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Pauses to think, amid glitter and glow,
Oh! there be hearts that are breaking below!

Night on the waves !—and the moon is on high,
Hung, like a gem, on the brow of the sky,
Treading its depths in the power of her might,
And turning the clouds, as they pass her, to light!
Look to the waters !-asleep on their breast,
Seems not the ship like an island of rest?
Bright and alone on the shadowy main,

and The Duke of Mercia, 1823; also of A Song of Faith, and other Poems, 1842. The last volume is dedicated to Wordsworth, who had perused and 'rewarded with praise' some of the pieces.-Sir Aubrey's third son, AUBREY THOMAS DE VERE (born in 1814), has published several pieces both in verse and prose-The Waldenses, with other Poems, 1842; The Search after Proserpine, 1843; Mary Tudor, a Drama, 1847; Sketches of Greece

Like a heart-cherished home on some desolate plain! and Turkey, 1850; The Infant Bridal, and other Who-as she smiles in the silvery light,

Spreading her wings on the bosom of night,
Alone on the deep, as the moon in the sky,

A phantom of beauty-could deem, with a sigh,
That so lovely a thing is the mansion of sin,
And that souls that are smitten lie bursting within!
Who, as he watches her silently gliding,
Remembers that wave after wave is dividing
Bosoms that sorrow and guilt could not sever,
Hearts which are parted and broken for ever!
Or deems that he watches afloat on the wave,
The death-bed of hope, or the young spirit's grave!

'Tis thus with our life, while it passes along,
Like a vessel at sea, amidst sunshine and song!
Gaily we glide, in the gaze of the world,
With streamers afloat, and with canvas unfurled ;
All gladness and glory, to wandering eyes,
Yet chartered by sorrow, and freighted with sighs:
Fading and false is the aspect it wears,

As the smiles we put on, just to cover our tears;
And the withering thoughts which the world cannot
know,

Like heart-broken exiles, lie burning below;
Whilst the vessel drives on to that desolate shore
Where the dreams of our childhood are vanished and
o'er.

The Poetical Sketches (1822) and Lyrics of the Heart (1850) of MR ALARIC ALEXANDER WATTS (1799-1864) are similar to the productions of Mr Hervey. Their author-a native of London-was connected with the periodical press, and was also among the first editors of those illustrated annual volumes once so numerous, in which poems and short prose sketches from popular or fashionable writers of the day were published. The Literary Souvenir ran to ten volumes (1824-34), and the Cabinet of Modern Art to three volumes (183538). Though generally very poor in point of literary merit, these illustrated annuals unquestionably fostered a taste for art among the people. In 1853, a pension of £300 was settled upon Mr Watts.

GEORGE DARLEY-SIR AUBREY AND AUBREY
THOMAS DE VERE.

A critic has said that many 'pensive fancies, thoughtful graces, and intellectual interests blossom beneath our busier life and our more rank and forward literature.' Some of these we have had the pleasure of pointing out, and among the graceful contributors of such poetry, we may include MR DARLEY, author of Sylvia, or the May Queen, 1827; of Thomas à Becket and Ethelstan, dramas; Errors of Extasie, and other Poems. Mr Darley-who was a native of Dublin-died at a comparatively early age in 1846. He was in the latter part of his life one of the writers in the Athenæum, and an accomplished critic.-SIR AUBREY DE VERE (died in 1846) was author of two dramatic poems, Julian the Apostate, 1822,

Poems, 1864; &c.

ARCHBISHOP TRENCH.

Though of late chiefly known as a theologian and prose author, RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH early attracted attention by some poems evincing genuine feeling and graceful expression. The Story of Justin Martyr, and other Poems, appeared in 1835; Sabbation, Honor Neale, &c. in 1838; Elegiac Poems, 1850; Poems from Eastern Sources, 1851, &c. This accomplished divine is a native of Dublin, born in 1807. Having studied for the church, he was some time engaged in different places as curate. In 1845, he became Rector of Itchin-Stoke, near Alresford; Hulsean Lecturer at Cambridge in 1846; Professor and Examiner at King's College, London, in 1847; Dean of Westminster in 1856; and in 1864 he succeeded Dr Whately as Archbishop of Dublin.

