ION. This is a joy

I did not hope for--This is sweet indeed.
Bend thine eyes on me!

CLEM. And for this it was

Thou wouldst have weaned me from thee!
Couldst thou think

I would be so divored?

ION. Thon art rigt, Clemanthe

It was a shallow and an idle thought;

'Tis past; no show of coliness frets us now;
No vain disguise, my girl. Yet thou wilt think
On that which, when feigned. I truly spoke
Wilt thou not. sweet one ?

CLEM. I will treasure ali

[Stabs himself.

[Dies.

SIR HENRY TAYLOR.

Although long engaged in public business-in the Colonial Office -MR. (now SIR) HENRY TAYLOR is distinguished both as a poet and prose essayist. He is a native of the county of Durham, born in 1800, only son of George Taylor, of Wilton Hall. In 1827 appeared h.3 play of Isaac Commenus,' which met with few readers,' says uthey, and was hardly heard of.' In 1854 was published Philip vin Artevelde,' a play in two parts, characterised by its author as an aistorical romance cast in a dramatic and rhythmical form.' The 8 ibject was suggested by Southey, and is the history of the two Van Arteveldes, father and son, citizens of revolted Ghent, each of whom swayed for a season almost the whole power of Flanders against their legitimate prince, and each of whom paid the penalty of ambition by an untimely and violent death.'

There is no game so desperate which wise men
Will not take freely up for love of power,
Or love of fame, or merely love of play.
These men are wise, and then reputed wise,
And so their great repute of wisdom grows,
Till for great wisdom a great price is bid,
And then their wisdom they do part withal.

Such men must still be tempted with high stakes:
Philip van Artevelde is such a man.

Two

As the portrait of a revolutionary champion, Philip is powerfully delineated by the dramatist, and there are also striking and effective scenes in the play. The style and diction resemble those of Joanna Baillie's dramas-pure, elevated, and well sustained, but wanting the brief electric touches and rapid movement necessary to insure complete success in this difficult department of literature. years after the historical romance had established Henry Taylor's reputation as a poet, he produced a prose treatise, The Statesman,' a small volume, treating of such topics as experience rather than inventive meditation suggested to him.' The counsels and remarks of the author are distinguished by their practical worldly character; he appears as a sort of political Chesterfield, and the work was said by Maginn to be the art of official humbug systematically digested and familiarly explained.* It abounds, however, in acute and sensible observations, shewing that the poet was no mere visionary or romantic dreamer. The other works of Sir Henry are- Edwin the Fair,' an historical drama, 1842; The Eve of the Conquest, and other Poems,' 1847; 'Notes from Life,' 1847; Notes from Books,'

In Crabb Robinson's Diary, vol. iii.. is the following notice of Henry Taylor then under Sir James Stephen in the Colonial Office: Taylor is known as literary executor Sinthey, and author of several esteemed dramas especially Philip ran Arterele. He married Lord Monteagle's daughter. He is now one of my most respected acquaintHis manners are shy and he is in re a man of letters than of the world. He pubished a book called The Statesman which some thought presumptuous in a junior clerk in a government office. Sonthey said Henry Taylor was the only one of a generation younger than his own whom he had taken into his heart of hearts.

1849; The Virgin Widow,' a play, 1850; St. Clement's Eve,' a play, 1862; A Sicilian Summer, and Minor Poems,' 1868. The poetical works of Sir Henry Taylor enjoy a steady popularity with the more intellectual class of readers. Philip van Artevelde' has gone through eight editions, Isaac Comnenus' and Edwin' through five, and the others have all been reprinted.

The Death of Launoy, one of the Captains of Ghent.-From Philip tun Artevelde,' Part I.

SECOND DEAN. Beside Nivelle the Earl and Launoy met.

Six thousand voices shouted with the last :

Ghent, the good town! Ghent and the Chaperons Blancs!'
But from that force thrice-told there came the cry

Of Flanders, wi h the Lion of the Bastard!'

