think, nearly drive them out of their seven senses. To prevent further mistakes, we beg to suggest this correction of the couplet "While, further south, lies Glendalough,” (A shocking word, that rhymes with shock!) The following lines are pretty, but are too general and vague for the scene described. Those at the end are too glaringly inaccurate. 66 ACT III.-SCENE II. (Summit of Sugar Loaf). EMILY, CHARLES MORTON. Morton. The mists are rising thick and fast, And shrilly whistling comes the blast; Hark! how 'tis sighing down below, Where hight the purple heathers glow, Where distant feed the mountain sheep, Beneath yon grey and moss-clad steep; The glorious sun, that but awhile Made all around a happy smile, Until the gloomiest dullest spot Seemed clothed in dress it owneth not, No longer knows through mist to trace The way to this our resting-place. Lo! now awhile the dense cloud fled, The landscape glimmers wide outspread, And merry voices from the vale Come borne upon the fresh'ning gale; We sit secure, while showers of rain Pour fresh beneath, o'er hill and plain. How dreary 'tis to hear below The childish laugh, the cattle's low; The dash of waves along the shore, And far the cataract's surging roar, The bleat of mountain yearling flocks, The wild bird's call among the rocks, The cock's hoarse challenge, loud and shrill, The geese that seek the mountain rill." p. 49. One must have very long ears, indeed, to hear all those different sounds from the summit of the Sugar Loaf Mountain. Some of the most pleasing passages are those descriptive of plants, of which the author shows the good taste of being exceedingly fond. The effect is somewhat marred by the rather ostentatious display of botanical knowledge, of which, perhaps, the most flagrant instance is that where Helen, We think it very likely we shall meet with the author of "The Children of Nature" in some more matured and elaborate performance. Will he permit us to suggest, in all kindliness, the omission from his future writings of a false rhyme, which, in the present poem, becomes absolutely ludicrous from its repetition. It is the rhyming of such words as day," "may," say," &c., with words terminating simply with the letter y, preceded by a consonant. Such as 66 " 66 poesy," "novelty," &c., which must be pronounced "poesay,' noveltay," &c., if they are meant to rhyme. An occasional word or two of this kind is of course allowable; but with our author it seems done by design. We have marked more than thirty instances of it, and, as we said, it produces a fatally ludicrous effect. As the benevolent intention of the author of our next poem, "The Ocean Monarch,' must have been long since carried out, we do not fear that we shall greatly diminish "the proceeds of the sale" by two quotations, one of which he intends for "prose," and the other for "verse." We greatly fear the "frail barque" to which he alludes in his preface met with a speedier shipwreck than even the ill-fated vessel of which he writes. Fortunately, the cargo was not very valuable, and no ballast even was thus wantonly "In the deep bosom of the ocean (monarch) buried." The Ocean Monarch; a poetic narrative, with an original account, in prose, of the loss of this ill-fated vessel. The proceeds of the sale will be devoted to the benefit of the surviving sufferers. By James Henry Legg. Liverpool: Deighton and Laughton. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. My boldness had not so far tempted me," continues Mr. Legg, touchingly, "had I not found a guide. My pilot is the hand of charity; my haven the good feeling of the world; the wind that may impel this to success or doom it to destruction, are the kindly welcome or the bitter censure, with the as fatal calm of neglect, and my freight is consigned to those who have been the sufferers by the dreadful visitation which I have made the subject of my narrative. 66 Thus, then, on the broad stream I glide-away to the unknown and unfathomable depths of that ocean I steer. Asking for a welcome, thus I pass, and to the judgment of the growing world commit my offering and my shallop's fate." What a mistake Mr. Legg has made! The above extract he has the modesty to print as mere prose, while to the following all the honours of verse are given. But charity, we know, is proverbially blind :— "Now turn we to the beings who have known And felt this tenderness. Some I have said Remained in the Affonso, others were Received on board the steamer "Prince of Wales," Before unnamed, though in the work of love And of humanity she bore her part Right nobly with her crew: these she bears now With her upon her route-the yacht we called The "Ocean Queen," before whose owner's hand, And all on board her had saved many an one, While the poor sufferers they bear are fed And cloth'd with all spare garments, every thing That kindest hands could tend and warm hearts give On board them both were yielded unto them." p. 68. "Prose run mad" would be a dignified appellation for this. It is the very drivelling idiotcy of scribbling. "Buds and Leaves"* is the name of a little emanation from " the Manchester School " of poets. It is a modest but correct title, as it candidly lays no claim to those productions of the poetical tree which are alone valuablenamely, blossoms and fruit. As with most books of this class, it contains passages which are provokingly quizzible, as this one, for instance, addressed to an "old watch:" Buds and Leaves." By Joseph Anthony, jun. Manchester: Burge and Perrin. 