Farewell, Erin!-farewell all The brows with vict'ry glowing. We close our extracts from the Irish melodies with lines that we consider a happy and not vain-glorious description of the poet's efforts to marry the We tread the land that bore us, Are by our side, And the foe we hate before us! melodies of his country to verse, which, if not immortal, is very pleasing and very popular. "Dear Harp of my Country! in darkness I found thee, "Dear Harp of my Country! farewell to thy numbers, The national melodies, and some of the other miscellaneous works of our author, will supply us with specimens of his poetry more favourable, we think, because more natural and simple, than any we have yet extracted. No one can be insensible to the touching effect of those well-known verses, that tell us of the long-vanished pictures of youth and joy, that the silent darkness of night has power in the solitude of advancing years to restore to the mind's eye, with more vividness than the blaze of noon can now offer to the bodily sight:-- "Oft in the stilly night, Ere Slumber's chain has bound me, The words of love then spoken, The cheerful hearts now broken! Ere Slumber's chain has bound me, Sad Mem'ry brings the light "When I remember all The friends so link'd together, I've seen around me fall, Like leaves in wintry weather; I feel like one who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, Thus in the stilly night, Of other days around me." We cannot let these lines pass without protesting against an inaccuracy which makes us stumble at the very threshold. "Stilly" is not an adjective but an adverb; and even the authority of the author of Douglas will not justify this anomalous use of it. But, indeed, the expression a "stilly sound," which means not a perfectly still sound, or no sound at all, but a still-like sound, is not a precedent for "the stilly night," where the silence is as profound as this world will permit of. Passing over this blemish, we give our ready tribute of praise to the greater part of this admired and affecting song. We are not sure, however, that the image of the "banquet-hall deserted," is a pleasing or proper one. It is too much as if life were merely a revel, instead of being, as it is, the scene of silent and serene, as well as of rapturous and riotous, enjoyments. The picture of a deserted banquet-hall is no doubt a vivid object, but it comes home too much to our fancies, with its burnt-out candles, spilt liquor, and broken glasses, as one of the meanest as well as most miserable of sights. We could have wished some comparison had been chosen of a less depreciatory character, and which would have better represented the loneliness of him who worthily laments the loss of loves and friendships, which had higher and holier attractions than the feast or the wine-cup. Our next extract, though not possessing any original ideas, is tender and melodious. But it ought to have stopped at the end of the fourth verse. In the fifth, the poet splits upon his old rock of fanciful and frigid simile. "Then fare thee well! my own dear love, No greater grief, no pain above The pain of parting thus, dear love! the pain of parting thus! "Had we but known, since first we met, Some few short hours of bliss, We might, in numb'ring them, forget The deep, deep pain of this, dear love! the deep, deep pain of this "But no, alas! we've never seen One glimpse of pleasure's ray, But still there came some cloud between, And chased it all away, dear love! and chased it all away "Yet, e'en could these sad moments last, Far dearer to my heart Were hours of grief, together past, Than years of mirth apart, dear love! than years of mirth apart "Farewell! our hope was born in fears, And nursed 'mid vain regrets! Like them in tears it sets, dear love! like them in tears it sets!" The subject of our next quotation is worthy of all acceptation, and is prettily, though not powerfully, treated. "Oh, no! not e'en when first we loved, Wert thou as dear as now thou art; Thy beauty then my senses moved, But now thy virtues bind my heart. What was but Passion's sigh before, Has since been turn'd to Reason's vow; And though I then might love thee more, Trust me, I love thee better now! "Although my heart, in earlier youth, Might kindle with more wild desire; Believe me, it has gain'd in truth Much more than it has lost in fire. The flame new warms my inmost core That then but sparkled on my brow; And though I seem'd to love thee more, Yet, oh, I love thee better now!" We happen to remember a passage in Southerne's Fatal Marriage, which probably no one else remembers, but which, in its strange prosaic style, embodies the idea that Moore has here worked out. The turn of one of the lines would almost persuade us that the modern poet had the passage of his predecessor in his eye when he wrote his song. "When yet a virgin, free and undisposed, I have since lived in contemplation goodness. What then was passion is my reason now." But how inferior are both of these descriptions to that other picture of a similar change of feeling towards a beloved object, when time and familiar converse have transformed her from a shadowy vision of imagined perfection "She was a phantom of delight A lovely apparition, sent Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; "And now I see with eye serene "I saw her on a nearer view, smiles. We have always been much affected by the beauty and simplicity of the following lines of Moore, which are to be found in the National Melo dies, adapted to a very plaintive Welsh air. The measure is peculiar, and may render some attention necessary when unconnected with music. "Bright be thy dreams-may all thy weeping "There may the child, whose love lay deepest, This, among other examples, we think, will illustrate our position, that Moore's talents are best shown where the natural goodness and sensibility of his heart can be seen through the simplest and least ornamental language. Indeed, we might ask whether it is not generally the best and always the safest plan to select as the expression of our ideas, a style that shall be as colourless and transparent as the air that is the medium of sight, and seek only to enliven the picture by the real hues and forms of the objects that are represented. There is neatness and sprightliness in the following specimen of a differ ent character: "How oft, when watching stars grow pale, And round me sleeps the moonlight scene, To hear a flute through yonder vale I from my casement lean. Oh! come, my love!' each note it utters seems to say- Can words, though warm they be, "Then quick my own light lute I seek, And strike the chords with loudest swell; And though they nought to others speak, He knows their language well. ' I come, my love!' each sound they utter seems to say- Oh! weak the power of words, The hues of