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 about 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,

In that just world where each man's heart
Will be his only measure."

Worthy of ARCHEUS himself—whose "SEXTON'S DAUGHTER"-So 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 prevail-for the mountains are not yet empurpled. Such honey, such butter, and such oat-cake make a delicious bite -and 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 mountaindew as Oberon may be supposed to lay his lips to the foxglove bell, impatient for his morning." Ignoramuses gulp Glenlivet from quechs-the Cognoscenti sip it from thimbles-thus-thus-thus-health-happiness-and a husband to Victoria, our gracious queen!'

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. The 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 honouredfor 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 service-fought at Algiers-and on voyage of discovery circumnavigated the globe. Here for a while he has cast anchor-ready at any hour to slip his cable— and 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 friend, and of thy mother's-loveliest 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 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 stewardand 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 none-so 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 Barrett, 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 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 sustained—and 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 poetic 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 demi-god 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 untouched-to 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 powers-there is beauty in them all-and some of them, we think, are altogether beautiful. From the "Poet's Vow," "The Romaunt of Margaret," "Isabel'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 a 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.