She had the rich perfection of that gift, I looked upon the deep blue sky, I saw a youth beside me kneel; Then came remembrances of other times, Of fear and pain, there were these the last night, Curled half in the pride of its loveliness, And half with a love-sigh's voluptuousness. This hope is vain, my grave must be Far dist ant from my own country. Some one had brought dew of the spring She prest her hãnd tỏ hér brow or păin Or better thoughts were passing there,-the room Hd no light but that from the fireside. Which like the meteor has from darkness birth, She watched her circle,-ready smile or sneer, Sneers for the absent ones, smiles for the near. We said that her blank verse had " slovenly and feeble terminations" and gave the following specimen. Her voice. Lost its so tremulous accents as she bade Her child tread in that Father's steps, and told How brave, how honored he had been.-But when She did entreat him to remember all Her hopes were centered in him, that he was The stay of her declining years, that he Might be the happiness of her old age, &c. &c. Now we would ask the admirers of L. E. L. if there is any example of such blank verse as this in Paradise Lost, or whether this flimsy and careless composi tion is not a flagrant breach of the laws of English Prosody. We have confined our specimens of inaccurate verse to those previously given, as we brought them forward in the critique that has excited so much discussion as proofs of the justice of our censure, while our Correspondent is inclined to consider them undeniable improvements in versification-after the manner of Milton! We have now said enough, and perhaps more than enough upon this subject, and it only remains for us to assure our Correspondent, that he is very much mistaken indeed, if he thinks, that our late critique upon the poems of L. E. L. was the result of any determination to underrate her real genius. We most readily acknowledge that her poetry, has many pleasing qualities, and that it would be as disgraceful in the public to entirely neglect it, as it is ridiculous in the Editor of the London Literary Gazette to assure his readers that her powers are of so splendid a character that as far as his poetical taste and critical judgment enable him to form an opinion, HE COULD ANCIENT OR MODERN, OF SIMILAR TALENT AND EXCELLENCE"!!! ADDUCE NO INSTANCE When a writer like L. E. L. is thus characterized in a public print of extensive eirculation-when terms of eulogy are lavished on her name, that if applied to that illustrious trio of modern Poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, would bring the blood into their cheeks-when she is elevated by implication above the still more illustrious trio of Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton, it is time indeed for an honest critic to perform his duty, and to warn the crowd of readers, from listening to such monstrous absurdities. FRAGMENTS. POVERTY. Shall I contract myself to Wisdom's lore? Is like a sacred book that's never read.- Decker. : DERISION. O call this madness in see, from the windows Is like a dart shot from the hand of Scorn, By which thy name is hurt, thy honour torn.- Decker: INSINUATING MANNERS. We must have these lures when we hawk for friends; And wind about them like a subtle river, That seeming only to run on its course, Doth search yet, as it runs, and still finds out The easiest part of entry on the shore, AN ORIGINAL POEM BY L. E. L. We had just finished the preceding article when we were favored by friend with the following hitherto unpublished poem from the pen of the Lady whose poetical powers have been the subject of so much consideration. We cannot more appropriately and agreeably close the discussion than by the insertion of this little specimen of her genius. It is written in her best manner, and is sufficiently elegant, correct, and harmonicus, to form a contrast to those careless and irregular compositions to which our censures were applied. If these pages should ever meet her eye, we trust that this celebrated young Poetess will not think herself harshly treated, or illiberally under-rated, because we have pointed out what we conceive to be her defects, and described her as inferior to some of those profound and philosophical poets to whom a few of her more extravagant admirers have foolishly compared her. For our own parts, after all that we have advanced against her claims to indiscriminate eulogy, we are under no apprehension of being convicted of inconsistency in paying our tribute of praise to the extreme grace and tenderness that often characterize her occasional effusions. ON BEING ASKED TO RETURN A SONG. Oh, do not claim again the lay, The lay that we have loved so well, To me as memory's sweetest spell. O'er the dear page while every thought, As we the minstrel's rapture caught. All that we loved is here enshrined, The music of the midnight wind, The softness of the twilight's tear. Our summer walks from all apart; Our flowers, are all recorded here, Then leave with me the strain whose flow L. E. L. ANECDOTES OF RUSSIA. [FROM THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, NO. CX.] * Crimes are rare in Russia, because the blood does not flow with sufficient rapidity to excite violent passions,' ** I have elsewhere mentioned the reason why so little is ever known of the crimes committed throughout this vast empire; but those who have resided long in either capital may have had numerous opportunities of witnessing the punishment of the knout, or of meeting strings of unfortunate culprits doomed to spend the rest of their miserable existence in