painting dim, Compared to what those simple chords Then say and paint to him." We conclude these miscellaneous extracts with a song, which, allied as it has been to the poet's own music, has seldom been sung by any one, and never by its author, without producing delightful emotions. It is well conceived, and very pleasingly written. THE MEETING OF THE SHIPS. "When o'er the silent seas alone, "Sparkling at once is every eye, 'Ship ahoy! ship ahoy!' our joyful cry; While answering back, the sounds we hear, Ship ahoy! what cheer, what cheer?' "Then sails are back'd-we nearer come- The sacred songs of Moore are not of a very high class. They are too much tinged with his characteristic peculiarities of illustration, which, unsuitable in all earnest or impassioned poetry, are still less admissible when Heaven inspires the song, and when the solemnity of the subject should repress all feelings that are not humble or sublime. We shall give one example of his style in this department, not so much because it is more striking, as because, in point of taste, it is less exceptionable than most of the others. "The turf shall be my fragrant shrine; " My choir shall be the moonlight waves, When murmuring homeward to their caves, Or when the stillness of the sea, "I'll seek by day some glade unknown, All light and silence, like thy throne; And the pale stars shall be, at night, The only eyes that watch my rite. Where I shall read, in words of flame, "I'll read thy anger in the rack Of sunny brightness breaking through! "There's nothing bright, above, below, "There's nothing dark, below, above, This is well: but it reminds us of something better in the "Labourer's Noon-Day Hymn;" telling us, in something of a similar strain, that even where the stately temples of human workmanship are inaccessible, the God of Nature has not therefore dispensed with our devotions, but has provided a place for his worship wherever the thankful knee can be bent, or the prayerful hand uplifted. In bringing this criticism to a close, we think we may say that we have brought together a great and remarkable variety of lyrical specimens, sufficient to demonstrate, that, if Moore is deficient in the higher powers of poetical conception and delineation, he is at least possessed, in no ordinary degree, of that species of talent which borders on genius, and which, under the regu.. lation of a purer taste, or with the check of a less "indulgent public," might have produced a great deal that was well worthy of a fond remembrance. Even as it is, we conceive that he has contributed liberally to confer its due honour on lyrical poetry; and that much pleasure, and not a little instruction, both by way of beacon and of ex "Thy heaven, on which 'tis bliss to look, ample, may be derived from the study Shall be my pure and shining book, of his compositions. THE BELLMANSHIP. A TRUE STORY. CHAPTER I. "THE course of true love never did run smooth." Didn't it? Let any man look round him for a single moment, and he will see how unfounded and absurd is this observation of Mr William Shakspeare. Pray, what was there to hinder the equable flow of the true love of your neighbour, Mr Bibbs, and his fat wife? Was there any objection on the part of parents? -any trouble from rivals? - or even any delay about pin-money and settlements? Not a vestige of any of these things. In the course of the accustomed number of months they were fairly and legally married, without a single ripple on the stream of their courtship, and have been a pattern-couple, without quarrels, disagreements, or misunderstandings of any kind whatever, for twenty or thirty years. But you say, perhaps, their love is not true love. Isn't it? I grant he wrote no sonnets; she never thought of suicide; he never mentioned a dagger to her in his life; and I have no reason to believe that she, even at her first ball, considered Mr Bibbs an angel. But their love was true enough for all that a good, solid, substantial love, fitted for all weathers, ballasted with a good deal of plain sense, and not without a glance of affectionate regard to the comforts of a well-spread table, easy-hung fourwheeled carriage, and pretty little income of eight or nine hundred a-year. This is my definition of true love. If you prefer Shakspeare's account of it, and consider no love worth having that is not accompanied with woes and accidents, quarrels among friends, and other accessories, I beg to say you have not made such use of your powers of observation as you ought to have done, or you would have found out long ago that such loves as those are never lasting. And this, I take it, is the reason that authors of novels generally close their stories with a description of the wedding. If they continued their labours, how different would be the scene! Waverley and Rose Bradwardine flying to Boulogne for debt; Henry Morton and Edith Bellenden separated from incompatibility of temper; not to mention the celebrated divorce case before the House of Lords, "Reginald Dalton v. Cyril Thornton!" Will no person of an enquiring turn of mind give us a postnuptial account of all the heroes and heroines who have excited our interest so intensely? It would put a good deal of romance to flight, and teach us the great and useful lesson, that people may be just as happily married in the good old-fashioned way-bridemaids, marriage favours, and wedding cake-as if they nearly broke their necks jumping out of up-stairs windows, and hurrying off to Gretna Green. But, mercy upon us! we have got into such a prodigious passion with love matches, and sighing, and dying, that we have forgotten the main object with which we began this paper, which was to give notice to the reader that, if in this eventful history he finds difficulties thrown in the way of the hero and the heroine, he is not to imagine that those difficulties prove that their love was one whit more sincere than if all had gone "gaily as a marriage bell," from the first agony of popping the question to the last extremity of putting on the ring. No-it certainly did so happen that in this one particular instance the course of true love was occasionally somewhat rough; but it by no means follows that the roughness was the cause of the love being true, or that the truth of the love was the cause of the course of it being rough. So much for Shakspeare-and now for John Plantagenet Simpkinson. The labours of the Statistical Society, I suppose, have left very few people in ignorance that ours is a borough town, though the inhabitants have not the inestimable privilege of hating each other on principles of the purest patriotism once every three or four years, when some soaring squire or plethoric manufacturer is ambitious of a seat in Parliament; by which periphrasis I would have it understood, that we return no member, albeit we |