We are so unlike each other,

Thou and I; that none could guess We were children of one mother,

But for mutual tenderness.
Thou art rose-lined from the cold,
And meant, verily, to hold
Life's pure pleasures manifold.

I am pale as crocus grows

Close beside a rose-tree's root!
Whosoe'er would reach the rose,

Treads the crocus underfoot-
I, like May-bloom on thorn-tree-
Thou, like merry summer-bee!
Fit, that I be pluck'd for thee.

Yet who plucks me ?-no one mourns-
I have lived my season out-

And now die of my own thorns
Which I could not live without.
Sweet, be merry! How the light
Comes and goes! If it be night,
Keep the candles in my sight.
Are there footsteps at the door?

Look out quickly. Yea, or nay?
Some one might be waiting for

Some last word that I might say.
Nay? So best! So angels would
Stand off clear from deathly road,
Not to cross the sight of God.

Of the poetess's moving lyrics, meant in one form or other to express, echo, and reverberate what she calls the " cry of the human," it boots not to speak at any length; they are commonly the best known and understood of all her poems. The "Cry of the Children" witnesses to the earnestness of her sympathies, and the power with which she can give them broken voice. Moir calls the truth of these stanzas an "importunate and heavy load," that weighs on the heart like a nightmare; on the imagination like a torture-scene by Spagnoletto. It is as real, and goes as straight to the heart as the 66 Song of the Shirt." Her "Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point" is another outburst of passionate remonstrance, vented as it were in gasps and sobs of song. Thorough earnestness, indeed, marks all the verses she writes "with a purpose," from stanzas few and simple to the longer and more labored "Casa Guidi Windows," the " very incoherent and fragmentary form" of which, however, is in itself, by the sentence of Charles Kingsley, a true and natural expression of her natural bewilderment, uncertainty, alternate hope and disappointment. vague yet sure expectation of a darker and a brighter

future," a red sunrise of retribution, from whose glory and whose horror her eyes, as they should have done, turned away, while all things quivered before them, indistinctly amid the mist of tears"-what time she heard a little child go singing

'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church, "O bella libertà, O bella!"—

a little child, too, who "not long had been by mother's finger steadied on his feet," though still O bella libertà! he sang. The war-utterances of "Maud" had been anticipated for years by the laureate's greatest living rival in song, who denounces a hollow peace, where fellowship is not, nor mercy, nor any true fruit of bella libertà, and who prefers to it the horrors of war, the "raking of the guns across the world," "the struggle in the slippery fosse, of dying men and horses, and the wave-blood bubbling ;" such things she swears "by Christ's own Cross," and by the "faint heart of her womanhood," are better than a despot's selfish peace, for that

Is gagged despair, and inarticulate wrong,
Annihilated Poland, stifled Rome,
Dazed Naples, Hungary fainting 'neath the
throng,

And Austria wearing a smooth olive-leaf
On her brute forehead, while her hoofs outpress
The life from these Italian souls.

Mary Russell Mitford, lately taken home in a green old age, has told the world more than any one else, or than all other gentle gossips put together, of the life-history and painful past of the poetess, Miss Barrett that was (and under another title still is) once cordially addressed in a sonnet Miss Mitford that then was (and now, alas! is not :)

Dear friend, in whose dear writings drops the

dew

And blow the natural airs; thou, who art next To nature's self in cheering the world's view, To preach a sermon on so known a text, etc.

In the cheeriest of old maid's "Recollections of a Literary Life," that pleasant kindly gossip about books, places, and people, is given, with characteristic unreserve and delicate sympathy combined, a record* of certain tragic passages that

The reader will be glad to read, if for the first time, and not unwilling, if for a second,

Miss Mitford's narrative:

rett commenced about fifteen years ago. "My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Bar[This was written in 1851.] She was certainly one of

have deeply tinged the life and works of her gifted friend. Acquaintance with it casts a mournful light on some dark places in the poems where the darkness may be felt. Without knowing an atom of the story of her life it is yet impossible not to

