(A foolish puppy who had left the pack,

Thoughtless what foe was threat'ning at his back,)
He moves about, as ships prepared to sail,
He hoists his proud rotundity of tail,

The half-sealed eyes and changeful neck he shows,
Where in its quickening colours vengeance glows;
From red to blue the pendant wattle turn,
Blue mixed with red as matches when they burn,
And thus the intruding snarler to oppose,
Urged by enkindling wrath, he gobbling goes.
No image appears too humble for Crabbe:

For these occasions forth his knowledge sprung,
As mustard quickens on a bed of dung.

When his graphic power is applied to a different order of subjects and accompanied with more sentiment, we behold the legitimate evidences of his title to the name of poet :

Then how serene! when in your favourite room,
Gales from your jasmins soothe the evening gloom,
When from your upland paddock you look down
And just perceive the smoke which hides the town;
When weary peasants at the close of day,

Walk to their cots and part upon the way;

When cattle slowly cross the shallow brook,

And shepherds pen their folds and rest upon their crook.

Their's is yon house that holds the parish poor,
Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door;
There, where the putrid vapours flagging play,
And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day;
There children dwell who know no parents care,
Parents, who know no childrens' love, dwell there,
Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed,
Forsaken wives and mothers never wed;
Dejected widows with unheeded tears,

And crippled age with more than childhood's fears,
The lame, the blind, and far the happiest they,
The moping idiot and the madman gay.

But the

out its ideal grandeur or its poetic consolation. redeeming influence of such creations lies in the melancholy but wholesome truths they convey. The mists that shroud the dwellings of the wretched are rolled away, the wounds of the social system are laid bare, and the sternest facts of experience are proclaimed. This process was greatly required in Great Britain when Crabbe appeared as the bard of the poor. He arrayed the dark history of their needs and oppression in a guise which would attract the eye of taste. He led many a luxurious peer to the haunts of poverty. He carried home to the souls of the pampered and proud, a startling revelation of the distress and crime that hung unnoticed around their steps. He fulfilled, in his day, the same benevolent office which, in a different style, has since been so ably continued by Dickens. These two writers have published to the world, the condition of the English poor, in characters of light; and thrown the whole force of their genius into an appeal from the injustice of society and the abuses of civilization.

SHELLEY.

"Was cradled into poetry by wrong,

And learned in suffering what he taught in song."

It is now about eighteen years since the waters of the Mediterranean closed over one of the most delicately organized and richly endowed beings of our era. A scion of the English aristocracy, the nobility of his soul threw far into the shade all conventional distinctions; while his views of life and standard of action were infinitely broader and more elevated than the narrow limits of caste. Highly imaginative, susceptible and brave, even in boyhood he reverenced the honest convictions of his own mind above success or authority. With a deep thirst for knowledge, he united a profound interest in his race. Highly philosophical in his taste, truth was the prize for which he most earnestly contended; heroical in his temper, freedom he regarded as the dearest boon of existence; of a tender and ardent heart, love was the grand hope and consolation of his being, while beauty formed the most genial element of his existence.

Of such a nature, when viewed in a broad light, were the elements of Shelley's character. Nor is it difficult to reconcile them with the detail of his opinions and the tenor of his life. It is easy to imagine a state of society in which such a being might freely develope, and felicitously realize principles and endowments so full of pro

mise; while, on the other hand, it is only necessary to look around on the world as it is, or back upon its past records, to lose all surprise that this fine specimen of humanity was sadly misunderstood and his immediate influence perverted. The happy agency which as an independent thinker and humane poet might have been prophecied of Shelley, presupposed a degree of consideration and sympathy, not to say delicacy and reverence, on the part of society, a wisdom in the process of education, a scope of youthful experience, an entire integrity of treatment, to be encountered only in the dreams of the Utopian. To have elicited in forms of unadulterated good the characteristics of such a nature, "when his being overflowed," the world should have been to him, "As a golden chalice to bright wine

Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust."*

Instead of this, at the first sparkling of that fountain, the teachings of the world, and the lessons of life, were calculated to dam up its free tide in the formal embankments of custom and power. What wonder, then, that it overleaped such barriers, and wound waywardly aside into solitude, to hear no sound "save its own dashings?”

The publication of the posthumous proset of Shelley, is chiefly interesting from the fact that it perfectly confirms our best impressions of the man. We here trace in his confidential letters, the love and philanthropy to which his muse was devoted. All his literary opinions evidence the same sincerity. His refined admiration of nature, his habits of intense study and moral independence, have not been exaggerated. The noble actions ascribed to him by partial friends, are proved to be the * Prometheus Unbound.

† Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments. By Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mrs. Shelley: London. 1840.

natural results of his native feelings. The peculiar sufferings of body and mind, of experience and imagination, to which his temperament and destiny subjected him, have in no degree been overstated. His generosity and high ideal of intellectual greatness and human excellence, are more than indicated in the unstudied outpourings of his familiar correspondence.

Love, according to Shelley, is the sum and essence of goodness. While listening to the organ in the Cathedral of Pisa, he sighed that charity instead of faith was not regarded as the substance of universal religion. Self he considered as the poisonous "burr" which especially deformed modern society; and to overthrow this "dark idolatry," he embarked on a lonely but most honourable crusade. The impetuosity of youth doubtless gave to the style of his enterprise an aspect startling to some of his well-meaning fellow-creatures. All social reformers must expect to be misinterpreted and reviled. In the case of Shelley, the great cause for regret is that so few should have paid homage to his pure and sincere intentions; that so many should have credited the countless slanders heaped on his name; and that a nature so gifted and sensitive, should have been selected as the object of such wilful persecution.

The young poet saw men reposing supinely upon dogmas, and hiding cold hearts behind technical creeds, instead of acting out the sublime idea of human brotherhood. His moral sense was shocked at the injustice of society in heaping contumely upon an erring woman, while it recognizes and honours the author of her disgrace. He saddened at the spectacle so often presented, of artificial union in married life, the enforced constancy of unsympathizing beings, hearts dying out in the long struggle of an uncongenial bond. Above all, his benevolent spirit bled for the slavery of the mass-the supersti