to him all the summer through whenever he had any time to himself. But Colin's time was not much at his own disposal. Nature had given to the country lad a countenance which propitiated the world. Not that it was handsome in the abstract, or could bear examination feature by feature, but there were few people who could resist the mingled shyness and frankness of the eyes with which Colin looked out upon the miraculous universe, perceiving perpetual wonders. The surprise of existence was still in his face, indignant though he would have been had anybody told him so; and tired people of the world, who knew better than they practised, took comfort in talking to the youth, who, whatever he might choose to say, was still looking as might be seen, with fresh eyes at the dewy earth, and saw everything through the atmosphere of the morning. This unconscious charm of his told greatly upon women, and most of all upon women who were older than himself. The young ladies were not so sure of him, for his fancy was preoccupied ; but he gained many friends among the matrons whom he encountered, and such friendships are apt to make large inroads. upon a young man's time. And their hospitality reigns paramount on those sweet shores of the Holy Loch. Mr. Jordan filled his handsome house with a continual succession of guests from all quarters; and as neither the host nor hostess was in the least degree amusing, Colin's services were in constant requisition. Sometimes the company was good, often indifferent; but, at all events, it occupied the youth, and kept him from too much inquisition into the early troubles of his

career.

Own

His life went on in this fashion until September brought sportsmen in flocks. to the heathery braes of the loch. Colin, whose engagement was but a temporary one, was beginning to look forward once again to his old life in Glasgow-to the close little room in Donaldson's Land, and the long walks and longer talks with Lauderdale, which were almost his only recreation. Perhaps the idea was

not so agreeable to him as in former years. Somehow, he was going back with a duller prospect of existence, with his radiance of variable light upon his horizon; and in the absence of this fairy illumination the natural circumstances became more palpable, and struck him with a sense of their poverty and meanness such as he had never felt before. He had to gulp down a little disgust as he thought of his attic, and even, in the involuntary fickleness of his years, was not quite so sure of enjoying Lauderdale's philosophy as he had once been.

He was in this state of mind when

he heard of a new party of visitors who were to arrive the day after at Ardmartin-a distinguished party of visitors, fine people, whom Mr. Jordan had met somewhere in the world, and who had deigned to forget his lack of rank, and even of interest, in his wealth, and his grouse, and the convenient situation of his house; for Colin's employer was not moderately rich-a condition which does a man no good in society-but had heaps upon heaps of money, or was supposed to have such, which comes to about the same, and was respected accordingly. Colin listened but languidly to the scraps of talk he heard about these fine people. There was a dowager countess among them, whose name abstracted the lady of the house from all her important considerations. As for Colin, he was still too young to care for dowagers; he heard without hearing of all the preparations that were to be made, and the exertions that were thought necessary in order to make Ardmartin agreeable to so illustrious a party, and paid very little attention to anything that was going on, hoping within himself to make his escape from the fuss of the reception, and have a little time to himself. On the afternoon on which they were expected he betook himself to the hills, as soon as his work with his pupils was It had been raining as usual, and everything shone and glistened in the sun, which blazed all over the braes with a brightness which did not neu

over.

tralize the chill of the wind. The air was so still that Colin heard the crack of the sportsman's gun from different points around him, miles apart from each other, and could, even on the height where he stood, discriminate the throb of the little steamer which was progressing through the loch at his feet, reflecting to the minutest touch, from its pennon of white steam at the funnel to the patches of colour among its passengers on the deck, in the clear water on which it glided. The young man pursued his walk till the shadows began to gather, and the big bell of Ardmartin pealed out its summons to dress into all the echoes as he reached the gate. The house looked crowded to the very door, where it had overflowed in a margin of servants, some of whom were still importing the last carriage as Colin entered. He pursued his way to his own room languidly enough, for he was tired, and he was not interested either. As he went up the grand staircase, however, he passed a door which was ajar, and from which came the sound of an

animated conversation. Colin started as if he had received a blow, as one of these voices fell on his

ear.