1851. Imagination; an original Poem. By Spero. London: David Bogue. of Nature, since the appearance of "The Pleasures of the Imagination," where truth has literally become stranger than fiction, present almost insuperable difficulties to an adequate treatment of this theme. Poetry, to obtain any successful results at present, must imitate the direction of material science; and as that has abandoned ballooning, and the clouds, for geology and the electric wire, so must the former abandon its "airy nothings," and send the electric current of its inspiration through the hidden recesses of the human heart. Our present author is, at any rate, inadequate to the task; and even in the humble flight that he essays, his wing too often fails him. His sentiments are generous; his versification tolerably correct; but his fatal facility of sinking destroys even what little these two qualities, unassisted by something higher, might achieve. For instance, speaking of liberty, he says: "From heart to heart her sacred spirit flies From eye to eye, till despotism dies. When Brutus rose he levell'd Tarquin's race; The strong-nerv'd Tell removed his land's disgrace; Our Hampden gain'd the cause for which he fell Stern Cromwell rose upon a monarch's knell." p. 41. Our author, we suppose, would insist that this description of Cromwell's rise was not only poetry, but sound sense. The poem is dedicated to Charles Dickens, who, it appears, read it in manuscript. As "University Prize Poems" should find their appropriate immortality in the UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE. we read the title-page, we felt our heart beginning to expand at the gratifying fact of adding another native national bard to the list of illustrious Irishmen. We were also not a little proud that the same alma mater which had given birth to Thomas Browne the younger, had now produced Frank Browne the elder (we should hope). It was only when we read the last page of the volume we discovered our mistake. Mr. Browne, after returning his thanks to the Senior and Junior Fellows," for her kindness and impartiality to the author during his examination, addresses his fellow-townsmen, of whom we innocently believed ourselves one, in the following terms: 66 And to you, my fellow-townsmen, who have so often rallied round the rustic harp of a young minstrel; you who have so often breathed the voice of praise in my ear, what can I say? When the heart is full, the lips, sometimes, refuse to speak; but you will find its feelings expressed in a little song, entitled The hearts that beat behind me.' May prosperity in every way attend the town of Nottingham (1) from its greatest manufacturer to the humblest minstrel that may tune his harp to its praise, is my best and farewell wish." After this crushing of our patriotic hopes, we really cannot be over indulgent to our author. We shall only say of his "Prize Poems," that were they the best that were ever written, the praise would not be very great, and his Prize Poems" are not the best, notwithstanding that he informs us, in his preface, that "their subjects were chosen by great men," so that Bishop Heber's "Palestine may still be regarded as the first of the class. If our poet, ere his departure for India, feels disposed to " get savage " with us for our verdict, we cannot help it. We shall address him, in the concluding lines of his own "Rajah of Sarawak," which will serve for a valediction as well as quotation :— "Farewell, young savage, we can feel Our present garland has now almost approached that size and completeness that we had pre-arranged, in our wisdom, it should reach and attain. We have, however, reserved a small space for the introduction of a few wild Indian plants, whose names and peculiarities we take some pride in being the first to make publicly known at this side of the Atlantic ferry. Let not the reader start aghast at the formidable appearance those names make on paper. We can assure him that, like Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton's play, they are "not so bad as they seem." The volume which contains those choice treasures, "University Prize Poems." By Frank Browne, author of "Lyra Rudis," and other Poems. Dublin: Edward J. Milliken, 15, College-green. It so dear to euphony and orthography, is a large, well-printed book, of 327 pages; its name is "Frontenac.' is written by a