The

Heaven-wedding pyramid," we are told with seeming gravity, that our hero, "fainted in perfection!" "Angels and ministers of grace defend us!" What are our poets about ? opening lines contain a very fair idea of the nature of the composition

Through all God's homely universe he
roamed

Lordly, and spake to earth the lore of stars,
The mother-tongue of Heaven our Father-

land.

Born to instate mankind in veriest truths,
By nature symbolled in gem, bloom, and
wing;

To give to all the hope of bliss reserved,
And ultimate certainty of angelhood,
He, like a river which through gulleys, rocks
And deserts runs its purifying race

To Ocean's thrice regenerative depths,
Chose thorough all probations his own path,
And voluntary trode the downward way;
For they whose eyen by spirit-fire are
purged

Move ever up the reascent to light,

On a cœlestial gradient, paved with wings;
Disrobed him of all privilege, and alone
Suffered the dignities yearned for by the

mass

But that he might ennoble servitude.

Very soon after this disclosure we are enlightened as to the endowments The Mystic received at his birth, and it is curious to remark here, the great likeness between a passage of Bailey's, and one of Calderon's, in "El Purgatorio de san Patricio."

(Que no daran Marte y Venus?)
El sol me dio condicion
Muy generesa, y por serio,
Si no tengo que gastar,
Hurto y robo cuanto puedo ;
Jupiter me dio soberbia,
De bizarros pensambientos;
Saturno colera y rabia,
Valor, y animo resuelto
A traiciones; y a estas causas
Se han sequido los efectos.

Jornada 1.

I suspect that all The planets seven, in wild confusion strange Assisted at my most unhappy birth. The fickle Moon gave me inconstancy, Mercury gave me genius ill employed, (Far better not to have received the gift!) Lascivious Venus gave me siren passions. And ruddy Mars a hard and cruel mind. (What will not Mars and Venus jointly give?)

The Sun conferred upon me rank and
state,-

Which to support I scrupled not the means;
Jupiter gave me pride and lofty thought;
And Saturn blended in my complex nature
Rage, anger, valour, and a ready mind;-
And fitting fruits have grown from out

these lusts.

'Dramas of Calderon, by D. F. M'Carthy.

After his second birth, he employs his time in leading men to do good, or in fasting, and in abstract contemplations of the Divinity.

Time's arid rivulet through its glassy gorge
Lapsed ceaseless; and again, by Gunga's

ware,

(0! life and bliss assuring fount of heaven, The life-flowings divine of Deity,

How mighty, how mysterious is thy name!)

He, of a damsel, sacred to the god
With fellow maidens sporting,whom a cloud
Of sunset glory clasped, and circumfused
With vital brilliance, dropping-next was
born.

During this portion of his career, we learn to our great astonishment that:

"The spirit,

Inured to meditate alone on God,

Pleasure no more can please, finds scant delight
In fragrant fields, grows discontent with Heaven.

After his third birth, he sees the destruction, and rebirth of things, and warns man of their appearance. His presence this time is thus described

Born of the tree blood-sapped, which, on the steep

Of knowledge, thrice, by vital wind, impreg-
ned,

Buds forth her life, the mother of the world,
Upon the royal rock four-faced, he dwelled,

The tripod mountain, with its jewelled feet
Long while; the orient side of silver pure;
Beryl, the brow which over-awes the sun,
When, abdicating Heaven, he calls the stars
To attest his end imperial; the dead north
Of glowing gold, the south of ruby paled.

The fourth time he comes into the world, he appears to have been engaged in the very ridiculous and preposterous occupation, of proving how infinity becomes finite.

Reason supreme him made innately wise,
The stars prophetic and the holy moon,
Interpreter to time of things æterne,
Ruler of rites and sacred festivals.
And the invisible heavens the giant world
Through him instructed; him O! star of
earth

Thou saddest, wisest, eldest of all lights !

The formless origin of things, and how,
Proceeding from itself, the infinite
Finite becomes: returning thitherward,
The finite infinite, whereby the parts,
O'erleaping the interstitial net of death,
Regain that continuity of soul

Which ones them with the boundless and
divine.

Fifthly, that is to say, after his fifth birth, The Mystic seeks and finds Death, grapples with "the white monster," smites him, and takes three drops of black blood from his heart, with which he proceeds "to purge the eye of wisest man." Here is a piece of news for us.

Of the cœlestial vine, ten thousand branched, Which stretcheth o'er the skiey roof of earth,

Heaven's holy tree, whereon the luminous

fruit

Of soul unborn, in glittering clusters hung,

One by one dropping into mortal moulds,
A golden shower, he tasted; and by stealth
Plucked from the pomegranates of Paradise,
Unknown to crowds, the secret fruit of life,
Star-orbed, immortal, ripe with solar seed
The single seed, deathful yet mastering
death,

And knew himself divinifled; for he,
With lote and holy honey-suckle crowned,
As well the bruised theangeline, which gives
Prophetic sense, as juice of aglaophant,
That subjects to the eye the invisible world,
And hom sweet herblet of immortal life,
Sipped, till transmute he stood, star-
headed; felt

His eyes Irradiate with an inward light,
And recognized his angels where they
wheeled,

Like mated falcons round their creanced
young,

Saluting him in rapture, man of men,

Sole son of life, the crown and heir of time.

