cherub-face of Harriet Beauchamp, who had answered with a pretty lisp she was eight years old,)" and make up eighty-five without you." But this was his LAST BIRTHDAY. Never again did that happy circle gather round him for when the time came that so they would have done, Charles Corentry, Viscount Glencraig, was made partaker of that awful secret whose mystery stretches not beyond the grave. His end was peaceful. He laid down life, as a man who had tasted of its sweetness even to satiety; and he put on immortality-for eternity dawns upon the soul before this world fades from its glimmering consciousness forever-as one who had humble hope in having done well. THE FOETRY OF PROFESSOR WILSON. THIS is unquestionably the age of antithesis. The poets of the day have ranged themselves under two distinctly opposite banners-those of quiet repose, and passionate excitement; and, according to the fluctuations of ever-varying taste and fashion, has each been alternately magnified and extolled. A few short years ago, nothing went down with the reading public but Sir Walter Scott's battle sceneshis gathering of the clans of the fiery cross- -his gorgeous cavalcades, and all the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war or Lord Byron's semi-demoniacal barbarians, contrasted with woman, sublimated to almost angelic loveliness. At this period, the public appetite was stimulated to a craving for intense emotion, not unlike that of the pampered gourmand for deviled turkey: the charities of the heart were regarded as commonplaces; and whoever peppered the highest, was surest to please. During the prevalence of this singular perversion of taste, there was a class of writers who nobly kept aloof from the contagion, preferring temporary neglect to unenviable notoriety and at the head of these praiseworthy devotees, was the illustrious Wordsworth. A disciple of this great master, and one imbued with a strong con-. viction of the sterling truth of his poetical canons, Mr. Wilson made his debut in the literary world, whilst yet a very young man, by the publication of his "Isle of Palms ;" a work of amazing wealth in imagery-ever flowing with all that is bright, graceful, and gorgeous in conception; but somewhat deficient in that condensation of idea and of language, which is one of the characteristics of poetry of the more exalted order. It was, however, impossible not to discover, from this first exhibition of his powers, that, whatever might be his faults, poverty of intellect, and obtuseness in the perception of the beautiful and the grand, were not of the number; and that all that was required to enable him to produce a work of more permanent interest, was the application of a bridle to his singularly wild and excursive imagination. To the current productions of the era at which it appeared, the Isle of Palms furnished a remarkable contrast. The rage was then almost exclusively for romances in rhyme; and, provided the story was sufficiently bizarre and appalling, the quality of the poetry which was its vehicle was of subordinate importance. In the Isle of Palms, Mr. Wilson has woven, on a slender thread of narrative, four long cantos of exuberant versification; and, instead of savage anger, insatiable revenge, or unnatural hatred "Guns, trumpets, blunderbusses, drums, and thunder; we are presented with the calm, quiet, secluded beauty of nature : green trees and dewy flowers, bright sunshine, and cerulean skies, and sinless tears, and affectionate tenderness, and pious aspirations after the bliss of a more refined state of existence; in short, with all those brighter shades of human feeling, which adorn and dignify our nature. The machinery of this beautiful and truly original poem, is extremely simple. The story is briefly this -Two betrothed lovers are wrecked together upon a desart, but lovely island in the Indian sea; where they are discovered seven years afterwards by the crew of an English vessel. They return to England, to the great joy of the heroine's mother; who, having given her up for dead, at length determines to take up her abode in the town from the port of which her daughter originally sailed, with the remote hope of hearing some tidings of her fate. The following lines, from the first canto of the Isle of Palms, are not surpassed in beauty by any passage with which we are acquainted, in the whole range of modern poetry: THE SHIP. And lo! upon the murmuring waves A broad-wing'd Vessel, through the shower She lifteth up her stately head A lovely path before her lies, A glorious phantom of the deep, On her wavy streamer and snow-white wings, Or bathe in brighter quietude So far the peaceful soul of Heaven It seems as if this weight of calm O World of Waters! the steadfast earth Is she a vision wild and bright, Ah, no!-an earthly freight she bears, So calm and stately is her motion In the above glorious picture, of the various poetical descriptions our readers will recognise the germ of a ship, which have appeared since its publication; especially Lord Byron's well-known and justly-admired couplet— "She walks the waters like a thing of life; And seems to dare the elements to strife." Nor is the next quotation less powerful in its kind, although of a different stamp: THE WRECK. But list! a low and moaning sound The Moon is sunk; and a clouded grey Declares that her course is run, And like a God who brings the day, Soon as his light has warm'd the seas, O'er wrathful surge, through blackening storm, 'Mid the deep darkness white as snow! mast! -Hush! hush! thou vain dreamer! this hour Five hundred souls in one instant of dread Her keel hath struck on a hidden rock, And down come her masts with a reeling And a hideous crash like thunder. And her pendant that kiss'd the fair moonshine Her beauteous sides, whose rainbow hues And flung a warm and sunny flush O'er the wreaths of murmuring snow, To sleep amid colors as bright as their own. Oh! many a dream was