Evening Hymn.

To the sound of evening bells
All that lives to rest repairs,
Birds unto their leafy dells,

Beasts unto their forest lairs.

All things wear a home-bound look,
From the weary hind that plods
Through the corn-fields, to the rook
Sailing toward the glimmering woods.
'Tis the time with power to bring
Tearful memories of home
To the sailor wandering

On the far-off barren foam.
What a still and holy time!

Yonder glowing sunset seems
Like the pathway to a clime

Only seen till now in dreams.

Pilgrim! here compelled to roam,
Nor allowed that path to tread,
Now, when sweetest sense of home
On all living hearts is shed,

Doth not yearning sad, sublime,

At this season stir thy breast,
That thou canst not at this time
Seek thy home and happy rest?

Some Murmur, when their Sky is Clear.
Some murmur, when their sky is clear
And wholly bright to view,

If one small speck of dark appear
In their great heaven of blue.
And some with thankful love are filled,
If but one streak of light,
One ray of God's good mercy gild
The darkness of their night.

In palaces are hearts that ask,
In discontent and pride,

Why life is such a dreary task,
And all good things denied.
And hearts in poorest huts admire
How Love has in their aid
(Love that not ever seems to tire)
Such rich provision made.

THOMAS AIRD-JAMES HEDDERWICK,

A few poems of wild imaginative grandeur, with descriptive sketches of Scottish rural scenery and character, have been written by THOMAS AIRD, born at Bowden, county of Roxburgh, August 28, 1802. Educated at the university of Edinburgh, Mr Aird formed the acquaintance of Professor Wilson, Mr Moir, and other contributors to Blackwood's Magazine; and in this favourite periodical he published most of the poetical pieces collected into one volume, 1848, and reprinted in 1856. Two volumes of prose sketches have also proceeded from his pen-Religious Characteristics, 1827, and The Old Bachelor in the Old Scottish Village, 1848. For nearly a quarter of a century, Mr Aird conducted a Conservative weekly newspaper, The Dumfries Herald. Resident in a beautiful country, with just employment enough to keep the mind from rusting, and with the regard of many friends, his life glided on in a simple and happy tranquillity as rare among poets as it is enviable. He died at Dumfries on the 25th of April 1876.

From The Devil's Dream on Mount Aksbeck.

Beyond the north where Ural hills from polar tempests

run,

A glow went forth at midnight hour as of unwonted sun; Upon the north at midnight hour a mighty noise was heard,

As if with all his trampling waves the Ocean were unbarred;

And high a grizzly Terror hung, upstarting from below, Like fiery arrow shot aloft from some unmeasured bow.

'Twas not the obedient seraph's form that burns before the Throne,

Whose feathers are the pointed flames that tremble to be gone:

With twists of faded glory mixed, grim shadows wove his wing;

An aspect like the hurrying storm proclaimed the Infernal King.

And up he went, from native might, or holy sufferance given,

As if to strike the starry boss of the high and vaulted heaven.

Aloft he turned in middle air, like falcon for his prey, And bowed to all the winds of heaven as if to flee away; Till broke a cloud-a phantom host, like glimpses of a dream,

Sowing the Syrian wilderness with many a restless gleam:

He knew the flowing chivalry, the swart and turbaned train,

That far had pushed the Moslem faith, and peopled well his reign:

With stooping pinion that outflew the Prophet's wingèd steed,

In pride throughout the desert bounds he led the phantom speed;

But prouder yet he turned alone, and stood on Tabor hill,

With scorn as if the Arab swords had little helped his will:

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He saw a form of Africa low sitting in the dust; The feet were chained, and sorrow thrilled throughout the sable bust.

