mean, ostentatious, or trafficking spirit which prompts

them.

Authority is the basis of household happiness. But, if the very mention of authority, even in connection with the training of children, give an air of mustiness to our page, how shall we face the reader of to-day, when we avow that we judge no family to be truly and rationally happy, unless the head of it possess absolute authority, in such sense that his known wish is law-his expressed will imperative. Is this an anti-democratic sentiment? By no means. The ideal family supposes a head who is himself under law, and that of the most stringent and inevitable kind. It supposes him to hold and exercise authority under a deep sense of duty, as being something with which God clothed him when he made him husband and father, and which he is, therefore, on no occasion or account, at liberty to put off or set aside as a thing indifferent. This power is necessary to the full development and exercise of that beautiful virtue of obedience, without which the human will must struggle on hopelessly for ever, being forbidden by its very constitution to know happiness on any other terms. It is an ill sign of the times, that the old-fashioned promise of obedience in the marriage ceremony is now only a theme for small wit. Those wise fathers who placed it there knew the human heart better than we suppose. They knew that, as surely as man and wife are one, so surely do they thus united become a Cerberus-like monster, if they retain more than one head. The old song says,

'Thy husband is thy life, thy lord, thy keeper,
Thy HEAD, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance: commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
While thou liest warm at home, secure and safe:
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
Than love, fair looks, and true obedience-
Too little payment for so great a debt!'

If now we should in turn read a homily to this supreme head (which is bound to have ears), we might perhaps forfeit all the gratitude we suppose ourselves to have earned from him. We should show him such a list of the duties which true headship imposes, that he would be glad to be diminished, and perhaps change places with the least important of his subjects. The possession of unquestionable authority almost makes him responsible for the happiness of the household. No sunshine is so cheering as the countenance of a father who is feared as well as loved. A brow clouded with care, a mind too much absorbed by schemes of gain or ambition to be able to unbend itself in the domestic circle, a temper which vacillates between impatience under annoyance, and the decision which puts an end to it, a disposition to indulgence which has no better foundation than mere indolence, and which is, therefore, sure to be unequal-these are all forbidden to him whose right it is to rule. In short, unless he rule himself, he is obviously unfit to rule anybody else; so that, to assume this high position under law and gospel, is to enter into bonds to be good; which appears to us a fair offset against the duty of obedience on the other side.

One reason, certainly, why there is less household feeling than formerly is, that young married people at present think it necessary to begin life where their fathers left off-with a complete establishment, and not a loophole left for those little plans of future addition to domestic comforts or luxuries which give such a pleasant stimu

lus to economy, and confer so tender a value on the things purchased by means of an especial self-denial in another quarter. Charles Lamb, who was an adept in these gentle philosophies, said that, after he had the ability to buy a choice book when he chose, the indulgence had, somehow, lost its sweetness, and brought nothing of the relish that used to attend a purchase after he and Mary had been looking and longing, and at last only dared buy upon the strength of days' or weeks' economising. This is a secret worth learning by those who would get the full flavour of life, and make home the centre of a thousand delightful interests and memories.

But all this is supposing that to please ourselves, and not the world, is the object. The world begs leave to order matters more rationally for us. Scorning nature's plan of pushing the fledgeling from the parental nest before his wings are full grown, in order that he may strengthen and enjoy them the better through the necessity of effort, it demands at least the appearance of independent maturity, and scouts any idea of growth in the great matter of feathers. And, what is worse, this regulation plumage often leaves the wearers chilled and uncomfortable, though perhaps unconscious why. We might learn better notions as to our début from the sportsman, for he knows that the pleasure is in the chase, not the dinner.

In thus attempting faintly to shadow forth the difference between house and home, we have unavoidably broached some unpopular subjects, and must expect to be reckoned behind the age. But we pray our readers to remember that, in preferring the household warmth and sacredness of simple times to the less carefully impropriated splendours | of this, we are but following-so far as the question is an chooses for his canvass rather the sun-stained Italian æsthetic one, at least-the example of the artist, who damsel, with her trim, yet fantastic bodice, square headdress of coarse linen, and quaint distaff and spindle, than the most faultlessly furbelowed modern belle, though her complexion be like blanc-mange, and her form like an hour-glass. These are matters of taste, and, perhaps, if we cannot quite agree, we may agree to differ.

