same contemplative mood, and calm temperament, that had sat so gracefully on him in his earlier phasis. He indulges in that error, so common among public men, of weighing private virtue or vice lightly, in comparison with the superior importance to mankind of his public transactions; he philosophizes away to his conscience the taint that has come upon some of the best parts of his original character; and pleases himself with feeling that the strength and generosity of his nature have not at all events been impaired.

We are prepared, in short, to find Adriana van Merestyn replaced in the second part of the romance by a heroine of a far different stamp. The following lines come as a sort of envoy to the first drama

'-Rest thee a space; or if thou lovest to hear

A soft pulsation in thine easy ear,

Turn thou the page, and let thy senses drink
A lay that shall not trouble thee to think.
Quitting the heroine of the past, thou'lt see
In this prefigured her that is to be,

And find what life was hers before the date
That with the Fleming's fortunes linked her fate.
This sang she to herself one summer's eve,

A recreant from festivities that grieve

The heart not festive; stealing to her bower,

With this she whiled away the lonely evening hour.'-vol. i. p. 264. These beautiful lines introduce a separate lyrical poem, which, if the author had written nothing else, would, as it seems to us, have been sufficient to fix an elegant reputation. We must content ourselves with broken fragments from the lay of Elena.'

'A bark is launched on Como's lake, A maiden sits abaft;

A little sail is loosed to take

The night-wind's breath, and waft
The maiden and her bark away,
Across the lake and up the bay.
And what doth there that lady fair
Upon the wavelet tossed?
Before her shines the evening star,
Behind her in the woods afar

The castle lights are lost.
What doth she there? The evening
air

Lifts her locks, and her neck is bare;
And the dews, that now are falling fast,
May work her harm, or a rougher blast

May come from yonder cloud;
And that her bark might scarce sustain,
So slightly built ;-then why remain,
And would she be allowed
To brave the wind and sit in the dew
At night on the lake, if her mother knew?

Its changes, seasons, you can tell,—
At least you typify them well.
First came the genial, hopeful Spring,
With bursting buds and birds that sing,
And fast though fitful progress made
To brighter suns and broader shade.
Those brighter suns, that broader shade,
They came, and richly then array'd
Was bough and sward, and all below
Gladdened by Summer's equal glow.
What next? a change is slowly seen,
And deepeneth day by day
The darker, soberer, sadder green
Prevenient to decay.

*

'What followed was not good to do,

Nor is it good to tell;

The anguish of that worst adieu
Which parts with love and honour too,
Abides not, so far well.
The human heart cannot sustain
Prolonged, unalterable pain,
And not till reason cease to reign
Will nature want some moments brief
Of other moods to mix with grief:
Such and so hard to be destroyed
That vigour which abhors a void;
And in the midst of all distress,
Such nature's need for happiness!
And when she rallied thus, more high
Her spirits ran, she knew not why,
Than was their wont in times than these
Less troubled, with a heart at ease.
So meet extremes; so joy's rebound
Is highest from the hollowest ground;
So vessels with the storm that strive
Pitch higher as they deeplier drive.

'Well had it been if she had curbed
These transports of a mind disturbed;
For grief is then the worst of foes
When, all intolerant of repose,
It sends the heart abroad to seek
From weak recoils exemptions weak;
After false gods to go astray,
Deck altars vile with garlands gay,
And place a painted form of stone
On Passion's abdicated throne.

*

**

*

*

'On Como's lake the evening star
Is trembling as before;

An azure flood, a golden bar,
There as they were before they are,

A foreign land is now her choice,
A foreign sky above her,
And unfamiliar is each voice

Of those that say they love her.
A prince's palace is her home,
And marble floor and gilded dome,
Where festive myriads nightly meet,
Quick echoes of her steps repeat.
And she is gay at times, and light
From her makes many faces bright;
And circling flatterers hem her in
Assiduous each a word to win,
And smooth as mirrors each the while
Reflects and multiplies her smile.
But fitful were those smiles, nor long
She cast them to that courtly throng;
And should the sound of music fall
Upon her ear in that high hall,
The smile was gone, the eye that shone
So brightly would be dimmed anon,
And objectless would then appear,
As stretched to check the starting tear.
The chords within responsive rung,
For music spoke her native tongue.

