Macbeth. When dealing with Genius, we must be content, and grateful, to give as well as take. And Genius itself frequently realizes the adage, Nothing venture nothing have.

Some of Southey's lyrics and shorter pieces will always be favourites. What child of British growth knows not "You are old, Father William, the young man cried," and that famous tale "The Batttle of Blenheim"? The Holly Tree is in his best manner; every line tells. There is a soothing tranquillity about the lines to a friend, beginning-" Do I regret the past? Would I again live o'er the morning hours of lite?" and those entitled "The Dead Friend," beginning"Not to the grave, not to the grave, my Soul, descend to contemplate the form that once was dear!" We are fond, too, of the fragment on Autumn, and those serenely beautiful stanzas, "My days among the Dead are past," written thirty years since in the beloved study at Keswick. Who has not held his breath at hearing for the first (or perhaps the twenty-first) time, the ballad of Mary, the Maid of the Inn, with its Monk Lewisian metre, so suitable for such a mournful narrative? Nor need we do more than allude to the muchcontested Devil's Walk, and the story of Bishop Hatto, and the Inchcape Rock, and that capital tale The Well of St. Keyne. Mr. Macaulay denies Southey the possession of anything like humour-saying, “A more insufferable jester never existed. He very often attempts to be humourous, and yet we do not remember a single occasion on which he has succeeded farther than to be quaintly and flippantly dull." Is there no humour in the Doctor? None in the Metrical Tales and Occasional Pieces? Has the great historian no smile but of contempt for The March to Moscow, including the catalogue of break-jaw Sclavonic names? Will he ignore in toto Southey's autograph

A man he is by nature merry,

Somewhat Tom-foolish, and comical, very? Perchance the critic was too intent on extracting fun out of the Colloquies on Society, to be susceptible to the quiet mirth of the draughtsman of Daniel Dove.

The prose style of the Lives of Nelson, Wesley, Kirke White-of the history of Brazil and that of the Peninsular War-and of the numerous contributions to the Quarterly Review, is justly admired. It is simple, straightforward, and fluent; singularly free from involved and parenthetical sentences, and innocent of approach to the obscure. We glide smoothly on, and meet with no locks, no breaks by the way. Those who have no patience with the Book of the Church, in its moral and political aspects, are forced to allow the beauty and purity of the English;--Macaulay for instance says, "We find, we confess, so great a charm in Mr. Southey's style that, even when he writes nonsense, we generally read it with pleasure." To find his equal in prose composition, among our living writers, might be no light task. There are some far more pungent, energetic, pictorial, and startling; there are Carlyles, Emersons, Macaulays, Bulwer Lyttons, Wilsons, Taylors; but where is the easy expression, graceful carriage, and artless yet emphatic style of the departed laureate? Who now distils such meaning from a collation of unambitious sentences, and plays so few pranks with the queen's English? Try to imitate him, and you will soon enough be called (peradventure with very good reason) tame, flat, insipid, and stale to a degree.

Southey's personal character was most exemplary. In this respect he and William Wordsworth are clara et venerabilia nomina. His morality was high-toned, his integrity unimpeachable, his devotion to goodness sincere and nobly severe. For this cause, as well as for his illustrious literary claims, the sympathy of a whole nation was aroused during the darksome decline of his

most industrious life. And as we thought of the old man sitting helplessly in the library, out of which (touching fact!) he could never find the way for himself, we remember with a sigh his friend Landor's verses, addressed to Southey himself in 1833—

We hurry to the river we must cross,

And swifter downward every footstep tends;
Happy who reach it ere they count the loss
Of half their faculties and half their friends!

THE LAY OF ONE FORGOTTEN.

BY CHARLES H. HITCHINGS.
Sleep soft upon your silken beds,
Close-curtained velvets wrap ye round,
In chambers fast from echoing treads,

And hushed from every wakeful sound;
Light joys flit through your favoured dreams,
Indulge each blissful fancy there,
Where every fond illusion seems

As real as pain!-O, sisters fair,
Gentle, and good, and happy be-
But sometimes waste a thought on me!