IMPRESSIONS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF HANWELL ASYLUM.

VIII.-CONTINUATION OF LUNATIC LITERATURE.

THE subject of the present notice has been an inmate of Hanwell Asylum for nearly twenty years. By birth, by education, and by versatility of talent, he was fitted to occupy a most distinguished station in the service of his country, and to adorn the highest circles of society; and nothing but a combination of the most terrible calamities can account for his present uncongenial companionments. Poverty,' it is said, 'makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows'-a proverb equally applicable to the queer associations enforced by insanity.

Our first introduction to our unfortunate brother, whom we shall call Azael-a fictitious cognomen assumed on one occasion by himself in the course of our correspondence-took place on the evening of the ball. His figure, as it then appeared, is now vividly before our imagination. At the upper end of the convalescent day-room, with his back turned to the fire, and a straw hat slouched with a slovenly air upon his head, he stood apart-solitary, silent, sullen, moody, and morose, suggesting to our minds the picture of misanthropy, looking down with disdain and scorn on the ephemeral enjoyments and social amenities of his fellow-sufferers. After several ineffectual attempts to attract his attention during the evening, we resolved, when just on the point of leaving, to make one more effort to thaw the barriers of this icy isolation. We accordingly approached, drew up beside him, and endeavoured to allure him into conversation, that we might have an opportunity of witnessing some indication of those noble powers which he was said to possess, and of the existence of which ample evidence is furnished below. But he deigned us no intelligible reply; he looked cross and irritated; and so, chewing the

cud of disappointment, we turned away in pity, not in anger. Let not the reader, however, regard this as the true portraiture of our unhappy friend. On that occasion, let it be whispered in loving sorrow, he was beside himself -he was then the overborne victim of the tyrannous malady that has for so long a season robbed him of liberty and blighted his manhood's prime. Bitter were the regrets which he afterwards expressed, when delicately reminded of the austerity of his air and the surliness of his spirit on the occasion referred to; and, since then, all unfavourable impressions have been effaced from our mind by the urbanity, cheerful kindness, and unclouded intelligence, subsequently displayed by him in a few hasty but happy interviews. As an instance of the suddenness and fearfulness of his relapses, we may mention, that after one of these visits, during which we had looked down with wonder and admiration into the clear depths of his understanding, we wrote to him for some information respecting a former inmate of the asylum. In a post or two, a reply arrived; but what a reply! It is now before us, and comprises no fewer than eight epistolary fragments, with only here and there a coherent or intelligible sentence. Most of it consists of a succession of hieroglyphs as undecipherable as the inscriptions of some of the Egyptian monuments. In some, there shines a momentary gleam of intellect, and then, in an instant, the orb visibly sets in darkness and the shadow of death, to be succeeded by the wildest ravings against the providence of God and the injustice and tyranny of man. But we draw the veil over these mournful aberrations of a naturally powerful and original mind, and call attention rather to the subjoined examples of what, but for its obscuration, it might have achieved. Befure affording the reader this gratification, however, we will relate, unartistically, such facts as we have been able to glean respecting his painful history.

Azael, if we are not mistaken, was born in India. By birth and education, to quote his own words, he was a gentleman. He is of Irish parentage, his father and mother both having, while in their native land, moved in a sphere of humble gentility. At an early period of life, he had the heavy misfortune to be deprived of the guardianship and counsels of the former by death. After the lapse of a few years, his mother was married a second time, to Colonel V- commandant of one of the cantonments in India. By this alliance our friend, during the most impressionable and critical period of his life, was exposed to all the demoralising and corrupting influences of military contacts, and association with the most profligate portion of Anglo-Indian society. From the blight which his moral nature then received, he has never recovered. We gather from incidental allusions in his own papers and epistles, that even in his tenderest youth he had been initiated into all the accursed mysteries of a sensual, voluptuous, and prodigal career. Bitterly does he bewail his perverted education. He confesses, with pungent grief, that he was 'early indoctrinated into evil,' and that, from such time to the present, he has found the assisting energy of superior minds to be, like angel visits, few and far between." He states, that the idolatry and abominations of the East have rendered the world hateful' to him; he makes these avowals in the hope that they may prove serviceable to cheer the good and deter the bad;' and then breaks out into this emphatic soul-cry: I lament, as with the mourning over Josiah, the loss, in the prime of my life, of the great and wonderful providence of God, together with the treasures of knowledge, instruction, and amusement exhibited daily in the presence of this highly-favoured nation.' At the age of sixteen, Azael quitted India, with principles, habits, and desires altogether inimical to his success in life. During this temporary absence, his mother, whose private means were inadequate to make a suitable provision for him, was induced, with a view of rescuing him from the consequences of the prodigal career he was pursuing, to apply to the Marquis of Hastings, then governor-general of India, for a commission in the army. Being in some way known by him and the marchioness, the succeeded in her suit; and her son prepared to return,

