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planted, and watered and hoed; counted, with Chinese patience and accuracy, the number of my flowers; set down their position in a map; ravaged the hedgerows far and near; and at last contrived to get exactly the same plants in the same places. But it would not do. She was too ambitious. She rooted out all weeds but the select, and the select would die. She never could cover her ground. The last time I saw her primrosebank there were only three roots left, and they were withering; that was five months ago: I dare say, by this time, she has not one alive.

What pretty flowers grow by the side of water! The little Veronica, called Forget-me-not, which is so like the turquoise, or the softest piece of the blue sky; and the lady's bedstraw, whose yellow cups and pale green leaves form such graceful natural wreaths, and twist so airily round a straw bonnet. In the water there is the white lily floating, like a swan; cool and pure as alabaster; regular, solid, and yet sharply defined, as a fine carving. The meadows are full of beautiful flowers. Two of the least common are the field tulip and the field star of Bethlehem. The field-tulip is very splendid. It resembles the garden tulip in figure, only smaller, and the head drooping like a snow-drop. O the beauty of that pendent head, with its small indented chequers of rich lilac (a rosy lilac) and deep purple (a crimson purple); dull and sad till the sun shines through, and then lighted up like stained glass in a cathedral window! There is a white variety of great elegance. The two sorts contrast well with each other, and with the deep orange clusters of the marsh marigold, which is often intermixed with them, but which generally edges away to the side of a running stream, as if enamoured of the bright reflection of her golden cups, broken into a thousand forms by the motion of the water. The field star of Bethlehem is the most ghost-like of flowers. It resembles a large hyacinth, the blossom almost green, the stalk almost white, with a strange shadowy mixture of tints, a ghastly uncertainty, a sepulchral paleness, a solid clayey visible coldness. Dr. Clarke found the field star of Bethlehem on a tumulus in the Troas, which is called the grave of Ajax. Never was any locality more appropriate. It is the flower of the grave. Not that this remarkable plant is livid or disgusting, like that, for instance, which children call dead men's fingers; on the contrary, it maintains a sort of ghostly purity and dignity. As far as a flower can be so, the field star of Bethlehem is awful. It is a rebuker of smiles; a living memento mori. It hints of death like a shroud. The happiest contrast to this melancholy plant is the periwinkle, the earliest and latest of flowers. From November to May I have seen the shining leaves and bright blue-bells bristling through the hedge

rows, and have almost envied such cheerful hardiness-such a power of living and putting forth blossoms when all other vegetation lies dead or dormant. The periwinkle blooms without a rival. The song of the robin belongs to her, as that of the nightingale to the rose.

Wood flowers are very interesting and various. The whole tribe of orchis, that singular frolic of nature; lilies of the valley, "whose very name is enough," and which are sometimes found in such rich abundance in cutting roads through an old coppice; the wood anemone, whose lightness and delicacy the common people express so well in calling it the wind-flower; and that lady of the forest, the peerless wood-sorrel. Nothing is so pretty as the wood-sorrel-nothing so elegant-drooping white blossoms veined with purple, and such leaves! Trefoils gracefully folded and dropping over the light stalk; the outside of a lucid green, the inside of a blushing crimson. It chooses such pretty situations too; springing, with a light elegance, from the dark mould, under low holly-bushes, or growing out of soft moss, between the fantastic roots of the beech-tree. Perhaps one part of the charm consists in its being altogether unhackneyed, unpraised in prose or verse. I never remember seeing the wood-sorrel mentioned, except by Mrs. Charlotte Smith, who had so fine a sense of the minute beauties of nature. Lord Byron's description of a lady's eye-lids resembles the blossom :

"Those lids o'er which the violet vein
Wandering, leaves a tender stain,
Shining through the smoothest white."

After all, the commonest flowers are the most delightful. My greatest pleasure in flowering, is to find the first fresh bunch of primroses peeping out of some sheltered corner with their innocent happy look.

M.

POEMS OF MADAME DE SURVILLE.