He came to a dead pause in the gallery upon which this room opened, and stood listening, unconscious of the surprised looks of somebody's maid, who passed him with her lady's dress in her arms, and looked very curiously at the tutor. Colin stopped short and listened, suddenly roused up into a degree of interest which brought the colour to his cheek and the light to his eye. He thought all the ladies of the party must be there, so varied was the pleasant din and so many the voices; but he had been standing breathless, in the most eager pose of listening, for nearly half the time allowed for dressing, before he heard again the voice which had arrested him. Then, when he began to imagine that it must have been a dream, the sound struck his ear once more-a few brief syllables, a sweet, sudden laugh, and again silence. Was it her voice? or was it only a mock of fancy? While he stood lingering, wondering, straining

his ear for a repetition of the sound, the door opened softly, and various white figures in dressing-gowns flitted off upstairs and downstairs, some of them uttering little exclamations of fright at sight of the alarming apparition of a man. It was pretty to see them dispersing, like so many white doves, from that momentary confabulation; but she was not among them. Colin went up to his room and dressed with lightning speed, chafing within himself at the humble place which he was expected to take at the table. When he went into the dining-room, as usual, all the rest of the party were taking their places. The only womankind distinctly within Colin's sight was one of fifty, large enough to make six Matildas. He could not see her though he strained his eyes up and down through the long alley of fruits and flowers. Though he was not twenty, and had walked about ten miles that afternoon over the wholesome heather, the poor young fellow could not eat any dinner. He had been placed beside a hoary old man to amuse him, whom his employer thought might be useful to the young student; but Colin had not half a dozen words to spend upon any one. Was she here ? or was it mere imagination which brought down to him now and then, through the pauses of the conversation, a momentary tone that was like hers? When the ladies left the room the young man rushed, though it was not his office, to open the door for them. Another moment and Colin was in paradise—the paradise of fools. How was it possible that he could have been deceived? The little start with which she recognised him, the moment of surprise which made her drop her handkerchief and brought the colour to her cheek, rapt the lad into a feeling more exquisite than any he had known all his life. She smiled; she gave him a rapid, sweet look of recognition, which was made complete by that start of surprise. Matilda was here, under the same roof-she whom he had never hoped to see again. Colin fell headlong into the unintended swoon. He sat pondering over her look and her

startled movements all the tedious time, while the other men drank their wine, without being at all aware what divine elixir was in his cup. Her look of sweet wonder kept shining ever brighter and brighter before his imagination. Was it wonder only, or some dawning of another sentiment? If she had spoken,

the spell might have been less powerful A crowd of fairy voices kept whispering all manner of delicious follies in Colin's ear, as he sat waiting for the moment when he could follow her. Imagination did everything for him in that moment of expectation and unlooked-for delight.

THIS is the quaint title-and there is much in a title of a volume of poetry, nay, we may conscientiously say a poem, which, even if less note-worthy in itself, would have been remarkable for the circumstances of its production. It is not one of the innumerable "lays," "verses," "lyrics"-the weak, crude efforts of some young scribbler thirsting for reputation, but the one work, the concentrated, deliberate labour of love, given, as the fruit of many years, by a man whose life-labour in another art has earned for him a reputation high enough to make poetical renown of very secondary value. Thomas Woolner, the sculptor, has no need of the fame of a poet. And though when he leaves the chisel for the pen, he must necessarily be judged among pen-labourers, just as severely and accurately as if his marble-poems had never existed,-still it is curious to trace in this additional instance a confirmation of the fact, that genius has but one common root, and that its development into one of the three branches of the sister arts is often a mere accident. We could name many living men of mark, or whom chance alone appears to have decided whether they should be poets, artists, or musicians. And we need not go so far back as Da Vinci or Michael Angelo to find some who have excelled in all the various subdivisions into which branches that strange gift which we call the creative faculty; who have been at once painters, sculptors, engravers, architects, musicians, poets. Though, except in rarest instances, this is a fatal excellence. A

man is far safer in having one single settled purpose in his life, unto which all his study, observation, and experience ought to tend. It is highly to Mr. Woolner's credit-and doubtless to the great benefit of his fame as a sculptorthat, with all this facility of versification, and the intense delight which all who read his book must be convinced the author took therein, he has allowed himself to be, Rumour says, from ten to fifteen years, in perfecting, unpublished, "My Beautiful Lady."

