I HAVE been in a fool's paradise for the last week. My back is still smarting from the stroke of the old shoe which followed me into the carriage that bore me, with the young partner of my heart, from a weeping circle of friends, and the paternal residence in Place. The honeymoon has not had time to show the least tendency to horns; and the vow which I swore to my lovely Julia between Hangingshaw and Torsonce, to forswear whiskytoddy and cheroots, remains unbroken. My health has been visibly declining in consequence; but one glance in Julia's eyes, and the memories of Manilla fade like a curl of its own smoke in the morning air; and Islay and Glenlivat are abandoned without a sigh.

Dear soul! what days have these not been? It is true, she would insist upon my going out the other night, in the moonlight, to see the ruins of the abbey at Melrose, where we have been doing the pastoral since the happy day; a little freak of poetical perverseness, which has cost me a rheumatism. It is true, that I have not heard one bit of news or scandal for a week; and thoughts of the club have come over me now and then. But, upon the whole, I should say, if I might be allowed a little poetical license, that since "holy church incorporated us two in one,"

We on honey dew have fed,

And drunk the milk of paradise ;

but as all that is between the "conscious moon and ourselves, the less that is said about it the better.

What extremity will not a man suffer for love? Here am I actually at this moment with my wife's Album before me, and under a solemn engagement to contribute to its stores; I, who have through life shunned an Album as I would a leprosy, and lost the favour of many charming Bellamiras of my acquaintance, by refusing to add an acrostic or love-sonnet to the pile of such rubbish which young ladies will take so much pains in compiling for the amusement of their evening parties. Well, I see there is no escaping. Julia, ostensibly deep in the second volume of The President's Daughters, is stealing sly glances at me over the top of the page, delighted to see my pen already flying over the paper. Let me dip into the portfolio of my memory, and perhaps some flying leaves may turn up to help me in my strait. My pen, like Anacreon's lyre, runs, as naturally it should, to "Love, still love ;" and I wander back to the days when I first took my degrees in classics and general literature, beer and tobacco-pipes, at the university of Jena. I was sitting; but I shall tell my tale in good Uhlandic measure. Thus did it befall

THE STUDENT OF JENA.
Once-'twas when I lived at Jena-
At a Wirthshaus' door I sate,
And in pensive contemplation
Eat the sausage thick and fat;

VOL. AI-NO. CXXI,

Eat the kraut, that never sourer
Tasted to my lips than here;
Smoked my pipe of strong canaster,
Sipp'd my fifteenth jug of beer:
Gazed upon the glancing river,
Gazed upon the tranquil pool,
Whence the silver-voiced Undine,
When the nights were calm and cool,
As the Baron Fouqué tells us,
Rose from out her shelly grot,
Casting glamour o'er the waters,
Witching that enchanted spot.
From the shadow which the coppice
Flings across the rippling stream,
Did I hear a sound of music-

Was it thought or was it dream?
There, beside a pile of linen,

Stretch'd along the daisied sward, Stood a young and blooming maiden"Twas her thrush-like song I heard. Evermore within the eddy

Did she plunge the white chemise,
And her robes were loosely gather'd
Rather far above her knees;
Then my breath at once forsook me;
For too surely did I deem
That I saw the fair Undine,

Standing in the glancing stream;
And I felt the charm of knighthood;
And from that remember'd day,
Every evening to the Wirthshaus
Took I my enchanted way.
Shortly to relate my story,

Many a week of summer long,

Came I there, when beer-o'ertaken,
With my lute and with my song;
Sang, in mellow-toned soprano,
All my love and all my woe,
Till the river-maiden answered,

Lilting in the stream below:"Fair Undine ! sweet Undine !

Dost thou love as I love thee?"
"Love is free as running water,"
Was the answer made to me.
Thus, in interchange seraphic,

Did I woo my phantom fay,
Till the nights grew long and chilly,
Short and shorter grew the day;
Till at last 'twas dark and gloomy,
Dull and starless was the sky,
And my steps were all unsteady,
For a little flush'd was I-
To the well-accustom'd signal

No response the maiden gave;
But I heard the waters washing,
And the moaning of the wave.
Vanish'd was my own Undine;

All her linen, too, was gone;
And I walk'd about, lamenting,
On the river bank alone.
Idiot that I was, for never

Had I ask'd the maiden's name.
Was it Lieschen? was it Gretchen?
Had she tin? or whence she came ?
So I took my trusty meerschaum,
And I took my lute likewise;
Wander'd forth, in minstrel fashion,
Underneath the lowering skies;
Sang before each comely Wirthshaus,
Sang, beside each purling stream,
That same ditty that I chanted
When Undine was my theme:

Singing, as I sang at Jena,

When the shifts were hung to dry, "Fair Undine! young Undine,

Dost thou love as well as I ?" But alas! in field or village

Or beside the pebbly shore Did I see those glancing ankles,

And the white robe never more,And no answer came to greet me, No sweet voice to mine replied, But I heard the waters rippling,

And the moaning of the tide.