in the ship And sights of home with sighs disturb'd The hum of the spreading sycamore -He wakes at the vessel's sudden roll, Another sample is all that we can afford to give of this beautiful poem ; but it will be found no less characteristic of its author's genius than those already furnished. It is THE RETURN TO PORT. The pier-head, with a restless crowd, Seems all alive; there, voices loud 45 ATHENEUM, VOL. 5, 3d series. What ship is she that rises slow By the bright sunshine, fondly woo'd Well doth she know this glorious morn, And now the gazing crowd descry, The outward forts she now hath pass'd; Of the billows rushing past her sides, Then up leap all her fearless crew, In peace and friendship doth she come, Although no one was hardy enough to deny the merit of a poem abounding with passages as exquisitely beautiful as these, yet, as was to have been expected from the vitiated taste which prevailed when the Isle of Palms was first published, Mr. Wilson shared for some years the neglect, we had almost said obscurity, of his preceptor; and although fervently admired by a select and discriminating few, was on the whole little read and still less frequently purchased. Among those who paid him the well-merited tribute of their praise, at this early stage of his career, we are happy to mention Mr. Jeffrey, (although his previous abuse-his ignorant depreciation, of Wordsworth, deprives his opinion of the sincerity or consistency which can alone render an opinion valuable); and the honest avowal of James Hogg, that such an impression did the perusal of the Isle of Palms make upon him, and "so completely did it carry him off his feet, that for some days afterwards he felt himself as in a land of enchantment, and could with difficulty bring down his feelings to the business of ordinary life." Át the distance of about four years from the publication of the Isle of Palms, Mr. Wilson produced his best and most popular work, "The City of the Plague,"-a poem of first-rate excellence, amply realizing the anticipations to which his maiden effort had given birth. To the exalted merits of this production, which is of a severer order, and for the most part free from those exuberances of youthful genius which had in some measure deformed its predecessor, gratifying testimony has been borne by several of Mr. Wilson's distinguished contemporaries; and, among others, by Lord Byron and Mr. Moore, two writers whose genius is as opposite in character to that of the object of their eulogy as can well be imagined. In the preface to his "Doge of Venice," Lord Byron mentions the City of the Plague, as one of the very few evidences that dramatic power is not yet extinct among us. If that poetry deserves to rank the highest, which excites the most vivid emotions in the mind of the reader, Mr. Wilson's tragedy will certainly be found amply to deserve his Lordship's generous tribute; for we know of no work, of a purely imaginative character, which is calculated to make so deep an impression upon a person of even ordinary feeling and intelligence, as this. It assumes a loftier tone of inspiration than the Isle of Palins. Indeed, the two poems will scarcely admit of a comparison in any respect. One is a tale of love, beauty and repose, the attempered glory of a summer's eve, disturbed only by one of those transitory storms which leave the face of nature more beautiful than ever; whilst the other is a narrative of alternate pity and suffering-tears and terrorimbued throughout with an energy almost supernatural-and producing upon the mind of the reader an impression which, like the recollection of a storm at sea, is never afterwards obliterated. Although dramatic in its form, there is little that is dramatic in either its plot, or the manner in which it is developed. It consists in a great measure of a series of impassioned dialogues on natural loveliness-a vernal picture of all that is serene, gentle and fas cinating in human nature, here and there chastised by those "sabler tints of woe," "Which blended form, with artful strife, The strength and harmony of life." The selection of so awful a sub ject as the great plague in London, of the abiding strength and lovelias a groundwork for the delineation ness of our best affections, affords and versatility of Mr. Wilson's geadditional evidence of the power nius. Yet this he has attempted; and, notwithstanding the apparently antithetical nature of the subject, The following passages from his has achieved most triumphantly. poem, we select, not less for their intrinsic beauty than that they strike us as being peculiarly characteristic of his powers. Frank. SIGNS OF THE PLAGUE. Why does the finger, Yellow 'mid the sunshine, on the Minster-clock, Even at the moment when a hundred hearts There is no need that men should count the Of time, thus standing on eternity. In unchanged meekness and serenity, And all my fears were gone. But these green banks, With an unwonted flush of flowers o'ergrown, Brown, when I left them last, with frequent feet From morn till evening hurrying to and fro, O unrejoicing Sabbath! not of yore eyes, Raving, he rushes past you; till he falls, As if struck by lightning, down upon the stones, Would you look in? Grey hairs and golden And many a rosy visage smiling still; Bright with the ring that holds her lover's hair. How beautiful is the following out-pouring of the spirit, that clings to heaven in its desolation : Oh! let me walk the waves of this wide world Through faith unsinking;-stretch Thy saving hand To a lone castaway upon the sea, Who hopes no resting-place, except in heaven. And oh this holy calm,-this peace profound, That sky so glorious in infinitude,- I feel the Omnipotent is merciful! How finely do these lines contrast with the following: O! 'tis the curse of absence, that our love Becomes too sad-too tender-too profound Towards all our far-off friends. Home we In other days, to what a lofty pitch house, |