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And he who stood the doomed beside,
Calm guager of the swelling tide
Of mortal agony and fear,

Heeding with curious eye and ear
Whate'er revealed the keen excess
Of man's extremest wretchedness:
And who in that dark anguish saw
An earnest of the victim's fate,
The vengeful terrors of God's law,
The kindlings of Eternal Hate-
The first drops of that fiery rain
Which beats the dark red realm of Pain,-
Did he uplift his earnest cries

Against the crime of Law, which gave
His brother to that fearful grave,
Whereon Hope's moonlight never lies,

And Faith's white blossoms never wave
To the soft breath of Memory's sighs;-
Which sent a spirit marred and stained,
By fiends of sin possessed, profaned,
In madness and in blindness stark,
Into the silent, unknown dark?
No-from the wild and shrinking dread
With which he saw the victim led
Beneath the dark veil which divides
Ever the living from the dead,

And Nature's solemn secret hides,
The man of prayer can only draw
New reasons for his bloody Law;
New faith in staying Murder's hand
By murder at that Law's command;
New reverence for the Gallows-rope,
As human nature's latest hope;
Last relic of the good old time,

When Power found license for its crime,

And held a writhing world in check

By that fell cord about its neck;

Stifled Sedition's rising shout,

Choked the young breath of Freedom out,

And timely checked the words which sprung From Heresy's forbidden tongue;

While in its noose of terror bound,

The Church its cherished union found,
Conforming, on the Moslem plan,
The motley-colored mind of man,
Not by the Koran and the Sword,
But by the Bible and the Cord!

VI.

Oh, Thou! at whose rebuke the grave
Back to warm life its sleeper gave,
Beneath whose sad and tearful glance
The cold and changéd countenance
Broke the still horror of its trance,
And waking, saw with joy above,
A brother's face of tenderest love;
Thou, unto whom the blind and lame,
The sorrowing and the sin-sick came,
And from thy very garment's hem
Drew life and healing unto them,

The burden of Thy holy faith
Was love and life, not hate and death;
Man's demon ministers of Pain,

The fiends of his revenge, were sent
From Thy pure Gospel's element
To their dark home again.

Thy name is Love! What, then, is he
Who in that name the Gallows rears,
An awful altar built to Thee,

With sacrifice of blood and tears?
Oh, once again Thy healing lay

On the blind eyes which know Thee not;
And let the light of Thy pure day

Melt in upon his darkened thought.
Soften his hard, cold heart, and show
The power which in Forbearance lies,
And let him feel that Mercy now
Is better than old sacrifice!

VII.

As on the White Sea's* charméd shore,
The Parsee sees his holy hill

With dunnest smoke-clouds curtained o'er,
Yet knows beneath them, evermore,

The low, pale fire is quivering still;

So, underneath its clouds of sin,

The heart of man retaineth yet

Gleams of its holy origin;

And half-quenched stars that never set,
Dim colors of its faded bow,

And early beauty, linger there,

And o'er its wasted desert blow

Faint breathings of its morning air.
Oh! never yet upon the scroll
Of the sin-stained, but priceless soul,
Hath Heaven inscribed "DESPAIR!"
Cast not the clouded gem away,
Quench not the dim but living ray—
My brother man, Beware!

With that deep voice which from the skies
Forbade the Patriarch's sacrifice,

God's angel cries, FORBEAR!

Among the Tartars, the Caspian is known as Akdingis, i. e. White Sea. Baku, on its Persian side, is remarkable for its perpetual fire, scarcely discoverable under the pitchy clouds of smoke from the bitumen which feeds it. It is the natural firealtar of the old Persian worship.

NOBLE AUTHORS.

In our last, we discoursed about "Royal Authors." We propose now to descend from the steps of the Throne, and pursue our literary search within the precincts of the Court.

There is an aristocracy of letters of two kinds: that of " the lords of human kind," and that which derives its strongest claims to respect from the accidents of noble birth and honorable lineage. Authors are noble from genius, or from family: by the birthright of natural gifts, or the claims of descent and hereditary title. It is of a mixed aristocracy, however, that we intend to attempt a description in the present paper, an aristocracy in which pride of birth is gracefully blended with the nobler pride of intellect, in which title is an elegant ornament to the possessor of genius: an aristocracy in which the nobleman is also a great man, who further rather dignifies his conventional rank by his genius, than is ennobled by it.