And he has his reward.

:

Seldom does

a critic rest with such complete satisfaction on a book, which, whatever level of literary merit it may attain, cannot but be regarded as being, of its kind, a pure work of art, careful, conscientious, complete in which nothing is done slovenly, or erratically, or hastily. Earnest, too-and though strictly impersonal in its character-yet retaining the vivid impression of the author's individuality, that is, his individuality transfused through his imagination, so as to be able to generalize, concentrate, and elevate accidental fact into universal, poetic truth. In plain words, no one would ever suspect Mr. Woolner of being the hero of his own poem, yet by the power which genius alone possesses, he has been able so thoroughly to identify himself with his conception, that every one who reads his pathetic story of "love which never found its earthly close," will feel at once that it is in one sense absolutely true; that sublimation of literal fact, out of which the poet creates a universal verity.

This fervid and touching realism lifts the book in some degree out of the level of ordinary criticism. Reviewers, trained and eager to dart with "flawseeking eyes, like needle-points," upon faulty expressions, fancied plagiarisms, tumid common-places, might no doubt discover such in this volume; but the mere reader, who reads for his own delight, will be carried along, heart-warm, by the mere impetus of that delight, nor pause to criticise till he has ceased to feel.

Strongly emotional-yet with both. passion and fancy made subordinate to its ethical purpose, the book stands out distinctly among all poems of late years, as the deification of Love. Love, regarded neither as the "Venus Victrix" of the ancients, nor treated with the sentimental chivalry of medieval times-or the fantastic, frivolous homage of a later age, under which lay often concealed the -lowest form of the passion which can degrade manhood or insult womanhood; but love, the consoler, the refiner, the purifier, the stimulator to all that is high and lovely and of good report Love, not spread abroad among many objects the "episode in man's life," as Byron terms it-(alas! he spoke but as he knew)-or the dream of mere fancy, like Shelley's :

"In many mortal forms I rashly sought The shadow of this idol of my thought;"

but love, strong, human, undivided, and from its very singleness the more passionately pure ;-the devotion of the individual man to the individual woman, who is to him the essence of all womanhood, the satisfaction of all his being's need; from whom he learns everything, and to whom he teaches everything of that secret which is the lifeblood of the universe, since it flows from the heart of God Himself—the Love Divine.

This doctrine, the Christian doctrine of love, is, even in our Christian times, so dimly known and believed in, that we hail thankfully one more poet, one more man, who has the strength to believe in it, and the courage to declare it.

For, God knows, it is the only human gospel which in this fast corrupting age will have power to save men and elevate women. Coventry Patmore preached it in his " Angel in the House," which, with all its quaintnesses and peculiarities, stands alone as the song of songs, wherein is glorified the pure passion, which, if it is to be found anywhere in the world, is to be found at our English firesides conjugal love. And though "My Beautiful Lady," attains not that height-fate forbidding that the love of betrothal should ever become the perfect love of marriagestill it breathes throughout the same spirit. Such books as these are the best barrier against that flood of foulness which seems creeping in upon us, borne in, wave after wave, up to our English doors by the tide of foreign literature; French novels, with their tinsel cleverness, overspreading a mass of inner corruption; and German romances, confusing the two plain lines of right or wrong with their sophistical intellectualities and sentimental affinities: or, worse than either, being a cowardly compromise between the two, that large and daily increasing section of our own popular writing, which is called by the mild term, “sensational."

