force and pathos that will come home to many mothers' hearts. The flight of a girl whose depraved mother would have sold her to the squire, is thus vigorously painted

"The child turned round,

And looked up piteous in the mother's face,
(Be sure that mother's deathbed will not want
Another devil to damn, than such a look.)

'Oh, mother!' then, with desperate glance to heaven,
'God, free me from my mother!' she shrieked out,
'These mothers are too dreadful.' And, with force
As passionate as fear, she tore her hands

Like lilies from the rocks, from hers and his,

And sprang down, bounded headlong down the steep,
Away from both-away, if possible,

As far as God-away! They yelled at her,

from the hills,

And now she had cast

As famished hounds at a hare. She heard them yell.
She felt her name hiss after her
Like shot from guns. On, on.
The voices off with the uplands.
Was running in her feet and killing the ground;
The white roads curled as if she burnt them up,

On. Mad fear

The green fields melted, wayside trees fell back

To make room for her. Then, her head grew vexed-
Trees, fields, turned on her, and ran after her ;

She heard the quick pants of the hills behind,

She had lost her feet,

Their keen air pricked her neck.
Could run no more, yet, somehow, went as fast—
The horizon, red 'twixt steeples in the east,
So sucked her forward, forward, while her heart
Kept swelling, swelling, till it swelled so big

It seemed to fill her body; then it burst,

And overflowed the world, and swamped the light.

'And now I am dead and safe,' thought Marian Erle-
She had dropped-she had fainted.'

If the plot of this tale had been developed in a prose fiction, some objections might have been urged on the score of probability. But we are not sure that the demand should be pressed so rigorously on a poem. The speeches uttered in the dialogues are sometimes so

VOL. II.

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long as to lose almost wholly the conversational character, and yet it cannot be denied that they are in spirit dramatic, inasmuch as each is made to arise out of what had gone before, and is such as belongs to the character who gives it utterance. The story of many poems is simply a slender thread on which to hang imagery, descriptions, and reflection, and is encumbered out of all measure by its adornments. In this instance the story itself (as in the poems of Scott) assumes a prominent interest, and while all mere ornament is subordinated, is told clearly and well, yet so imaginatively that the reader can never think to himself- All this would have been better said in prose.'

'Craigcrook Castle.'

MR. MASSEY'S first volume of poems was received with general favour by the critics; and this, his second, gives abundant evidence that their auguries were not fallacious as regards the reality of his genius, nor their praise in any way injurious to its culture. We shall proceed to give an account of this little book, believing some information as to its contents more likely than a few sentences of general criticism to induce our readers to make acquaintance with it for themselves. First of all, there is a description of Craigcrook Castle, with its tiny town of towers,' its famous roses, and the region round about. To these roses, by the way, certain stanzas are addressed farther on, whose only fault is one which it would be scarcely fair to lay at Mr. Massey's door. Lovely are the roses : graceful are the verses; but what art could make 'Craigcrook' sound pleasantly in song? The recurrence of that word in every stanza is as the grating of a coffee-mill amidst sweet harping. There are some vigorous passages in the description of the guests at the Castle, their employments, and how they agree to sing or say, in turn, each somewhat that shall crown the glorious summer-day they celebrate.

The first poem, entitled 'The Mother's Idol broken,' consists of occasional pieces suggested by the death of a child. Very touching

are some of these ejaculations and laments—these yearning, wistful cries after the lost little one-these echoes of the dear child-life, now silent in the grave. Many thoughts and lines here are diviningrods that find out the hidden spring of tears, and make us look heavenward, whither some precious one hath gone before. The following passages, for example, are so beautiful, because so true-no poetic expression or vesture, merely-but drawn from the depths of our common humanity.

Again :

'This is a curl of our poor 'Splendid's' hair!
A sunny burst of rare and ripe young gold—
A ring of sinless gold that weds two worlds l

'There is her nest where in beauty smiled

Our babe, as we leaned above;

And her pleading face asked for the tenderest place
In all our world of love.

