the crown; the Duke of Reggio, (Oudinot,) the sceptre; the Duke of Treviso, (Mortier,) the sword; and Count Molitor, the hand of justice. The king then signed the declaration, ascended the throne, and, after a short speech, in which he repeated that necessity, the dangers threatening social order, and the will of the Chambers had prevailed upon him to accept a charge, of which he felt all the duties, duties which he was determined to fulfil, he left the house amidst the applause of the spectators, and returned to his palace.

On reconsidering the whole of this important transaction, we can see no essential alteration in the principle of the constitutional monarchy as established by the Restoration; we see rather a return to the principles of the charter of Louis XVIII.; we read that Louis Philippe swore to govern according to the laws, and according to the Charter. He, in fact, entered into the office of his two predecessors, and succeeded to their constitutional right. What becomes then of all the jargon about republican institutions surrounding the monarchy, of the unintelligible axiom advanced by M. Thiers, that "the king reigns and does not govern." If there is a mystification somewhere, it is the republicans who have mystified themselves; they wanted to have a republic, and they find that they have got a constitutional monarchy, and they must now make the best of it, as France does not seem disposed to make a fresh revolution to try their crude experiments.

RUCKERT'S POEMS.

Gesammelte Gedichte von Friedrich Rückert. (Collected Poems of Friedrich Rückert.) Vols. 5 and 6. 8vo. 1838-9.

Two volumes more! Two thick octavos more! Did not the four volumes of five hundred pages each contain all? Ay, and they were tolerably closely printed pages too, considering that the matter was in verse; none of Sir Benjamin Backbite's rivulets of text meandering through a meadow of margin. But we are not grumbling, we are exclaiming with wonderment and admiration at the marvellous power of the great poet in opening forth poem after poem with his immense facility: let the volumes increase, let their pages be multiplied, we know we shall find something more or less good. We are indebted to Rückert for many a pleasant hour, for many a high and holy thought; and we shall ever hail the appearance of an additional volume, even though the poet declines himself; for we know that Rückert, though declining, will be Rückert still.

In fertility, in creative power, Rückert can scarcely be excelled; he can seize on an image, and, using it as a focus, cause a universe to revolve around it. He does not take fearful leaps

from image to image, like Lenau, that we wonder how he jumped over the intervening chasm; but we see his course clearly; we see his subject increase, sparkling on like a firework, and gaining in compass what it gains in splendour.

One grand thought seems to float before the mind of Rückert, and that thought is the universe. This is no indistinct shadowy abstraction, before which he stands, as in some awful obscure presence; but it is a living glorious organization, the principle of which is love. He can start from a rose, or a nightingale, or a diamond, or a pearl; he adds and adds, and the universe, the bright and glittering whole, is before him; turn where he will, he finds love as the creative power, and perceives its influence, whether his object be small or great. Nature for him is a vast book, inscribed with lively characters, which, arrange them as he will, still present him with a meaning; no dim oracle, uttering vast and awful secrets. He does not aim at the creation of a colossus, but he loves to take the single particle, and, by pursuing it through its various aspects and relations, to discover its connection with the whole. Hence, though his idea is vast, his method is minute and elaborate; hence, however long he may write, he will arrive at no limits; for, while there is no end to his command over forms and metres, there is no end to the relation of a subject to the rest of the universe; and, take what startling point he will, progress is certain.

Held fast in God's own hand, the heaven is
A mighty letter with a dark-blue ground,
Which has retained its hue unto this hour,
And will retain it till the world shall end.
And in this mighty letter are inscribed

Mysterious words spoken by God's own mouth;
But on it stands the sun, a bright round seal,
So that the letter may not be displayed.
But when night from the letter takes the seal,
The eye can in a thousand characters
Read nothing but one hieroglyph sublime,
"That God is love, and that love cannot lie!"

Nought but this word, whose purport is so deep,

No understanding may interpret it.—(Vol. II. p. 66.)

In this sonnet, Rückert's starting point is the obvious and trifling fact, that, when the sun shines, the stars are invisible. But how does he proceed? The heavens become a vast book, in which the stars are characters, the sun is the seal that prevents their being read; that is removed at night, the book is opened, and the characters declare that "God is love!" This is the truth that Rückert finds everywhere, traced in the stars, or on the rose-leaf, inscribed on the domestic hearth, or extending over the world, whispered by a breeze, or descending from past times, veiled in some antique myth. Of this high truth he is the prophet, and, though the songs of none are more various,

though he speaks in the forms of the South, or luxuriates through the eastern ghazels, this truth peers through every variety; and though, in many respects, his feelings and literary tendencies seem to have changed from time to time, the impress of this truth remains as the "Dauer in Wechsel," the stationary principle amid a whirl of endless variety.

In no poem, perhaps, does he so apparently embody the thought that the universe is one temple of praise to the Deity, as in the following magnificent effusion :

Spirit of love, soul of the world, paternal ear divine,

That overhearest none of all the hosts that sing thy praise, While a string of thankful prayer, a thread of praiseful song, Stretches from the scent of morning to the evening's glow. While a thread of praiseful song, a string of thankful prayer, Stretches from the scent of evening to the morning's glow. On this thread, in order ranged, are hanging to thy praise

Stars of all the heavens, and the flow'rs of all the groves. On this thread the sea has strung its pearls of thankfulness,

And the earth's depths have strung the diamonds of their burning love. To the web of praise, creation works each day anew

From a thousand threads, oh grant that I may add mine own!