Of a

the most interesting persons that I had ever seen. Everybody who then saw her said the same; so that it is not merely the impression of my partiality, or my enthusiasm. slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes richly fringed with dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went together to Chiswick that the translatress of the Prometheus' of Eschylus, the authoress of the Essay on Mind,' was old enough to be introduced into company, in technical language was out. Through the kindness of another invaluable friend, to whom I owe many obligations, but none so great as this, I saw much of her during my stay in town. We met so constantly and so familiarly, that in spite of the difference of age intimacy ripened into friendship, and after my return into the country we corresponded freely and frequently, her letters being just what letters ought to be, her own talk put upon paper. The next year was a painful one to herself, and to all who loved her. She broke a blood-vessel upon the lungs, which did not heal. If there had been consumption in the family that disease would have intervened. There were no seeds of the fatal English malady in her constitution, and she escaped. Still, however, the vessel did not heal, and after attending her for above a twelvemonth at her father's house in Wimpole-street, Dr. Chambers, on the approach of winter, ordered her to a milder climate. Her eldest brother, a brother in heart and talent worthy of such a sister, together with other devoted relatives, accompanied her to Torquay, and there occurred the fatal event which saddened her bloom of youth, and gave a deeper hue of thought and feeling, especially of devotional feeling, to her poetry. I have so often been asked what could be the shadow that had passed over that young heart, that now that time has softened the first agony it seems to me right that the world should hear the story of an accident in which there was much sorrow, but no blame. Nearly a twelvemonth had passed, and the invalid, still attended by her affectionate companions, had derived much benefit from the mild sea-breezes of Devonshire. One fine summer morning her favorite brother, together with two other fine young men, his friends, embarked on board a small sailing vessel for a trip of a few hours. Excellent sailors all, and familiar with the coast, they sent back the boatmen, and undertook themselves the management of the little craft. Danger was not dreamed of by any one; after the catastrophe no one could divine the cause, but in a few minutes after their embarkation, and in sight of their very windows, just as they were crossing the bar, the boat went down, and all who

infer from Mrs. Browning's poetry that hers is no mere luxury of woe; that she is noway liable to the suspicion of willful gloom for very wantonness; that she is no fantastic or professional threnodist, making a special wonder and grief of the

were in her perished. Even the bodies were never found. I was told by a party who were traveling that year in Devonshire and Cornwall that it was most affecting to see on the corner houses of every village street, on every church-door, and almost on every cliff for miles and miles along the coast, handbills, offering large rewards for linen cast ashore marked with the initials of the beloved dead; for it so chanced that all the three were of the dearest and the best. One, I believe, an only son, the other the son of a widow. This tragedy nearly killed Elizabeth Barrett. She was utterly prostrated by the horror and the grief, and by a natural but a most unjust feeling that she had been in some sort the cause of this great misery. It was not until the following year that she could be removed in an invalid carriage, and by journeys of twenty miles a day to her afflicted family and her London home. The house that she occupied at Torquay had been chosen as one of the most sheltered in the place. It stood at the bottom of the cliffs almost close to the sea, and she told me herself that during that whole winter the sound of the waves rang in her ears like the moans of one dying. Still she clung to literature and to Greek; in all probability she would have died without that wholesome diversion to her thoughts. Her medical attendant did not always understand this. To prevent the remonstrances of her friendly physician, Dr. Barry, she caused a small edition of Plato to be so bound as to resemble a novel. He did not know, skillful and kind though he were, that to her such books were not an arduous and painful study, but a consolation and a delight. Returned to London she began the life which she continued for so many years, confined to one large and commodious, but darkened chamber, admitting only her own affectionate family and a few devoted friends; (I myself have often joyfully traveled five-andforty miles to see her, and returned the same evening without entering another house ;) reading almost every book worth reading in almost every language, and giving herself heart and soul to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess. Gradually her health improved. About four years ago she married Mr. Browning, and immediately accompanied him to Pisa. They then settled at Florence; and this summer I have had the exquisite pleasure of seeing her once more in London with a lovely boy at her knee, almost as well as ever, and telling tales of Italian rambles, of losing herself in chestnut forests, and scrambling on mule-back up the sources of extinct volcanoes. May Heaven continue to her such health and such happiness."

Though the concluding prayer was uttered half a decade since, it is not too late--whole decades hence may it not be too late-to renew it with a deep Amen.

o'erpassing of a summer cloud; but one who has learned, as only storm-laden sorrow can teach, the possible anguish that human life can entail and human heart endure. By one overmastering affliction,

God's shadow on her face is laid

In sanctity for aye.

But sighs of heart - weariness escape ever and anon from the o'er fraught heart that else would break. In no modern poet are these suspiriosæ cogitationes more pregnant with meaning. In none are retrospective reveries shadowed forth in

greater depth of solemn sadness. We have never seen the recognition their pathos claims awarded to those self-communings in "Night and the Merry Man," for instance, where memory evokes from the past souvenirs of fancy's golden treasures, and of poems delightedly conned in childhood, ere the chilling discovery was made that life is not a poem too:

What are these? more, more than these!
Throw in dearer memories!
Of voices, whereof but to speak,
Maketh mine all sunk and weak;

Of smiles, the thought of which is sweeping
All my soul to floods of weeping;

Of looks, whose absence fain would weigh
My looks to the ground for aye;
Of clasping hands; ah me! I wring
Mine, and in a tremble fling,
Downward, downward, all this paining!

