Rest on your woodland banks and wither there, Sweet preluders of spring! far better so, Than live misused to fill the grasp of care, And serve the piteous purposes of woe. Ye are no longer Nature's gracious gift, Yourselves so much and harbingers of more, But a most bitter irony to lift The veil that hides our vilest mortal sore." Si sic omnia dixisset! This is poetry in all languages; it is like mercury, never to be lost or killed. There is a passage in one of Lady Mary Wortley Montague's letters to her daughter which still continues to excite a smile on the lips of every reader, "The study of English poetry is a more important part of a woman's education than it is generally supposed. Many a young damsel has been ruined by a fine copy of verses, which she would have laughed at if she had known it had been stolen from Mr. Waller. I remem ber, when I was a girl, I saved one of my companions from destruction, who communicated to me an epistle she was quite charmed with. As she had naturally a good taste, she observed the lines were not so smooth as Prior's or Pope's, but had more thought and spirit than any of theirs. She was wonderfully delighted with such a demonstration of her lover's sense and passion, and not a little pleased with her own charms that had force enough to inspire such elegancies. In this triumph I shewed her that they were taken from Randolph's poems, and the unfortunate transcriber was dismissed with the scorn he deserved." The reason assigned for the study of English poetry by English ladies, is truly characteristic of Lady Mary and of the female mind. A lady is to read through every volume of verse, and remember what she reads, to see that her lover writes his own valentine. Ye gods, should one swear to the truth of a song! If a woman will marry a poet, she had better go through the course of study Lady Mary recommends. Not that she is safe to secure a poet to herself after a very long life of study. How few read Randolph, and yet he is a very fine poet. Lady Mary might have taken a copy of verses from Randolph to every female writer of the day, and passed them off for the production of a young, a handsome, and a rising writer, and no one would have set her right, or detected the imposition that was passed upon her. We are afraid we must recommend the study of our early English poets to English ladies on some other ground than the chance detection of a lover pleading his passion in the poetry of another under pretence of its being his own. Not that we have any particular predilection for "romancical ladies," as the dear old Duchess of Newcastle calls them, or girls with their heads stuffed full of passionate passages; but we should like to see a more prevalent taste for what is good, for poetry that is really excellent; and this we feel assured is only to be effected by a careful consideration of our elder poets, who have always abundance of meaning in them. It is no use telling young ladies that Mr. Bunn's poetry is not poetry, but only something that looks very like it and reads very unlike it: The words run sweetly to the piano; there is a kind of pretty meaning in what they convey, and the music is pleasing. What more would you want? Why every thing. then, as we once heard a young lady remark with great good sense and candour (and her beauty gave an additional relish to what she said), these unmeaning songs are so much casier to sing. Your fine old songs, so full of poetry and feeling, require a similar feeling in the singer, and young ladies are too frequently only sentimental, and not equal to the task of doing justice to passionate poetry conveyed in music equally passionate, and where they can do justice to it they refuse because it is not fashionable to be passionate, and it really disturbs and disorders one to be so, and in mixed society, "above all." But It cannot be concealed that we have never been so well off for ladypoets as we are at present. Only run the eye over Mr. Dyce's octavo volume of Specimens of British Poetesses, and compare the numerical excellencies of the past with the numerous productions of the present * Letters by Lord Wharncliffe, 2d edit. iii, 44. day! A few specimens of the elder poetesses-such as the "Nocturnal Reverie," and "The Atheist and the Acorn," both by the Countess of Winchelsea, it would be very difficult to surpass, or even, perhaps, to equal; but in the general qualifications for poetry, both natural and acquired, the ladies, since Charlotte Smith, far surpass their female predecessors. Mrs. Norton is said to be the Byron of our modern poetesses. "She has very much of that intense personal passion," says the Quarterly Reviewer, "by which Byron's poetry is distinguished from the larger grasp and deeper communion with man and Nature of Wordsworth. She has also Byron's beautiful intervals of tenderness, his strong, practical thought, and his forceful expression." This is high praise. "Let us suggest, however," says the Athenæum, 66 that, in the present state of critical opinion, the compliment is somewhat equivocal, it being hard to decide whether it implies a merit or a defect." If Mrs. Norton is an eminently thoughtful writer, Miss Barrett is still more so. She is the most learned of our lady-writers, reads Eschylus and Euripides in the originals with the ease of Porson or of Parr, yet relies upon her own motherwit and feelings when she writes,— "Nor with Ben Jonson will make bold If Mrs. Norton is the Byron, Mrs. Southey is said to be the Cowper of our modern poetesses. But it would be idle to prolong comparisons. Whatever we may think of our living poets, we have every reason to be proud of our living poetesses. We will conclude with an anecdote. A charming article appeared about six years ago in the Quarterly Review, entitled "Modern English Poetesses." It was written, we believe, by the late Henry Nelson Coleridge, and is full of cautious but kindly criticism. The conclusion is worth quotation : "Meleager bound up his poets in a wreath. If we did the same, what flowers would suit our tuneful line? 1. Mrs. Norton would be the Rose, or, if she like it, Love Lies a Bleeding. 