The defect of the two elements to which we have alluded is coldness: the redundance of the first, conceit; of the second, garish embroidery. Truth compels us to say, that Mr. MacCarthy's rich fancy sometimes degenerates into the last. The first of his Under-glimpses, "The Arraying of May," has something too much of the jeweller, upholsterer, and abigail. Fancy is a very delicate thing: a touch too much disenchants a fairy to a lady's maid. Hence, Mr. MacCarthy's musical ear, and unrivalled power of rhythm, sometimes betray him into a style in which he plays with words, like a child with feathers: he takes us with surprising turns, with tricks and quirks of rhyme. Hence, such expressions as that about the snow "The pearly parachute Of the wond'ring air." "The primrose, the spring's own spouse; Bring corn, flax, tulips, and Adonis flower, green- The breath thereof Panchaia may envy, The colours China, and the light the sky." But when they are stuffed into our nose, and rammed into our pockets, and make a heavy, sickly smell on our writing-table-why we are but men, and we get a little savage or so. We commend to Tennyson, with his "pimpernels," and soforth,and to all our botanical and nursery-garden poets, this sentence of Dr. Johnson : "The heat of Milton's mind might be said to sublimate his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit of science, unmingled with its grosser parts.' Flowery ladies and gentlemen, apply this to your botany. And finally, to conclude all that we can find it in our heart to say in this tone to Mr. MacCarthy, we would point out to him the very Irish misprint (surely) by which, in the "Search for May," will appears seven times in the refrain "We will find the wand'ring maiden there to-day." Assuredly, we have no intention of But told how in her crown of gold, And saw, against the morning sky, The white-sail'd fleets their wings display, The "Progress of the Rose" is "At first she lived and reigned alone, No lily maidens yet had birth: The No turban'd tulips round her throne Again, of the progress :— "She sends her heralds on before, The exquisitely pretty verses on the snow we have already quoted "The Year-King" is magnificent: we feel a peculiar pride in it, for it first appeared in this Magazine. These verses are not inferior to Wordsworth's grand ode to "Winter." The Old Year "Thinks upon his youthful pride, When in his ermined cloak of snow, He thunder'd on the rocks below, "From rock to rock, through cloven scalp, "The bugles of the blast rang out, The banners of the lightning swung, The icy spear-points of the pine Bristled along the advancing line, And as the wind's reveille rung, Heavens! how the hills dit shout." Underglimpses, p. 74. The "Awaking" and the "Resurrection" are sweet and holy songs, in which nature is transfigured in the light of Christian hope; but we must wish that "The First of the Angels" may be omitted in the next edition: it is almost ludicrous. The ode on the death of the Earl of Belfast is steeped in the light of an Italian summer, and is at once classical and tender "Young Marcellus sleeping lies, Scatter snowdrops-scatter here Since we love those flowers the best -p. 150. The Bell-founder is a beautiful, musical, and well-sustained poem. We do not like the Voyage of St. Brendan so well. We are not going to intrude a word of that ugly thing, controversy, into the circle of Mr. MacCarthy's loving poetry. And, therefore, we will only say, that the poetical aspect of the Roman Ritual is touched with especial grace. He must have a fiercer heart than ours who is not pleased with these : "At noon, as he lay in the sultriness, under his broad leafy limes, Far sweeter than murmuring water came the toll of the Angelus chimes." Bell-founder, p. 13. "I loved to watch the clouds-now dark and dun In long procession, and funereal line, Pass with slow pace across the glorious sun, Like hooded monks before a dazzling shrine. And now, with gentler beauty as they roll'd Along the azure vault, in gladsome May, Gleaming pure white, and edged with broider'd gold, Like snowy vestments on the Virgin's day." Bell-founder, and other Poems, p. 177. "The round moon rests-like the sacred Host Upon the azure altar of the skies." -p. 187. without adding our tribute of admiWe cannot conclude this notice ration to the purity of Mr. MacCarthy's poetry. His strains will blush. not cost a saint a sigh, or a virgin a Moore without a stain of his licenHe has the gracefulness of tiousness. We close our long but pleasing task with another word of Mr. Arnold. Of all the poets of the day, he has, perhaps, the largest learning-the finest and most educated taste. He has disfigured his books, and encrusted the works of his lofty imagination with some eccentricities and affectations. Now, that he is a Professor, let him rack off his muddy theories in Latin lectures, and the precious liquor will flow richer and clearer from the dregs. If he must write essays, let him not twist the poem to meet the essay, but make the essay meet the poem. No man can say, "Go to, I will write a Greek tragedy in English." Greek and Latin have put off flesh and blood, and become immortal: we do not I. THE ERICKSONS-A TALE. I NEVER had a home like other children when I was a child. I was early left without father or mother, and almost without kith or kin. I was left poor, too, without enough, baby as I was, even to keep me from being a burden on those who were forced to take the charge of me. I was in the world simply and solely a little, desolate, useless child. The home, such as it was, that fell to my lot, was in the house of an