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2.

Welcome he played in the mid-forest glade
To the nymphs who danced nightly upon
the green sod,
Where the hoofs of the satyrs a circle had made,
As they trod out a measure in praise of their God.

3.

The wind of the midnight crept under each leaf,
As if it would whisper some tale that it knew,
For long had it nestled within a wheatsheaf,
And slept in the cup of a lily-bell blue.

4.

Far away in the west lay a forest of pines,
Looking over the yellow cliffs into the sea;

While, perched like a white dove above their dark lines,
A Temple of Jove held his mystic decree.

5.

Leapt out from earth's bondage beneath its tall fane
The strength of a torrent all bearded with spray,
While, like a loud trumpet, it sung to the main,
And waved like a plume in the moonlight's bright ray.

6.

But hark to the cymbal-clash! Hark to the song
That steals thro' the trees like a spirit of life,
To seize on the nymphs and to bear them along
To dance on the sod in a bacchanal strife.

7.

Ah! how could they linger, and hear that sweet lute,
That the nightingale often had rivalled in vain,
That weaned from his quarry the tawny-barred brute,
And fell on the heart like a summer-tide rain.

8.

Oh! lightly they press thro' the grape-laden vines,
Singing sweet snatches of silvery song,
While with a rare beauty each white bosom shines,
As the polished swell rises each note to prolong?

9.

Wrapped in a leopard skin, looped at the waist,
Lily-bells twisted amid their dark locks,
Oh! where were there ever such beings as graced
The haunts of the satyrs amid the grey rocks.

10.

Hark! to the hoof-tramp that beats on the ground,
As they greet the wood-beauties with many a freak.
Hark! to the shout as, with hands clasped around,
The beards of the satyrs brush many a cheek,

TOL. XLVII.-NO. CCLXXXII.

D 8

11.

Io for Bacchus. Io! for the grape.

The trees seem to spin with their dance of delight, While like a bright spirit beside each rough shape The forms of the wood-nymphs fling back the moonlight.

12.

They tread like a shadow upon the green sward,
Leaving the dainty grape plump at their feet;
Ripe for the hoof of their bacchanal lord,
To crush as they nimbly keep the time-beat.

13.

Into the underwood, from it again,
Winning the satyrs with many a wile,
Glancing like rosy lights over a plain,
Wooing the weary one many a mile.

14.

Foreheads all beaded like dews on a rose,
The polish is moist on each beautiful limb,
While brimful of langour their white eyelids close,
And the leopard-skin droops o'er each waist, lily-slim.

15.

Reeling the satyr-group shout out their joy,
Flinging their cymbals away with delight,
Prancing and bounding as if they'd destroy
The wine cups that mirror the Queen of the night.

16.

Fiercely they clutch on each beaker of wine,

Pledging the snowy-limbed nymphs of the dance, Their horns twined around with the wreaths of the vine, And the South's sultry fire in theirquick searching glance.

17.

Dips into the valley the white harvest moon;

A fleecy cloud sails o'er the brow of the night; From afar on the ear comes the wild mystic rune, Where the reeds sway together within the moonlight.

18.

The stars draw around them their mantles of blue;
The red lips of morn kiss the hills in the east ;
On the golden eared wheat hangs the silver white dew;
A bee flies away, from a lily released.

19.

But alas! to the depths of the forest unknown
Has the satyr-group fled with the bright nymphsaway,
And the scene of their revels, deserted and lone,
Woos the deer to its rest in the noon of the day.

J. J. W.

SONNETS BY JAMES EDMESTON,

I.

Ye who, once habitant in mortal clay,
Are now from all its cumbrous fetters free,
Sweet angel spirits who around my way,

Although unseen, unfelt, may haply be,
How sweet once were and are your loves to me!
Do ye not still with sympathising heart
My earthly wanderings and my sorrows see,
And in each anxious feeling bear a part,
And haply turn aside the poison'd dart

Aim'd at my peace by some dark-dealing foe;
Or, if the barb hath struck, assuage the smart,
And tend in love upon the way I go?

Sweet is the thought to be surrounded yet

By those I dearly loved and never can forget.

II.

