small cellar which could be filled with water by means of a pipe; there he was drowned. The following morning his body was burned in an oven, and this was walled up. For a long time no one knew what had become of Königsmark; the most extraordinary rumours were current about him; all the inquiries set on foot by the Court of Dresden, at the instigation of Aurora, Königsmark's sister, the reigning favourite of the new Elector of Saxony, were fruitless. Aurora was told by the Elector of Hanover that he was not her brother's keeper. 6 The Princess, on hearing the news of this horrible catastrophe, gave way to the most violent expressions of grief; whereby,' says Fräulein Knesebeck, she exposed herself to the suspicion that the murdered Count was something more than a common friend.' She declared loudly that she would no longer live among barbarians and murderers. She was even said to have attempted selfdestruction. The breach between her husband and her father-in-law and herself was made wider; the scandal was notorious, and could no longer be concealed. Proceedings were therefore instituted against the Princess; the reasons given for the separation were her attempts at flight, and the Princess was condemned to imprisonment for life. The circumstance that the Princess swore in the most solemn manner that she had kept her marriage vow, and that her lady-in-waiting confirmed this statement, rendered the matter of the Princess's guilt highly problematical, till the publication of the letters by Palmblad and others. In her own autobiography, the Princess is no longer the ardent, incautious lover of former years. The separation took effect in Hanover on the 28th October, 1694; and the Princess, who was then eight-and-twenty, was carried to Ahlden, a small place about four German miles from Zell, the residence of her father and mother. The Princess's friend and companion, Fräulein von Knesebeck, was imprisoned in the fortress of Schwarzfels, in the Harz; but escaped, after three years' durance. She was aided in her escape by a faithful old servant, disguised as a tiler. This man let himself down from the roof in front of her window, entered her room, and placing her in a sort of rope cradle, let her down into the moat, and himself after her. Horses had been prepared, with which they escaped, first to Wolfenbüttel, and then to Berlin, where Fräulein von Knesebeck entered the service of the Queen of Prussia. The Commander of the fortress of Schwarzfels reported to the Elector of Hanover, that the Devil, in the shape of a tiler, had carried off the Fräulein through a hole in the roof. He could not account for her escape in any other way. Sophia Dorothea passed two-andthirty years in her prison. The death of her father, in 1705, and of her mother, in 1723, gave her a very tolerable income. The company she saw consisted of two ladies, and a gentleman-in-waiting, and the Commandant of Ahlden, who dined regularly every day with her. She was allowed free intercourse with mechanics and tradesmen, but not with people of the higher class. She employed herself during her imprisonment in the management of her domains-the inspection of her household accounts-needle-workreading, and in works of charity and the offices of religion. It was said, that when George L. ascended the English throne, it was proposed to her to quit her retreat : but that she replied, if she were guilty she was unworthy to be a queen; and if innocent, the King was unfit to be her husband: and thus she remained at Ahlden. At first, she was kept a close prisoner; but afterwards, she was allowed to drive out some miles from the town, but always with an escort. She corresponded with her son and her daughter, and frequently saw her mother. The Princess once made an attempt to escape, which was unsuccessful; a certain Count Von Bar, of an Osnabruck family, received 125,000 florins to aid her in her flight. This man kept the money, in spite of an action at law. The treason of one in whom she trusted affected the Princess to such a degree as to bring on a fever, which carried her off at the age of sixty. George I. survived her one year. There was a sort of prophecy that he would not outlive her a year, and her death made a great impression upon him. He fell into a deep melancholy, and expressed a strong anxiety to see Hanover once more. On his way thither, with the Duchess of Kendal, he fell ill at Bentheim; he proceeded, however, on his journey, and was struck by apoplexy at Ippenburen, in Westphalia. His eyes became glassy, and his tongue hung from his mouth; he reached Osnabruck a corpse. According to vulgar report, Sophia Dorothea, on her death-bed, summoned her husband to appear before the judgment-seat of God within a year and a day. This letter was not delivered to him in England, but was kept for his arrival in Germany. He opened it in the carriage, and was seized with fainting fits, which ended in a stroke of apoplexy. The appearance of his face caused the 451 report to be spread abroad that the devil had twisted his neck round. The wicked Countess Platen, the murderess of Count Königsmark, was blind for several years before her death, which took place in 1706. During her last illness she was haunted by Königsmark's ghost perpetually seated at her bed-side. We have now disposed of most of the dramatis persone who played a part in the catastrophe of the Princess of Ahlden and Count Königsmark, and can only refer such of our readers who like gossip and amusing scandal, culled from various sources, to Dr. Vehse's work. The learned Doctor promises to go seriatim through all the petty courts of Germany. Let them look well to it, for nothing seems to escape him. He has a keen nose and the patience of the sleuth-hound for the discovery and recording of royal deliquencies. ROLLO. RIM Odin rejoicingly watches his Norsemen, The three awful maidens in secret foreshowing To seek for a home in some southerly region, Where wealth tempts the rover, and warriors are few. Wild Rollo can storm as madly as they do, The rough rolling wave is a steed for the strong. Labour, ye serfs! in the plains and the valleys, Your beeves and your crops are a prize he will claim; Shall fall before Rollo, and tell of his fame. The Prelate of Rouen may preach about meekness, Stern Odin smiles grim at the Christianiz'd sea king, On his purple right hand there is peasants' blood reeking, He sees the black ships filling Normandy's havens, A. C. S. ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. ON reading this little book,* and considering all the exaggerated praise and exaggerated blame which have been lavished on it, we could not help falling into many thoughts about the history of English poetry for the last forty years, and about its future destiny. Great poets, even true poets, are becoming more and more rare among us. There are those even who say that we have none; an assertion which, as long as Mr. Tennyson lives, we shall take the liberty of denying. But were he, which Heaven forbid, taken from us, whom have we to succeed him? And he, too, is rather a poet of the sunset than of the dawn-of the autumn than of the spring. His gorgeousness is that of the solemn and fading year; not of its youth, full of hope, freshness, gay and unconscious life. Like some stately hollyhock or dahlia of this month's gardens, he endures while all other flowers are dying; but all around is winter-a mild one, perhaps, wherein a few annuals or pretty field weeds still linger on; but, like all mild winters, especially prolific in fungi, which, too, are not without their gaudiness, even their beauty, although bred only from the decay of higher organisms, the plagiarists of the vegetable world. Such is poetry in England; while in America, the case is not much better. What more enormous scope for new poetic thought than that which the new world gives? Yet the American poets, even the best of them, look lingeringly and longingly back to Europe and her legends; to her models, and not to the best of them -to her criticism, and not to the best of that-and bestow but a very small portion of such genius as they have on America and her new forms of life. If they be nearer to the spring than we, they are still deep enough in the winter. A few early flowers may be budding among them, but the autumn crop is still in somewhat shabby and rain-bedrabbled bloom. And for us, where are our spring flowers? What sign of a new poetic school? Still more, what sign of the healthy resuscitation of any old one ? 'What matter, after all?' one says to oneself in despair, re-echoing Mr. Carlyle. Man was not sent into the world to write poetry. What we want is truth-what we want is activity. Of the latter we have enough in all conscience just now. Let the former need be provided for by honest and righteous history, and as for poets, let the dead bury their dead.' And yet, after all, man will write poetry, in spite of Mr. And never, certainly, since Pope wrote his Dunciad, did the beautiful require more taking care of, or evince less capacity for taking care of itself; and never, we must add, was less capacity for taking care of it evinced by its accredited guardians of the press than at this present time, if the reception given to Mr. Smith's poems is to be taken as a fair expression of the public taste.' Now, let it be fairly understood, Mr. Alexander Smith is not the object of our reproaches: but Mr. Alexander Smith's models and flatterers. Against him we have nothing whatsoever to say; for him, very much indeed. Very young, as is said, self-educated, drudging for his daily bread in some dreary Glasgow prisonhouse of brick and mortar, he has seen the sky, the sun and moon-and, moreover, the sea, report says, for * Poems, by Alexander Smith. London: Bogue. 1853, one day in his whole life; and this is nearly the whole of his experience in natural objects. And he has felt, too painfully for his peace of mind, the contrast between his environment and that of others-his means of culture and that of others—and, still more painfully, the contrast between his environment and culture, and that sense of beauty and power of melody which he does not deny that he has found in himself, and which no one can deny who reads his poems fairly; who reads even merely the opening page and key-note of the whole : For as a torrid sunset burns with gold Up to the zenith, fierce within my soul A passion burns from basement unto cope. Poesy, poesy, I'd give to thee As passionately my rich laden years, Is my poor life; but with one smile thou canst Clothe me with kingdoms. Wilt thou smile on me? Wilt bid me die for thee? Oh, fair and cold! As well may some wild maiden waste her love Upon the calm front of a marble Jove. Now this scrap is by no means a fair average specimen of Mr. Smith's verse. But is not the self-educated man who could teach himself, amid Glasgow smoke and noise, to write such a distich as that exquisite one which we have given in italics, to be judged lovingly and hopefully? What if he has often copied? What if, in this very scrap, chosen almost at random, there should be a touch from Tennyson's Two Voices? And what if imitations, nay, caricatures, be found in almost every page? Is not the explanation simple enough, and rather creditable than discreditable to Mr. Smith? He takes as his models Shelley, Keats, and their followers. Who is to blame for that? The Glasgow youth, or the public taste, which has been exalting these authors more and more for the last twenty years as the great poets of the nineteenth century? If they are the proper ideals of the day, who will blame him for following them as closely as possible-for saturating his memory so thoroughly with their 453 words and thoughts that he reproduces them unconsciously to himself? Who will blame him for even consciously copying their images, if they have said better than he the thing which he wants to say, in the only poetical dialect which he knows? He does no more than all schools have done, copy their own masters; as the Greek epicists and Virgil copied Homer; as all succeeding Latin epicists copied