The world is very cold and bleak,

While Pleasure crowns our happiest lot; But ah! to bear the crimson cheek,

The aching heart-and be forgot!
Name never more my former name -
Ye could not breathe it and be gay,
Remembering how the hand of Shame
Tore from your love that one away.
Happy, and good, and tearless be-
But sometimes waste a thought on me!

Think of me, as you think of those

From you the unrestful wave dividesUpon whose seperate fortunes close, The ungenial ocean's severing tidesDear to the Memory's pensive hour

For gentle words and pressures pastDearer because a transient flower,

Whose short-lived sweetness did not last. When in your hearts old times shall be, Sweet sisters, sometimes think on me!

Or as the dead-(a tenderer thought,

Nearer and dearer)--if ye willAs one, whose young departure brought A void to Home, her place to fillWhose faded form and altered face

From out the mind ye leave to pass, Remembering but its earlier grace, And all the gentle thing it was. When in your hearts the dead shall be, O, sisters, sometimes think on me!

No need to ask these alms of love,
Could I but lay this bosom bare,
And to your hard compassion prove
Each aching memory cloistered there:
The sweet affection turned to gall—

The trustful hope-a ruin now-
And where the heart had garnered all-
O, sisters, of the stainless brow,
Pray that it ever stainless be-
But sometimes waste a thought on me!

66

THE SEASONS.

THE personification and embodiment of the four seasons of the year, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, as infancy, childhood, manhood, and old age, is no new thing; so common, indeed, is it to all nations and peoples, that their very phraseology partakes of it; the spring of youth, "the summer time of life, "the winter of old age," recur to us constantly. The Greek and Latin pocts use epithets also drawn from the same source, and amongst some peoples the very words own the same etymon. The beauty of our picture must plead an excuse for our having some short gossip on a well-used theme. It is from the pencil of Stothard, the most graceful illustrator of his day (as also the most popular), and the well-known painter of the 'Canterbury Pilgrimage," and "the Flitch of Bacon Procession.' The grace and beauty of the present design will be at once confessed; the painter has brought before us in one group the whole life of manthe flower in its various stages, from the germ to the seed-time; and to the rightly-minded a solemn discourse it holds forth. A man shall find no deeper subject to preach on than the whole range of human life-no wider field than the entire humanity can present to him: all "the far stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man,' * is here drawn together in a narrow space enough. In the front of the group is the mother caressing the infant, who nestles softly in her arms. With what beauty and enjoyment Spring furnishes us! The budding intellect of childhood well represents smiles, and gambols, and presently anger and tears-a February and April combined

But, heart, cheer up! the days speed on,
Winds blow, sun shines, and thaws are gone;
And in the garden may be seen

Up-springing flowers, and budding green:+

a more cheering time approaches-the innocence of early infancy, its nestling love, and heart-moving truth. "We love little children when the wind moves their fair hair, and when they look up with their blue eyes into our faces-we love to see them when they fall asleep, their pretty faces falling into the softness of the pillow like a statue of marble; they look like angels that have come to bring tidings of peace, and good-will, and are wearied with persuading world-loving man to listen- -we love to take them in our arms; we feel that there is no guile in those innocent shrines, that they would stand before the presence of the Creator without shame, and meet the searching gaze of ranged angels unabashed." But time, "that memorable first lieutenant," as Marryat somewhere calls him, speeds on: childhood is soon passed; our boyish loves, our school-days, our holydays, our mothers' caressings and sisters' presents; our first day in London, our stand-up collar, and first tail-coat-where are they? Echo answers-or should do so-"With the world before the flood."--Now comes the Autumn

Crowned with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf Comes Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain. We have time to look about us now; we reflect and marry; some marry and reflect; and certain ghosts of time misspent, of precious moments wasted, of hours that run by untasted, like water through a statue's marble lips, flit ubraidingly before our mental vision.

Not to understand a treasure's worth
Till time has stol'n away the blighted good,
Is cause of half the poverty we feel,
And makes the world the wilderness it is.||

Well! well! we say, we will do better now; we will
turn over a new leaf, and live so as to live hereafter.
A fool at forty is a fool indeed.