He then gains admission into the company of certain "Mystics," "luminous, divine," "the first created witnesses of God," who, among other things, show him the "magic rose," from whose fragrance he gains knowledge of the past. Birth the sixth having taken place, we find that he has been made a present of the skies as a mantle, that he sits down to play game of hazard with the Sun, fleeces him as well as ever a greenhorn was fleeced in a sponging house, " and plays such tricks before high heaven," as ought to make the angels weep," though he would lead us to infer, that they were delighted with his gymnastics. Here is a glimpse reminding us very much of Hogarth's "Rake's Progress."

Thus conversant with gods, immortal, he
The pure perfection whence he fell regained,
Gifts pleni-solar, and præ-astral powers,
Prophetic, and mnemonic of all time,
With added wisdom of all ill and good.
The gates of death he passed and doubly
lived,

The gates of life, whereby the blest ascend;
Then drave his dragon chariot round the
world,

Lashing with lightnings till they sweated
fire.

Gaming with golden dice, he of the Sun
Won thrice his light; of ocean, deep by

deep,

His boundless realms; of earth her count

less lands;

But their own bade them take again, while he

One moment merged in that leviathan womb,

And through the starry tabernacles borne, By seven bright maids immortal, (gleeful they

At the lost brightness refound) from the
depths

Of heaven's siderial river drew and drank
The lymph divine of light, the dew of life.

The seventh transformation shews him eagerly endeavouring to discover "Truth," in pursuit of which he forsakes all luxu

ries.

For thrice nine years, Through fits of silence, loneness, fasting, toil, He fought the foe of spirit and subdued. The thrice thinned juices of the all-healing plant,

With moon-dews mingled and eye-brightening charms

The unseen to see, himself invisible;
Honey, and berries red of the eerie wood,
Oakcorns and apples, roots and wheaten
cates,

His fare and bever formed for twice an age,
With amber flowing mead at moonéd feasts.

We will allow the author to relate his eighth appearance :

Initiate, mystic, perfected, epopt,
Illuminate, adept, transcendent, he
Ivy.like, lived, and died, and again lived,
Resuscitant. On high his nest he wove

In the strange tree whereof man first was
made,

Whose roots reach down to hell, whose topmost bough

Waves its bright leaflets in the airs of
heaven,

And communed with the universal life,
Beloved of lightning for its kindred birth,

19

That vivifies its veins; until possessed
Of all that could be known, the whole he
knew;

Cropped where they grew the flowers of

learning, massed

In meadowy beds, and bright with fragrant dew.

The above may be taken as a fair instance of the mysticism, pedantry, and purposeless nature of this truly incomprehensible Poem: take him again :

Impowered in turn by these with chariest charms,

The sun, from dawn to night-noon, he outeyed

From the peaked mountain which commands the world,

And earth's penumbral pinions, by her side Quivering; with him he leaped in joy of life

Immortal proven, hand in hand, through air;

In sign whereof on that most holy day,

Heaven's globéd flower whose perfume is the light,

Rose from the polar-north perpend, and

not

With slow initial motion from the west,
As theretofore, in ages lost to time,
Ere coal-palm leaved, or pristine pine, now
tombed

In earth's sepulchral centrals, had put forth
The mystic life-cone, fern her feathery stem.

And yet The Mystic, contains passages of much beauty, evidencing the great genius of their Author, but only adding tenfold to the censure, he deserves, who, gifted with such powers, has turned them to such a bad account: the following, but for a few conceited words, deserves the highest praise :

The next Poem, A Spiritual Legend, which has for its plot, the construction of the World, by the Angels, is a mere list, of all natural objects, and pedantic expressions. The most wearisome minuteness of detail is one of its prominent characteristics let us take one example

We would venture to state, that there are more evidences of pedantry in this one poem, than in a hundred volumes of cotemporaneous literature we might name. A Fairy Tale, with all respect to the Author, is a very bad one, and we remember fifty, told to us in our infantine days, far better than this of Mr. Bailey's; the whole story seems to be that of young lady, who having voluntarily joined a band of fairies, remains in their society for so long a time, that when she returns again to her paternal residence she can find no trace of any of her family, but beholds the castle in ruins, and the place altogether deserted.

In the remarks we have made relative to this new volume of Bailey's, we would not wish to be considered as denying any merit to the poetry it contains: there it a prodigality of language, a lavish profusion of the most gorgeous images, and a sustained elevation of style, throughout everything that issues from this Author's brilliant pen, which strongly typify a most luxuriant imagination, and a mind endowed with lofty contemplative capacity. What we condemn is, the pompous display of learned words, the perpetual mystery apparent, and the meaningless tenor of his themes. The Mystic, does not