that is, the man most thoroughly permeated by the new spirit, and gifted beyond his fellows with the power of giving it expression.

The great spaces, however, which lie between one great poetical luminary and another, are not totally void. They cannot boast, indeed, of any perfect orb, however minute, moving in its brilliant though limited circle; but their utter desolateness is partially relieved by numerous small bodies, something like those incomplete fragments of planets that lie between Mars and Jupiter. As it is in one of those spaces that the literary world is at present moving, we cannot promise our readers any very wonderful discoveries, or any very dazzling spectacle, as they look through our critical telescope at the objects that may rise before them. We promise them, however, that we shall arrange our glass in such a manner, that nothing really beautiful or interesting in those objects shall be wilfully neglected for there is a beauty and an interest in all created things and to discover these, we sincerely wish that our small critical eyeglass had the magnifying powers of the leviathan telescope of the Earl of Rosse.

With the exception of Tennyson's (if the remark is not applicable to his also), the most successful poetry of the last twenty years has been unquestionably that species that sympathised most intimately with the social questions and difliculties of the age. In this department, no man would have reached such thorough and complete success indeed, no man has attained such pre-eminence as the late THOMAS HOOD. If he himself had not been one of the most conspicuous victims of the unhealthy and unhappy social system under which this generation is living-if he, with a heart genial and overflowing like a hot spring, with a fancy teeming with imagery and vi sions of consummate beauty, with an ear attuned to sweetest harmony, and with a soul filled, like a mountain lake, with the deepest and the calmest thought, and shadowed by that slight, overhanging, melancholy gloom which is ever the attendant of genius-if he,

we say, possessed of all those rare and lofty qualities, had not been compelled

"To make himself a motley to the view"

for bread-driven from the divine mission which nature had qualified him to fill, by the necessities of life-he, instead of being the jester of his age, might have been its best and loftiest teacher! As it is, he has left two or three texts which the world will not

easily forget: need we mention one ?— the most exquisite and yet most painful poem of its kind perhaps in the whole range of English poetry-" The Bridge of Sighs."

Since the death of Hood, the writer who has most successfully dealt with social questions, with the struggles and difficulties that specially beset life in these countries at the present time, and with the hopes that are rising, like crescent moons, upon the horizon of the future, is, unquestionably CHARLES MACKAY.*

Dr. Mackay appears to us to be singularly well adapted for the particular poetical mission to which he seems to consider himself called. His sympa thies are all with the classes to whom and for whom he sings; his prejudices are few, and those generally based upon some error, so generous as to be almost a merit; his style is simple, clear, and unpretending, while there is a popular melody in his versification that wins an easy way to the ear of " the million." He does not seek for inspiration, in this instance at least, at the ordinary

to the unfortunate and the oppressed; but we dislike very much the spirit in which a few of his pieces are conceived and written. We dislike, for instance, his "Mary and Lady Mary," as well for the injurious tendency and want of delicacy of such couplets as this

"Her pulse is calm, milk-white her skin-
She hath not blood enough to sin,"

as for its being deliberately written down to the level of some of the lowest prejudices of those classes whose habits of thought, as well as whose material condition, we are perfectly certain Dr. Mackay is sincerely anxious to elevate and to improve. There are two poems, however, which we give without curtailment, and which we think our readers will join with us in admiring:

"THE LIGHT IN THE WINDOW.

BY CHARLES MACKAY, LL.D.

"Late or early home returning,
In the starlight or the rain,
I beheld that lonely candle
Shining from his window-pane.
Ever o'er his tattered curtain,
Nightly looking, I could scan,
Aye inditing,
Writing-writing,

The pale figure of a man;
Still discern behind him fall
The same shadow on the wall.

"Far beyond the murky midnight,
By dim burning of my oil,
Filling aye his rapid leaflets,
I have watched him at his toil;
Watched his broad and seamy fore-
head,

Watched his white industrious hand,
Ever passing
And repassing;

Watched and strove to understand
What impelled it-gold, or fame-
Bread, or bubble of a name.

"Oft I've asked, debating vainly
In the silence of my mind,
What the services he rendered
To his country or his kind;
Whether tones of ancient music,
Or the sound of modern gong,
Wisdom holy,
Humours lowly,

Sermon, essay, novel, song,
Or philosophy sublime,
Filled the measure of his time.
"Of the mighty world of London,
He was portion unto me,
Portion of my life's experience,
Fused into my memory.

Twilight saw him at his folios,
Morning saw his fingers run,
Labouring ever,
Wearying never

Of the task he had begun;
Placid and content he seemed,

Like a man that toiled and dreamed.

"No one sought him, no one knew him, Undistinguished was his name;

Never had his praise been uttered
By the oracles of fame.

Scanty fare and decent raiment,
Humble lodging, and a fire-
These he sought for,
These he wrought for,
And he gained his meek desire;
Teaching men by written word—
Clinging to a hope deferred.

"So he lived. At last I missed him;
Still might evening twilight fall,
But no taper lit his lattice-
Lay no shadow on his wall.
In the winter of his seasons,
In the midnight of his day,
'Mid his writing,

And inditing,

Death had beckoned him away,
Ere the sentence he had planned
Found completion at his hand.

"But this man so old and nameless
Left behind him projects large,
Schemes of progress undeveloped,
Worthy of a nation's charge;
Noble fancies uncompleted,
Germs of beauty immatured,
Only needing

Kindly feeding

To have flourished and endured; Meet reward in golden store

To have lived for evermore.