A yet more moving example, to the same effect, is found in "The Fourfold Aspect," beginning with a time when "the worst recorded change was of apple dropped from bough, when love's sorrow seemed more strange than love's treason can seem now:"

Then, the living took you up
Soft upon their elder knees,
Telling why the statues droop

Underneath the church and trees;

and thence, tracing the shades of the prison-house as they close in upon, and well-nigh darken to despair, well-nigh stifle and slay, the mortal that had yet to learn its mortality:

Ay, but soon ye woke up shrieking,
As a child that wakes at night
From a dream of sisters speaking
In a garden's summer light,

That wakes, starting up and bounding,
In a lonely, lonely bed,

With a wall of darkness round him,
Stifling black about his head!

Ꭱ

DR. SOUTH, THE WIT OF THE
ENGLISH PULPIT.

OBERT SOUTH, the son of a London merchant, was born at Hackney, in 1633, and was educated under the famous Dr. Busby at Westminster School. Thence he proceeded to Oxford, and, along with John Locke, became a distinguished student at Christ Church, of which Dr. Owen was at that time the dean. Even then he showed the elements of that character to which subsequent years gave development and emphasis; wit and illhumor, petulance toward those whom it was safe to offend, and considerable adroitness in taking care of himself. His first publication was a congratulatory ode to Cromwell at the conclusion of the war with Holland, but as soon as the power of the Independents began to wane, the young churchman grew valiant, and shewed his heroism by insulting Dr. Owen. While there was a prospect of Presbyterian ascendency he flattered the Presbyterians by his invectives against Independency; and when the Restoration divested

Prelacy of its dangers he availed himself of an Episcopal ordination which, in 1658, he had obtained from one of the deprived bishops, and came out an ultra-royalist and a reviler of all the sectaries. In 1660

he was chosen University orator. In this capacity he had occasion to present to

"Mortal," a Barrettism for mortality. Syncope is a very summary way of turning an adjective into a substantive, pro ré natá.

greasy hat, (and, perhaps, neither of them paid for,) could have suspected that, in the space of so few years he should, by the murder of one king and the banishment of another, ascend the throne, be invested in the royal robes, and want nothing of the state of a king but the changing of his hat into a crown?" the king was convulsed with laughter, and turning to Laurence Hyde, Lord Rochester, with one of his peculiar ejaculations, he exelaimed: "Lory, your chaplain must be a bishop therefore put me in mind of him at the next death."

But South was never made a bishop. In 1663 he was installed Prebendary of Westminster, and in 1670 Canon of Christ Church, and in 1678 he was presented to the rectory of Islip, in Oxfordshire. At the Revolution he was sorely perplexed. He had so often expatiated on the right Divine, and had been so fulsome in his flattery of the Stuarts, that he could hardly be expected to join the invitation to the Prince of Orange; and, with so little to choose between a loathsome Puritanism and an unlovely Popery, he refused to take an active part on either side, but said that he would go into retirement, and give himself to prayer. When he

came out of his retirement the Revolution was effected, and William and Mary were safely seated on the throne. To the sovereign de facto South took the oath of allegiance, and, growling out an occasional regret for the good old times of absolutism, he consented to retain his preferment, and reconciled himself, as well as he could, to the evil days of religious toleration and constitutional monarchy.

Living to witness the accession of George I., he died July 8, 1716, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, to which his brilliant satire and fierce invective had so often drawn overflowing audiences, and where an elaborate monument still marks the place of his sepulture.

known and received in the world, that a lie is absolutely sinful," he adds, "I suppose he means that part of the world where the Scriptures are not read, and where men care not to know what they are not willing to practice." Sometimes the vein is more decidedly comic, as in the abovementioned sermon on "The lot in the lap," where, after mentioning the fortuitous way in which men have acquired a reputation for wisdom, he proceeds, "And as the repute of wisdom, so that of wit is very casual. Sometimes a lucky saying, or a pertinent reply, has procured an esteem of wit to persons otherwise very shallow, and no ways accustomed to utter such things by any standing ability of mind; so that if such a one should have the ill hap at any time to strike a man dead with a smart saying, it ought, in all reason and conscience, to be judged but a chance-medley; the poor man (God knows) being no way guilty of any design of wit.” And, not to quote instances where the drollery degenerates to buffoonery, its most legitimate examples are the more latent, where the keen perception of incongruities does not so much provoke a smile, as point the moral, and make the lesson pithy: “The Gospel does not dictate imprudence: no. evangelical precept justles out that of a lawful self-preservation. He, therefore, that thus throws himself upon the sword, runs to heaven before he is sent for; where, though perhaps Christ may in mercy receive the man, yet he will be sure to disown the martyr." "Love an ungrateful man, and he shall despise you. Commend him, and, as occasion serves, he shall revile you. Give to him, and he shall but laugh at your easiness. Save his life, but, when you have done, look to your own," Speaking of unqualified teachers: "A blind man sitting in the chimney corner, is pardonable enough; but sitting at the helm, he is intolerable. If men will be ignorant and illiterate, let them be so in private, and to themselves, and not set their defects in a high place, to make them visible and conspicuous. If owls will not be hooted at, let them keep close within the tree, and not perch upon the upper boughs.'