his private feelings out of the question. We grieve that he should have done so; and it is well to know that he himself grieved for it on his death-bed. Borgia deserves no pity: he united in himself all the worst features of Italian cunning and treachery, of Spanish lust and avarice, of French insolence and cruelty. The young duke, heir to the crown of Naples, was surrendered to Ferdinand, his worst foe: he died in 1550, after a captivity of nearly half a century: we have often paced his castle prison at Xativa, and lamented the hard fate of an amiable and truly royal prince.

Such were the few errors and many virtues of the Great Captain. It was reserved for our greater, and the greatest the world has ever seen, to conquer India in his youth, to save Europe in his manhood, and in his green and vigorous age to rescue England from being untrue to herself. He has been spared to stay the plague, to lead back a wholesome reaction, after the temporary delirium of revolutionary phrenzy-serus in cœlum redeat. Gonzalo slumbers at Granada, in the convent of Hieronymites. The chapel was desecrated by the French, who insulted the dead lion, from whose roar their forefathers had fled. We have often gazed upon the slab which covers the vault: to that we must all come at last. We are not aware that his epitaph has ever been given in print; perhaps, while we now write it down, the very graven stone may have been torn up and smashed in the destructive impiety of the ungrateful, degraded Christinos:-

'Gonzali Fernandez de Cordova,
Qui propria virtute
Magui Ducis nomen
Proprium sibi fecit,
Ossa,

Perpetuæ tandem
Luci restituenda,

Hoc interea tumulo
Credita sunt;

Gloria minime consepulta.'

We must not conclude without offering some little apology to Mr. Prescott for having bestowed our space more on his subject than on his book. We repeat, however, that the book must be read-and we hope it may be read with some additional advantage, by those who shall have done us the honour to consider our remarks on several of its most important topics, and our attempts to supply some of its most obvious deficiencies. We must also repeat our opinion that, with all its errors and omissions of manner and matter, Mr. Prescott's is by much the first historical work which British America has as yet produced, and one that need hardly fear a comparison with any that has issued from the European press since this century began.

ART. II. 1. Memorials of a Residence on the Continent. By Richard Monckton Milnes, M.P. 12mo. London, 1858.

2. Poems. By the Same. 12mo. London, 1838.

NOT

OT the least remarkable among the signs of the times' is the altogether unprecedented number of literary aspirants among the classes of society most favoured by fortune. Half our young peerage are, or would fain be, authors. The advantages of birth, wealth, station, are still very great; and it is well for those who contemplate them from below that it should be sʊ; but they are no longer all-sufficient-they secure a fair start, where many jostle for elbow-room, and some in vain; and perhaps it must be allowed that they swell the plaudits, from the privileged stands at least, if the race be won; but still the goal cannot be reached save by native muscle, resolute training, and brave exertion. To obtain and retain a prominent place in the public eye is no longer the unquestioned birth-right of any man. You must distinguish yourself individually and intrinsically by the display of intellectual gifts and energies-is the stern whisper of Necessity in the ear of the highest; and it has not been heard in vain. Already we see on all sides the salutary effects of this warning voice; and illustriously as the House of Lords has long been distinguished before the world, we have no doubt that, if it preserves its existence at all-which the very splendour of its character may possibly endanger more than any one circumstance besides the next generation will see it ing, of right divine, a still more eminent superiority than may with perfect justice be already claimed for it. The popular literature of the country exhibits, in the most tangible form, a noble ambition, that works equally, we believe, in every other high department of thought and industry.

occupy.

It is no wonder that among the many of the first-born of Egypt who now come forward as claimants of literary honour, there should be distributed a considerable allowance of negatives. The worst of it is, as regards themselves, that they have none of the usual preliminary difficulties of authorship to overcome. How Mr. Dickenson's magnificent vats are to be made to yield the flood of paper cream-how Mr. Clowes's twenty steam-presses are to be called into motion-are questions which in these cases create no anxiety. No sooner has the inlaid desk been stuffed with the requisite amount of manuscript, than some smiling bibliopole is too happy to undertake anything except the risk of money, which is nothing, and the risk of ridicule, which buoyant youth holds at a pin's fee.

In our humble opinion, if the honourable member for Ponte

fract

fract lives ten years more, he will regret that he published the two volumes named at the head of this article. He had a hereditary claim to talents of no ordinary kind, as well as to other advantages-and his verses contain abundant evidence that he possesses great natural abilities, as well as amiable feelings, and lofty principles; but we think, upon the whole, he has shaken the tree a great deal too soon. A large proportion of the fruit appears to us raw, some insipid, some harsh and sour, some utterly nauseous. To drop metaphor, we are quite sure that he will hereafter obey one good precept in an otherwise doubtful decalogue

Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope;'

and regret few sins of his youth more bitterly than the homage he has now rendered at the fantastic shrines of such baby idols as Mr. John Keats and Mr. Alfred Tennyson.

