period of agricultural depression almost without precedent, I will do him the further justice to assert that he is too well acquainted with his vernacular tongue to insist, as does my reviewer, that "woodland" and "sylvan" are correlative terms. Woodland, in its most correct sense, means land occupied by wood; and "woodland flowers" are such as grow upon its surface, and which, in the primitive phraseology of Wordsworth, would be called

66

ground-flowers." Sylvan, on the contrary, has immediate reference to that which constitutes the wood. By a sylvan bower, then, is implied a retreat of some altitude, in which the Thrush is found as well to sing as to build its nest: thus the necessary distinction between these epithets, at which the reviewer sneers, is duly preserved in the couplet that closes the second stanza. Passing by the third, he encounters an inexplicable difficulty at the fourth stanza, where the Thrush, Druidic shades, and mistletoe seem, in his bewilderment, to dance before him in all the mazes of metaphorical confusion.' For his comfort I would remark that the Druids "deemed the mistletoe sacred, if it vegetated from the oak. They selected groves of oaks, and thought every thing sent from heaven which grew on this tree. On the sixth day of the moon, which was the beginning of their months and years, and of their period of thirty years, they came to the oak on which they observed any of the parasitical plant (which they called all-healing), prepared a sacrifice and a feast under this venerated tree, and brought thither two white bulls, whose horns were then first tied. The officiating Druid, in a white garment, climbed the tree, and, with a golden knife," or, according to

Stukeley, a brass hatchet, "pruned off the mistletoe, which was received in a white woollen cloth below. They then sacrificed the victims, and addressed their gods to make the mistletoe prosperous to those to whom it was given; for they believed that it caused fecundity, and was an amulet against poison."* Almost the sole agent in the perpetuation of this parasite is the Missel Thrush, which greedily devours its berries. In doing so, it not unfrequently happens that some portion of the seed, by means of the viscid pulp in which it is embedded, adheres to the exterior of the beak, and, on being rubbed by the bird upon a branch on which it subsequently alights, clings in like manner to the bark, and in due time germinates. Profiting by this curious fact, the naturalist has often tried to propagate the mistletoe; and though success may have occasionally rewarded him, he has much more commonly failed. Such is the testimony of Abercrombie; and to his I may add my own, having made the experiment in a vast many instances with uniform failure. Of all this my reviewer can have known nothing. Convicted then as he now stands of ignorance that, but for the pains I have taken with him, might have been thought incredible on a subject of popular interest, he might well exclaim "of the lines we have italicized we must acknowledge that the meaning lies too deep for our comprehension.” Assisted, however, by the information I have vouchsafed him, supported as it is by the eagerness with which, as a nation, we yet search for mistletoe in the furtherance of our Christmas convivialities, it is possible he may

* Sharon Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons.

learn that, in the figurative language of the following stanza, is conveyed much that a man of better education would have known how to appreciate :

The shade of heathen Druid holds
Communion with thy sprightly race,
In mystic language that unfolds

Its virtue in the pleasing grace
Of mistletoe, dispensing charms
To Britons with extended arms!

When first proposing to include the "Imprecation among other pieces that occupy a place in my volume, I doubted the propriety of doing so; but my scruples were soon dissipated on reading "The Sisters" by the present Laureate, who may fairly be said to represent the caudal extremity of the Lake school. Not wishing to injure the moral susceptibility of my reviewer beyond the demands of necessity, I must implore him, on my introduction of "The Sisters," to bear up against the infliction as best he can. It is hard work for a man who is confessedly shocked at the resentment of an unprovoked outrage, to be dragged through a scene of seduction, damnation, treachery, and murder; but he will surely console himself with the reflection that it proceeds from the pen of one, whose boast it is to have received the laurel "from the brows of him that uttered nothing base."

THE SISTERS.

BY ALFRED TENNYSON.

We were two daughters of one race:

She was the fairest in the face:

The wind is blowing in turret and tree.

They were together, and she fell ;
Therefore revenge became me well.
O the Earl was fair to see!

She died: she went to burning flame :
She mixed her ancient blood with shame.

The wind is howling in turret and tree. Whole weeks and months, and early and late, To win his love I lay in wait:

O the Earl was fair to see!

I made a feast; I bad him come;

I won his love, I brought him home.

The wind is roaring in turret and tree.

And after supper, on a bed,

Upon my lap he laid his head:
O the Earl was fair to see!

I kissed his eyelids into rest:

His ruddy cheek upon my breast.

The wind is raging in turret and tree.

I hated him with the hate of hell,
But I loved his beauty passing well.
O the Earl was fair to see!

I rose up in the silent night:

I made my dagger sharp and bright.

The wind is raving in turret and tree.

As half-asleep his breath he drew,

Three times I stabbed him thro' and thro'.
O the Earl was fair to see!

I curled and combed his comely head,
He looked so grand when he was dead.

The wind is blowing in turret and tree.

I wrapt his body in the sheet,

And laid him at his mother's feet.

O the Earl was fair to see!

66

In taking leave of the literary charlatan, whose impositions find currency through the "Nottinghamshire Guardian," I will just add that, if amongst the fraternity to which he belongs men of better parts are to be found, there are none more adroit in the use of petty artifice than he is. From the novel device by which, with the aid of diamond type on one hand, and stalwart Roman on the other, he succeeds in contrasting authors, down to the marshalling of a group of notes of exclamation, after the manner of a line of infantry, he is distinguished from the ruffians of the Morning Post" and "Tait," who, confiding in the resources of unabashed impudence, deal only in scurrility. At the hands of the journalists I well knew, as already intimated, that in the publication of my volume I could expect no sympathy; for though most of them had, in years that are gone by, treated Wordsworth more contemptuously than I have done, his appointment to the rank of Laureate tended greatly to conciliate them. So little did the Poet write from the date of his elevation to his demise in 1850, that they had few opportunities for eulogizing him until the appearance of his "Prelude," which, by way of showing with what good taste his "Prefaces" had been attached to the conclusion of his works, was directed to be published at the close of his life. But the announcement of his memoirs was the key-note to posthumous praise, that has swelled almost into a national chorus; and my own strictures on his versification following immediately upon this performance, the critics, to be true to themselves, must necessarily complain of me. To that I could make no valid objection: having in