Tomb'd in the deep sea, where the cavern'd rocks
Form their sepulchral chamber, low and far
Sleep the drown'd dead; and mighty ocean locks
Their prison vault with many a billowy bar.
There, through the green light fainter than a star,
Gleams the bright king of the cerulean day;
Their, as exulting o'er their human prey,

The loud resounding waters madly jar.
But vain their triumph; for that mighty hand
Which chains the wild waves in their bed of sand
Shall lead those prisoners from their rocky tomb,
And reunited love shall repossess

A thousand-fold its first pure blessedness,

Where amaranthine flowers in fields celestial bloom.

CLUB TALK IN LONDON.

PICTURES-POISON-PYROCTECHNICS.

As a rule, nobody now makes jokes against wives. The current is all the other way, and in novels, and therefore of course in life also, which novels invariably reflect so accurately, a wife is the healer, and the missionary, and the restorer, and the paraclete, and the Angel in the House. And this is healthy, and as it should be. Half the world, and the best, and kindest, and handsomest half, are certainly not meant to be ridiculed by the inferior and uglier moiety. But now and then, in corners of clubs, and after dinner when the ladies have retired, and in the opera stalls, and in one or two other places of safety, some elderly bache

the

lor with a neat wig, and a faith in
King Turveydrop, deceased, will
jerk out a little Joe Millerism against
what the ancient creature calls
sex." One of these people--not that
one would keep such company, but
stall fifty-four is next to stall fifty-
five and there is no help for it-told
us the other night, between the acts
of the Barbiere, that there was once a
man who had a dumb wife, of whom
he was very fond, So he spent half
his fortune in having her taught to
speak. Thereupon she talked so much
that he offered the other half to any-
one who could restore her to silence.
And then the old fellow took a pinch
of some highly scented mixture, and

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fabled lady, in her two conditions, typifies the conversational position of London society in the months of April and May. We were so stupid in London all through April. There was nothing "to put a name to." We apprehended that peace was going to break out; but this was a subject rather evaded, especially as nobody knew much more about the terms than that they were to be particularly statesmanlike and unsatisfactory. There was that Naval Review, which brought out the finest crop of patriotic adjectives ever grown on newspaper-soil, but which almost everybody referred to with a mild execration for the first week after its misfortunes, and has grunted at ever since. A few people who had secured, as they believed, good accommodation for the day of the spectacle, and what was of more consequence, for the nights on each side of it, talked eagerly, and walked about town on the previous day with raceglasses hung across them; but the masses, dubious of getting down to Portsmouth, dubious whether they should see anything when they ar rived, and specially dubious about getting home, held their tongues with extreme tenacity. And by common consent the subject was dropped as soon as possible after the impeachment of the Ministers and the indignant declaration of the South Western Railway people, that they ought to be publicly thanked for not having slain anybody during the whole day or night. There was really nothing else to talk about, and the very newspapers, in despair, let in correspondence of great length and fury as to whether a lady-translator of a French author, say M. Montalembert, has a right, on the grounds of the admirable execution of the rest, to mistranslate certain sentences of the original, if they be not English enough for English readers; and whether the Moon goes round on her axis while going round the Earth, as a tipsy man circumrotates while circumnavigating the table on his way to his hat; and

whether the original Lass of Richmond Hill was the same lady as the original Sally in Our Alley, with other high, great, and doubtful questions of similar vital interest. In April we were the silent lady whose husband was spending the first half of his fortune.

That is all over. We have plenty to talk about now. April showers have brought forth May flowers. Now our case is an embarras des richesses, and your friend no longer skulks from you as if, his conversational pocket being empty, he thought you were going to ask him to stand treat. He pours out his bounty of talk upon you at once. The club is a clack and a clatter, and out of the vocal chaos arise ever and anon the words "fine colour," rockets," "strychnine," "the scape-goat," remember 1814,"

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not a chance now," "sold at the private view," Temple of Concord," "medical evidence," and so forth,— the phrases indicating that the Pictures, the Poison, and the Pyrotechnics are under busy discussion. one were to say that enough and to spare had been said upon each subject, and that the other half of the husband's fortune occurs to the mind, possibly ill-nature-for there is such a thing-might hint that this present writing was inconsistent with such assertion. But ill-nature would be wrong, as it usually is,--for it is very meet that a record should be preserved of the curiously entwined "strands" of our London talk in this present stormy, chilly month of May. Shall we, therefore, disentangle them for half an hour, and hear what people have got to say for themselves?