We would willingly believe that the best pieces in his books were produced the last-at all events, we shall quote no specimen but of that which we consider as his happiest manner, and to which we hope he will in future adhere. It is, we are satisfied, impossible that the author of such sonnets as we are about to transcribe can persist long in fancying it worth his while to spin puny sentimentalities into lyrical namby-pamby. We shall cite enough to convince our readers that Mr. Milnes was meant by Nature for a poet-and that if he ultimately fails to secure the station which his talents and acquirements entitle him to covet, he will have nothing to blame but indulgence of perverse admiration for absurd models. We claim him for the orthodox faith-he is too good for a heretic.

The truth is, that we should have said nothing about these volumes at all, had we not, upon laying them down, come to the conviction that, in spite of all their weaknesses and affectations, they contain better English verses than have as yet been produced to the public by any living writer not on the wrong side of the Mezzo Cammin. Exempli gratiá:

ON THE MAD-HOUSE AT VENICE.

'Honor aright the philosophic thought
That they who, by the trouble of the brain
Or heart, for usual life are overwrought,
Hither should come to discipline their pain.
A single Convent-on a shoaly plain
Of waters-never changing their dull face
But by the sparkles of thick-falling rain
Or lines of puny waves, such is the place.
Strong medicine enters by the ear and eye;
That low, unaltering dash against the wall
May lull the angriest dream to vacancy;

And

And Melancholy, finding nothing strange

For her poor self to jar upon at all,

Frees her sad-centred thoughts, and gives them pleasant range."

'ON THE CHURch of the Madeleine, at paris.

The Attic temple whose majestic room

Contained the presence of the Olympian Jove,
With smooth Hymettus round it and above,
Softening the splendour by a sober bloom,
Is yielding fast to Time's irreverent doom;
While, on the then barbarian banks of Seine,
That noble type is realised again

In perfect form; and dedicate-to whom?
To a poor Syrian girl, of lowliest name,
A hapless creature, pitiful and frail

As ever wore her life in sin and shame,—
Of whom all history has this single tale,—
"She loved the Christ, she wept beside his grave,
And He, for that love's sake, all else forgave."

'HAPPINESS.

* Because the few with signal virtue crowned,
The heights and pinnacles of human mind,
Sadder and wearier than the rest are found,
Wish not thy Soul less wise or less refined.
True that the small delights which every day
Cheer and distract the pilgrim are not theirs;
True that, though free from Passion's lawless sway,
A loftier being brings severer cares.

Yet have they special pleasures, even mirth,
By those undreamt of who have only trod
Life's valley smooth; and if the rolling earth
To their nice ear have many a painful tone,
They know Man does not live by Joy alone,
But by the presence of the power of God.'
'THE SAME.

Trembling and weeping while her troth is vowed,-
A school-boy's laugh, that rises light and loud
In licensed freedom from ungentle dread;
These are ensamples of the Happiness
For which our nature fits us: more and less
Are parts of all things to the mortal given,
Of Love, Joy, Truth, and Beauty. Perfect Light
Would dazzle, not illuminate, our sight,-
From Earth it is enough to glimpse at Heaven.'

ON

ON REVISITING CAMBRIDGE,

'After a long absence on the Continent.
'Nor few, nor poor in beauty, my resorts
In foreign climes,-nor negligent or dull
My observation-but these long-left courts
I still find beautiful, most beautiful!
And fairly are they more so than before;
For to my eye, fresh from a southern land,
They wear the coloring of the scenes of yore,
And the old Faith that made them here to stand.
I paint the very students as they were,

Not the men-children of these forward days,
But mild-eyed boys just risen from their knees,
While, proud as angels of their holy care,
Following the symbol-vested priest, they raise
The full response of antique litanies.'

THE SAME.

'I have a debt of my heart's own to Thee,
School of my Soul, old lime and cloister shade,
Which I, strange creditor, should grieve to see
Fully acquitted and exactly paid.

The first ripe taste of manhood's best delights,
Knowledge imbibed, while mind and heart agree,
In sweet belated talk on winter nights,

With friends whom growing time keeps dear to me,—
Such things I owe thee, and not only these:
I owe thee the far beaconing memories
Of the young dead, who, having crost the tide
Of Life where it was narrow, deep, and clear,
Now cast their brightness from the farther side
On the dark-flowing hours I breast in fear.'

་ ON COWPER'S GARDEN AT OLNEY.

'From this forlornest place, at morn and even,
Issues a voice imperative, " Begone,

All ye that let your vermin thoughts creep on
Beneath the unheeded thunders of high Heaven;
Nor welcome they, who, when free grace is given
To flee from usual life's dominion,

Soon as the moving scene or time is gone,
Return like penitents unfitly shriven.

But
ye who long have wooed the memory
Of this great Victim of sublime despair,
Encompassed round with evil as with air,
Yet crying, God is good, and sinful he,-
Remain, and feel how better 'tis to drink

Of Truth, to Madness even, than shun that fountain's brink."

ΤΟ