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We approach the end-a battle is fought. Lear and Cordelia lose the day. They are doomed-but, consolation! together. Cordelia wishes to confront Goneril and Regan:

Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters.

The old King has lost all relish for revenge. Now his child's love is all to him.

No, no, no, no!

Come, let's away to prison,
We two alone will sing like birds in the cage;
When thou dost ask my blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins, who's in, who's out,
And take upon us the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by the moon.

But the poetry of such a life is always a hereafter.

The two elder sisters, false to each other, as to their father and Cordelia, are hostilely plotting-the one cause, a lover. We have given less time to them than to Cordelia. There is something too terrible for comment in their undeviating cruelty— but we must not forget to mark their distinctive differences of character. Goneril is ambitious, revengeful, merciless—in her, the softer passion has only one of the qualities of love-its fire. Regan is cunning, stealthy, hypocritical, fierce: but her cruelty has less of horror. It is more human. Their deaths are most justly conceived. Regan dies by poison, and the murderess Goneril, is a suicide.

We are on the verge of the last scene. Sad, sad and harsh, but in true harmony with the Play.

Lear enters with the dead body of Cordelia, (who has been hung by order of Goneril.) Well Shakespere understood the simple language of Despair, and beautifully has he painted the utter prostration of hope:

I know when one is dead and when one lives;
She's dead as earth: Lend me a looking glass;
If that her breath will moist or stain the stone,
Why then she lives.

This is but the lingering, reasoning love-hoping past all hope

This feather stirs ; she lives! if it be so,
It is a chance that does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt,

But he only sees his own death in his child's face

Cordelia, Cordelia,-stay a little.

Ha!

He thinks the lips move

What is't thou sayest?

Her voice was ever soft,

Gentle and low; an excellent thing in woman :

I kill'd the slave that was a hanging thee.

One exclaims:

Tis true, my lords he did.

Did I not, follow ?

I have seen the day, with my good biting faulchion,
I would have made them skip: I am old now,
And these same crosses spoil me.

His mind again wanders he tries to recognize his friends round, but eyes and heart and reason are all with the dead. How touchingly the memory of his poor fool and Cordelia is blended:

And my poor fool is hang'd! no, no, no life.

Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life

And thou no life at all. O thou wilt come no more.
Never, never, never, never, never!

This repetition of a word-so true to the expression of passion, is frequent in Shakespere. It is one of those delicate touches of nature, to which almost every other writer has found himself unequal-and the deepening gradation of sorrow in this last line, for the words are anything but vain repetitions of each other, is rarely understood on the stage. The suggestion in the following line is equally fine:

Pray you undo this button.

How simply expressing the full throb of that breaking heart!

Thank you, Sir,

Do you see this! look on her, look on her lips
Look! there, look there!

And on those lips, searching for life, he dies.
We have no heart for comment.

Let the sad tale, with its

stern moral, make its way in the world.

APRIL AND MAY.

YE gentle guardian Sisters of the Spring,

That love-link'd, teach how flowers arise from tears, As smiles from sorrow, or as hopes from prayers, That, like the shadow and the sunshine, fling

Your arms about each other till you win

The close embrace that makes each smile seem twinWhy, as you twain watch o'er the young year's waking, Cradled in the caressing flowers

Why are its happiest hours

Those when his dream in your farewell is breaking.

April! the younger born I love thy face,

E'en though tricked out with Nature's whitest weeds, Making thy widowhood of grief and grace

For blustering March, the gentlest of thy deeds.
Yet when thy tearful eyes so dewy bright,
Look with their changing hue for the soft light
Of thy young sister's-May, whose clasped hands
Are round thy drooping neck-all Nature stands
In awe of thee; and when thou diest

Upon the bosom where thou, sighing, liest-
That breast, where rise the flowers with pearl-drops full
As if thy grief had given the blossoms birth
Thou sadly touchest that the Beautiful

Dies ever in the restless lap of earth.