as nominal ensign in the 67th regiment of foot. Before the appointment was actually entered upon, however, the marquis was recalled, and his administration impeached, so that all his last appointments fell to the ground, his successor having refused to confirm them. This disappointment so affected a system already enervated by excesses and the relaxations of an oriental climate, as to bring on a violent attack of brain fever, which, on its subsidence, left him to all appearance idiotic, up to the time of his visiting England a second time, about twenty years ago. The change at first seemed to operate beneficially upon his decaying intellect; but alarming symptoms of insanity reappearing, particularly when under the influence of intoxicants, he was, to use his own language, injudiciously or providentially (if it please God) amanded to Hanwell Asylum; since which period,' he continues, 'year by year, beautiful galleries of amusement, and national gardens of instruction and delight, have been opened; while my mind, in its circumscribed condition, has endeavoured, but in vain, to reconcile events and occurrences of social and political life antagonistic to each other.' The first contribution of our talented friend embraces a disquisition on the causes and nature of insanity, his opinion concerning lunatic asylums, and a protest against his own confinement. Something curious and original will be naturally looked for from such a source, and our readers will not be disappointed. We prefix to it his own characteristic introduction :

'HOSTIS BASIa et furor hOSPITIS:

Or, the protest of one by birth and education a gentleman, through misfortune and sequestration a prodigal, and, in consequence, a lunatic; and who, if he have only few whom he can esteem or respect, loves many with an immeasurable love, although undeserving of the love of those around him.'

'Reasoning rightly on wrong premises'-words to be found in an excerption from the Essay on the Human Understanding'-should imply, in like manner, a reasoning wrongly upon justifiable grounds. The startling announcement that Mr Locke is sometimes one-sided in his views, ought not to be very sternly received to the disparagement of the writer, considering his circumstances. The doctrine of non-innate ideas may refer to a peculiar conformation of some minds, or the duality of others in their configuration, rather than to the understandings of all; and his definition of diseased intellect, in the words above quoted, recognises merely the line of demarcation between insanity and crime; as an inverse construction of the essayist's words would determine simply the difference between the moral infirmities of the world at large, and the peculiar ailments of persons confined in asylums. Some such ethical demonstration of what insanity is-a humble and straightforward exposition, that where virtue is, there need not be derangement of the mind, as there cannot be corpore sano where there are vicious propensities-is what is intended to be conveyed to the reader in this skeleton of an essay; and, accordingly, as his sympathies may or may not be enlisted, will the reader come to desire, or abnegate the wish for, a yearly release of all persons in the British empire who are, or are reported to be, insane, as the best antidote to a mania prevalent from the times of the deluge.

Of mental disease, God is the physician: nature is the remedial source; and freedom, change of climate, and cheerful intercourse, are the best means for its restoration. The Nebuchadnezzar tree, with its numerous ramifications, filaments, and figments, reared by the dreamy tyranny of the French and Germanic schools, is only intelligible in the proper and sane state awarded to its prototype by the heavenly watchers. Metaphysics is a science of which it may be said, that though it be cut down, nevertheless it will bud and bring forth boughs like a plant.' So that, unless the former were simplified, the benevolent anticipations of Mr Beck, the American writer on medical jurisprudence, of a millenium when insanity will practically be brought to the level of ordinary diseases, and when the opinion that a melancholy inclination forms any part whatever of an unsound mind will be exploded, must be made