Very silent and empty now! yet we feel

It rock; and a tiny footfall

Comes over the floor in the thrilling night-hush,
And our hearts leap up for the call
Of our puir wee lammie dead and gone;

Our bonnie wee lammie dead and gone.'

We have not space for more quotation from this part of the book, but we are much mistaken if there are not many who will prefer it to all the rest. We have seen those who seldom read a line of poetry, and to whom 'Balder' seemed a prophecy in a tongue uninterpreted, who were melted by the pathos of Mr. Dobell's 'England in Time of War.' So while the lovers of poetry and the students of art rejoice in the 'Bridegroom of Beauty,' or such a poem as 'Only a Dream,' the mother will turn to the plaintive utterances of bereavement, and feel that her grief has found words. And what truer test or higher tribute could either poet seek or find? For what is Poetry but Truth with her singing-robes about her?

Next follows 'Lady Laura,' a tale in short cantos of various measure, wherein the lady, cast out by falsehood from her broad

lands, weds the poor man whom in her prosperity she had lifted out of the dust. His hidden love is thus described :—

'He saw her in the spring-dawns gliding down,
Like Morning on the world, to tend the flowers
That from her touch sprang thrilling with delight.
Darkened into himself, he watcht, all eye,

Like spirit that sees its mortal love go by,
Itself invisible.'

Has the reader marked the horse-chestnut in blossom on a night

in spring ?—

'Ah, happy nights and lustrous darks, in which

He watcht her casement when the house was mute,
Where the tall chestnuts husht her beauty round,
Uplifting in their hands a light of flowers l'

The latter of the two following is a lovely line

'In honeyed light, and sweet with pleasant showers,
Lies all the land, a coloured flame of flowers.'

Those who have seen our great manufactories at night will recognise in the following thought something more than a mere fancy

'And not forgotten was that factory world,

Which like a doomed ship far away i' the night
Pleaded-each port-hole lighted up for help!'

Among the Glimpses of the War,' which follow, we most admire the description of Inkermann, where the impetuous fiery lines echo the shock of conflict, and sorrow for those

'Who fell in Boyhood's comely bloom, and Bravery's lusty pride;

But they made their bed o' the Russian dead, ere they lay down and died.' "The Bridegroom of Beauty' is a blank-verse poem, in which is portrayed the enamoured pursuit of artist or of poet after the changeful, multiform Spirit of Beauty. Surely the wooer hath caught a glimpse of his spirit-mistress when he calls flowers

'The coloured clouds that kindle and richly rise

From out the bosom of Earth's emerald sea :

or when he speaks of the

vernal nights so tender, calm, and cool,
When eerie Darkness lays its shadowy hands
On Earth, and reads her sins with myriad eyes,
Like a Confessor o'er a kneeling Nun.'

'Crumbs from the Table' follow next, sundry songs and ballads, whereof the best to our mind is that entitled 'Long Ago.' 'A Ballad of the Old Time' is successful in catching the mediæval spirit, save in such a line as ' Hush the hills in a mystic dream,’ which lacks the due simplicity. In the dead Unhappy Midnight,' though spirited in expression, does not tell its own story with sufficient distinctness. It is like a shadowy, echoing corridor, suggestive of some tale of horror, but only suggestive; for the old crone or the decrepit steward, who ought to relate it, is not at our side. The last poem, called 'Only a Dream,' is conspicuous for power and passion, and is distinguished, moreover, by a praiseworthy unity and completeness. But we do not like such a line as this

'Warm-wingéd Ardours plumed her parted lips.'

Shelley is fond of this mythology of abstractions, and personifies and wings ardours,' and 'visions,' and 'thoughts;' but his genius is no true guiding-star in this matter. When Mr. Massey says— 'White waves of sea-like soul had climbed, and dasht The red light from its heaven of her cheek,'

we feel that he expresses himself in a quaint conceit—an ingenious allegory, almost-rather than in that rapid and bold, yet congruous metaphor, which is the true language of passion. Shakspeare makes Romeo say of the dead Juliet,

Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,

And death's pale flag is not advanced there.'

A passage in which a different conceit, but still a conceit, and not a genuine imaginative figure, is employed to depict a similar object.