The idol and the idol's priest he hailed upon the earth, And every slavery that brings wild passions to the birth. All forms of human wickedness were pillars of his fame, All sounds of human misery his kingdom's loud acclaim.

Exulting o'er the rounded earth again he rode with night,

Till, sailing o'er the untrodden top of Aksbeck high and white,

He closed at once his weary wings, and touched the shining hill;

For less his flight was easy strength than proud unconquered will:

For sin had dulled his native strength, and spoilt the holy law

Of impulse whence the archangel forms their earnest being draw.

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'And thou shalt dwell 'midst leaves and rills far from this torrid heat,

And I with streams of cooling milk will bathe thy blistered feet;

And when the troubled tears shall start to think of all the past,

My mouth shall haste to kiss them off, and chase thy sorrows fast;

And thou shalt walk in soft white light with kings and priests abroad,

And thou shalt summer high in bliss upon the hills of God.'

[The fiend sprung upward in haughty defiance.]

His pride would have the works of God to shew the signs of fear,

With flying angels to and fro to watch his dread career; But all was calm: he felt Night's dews upon his sultry wing,

And gnashed at the impartial laws of Nature's mighty King;

Above control, or show of hate, they no exception made, But gave him dews, like aged thorn, or little grassy blade. Terrible, like the mustering manes of the cold and curly sea,

So grew his eye's enridgèd gleams; and doubt and danger flee:

Like veteran band's grim valour slow, that moves to avenge its chief,

Up slowly drew the fiend his form, that shook with proud relief:

And he will upward go, and pluck the windows of high heaven,

And stir their calm insulting peace, though tenfold hell be given.

Quick as the levin, whose blue forks lick up the life

of man,

Aloft he sprung, and through his wings the piercing

north wind ran;

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Season when not to achieve is to despair!
Last field for us of a full fruitful soil!
Only spring-tide our freighted aims to bear
Onward to all our yearning dreams have sought!
How art thou changed! Once to our youthful eyes
Thin silvering locks and thought's imprinted lines
Of sloping age gave weird and wintry signs;
But now, these trophies ours, we recognise
Only a voice faint-rippling to its shore,
And a weak tottering step, as marks of eld.
None are so far but some are on before;
Thus still at distance is the goal beheld,
And to improve the way is truly wise.

Farewell, ye blossomed hedges! and the deep
Thick green of summer on the matted bough!
The languid autumn mellows round us now:
Yet Fancy may its vernal beauties keep,
Like holly leaves for a December wreath.
To take this gift of life with trusting hands,
And star with heavenly hopes the night of death,
Is all that poor humanity demands
To lull its meaner fears in easy sleep.

LORD MACAULAY.

In 1842 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY surprised and gratified the lovers of poetry and of classic story by the publication of his Lays of Ancient Rome. Adopting the theory of Niebuhr -now generally acquiesced in as correct-that the heroic and romantic incidents related by Livy of the early history of Rome are founded merely on ancient ballads and legends, he selects four of those incidents as themes for his verse. Identifying himself with the plebeians and tribunes, he

makes them chant the martial stories of Horatius Cocles, the battle of the Lake Regillus, the death of Virginia, and the prophecy of Capys. The style is homely, abrupt, and energetic, carrying us along like the exciting narratives of Scott, and presenting brief but striking pictures of local scenery and pily delineated were hallowed by their antiquity manners. The incidents and characters so hapand heroism. The whole life and meaning of the early heroes of Rome,' says the enthusiastic Professor Wilson, are represented in the few isolated events and characters which have come down; and what a source of picturesque exaggeration to these events and characters there is in the total want of all connected history! They which renders them the richest subjects of poetic have thus acquired a pregnancy of meaning contemplation; and to evolve the sentiment they embody in any form we choose is a proper exercise of the fancy. For the same reason, is not the history which is freest of the interpreting reflection that characterises most modern histories, and presents most strictly the naked incident, always that which affords the best, and, as literature shews, the most frequent subjects of imagination? The Roman character is highly poetical-bold, brave, and independent-devoid of art or subtlety -full of faith and hope-devoted to the cause of duty, as comprised in the two great points of reverence for the gods and love of country. Shakspeare saw its fitness for the drama; and these Lays of Ancient Rome are, in their way and degree, a further illustration of the truth. Mr Macaulay might have taken, and we trust will yet take, wider ground; but what he has done he has done nobly, and like