of none effect,' because of ostentatious abstractions, abnormal phenomena, and mental monstrosities. Such moral delinquencies and merciless determinations, as imprison, epilepsy, and melancholia, go to prove, if anything, simply this, that the consentaneous selfishness and cabals of men shall triumph over truth, rather than prejudices be crushed under its divine influence; that crime shall be cultivated, tolerated, and patronised by society, rather than the ignominy of such an attainder as non compos mentis be swept away from her beautiful brow; that there shall be a deprivation of moral responsibility, and there shall be that freedom of men among their fellow-men ordained by Providence; and all this in direct antagonism to the indefatigable exertions of magistrates, the sighings of an intelligent faculty, the approval of a qualified attendance, and the tears that eat into the soul' of the victims to such oppression. Wounded spirits, well calculated to adorn society, and wounded, perhaps, by an all-wise Providence, for that purpose, are thus to be rendered remediless, and cast into the excruciating and horrible condition of a com

pulsatory atheism and hatred of their species-misanthropy!

The simple schoolboy system of moral philosophy-taught by no books one can quote, but rising somehow in the adolescent mind-that the indigenous qualities, judgment and imagination, called into efficiency by reflection and perception, and liable to the accidents dementia and mania, form man's inbeing; that the memory is a constituent of a duality of mind, and the generative interim, the link of nomy-simple and almost savage as it seems to be, tends far more to elucidate our subject than countless theories and interminable divarications. The truth is, insanity is the abecedary of the mind in its intellectual progress; and a comparison of the wisdom of the ancients with what the moderns set forth, urges to the conclusion, that great minds were but catechumenical till such appalling Rubicon of metaphysics was passed.

connection between mind and matter in the human eco

What is insanity, but a loss of the senses through some very heavy affliction, or some wickedness over much, inducive of a premature age? Will any reasonable man deny that the book of Job sets forth dementia; the Ecclesiastes, and many portions of St Paul, mania? Cæsar, some histories aver, was subject to epilepsy; and Shakspere, if we may judge from his sonnets, appealed from his own to a future age; and there was a report that Lord Byron, on one of his pilgrimages to his native land, very nearly escaped incarceration in a madhouse. The world is equally opposed to the manifestation of its own good and the unselfish glory of Christianity.

Religious insanity is a misnomer and solecism. Where fanaticism is, it is avowed and in high place, though in every instance an impious combination of evil under the name of good; and it is strange, but in the literal translation of the words in the Bible, the very first who made an image was the ever good God. Religious insanity to be, must imply irreligion.

Literary insanity, like that of love, is one to which the adage, 'There is a pleasure in madness which none but madmen know,' applies. The happy victims exist in a world of their own. The object, or idea of the object, of their hopes is impersonified with them. Hence, to be brief, the subjoined passionate versifications of one such:

This hand that writes is thine, I swear,
The heart that dictates thine in me,

Nor can I from myself forbear

Endeavouring to escape from thee!

Where from thy presence can I flee,
Or whither from my spirit go?

Love, like an overwhelming sea,

Above, around me, and below.

And canst thou fear some strange mishap,
To take thyself to thine own lap!

Devotion is that light from heaven,
Which knoweth not of guilt or shame,

To mortals, as to angels, given;
And love is its celestial name.
Devotion doth its birthday claim
From the Creator of all things,
Who form'd us, dearest, in his frame,
Or image, whence it ever springs
That I am all myself in thee,

And thou art all thyself in me.

To close these digressions, with a word in reproof to the Agapemone, and other combinations of unsocial socialism. The victims of the above hallucination are, on the reaction of their feelings, more miserable than the beasts of the field, and as wretched as those who, having been victimised by duplicity, have to undergo a treatment of unmitigated deceit, perverting the mind even to the commission of crime, which some use as the most wholesome and amiable means of intercommuning with and managing the insane.

To conclude, the purport of this paper was to show, firstly, the comparative relations of the insane, in and

out of asylums. Take a few illustrations.

Lord C. has hounds and horses, bets at Ascot races, has tenants never saw him in their lives. a box at the Italian opera, &c., and nine-tenths of his

J. G. imagines himself to be the Marquis of Shaftesbury. His rigid self denial, his continual apprehensions that his stewards are oppressing his tenants, his furious indignation if you would tempt him from his estates by proposing to him the pleasures of the metropolis, are nothing, mere nothing in comparison; so greatly does seductive vice go

beyond unadorned truth.