A general, and, in most case, a justifiable feeling of prejudice exists against authors who come out from the ranks of the nobility: they are thought, and for the most part justly, to rely too much on their personal pretensions to accomplishments, apart from their lite rary character, to wealth, and to station. They are not considered amenable to criticism, it being in their power, if their literary claims are disallowed, to fall back upon their social standing, a point d'appui, and rest secure within " the Bastile of a name." A mere writer, however great his powers, cannot take refuge in a similar way. He must repose wholly on his individual merits. Aut Cæsar aut nullus. He is to be tried in a literary court, and by his fellow-commoners alone. He cannot appeal to the (literary) House of Lords. There are, to be sure, silly people -yea, even among ourselves, and especially among the "first circles" of our commercial cities-who think everything from a man who can write Sir, or Right Honorable, before his name, must be correspondingly grand and

fine; but such critics sit in the gallery, not in the pit of the theatre of criticism. They compose the body of the great vulgar, who would have called Blackmore a great poet, because he wrote heroical rhymes in the epic mould, and not because they were truly such; and who think West a great painter, because he attempted the historical style. Critics of this stamp have seen the poet's eye in Byron's countenance, because he was a noble lord.

"Let but a lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens, ad the style refines!" POPE.

And they call Dickens low, because he does not condescend to write novels of fashionable life, but prefers truth to nature in an humbler walk.

To counteract an extravagant depreciation of writers, merely because they bear a title, though without the least intention to elevate any one purely for that reason, we have collected together the names of several of the most eminent, both for rank and genius. In literature, we regard titles as drawbacks rather than among the desirables of life; for the author is too apt to be merged in the fine gentleman, and to look down upon those of his craft who pursue it for a livelihood. Still, a writ er of the first class may be titled or not, as it happens, and essentially without the smallest grain of difference. True greatness is independent of stars and ribbons, the playthings of childhood; though there are positions in public life, as places of commanding importance, which, according to the common notion, are dignified by titles of honor. Bacon is still, for instance, the Secretary of Nature, though Lord Chancellor and Baron Verulam (a title conveying a certain amplitude of distinction); so, too, of the British Tacitus, Lord Clarendon, and the English Demosthenes, Lord Chatham. Law lords, ministers of state, cabinet councillors, and senators, appear to be appropriately

distinguished by peculiar epithets of respect.

In Walpole's catalogue, there are many names that do not deserve to be recorded for their literary claims; yet some have been omitted who have been unhandsomely treated, and since his time there are others to be added. Yet it is the only catalogue of the kind. To leave cavilling, and commence our task, we may remark the peculiar lines in which a noble author would be most likely to succeed. Knowledge of court life, the epigrammatic court-wit, the history of parties, the secret councils of cabinets, the private characters of monarchs, appear with the truest effect and least partiality, in the correspondence and memoirs of the courtly and noble. This is especially to be noted in the case of disappointed suitors. When the most interested man has lost all hope, and nothing remains, he may then be suspected of telling a large share, and where malice or private pique does not intervene, the whole of the truth. Swift, in his early addresses to the Earl of Oxford, employed the language of a sycophant, and flattered him grossly after the defeat of his objects, he wrote in a very different strain; and his later account of the Earl has been confirmed by history. We might transcribe a number of instances beside, but it would be useless. The point is clear, and needs no further confirmation.

Where but from the pen of one living in courts, could we read an experience (gained there) like that displayed in the piquant maxims of Rochefoucault? What scene of life could furnish material for such pictures as those we meet in the French memoirs? Where else should we look for the subtle cunning of a Cecil, the gallant bearing of a Sidney, the sparkling wit of a Rochester, or the exterior graces of a Chesterfield? And there are authors, proud of their calling; classics, too, who have lived within the magic circle, and breathed the arbitrary atmosphere of a court men, who, when we mention their names, we are very apt to prefer the prefix to them, and whose works are estimated without any reference to Debrett's Peerage, or the records of the Herald's College. In the gallery of the Temple of Fame, on the walls of which hang the counterfeit presentments of distinguished authors born among the

English aristocracy, (to confine ourselves to but one literature and one country), we encounter great philoso phers, great historians, accomplished writers of verse rather than true poets, with a single modern exception, fine prose writers in the miscellaneous department, and men of elegant scholarship and exact research.