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an antique Roman." Previous to this, during his collegiate career, the poet-historian had shewn his fitness to deal with picturesque incidents and characters in history. His noble ballads, The Battle of Naseby; Ivry, a Song of the Huguenots; and The Armada, a Fragment, are unsurpassed in spirit and grandeur except by the battle-pieces of Scott. The ancestors of Lord Macaulay were long settled in the island of Lewis, Ross-shire. His grandfather, the Rev. John Macaulay, was successively minister of South Uist, of Lismore, of Inveraray, and of Cardross in Dumbartonshire. In Inveraray, he met with Johnson and Boswell on their return from the Hebrides in the autumn of 1773. He died at Cardross in 1789. Two years previous to his death, a daughter of Mr Macaulay was married to Thomas Babington, Esq., of Rothley Temple, Leicestershire-many years the representative of Leicester in parliament and thus an English connection was formed, from which, at a subsequent period, Lord Macaulay derived the scene of his birth, his Christian name, and many of his early associations. Zachary Macaulay (1768-1838), son of the Scottish minister, was sent when a boy to the West Indies. He was disgusted with the state of slavery in Jamaica, and afterwards, on his return to Great Britain, resided at Clapham, and became an active associate of Clarkson and Wilberforce. He married Selina, daughter of Mr Thomas Mills, a bookseller in Bristol, and had, | with other children, a son destined to take a high place among the statesmen, orators, essayists, and historians of England.

the Marquis of Lansdowne, procured his return to parliament for the borough of Calne, and he rendered effective service in the Reform debates of 1831 and 1832. The speeches of Macaulay were carefully studied and nearly all committed to memory, but were delivered with animation and freedom, though with too great rapidity and in too uniform a tone and manner to do full justice to their argument and richness of illustration. In 1832 he was appointed Secretary to the Board of Control, and the same year the citizens of Leeds returned him as their representative to the House of Commons. In 1834 he proceeded to India as legal adviser to the Supreme Council of Calcutta, and was placed at the head of a Commission for the reform of East India legislation. He took an active part in the preparation of the Indian criminal code, enriching it with explanatory notes, which are described as highly valuable. He returned to England in 1838, and in the following year was triumphantly and almost without expense returned to parliament for the city of Edinburgh, which he continued to represent until 1847. In the Melbourne administration he held the office of Secretary at War, and in that of Lord John Russell, Paymaster of the Forces, with a seat in the cabinet. During this time he had written most of his essays, and published his Lays of Ancient Rome. As member for Edinburgh, his independence of character is said to have rendered him somewhat unaccommodating to certain of his constituents; his support of the Maynooth grant was resented by others; and his general political principles, so decidedly liberal, and so strongly and eloquently expressed, were opposed to the sentiments of the Conservative citizens of Edinburgh. Thus a combination of parties was formed against him, and it proved successful. He was rejected by the constituency at the general election in 1847. T defeat forms the subject of a striking copy of verses by Macaulay, but which were not published until after his death part of these we subjoin. The electors of Edinburgh redeemed, or at least palliated, their error by returning Macaulay again to parliament, free of expense, and without any movement on his part. This was in 1852. He had previously published the first two volumes of his History of England, which appeared in 1849, and were read with extraordinary avidity and admiration. Other two volumes were published in 1855, and a portion of a fifth volume after the death of the author. In 1849 he was elected Lord Rector of the university of Glasgow, and pre

