Why can't a painter lift each foot in turn,
Make his flesh liker, and his soul more like,
Both in their order? Take the prettiest face,
The Prior's niece
is it so pretty

You can't discover if it means hope, fear,
Sorrow or joy? won't beauty go with these?
Suppose I've made her eyes all right and blue,
Can't I take breath, and try to add life's flash,
And then add soul, and heighten them three-
fold-

Or say there's beauty with no soul at all(I never saw it-put the case the same) If you get simple beauty and nought else, You get about the best thing God invents; That's somewhat-and you'll find the soul you have missed

Within yourself when you return him thanks.

We are always pleased to see a book of Mr. Mackay's, and we were not disappointed when we had read "The Lump of Gold,"* his latest work.

The story is simple. Aubrey loves Parson Vale's daughter, but desirous of money to redeem his ancestral property, goes to Australia, making a close friendship on the voyage. At the diggings he finds an enormous lump of gold which he cautiously conceals, for it is too heavy to remove. In one of his stealthy visits, his friend suddenly appears and claims half, and in his wrath he smites him seemingly dead with his hammer. He flies home, leaving the gold, and goes to his native village, crushed with remorse. He falls sick unto death, and is attended by Parson Vale, to whom he relates his story, and who relieves his mind by telling him that Heseltine his friend is still alive. Of course a bridal follows, and Heseltine with most marvellous Christianity goes to Australia, and bringing back the lump of gold which he had cunningly concealed, gives half to Aubrey, and keeps the rest, paying all expenses, for himself. The treatment of this tale is distinguished by the healthfulness and manly vigour of thought which have made Mr. Mackay's poems such favorites among the middle classes of England. The description of the village and of Parson Vale's family is in his best style.

Embowered amid the sunny hills,
The quiet village lay;

Two rows of ancient cottages,
Beside the public way,

A modest church with ivied tower,
And spire with mosses grey,

Beneath the elms' o'erarching boughs

The little children ran;

The selfsame shadows flecked the sward
In days of good Queen Anne-
And then, as now, the children sang
Beneath its branches tall;

They grew, they loved, they sinned, they died,

The tree outlived them all.

The picture of Lilian, too, is wrought in a few touches that paint to the life

The quiet ripple of her smile
Revealed the peaceful mind;
The mellow moonlight of her eyes
Her sympathies refin'd,

And when she spoke, the audible charm
Was beauty for the blind.

We would we had room to quote the description of the sudden silence during the parson's sermon, and how the sounds of nature from outside floated in through the door of the ivied country church; but if we gave all of these vivid, manly descriptions, we should be obliged to quote too much. The gardener's song has been praised by every one. The voyage and the description of the icebergs are too like portions of the Ancient Mariner, but the echo of the bells among the floating spires of the icebergs

Rose tinted-amber-opal blue,
Alight with living gold,

is strangely beautiful. We analysed and felt the truth of Mr. Mackay's delineation of the covetousness which pervaded all the gold-seekers, and the sympathetic effect it produced on Aubrey's mind, with great pleasure, arising not so much from the subject, as from its truth to natural feeling. Our readers can understand how Mr. Mackay has treated his subject if they read the book, and we promise they will not regret the time which they will spend in its perusal.

The rest of the poems are not so good; most of them are but mediocre

in poetic spirit, and weak in their handling, and seem to have been written while travelling, and of course, in a hurry. One called "Fallow" is remarkably good; and the poem "To one who was afraid to speak his mind on a great question," is both well sustained with imagination, and full of a manly, true, honest, English spirit. We like in these poems the brave feeling of brotherhood, which stands free of mere civil distinctions, and displays man as he stands before God, who has "made of one blood all nations that dwell on the face of the earth." This is what

we want in these days.

If we all felt and acted on the belief of this great bond, the difficulty we find in approaching the poor would, at least, diminish. Fawning and servility would be no more. Heart would stand close by heart, and hand would grasp hand freely, beneath God's unity of sky.

We thank God the higher classes are beginning to feel this, and though there may be much vanity mixed up with all this lecturing and instructing of the poorer classes by noblemen and others, yet still it is the right thing to do. The poor would not ever be striving to assert that they are men, if they knew that they were looked on as men. The distinctions which God has made would be recognised by all, and there would be no struggle to assert a principle which was universally acknowledged. This may be all very Utopian, but it is the true and right thing to do, and it should be done. We rejoice when we read fine, free, manly poetry like this:

MAN TO MAN.