aunt of my father's, an old lady who took me to live with her from a feeling rather of duty than of love, and into whose formal household my childish advent made, I am afraid, no very welcome inroad. Yet my aunt was kind to me, if she was cold; and I, who had never known a more genial home, was content with the one that had fallen to my share. We led a peaceful, quiet life. There was no poetry in it, but we did without that; there was little beauty in it, too, but we do not feel the want of what we have never known. I was housed, and fed, and clad; and if the world that during those years hedged me in was a very narrow one, I did not feel its narrowness, for I had never seen what lay beyond its limits. This existence endured for me until I was eighteen; then my grandaunt died. I recollect that parting vividly still, as the first sorrow and the first glimpse of the hidden things outside our daily life that I had ever had. My aunt had left me all she was possessed of, and after her death, I lived alone for a few months. At the end of that time I was surprised one day by a letter from my godmother, Mrs. Erickson, which asked if I would come and live with her. Mrs. Erickson had been a cousin of my mother's. Long ago, when I had been a little child, she had shown me some kindnesses that I had not forgotten. Her proposal was pleasant to me, and I accepted it. I set my house in order and obtained a tenant for it; then, one autumn day, when the sun shone bright on harvest fields, I bade farewell to the village where I had lived, and set forth upon my journey to my new home. That journey's end brought me to a quaint old town, dark with long narrow streets, whose stones time had impressed with his seal of solemn colouring, whose gloomy dimness only here and there stole into sudden light at some unlooked-for opening, where the sun shone upon the grass growing around the pavement of an untrod square, or glinted on a bend of the bright silent river, or lingered lovingly upon the tall, grey, half-decaying towers of some old time-eaten church. I saw it linger so for the first time on that autumn evening, and the light, new to me at that time, quickly grew familiar, for in the opening before one such old church my godmother had her house, and summer and winter, between her windows and the rivulet, there stood an eternal screen of blackening stone-a mouldering pile, all rich with antique devices upon wall and capital and archivault, and delicate traceried windows, through whose narrow lights there came to us all that we ever saw of the gold and crimson of the western sky. It was a change from the village and the house that I had left! There all had been flat, clear, open as a sea; neither brick nor stone obscured our view-neither tree nor tower darkened us; undulating fields and hedge-rows there shut out no prospect; all was bright and sunny there, from zenith to horizon. This new confinement, at its first sight, was strange and painful to me. I recollect on the night I came that I stood by one of those west windows and drew my travelling cloak around me with an involuntary shiver. The sun had set, and the sky above was grey, and the black decaying walls, in that cold twilight, looked strangely sorrowful-stern, too, and pitiless a black cold shadow, whose beauty I could not see, and whose solemn age-grim mouldering memorial of the vanished centuries-only chilled me. I had not seen my godmother for eleven years. When we last met she was an active, bright-looking woman, of five-and-thirty. When she greeted me at her threshold now, I did not recognise her she had grown faded, and pale, and old. "I was stronger and younger when I saw you last, Ruth," she said gently, when I spoke of the change in her but there was a real and anxious look in her face that I thought must be set there by other causes than advancing years or failing strength. "And my cousin, Noel?" He was her only son-a man ten years or so older than I was. I had seen him once those eleven years ago -and had one day been carried in his strong arms through a hazel copse, when a long wandering amidst fallen autumn leaves had wet my feet a small kindness that I had remembered faithfully. She answered, "You will scarcely remember Noel;" and I presently found that she said right. As we sat together a little while after, talking by the fire, a man entered the room, and coming up to me, put out his hand with a single cold phrase of welcome. I looked up into his face as I answered his salute, and with that look, something that had been a kind of hope in me, sank down with a quick short pang. No-I had no recognition for this Noel Erickson. That cold repellent face was all strange to me. It was a small thing to speak of a slight disappointment and yet out of my child's prose life, it was something to lose the sunshine of one pleasant memory. We fell calmly, and at once, into a quiet, regular life. I had little eduIcation and few tastes. I had been accustomed to spend hours every day, passively laying stitch to stitch upon some long monotonous work. I set a square yard of canvas now in a frame, and with my pattern and my coloured wools, I quickly set to work. The thing, when finished, I said, should be a cushion for my godmother. At which she thanked me, and took up some humbler work herself. They were not rich, and she had other sewing to do than to make cushions. We passed our days alone, for Noel Erickson, though he did not often leave the house, had his own_work, and his own room to work in. He was an artist, and he laboured in his studio early and late. What came of his labouring I did not often