Soon again we are called from reflection to action; children crowd around our knees; and they play our games over and over again, and shoot up to boyhood and to manhood, whilst we are going down the hill: we sink soon into the state of Shakespere's justice, with "beard of formal cut," it may be even "with fair round belly with good capon lined." We tell our young experiences, and what we did when we were young; we recur to old times, and old friends and old familiar faces"-going or gone

Fine merry franions
Wanton companions
My days are e'en banyans
With thinking upon ye!
How death, that last stinger,
Finis-writer, end-bringer,
Has laid his chill finger
Or is laying on ye.

Soon again Autumn passes, and chill Winter comes upon us: we are in the last stage of our mortal year Now it will be soon all over with us; our enjoyments are circumscribed; our sight fails; our taste and hearing are nearly gone; we sigh with Virgil:

Optima quæque dies miseris mortalibus ævi Prima fugit, subeunt morbi tritisque senectus. Our best days are past; and nothing remains but the hope beyond the grave. Let us hope that it is a firm and bright one to us; and then indeed this life is nothing.

At last, with creeping crooked pace, came forth
An old, old man, with face as white as snow+

Another turn of time's kaleidoscope and the year has passed; the seasons all gone-and death comes at last to put an end to life's poor play. Reader, we have had somewhat of a long gossip-we hope not uselessly. In turning again to the beauties of the Seasons, the flowers, and fair weather, the corn, and wheat, and storms, and windy weather, let us exclaim with

Thompson

The stars one by one in the waters look'd down,

To array them to wait on their beautiful queen: Save the nightingale's voice, all was silence around, Or Zephyrus sporting the foliage between.

When the fairy-like form of the maid I adored

Tripp'd over the meadow bespangled with dew; And the spot is still holy where first we out-pour'd A passion as mutual and warm as 'twas true.

Ye stars, that inspired us with purest delight,
Ye bright-eyed beholders of all that we proved,
Ye never embellish'd a lovlier night

Than the one in whose silence we wander'd and loved.

Charles Lamb. +Spenser

THE SECOND MARRIAGE.

A TALE FOR EMIGRANTS.

BY GEORGINA C. MUNRO.

JESSIE Palmer was the prettiest girl within a circuit of a good hundred miles in the heart of the Cape Colony, and that is saying not a little for her beauty, when the rival charms of two or three score of Dutch maidens are taken into due consideration: for the fair descendants of the first colonists are gifted with a large amount of personal attraction, and it is rare to find among them any who have not some claim to admiration. It might have been Jessie's sweet temper and noble qualities that made her the best beloved child of her widowed father; but we much fear that it was chiefly her exceeding loveliness which won her such high place in his affection. And yet her yielding gentleness endeared her likewise to one who could not bear his pleasure thwarted in the most trifling degree, nor brook the expression of any will except his own.

But that will had always been to seek Jessie's happiness, that pleasure always to promote it. Palmer loved to see his favourite daughter smile, and the only tears his tyrannical disposition had ever cost her, were occasioned by his harshness and unkindness towards her brother and sister. Yet to stand, as she often did, between them and his anger, or to obtain for them some favour they would have themselves implored in vain, was a delight far surpassing all the mere personal gratifications showered on her by her father's partiality.

But it was not merely in his own family that Palmer was overbearing and capricious, the same grave faults were visible in his intercourse with the world. His prejudices were strong, and his hatreds as easily aroused as they were enduring, and many were the feuds which had sprung up between him and his fellow-men during , the twenty-years he had resided at Blue Krantz Vlei. For one half those years, while his fair and gentle wife was by his side to smile sunshine upon his soul, and by the music of her voice chase away the evil spirit which troubled him, those deformities of character were less apparent; but since she who was his guardian angel left him, they had become more glaring every year.

Palmer's features wore their softest expression, as he sat examining a small case which had just arrived from Cape Town. "What do you think I have here?" he demanded, turning on Jessie a look which seemed to herald a welcome surprise.