And May! how soon forgot her Sister's death!
Dries her rain sorrow in the Morning's breath,
Still bounding on, hour after hour,

As from each step upsprings a flower,

Whilst bees her whispers echo, and glad birds, Set to sweet music all her loving words, Bearing them through the leafy halls of Noon, Where range the winged harmonies,

And troops of faerie-butterflies,

On through the pillared shade and archéd aisles
To the Court, steeped in sunbeams and in smiles-
The golden palace of majestic June,

Who, gathering up his crimson robe, and wand
Star-jewelled, glittering from his royal hand,
Rises to meet his modest maiden Bride;
And fragrant May in all her blushing charms,
Dies in the welcome of the Monarch's arms;
But still all-proud and glorious to the last
This fair Queen of the Year
First bids June wave his magic wand
Which glitters o'er the ripening land,
And whilst her life the King doth hold,
Nought will serve but cloth of gold
For bridal robe and bier.

THE FLOWER GIRL.

"Oh be sure of this

The alms most precious man can give to man
Are kind and loveful words! Nor come amiss
Warm, sympathizing tears to eyes that scan
The world aright-the only error is
Neglect to do the little good we can!"

CALDER CAMPBELL.

We never could agree in the often quoted assertion that "God made the country, and man made the town." We verily believe that God made both; and wherever our lot is cast, or our duty seems to call us, we must strive therein to be content. There is, however, notwithstanding the sweet wisdom we would inculcate, a lingering yearning for the country, and country things, and scenes, and flowers, and birds, and green quiet fields, haunting the sweet recesses of almost every human heart like a strain of well remembered music. Who does not love the country? Who does not dream about it, at least, when the sunshine, and the long summer days, and the cry of the Flower girl in our hot, busy streets, bring back a thousand happy recollections, and we remember although we may not repine? It was the last of these things which set us thinking upon that bright morning of which we write.

Flowers! Beautiful flowers! how we love you! In the garden-by the wayside-least, perhaps, in conservatory and hothouse-most, in the green wood, and wild hedgerows-aye, and even as ye are now, away from your homes,-fairy wanderers in our great city!-laden messengers of beauty and fragrance! We had sent out to purchase some flowers. We arranged them in the white vases upon the mantel-piece; and they seemed to shed a grace and freshness over the whole apartment. We stood and admired their loveliness. We listened to their voices, and to the tales they had to tell of old times;their gentle reminiscences of by-gone days. We wept at the touching anecdotes which they whispered to us of the loved and lost while now and then we could not choose but smile at some of the well known histories they related. Each flower had a separate association: some sorrowful, some merry, all sweet; although few would bear repeating. But who has not a store of such flower-legends-especially among the young?

While we stood dreaming thus before the flowers which we

had purchased, our glance wandered by chance-was it chance? towards the window, and we saw that the poor Flower girl had sat down upon an opposite door step, with her basket by her side, and her head resting wearily against the area railings. Her bonnet had fallen back and exposed to view a pale young face, whose mingled expression was one of hopelessness and resignation. What were her dreams as she languidly arranged her half-faded bouquets? What flower associations could she have had save those of toil and hardship? The dim, sweet poetry of the Past vanished before the sad reality of the Present-and stepping out of the golden City of Memory and Romance, we found ourselves all of a sudden, gazing into the streets of London, and standing opposite a suffering, perhaps a starving fellow creature!

The history of the poor Flower girl was soon told she was hungry she confessed, but not very-not so hungry as she had been sometimes, for she had breakfasted before she came out in the morning-it was now noon-day; and we afterwards discovered that the meal of which she spoke so thankfully had consisted only of bread and water. What a reproach to one who had breakfasted so late and luxuriously, and offered up no thanksgiving!

"What then do you do with the money for which you sell your flowers?" we enquired.

"I do not always sell them; but to-day I have been fortunate, and shall be able to pay my lodging."

"And when you do not sell them?"

The girl looked up with a meek smile and a tearful glance. "I manage as well as I can," said she.

"I suppose you dread the winter coming ?"

"No ma'am; I shall not be here then !"
"Where do you think of going?"
"I do not know. I am not sure.

Oh, God be merciful to

me, a sinner ;" and the girl clasped her thin hands together, and burst into tears.

She was dying, and she knew it; but it was not the fear of death that made her weep-it was the hereafter she dreaded. She had heard that there was no sorrow or sickness in Heaven; neither hunger, or thirst, or toil, or weeping; but she also knew that the good only go there, and that she was not good! Who is? Therefore it was that she wept. And now that we looked steadfastly on the bent form, and pale, hollow cheeks of the poor Flower girl, we dared no more hold out to her the false hope of returning health, than we dared to whisper of a false peace.

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