'My Beautiful Lady" is, of course, a love poem ; divided into sectionscall them cantos-of varied style and rhythm, after the manner of "Maud." Nay, there are many critics who will aver that had "Maud" never been written neither would Mr. Woolner's poem. But besides the fact, that the latter was planned and partly executed before the former appeared-the differences are great enough to prevent all suspicion of plagiarism beyond a certain occasional Tennysonian ring, which pervades most of our modern verses, marking the involuntary influence of the master-poet on all the poetry of our age. It is the history of a holy, happy, mutual love-crowned, not by fruition, but loss yet still complete. For death, at first the ruthless divider, afterwards only perfects, into the perfectness of a noble, resigned, useful and not unhappy

life, this passion of the soul-which had it been a merely human passion,

"Would at once, like paper set on fire,
Burn- and expire.'

The story is simplicity itself: there being no characters except the twohero and heroine: no incidents save those of love and death. Few descriptions; even the portrait of "My Lady" is projected, or rather reflected, less by her own corporeal identity than by the mental influence which she exercises over the imagination of her lover. Not many poets, who, while they pretend to ". . . despise

Lovely cheeks, or lips, or eyes,"

yet prate of them incessantly as the best realities of love, have drawn with such purely spiritual and yet vivid touches a more life-like portrait than this:

"I love my lady, she is very fair,

Her brow is wan, and bound by simple hair;
Her spirit sits aloof and high,
But glances from her tender eye
In sweetness droopingly.

"As a young forest while the wind drives through,

My life is stirred when she breaks on my
view;

Her beauty grants my will no choice
But silent awe, till she rejoice
My longing with her voice.

"Her warbling voice, though ever low and mild,

Oft makes me feel as strong wine would a
child;

And though her hand be very light
Of touch, it moves me with its might,
As would a sudden fright.

"A hawk, high poised in air, whose nerved
wing-tips

Tremble with might suppressed, before he dips,

In vigilance, scarce more intense

Than I, when her voice holds my sense
Contented in suspense.

"Her mention of a thing, august or poor,
Makes it far nobler than it was before:

As where the sun strikes life will gush,
And what is pale receives a flush,
Rich hues, a richer blush."

Such a woman, we feel, was worthy of the following poem, or rather psalm, of lover-like rapture over the love won : No. 51.-VOL. IX.

DAWN.

"O lily, with the sun of heaven's
Prime splendour on thy breast,
My scattered passions toward thee run,
Poising to awful rest.

"The darkness of our universe

Smothered my soul in night:
Thy glory shone; whereat the curse
Passed molten into light.

"Raised over envy, freed from pain,

Beyond the storms of chance, Blest king of my own world I reign, Controlling circumstance."

"Noon"and" Night"-two other carols -rich and rosy with the atmosphere of full delight and contented love, carry forward the story through its brief sunshine into the shadow of the fate which

is to come. "Her Garden" gives the first sign:

"In walking forth, I felt with vague alarm Heavier than wont her pressure on my arm, As through morn's fragrant air we sought what harm

That eastern wind's despite had done the garden's growth,

Where much lay dead or languished low for drouth.

"Her own parterre was bounded by a red

Old buttressed wall of brick, moss-broidered, Where grew, mid pink and azure plots, a bed

Of shining lilies, intermixed in wondrous light

She called them "Radiant spirits robed in white."

"My Lady dove-like to the lily went,

Took in curved palms a cup, and forward leant,

Deep draining to the gold its dreamy scent. (I see her now, pale beauty, as she bending stands,

The wind-worn blossom resting in her hands.)

"Then slowly rising, she in gazing trance Affrayed, long pored on vacancy. A glance Of chilly splendor tinged her countenance, And told the saddened truth that stress of blighting weather

Had made her lilies and My Lady droop together."

"Tolling Bell" is beautiful, despite some jarring faults, an exaggeration of diction, and a didactic lengthiness. Both matter and style should have been perfectly simple, with that solemn severity

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