Stand up, man, stand!
God's over all,

Why do you cringe to me,
Why do you bend the knee,
And creep and fawn and crawl?
Stand up, man, stand!

If I thought our English land
Had no true-hearted poor,
To suffer and endure-
And hold themselves erect,

In the light of their own respect —
I'd blush that I was English-born,
And run away to the wilderness, to free my-
self from scorn.

With this quotation-a quotation which gives us the same thrill as Wordsworth's telling sonnet "To the Men of Kent"-we take our leave of Mr. Mackay, and pass on to a book wonderfully different in style and thinking, "The Poetical Works of Thomas Aird."* Mr. Aird has given us many a pleasant hour. Those who have perused the warm eulogium of Wilson, and known how the sympathies of Chalmers were enlisted on his behalf, must have felt, as they read Mr. Aird's poems, that the criticisms of these great men were more than justified. Every idea which strikes him he fully embodies, and does not leave it till it has been made smooth and round as a billiard ball. The grotesqueness which we sometimes observe in Mr. Aird's painting of the terrible becomes a racy humour, which occasionally verges on what is low and undignified when his subject is pastoral. The closest observation of nature is combined with a rare power of expression which descends to the most minute details. The Summer Day" and "The Winter Day," though so long, are not wearisome, owing to the vigor Mr. Aird imparts to his descriptions by mingling scenes of pastoral and travelling life with them, and so giving a human interest to the landscape. They remind us of the Georgics of Virgil, and The Seasons. A short quotation from the Summer Day will give our readers an idea of Mr. Aird's peculiar power :—

As liquored o'er with some metallic wash. Thus pleased, laid back, up through the elm we look.

What life the little Creeper of the Tree
To leafdom lend! See how the antic bird,
Her bosom to the bark, goes round away
Behind the trunk, but quaintly reappears
Through a rough cleft above, with busy bill
Picking her lunch; and now among the leaves
Our birdie goes, bright glimmering in the green
And yellow light that fills the tender tree."

And this from "Frank Sylvan," to show Mr. Aird's peculiar humour.

1856.

But lo the old mill-down to it hies our imp, Following the dam. The outer wheel still black

Though sleeked with gleety green, and candied o'er

With ice, is doing duty. In he goes By the wide two-leaved door; all round he looks

Throughout the dusty atmosphere, but sees No miller there. The mealy cobwebs shake Along the wall, a squeaking rat comes out, And sits and looks at him with steadfast eye. He hears the grinding's smothered sound, a sound

Lonelier than silence: memory summons up
The Thirlstane Pedlar' murdered in a mill
And buried there. The Meal-cap miller,' too,
In 'God's revenge on Murther,' bloody famed,
Comes o'er his spirit. Add to this the fear
Of human seizure, for he meditates
A boyish multure: stepping stealthily
On tiptoe, looking round he ventures on;
Thrusts both his hands into the oatmeal
heap,

Warm from the millstones; and in double dread

Of living millers and of murdered pedlars,
Flies with his booty, licking all the way.

This would delight the heart of a benevolent miller, from the truth of description, and the happy theft of the flying "imp," while his sense of retribution would be satisfied by the terrors which conscience heaped on the small robber.

Mr. Aird seems to delight in the horrible, and we have observed that he suddenly contrasts with it some softer image, making the idea like the snaky horrors of Medusa's hair, more terrible for the loveliness of the face. It is this which gives to a poem called "The Prophecy," its strange clinging power. "The Devil's Dream on Mount Aksbeck," Othuriel," "Nebuchadnezzar," and others have been so well and fully treated of by Mr. Gilfillan, that it would be superfluous for us to speak of them here further than according to them our praise.

The tragic poem of Wold possesses all Mr. Aird's peculiarities. His power of chrystallizing thought is somewhat like Shakespeare.

Of nature's last necessities, even this Has been my joy of life.

Again

Everything's hollow-false-a lie. The over-blown bubble must burst-hence revolution, which is just the crack of an exploded lie.

We must lacker our fronts with daring, and hold out.