"Some paints for Miriam!" exclaimed Jessie, after a moment's thought.

"Paints for Miriam!" echoed her father contemptuously. "A lump of Kafir pigment would serve her turn. What is the use of her wanting to daub?"

A flush crimsoned Mirian's pallid brow, and she bent lower over her work.

"Come hither, child," added Palmer; and Jessie sprang forward, eager to prevent by her alacrity any deeper wound to her sister's feelings. "What say you to this?" he asked, holding up a glittering bracelet, "what will you give me for it?"

"As many kisses as you like!" cried Jessie joyfully, for, despite her wish to procure Miriam's gratification, girlish vanity would have its way, and she was delighted with the gift.

"How very beautiful!" exclaimed Miriam, who had crept near to look at it.

"Not half so beautiful as my Jessie," said the father, proudly, as he kissed the snowy brow of his fairer child.

Miriam's eyes glanced fondly on her sister, but she did not give utterance to the feelings of admiration which no thought of envy could ever shadow. And

yet she was one who might have found some excuse for envy.

An hour later on the same day a young man stood leaning on his gun on the edge of a cliff, whose base was washed by a small stream which flowed swiftly and silently along. He stood on a sharp angle of the cliff, which receded on the right hand from the rivulet, giving place to a bank of smooth white sand which bordered it for a few yards further down. In a small spot of earth at the foot of the precipice on this side, a stately laurel had struck root and flourished most luxuriantly, raising its lofty head almost to the level of the cliff, and hiding the dull red sandstone with its dome of bright dark leaves.

But the stranger's gaze rested neither on the clear water nor the graceful laurel, but on the grassy slope which met the glittering sand. Its fresh green hue was token of how recently the now insignificant stream had overflowed its banks, and behind it stretched away a tangled wilderness of geraniums, African laburnums, and acacias, mingled with the pale blue of the Kafir rose, and the snow stars of the jasmine; and the cool welcome breeze which swept by was richly laden with their fragrance.

On the slope, half reclined, were seated Jessie and Miriam, presenting in their persons a contrast which might well have arrested an older eye than that now fixed upon them. One a very Psyche in grace and beauty, with all the bright joyous feelings of eighteen beaming on her sunny features. The other sixteen, but at first glance looked scarce more than half that age, so dwarfed was she by the fearful accident which had left her deformed and sickly. Her face, too, was plain; though they who thought worth while to regard it attentively, read a softness and sweetness in the sad earnest eyes, which half won them to forget its plainness. The tiny creature was sketching some object beyond the rivulet, and the bright-eyed beauty ever and anon bent over to watch her progress, with a warmth of sisterly affection which no repulsive exterior had power to chill.

The gazer was fully conscious of the social treachery he was guilty of, yet there he stood in danger of discovery every instant. But neither of the girls ever thought of raising their eyes to the cliff. At length as the deformed girl was sharpening her pencil, the wind caught the paper, and bore it fluttering along the ground towards the stream. She sprang after it eagerly.

"Miriam! Miriam!" exclaimed her sister, starting to her feet. But Miriam hurried on.

An alarming thought flashed like lightning through the young man's mind, but it vanished as he saw that Miriam's little feet left no impression on the sand. The next moment the foot sunk an inch; but, thinking only of the sketch, which now fluttered close to the water's edge, she was unconscious of it. Another step nearer to the stream, and she sank deeper, and at the same moment her sister's cry of terror awoke her to the danger; but, hurried and bewildered, she lost all presence of mind, and her only movement carried her further within the line of quicksand, which, as sometimes happens in South Africa, owed its temporary existence to the recent flood.

Light as she was, she had sunk more than a foot, and another minute would have left no trace of the shuddering Miriam. But no sooner did the silent watcher perceive the fearful realisation of his passing thought, than, throwing down his gun, he sprang into the lofty laurel, and rapidly lowered himself by its branches to the ground. Then stepping lightly forward he caught up the child-like Miriam, and as the readiest mode of insuring her safety, flung her into the arms of the girl who stood paralysed with terror on the verge of the sandbank.