'Twas then the lordly father first
The lily of the Tamar saw,

And, fired with passion, learn'd to burst
The holiest links of Nature's law.

Yet not by force, but in the guise
Of fondest interest first he strove
To blight the hopes, to rend the ties
Of happy youth and early love.

He bade the youth in arms aspire
Betimes to honours, wealth, and fame,
Until his generous heart beat fire

To hear but Drake's or Ralegh's name.*

Flush'd with new hopes, at length he steel'd
His heart to quit his native shore,

For one, where many a mournful field
Had stain'd proud Tudor'st Rose in gore.

With Thomond and Carew he met
The wily Desmond's§ feudal horde :-
In wrath or pity ne'er was wet

A gentler eye, a braver sword.

But oft, in scenes of feud and blood,
He long'd with all a lover's pain,
To hear his native Tamar's flood,
And see green Devon's woods again.

Dismiss'd with fame, he hoped (for Love
Will hope while hope is left below)
From Mary's side no more to rove—
All, all her own, in bliss or woe.

Slow is the keel, and faint the wind,
That bears a lover fond and true ;-
Yet Erin's wåves were soon behind,
And Erin's hills in distance blue.

Soon o'er the deep Mount Edgcumbe rose-
Fair as it still at sunset shines,

When, laced with gold, its ocean glows,

And wave in gold its hundred pines.

How throbb'd his heart, as to the bay

His boat drew nigh, where Mary's home
Peep'd from the woods, with evening grey,
Where they were wont of old to roam!

Oh, 'tis an hour of bliss, so deep

That nought but tears its depth can tell,
When parted lovers meet and weep,

Albeit their hearts with rapture swell!

* Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Ralegh, both sprung from Devonshire, and both among the proudest ornaments of chivalry in Elizabeth's, or indeed in any reign. It is well known with what expense of blood and treasure, Elizabeth kept her "wild Irishes" in subjection, and how much their refractory spirit embittered her reign.

The Earl of Thomond and Sir George Carew (afterwards Earl of Totnes) united their forces, and performed important services to Elizabeth in Ireland. § The Earl of Desmond, a name familiar in the Chronicles of those times, as one of the most powerful and enterprising of the Irish insurgent chieftains.

He found his Mary still his own,

With truth as pure, and form as fair; Yet from her cheek the tinge was flown That told of health and gladness there.

Upon his fond alarm she smiled

But her sweet smile was full of woe;
And sometimes, from her heart beguiled,
The sigh would rise, the tear would flow.

In vain he pray'd her to unfold

To him the secret of her breast

Until her widow'd mother told

What blanch'd her cheek and broke her rest.

'Twas a brief tale of sin and shame :

His father, while afar he stray'd,

Had own'd a rival's guilty flame,

And sued with gold the lonely maid.

His heart, its love renounced with scorn,
Thence for revenge alone could pine;
And never sun, he deep had sworn,

Upon their bridal morn should shine.

"And is it thus," young Bevil cried, Could he so use a father's power? With all his harlot loves beside,

Could he not spare the Tamar's Flower?

""Tis not enough that, while his head

So grey, his age to guilt is givenThat wine and wassail still have sped Away the years he owed to Heaven !

No! he must tempt my plighted bride,
Forgetful that the wild flowers wave
O'er one, alas! who loved and died-
O'er my wrong'd mother's early grave!"-

His words, repeated oft and free,

Reach'd the proud lord of Warlegh's ear,— And awful was it then to see

His whitening lip and eye of fear.

-And now he sees that rival nigh-
Feels his own dagger at his side-
Ab, wherefore steals the lover's eye
Where sat apart his destined bride?

Then burst the stiffled flame at once,-
Beyond disguise, beyond control,—
And all the murderer lit his glance,

And all the dæmon fill'd his soul.

As Bevil turn'd, he caught that look-
Saw through it flash the smother'd fire-

And felt, to linger were to brook
A father's hate, a rival s ire.

Away! thy life is won or lost!

With hurried step he leaves the pile

But, ere the Gothic porch he cross'd,

Lould, long shrieks rung through nave and aisle !

It was his Mary's voice!-he turn'd-
Dread was the sight he met behind!—
His father's eye with vengeance burn'd,
His father's dagger near him shined!

One moment, fix'd in pale despair,

He stood then shot the church-yard o'er ;He gains the green-why stops he there? The steel is hurl'd-he loves no more!

Fixed in back the poniard stood,

Flung with strong hand, and eye too keen ;— He reels-he falls-the hot life-blood

Is bubbling on the crimson'd green!

Beneath a broad oak's massy shade,
Pale, bleeding, on the turf he lay-
Even where he crown'd his own loved maid
The village Lady of the May.

She sees not this-she saw alone

The lifted death-steel gleam on highThen shriek'd-and fell with one deep groan, As death had seal'd her heart and eye.

They bore her thence-but all in vain'Twas but to droop within her bower; And oh, it was a sight of pain,

To watch the blight of Tamar's Flower!

Yet death was beautiful in her,

As the sweet light of evening day; And, though to hope was but to err, Her blue eye seem'd to mock decay.

But wherefore-wherefore tell the rest?
'Tis told in one sad word-she died;
And 'twas her last and lone request
To sleep in death by Bevil's side.

Alas! forgot are now their graves—
Yet unforgot the father's blow;
And still, as then, the green oak waves
Where lay the son so early low.

Still to the oak of Copleston

The neighbouring peasant points his boy,
Tells him the deed that there was done,
And warns from passions that destroy.

-The tale is done-and some there are,
Whose hearts will feel its simple power,
And love the harp, howe'er it jar,

That told the fate of Tamar's Flower.