Thus was I first inoculated with the sweet poison of love. I had foolish notions of constancy in those days-clung to the memory of that fair blanchisseuse, as a devotee would to a relic of some saint "niched in cathedral aisle," and believed I should die a martyr to that exhibition of the washing-tub, in which, to my ardent fancy, she seemed like the immortal "Venus from the Bath" of Canova. I of course got over all that nonsense in due season; but in the faith in which I then was, I remember being much struck with the story of one of my fellow bürschen, who died a martyr to an unhappy attachment to a vintner's daughter and to liquor. I chronicled his story in immortal verse at the time; and as it bore some analogy to that of Schiller's Ritter Toggenburg, I had no scruples in adopting the metre of that wellknown poem. It ran somewhat in this fashion:BURSCH GROGGENBURG.

"Bursch! if foaming beer content ye,

Come and drink your fill;

In our cellars there is plenty,
Himmel! how you swill!
That the liquor hath allurance,
Well I understand;

But 'tis really past endurance

When you squeeze my hand!"

And he heard her as if dreaming,

Heard her half in awe;

And the meerschaum's smoke came streaming
From his open jaw:

For his pulse beat somewhat quicker

Than it did before,

And he finish'd off his liquor,

Stagger'd through the door;
Bolted off direct to Munich,
And within the year
Underneath his German tunic
Stowed whole butts of beer.
And he drank like fifty fishes,
Drank till all was blue-
For he felt extremely vicious;
Somewhat thirsty too.

But at length this dire deboshing
Drew towards an end;
Few of all his silber-groschen
Had he left to spend.

And he knew it was not prudent
Longer to remain,

So with weary feet the student

Wended home again.

At the tavern's well-known portal,
Knocks he as before,
And a waiter rather mortal,
Hiccups through the door.
"Master's sleeping in the kitchen;
You'll alarm the house;
Yesterday the Jungfer Fritchen
Married baker Kraus !"
Like a fiery comet bristling,

Rose the young man's hair,

And, poor soul! he fell a-whistling,
Out of sheer despair.

Down the gloomy street in silence
Savage-calm he goes;

But he did no deed of violence,

Only blew his nose.

Then he hired an airy garret,

Near her dwelling-place,
Grew a beard of fiercest carrot,
Never washed his face;

Sate all day beside the casement,
Sate a dreary man;

Found in smoking such an easement
As the wretched can;

Stared for hours and hours together, Stared yet more and more,

Till in fine and sunny weather,

At the baker's door,

Stood in apron white and mealy,
That beloved dame,
Counting out the loaves so freely,
Selling of the same.

Then like a volcano puffing,

Smoked he out his pipe;
For his supper took he "nuffin,"
Only kraut and tripe;

Went to bed, and in the morning,
Waited as before,

Still his eyes in anguish turning

To the baker's door;

Till, with apron white and mealy,
Came the lovely dame,
Counting out the loaves so freely,
Selling of the same.

So one day, the fact 's amazing—
On his post he died,

And they found the body gazing

At the baker's bride.

I see a number of sensitive young gentlemen turning away at the frequent mention of the sacrifices of Young Groggenburg to the Beer-King. I own the ideas suggested by the practice are not so poetical, according to the received notions, as if I had idealized the more vulgar liquor into wine, and subdued the rosy tints of the grape into the delicate "purple light of love." But I hold it to be above all things essential to poetry that it shall be true to nature; and here the reader must remember that it is German nature that we are dealing with; and to me there is something inexpressibly touching in Groggenburg's "fixed idea" of the fair Gretchen settling down in the vortex of despair and Bavarian Brown, while the eddying volumes of canaster smoke mantled above his head like the clouds of a ravaging volcano.

I have said that it is an essential of poetry that it shall be true to nature. We are too apt to linger in the notion that certain emotions, generally regarded as the more purely poetical, should always clothe themselves in a certain form of words, and to apply the rule of an advanced civilisation to the untutored expressions of a less cultivated race. Jewels and flowers, the attributes of grace and brilliancy, the brightness of the sky, and all that is most rare in fragrance, are what we are in the habit of coupling with the name of her whom we admire. But this species of appeal, it is plain, would have no effect with an Esquimaux beauty. The Hottentot Venus would turn up the rings of her nose at it. What the Australian or New Zealand fair one might say, if told that

"Her cheek was like the cocoa nut,
Her voice, the parroqueet's,"