Mr. Aird has evidently adopted Shakespeare as his model, and copies almost too openly from him. When Lord Wold says to his betrothed— Excellent creature, How I do love thee.

it is impossible not to recognize Othello's

Excellent wretch,

Perdition seize my soul-but I do love thee.

The Fate, impersonated in Afra, which deepens over each act like a thundercloud, binds the scattered action into something like dramatic unity, and is some excuse for the number and the rapidity of the misfortunes which culminate in the death of Wold. The main design is too complicated, and deaths of almost every kind occur during the progress of the action, till, at the end of the play, the chief idea remaining with the reader is that the whole district is depopulated.

Mr. Aird's poems would require much more space and attention than we can give them. It is a matter of regret to us that we cannot, owing to the limits of our space, enter more fully into their great merits, and their small demerits; but these, as we said above, have been recognized not only by journals, but by established periodicals.

We cannot conclude our too short notice of Mr. Aird's Poems better than by quoting two of his most beautiful lines at the end of the Summer Day.

Day melts into the west, another flake
Of sweet blue time, into the eternal past.

"Poems by Rose and De Rupe"*

are prefaced by some few lines from Rose, which beg the charity of the critics. We are sorry to say that the prayer is not an unnecessary one. The chief fault of these poems by Rose is an utter want of rhythm; a fault which common attention could have remedied, and which shews either contempt for the public judgment, positive carelessness, or ignorance of the established laws of metre. We open the book at random for a few instances, for in almost every poem there is some glaring violation of harmony:--

In his halls the dark stranger stands,
And proudly rules thy rightful lands.
Thy country, shame! once brave and free,
To the Saxon bends the slavish knee;
Her altars defiled, faith a scorn,
Better for thee thou ne'er wert born.

The first line is unrhythmical enough, but the fifth, what shall we say of it? Is it prose or poetry, or Rhythm or Reason? We fear it is nothing but words. The fourth line, which is too long, is even more inexcusable. To quote more of these mistakes would but irritate the reader. Rhythm is as necessary to poetry as oil is to an axle. The thoughts may support an unrhythmical poem, as an ungreased axle does a waggon; but the noise they both make is execrable. The idea to be expressed is full, rounded, and harmonious in the poet's own mind; and, however imperfectly understood, is the same in the reader's also, if it is to be understood at all. We are irritated, therefore, by the inequality which objects itself to us, between the imperfect expression in words and sounds which appeal to the senses, and the perfect roundness of the idea in our own minds. It is as if the nerves of our mind were jarred, as a delicate ear is by a discord in music. We are sorry that Rose, who possesses poetical talent, which would give her productions some value in the critical world, should thus outbalance her merit by a fault so easily avoided. We regret to say that Rose has indulged in those pseudo-patriotic poems in which the English, under the generic name of the Saxon, are denounced. It is time now, when international relations have become so universally friendly, that this poetic olla podrida should cease to be served up for the intellectual consumption of

an excitable people. Chains and blood, Saxon slavery and pikes, revenge and flame, have ceased to prove digestible. The poems which the Nation press poured into the ear of Ireland were partially to be excu sed by the time. Many of them are truly beautiful; many of them are true to fact; many of them are grossly exaggerated. The long fever of mistaken patriotism has, we hope, past its crisis. The delicate delirium which produced Moore's song to Emmet passed into the wild and unproductive frenzy which inspired many of the Nation lyrics. In these the heart of Ireland found expression. They will be useful for the first time, if they free us from them for ever, as, magna componere parvis, the fires of a volcano deliver us from the threatened earthquake. We have, we hope, entered on the first stage of convalescence. We are a patriot ourselves. The heart of Ireland is responsive to our own. Over her ancient glories and her undoubted wrongs, we have smiled with pride, and frowned with indignation. Gross has been the misunderstanding, ignorant has been the rule of England; but she has seen and owned her error, and are we to remember for ever? It is a wise and Christian maxim to forget what has been done, and to pursue what is yet to do. We would know the use of all this noise.