In the psalm-stream of creation, in the vast hymn-waves

Of the sea of worlds, oh grant that mine may float along!
And then Nature, with thy breathing, sanctify my soul,
That it may repeat in purity thine own pure chimes!
Grant that ev'ry human heart, whether it joy or mourn,
May in the vast concord of thy many voices join!

Thou, world's ear, to whom have sung so many bards combined
Through successive ages, from the origin of time;

Every difference of their chords has faded before thee,

And their hundred thousand voices thou hast heard as one.

In thy evening-breeze, oh let thy roses hover o'er

All the slumb'ring bones of those who once have sung thy praise! Let the poet's free mouth aid in praising thee while here,

Till more freely it may join with angel-tongues above!*

From this, considering the individual in its mere relative position to the whole, arise his ethical views. To combat selfishness, to teach all to be satisfied with the part assigned them in working the vast machine, to point out the absurdity of pride, by exhorting every individual to regard his neighbour as a fellowinstrument of divine love, are the purpose of all the poems of Rückert that convey a moral. He exclaims:

Come, do honour to thy master, come, thou workman, build aright,
He has taken right the measure; take thy trowel, build aright!
Care not for thy fellow-workmen, nor the way in which they build,
That should be the master's business, thy department build aright.
(Vol. I. p. 3.)

"

The above in the original is a Ghazel." In the translations the rhymes have been omitted for the sake of closeness, but the metres preserved.

He consoles the dying flower (die sterbende Blume, Vol. I. p. 18,) by telling it that, though it perishes as an individual, it shall remain perpetual as a species; and the flower dies, saying to the sun :

Eternal flame-heart of the world,

Oh let me fade away in thee;
Thy blue pavilion, heav'n extend,
For mine is fast decaying here.

Hail to thy light, thou lovely spring,
Hail to thy freshness, morning breeze;
Without complaint I sink in sleep,
Without a hope to rise again.

In his noble poem, "Diamond and Pearl," (Edelstein und Perle, Vol. I., p. 145,) he ends by making the Spirit of Love rebuke the two proud jewels, for their contempt of the rest of the world. The Diamond owed its origin to the glance of an angel's eye, the Pearl was formed from a tear dropped by an angel in the sea. When each has recorded its own history, both having met in decorating the same lady, the Spirit of Love appears and addresses them :

I was the angel, who of old bowed down

From heav'n to earth, and shed that tear, O pearl,
From which thou wert first fashioned in thy shell.
I was the wandering angel too, oh diamond,
Who darted rays into the chasm, of which
One became petrified and turned to thee.
To thee I gave that longing, in thy shell,
Which guided thee and caused thee to escape,
Oh pearl, from the bewitching Siren's song.
While in the earth, I gave thee that desire,
Thou diamond, that becam'st no goblin's prey,
That thou shouldst scorn to deck a meaner form.
And when you came into the busy world,

I chose the place, where, bringing you together,
I might surprise you with each other's aspect.
Ye, who have sprung from two realms of the world,
Ye, who have met through me in union
And wond'ring, join in singing to my praise:
Ye, who are here suspended from my braid,
"Tis I alone who hold that mighty chain
On which, for jewels, countless stars are hung.
And I am he, too, who unfolds the thread

On which for pearls are hanging worlds, all which
Are gathered from the spacious shell of Nature.

If I delight in stars and globes immense,

The larger geins of my eternal robe,
Minding that none may from the border fall,

I also joy in you, my smaller gems,
And gladly give you from my treasury,
That you may deck the dearest of my children.

As to my glory you are shining here,
So do I suffer pearls and diamonds too
To glitter to my praise ou ev'ry flow'r :
As I despise you not by worlds and stars,
Do not contemn the jewels of the field
Which I have gifted with like purity.

We think we have taken Rückert from his correct point of view, and brought forward extracts enough to support our position. His contemplative and dialectic poems are but different forms of one idea; in the former he recognizes the individual as a member of the universe, in the latter he enjoins him to act as such.

It was natural that one, who could take a view so extended, who could assign its due value to every individual thing, should regard the beautiful in all ages and every country. Hence we can see how Rückert is impelled on to the poetry of every nation; hence we enter into the facility (for what is not easy to a strong will?) with which he can clothe his thoughts in every metre, and use every tradition for a purpose. As a translator from oriental languages, he is every where honourably known; but his greatest work is his translation of himself. There is no end to the forms he can assume, and yet we see the original Rückert through all. He boasts that he was the first to introduce the Ghazel metre into Germany. A small subject for boasting! The recurring rhymes of the Ghazel will be fearful rocks for witlings and rhymesters to split on, and their works will be mere nothings clothed in metrical intricacies. It is only a fruitful genius, like Rückert's, that can turn the Ghazel to account, one that can create afresh at every couplet, and can use the recurring rhymes as stepping stones for the imagination.

In his latter volumes, the subjects of his poems are less extended; he sinks into the bosom of his family, and the most trifling matter that occurs by his hearth becomes a theme for his songs. This change in his tendency he has illustrated by a pleasant little poem, on the lines of Homer:

Καὶ τρίποδας κατὰ οἶκον επηετανούς τε λέβητας
Και τὰ μὲν οὖν ἡείδε, τὰ δὲ φρεσὶν ἄλλα μενοίνα.

In the rooms so full of bustle,
Mid the busy children's noise,
Now methinks I look like Hermes,
In his mother's quiet house.

Hermes felt but dull and lonely,
While he passed his childhood there!

But a gift was slumb'ring in him,

And an instrument he found.