Previous to the age of Elizabeth (to mention only a few of the first names that occur to us), there are Lord Berners, the prose translator of Froissart, and Baron Vaux, one of the prime favorites of Sir Egerton Brydges; the twin-bards Surrey and Wyatt, accomplished knights, gallant lovers and polite gentlemen; Sackville, the author of the first English drama. Then, the great More, the noble patriot and philosopher and man; the father of English prose, the first native historian, the great statesman and generous friend. The age of Elizabeth could boast (with the exception of Shakspeare and Spenser and the great old dramatists, far above their contemporaries) a galaxy of noble authors, inferior only to them, Bacon, Sidney, Raleigh, Herbert, Fulke, Greville. In the next period occur the names of Sir Thomas Browne and Sir Kenelm Digby and Lady Fanshawe, not to pass by without mention the eccentric Duchess of Newcastle, so eloquently eulogized by Lamb, and the Countess of Winchelsea, whose verse has extorted the admiration of Wordsworth. After the Restoration, and until the reign of Anne, the majestic and incorruptible Clarendon, the easy and amiable Temple, the four court wits and poets, all earls, the contemporaries of Dryden, Rochester and Halifax, and Dorset and Roscommon: the two Buckinghams, Villiers and Sheffield, Denham and Davenant and Suckling. Through all these periods, the great old divines extend, most of whom were Bishops and Archbishops, Usher and Taylor, and a host beside. During the period of Anne's reign, Bolingbroke and the later Shaftesbury, Bishops Atterbury, Burnet and Butler, and Archbishop Tillotson. Coming down to this nineteenth century, the great names are few-Byron and Scott, and perhaps Bulwer. In the second rank of wonderfully clever men, but not geniuses, we might include the critics Jeffrey and Brougham; in the class of respectable writers of an earlier date, the Scotch notabilities,

Lords Kames, Stair, Hailes and Woodhouselee, with Blackstone and Sir William Jones, and Bishop Percy, and among contemporaries the accurate and industrious historian, Mahon; Lord Holland, the liberal patron; the irritable Brydges, and Gower, the translater of Faust. Writers of novels and books of travels are not unfrequent among the nobility, but they are only writers for the season. Even Lord Lennox has lately written a novel. Writers of vers de société like Spencer may not be rare, yet we suspect we have forgotten no writer of mark.

The ablest of the nobility, in general, turn to politics as a relief to a mode of life, the abundance and superfluities of which take away almost every impulse to active exertion of any kind. Of this class, we find many great lawyers with no pretensions to authorship. And of these how many brilliant names have sunk after a temporary brilliancy. Who hears anything now of the great Somers, the dare-devil wit and orator immortalized by Pope, Wharton? What do we know of Harley or Pelham? The famous lawyers from Fortescue to Sir William Follett are little more than bare names. After all, compared with the vastly larger and selecter list of men of genius of obscure birth, or at best of merely respectable parentage, the nobility can show but a scanty collection.

In the different departments of literature, what have they done? Though we repeat the names above mentioned, we hope to add a word or two of criticism. In English literature, Byron's is the first name among noble poets, as far above his fellow bards as he is himself inferior to the master poets of the human race. Admitting his force, energy, and occasional beauty; with his music, pathos and satirical humor, yet how much lower than Milton, in his loftiest flights! No one could compare him to Spenser or Chaucer, and to parallel him with Shakspeare would be little short of profanation. The remaining noble poets are little more than clever writers of verse, even Sidney was most poetic in his prose Defence of Poesy; his predecessors, Wyatt and Surrey, wrote amorous sonnets, and by no means rich, in that emasculated form of poetry. Charles II.'s wits were lively and neat: Rochester, has keen sense, and Roscommon dull discretion. VOL. XII.-NO. LIX. 61

Dorset wrote a gay song or two, and Halifax a few copies of verse, as short poetical attempts were then called, which could be ranked under no definite head. The Rehearsal is the great and only triumph of the dramatic muse in the ranks of the nobility, and that is at best an amusing satirical burlesque, about equal to Sheridan's Critic. Denham is the most elevated of all his contemporary wits, in point of style. We know little of Davenant: but Suckling is truly delicious. All of these writers were brief writers, and limited their attempts to a satire, an epigram, a ballad, or a song. They are sparkling brilliants, but, taken collectively, they do not form a gem of dazzling splendor.

In history, there are the names of More, Bacon, Herbert, Raleigh, Clarendon, Burnet and Bolingbroke, names to last; still, only Clarendon will be generally read, save by a few antiquarian scholars. More's fragment is the original chronicle of the Reign, full of picturesqueness, yet a fragment of an early reign, and one, too, which Shakspeare has done more towards popularizing the memory of than any historical writer. Bacon's History of Henry III. was a party history, but written with an ability so great a man could not help displaying. Herbert's Henry VIII. we have not read, but if it be comparable to his Life, (the first autobiography in English), it must be worth reading. Raleigh's work is only a noble introduction to a noble conception. Clarendon and Burnet furnish a storehouse of character to every class of writers, novelists, political critics, reviewers and historians. Bolingbroke is merely a showy writer on, not of history.

In philosophy, Bacon is and always must be, very prominent. To the end of time, his prudential wisdom, rich fancy and compact eloquence, must remain fresh. Even the reader who knows nothing of the Advancement or the Organon, will resort to the essays as a fountain of wisdom next to Ecclesiasticus or the words of the Preacher. Shaftesbury, we agree entirely with Grey, in thinking to have been vastly overrated. At present he is almost wholly forgotten. Next to Bolingbroke, it appears to us, no writer of eminence was ever rated so extravagantly high as this English imitator of Plato and

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