So then the battle joined, and they of Ghent
Gave back and opened after three hours' fight;
And hard y flying had they gained Nivelle.
When the earl's vangard came upon their rear
Ere they could close the gate, and entered with them.
Then all were slain save Lannoy and his guard,

Who, barricaded in the minster tower,

Made desperate resistance; whereupon

The earl waxed wrothful, and bade fire the church.

FIRST BURGHER. Say'st thu? Oh, sacrilege accursed!
Was't done?

SECOND DEAN. 'Twas done-and presently was heard a yell.
And after that the rushing of the flames!

Then Launoy from the steeple cried aloud

A ransom and held up his coat to sight

With florius filled, but they without but laughed

And mocked him, saying: Come amongst us, John,

And we will g ve thee welcome; make a leap

Come out at window, John.' With that the flames
Rose up and reached him and he drew his sword,
Ca-t his rich coat behind him in the fire.

And shouting: Ghent, ye slaves! leapt freely forth,
When they below received him on their spears.

And so died John of Lam y

FIRST BUPGHER A brave end

"Tis certain we must now make peace by times;

The city will b starved else.-Will be, said I?

Starvation is upon us...

VAN ARTEVELDE I never looked that he should live so long.
He was a man of that unsleeping spirit,

He seemed to live by miracle: his food

Was glory, which was poison to his mind,

And peril to his body. He was one

Of many thousand such that die betimes.
Whose story is a fragment known to few.
Then comes the man who has the luck to live,
And he's a prodigy. Compute the chances.
And deem there's ne'er a one in dangerous times,
Who wins the race of glory but than hin

A thousand men more gloriously endowed

Have fallen upon the course; a thousand others
Have had their fortunes founded by a chance,

Whilst lighter barks pushed past them; to whom add
A smaller tally, of the singular few,

Who, gifted with predominating powers.

Bear yet a temperate will, and keep the peace.

The world knows nothing of its greatest men.

all

FATHER JOHN Had Launoy lived. he might have passed for great,
But not by conquest in the Franc of Bruges
The sphere-the scale of circumstance-is
Which makes the wonder of the many.
An ardent soul was aunoy's, and his deeds

Still

Were such as dazzled many a Flemish dame.

There'll be some bright eyes in Ghent be dimmed for him.

VAN ARTEVELDE They will be dim, and then be bright again.

All is in busy, stirring, stormy motion:

And many a cloud drifts by, and none sojourns.

Lightly is life laid down amongst us now,

And lightly is death mourned: a dusk star blinks

As flects the rack, but look again, and lo!

In a wide solitude of wintry sky

Twinkles the reilluminated star,

And all is out of sight that smirched the ray.
We have no time to mourn.

FATHER JOHN. The worse for us!

He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend.
Eternity mourns that. 'Tis an ill cure

For life's worst ills, to have no time to feel them.
Where sorrow's held intrusive and turned out,
There wisdom will not enter, nor true power,

Nor aught that dignifies humanity.

Yet such the barrenness of busy life!

From shelf to shelf Ambition clambers up,
To reach the naked'st pinnacle of all;
Whilst Magnanimity, absolved from toil,
Reposes self-included at the base.
But this thou knows't.

The Lay of Elena.'-From the same.

A bark is launched on Como's lake,

A maiden sits abaft;

A little sail is loosed to take

With ears to hear, and eyes to see,

And heart to apprehend.

The night-wind's breath, and waft It was to leave the earth behind,

The maiden and her bark away,
Across the lake and up the bay.
And what doth there that lady fair
Upon the wavelet tossed?
Before her shines the evening star,
Behind her in the woods afar

The castle lights are lost. . . .

It was not for the forms-though fair,
Though grand they were beyond com-
pare

It was not only for the forms
Of hills in sunshine or in storms,
Or only unrestrained to look

On wood and lake. that she forsook
By day or night

Her home and far
Wandered by light

Of sun or star.

It was to feel her fancy free,

Free in a world without an end,

And rove with liberated mind,

As fancy led. or choice or chance,
Through wildered regions of romance....