Touching the Pictures. The opening of the eighty-eighth exhibition of the Royal Academy has, of course, opened this subject. opened this subject. The place has been frightfully crammed ever since the public were let in, but there was a calm quiet Friday preceding, when a good many of Queen Victoria's aristocracy, and a few of nature's, were admitted to the rooms, then so silent and orderly. One "saved a good shilling," too, as Dean Swift says of a brother ecclesiastic; and perhaps it is inhospitable to find fault with the catalogue presented with a bow, instead of sold with a snap and a glance at your possible bad money. Yet look at the motto, and ask

whether the united lore of the Academy ought not to have furnished something a little less clap-trappy and common-place. "Des artistes sont les enfans de la paix, ils sont bienfaisants comme elle, et c'est par elle qu'ils prosperent." Of course we all know that the word "Paix," caught the eye of the academical gentleman who was hunting for a motto, and who wanted it to be appropriate; and as peace was to be proclaimed just as the Academy opened, here was a happy triteness ready furnished by La Harpe; and no doubt many of the old academicians-such of them, at least, as understand French-remarked, " very neat-very felicitous." And yet a

national institution that assumes to teach the world what art is, ought at least have given us an art-truth, instead of telling us that artists cannot paint in a riot, or sell their pictures for good prices in war time. Even the old platitudes from Reynolds and Northcote-the fragments which, detached from their context, became foolish-were better than this; or the motto imitative thereof, to which Mr. Punch helped the Academy, "Art is in no respects dissimilar to Nature, except in the cases in which Nature herself is unlike Art." But let us have a look at the children

of peace.

Mr. Ruskin, who came forth last year like a lion, and rent in pieces the academy and its works, is this year a lamb. The "notes" wherewith he follows the catalogue announce that the Pre-Raphaelites have gained a victory like that of Inkerman, that the academical Russians are utterly routed, and that "the battle is completely and confessedly won by their opponents." And by this he means that nearly all the artists who are worth anything have studied in the school they used to scorn, and are now emulating its professors. Consequently he declines to find fault with men who, as he conceives, are struggling onwards to the very goal which he would set for them. Academicians growl in private places at this dictum, and declare that they did not need " a parcel of boys" to tell them how to paint, nor Mr. Ruskin to tell them how they have painted; but the public has laid hold of the proposition which is compact

and comprehensible, and uses it with all the public's habitual discrimination.

Four good names are omitted from the list altogether. The President has nothing. Sir Charles may be presumed to have been too busy in furnishing a curious advocate, Mr. James Wilson, M.P., with comprehension and arguments in re the new Paul Veronese, to have had leisure to finish any of his own graceful works. Daniel Maclise has nothing; where is the harp that once through Danish camps King Alfred's music shed? William Mulready, auditor, has nothing for the spectators; and Thomas Creswick has nothing that places him in the list of exhibitors, though he has lent a background or

two.

So here are four good men and true, who have not as yet bowed the knee to Mr. Ruskin's idol. Nevertheless, saying this, let it not be supposed that we fail to recognize the incalculable services which the PreRaphaelite school has rendered to art. If it had done nothing else than taught or rather compelled--other men to let light into their pictures, it would have earned undying gratitude. But it has done far more than this though. To estimate what this is, go and look at some of the best Pre-Raphaelite atmospheres, beside the dismal dinginess of the men who still refuse to be taught; or even beside the dubious work of those who have given their allegiance, but not with a whole heart. The background of Hunt's picture, the "Scapegoat," looks from a distance, and in comparison with the surrounding works, as if a hole had been broken in the wall, and the real light of heaven were seen. Thanks to these young men, the academy tax on lightthe conventional rule which as effectually darkened and dirtied our pictures as ever parliamentary imposts did our houses-will shortly be repealed; artists are refusing to endure it. But, we repeat, the Pre-Raphaelites have done much more. They have been as the alchemists to the men of science. Pursuing an error-or, rather, erroneously pursuing a truth, they have opened a world of discoveries. We do not, with Mr. Ruskin, desire that a group, the interest of which is human passion, should be backed by a wall whose every blade of grass, every gold-lace of moss, every chink,

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