I really cannot say; but it is very plain that the way to compliment either of these ladies upon her head-dress would be, not to talk of "pearlins or silken twine," but of scalp-locks and bears' claws. I shall illustrate my position by some verses which recently reached me from Australia. They were sent me by a young man who left his native city of Glasgow, some ten years ago, after a protracted interview, conducted with the greatest propriety on both sides, with the Lord Justiceclerk of the period, in presence of several of the junior members of the bar, who happened to be on circuit at the time. He went out in one of her Majesty's vessels, on a permanent engagement by government for seven years. It was part of his duty to see to the repair of the roads in the colony; and he was thus thrown much into the society of a literary gentleman from London, who had seen a good deal of life in the colony, and who happened to be under a similar engagement. For days on days, as he wrote me, they used to sit side by side, amusing themselves with geological hammers upon the whinstone of Australia, linked together, not so much, perhaps, by the ties of friendship, as by a chain of some four hundred-weight, which was the symbol of their government appointment. It was in this situation that my young friend heard from the lips of his companion the following erotic appeal, which may be called

The bush is now my empire,

The knife my sceptre keen;
Come with me to the desert wild,
And be my dusky queen!
I cannot give thee jewels,
I have nor sheep, nor cow,
Yet there are kangaroos, love,
And colonists enow!

We'll meet the unwary settler,
As whistling home he goes,
And I'll take tribute from him,
His money and his clothes.
Then on his bleeding carcass

Thou 'lt lay thy pretty paw,
And lunch upon him, roasted,
Or, if you like it, raw!

Then come with me, my princess,
My own Australian dear!
Within this grove of gum trees
We'll hold our bridal cheer.
Thy heart with love is beating,
I feel it through thy side,
Hurrah! then, for the noble pair,

The convict and his bride!

Thy skin is dark as jet, ladye,

Thy cheek is sharp and high,

And there's a cruel leer, love,
Within thy rolling eye!
These tangled ebon tresses

No comb hath e'er gone through,
And thy forehead, it is furrow'd by
The elegant tatoo!

I love thee, oh, I love thee,

Thou strangely-feeding maid-
Nay, lift not thus thy boomerang,
I meant not to upbraid!

Come, let me taste these yellow lips,
That ne'er were tasted yet,
Save when the shipwrecked mariner
Passed through them for a whet.
Nay, squeeze me not so tightly!
For I am gaunt and thin,
There's little flesh to tempt thee
Beneath a convict's skin.

I came not to be eaten,

I sought thee, love, to woo;
Besides, bethink thee, dearest,
You've dined on cockatoo !

Thy father is a chieftain,
Why, that's the very thing!
Within my native country

I too have been a king.
Behold this branded letter,
Which nothing can efface,
It is the royal emblem,

The token of my race!

But rebels rose against me,
And dared my power disown-
You've heard, love, of the Judges?
They drove me from my throne.
And I have wander'd hither,

And crossed the stormy sea,
In search of glorious freedom,

In search, my sweet, of thee!

Aus

A singular strain, certainly; but, doubtless, it was as fatal in its way as any of Moore's Melodies to a young lady fresh from Lara and a boardingschool. The only startling point about it is, that a European should be the suitor; but when gentlemen take to the bush, they don't usually stand upon trifles. Love is blind in any case. tralia's cupids must, however, be beyond the cure In this case, the poet may have spoken from a prudent fear of being eaten up, as the phrase goes, with kindness; and tried to find the way to his dusky charmer's heart, to avoid a passage to the less poetical regions of her stomach. In fact, he must have written under the "dira necessitas leti," as our poor friend, the Honourable I. O. Uwins, flung himself away upon a bailiff's daughter to escape from the restraints and pungent odours of a spunging-house. Poor I. O. Uwins! thine was a woeful fate, and worthy of a minstrel's hand of But you shall not go greater nerve than ours. down to oblivion, like the heroes who lived before Agamemnon, for want of a bard, so long as we have a note left in our voice to chant

THE DOLEFUL LAY OF
THE HONOURABLE I. O. UWINS.
Come and listen, lords and ladies,
To a woeful lay of mine;
He whose tailor's bill unpaid is,
Let him now his ear incline:
Let him hearken to my story,
How the noblest of the land
Pined long time in dreary duresse,
'Neath a spunging bailiff's hand.

I. O. Uwins! I. O. Uwins!
Baron's son although thou be,
Thou must pay for thy misdoings
In the country of the free!
None of all thy sire's retainers
To thy rescue now may come ;
And there lie a score detainers
With Abednego the bum!
Little recked he of his prison
Whilst the sun was in the sky:
Only when the moon was risen
Did you hear the captive's cry.