CORONATION OF CHARLES THE TENTH AND OF THE

KINGS OF DAWKEY.

Pageants on pageants in long order drawn,
Peers, heralds, bishops, ermine, gold, and lawn.

WHAT is a coronation? Ask Garter King at Arms, and he will, perhaps, tell you, that it is to the divine right of monarchy what baptism is to religion. Ask any other human being, and the probability is you will be answered, that it is the rehearsal of a melo-drame, much better given at the minor theatres. It is passing strange that processions and state spectacles should succeed so well on the stage, and should so totally fail in real life; that this most sight-seeing age should, in political matters, be, of all others, the least moved through the instrumentality of its eyes, and that the holy oil should fall less efficaciously on the Lord's anointed than if it were bestowed on an old lock. There is nothing, indeed, in which the sublime approaches nearer to the ridiculous than in a public ceremony, in which the thin line of demarkation between meaning and mummery, pageant and puppet-show, rests wholly on the imagination of the spectator. We shall not easily forget the question of a little boy who was taken to see one of these public funzioni, the day after his first introduction to Harlequin, and who, as the glittering procession passed, asked if what he saw was "in earnest, or only a thing to laugh at ?" The answer to this question is a matter of no small importance to statesmen and ministers, (the terms are not always synonymous); for if they persist in thinking themselves in earnest, when the people they govern regard their pageants as things "to laugh at," they and their places are in more immediate danger than if they had committed a great crime. Yet there are few riddles so difficult to solve with precision: an association of ideas, more or less germane to the matter, constitutes all the difference, and will make or mar the fortune of the best-conceived combinations of scarlet, purple and gold, that ever passed through the (brain?) of a Herald. The practical inference to be drawn from this consideration is wholly against revivals. My Lord Mayor's show, which has passed annually before our eyes since the days of our infancy, and is deeply associated with Whittington and his cat, still maintains something of its mystic influence in our riper years, and is not viewed without a pleasing reflection on the commercial prosperity of which it is a type. The city marshal is as respectable an officer, in our estimation, as if he were a Russian field marshal in "off" or "ski ;" the state coach, if not handsome, is at least venerable; and the men in armour by no means suggest the idea of a copper tea-kettle. Not so the case in which an attempt is made to reproduce by-gone combinations, and to strike on the imagination of the people by associations which have been broken up and dissipated. As well might we hope to bring back the illusions of love at sixty, as to influence an adult nation by the playthings of its infancy. The attempt at imposition forms the prominent idea in men's minds on such occasions; and they take a malignant pleasure in substituting for each hallowed notion, connected with the visible type, some burlesque and ridiculous image, to defeat the object and annihilate the effect intended to be produced by the ceremony. On this account a

coronation stands a better chance of success in England than in France, although in the former it is merely "upheld by old repute," and is in total discrepance with the semi-republican institutes of the government. Among the English it is regarded simply as an ancient custom; but nobody is interested in knocking an old custom on the head; and, like the chimney-sweeper's May-day majesty, a coronation takes place on the proper occasion, and the next day is forgotten by every body except Mr. Dymocke and the Barons of the Cinque Ports. The thing itself leads to no consequence; or if it should tend to inspire false ideas of conclusions yet to come, a single stormy debate in the Commons will completely dissipate the illusion. In France the case is materially different. When Napoleon defined a throne to be a crimson chair studded with gilt nails, he put an extinguisher on the moral effect of coronations. In reviving the worn-out ceremony, the Bourbons have only given a handle to ridicule, and invited the mocking spirit of Parisian wit to a tournay of epigram and calemburg. The best, therefore, that could rationally be expected from such an exhibition, was that it should pass off smoothly, and without observation ; and those who were no well-wishers to the throne, turned every accident into an ill augury, and looked out for the false move of a knight or a bishop, as a sure preliminary to a future check-mate to the king.

The anointing of kings is a ceremony that naturally arose among the Jews, where monarchy sprang out of a theocracy; and every government which has adopted this ceremony, is, for one day at least in each reign, purely theocratic. At the coronation at Rheims the clergy decidedly assumed the pas of royalty. Bonaparte had taken good care, in gratifying his own and his people's false taste for raree show, not to degrade himself in the eyes of his subjects, but boldly snatched, and himself put on, the iron crown of Lombardy, instead of receiving it by a feudal investiture from the hands of the archbishop. The pious successor of St. Louis remained for hours prostrate at the feet of the clergy, before he could obtain the golden circle; from which, eventually, he will be in greater danger than from the running away of his post-horses. In the whole of this ceremony there was nothing more amusing than the anointing. Every body knows that in former times the eldest son of the church was anointed from an holy phial that came direct from heaven, where oil continued miraculously renewed in sæcula sæculorum. This phial the Jacobins (those eternal enemies of social order) broke to pieces in the market-place, to show that royalty was for ever cut up by the roots and extirpated from France. But, notwithstanding this event, kings, somehow or other, did come back; and, as good luck would have it, the oil jar along with them. For a loyal subject, who was an eyewitness of the demolition of the ci-devant jar, fortunately slipped a fragment into his pocket, oil and all, to the great and manifest danger of his inexpressibles, through which the chain of transubstantiation has been preserved unbroken; and those who are aware of the infinite divisibility of matter, cannot doubt that Charles the Tenth has as efficacious a part in the original miracle as the remote ancestor, for whose especial use the angel brought the sacred ampoule from heaven. In this piece of stage trick, the breaking of the phial is indeed admirably typical of the rude process which monarchy underwent in the hands of the Sans Culottes; but it remains to be