see. Sometimes his mother took me to his workroom, and made me look at some completed drawing-during these first months they were generally slight water-colour sketches-before it left the house; but these were all I saw, and, amongst them, few impressed me much. I used to tell Mrs. Erickson (for it was necessary when I looked at them to say something) that I was no judge of painting; and that was true; but it was also true that in my heart I did not like my cousin Noel's pictures. Even in his slightest drawings there was at all times something feverish and restless. They might have power in them--I did not know-but they had no repose. say I did not like nor understand them; neither did I like nor understand him. He was a shadow in the house-an unsociable, care-worn, silent man. His presence made gloom in place of sunshine; his aspect chilled me with winter's cold. He was unhappy himself, and he brought discomfort as his companion. I was afraid of him a little; I pitied him much; I liked him not at all. Yet I did not regret my coming to my godmother's house. If Noel chilled me, his mother did not. I had known so little affection in my life that the quiet love she presently began to bestow on me, stole into my heart like very sunshine. I returned her what she gave to me; and in spite of Noel Erickson, and the gloominess of the ancient town, my new home became very pleasant to me. She said that I made it brighter to her too: perhaps I did I can still remember the sound of my merry laughter, as through the months of that first winter it used to ring, wakening smiles at least to join with it, through the low-roofed rooms turned from the second quickly. The of the old house. II. It was an afternoon of early spring. The days were long, and the birds had begun to build their nests under the gables of the old church. There were blossoms too upon the trees, and pale spring flowers in the old garden sheltered by the church wall. I sat by the window sewing and singing. It was a pleasant season to me-this bright spring time. I was not thoughtful-perhaps I understood only one fraction of its meaning and its loveliness; but it had spoken to me all my life of youth and hope, and I was young and hopeful. The sun shone warm upon the old church towers; far away there was a sound of joy-bells; I stopped my singing at times to listen to them-it was a right, glad sound for this spring day. 'Ruth, will you come? it is ready," Mrs. Erickson said. I turned quickly from the outer sunshine with a momentary feeling of compunction: something was happening in the house to-day, and I had forgotten it. My godmother thought it a great thing; it was not great to me, it was only this-that Noel had completed the picture that had been his chief winter's work, and it was to be sent to London to-day. I had never seen it yet. I rose at Mrs. Erickson's invitation, and followed her up stairs. She was excited and glad, and her pale face was even brightened by a flush of colour. I was not glad, nor almost even curious; an entrance into my cousin's studio had long ceased to be looked upon by me as even a possible pleasure. He was in the room when we came in, but not at his easel. The space about that was vacant, and upon it stood his framed picture. We went up together and stood before it. It was a large picture, divided into two compartments, both representing the same scene-a sea-shore, girt to the right by a line of rocks-but in one the water was lying calmly under an azure sky, and the spars of the rocks glittered in sunshine ; in the other the sea was lashed into high crests of foam, and one red cleft in the heavy thunder clouds illumined the whole canvas with a lurid light. I looked at both pictures, but I warm, soft sunshine, the calm, blue water-these things I liked; that picture had rest and beauty and quiet light in it; I liked it as I had liked no other creation I had ever seen of Noel's. I was glad to be able to speak what I felt I exclaimed heartily"This is beautiful." "Which is beautiful, Ruth?" Noel suddenly asked. I looked at him as he came towards us; there was a slight contemptuous scorn in his face that for a moment irritated me. I knew the answer that he expected, and I gave it to him half defiantly. "The first!" "You do not like the other, then?" "I am no judge of pictures." "Perhaps not. But you thinkwhat?" There was an ungentle smile upon his lips; another look would have made me humble, but that angered me. "Ithink," I answered quickly, "that pictures were meant to make us happy when we look at them--and that one does not." "But pictures cannot only be painted when men are happy, Ruth," my godmother said; "and if they are unhappy their pictures will show signs of their sorrow." "Why need they?" I answered boldly. "If they feel sorrow can they not learn to repress it? Can they not struggle against, instead of giving way to it, and brooding over it, and nursing it as if it was some precious thingas Noel does?" It was a sudden impulse that had made me speak. The thoughts had come impatiently into my mind many a time before, but never before had I given utterance to them. I spoke them hotly now, confident in my wisdom and common sense. When I ceased, my cousin met me with this answer: "Who told you, Ruth," he calmly demanded, "that sorrow was not a precious thing? How do you know how much strength lies in it-how weak many a heart and hand might be if it was cast away? My cousin, you are young, and you judge all people by yourself, and would have all the world such as you are. Take my advice, and in future condemn only what you understand, lest you chance |