2. Miss Barrett must be Greek Va lerian or Ladder to Heaven, or, if she pleases, Wild Angelica. 3. Maria del Occidente is a PassionFlower confessed. 4. Irene was Grass of Parnassus, or sometimes a Roman Nettle. 5. Lady Emmeline is a Magnolia Grandiflora, and a Crocus too. 6. Mrs. Southey is a Meadow Sage, or Small Teasel. 7. The classical nymph of Exeter is a Blue Belle. 8. V. is a Violet, with her leaves heart. shaped. 9. And the authoress of Phantas. mion' is Heart's-Ease." The complimentary nature of the criticism drew a world of trouble upon John Murray, the well-known publisher of the Quarterly. He was inundated with verse. Each of the nine in less than a week offered him a volume, some on easy terms, some at an advanced price. He received letters, he received calls, and, worse still, volumes of MS. verse. But the friendly character of the criticism was not confined in its influence to the nine reviewed; parcels of verse from all parts of the country were sent to receive an imprimatur at Albemarle Street. Some were tied with white tape, some were sewn with violet riband, and a few, in a younger hand, with Berlin wool. "I wished," Mr. Murray has been heard to relate, "ten thousand times over that the article had never been written. I had a great deal of trouble with the ladies who never ap peared before; and, while I declined to publish for the Ninc, succeeded in flattering their vanity by assuring them that they had already done enough for fame, having written as much or more than Collins, Gray, or Goldsmith, whose reputations rested on a foundation too secure to be disturbed." This deserves to be remembered. EDUCATION IN THE ARMY. In common with all right-minded persons, we are glad to perceive that the attention of the public and of the government, seems at length to be directed in earnest towards the introduction into the army of an improved system of moral and intellectual discipline. That the army well deserves this care for its best interests, nobody who is conversant with the events of the last half century can doubt. Not to speak of the important service performed by our troops during the perilous season when England was at war with the most powerful nations in the world; not to revert to their sufferings in the Netherlands under the late Duke of York; their endurance in Holland; their valour in Egypt; their patience amid the pestilential swamps of St. Domingo, and under the burning suns of the far East; not to dwell too much upon their triumphs in the Peninsula, their losses in America, and the crowning glories of Waterloo, whereby peace was purchased for Europe, which has continued unbroken more than thirty years,—we have only to consider the amount and nature of the duties which at this moment the country imposes upon its army, and we shall be convinced at once that, let us deal with our soldiers as generously as we may, we cannot come up to their deservings, far less go beyond them. In the history of the world there has never been heard of an armed force out of which the nation that kept it together took so much. We really seem to believe-as Nelson professed to believe before us-that one Englishman is worth three men of any other nation, not in the battlefield exclusively, as was his view of the case, but in the still more harassing struggle which all soldiers, more or less sustain against exposure to climate, watching, and strong temptation. So far from assenting to the opinions of the Continentals concerning us, that "we are not a military nation" we seem to be of opinion, that there is a spirit so essentially military inherent in every man from within the compass of the three kingdoms, that whatever you set him to in the order of a soldier's calling and duties, he will accomplish it,-ay, and accomplish well, without any previous training. Consider how our battalions are dissipated and scattered at home, and harassed by severe colonial duty. It is the rarest thing in the world to find, except at one or two points, as much as a whole regiment of infantry together, either in Great Britain or Ireland; and taking into account their progresses from colony to colony, perhaps there is not a soldier in the British army that does not spend a full tenth part of the period of his service on board of ship. And as to service in the colonies, very many, indeed almost all of which, try the constitutions of Englishmen severelyit absorbs on the most moderate computation something more than threefourths of the soldier's time under arms; if he be sent to India or New South Wales early in his career, it probably absorbs the whole. For the empire of the Queen of England is at once the most