Thomas Babington Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple, the seat of his paternal uncle, on the 25th of October 1800. At the age of twelve he was placed under the care of the Rev. Mr Preston, first at Shelford, afterwards near Buntingford, in the neighbourhood of Cambridge. As a schoolboy he was noted as being an insatiable reader; and he sent a defence of novel-reading to the serious journal of his father's friends, the Christian Observer. This passion for novel-reading adhered to him to the last.* In his nineteenth year he was entered of Trinity College, Cambridge; he gained two prizes for English verse, one in 1819 on Pompeii, and one two years afterwards on Evening. He gained the Craven scholarship in 1821, took his degree of B.A. in 1822, became Fellow of his college in 1824, and took his degree of M.A. in 1825. He had distinguished himself by contributions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine in 1823 and 1824; and in August 1825 appeared his celebrated article on Milton in the Edinburgh Review.sented with the freedom of the city. While enThis essay, though afterwards condemned by its author as containing scarcely a paragraph such as his matured judgment approved,' and as 'overloaded with gaudy and ungraceful ornament,' arrested public attention in no ordinary degree, and was hailed as the precursor (which it proved to be) of a series of brilliant contributions to our critical literature. Having studied at Lincoln's Inn, Mr Macaulay was called to the bar in 1826, and joined the Northern Circuit. In 1827, Lord Lyndhurst-generously discarding political feeling, as he did also in the case of Sydney Smith-appointed Macaulay Commissioner of Bankruptcy. Three years afterwards, a distinguished Whig nobleman,

* Dean Milman's Memoir of Lord Macaulay, written for the Annual Journal of the Royal Society.

gaged on his History, Macaulay turned aside to confer a graceful and substantial favour on Mr Adam Black, publisher, Edinburgh. Mr Black had solicited literary assistance from his distinguished friend for a new edition (the eighth) of his Encyclopædia Britannica. The request was complied with; and,' says Mr Black, ‘it is but justice to his memory that I should record, as one of the many instances of the kindness and generosity of his heart, that he made it a stipulation of his contributing to the Encyclopædia that remuneration should not be so much as mentioned.' On this generous footing, Macaulay contributed five carefully finished biographies-Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Johnson, and Pitt-the last appearing in 1859. From failing health he withdrew from parliament in January 1856. In 1857 various

honours were showered on the popular author: he was elected a foreign member of the French Academy, a member of the Prussian Order of! Merit, High Steward of Cambridge, and a peer of Great Britain under the title of Baron Macaulay of Rothley. His health, however, was gone; he laboured under derangement of the action of the heart, and felt, says Dean Milman, 'inward monitions: his ambition (as the historian of England) receded from the hope of reaching the close of the first Brunswicks; before his last illness he had reduced his plan to the reign of Queen Anne. His end, though not without warning to those who watched him with friendship and affection, was sudden and singularly quiet; on December 28, 1859, he fell asleep and woke not again. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in Poets' Corner, his favourite haunt.'

Lord Macaulay's memory and conversational powers were the wonder and envy of all his contemporaries. He was constantly heaping up stores of knowledge, as his reverend biographer remarks, and those stores' could not overload his capacious and retentive memory, which disdained nothing as beneath it, and was never perplexed or burdened by its incalculable possessions.' has been accused of talking too much, and Sydney Smith alluded to the 'eloquent flashes of silence' with which it was sometimes, though rarely, relieved; but this was a jocular exaggeration, and in general society Macaulay seldom demanded a larger share than all were willing to yield to him.

Lines written in August 1847.

He

The day of tumult, strife, defeat, was o'er ;
Worn out with toil, and noise, and scorn, and
spleen,

I slumbered, and in slumber saw once more
A room in an old mansion, long unseen.

That room, methought, was curtained from the light; Yet through the curtains shone the moon's cold ray Full on a cradle, where, in linen white,

Sleeping life's first soft sleep, an infant lay.