A COUNTRYMAN of the Poetess whose name stands at the head of this article, has said, that "Poetry is a diversion proper for women—a dissembling and prating art, all pleasure and all show like themselves." This splenetic sentence is strangely compounded of truth and falsehood; and the world is now too well convinced of this to require any arguments from us on the subject. In fact, the womanly character is eminently poetical--more deeply sensible of all poetical emotion, more quickly alive to the language of all sympathy and sentiment, than that of man; and therefore more capable of relishing the delicate tenderness of the art. But, though there is generally this great appreciation of poetical excellence in the female mind, it is by no means

a necessary consequence that the power of poetical conception should exist there: to admire and to create are widely different. We do not in this place presume to name all the various qualities which are necessary to constitute the poetical character in its highest excellence; but we think we may assert, that there are some of those qualities which seldom mingle in the female character-the deep and accurate insight into human nature and human passions, upon which alone a poet can build his noblest and truest fame. This knowledge, by education or by habit, is generally excluded from the heart of woman-from "the nunnery of her pure breast and quiet mind." In painting the milder affections of our nature, however, the poetesses of all ages have been eminently successful. Love, friendship, and filial affection, never wear a more beautiful garb than when ornamented by a female hand. It is not the province of woman to surmount the craggy mountain, and to delight in the terrors which she views from its brow, or to traverse the pathless ocean, and to rejoice in its dangerous sublimity; but it is her pleasant employ to walk amid beds of flowers, and there to gather the sweetest, the tenderest, and the most beautiful. There is something in the poetry of female writers, which speaks most earnestly from the heart, and which teaches us a mild and lovely wisdom. It does not terrify, but win to goodness-it is placid, affectionate, and earnest-hearted.

Of female classical writers we have very few remains; but the age and spirit of chivalry gave a new place to the character of woman. On the revival of learning, she shared with man all the immunities of his intellectual dignity. The singular poems of Marguerite-Eleonore Clotilde de Vallon-Chalys, of which we believe but little is known, can scarcely be classed, even in character, amongst these; in language, expression, and imagery, they are totally distinct.

Of the authenticity of these poems, we must confess, we have considerable doubts; but their merit and beauty we readily acknowledge. In 1804 a small volume was published at Paris, with the following title: "Poesies de Marguerite-Eleonore Clotilde de Vallon-Chalys, dépuis Madame de Surville, poëte Français du XV. siècle, publiées par Ch. Vanderbourg." In the preface to this little work there is some account given of the way in which these poems were discovered, and also of the author of them. In the year 1782, a M. de Surville, a descendant of this poetess, in searching among the neglected archives of his family, discovered some MS. poems, the beauty and excellence of which excited his astonishment and admiration. He applied himself diligently to the study of decyphering the hand-writing, and, with considerable trouble, he succeeded in transcribing the greater part of the MSS. M. de Surville was driven from France

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xisted between her and some other young females, which was -trengthened by the ties of similar tastes and occupations.

In the year 1421, not long after the death of her mother, Cloilde became attached to Berenger de Surville, and they were oon afterwards married. Immediately after that event had taken place, M. de Surville was called on to join the standard of Charles VII. then Dauphin; and it was on this occasion, probably, that the beautiful verses which we shall shortly transcribe, may be presumed to have been written; and at this time also the "Heroide a son espoulx Berenger" was composed, which, it is said, was seen, though not admired, by Alain Chartier. The life of Berenger de Surville was not long-he perished the victim of his own valour, in a dangerous expedition which he undertook during the siege of Orleans, leaving only one son by his wife. Madame de Surville now devoted herself more assiduously to her poetical labours, and she gained considerable notice by some severe attacks on Alain Chartier, between whom and herself there existed much animosity. After the death of her daughter-in-law, Heloise de Vergy, who died in 1468, Madame de Surville found her only consolation in the society of her granddaughter Camilla, upon whose death she once more visited the place of her birth. In this retreat she appears to have passed the remainder of her life, writing, in her extreme age, verses which would have done honour to the freshest mind at a much more favourable period. The precise time of her death is not known; but she lived and composed to her ninetieth year.

The poems which are contained in this little volume are principally poems of sentiment and satire; but as the latter must necessarily have lost much of the poignancy, which is their chief merit, we shall confine ourselves, in the extracts which we are about to make, to a few of the former description. We have attempted an English translation of these extracts, which we were induced to make from the admiration which we felt for the beauty of the original, though not in the hope of being able, in any manner, to approach it. Even in the very title a translation is impossible.

VERSES TO MY FIRST-BORN.*

My cherish'd infant! image of thy sire!

Sleep on the bosom which thy small lip presses;
Sleep, little one, and close those eyes of fire,

Those eyelets which the weight of sleep oppresses.

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