P. J. B. is a poet. He sighs for eminence, but it is for the grist of it; he aspires to be a poet, but it is for the purposes of seduction; he never, before he set pen to paper, inquired into the tendency of his morals as to how they might promote the national virtue; and the consequence is, that his admirers prefer pleasure, profit, and convenience to the performance of their social duties.

H. L. is the author of the preceding verses. He despises fame and fortune, except as mediums to bless the poor around him, and revive the pulse of social health. If one interested motive draws his thoughts away from patriotic love, it is what he assumes to be the reward of his virtuethe return of his love by the one object of his passion. Over all he writes, over his best efforts, he mourns, as calculated to misguide and pervert; and 'the tear he sheds upon his Bible is sincere."

Lastly-As to the aforesaid mania for building asylums. For what purpose are such edifices raised? For a vast outlay, sir, Mr C. Dns would say, so that not only but some scores of shabby shepherds never want mutton some scores of shabby sheep be forced into a pen or fold, for dinner on high days and holidays. If the mode of maintenance in such places is to ascend from the patients to the supreme heads, unless inversely, so extreme is the want of the patients and their nearest allies, that the heads will have to go without their mutton; or else the latter will have to react Heliogabalus, and the former, Nero-fashion, bring his worship, the Supreme Consul, to live upon golden oats and a bean a-day-a prologue, sir -a kind of grace before meat.

A prologue interdash'd with many a stroke,
An art contrived to advertise a joke,
Where the dull jest is clearly to be seen,
Not in the words, but in the gap between.'

After this elaborate and discursive article, we present some varied specimens of poetry, much of which we think the reader will admit to be far above mediocrity, while all of it bears the impress of originality.

TO A MOTHER CUMBERED ABOUT MANY THINGS.

The roses which thy hands had planted,
The lilies it was thine to rear,
Whose fragrance oft thy sense enchanted,
As emblem of a love sincere;

described to A. T., Esq, and all True Patriots, as a humble specimen of the new era of poesy.)

Hence with your meretricious lore,
Such as your colleges display;
Ye rhythmists of the modern day,
Hence with the mysteries ye adore!
Apollo and Athene's sway,

With all such fabled forms of yore,
Are invocations pass'd away.
No fancied muses we implore

To bless our bounteous month of May;
Though vaunted still the proud array
Of hope, the Cytherian wore,
The Graces we invoke no more:

Thy zone of beauty, heaven-sent Queen,
Thy people's faith, thy mind serene!
Nor fay, nor sylphid hither hie, t

T'exalt the taste, yet crush and blight,
Like pestilential stars on high,

Deadly, though brilliant to the sight;
But come from your empyrean height,
Faith, hope, and heavenly charity!
And, habiting her palace bright,
Unfold your treasures to her eye.

⚫That evil predominates over good in the universe, does not form A sound and healthy abstraction of the human mind-yea, though the eye of faith be made to succumb to the appalling consideration, that Antichrist supervenes truth in the world. And what reformation can be expected as long as heathen and papistical mythologies form the indispensable catechumenical education of the clergy of every sect? Hence invocations and incantations among poets of every grade. Let the latter be informed that between the unpoetical fervour of such lines as 'Ye stars, which are the poetry of heaven,' and the downright Brahminical worship of the heavenly host, there is this difference, that in Milton the transition from Castalia's nymph and Siloe's brook, to a 'facilis descensus Averni,' is very easy; but in the book of Job there is no distinction made about such adulteries as an iniquity to be punished by the judges.' And let the former be made acqanted that, when some one asked the poet Collins what book it was he was engaged reading, he replied, I have but one book, but that is the best. It was a New Testament.

The notes to a poem are presumed to be 'Orient pearls at random strung. Hie' is preferred to 'fly' by the writer, who applies such words as sylphs, fairies, &c., to moths, &c., real and substantial, and not ideal creatures. His temerity is therefore pardonable.

The allusion involves the popular preference of foreign music and saics to native endemic genius; and it may here be remarked, that, as a piece of metaphysics, Plato's assumption, that a people who change their music will change also their form of government,' is tenable, and has been in the way of illustration for the past fifty years. One can only be satisfied on such adventurous Latrial tastes as are now in vogue, when Philomel is admitted by the populace to keep in silence the tribes of humming and of mocking birds that, swayed by British gold, infest our groves. Let, then, a gentle Warbler of the North be suffered also to startle the dull night. We shall have loads of ordinary exotics now our Great Exhibition is over, and domestic fowl also in plenty, that can scatter the rear of darkness thin,' without going to Italy, France, and the East for them.