Virgil; as Italians copied Ariosto and Tasso; as every one who can copies Shakspeare; as the French school copied, orthought they copied, 'The Classics,' and as a matter of duty used to justify any bold image in their notes, not by its originality, but by its being already in Claudian, or Lucan, or Virgil, or Ovid; as every poetaster, and a great many who were more than poetasters, twenty years ago, used to copy Scott and Byron, and as all poetasters now are copying the very same models as Mr. Smith, and failing while he succeeds. We by no means agree in the modern outcry for originality.' Is it absolutely demanded that no poet shall say anything whatsoever that! any other poet has said? If so, Mr. Smith may well submit to a blame, which he will bear in common with Shakspeare, Chaucer, Pope, and many another great name; and especially with Raphael himself, who made no scruple of adopting not merely points of style, but single motives and incidents, from contemporaries and predecessors. Who can look at any of his earlier pictures, the Crucifixion for instance, at present in Lord Ward's gallery at the Egyptian Hall, without seeing that he has not merely felt the influence of Perugino, but copied him; tried deliberately to be as like his master as he could? Was this plagiarism? If so, all education, it would seem, must be a mere training in plagiarism. For how is the student to learn, except by copying his master's models? Is the young painter or sculptor a plagiarist because he spends the first, often the best, years of his life in copying Greek statues ; or the school-boy, for toiling at the reproduction of Latin metres and images, in what are honestly and fittingly called 'copies' of verses? And what if the young artist shall choose, as Mr. Smith has done, to put a few drawings into the exhibition, or to carve and sell a few statuettes? What if the school-boy, grown into a gownsman, shall contribute his share to a set of Arundines, Cami or Prolusiones Etonienses? Will any one who really knows what art or education mean complain of them for having imitated their models, however servilely? Will he not rather hail such an imitation as a fair proof, first of the student's reverence for authority-a more important element of genius' than most young folks fancy-and next, of his possessing any artistic power whatsoever? For, surely, if the greater contains the less, the power of creating must contain that of imitating. A young author's power of accurate imitation is, after all, the primary and indispensable test of his having even the capability of becoming a poet. He who cannot write in a style which he does know, will certainly not be able to invent a new style for himself. The first and simplest form in which any metrical ear, or fancy, or imagination, can show itself, must needs be in imitating existing models. Innate good taste-that is, true poetic genius-will of course choose the best models in the long run. But not necessarily at first. What shall be the student's earliest ideal must needs be determined for him by circumstance, by the books to which he has access, by the public opinion which he hears expressed. Enough if he chooses, as Raphael did, the best models which he knows, and tries to exhaust them, and learn all he can from them, ready to quit them hereafter when he comes across better ones, yet without throwing away what he has learnt. Be faithful in a few things, and thou shalt become ruler over many things,' is one of those eternal moral laws which, like many others, holds as true of art as it does of virtue. And on the whole, judging Mr. Alexander Smith by this rule, he has been faithful over a few things, and therefore we have fair hope of him for the future. For Mr. Smith does succeed, not in copying one poet, but in copying all, and very often in improving on his models. Of the many conceits which he has bor rowed from Mr. Bailey, there is hardly one which he has not made more true, more pointed, and more sweet; nay, in one or two places, he has dared to mend John Keats himself. But his whole merit is by no means confined to the faculty of imitation. Though the Life Drama' itself is the merest cento of reflections and images, without coherence or organization, dramatic or logical, yet single scenes, like that with the peasant and that with the fallen outcast, have firm self-consistency and clearness of conception; and these, as a natural consequence, are comparatively free from those tawdry spangles which deface the greater part of the poem. And, moreover, in the episode of 'The Indian and the Lady,' there is throughout a keeping in the tone,' as painters say, sultry and languid, yet rich and full of life, like a gorgeous Venetian picture, which augurs even better for Mr. Smith's future success than the two scenes just mentioned; for consistency of thought may come with time and training; but clearness of inward vision, the faculty of imagination, can be no more learnt than it can be dispensed with. In this, and this only, it is true that poeta nascitur non fit; just as no musical learning or practice can make a composer, unless he first possess an innate ear for harmony and melody. And it must be said that it is just in the passages where Mr. Smith is not copying, where he forgets for awhile Shelley, Keats, and the rest, and is content to be simply himself, that he is best; terse, vivid, sound, manly, simple. May he turn round some day, and deliberately pulling out all borrowed feathers, look at himself honestly and boldly in the glass, and we will warrant him, on the strength of the least gaudy, and as yet unpraised passages in his poems, that he will find himself after all more eagle than daw, and quite well plumed enough by nature to fly at a higher, because for him a more natural, pitch than he has yet done. True, he has written a great deal of nonsense; nonsense in matter as well as in manner. But therein, too, he has only followed the reigning school. . . . As for manner, he does sometimes, in imitating his models, out-Herod Herod. But why |