'And then the gay and glittering crowd
Is heard not, laugh they e'er so loud;
Nor then is seen the simpering row
Of flatterers, bend they e'er so low;
For there before her, where she stands,
The mountains rise, the lake expands;
Around the terraced summit twines
The leafy coronal of vines;
Within the watery mirror deep
Nature's calm converse lies asleep;
Above she sees the sky's blue glow,
The forest's varied green below,
And far its vaulted vistas through
A distant grove of darker hue,
Where mounting high from clumps of oak
Curls lightly up the thin gray smoke;
And o'er the boughs that over-bower
The crag, a castle's turrets tower-
An eastern casement mantled o'er

With ivy flashes back the gleam Of sun-rise,-it was there of yore She sat to see that sun-rise pour Its splendour round-she sees no more, For tears disperse the dream.' -vol. i. p. 266-286. We have, limited by our allotted space, been obliged to omit many of the finest stanzas of this lyric. It will be more popular, we suspect, with the mass of readers, than the noblest pages of the two dramas which it links together; yet, if we be not mistaken, it is introduced chiefly to show that the author, if he had chosen,

might have employed, with brilliant success, in these dramas, a class of ornaments which he has, on principle, disdained to intermingle in their dialogue. His masculine ambition woos seriously the severer graces. We have quoted, therefore, from the lay of Elena' thus largely, on purpose to arrest the attention of those who have been so long accustomed to admire poetry of one particular school (in its original masters admirable) as to have lost, in some measure, the power of believing that there may be poetry equally fervid, and powerful, where the execution, as well as the sentiment, is more chastened. But to return to the story before us.

This beautiful Italian lady has of late been domiciled' with the Duke of Bourbon, father-in-law to the exiled Earl of Flanders, and uncle to the boy King of France. She has fallen into the hands of Artevelde, and conceived for him a passion far stronger than the reader of her 'lay' could have dreamt she would still be capable of; she loves the regent for himself-and he loves her also; but the now hopelessly disturbed temper of his mind is with bold and happy art made to break out even at the moment when she has first told him her love.

The lady has accompanied the regent's camp to the frontier; his application to the court of England has just been rejected; the Duke of Bourbon has induced his nephew of France to muster the strength of his kingdom in the cause of the Earl of Flanders: -(the whole portraiture, by the way, of this stripling monarch, is worthy of Scott himself-it has even a Shakspearian airinesss of touch about it ;)—a French envoy has arrived with a secret message from Bourbon, intimating that, if Artevelde will restore Elena, he may yet induce the giddy king to suspend his march, and acknowledge the regent as a lawful sovereign. Philip has allowed the envoy, Sir Fleureant de Heurlée, freedom to deliver letters to the lady herself, and referred the decision of her fate wholly to her own choice. Elena refuses to depart. In going the rounds of his camp at midnight, Artevelde perceives light in her pavilion-he enters, and every one foresees the issue. This is the close of the dialogue. We need not invite special attention to what we quote: here all real lovers of poetry will be as one. 'Artevelde. The tomb received her charms

Elena.

In their perfection, with no trace of time
Nor stain of sin upon them; only death

Had turned them pale. I would that you had seen her
Alive or dead.

I wish I had, my lord;

I should have loved to look upon her much;

VOL. LI. NO. CII.

2 D

For

For I can gaze on beauty all day long,
And think the all-day-long is but too short.
Artevelde. She was so fair, that in the angelic choir
She will not need put on another shape
Than that she bore on earth.

Elena.

Artevelde.

Elena.

Artevelde.

And I have tamed my sorrow.

Well, well,-she's gone,
Pain and grief

Are transitory things no less than joy,
And though they leave us not the men we were,
Yet they do leave us. You behold me here
A man bereaved, with something of a blight
Upon the early blossoms of his life

And its first verdure, having not the less
A living root, and drawing from the earth
Its vital juices, from the air its powers:

And surely as man's health and strength are whole
His appetites regerminate, his heart

Re-opens, and his objects and desires.

Shoot up renewed. What blank I found before me
From what is said you partly may surmise;

How I have hoped to fill it may I tell?

I fear, my lord, that cannot be.

Indeed!
Then am I doubly hopeless. What is gone,
Nor plaints, nor prayers, nor yearnings of the soul,
Nor memory's tricks, nor fancy's invocations,-
Though tears went with them frequent as the rain
In dusk November, sighs more sadly breathed
Than winter's o'er the vegetable dead,-
Can bring again: and should this living hope,
That like a violet from the other's grave
Grew sweetly, in the tear-besprinkled soil
Finding moist nourishment-this seedling sprung
Where recent grief had like a ploughshare passed
Through the soft soul, and loosened its affections—
Should this new-blossomed hope be coldly nipped,
Then were I desolate indeed! a man

Whom heaven would wean from earth, and nothing leaves
But cares and quarrels, trouble and distraction,

The heavy burthens and the broils of life.

Is such my doom? Nay, speak it, if it be.
I said I feared another could not fill
The place of her you lost, being so fair
And perfect as you give her out.

'Tis true,

A perfect woman is not as a coin,
Which being gone, its very duplicate
Is counted in its place. Yet waste so great