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her betrothed. We gave little heed, at that moment, to the remark which we have often called to mind since. We proceeded at a brisk pace towards the beach; there were twenty or thirty of us altogether, some of whom carried flambeaux. There was something spectral in the sight of so many pale forms gliding about in the red torchlight; and it would have stirred your heart to have listened, be- || tween the pauses of the hurricane, to the varied tones of human suffering. Jeanie's countenance was tranquil, and her step firm; only when the wail of some unhappy wife or mother struck her ear and heart with mysterious forebodings, she would start as though she had been touched with momentary anguish, and I could hear her mutter, Receive thou my petition; give me back my husband; or, if a victim must be sacrificed, bind me, too, on the altar of thy inscrutable wrath.' As though she had been shocked at the guiltiness of her own involuntary distrust, she suddenly stopped, just as we had reached the crag on which stands the lighthouse. At that moment a cry for help reached us from the shingle beneath; we all shouted, all together, and waved our torches; in the answer returned from the beach, we recognised the voices of some of the youths of Douglas's party. We then made our way down the cliffs as well as we could, till we reached our rescued friends: sad news, and a sad sight, there awaited us. In attempting to take the beach, their boat had been dashed against a sunken rock, and when we approached them, they were

just dragging to land the cold, stiff corpse of one of their companions. When the report of this circumstance reached the women whom we had left behind, a shrill scream of terror arose among them, for each felt a misgiving that the death-lot || had fallen upon her own husband or brother. Jeanie alone stood collected and unappalled by the corpse, and had sufficient presence of mind to address a few words of pious consolation to the women, whose clamorous sorrow became at once hushed again. She came up to the spot where I was standing with some others, took a torch from my trembling hand, and turning away again, stooped over the body of the drowned man. The light threw a strong gleam on her own lovely countenance; I could discover there no sign of terror; the roses of her cheek had received even a deeper dye from unusual exertion and excitement, and I almost thought that a supernatural brightness lightened in her eye. She kneeled down by the body, her long hair fluttering in the breeze; the gaze of the surrounding group was rivetted upon her, even more than upon the object of their mourning. The wind threw the glare of the torch upon the face of the dead man-the light fell from Jeanie's hands—she sank upon the corpse of her husband!

"Her prayer had been heard; she held him in her arms again; we endeavoured to raise her, but life had already fled; without pang or sigh she had expired on the bosom of her beloved."

OF THE MODERN ANTIQUE IN POETRY.

of the ancient poets are the effects not of foresight but of necessity; with them ideas begot words.

IN nations antecedent to an established || being obvious. The simplicity and strength literature, the languages of conversation and of poetry are much the same. The bard finds nothing wrought in the mode of expression to mar his inspiration; his stock of words are those with which the habits of speech have rendered him familiar, which are the natural conveyance of his ideas. The glow of thought alone, and at once, elevates the style of common life to that of the muse, by combination and metaphor, which, contrary to that of the moderns, is beautiful and striking, by

With us it is directly the reverse; words beget ideas. There is a distinct line || drawn between poetry and prose. Το him who attempts "to build the lofty rhyme," the first beacon that presents itself and warns him to avoid it, is prosaicism; he finds himself deprived in a moment of the use of that stock of terms, which have become by habit the almost

the Italians.

involuntary representatives of his ideas; olden time without the inconvenience of he must learn the language of poetry, or having his imitation specified by a parmust have learned it unwittingly (which || ticular name, such as the Danteggiare of comes to the same point); he must have recourse to a text-book; and as language There is little analogy between English cannot be studied without presenting poetry and that of the French, but we ideas, he there acquires his poetic imagi- || cannot help thinking of our present taste, nation, of which, according to the natural when reading La Harpe's excommunicavanity of man, he becomes enamoured in tion; such we may call his criticism of proportion as it is strange and outré. Roussard, a poet of the sixteenth century, to an imitation of whom there was a ten

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It is natural to suppose, that, in the maturity of the poetic art, the produc-dency among the wits contemporary with tions of the intervening age between that the critic. It gives a strong idea of the and its infancy, must have been exhausted, strictness of the French school, that the and changes rung upon them so as to innovation sought to be introduced by have satiated and wearied the general Roussard and his followers is founded on taste. The only resource is to try farther an imitation of the classics, which were back. An advanced stage of literature, avowedly the models and test of the natoo, is seldom fertile in genius; and in it tional poetry. What is chiefly censured those daring flights are not to be looked in his style, and which he caught from for, whose beauties o'er-inform the the study of Ovid, is that perpetual and page,” and hallow the very defects and fantastical personification, and endowing affectations of expression. In it, however, every object, howsoever insignificant, with taste will abound; and, if genius be want- || life, which, though it may be allowed to ing to produce originality, there will at the imaginative theology of the ancients, least be talents and research to afford with us is certainly not agreeable to good variety, to dress up old ideas in a foreign taste. Though Jupiter and Apollo may and attractive garb, to assume a piquancy with propriety and elegance shake their and artificial elevation of thought, and to ambrosial curls, we can hardly admire glean the beauties which the rapid sickle of genius may have left scattered. To effect a taste conformable to this, is the work of the critical tribe; and nothing is easier, by assuming it as a proved position, that, since the infancy of the art, since the good old times, there has been no progress, but all has been at a standthat the wits of the last century (whatever that may be) were, alas! poor souls, egregiously astray-by professing a profound veneration for the words nature and simplicity, taking care never to define them—in short, by doing what we do, thinking what we think, writing what we write.