extensive and the most populous that ever existed among men; and she holds it against foreign enemies, and preserves peace among its heterogeneous inhabitants by means of an army scarcely more numerous than Austria employs to secure the allegiance of her Italian and Hungarian provinces. There is no boon which this country has to bestow, but that the army by the extent and importance of its services has earned it. For the sake of the soldiers themselves, therefore, we heartily rejoice that there appears to be some prospect of getting a solid education introduced into the regiments generally, and the barracks in which the men are stationed rendered fit for rational beings to occupy. These, things, when they are accomplished, will indeed contribute to the soldier's respectability as well as to his comforts. They will cause him to respect himself. They will create in him tastes for higher pleasures than those which spring out of mere animal gratifications. They will save him from many an act of folly, and its necessary result of suffering; and, above all, they will provide for him resources against the time when his country shall have dispensed with his services, and restored him, an old, and perhaps, a broken-down man, to the town or village whence he was taken. They will fit him, likewise, for such situations as it may be in the contemplation of the government to reserve for him: namely, for one of the inferior offices in the customs, or in the excise, or in the police, or about the postoffice. And they will thereby retain him, possibly during some of the best years of his life, available still in case of invasion from abroad, or riot or disturbance at home. Of far more importance to him therefore are they, than even good-conduct stripes, and the increase of pay that accompanies them. For uneducated men are not rendered either the more happy or the more virtuous by the acquisition of superabundant wealth. On the contrary, as soon as you put the unlettered soldier in possession of a larger amount of money than may be required for his subsistence, you throw additional temptations to profligacy in his way. He has no idea of enjoyment beyond that which may be found in the public-house, or the canteen, or the society of loose women; and the consequence is, that he is sure, sooner or later, to be disgraced, or possibly to forfeit not his additional pay alone, but all claim to a pension. It would be presumptuous in us, after the full and able discussion which this part of the subject has received both in the Quarterly Review and in the Times, to advert to it except shortly. Yet it does appear that, in spite of the acumen which belongs to our contemporaries, they have not noticed certain parts collateral, perhaps, to the great question, but scarcely on that account less important than the question itself. Of these, one which will occur immediately to the more reflective of our readers is this, that God has not given to England the dominion over so many of the fairest portions of the earth for the mere aggrandisement, in an economical point of view, of the ruling power. We are masters of India, in order that through us the abominations of heathenism may be rooted out. We are lords of Canada and of the islands of the Caribbean seas, in order that in each of these there may spring up a race of civilised, moral, and religious people. The Polynesian group has come, or is coming into our exclusive possession, to the end that there, also, the seeds of Christianity and of good government may be sown. And in China the crust which had heretofore resisted all pressure from with. out is broken. Now by what class of person is the intercourse which we establish with the heathen begun? And who are they that, in very many instances, become settlers in the bush and on the prairie? In both cases soldiers are our instruments;men who have served, or are still serving, in the ranks, who meet the heathen in battle and overthrow them, and, taking military possession of their country, give to them their first and most enduring impression of what the Christian's religion is,who win them to adopt our manners by the grace and purity that adorn their own, or more and more confirm them in the usages of their fathers by the disgust with which they look upon the white man's excesses. What advantages does not the soldier possess for good if he himself only know what good is, and take pleasure in the performance of it? What an incalculable amount of evil does he not scatter round him, if the people whom he has defeated learn to esteem him, in all things, except in valour, immeasurably their inferiors! That the powerful effect for moral good or moral evil of the intercourse, be it more or less intimate, which our troops establish with the natives of heathen countries, should have been heretofore overlooked or disregarded by those in high military authority, by no means surprises us. Commanders-in-chief, as well as adjutant and quartermaster generals, naturally assume that they have done their part so soon as they shall have converted some thousands tive, and well set-up soldiers. They of country bumpkins into smart, acthis, the crown grants them their consider that for this, and only for commissions and the country pays them. They may be anxious, to a certain extent, about the health, and what they consider to be the bodily comforts of the troops, because their |