been putting our heads together, and all as we can make out is that Harry must have written before, and his letter never come to hand."

66

previous to the date of the post-mark on Harry's letter. Mr. Dennison advised my going to London, and offered me introductions to two 'Well, at all events, Mrs. Markland, I am gentlemen on the committee at Lloyd's. The very, very glad poor Harry is preserved. I "Emma" is probably a trader between China don't know what to think-I suppose he means and Australia, and it is just possible may be inme-that I have something to hope or fear insured. At all events, if the Candahar spoke her regard to this man with the queer name. Can you tell me what these last works in the postscript mean?"

Mary says it's 'cure her cough;' but I can't make it out so myself; and Mr. Bushell, our curate, as I took the letter to, says it's curl her hair.' It might be an h or it might be a k, but Harry couldn't so have forgot his spellingnot though he was in a hurry-and I can't make out a gh neither."

66

Why should it not be curl her hair?" "

Why Mary says, true enough, that he always used to be giving little Kitty sweeties, and used to say they were to cure her cough, whether she had one or no, ma'am. But as to curling her hair, she hadn't none long enough to curl, ma'am."

I was wavering between hope and fear while the good woman spoke. "Mrs. Markland," I now said, "are you sure he means your daughter's little one, and not mine?"

"Well, ma'am, what do you think?"

"I must hope there is a chance. Perhaps Harry has found some one to bring her to England-this man, Straggers, whatever he may be? I used to curl my little girl's hair: the Captain liked to see it. Harry was often standing by when I did it, and as it pleased the child she may have expected it to be done for her. In that case I think Harry was likely enough to humour her fancy?"

66

Mrs. Markland agreed it would be like him to do so, fond as he was of children's little ways. My Mary told me," she said, "I must beware of raising expectations; but my own feeling is that good news ought to have come to you before this. You see, ma'am, I was getting very desponding about my Harry, and now, after all, he's all right. And I don't think he'd write so cheerful if harm had come to your dear little girl. Of course he could not tell, being so far off, whether or no this What's-his-name man had arrived with the child; but he might send his love on the chance."

Mrs. Markland was readily induced to allow me to keep the letter to show to Messrs. Grey and Dennison, and I resolved immediately to go to them in search of information.

A message sent by Lance brought Helen to me the same evening. I should have been glad of her company to Liverpool, and she was very desirous of going with me, but her grandfather was a little out of humour, and did not concede the favour.

I went there alone the following day. Messrs. Grey and Dennison could throw no light on the letter, but took pains to obtain information for ine, and ascertained that a ship called the “Candahar” had arrived at Rangoon the day

and sent a man on board, there is hope of further news in time, for, when her owners are known, means may be fouud to convey a letter to Harry.

I wrote from Liverpool to my friend Mrs. Barnes, and have had a very kind reply, desiring me to make her house my home.

THE WRAITH.

BY ADA TREVANION.

The autumn sun was sinking low,
With a radiance calm and mellow;
Over the peaked horizon's brow

The ray fell slant and yellow.

The robin sang in the beech-tree long,

And his notes were sad and tender;
And we stood and listened to his song

Till the eve-star shone in splendour.

The river with its gentle flood

Went by us winding ever;
Softly it flowed by cliff and wood,
A fair and bounteous giver.

From my love's forehead, smooth and meek,
The loose elf locks were streaming;
The joy of her soul had tinged her cheek,
And her eyes were softly beaming.

I sat alone in my cot that night,
The student's taper burning;
And I thought I heard a footstep light
Still passing and returning.

There came a hand to my lonely door;

The calm moon shone unclouded;

I rose in haste, and crossed the floor,
And saw my true love shrouded.

I sought her side, and spoke her name,
But then all my hope departed;
For she vanished speechless as she came,
And I am broken hearted.

Oh! it cannot be her smile has fled,
And her eyes are dim and hollow:
If she indeed is gone-is dead,

Then I at least will follow!

So dig a grave 'neath the church-yard tree
(The river we loved flows by it),
And let it be for her and me,
And let us sleep there in quiet.

There are legends which appeal directly to the superstition deep-seated in some compartment of every soul; there are poets who spring up at the magic call of a nation's literary emergency to adorn and improve all succeeding epochs of man's history; there are epics, more powerful than laws, which, like beacons, mark here and there the characters, the language, and the tendencies of men, in the twilight of the past.

Of such men, such poems, and such undying legends, every school-boy will point to the most notable examples: "the blind old man of Chios," who evoked into being "the Scian and the Teian Muse," and his historic coincident of a later age, whose minor light was a celestial radiance.