gentleman who glories in the name of STREET, and who, on that account alone, cannot object to be "walked into." In sober seriousness, a more curious book than this we never opened; curious for the hallucination of mind under which it must have been written; since, from the gravity of the author's preface, it is plain, that he expected his most extraordinary vocabulary of names would have produced a serious effect upon the reader, instead of the convulsions of laughter they assuredly will bring on any person who attempts their pronunciation. We shall presently give abundant instances of this peculiarity, even at that risk to our readers and ourselves. The subject of the poem is the invasion of the Iroquois territory, by the French Canadians, under Count Frontenac, in the year 1696, with all the horrors and atrocities that produced that invasion and accompanied it. There is very considerable power in parts, but there is far too much scalping, even for Indian warfare, and disgust, consequently, takes the place of terror. The redeeming portions of the book are occasional descriptions of the strange animal and vegetable life, and the sudden revival of nature in the Canadian forests, a few of which are really beautiful; some of these, at least, we shall extract. But his enthusiasm for Indian nomenclature, indulged in the way he has indulged it, would have destroyed the work even of a true poet, if we can imagine any one so constituted giving way to such absurdity. What can we say to a man who calls the vine "sa-ha-we," and a wolf" ta-yo-nee;" a crow, "kah-kah;" and a kettle, "kun-a-tah?" Is it to make us shun the evil spirit the more that we are obliged to speak of him as "Hah-no-gah-ate-gah, a word to make his brother imp, the printer's devil, go mad? Has "Yu-we-lon-doh" the swiftness of the wind; or "Tah-wonne-whus,' the rapid flash of the lightning, both of which objects he informs us they express. Would we recognise our old cunning friend the fox, under the appellation of "ska-nux-heh," or aurora under the disguise of "thuren-se-rah?" And yet, these names, and many more, glare on us from every page, like the fiery glances of his own Indians from the thick jungle of his lines. It is really the most uncomfortaable book that in all our critical explorings we have ever met with, often as we have attempted to penetrate the boundless wilderness of verse, in the hope of meeting with the faint trail of the true poetical moccasin somewhere on its surface. What critic, however courageous, would venture to express an unfavourable opinion of this book, if his fancy pictures to itself, the offended poet brandishing a remorseless goose quill over his head, and singing the following war song," which he fears is addressed to him. self: 66 "Hooh! hooh! how the panther springs, As flies the deer on affrighted wings!" (We have winged bulls and lions from Nineveh. Why not winged deer from Canada?)— "Hooh! hooh! how he rends his prey! So will the On-on-dah-gahs slay! Hooh! whoop! how he rends his prey! So will the On-on-dah-gahs slay! "Hooh! hooh! how the eagle screams, As the blood of the fawn from his talons streams! Hooh! hooh! how the woods ring out! p. 61. Lord save us! we feel a cold shudder run through us, the light leaves our eyes, and it is only by applying our finger to the "ambrosial curls" with which we "nod" (too often, we fear), that we satisfy ourselves that our "dome of thought" does not bear a close but disagreeable resemblance to “the scalp.” We have said, that our author gives occasionally a pleasing description of the sights and sounds that gladden "the emerald woods" of Canada, in early summer. Here is one : Frontenac, a Poem." By Alfred B. Street. London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington-street. "With plumes were tipped the beechen sprays; The birch long dangling tassels showed; Of gorgeous red the maple glowed; Like spots of snow the boughs among; Where day its kindliest glances flung, The 'customed roof and porch to greet; Her limping lure the partridge tried; Was the rich hummingbird descried." But his descriptions are not always so successful, as in the following in stance : "So still the scene, the river's lapse Or the important incident which is gravely chronicled in those lines: "A duck, beside an isle of wood, Within a watery streak was steering, Dipping his green head in the flood, When, quick his bill of yellow rearing, With a loud whiz he flew away."-p. 72. We have not yet introduced our Indian warriors, of whose names we are tempted to make a litany, after the manner Southey availed himself of the Russian generals' patronymics, in his "March to Moscow." The achievement, however, is not worth the trouble, slight and easy though it would be. For we have "Sa-ha-wee" and " "To-yo-nee," And "Non-yon-de-yoh," and "Hah-wen-ne yo," And On-on-dah-gah" and "Co-ha-ta-teyah, And "At-o-tar-lo" and "Icar-jis-ta-yo," "Brave Skan-an-do-ah, at a stride, |