Be it avowed, when all is said.

She trod the path the many tread.
She loved too soon in life; her dawn
Was bright with sunbeams, whence is
drawn

A sure prognostic that the day
Wil not unclouded pass away.
"oo young she loved, and he on whom
Her first love lighted. in the bloom
Of boyhood was, and so was graced
With all that earliest runs to waste.
Intelligent. loquacious, mild,
Yet gay and sportive as a child.

With feelings light and quick. that came
And went like flickerings of flame;

A soft demeanour, and a mit d

Bright and abundant in its kind,

That, playing on the surface, made
A rapid change of light and shade,
Or, if a darker hour perforce

At times o'ertook him in his course,
Still, sparkling thick like glow-worms,
shewed

Life was to him a summer's road-
Such was the youth to whom a love
For grace and beauty far above
Their due deserts, betrayed a heart
Which might have else performed
prouder part.

First love the world is wont to call
The passion which was now her all.
So be it called; but be it known
The feeling which possessed her now
Was novel in degree alone;
Love early marked her for his own:
Soon as the winds of heaven had blown
Upon her, had the seed ben sown
In soil which needed not the plough;

a

And passion with her growth had grown,
And strengthened with her strengtu; and
how

Could love be new, unl ss in name,
Degree, and signs of a?
A tende ness had filled her mind
Pervasive, viewless, undefin d;
As keeps the subtle flu.d oft
In secret, gathering in the soft
And sultry air til: felt at 1 ngth,
In all its desolat ng strength-
So silent, so devoid of dread,
Her objectless affections spread:
Not wholly unemployed but squandered
At large where'er her fancy wandered-
Till one attraction, one desire
Concentred all the scattered fire;
It broke, it burst, it blazed amain.
It flashed its light o'er hili and pain,
O'er earth below and heaven above-
And then it took the name of love.

We add a few sentences of Sir Henry's prose writings:

On the Ethics of Politics.—From The Statesman.'

The moral principle of private life which forbids one man to despoil another of his property, is outraged in the last degree when one man holds another in slavery. Carry it therefore in all its absoluteness into political life, and you require a statesman to do what he can, under any circumstances whatever, to procure immediate freedom for any parties who may be holden in slavery in the dominion of the state which he serves. Yet, take the case of negro slaves in the British dominions in the condition of barbarism in which they were thirty years ago, and we find the purest of men and strictest of moralists falling short of the conclusion. In private life, the magnitude of the good which results from maintaining the principle inviolate, far overbalances any sp cific evil which may possibly attend an adherence to it in a particular case. But in political affair-, it may happen that the specific evil is the greater of the two, even in looking to the longest train of consequences that can be said to be within the horizon of human foresight. For to set a generation of savages free in a civilised community, would be merely to maintain one moral principle inviolate at the expense of divers other moral principles. Upon the whole, therefore, I come to the conclusion that the cause of public morality will be best served by moralists permitting to statesmen, what statesinen must necessarily take and exercise-a free judgment namely, though a most responsible one, in the weighing of specific against general evil, and in the perception of perfect or imperfect analogies between public and private transactions, in respect of the moral rules by which they are to be governed. The standard of morality to be held forth by moralists to statesmen is sufficiently elevated when it is raised to the level of practicable virtue: such standards. To be influential. must be above common opinion certainly, but not remotely above it; for if above it, yet near, they draw up common opinion; but if they be far off in their altitude, they have no attractive influence.

Of Wisdom-From Notes from Life.'

Wisdom is not the same with understanding, talents. capacity, sense, or prndence; not the same with any one of these; neither will all these tog ther make it up. It is that exercise of the reason into which the heart enters-a structure of the understanding rising out of the moral and spiritual nature. It is for this cause that a high order of wisdom-that is, a highly intellectual wisdom-is still more rare than a high order of genius. When they reach the very highest order they are one; for each includes the other, and intellectual greatness is matched with moral strength.