And ye, celestial seven, ally

Her heart and consort's, and requite Her best-beloved! Bless the light Of this propitious day! Be nigh

Her steps auspicious! Let all earth Rejoice for England's sovereign's birth!

ODE TO WINTER.

On seeing snow-drops in the Parterre of Mr and Mrs C of Hanwell Asylum.*

Inscribed to Mr Middleton, late of Hanwell.

When born, in tears we saw thee drown'd,
While thine assembled friends around

With smiles their joy confess'd:

So live, that at the parting hour
They may the floods of sorrow pour,
And then in smiles be dress'd.'

From the Persian,' a birth-day gift.

She saw the flowers; what said she then?
Snow-drops, inform my pen!

When eyes are dim and hearts are cold,
The memory of a life well spent
Will, as ye do, at heart unfold

Spring-tide o'er wintry discontent,

And more than spring-time will beseem so fair
Old age, with lilies braided in his hair.'

He saw the flowers; what said he then?
Roses, imbue my pen!

The bloom and beauty of your life,
And genial fragrance in your death,
Show forth how redolent and rife

The pure of heart, the sweet of breath;
And honour'd age but shows a summer fair,
However scentless snow-drops in his hair.'

She saw the flowers; what said she then?
Violets, inform my pen!

The forests with your fragrance glow,
And sure ye bless the lonely cot,
E'en as in lowly life the show

Of patriots, tenants of the spot;

Yet not e'en autumn, with her braided hair,
Old man with snow-drops, may with you compare.'
He saw the flowers; who saw ?-my pen!
A lonely man; what said he then?

'Take not the Thistle longer for thy glory,
Land of the snow-drop, dearest above all; t
Nor save the fragrance of the Rose for story,
Thou of the unrivall'd dome and princely hall.
And thou, O Erin, keep such modesty
From blushing for thy heart ease slavery.
To each and all, be all your several beauties:
There's more than earthly sweet in Christian duties.'

A poem without notes, especially a short one, is like a dinner without dessert, or a banquet of wine without olives. A long poem with short notes, or a short poem with long notes, looks best in print.

+ Unity, conformity, symmetry, or what the reader chooses, requires that the sweetbriar should be substituted for the rose in the national escutcheon, or the snow-drop and violet be encircled by the thistle and shamrock: but rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.'

There really is a possibility of an Ireland with a faith and worship independent (the writer means esoteric) of all the world, and every existing sect; but a nation who will not take the trouble to think for themselves, are never likely to act for themselves, but are sure to be 'priest-ridden.' As to the political speculation, despite these days of locomotives, of an incipient or independent parliament, Ireland must, first of all, be heaved into the locality of New South Wales. A house divided against itself cannot stand, neither can Satan cast ont Satan. To presume a word on the light that shineth in the darkness, it is well known, even to Irishmen, that what is good for the priesthood is good for the laity also. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. The writer greatly fears that, in the consummation of events, when encroachment is resisted, an honest Protestant will have to say, as an indignant adversary in Sobieski's time is reported to have said, by way of invocation, 'Come on, infidels: the very sight of your hats will make us fly. Hurra for the Cardinal!'

TO A LADY, AT HER REQUEST. Men fabled about Memnon's lute,

How morning's rosy hands could raise Its marble chords, no longer mute,

To grateful prayer or rapturous praise; So on the soul religion dawns,

When penitence inspires the breast,
And rocky hearts, o'er flowery lawns,

Pour forth the streams of mercy bless'd.
Yes, morning shows the earth we tread,
Made vocal to the Power above,
When flowers their early incense shed,
And birds unite in song and love.
But lo! 'tis dark; the joyous throng

Of birds has ceased, flowers closed, regret
Assumes the place of love and song,

And nature's mute-its sun is set. So on the aurora of the mind

Religion yields to gathering doubt,
And clouds oppress and sorrows blind,
With fears within and gloom without;
Thus on Hyrcania's plains arose

The sun of freedom, gladdening all
O'er whom now slavery, with its woes,
Broods like the night in bower and hall.
Looms in its waste of waters, Kern,*

And in the sunlight sleeps Seville;
I, as the rock, am lone and stern,
Thou, as the city, hast thy will—
Th' exalted aim and hope of life,

The scheme elate and social plan,

To still the turbulence of strife,

And make man love his brother man.

