Arac, the brother of the princess. And clad in "har

ness

"Issued in the sun that now

Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth,

And hit the northern hills."

To the fight

"Then rode we with the old king across the lawns
Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring

In every bole, a song on every spray
Of birds that piped their Valentines."

The prince and his companions are defeated; and he, wounded almost to the death, is consigned at her own request to be nursed by the princess:—

"So was their sanctuary violated,

So their fair college turn'd to hospital;
At first with all confusion; by and by
Sweet order lived again with other laws;
A kindlier influence reign'd; and everywhere
Low voices with the ministering hand
Hung round the sick."

The result may be foreseen

"From all a closer interest flourish'd up.
Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these,
Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears
By some cold morning glacier; frail at first
And feeble, all unconscious of itself,

But such as gather'd colour day by day."

And the agreement is filled up :

"Dear, but let us type them now

In our lives, and this proud watchword rest

Of equal; seeing either sex alone

Is half itself, and in true marriage lies

Nor equal, nor unequal: each fulfils

Defect in each, and always thought in thought,
Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow,

The single pure and perfect animal,

The two-cell'd heart beating with one full stroke
Life"

"O we will walk this world,

Yoked in all exercise of noble end,

And so through those dark gates across the wild
That no man knows. Indeed I love thee; come,
Yield thyself up; my hopes and thine are one;
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself

Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."

Who will question the true poetry of this production, or who will deny the imperfections, (mostly of affectation, though some of tastelessness) which obscure it? Who will wonder at our confessed wavering when they have read this course of alternate power, occasionally extravagant, and feebleness as in the long account of the emeute? Of the extravagant, the description of the princess, on receiving the declaration of war, is an example:—

"She read, till over brow

And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom

As of some fire against a stormy cloud,

When the wild peasant rights himself, and the rick
Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens."

The heroine, it must be acknowledged, is much of the virago throughout, and the prince rather of the softest; but the tale could not be otherwise told. We add four examples-two to be admired, and two to be contemned, in the fulfilment of our critique.

'For was, and is, and will be, are but is,”

is a noble line; and the following, on the promised restoration of a child to its mother, is very touching—

"Again she veiled her brows, and prone she sank, and so Like tender things that being caught feign death,

Spoke not, nor stirr'd."

Not so the burlesque eight daughters of the plough, the brawny ministers of the princess' executive, and their usage of a herald. They were

“Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men,
Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain
And labour. Each was like a Druid rock;

Or like a spire of land that stands apart

Cleft from the main, and clang'd about with mews.”

And they

"Came sallying through the gates, and caught his hair,
And so belabour'd him on rib and cheek

They made him wild."

Nor the following

"When the man wants weight the woman takes it up,
And topples down the scales; but this is fixt
As are the roots of earth and base of all.
Man for the field and woman for the hearth;
Man for the sword and for the needle she;
Man with the head and woman with the heart;
Man to command and woman to obey;
All else confusion. Look to it; the gray mare
Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills
From tile to scullery, and her small goodman
Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of Hell
Mix with his hearth; but take and break her, you!
She's yet a colt. Well groom'd and strongly curb'd
She might not rank with those detestable
That to the hireling leave their babe, and brawl
Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street.
They say she's comely; there's the fairer chance:

I like her none the less for rating at her!
Besides, the woman wed is not as we,
But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace
Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy,
The bearing and the training of a child
Is woman's wisdom."

-The Literary Gazette.

ROBERT BROWNING

Paracelsus. By Robert Browning

There is talent in this dramatic poem, (in which is attempted a picture of the mind of this celebrated character,) but it is dreamy and obscure. Writers would do well to remember, (by way of example,) that though it is not difficult to imitate the mysticism and vagueness of Shelley, we love him and have taken him to our hearts as a poet, not because of these characteristics-but in spite of them.-The Athenæum.