"Que du beau soleil la perruque empourprée Redore de ses rais cette basse contrée."

Another peculiarity for which Roussard is visited with the extreme indignation of the critic, is that of leaving no pause of sense at the end of each line, but running the verses into one another; a practice which, amongst us, in the present day, is frequently carried to a most ridiculous

excess.

"His continual affectation," says

La Harpe, " of merging one line in another is essentially contrary to the character of our great verse. Our hexameter, naturally majestic, ought to repose upon itself; it loses all its dignity in leaps and jumps; if the end of one verse often join the commencement of another, the effect of rhyme disappears, and we know (en suite) that rhyme is absolutely necessary to our poetic melody. It is true that of itself it tends to monotony, but the great art is to vary the measure without destroying it, to divide the verse without

The old dramatists have been for some time the cry, which has attracted such shoals of insects, that the green leaves are nearly sour; some, even, out-heroding Herod, have retrograded farther. It is lucky for the poets of this school that they are English; we have a wide field for those who wish to stray back and cull the flowers of the antique. Our stock of in-breaking it," &c. digenous and early matériel is immense; and one may write in the spirit of the

These are curious objections to poetic license. Perhaps the critic might have

brought against the revivers of the old school a much more powerful battery of argument and ridicule, than his straight dogmas of prosody. Not to mention the labours and research that are implied in having recurred to old and forgotten models, it might be urged as a proof of the weakness of intellectual powers, that they should be turned from the mode of expression natural to the age by the casual perusal of any writer, whatsoever his genius or his age. But these young folk, contrary to the vulgar adage, wish to be ground old; they say that they write for posterity; they look forward in aevum— their zenith is to be attained when the perishable language of the day shall be blended in equal obsoleteness with their borrowed one. What they are to gain from this it would be difficult to conceive. || When men of taste peruse a work in a decayed language, they are willing to put themselves out of their way, to take a little trouble for the sake of enjoying its beauties. They know that it was natural for the author to write in the fashion of his time, and they will, as much as pos

sible, enter into his spirit, by placing themselves in the scene of his days, and will make every allowance for change of prejudice and revolution of taste; but if they perceive that all the revolving characteristics of the author were of his own seeking instead of being of the age, were of himself—that in the puerility of affectation, he sought quaintness and obscurity, and nonsense, no allowances will be made; the sentiments of ridicule checked in the former case, are here indulged; and the author sinks into merited oblivion, or exists as a butt and bye-word.

It is to be wished that some check were put to the mania for musty things; to language it is especially pernicious. When an age of genius has once thrown its thoughts into a tongue, it cannot be changed but for the worse; to hold there is the most that can be hoped; and the tampering of restless conceit cannot be too early or too strongly reprobated. Seneca doubtless imagined that he improved on the language of Livy and Tacitus, while to him, more than to Goth or Vandal, may be attributed its decline.

THE WIDOW AND THE CARDINAL.

It was well exclaimed by Moliere, when a beggar to whom he had given a piece of gold alms, returned it, thinking the great dramatist had mistaken the coin, "Keep the money, my friend, and accept this other piece;" adding, "Où la vertu va-t-elle se nicher ?" The action, says M. || Tachereau, the dramatist's biographer,|| shews Moliere's true benevolence, and the exclamation, in finding an expression so happy for such just wonder, marks his genius.

who had struggled hardly to support her child, a lovely girl just budding into womanhood, through a perilous sickness: every article, the last remains of wealthier times, had been disposed of, and the widow, a prey to her remorseless landlord, was counselled by her confessor to approach the charitable threshold of the good Cardinal. The poor woman, attended by her daughter, made her suit with a delicacy which touched the churchman's benevolence, whilst it, in some meaA circumstance of a similar nature once sure, awakened his curiosity. "But five occurred in modern Rome. Cardinal Mon- crowns!" your Eminence, was the reply talto was distinguished as much by his of the widow, in answer to a question practical charity, as by the humility and from the Cardinal, as to the amount of benevolence of his professions. Thrice her wants. The Cardinal gave into her a-week was his palace beset by the poor || hands a piece of written paper, directing and unfortunate of the city. He dispensed her to take it straightway to his steward. freely his good counsel and his wealth, With prayers and thankfulness the widow according to the state of his petitioners, departed on her grateful errand. She whether they suffered from the disease of gave in the paper, when the steward the mind, or the galling irritation of hope- forthwith counted out fifty crowns, and less poverty. It happened that a widow, bade the widow make an acquittance for

Original Poetry.