"Who shall tell what schemes majestic Perish in the active brain?

What humanity is robbed of,
Ne'er to be restored again?
What we lose, because we honour
Overmuch the mighty dead,
And dispirit
Living merit

Heaping scorn upon its head?
Or perchance, when kinder grown,
Leaving it to die-alone?

The following, though written in town, has caught its inspiration from the fields. There is nothing to object to in it, except, perhaps, the use of the verb "dogs," in the sixth line of the fourth stanza. The idea (which, however, is but a mere conceit) could not be easily expressed by any other word; but it is scarcely good enough to excuse the use of one so vulgar and unpoetical as this:—

BY CHARLES MACKAY, LL.D.

"What time the fern puts forth its rings,
What time the early throstle sings,
I love to fly the murky town,
And tread the moorlands, bare and
brown;

From greenest level of the glens
To barest summit of the Bens,
To trace the torrents where they flow,
Serene or brawling, fierce or slow;
To linger pleased, and loiter long,
A silent listener to their song.

"Farewell, ye streets! Again I'll sit
On crags to watch the shadows flit;
To list the buzzing of the bee,
Or branches waving like a sea;
To hear far off the cuckoo's note,
Or lark's clear carol high afloat,
And find a joy in every sound,
Of air, the water, or the ground;
Of fancies full, though fixing nought,
And thinking-heedless of my thought.

"Farewell! and in the teeth of care

I'll breathe the buxom mountain air,
Feed vision upon dykes and hues,
That from the hill-top interfuse,
White rocks, and lichens born of
spray,

Dark heather tufts, and mosses gray,
Green grass, blue sky, and boulders
brown,

With amber waters glistening down, And early flowers, blue, white, and pink,

That fringe with beauty all the brink.

"Farewell, ye streets! Beneath an arch Of drooping birch or feathery larch, Or mountain ash, that o'er it bends, I'll watch some streamlet as it wends; Some brook whose tune its course betrays,

Whose verdure dogs its hidden waysVerdure of trees and bloom of flowers, And music fresher than the showers, Soft-dripping where the tendrils twine;

And all its beauty shall be mine.

Ay, mine, to bring me joy and health,
And endless stores of mental wealth-
Wealth ever given to hearts that warm
To loveliness of sound or form,
And that can see in Nature's face
A hope, a beauty, and a grace-
That in the city or the woods,
In thoroughfares or solitudes,

Can live their life at Nature's call,
Despising nothing, loving all.

"Sweet streams, that over summits leap,
Or fair in rock-hewn basins sleep;
That foaming burst in bright cascades,
Or toy with cowslips in the shades;
That shout till earth and sky grow

mute,

Or tinkle lowly as a lute;
That sing a song of lusty joy,
Or murmur like a love-lorn boy;
That creep or fall, that flow or run-
I doat upon you every one.

"For many a day of calm delight,
And hour of pleasure stol'n from
night;

For morning freshness, joy of noon,
And beauty rising with the moon;
For health, encrimsoner of cheeks,
And wisdom gained on mountain
peaks;

For inward light from Nature won,
And visions gilded by the sun;
For fancies fair, and waking dreams-
I love ye all, ye mountain streams."

The name of FRANCES BROWN, the blind poetess of Donegal, is familiar to most of our readers. Her sad privation, her talents, and the difficulties with which she had, and we believe still has, to contend, have awakened a good deal of interest in her regard; and many of our friends will be glad to have the opportunity of testifying their sympathy for her, by purchasing the very neat and elegant little volume that we have now the pleasure of bringing under their notice.*

Prevented as she is by the calamity with which she is afflicted from undertaking any of the few occupations which, according to the custom of these countries, are open to females, the gift of song is to her, what it is to very few, a blessing as well as an enjoyment. If she has been deprived of "the vision," she has been gifted with the "faculty divine;" and if she has lost many enjoyments, she has at least one consolation

"Ainsi la cigale innocente, Sur un arbuste assise, et se console et chante."

In an age like the present, so prolific in verse-writers, it is something to make one's-self heard-and this

Frances Brown has done. She has made for herself an admiring, a sympathizing, and, we believe, an increasing audience.

The following little tale is sweetly told:

66 THE LAST OF THE JAGELLONS.

BY FRANCES BROWN.

"Sigismund, last of the Jagellons, on the death of his father was unanimously elected King of Poland. But having previously married a lady of humble birth, whom the nobles requested him to divorce, as, according to the prejudices of that age, unworthy to be a Queen: Sigismund sternly told them, that either his wife should share the crown or he would never wear it. The senators, convinced that so true a husband must make a worthy King, immediately consented to do her homage as his Queen-and both were crowned accordingly.

"He said-but from the throng arose
Ere yet his speech was done,
A wilder, louder cheer than those
That told of conquest won-
When far in many a famous field,
Through long victorious years,
O'er Tartar bow and Paynim shield
He led the Polish spears.

And thus, they said, "the Flower,
whose worth

Inspired a soul so great
With love like this, whate'er her birth,
Should be a monarch's mate;
And as thy tameless heart was found
To love and honour true-
Oh, early tried, and far-renown'd,
Be true to Poland too !" "

"The minstrel ceased, and with a sigh
That noble matron said-
Alas, for Europe's chivalry-
How hath its glory fled!
Perchance in sylvan grove or glen
Such faithful love is known-
But when will earth behold again
Its truth so near a throne ?" "

The quiet, gentle pathos of the following story goes direct to the heart:—