within which passeth show," but will, we predict, some day shine forth with conspicuous splendour.

Some of the shorter compositions are almost all we could desire-and let us murmur some of them to ourselves in our Cave.

For lapse of water, swell of breeze, Or nut-fruit falling from the trees!

"The stir without the glow of passionThe triumph of the martThe gold and silver's dreary clashing

With man's metallic heartThe wheeled pomp, the pauper tread— These only sounds are heard instead. "Yet still, as on my human hand Their fearless heads they lean, And almost seem to understand What human musings mean

(With such a plaintive gaze their eyne
Are fastened upwardly to mine!)

"Their chant is soft as on the nest,
For love that stirred it in their breast,
Beneath the sunny sky:
Remains undyingly,

And 'neath the city's shade, can keep
The well of music clear and deep.

many a gentle girl—and mothers will ask their daughters to recite them, that they may watch the workings of nature in the eyes loving innocenceand even fathers looking on and listening—

"May from their eyelids wipe the tear That sacred pity had engendered."

Surely Poetesses (is there such a word?) are very happy, in spite of all the "natural sorrows, griefs, and pains," to which their exquisitely sensitive being must be perpetually alive. Tighe suffered woman's worst -wounded affections; nor was Hemans without a like affliction-but she who died first had a cheerful genius, and fancy led her heart into lands of enchantment, where her human life was lulled in repose, and its woes must have often and long been forgotten in the midst of visionary bliss. That other Sweetest Singer had children round her knees, and sufficient happiness it must have been for her, in that long desertion, to see

"How like a new existence to her heart Uprose those living flowers beneath her

eyes,

now flourishing, when she is gone, in the light of Heaven. Lætitia Landon-a name not to be merged-is a joyous spirit not unacquainted with grief her genius was invigorated by duty-now it is guarded by love-and in good time-may gentler suns shine again on her laurelled head-returning to us from the "far countrie," that may even now be inspiring into her startled imagination the beauty of "a New Song."

And our Elizabeth—she too is happy-though in her happiness she loveth to veil with a melancholy haze the brightness of her childhood-and of her maidenhood but the clouds we raise we can ourselves dispel-and far away yet beyond the horizon are those that may gather round the decline of her life.

"I called it my wilderness,
For no one entered there but I.
The sheep looked in, the grass t'espy,
And passed ne'ertheless.

"The trees were interwoven wild, And spread their boughs enough about To keep both sheep and shepherd out, But not a happy child.

"Adventurous joy it was for me!
I crept beneath the boughs, and found
A circle smooth of mossy ground
Beneath a poplar tree.

"Old garden rose-trees hedged it inBedropt with roses waxen-white, Well satisfied with dew and light,

And careless to be seen.

"Long years ago it might befall,
When all the garden flowers were trim,
The grave old gardener prided him
On these the most of all;

"And Lady stately overmuch,
Who moved with a silken noise,
Blushed near them, dreaming of the voice
That likened her to such!

"And these to make a diadem, She may have often plucked and twined; Half smiling as it came to mind,

That few would look at them.

"Oh! little thought that Lady proud, A child would watch her fair white rose,

When buried lay her whiter brows,

And silk was changed for shroud!

"Nor thought that gardener, full of scorns For men unlearn'd and simple phrase, A child would bring it all its praise,

By creeping through the thorns:

"To me upon my low moss seat, Though never a dream the roses sent Of science or love's compliment,

I ween they smelt as sweet.

"Nor ever a grief was mine, to see The trace of human step departed— Because the garden was deserted, The blyther place for me!

"Friends, blame me not! a narrow ken
Hath childhood 'twixt the sun and sward!
We draw the moral afterward-
We feel the gladness then!

"And gladdest hours for me did glide
In silence at the rose-tree wall:
A thrush made gladness musical
Upon the other side,