When Sir Clarence, however, rode up to the front of the hall, expecting to find her there with the rest of the party, he felt not a little chagrined to perceive his betrothed seated quietly by Lady Courtenay's side, in her ladyship's poney carriage, the pleasure of having outwitted him lurking beneath the dark lashes of her eyes, and speaking pretty plainly in the dimpling smiles on her countenance.

"You will be forced to put up with Sir Charles and Mr. Mordaunt's company," cried Lady Courtenay, with a gracious smile; "I am afraid to trust my niece on horseback this morning, Sir, Clarence."

"I hope Miss Courtenay is not indisposed," inquired the concerned Sir Clarence, bending down to his saddle-bow; "Oh! I am sure that beautiful complexion belies your ladyship's certificate of indisposition."

"Madeline had only a bad night," said Lady Courtenay, earnestly; "and though her spirits really bear her through wonderfully, yet I must not let her run the risk of a scamper in such dangerous company; you must not be jealous, for you know-" and the rest of her ladyship's communication, whatever it was, ended in a whisper which sent Sir Clarence away smiling and bowing more lovingly than ever.

"Now, Madeline, my love, we will have a quiet drive round the park; the gentlemen will not be at home until three or four o'clock, so that we need not be in a hurry to return; do you not think Sir Clarence a very fine-looking man."

"He wears well for his age, madam," returned Madeline, sarcastically; "you would scarcely suppose him to be so old."

Lady Courtenay nearly let the reins drop with astonishment. "My dear child," she exclaimed, "how dreadfully old you make Sir Clarence out to be; consider, love, he is your future husband."

"Sir Clarence Mildmay, aunt, shall never be my husband," cried Madeline, with a look and tone that made even Lady Courtenay quail before her; "No! I would rather live out the rest of my days, old and poor, and forgotten and unloved by all, than be the wife of that man-and that, madam, is my creed!" continued she with bitter emphasis, as she turned her beautiful and scornfully indignant countenance full upon the angry gaze of her ladyship.

4

TO AN ADOPTED CHILD.

It is said on the stormy winter nights, there are wailings wild and sweet, Swept along on the tempests' whirl-the desolate heart to greet;

When the opening gates of Paradise, receive a soul to rest,

The strains of angelic hymns escape from the mansions of the blest ;
And the blissful music floateth by, brief as the lightning's play,
And onward faintly echoing rolls-o'er boundless space away.

Mine adopted one! my heart's own child! my soul hath welcomed thee—
Thy voice hath breathed o'er its discord wild-this celestial harmony;
The wintry storm hath been drear and cold—and the mariners' hope will

cling

To the land where flowers of summer bloom, and birds for ever sing :

A flower of earth art thou to me-a bird of summer skies,

And on thy pure and transparent mind reflected Heaven lies.

Mine adopted one! mine only one! my beautiful and best,
Though stranger to my blood thou art-unnurtured at this breast—
No mother's love could exceed the love-so deeply cherish'd for thee—
Thou dearest-sweetest-and brightest gift-star of my destiny!
Though youth is passing away-and sorrow hath quenched its light—
Let this one bright star illume the path—and day beams forth in night!

Mine adopted one! my darling child! when winter tempests roar―
The angel music floateth past—and is heard on earth no more;
Thou, too, must quickly pass away -for the longest life doth seem
When named in the breath with Eternity-but a transient fleeting dream;
Live so beloved-that in youth or age-the Paradise gates may be,
On the stormy night-or the sunny day-freely opened to thee!

C. A. M. W.

JOHNSON VERSUS MILTON.

BY J. EWING RITCHIE.

IN penning a few remarks in accordance with our title, it is necessary that we should first consider the character of Johnson, or rather that portion of it developed in his critical writings with which we have principally to do, and which we would term the critical section of his character. We have said, with which we have principally to do, because in judging a man's judgment, in criticising the criticisms of a critic, there is much that at first sight may seem foreign, which must be taken into account. Causes from within, or from without, may act upon the man and modify the judgment. The habits, the prejudices, the feelings, the passions, the opinions, the interests, of the critic, may in a thousand various ways affect and render unfair the criticism. Unconsciously to himself, with an aim that shall be good, he may yet pronounce a sentence that shall be untrue. A man may sit down to draw a Venus, may intend to flatter even her, to endow her with eyes more deeply, darkly, beautifully blue, lips more red, brow more fair; and yet the lady drawn may possess the pleasing peculiarity of being the ugliest of all Earth's daughters.