The shores of the Egean still teem with the clustering growth of Homeric creations, and the mythic legend of Troy has passed into enduring history.

Then, by a natural transition, we advert to the splendour which has confined to the age and court of Octavius the cognomen of Augustus, and while Eneas the goddess-born lives in history, Jupiter and the celestials are endued with an unquestionable claim to immortality in the eloquent apostrophes of Horace.

Nor may we fail to mention, among the first in dignity, Shakespeare, the mighty master of the heart and harp, who wrote for all time and all people.

The epoch which Voltaire has styled the age of Louis XIV., too, is prolific of literary marvels. The pulpit, the poet's sanctum, and the seats of imaginative fiction, gave forth a redundancy of eloquence, of wit, of fine fancy, and of gorgeous creations. But these are historic truisms.

At length there appeared, almost within the limits of our own generation, among the German people, a new and more striking illustration of this magic power of genius; a man whose heart was full of fervour, whose mind was full of philosophy, whose brain was teeming with poetry. He did not seek his subjects from among the mystic and the incomprehensible, but stooping as it were to an old wife's legend which had come with the introduction of printing into Germany, and had been told at every hearth, to every child," to point a moral or adorn a tale," he raised it from its low estate, and set it as an unfading glory in the wreath of his own genius.

It seems to us that it is well occasionally to review such a production, to contemplate it again and again, like an old scene with which the heart is familiar, and to place our tribute with renewed admiration upon the shrine of

as

Goethe's genius; and we are the more impelled
to do this at present, by reason of the aid which
we have at hand, in Dr. Anster's translation of
the Faust, a work never as much known
it deserved to be, and now out of print, but
which abounds with so many passages of great
force and beauty as in itself to repay our trouble.
It may not be amiss, however, to assert, that
the translation is rather liberal in these days of
exact rendering, and that, while some of the
dubious passages are rendered contrary to our
way of thinking, the whole poem is rather an
embodiment of Dr. Anster's general idea of
Faust, than a literal construction of the words
of Goethe. Leaving a philosophical dissection
of the poem and the translation to those who
are at once poets and critical German scholars,
we may be permitted in this connection to say,
that it is with great delight we hail within a very
few years the dawning of a literal system, as
illustrated in the fine translations of Shakespeare
into French by Comte Alfred de Vigny, Auguste
Barbier, and Léon de Wailly, in which the
French dramatic rhythm is retained in its integ-
rity, and the untrammelled blank verse of the
mighty master rendered almost word for word.

We hope, not without confidence, that the coming translators of Goethe will emulate the correctness of the French literati, and that we shall yet read and understand the Faust in pure English, exactly as Goethe intended it.

As we sit with the original open before us, and Dr. Anster under our right hand, the angular German type and the peculiar German idiom seem to speak indeed in a language almost defiant of translation, and to say, in the words of Mephistopheles to the wavering Faust:

"Ich gebe dir was noch kein mensch geschen :" and "word for word" is the construction alone which will approach the conceptions of the author.

The poem is preceded by a Dedication, the last verse of which is an epitome of the whole, and will repay the perusal :

"Again it comes! a long unwonted feeling,
A wish for that calm, solemn, phantom land;
My song is swelling now, now lovely stealing,
Like Eol's harp, by varying breezes fanned:
Tears follow tears, my weaknesses revealing,
And silent shudders show a heart unmanned;
Dull forms of daily life before me flee,
The Past, the Past alone seems true to me!"
The opening scene is at the theatre, and the

* Later still we have translations of Shakespere into French, by the Chevalier de Chatelain.-ED.

dialogue is sustained by the manager, who is in | Thus wrought upon, thus perplexed, he deter want of a play, and a dramatic poet. The man- mines to put an end at once to himself and his ager wants something ad captandum, even sufferings. though it be at the expense of good taste and poetic feeling, and after much confabulation succeeds in irritating the poet, who has a loftier conception of his office and his destiny, and who vents his feelings in the following glowing language:

cling around in the field, as if in search of his master. Faust takes him home, to be a sort of companion in his study, a something upon which his eyes may rest as they turn from his books or his papers; a substitute (such is the opinion of many a scholar) for a human associate, more obedient and less troublesome. Not such, however, was the case with this extraordinary poodle.