Pale flickered on the hearth the dying flame,
And all was silent in that ancient hall,
Save when by fits on the low night-wind came
The murmur of the distant waterfall.

And lo! the fairy queens who rule our birth

Drew nigh to speak the new-born baby's doom: With noiseless step, which left no trace on earth, From gloom they came, and vanished into gloom.

Not deigning on the boy a glance to cast,

Swept careless by the gorgeous Queen of Gain; More scornful still, the Queen of Fashion passed, With mincing gait, and sneer of cold disdain. The Queen of Power tossed high her jewelled head, And o'er her shoulder threw a wrathful frown; The Queen of Pleasure on the pillow shed Scarce one stray rose-leaf from her fragrant crown.

Still fay in long procession followed fay;

And still the little couch remained unblest: But, when those wayward sprites had passed away, Came One, the last, the mightiest, and the best.

O glorious lady, with the eyes of light,

And laurels clustering round thy lofty brow, Who by the cradle's side didst watch that night, Warbling a sweet, strange music, who wast thou?

'Yes, darling; let them go ;' so ran the strain : 'Yes; let them go, Gain, Fashion, Pleasure, Power, And all the busy elves to whose domain

Belongs the nether sphere, the fleeting hour.

'Without one envious sigh, one anxious scheme,
The nether sphere, the fleeting hour resign;
Mine is the world of thought, the world of dream,
Mine all the past, and all the future mine.

'Fortune, that lays in sport the mighty low,

Age, that to penance turns the joys of youth,
Shall leave untouched the gifts which I bestow,
The sense of beauty, and the thirst of truth.

'And even so, my child, it is my pleasure
That thou not then alone shouldst feel me nigh,
When in domestic bliss and studious leisure,
Thy weeks uncounted come, uncounted fly;
'Not then alone, when myriads, closely pressed
Around thy car, the shout of triumph raise;
Nor when, in gilded drawing-rooms, thy breast
Swells at the sweeter sound of woman's praise.
'No: when on restless night dawns cheerless morrow,
When weary soul and wasting body pine,
Thine am I still, in danger, sickness, sorrow;
In conflict, obloquy, want, exile, thine.

'Thine, where on mountain waves the snowbirds

scream,

Where more than Thule's winter barbs the breeze, Where scarce, through lowering clouds, one sickly gleam

Lights the drear May-day of antarctic seas.

'Thine, when around thy litter's track all day

White sand-hills shall reflect the blinding glare; Thine, when through forests breathing death, thy way All night shall wind, by many a tiger's lair.

'Thine most, when friends turn pale, when traitors fly,
When, hard beset, thy spirit, justly proud,
For truth, peace, freedom, mercy, dares defy
A sullen priesthood and a raving crowd.

'Amidst the din of all things fell and vile,
Hate's yell, and Envy's hiss, and Folly's bray,
Remember me, and with an unforced smile
See riches, baubles, flatterers, pass away.

'Yes, they will pass; nor deem it strange :
They come and go as comes and goes the sea:
And let them come and go; thou, through all change,
Fix thy firm gaze on virtue and on me.'

Epitaph on a Jacobite (1845).

To my true king I offered, free from stain,
Courage and faith; vain faith and courage vain.
For him I threw lands, honours, wealth, away,
And one dear hope that was more prized than they.
For him I languished in a foreign clime,
Gray-haired with sorrow in my manhood's prime;
Heard on Lavernia Scargill's whispering trees,
And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees;
Beheld each night my home in fevered sleep,
Each morning started from the dream to weep;
Till God, who saw me tried too sorely, gave
The resting-place I asked, an early grave.

O thou, whom chance leads to this nameless stone,
From that proud country which was once mine own,
By those white cliffs I never more must see,
By that dear language which I spake like thee,
Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear
O'er English dust-a broken heart lies here.

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