It is now the fashion to run down Johnson, as amongst our fath it was the fashion to praise him. A race has arisen that kno him not. Money-making Manchester can barely find time f its threepenny newspaper, and patronizes no literature that dat from the dark side of the French Revolution. A change in sty and thought has taken place since Johnson's day, the laurel ha been torn from his brow by an almost unanimous confederacy the great men, and the little, in the literary world: many of whom had all Boswell's foolishness and none of Boswell's sense-that reverence for and subjection to a master mind, which obtained for him what little honour he ever had. Boswell did what few men do-he saw the divinity within-he could tell when he had seen a man-he could see that beyond the rough exterior-beyond the outward sins against grace and manner, where there was something true and great within; and, inasmuch as he did this, did he himself rise in all that gives dignity and worth to man. Boswell has rendered

undying his own name and that of Johnson's; to that most perfect of all biographies, that most life-like of all pictures no one has ever turned in vain. Johnson's works may fail to delight him. Rasselas may, indeed, be an eastern tale, but his life has all the charm and freshness of reality. We see the unwieldy form, we hear the dogmatic conversation, and almost shrink into nothing at the annihilating "sirs." We form one of the then many who stood and gazed, and trembled, and admired, in his presence. Involuntarily we join the throng—we do homage to the man; we lay our offerings at his feet, and then turn away, and unite in the general cry, "Great is the monarch of Bolt Court.

Samuel Johnson."

Great is

Thus was it in his life-time. In an old arm chair, apparelled in rustyblack, corpulent somewhat more than bard beseemed, in the first floor of a narrow court, in a crowded street of a crowded capital, did he sit and talk and legislate with the state and power of a tyrant. That day is passed. He, the great literary dictator of his time, whom not merely Grub Street, but all England, delighted to honour, has had his right to that high eminence disputed-his claims denied. Those whom his one word would have silenced with disgrace, were he alive, have made him the object of their paltry sneers. To a degree the contempt of the contemptible literature has been his lot.

Johnson's character and life unfitted him for the part of a critic, and, therefore, it was not to be expected he should play that part well. In the early part of it he was literally writing for bread, and, therefore, could not lead the age; and when he did lead it, all that the age contained of one-sided views of unbending prejudice, of dark and unrelenting bigotry, was embodied in his life and character, and had become as inseparable a condition of his being as the life-blood that flowed in his heart. He had been taken up by a class, and he stood by that class to the last. There was little of catholic feeling in him-his mission was truly to his own. His views were those of a thorough Englishman, and that Englishman a thorough advocate of church and state, and of church and state as they were before Old Sarum was disfranchised and Manchester sent its representatives to Parliament. Johnson argued, as every genuine John Bull invariably does ;-the Athenians had no printed books, therefore they were an ignorant set of men ; the Scotch prayed without a liturgy, consequently, they had no religion. In this perfectly free and easy manner did Johnson undertake to dispose of whole classes and communities of men. He divided the world into two classes. Himself, and those who agreed with him, he placed in the first class; they were right. The rest were wrong. With him was orthodoxy and salvationwith those who thought differently there was heresy and death. Unfortunately foremost in the latter stood Milton's undying name, and

Johnson, who was but an indifferent poet, or rather no poet at all, but a tolerably sonorous rhymester, attempted to criticise the minor poems of Milton, to whose beauties he was utterly blind. Never was mortal man more unfitted for his task; the critic and the author had nothing in common. For Johnson to set up as Milton's critic was as absurd as it would be were Grantley Berkeley to sit in judgment on Quaker Bright, or were Mr. Lane Fox, who has declared himself ready to ride up to his charger's neck in the blood of the papist and the infidel, to favour the reading public with the life and times of the late member for all Ireland. As well might the patentee of Betts's British Brandy become the biogragrapher of Father Mathew-or the Rev. Hugh M'Neile undertake to pourtray his reverence the Pope.

In opposition to all the rules of good nature and law, where the circumstances are doubtful, Johnson invariably inclines to the most unfavourable side. He acted completely contrary to the more charitable rule of believing a man innocent until he is proved guilty. Hence the unfavourable facts, and still more unfavourable insinuations, which mark his life of Milton, and which, at the time, to borrow a figure from Boswell, caused "the hounds of Whiggism to open in full cry," as well they might. When we recollect also who it is who makes the charges, Johnson's own surly one-sided character, many of them appear perfectly ridiculous. Quoting a passage, Johnson remarks, "Such is the controversial movement of Milton. His gloomy seriousness is yet more offensive. Such is his malignity that hell grows darker at his frown." A few pages further on, he represents this austere, unbending man, as an abject, fawning sycophant at the feet of the Protector. Johnson well knew that the materials that form the one character are very different to those that form the other, but he made the blunder in his anxiety to wrong the character of the writer of "Paradise Lost." Milton belonged to no establishment of religion. Johnson shakes his head, and says he was not of the church of Rome-he was not of the church of England, and having thus taken it for granted, that not to belong to either of these was not to be a religious man at all; he gravely observes, to be of no church is dangerous. But suppose we substitute for Milton's name that of a good Tory and high churchman, a friend of Johnson's, such as Dr. John Campbell, we shall hear him tell a different tale. Campbell is a good man, a pious man. I am afraid he has not been inside of a church for many years; but he never passes a church without pulling off his hat. This shows that he has good principles." Bear also in mind, that Johnson, himself, when in Scotland, thought it right to absent himself from public worship, because the ministers of the Kirk had not received episcopal ordination.

66

But to proceed with the criticisms on the smaller poems.