Stern they pass along the twilight green,
While within the tangled wood's recess
Some lorn damsel sits, lamenting keen,
With a voice of tuneful amorousness.

Clad in purple weed, with pearly crown,
And with golden hairs that waving play,
Fairest earthly sight for King and Clown,
Oriana or Angelica.

But in sadder nooks of deeper shade,

Forms more subtle lurk from human eye, Each cold Nymph, the rock or fountain's maid, Crowned with leaves that sunbeams never dry.

And while on and on I wander, still

Passed the plashing streamlet's glance and foam, Hearing oft the wild-bird pipe at will,

Still new openings lure me still to roam.

In this hollow smooth by May-tree walled,

White and breathing now with fragrant flower,

Lo! the fairy tribes to revel called,

Start in view as fades the evening hour.

Decked in rainbow roof of gossamer,

And with many a sparkling jewel bright,
Rose-leaf faces, dew-drop eyes are there,
Each with gesture fine of gentle sprite.

Gay they woo, and dance, and feast, and sing,
Elfin chants and laughter fill the dell,

As if every leaf around should ring

With its own aerial emerald bell.

But for man 'tis ever sad to see

Joys like his that he must not partake,

'Mid a separate world, a people's glee,

In whose hearts his heart no joy could wake.

Fare ye well, ye tiny race of elves;

May the moonbeam ne'er behold your tomb; Ye are happiest childhood's other selves, Bright to you be always evening's gloom.

And thou, mountain-realm of ancient wood,
Where my feet and thoughts have strayed so long,
Now thy old gigantic brotherhood

With a ghostlier vastness round me throng.

Mound, and cliff, and crag, that none may scale
With your serried trunks and wrestling boughs,
Like one living presence ye prevail,

And o'erhang me with Titanian brows.

In your Being's mighty depth of Power,
Mine is lost and melted all away.

In your forms involved I seem to tower,
And with you am spread in twilight grey.

In this knotted stem whereon I lean,

And the dome above of countless leaves,
Twists and swells, and frowns a life unseen,

That my life with it resistless weaves.

Yet, O nature, less is all of thine

Than thy borrowings from our human breast;
Thou, O God, hast made thy child divine,

And for him this world thou hallowest.

The Rose and the Gauntlet we much admire as a ballad, and the tale is told in fewest words, and by a single picture; but we have not room for it here. In Lady Jane Grey, though this again is too garrulous, the picture of the princess at the beginning is fine, as she sits in the antique casement of the rich old

room.

The lights through the painted glass

Fall with fondest brightness o'er the form

Of her who sits, the chamber's lovely dame,
And her pale forehead in the light looks warm,
And all these colors round her whiteness flame.

Young is she, scarcely passed from childhood's years,
With grave, soft face, where thoughts and smiles may play,
And unalarmed by guilty aims or fears,

Serene as meadow flowers may meet the day.

No guilty pang she knows, though many a dread
Hangs threatening o'er her in the conscious air,
And 'mid the beams from that bright casement shut,

A twinkling crown foreshows a near despair.

The quaint conciseness of this last line pleases me.

He always speaks in marble words of Greece. But I must make no more quotations.

Some part of his poem on Shakspeare is no unfit prelude to a few remarks on his own late work. With such a sense of greatness none could wholly fail.

With meaning won from him for ever glows

Each air that England feels, and star it knows;
And gleams from spheres he first conjoined to earth
Are blent with rays of each new morning's birth,
Amid the sights and tales of common things,

Leaf, flower, and bird, and wars, and deaths of kings,
Of shore, and sea, and nature's daily round
Of life that tills, and tombs that load the ground,
His visions mingle, swell, command, pass by,
And haunt with living presence heart and eye,
And tones from him, by other bosoms caught,
Awaken flush and stir of mounting thought,
And the long sigh, and deep, impassioned thrill,
Rouse custom's trance, and spur the faltering will.
Above the goodly land, more his than ours,
He sits supreme enthroned in skyey towers.
And sees the heroic blood of his creation
Teach larger life to his ennobled nation.
O! shaping brain! O! flashing fancy's hues!
O! boundless heart kept fresh by pity's dews!
O! wit humane and blythe! O! sense sublime
For each dim oracle of mantled Time!

Transcendant form of man! in whom we read,

Mankind's whole tale of Impulse, Thought, and Deed.

Such is his ideal of the great dramatic poet. It would not be fair to measure him, or any man, by his own ideal; that affords a standard of spiritual and intellectual progress, with which the ex

ecutive powers may not correspond. A clear eye may be associated with a feeble hand, or the reverse. The mode of measurement proposed by the great thinker of our time is not inapplicable. First, show me what aim a man proposes to himself; next, with what degree of earnestness he strives to attain it. In both regards we can look at Mr. Sterling's work with pleasure and admiration. He exhibits to us a great crisis, with noble figures to represent its moving springs. His work is not merely the plea for a principle, or the exposition of a thought, but an exhibition of both at work in life. He opens the instrument and lets us see the machinery without stopping the music. The progress of interest in the piece is imperative, the principal character well brought out, the style clear and energetic, the tone throughout is of a manly dignity, worthy great times. Yet its merit is of a dramatic sketch, rather than a drama. The forms want the roundness, the fulness of life, the thousand charms of spontaneous expression. In this last particular Sterling is as far inferior to Taylor, as Taylor to Shakspeare. His characters, like Miss Baillie's or Talfourd's, narrate rather than express their life. Not elaborately, not pedantically, but yet the effect is that, while they speak we look on them as past, and Sterling's view of them interests us more than themselves. In his view of relations again we must note his inferiority to Taylor, who in this respect is the only contemporary dramatist on whom we can look with complacency. Taylor's characters really meet, really bear upon one another. In contempt and hatred, or esteem, reverence, and melting tenderness, they challenge, bend, and transfuse one another.

Strafford never alters, never is kindled by or kindles the life of any other being, never breathes the breath of the moment. Before us, throughout the play, is the view of his greatness taken by the mind of the author; we are not really made to feel it by those around him; it is echoed from their lips, not from their lives. Lady Carlisle is the only personage, except Strafford, that is

brought out into much relief. Everard is only an accessory, and the king, queen, and parliamentary leaders, drawn with a few strokes to give them their historical position. Scarcely more can be said of Hollis; some individual action is assigned him, but not so as to individualize his character. The idea of the relation at this ominous period between Strafford and Lady Carlisle is noble. In these stern times he has put behind him the flowers of tenderness, and the toys of passion.

Lady, believe me, that I loved you truly,
Still think of you with wonder and delight,
Own you the liveliest, noblest heart of woman
This age, or any, knows; but for love ditties
And amorous toys, and kisses ocean-deep,

Strafford and this old Earth are all too sad.

But when the lady had a soul to understand the declaration, and show herself worthy of his friendship, there is a hardness in his action towards her, a want of softness and grace, how different from Van Artevelde's:

My Adriana, victim that thou art.

The nice point indeed, of giving the hero manly firmness, and an even stern self-sufficiency, without robbing him of the beauty of gentle love, was touched with rare success in Van Artevelde. Common men may not be able to show firmness and persistency, without a certain hardness and glassiness of expression; but we expect of the hero, that he should combine the softness with the constancy of Hector.

This failure is the greater here, that we need a private tie to Strafford to give his fall the deepest tragic interest.

Lady Carlisle is painted with some skill and spirit. The name given her by St. John of "the handsome vixen," and the willingness shown by her little page to die, rather than see her after failing to deliver her letter, joined with her own appearance, mark