Thou see'st society astir

With mirth and meaning, fair and good; But what is mine? A sepulchre,

Where morbid thoughts and things intrude

A buried life, a hopeless state,

Cut off from follower or kin,

Where love sequester'd wars with hate,

And yields to circumstance or sin.

To thee the rainbow makes the kiss
Thou gavest thy beloved, a pair;

I see it, for the sign it is,

But feel it arching o'er despair.
Fondling an infant, thou art given
To hopes of life and innocence;
I pause with dread, and ask if Heaven
And angels watch our progress thence!
Yon sun, that sheds empurpled light

On us, gilds many a prospect drear;
And beams that Afric nations blight
Prosper the silk-looms of Cashmere.
O, God! what might of mind can show
Thy most inscrutable decrees?
Who boasts of happiness below,

But finds it grief, as thou dost please!
Is hapless Sobieski's band

Trod down? There's freedom yet abroad, Though in her own elective hand

The sceptre proved an iron rod.
"Tis when the Bridegroom is away,
His children of the chamber fast,
But when His presence is their stay,
Banquet and song succeed repast;

TO A YOUNG MAN, DEPARTING FROM THE WAYS OF PLEASANTNESS AND PEACE.'

"Tis not where a mother's wringing

Of her hands in agony,
Where her stranded boy is clinging
To the rock with suppliant eye;

Kern, from cairn, Saxon for Clipperton's Rock in the Pacific.

"Tis not where the prow is dashing
O'er the sunlit waves once more,
And the parent's tears are plashing
Far off, where she stands, the shore,

That we know the depth and swell
Of that awful word, farewell!
'Tis where redbreasts, swiftly winging,
The deserted casements fly;
Where the nightingales are singing
To the lonely cottage nigh:
'Tis where pride with love is clashing,
Where the virgin's cruise is o'er,
And the bridal torches flashing,
Shows the bridegroom shut the door.
There we feel the depths of hell
Utter'd in that word-farewell!

SERENADE.

Intended for a song in Sheridan Knowles's William Tell.'
Tell me not that love is young,

That my lute is sweetly strung:
Love is worn, and grey from ruth,

And my strings have lost their youth.
Like some unimprison'd bird,
Bleeding, with a pinion shorn,

Love is doom'd to 'plain unheard:
Beauty's smile is still his thorn.
If his pinion prove his sway,
Love is aged grown, and grey.
Tell me not that love, sweet maid,
Lacking wealth, doth love upbraid,
Or that Mammon has a power
Over love in beauty's bower.
Beauty never is so bright,
But that time can work its wo;
Nor is time so swift of flight,
But that love can fly also:
Scythe against his bow doth prove,
Blind and aged grown is love.
But in vain love wings the air,

If with beauty dwell disdain;

Vainly beauty spreads its snare

Love, though blind, can break its chain;

And the bow is bent in vain

Where wealth perjured warps the stringHeart, O heart! grow cold again:

Love is but an idle thing!

Still to peasants love saith, nay,

Nor to princes saith love, aye.

MAGAZINE FASHION-PLATES. FOLKS do not need to know how they should look without clothes, for this is not the way they are to appear. What the public wants to know is, what a woman ought to look like when she is dressed; and we do approve most heartily of the idea of Jenny Lynd exhibiting a full formed waist. If she has such an one as Graham's portrait represents, God speed her voyage. Her visit will be worth a thousand times more than it can cost. If she can introduce the fashion of a natural waist, it will be worth ten dollars a ticket to see her, if she should never open her lips; but why does Graham give that preposterous fashion plate to counteract and overbalance all the good he can do by a thousand representations of nature? Does he not know that the mere name will cause it to be imitated despite all consequences? We are particularly out of humour with the whole batch of Fashion-plate Magazines. Godey, Graham, Sartain, and Peterson, have instigated more murders than ever Nero committed. They spread as much domestic misery, and do as much for the deterioration of our race, as all the rumsellers in the nation. Their magazines are a curse to humanity. We have never seen this in so forcible a light until very lately. We would like to know how many of our readers have seen a family of blooming