Siberia, whose backs are lacerated, and faces branded. As I am charitable enough to believe that these men are neither knouted, branded, nor exiled without some crime, so I am confirmed in my opinion, that crimes are very common in Russia. You are warned by the proprietor of the hotel in which yon reside, never to leave the key of your rooms on the outside, as it will inevitably be stolen; your carriage cannot be left, in travelling, one instant without a Russian confounding the difference of meum and tuum; and the noble art of self-appropriation is practised in the churches: to these add the natural aptitude of cheating, which every traveller (even Granville) has mentioned, and see, then and there, the first-fruits of crimes. A Russian tradesman, I believe, thinks it laudable to cheat a stranger, for it is by no means uncommon to ask double the price he intends to take; sometimes the reduction is so great, that the buyer doubts if he has got the same article he first bargained for. This comfortable style of picking pockets is mostly practised by the fur-traders, who have a method of dyeing the hair so uncommonly well, that they often take in their own countrymen with the bear-skins. The well-known anecdote of Peter the Great is a proof that the great monarch knew his subjects well. When his Minister requested that the Jews might be exiled from Russia, Peter replied-" No, no; leave my long beards alone: the Jews will soon go without an order." And although the followers of Moses yet vagabondize about Russia in all quarters and directions, yet reap they but a poor harvest, and cannot contrive to do as they do here, have two whole Sundays every week, and yet manage, with these fearful odds against them, to outdo the Christian, or overreach even the stock-jobber. Travellers do tell such contradictory stories, that the man who travels only in his arm-chair, in imagination, must be wonderfully confused. For instance: Jones, and Rae Wilson, Clarke, and a score of others, mention the knout as a most dreadful instrument of punishment, far surpassing any thing of the kind in the world; a man may be killed in three or four strokes, and it is well known that some have not survived even a less number. Struck with the extent of such barbarity, the arm-chair traveller starts with horror, and throws aside the work which conveys such unpleasant, such cruel statements. Directing his attention to some other Ancelot. work on the same subject, he opens Granville at p. 451, vol. ii. and there he finds that what he read before was all false; that the knout was not one jot worse than the cat-o'-nine tails, and certainly inferior in punishment to the driver's whip in the West Indies. I shall give an idea of this weapon before I proceed with its application, as I have handled the executioner's knout in the prison at Moscow. The handle may be two feet long, a little more or less, to which is fastened a flat leather thong about twice the length of the handle, terminating with a large copper or brass ring; to this ring is affixed a strip of hide about two inches broad at the ring, and terminating, at the length of about two feet, in a point: this is soaked in milk, and dried in the sun to make it harder, and should it fall, in striking the culprit, on the edge, it would cut like a penknife. At every sixth stroke the tail is changed, a plentiful supply of these being always kept ready, and wrapped up with much greater caution and care than the executioner's children, and certainly kept much cleaner. In the hands of a stranger, it would be a most innocent weapon; nor could I, after a quarter of an hour's practice, make any considerable impression on the snow, while the executioner will leave a pretty fair mark on a deal plank; and this is sufficient to prove how hard the hide must be which inflicts the punishment, and how tough a hide it must be to resist it. I shall here give an account of a knouting punishment, as seen by an English gentleman. "A coachman, a slave of Prince Jablonosky, a Polish nobleman, having murdered his master returning from Count Strogonoff's country-seat, finding means to escape, was pursued and taken at Novogorod, brought back to Petersburg, and there sentenced to receive one hundred and fifty strokes of the knout, to have his face marked with a hot iron, his nostrils torn out, and, if he survived, to inhabit Siberia for the rest of his life. (This was on September 17, 1806, and I have chosen this punishment to show, hereafter, how far punishments of this kind have been softened.)-On the 2d of October, the sentence was carried into execution in the following manner :-He was taken from the prison about nine o'clock in the morning, and conducted to the police-office gate, whence the police-master, with the policeguards on horseback, conducted him to the place of execution, about two English miles, the beast market being at the end of the Newski* Perspective, where such punishments are inflicted. There is always some ceremony observed, common as these punishments are, and there were several police-guards to clear the way; then came the head police-master, attended by several district police-masters, and, after them, a detachment of police-guards on horseback. Next, surrounded by a number of the same guards on foot, walked the criminal, bareheaded, with fetters on his legs, and handcuffed. He was a bearded peasant, dressed in the long blue habit which is commonly worn, with striped pantaloons. Behind him walked the two executioners, with the knouts under their arms. When arrived at the place of execution, a detachment of regular troops Neoski. |