As his master began his labours, he began to growl and whine; and when Faust undertook to translate the first verse of the first chapter of St. John's Gospel, the dog becomes transformed with rage, displaying to the astonished Faust the characteristics of demoniac possession. The air becomes filled with unearthly chantings. One spell is tried by Faust after another, without success, in exorcising the devil, until at last he chances to hit upon the cabalistic rhyme, which suddenly invests the dog with colossal proportions, and enshrouds him in a thick mist. When the cloud disappears, a gentleman in a scholar's travelling-dress appears from behind the stove, and we see Mephistopheles for the first time on earth.

The dog, or rather the devil, could not escape through the door, on account of a pentagram described upon the threshold; this figure, the Druid's foot," "sive salutis signum," being a bound which spirits cannot pass without permission. Thus forced apparently into contact with Faust, Mephistopheles commences artfully his conversation: he is neither too obsequious nor too exacting, but suits himself to the character, appearance, and station of his intended victim; patient and cool in argument, and in no haste for the result. In order to retire, he has recourse to attending spirits, who sing Faust to sleep in soothing but ghostly strains; and then he calls upon the rats, or demons in their form, to gnaw away the angel of the pentagram which confines him; and thus he escapes. At his next visit, Faust signs a compact with him,

which is couched in these words of the Devil :

"I bind myself to be thy servant here,

To run, and rest not, at thy beck and bidding;
And when we meet again at yonder place,
There, in like manner, thou shalt be my servant."

It is not difficult for a supernatural being to convince a philosopher that he can never know much; that his aspirings can never attain their aim; that his longings never can be satisfied. It is more easy still, when once he be convinced of these things, to work upon his despairing sensitiveness, and cause him to seek pleasure in the fruition of appetite and passion. Nor is this without many illustrations in every-day life. Thus Mephistopheles dealt with Faust; divorced him from his studies, infected his soul with the leprosy of devilish desire, and remained at his elbow to ensure its consummation in action. Thus he perverted from its holy and useful meaning the noble maxim which has descended

The Druids wore shoes of a pentagonal form.

to us from Hippocrates: "Ars longa vita brevis;" and our unfortunate hero plunges into the world and its pleasures, convinced that "if art is long," man may employ his powers in some more satisfying way than in endeavouring to reach its goal; and that if "time is fleeting,' we should make the most of it, according to the perverted tenets of the Epicurian philosophy.

In the outset of their adventures we meet them at Auerbach's cellar in Leipzig, where they have entered suddenly upon a convivial meeting of four bocn-companions. Then takes place the famous miracle, which is ascribed to Faust's devil in the earliest stories, and which, with other scenes, has been immortalized by the stylus of Retzsch. With great suavity Mephistopheles joins in their chat, exchanges a joke with them, and, upon the discovery that the wine is very bad, he proposes to give them better. For each taste he bores a hole in the edge of the table, and Rhenish wine, champagne, and Tokay flow into their glasses. The caution is, not to spill. Through the carelessness of Siebel, some wine is spilt, which immediately turns into flame. The devil quenches it with a word. Another draws the stopper from the gimlet-whole which gave his wine, and flame spouts out. All then, seized with a sudden transport, attack Mephistopheles. He disarms them by incantation and gesture, and straightway they become excited with the most pleasurable sensations; these in turn give way to frenzy, and Faust and his devil leave them fighting among themselves.

I would willingly pass over without notice the scene in the witches' kitchen, and gain time to linger upon more interesting parts of this wonderful poem. Suffice it, that there is a collocation of apes (called by the translator "catapes"), of witcnes, of filthy, dark and nauseating utensils and articles, of devilish speeches, the whole result of which is to administer a potent and charmed drink to Faust, to excite his passions, and thus to drown the aspiring impulse of his immortality. At the risk of pungent criticism, we think that even to a German reader there must be very little force in this scene. To us it is not justified by the end; and the coarseness, the vulgar jocularity, and the indecent familiarity, divested of all the majesty (if we may use the word) of devilish character, are faults which, instead of being easily forgotten, will become more and more glaring by contrast, in proportion as the poem shall be more generally read. The author has the idea which Shakespeare has embodied in Macbeth, but how differently has he invested it!

The spacious heath, thunder and lightning, the introduction of the classic Hecate, the farfamed cauldron, give to the creation of Shakespeare a horror, and at the same time an interest, such as the "secret, black and midnight hags" are intended to produce; while the apes of Goethe, the kitchen peopled with grotesque and disgusting figures, the witch tumbling down the chimney and fawning upon Mephistopheles, cause us to lose our interest in our disgust.