ὑμᾶς ἐρωτῶ, θρέμματ ̓ οὐκ ἀνασχετὰ, ἤ ταῦτ ̓ ἄριστα καὶ πόλει σωτήρια, αΰειν, λακάζειν, σωφρόνων μισήματα ; τὰ τῶν θύραθεν δ ̓ ὡς ἄριστ ̓ ὀφέλλετε, αὐτὸι δ ̓ ὑφ ̓ αὑτῶν ἔνδοθεν πορθούμεθα.

Our patience and admiration have at last been exhausted by these continual recollections of past glory, always in connection with vanished wrongs; and by the lofty moral lesson which is drawn from them, as exhibited in the following lines from Rose, which will give the reader an idea of her poetry and her patriotism :

Sons of Erin, in days of yore,

When the Danish spoilers came, You drove him from your lovely shore

With sword, and pike, and flame.

The serpent stranger, deep in wile,
Now taketh and graspeth all;
Yet taunts from her venomous lips
On
your cars unheeded fall.

Go! meet your wrongs as brave men should,
Not with tear and prayer and sigh,
But resolute will and stern resolve
To avenge them or to die.

Rouse thee; the God of heaven will bless
The sword of the patriot brave.
A deadly curse must ever rest,

On the low and grovelling slave.

Is this true or not? Are we such slaves, and so oppressed? If so, let us establish a guerilla warfare; it is but just we should be free; if it is not true, let us cease for ever crying war, war, when there is no war.

Our present Irish poets have well stood apart from this style, so ensnaring from its popularity, and so enticing to the warm and undigested feelings of young men. These "confusions of a wasted youth" are not to be found in the writings of such men as Starkey, Waller, and Irwin. We are slowly attaining to an international relation with England based on mutual forbearance and mutual honor. We regret, too, that a woman should have treated such subjects in such a manner. We cannot believe she thought of consequences; yet, truly, if all Irish rebellion is to eventuate in a bloodless cabbage-garden, she must have felt that she was urging her countrymen into a hopeless absurdity.

Ridiculum acri

Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat res.

Monsieur De Rupe, whose poems fill up the rest of this book, is a poet whose chief excellence lies in a fault. His poems are mostly devoted to the expression of past sorrow, and some of them are sung with much sweetness. They are rhythmically worded, and do not want in streaks of imagination, but they remind us of a weeping willow whose branches are graceful but ever tend earthwards. He has missed the meaning of true sorrow, which teaches us to rise through endurance to a calmer and a stronger reality. Sorrow ought to end in the experience of the following lines :

No longer caring to embalm

In dying songs a dead regret; But, like a statue, solid set, And moulded in colossal calin.

This Byronic style, which trumpets forth to the world the inner life of

our grief, wants the voiceless beauty of Niobe, whose sorrow is felt not heard. There is no object gained by sitting idly, like a lazy hound, and baying the moon." We are like Alciphron on the mystic ladder. The past drops in a fathomless abyss. We cannot change it, but the future still remains, and we can use the sad experience of the past as we use a pair of spurs-wear it at our heels, to make our life more active. We are glad we can praise Mr. De Rupe for the poetry with which he has chosen to illustrate his grief. There are many graceful and beautiful poems which would not discredit the pen or the tenderness of Mrs. Hemans; indeed they possess her very faultsa want of unity and condensation. It is impossible to read some of these poems without becoming sphered with the writer, and subdued into the mournful tenderness which breathes through them, as the low airs of evening through a sunken copse. His ballad of "Simple Mary" is pretty, and expressed with truth and tender

ness:

Simple Mary of the vale

Has taken her snow white pail, To bring water, sweet and cool, from the [woodside spring,

Where the silver bubbles rise,
And the wild wind comes and flies,
Lifting up the shadows as the green boughs
[swing.

As she crossed the tufted heath,
It scarcely bent beneath

The pressure of her springing feet, all wet [and bare;

A summer shower passed on,
And its drops like diamonds shone
Upon the falling curls of her golden hair.

It proceeds to tell how Simple Mary met her lover, who deceived her, and departed; yet the whole pathos and beauty of the ballad are slightly injured by inaccuracy in metrical arrangement. In a poem entitled "Night," we have the excellence of Mr. De Rupe's description, and the crude and wandering wildness into which he precipitates his muse, whenever there is any thinking to be eliminated. This is a beautiful image:

And floating slowly through the shadowy air, The night-hours come, the trembling stars to meet,