For till then cigars and claret
Lull'd him in oblivion sweet;
And I'd rather choose a garret,

For my drinking, than the street.
But the moonlight, pale and broken,
Pained at soul the Baron's son;
For he knew by that soft token,
That the larking had begun ;
That the stout and valiant Marquis
Then was leading forth his swells,
Mangling some policeman's carcass,
Or purloining private bells.
So he sate in grief and sorrow,

Rather drunk than otherwise, Till the golden gush of morrow Dawned once more upon his eyes; Till the spunging bailiff's daughter, Lightly tapping at the door, Brought his draught of soda-water, Brandy-bottomed as before. "Sweet Rebecca! has your father, Think you, made a deal of brass?" And she answered-" Sir, I rather Should imagine that he has." Uwins, then, his whiskers scratching, Leer'd upon the maiden's face; And her hand with ardour catching, Folded her in his embrace.

La, Sir! let alone-you fright me !" Said the daughter of the Jew. "Dearest! how these eyes delight me ! Let me love thee, darling, do!" "Vat is dish?" the bailiff mutter'd, Rushing in with fury wild ; "Ish your muffins so vell butter'd, Dat you darsh insult ma shild?" "Honourable my intentions,

Good Abednego, I swear!
And I have some small pretensions,
For I am a Baron's heir.
If you'll only clear my credit,

And advance a thou* or so,
She's a peeress-I have said it!
Don't you twig, Abednego?"
"Datsh a very different matter!"
Said the bailiff with a leer;
"But you mosht not cut it fatter

Than ta slish vill stand, ma tear! If you seeksh ma approbation,

You mosht quite give up your rigsh; Alsho, you mosht join our nation, And renounsh ta flesh of pigsh." Fast as one of Fagin's pupils,

I. O. Uwins did agree;

Little plagued with holy scruples

From the starting-post was he.

But at times a baleful vision

Rose before his trembling view;
For he knew that circumcision
Was expected from a Jew.
At a meeting of the Rabbis,

Held about the Whitsuntide,
Was this thorough-paced Barabbas
Wedded to his Hebrew bride.
All his former debts compounded,

From the spunging-house he came ;
And his father's feelings wounded
With reflections on the same.
But the sire his son accosted:

66 Split my wig, if any more,
Such a double-dyed apostate
Shall presume to cross my door!
Not a penny-piece to save thee

From the kennel or the spout.

* The fashionable abbreviation for a thousand pounds.

Dinner, John! the pig and gravy!
Kick this dirty scoundrel out!
Forth rushed I. O. Uwins, faster

Than all winking, much afraid
That the orders of the master
Would be punctually obeyed;
Sought his club, and there the sentence
Of expulsion first he saw :

No one dared to own acquaintance
With a bailiff's son-in-law.
Uselessly down Bond Street strutting,
Did he greet his friends of yore;
Such a universal cutting

Never man received before.
Till at last his pride revolted:
Pale, and lean, and stern, he grew ;
And his wife Rebecca bolted

With a missionary Jew.

Ye who read this doleful ditty,
Ask ye where is Uwins now?
Wend your way through London city,
Climb to Holborn's lofty brow,
Near the sign-post of" The Nigger,"
Near the baked-potato shed,
You may see a ghastly figure

With three hats upon his head.

When the evening shades are dusky,

Then the phantom form draws near,
And, with accents low and husky,
Pours effluvia in your ear:
Craving an immediate barter

Of your trousers or surtout,
And you know the Hebrew martyr,
Once the peerless I. O. U.

It may be bad taste in us, but it certainly is our opinion, that this lay is as touching as any lay that ever dimmed with tears the eye of lady in lordly bower. The hope of a noble house sinking, by degrees, from the splendours of Bond Street, through the spunging-house, into the arms of Abednego's daughter; spurned by the elders of the Sanhedrim, and the men of his club; kicked out by his affectionate parent; deserted by his too ardent wife; a pariah of pariahs; a trafficker in the refuse of Field Lane; verily here is matter to point a moral and adorn a tale.

Some writers would shun such a topic as too vulgar and familiar for verse. There lies the mistake. What is poetry fit for, if not to raise the vulgar and the familiar into the sphere of the beautiful and becoming; to elevate our common life,

"And with the lofty sanctify the low?"

We all diminish our chances of making life more agreeable by not keeping this in view. It is easy to be poetical on a pair of bewitching eyes, or a sweet smile, or a gentle voice. But commend us to the man who can give a poetical turn to a bad debt, and who has a stanza at command to give a relish to a spoiled dinner. And we are prepared to die in the service of the lady who will have a quatrain ready, along with the mutton, for her husband or brother when they come home, "tired both in heart and limb," or who cheers them with the living poetry of a cheerful face and pleasant temper. Carry out the principle a little farther, and see how pleasantly it will work. Suppose you want a favourite dish: it is, possibly, no favourite of your wife's; but, in place of using the husband's privilege of grumbling, because you