They mourn, but smile at length; and, smiling, mourn:
The tree will wither long before it fall;

The hull drives on, though mast and sail be torn ;
The roof-tree siuks, but moulders on the hall
In massy hoariness; the ruined wall

Stands when its wind-worn battlements are gone;

The bars survive the captive they inthrall;
The day drags through though storms keep out the sun;
And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on :

Even as a broken mirror, which the glass

In every fragment multiplies, and makes
A thousand images of one that was,

The same, and still the more, the more it breaks;
And thus the heart will do, which not forsakes,
Living in shattered guise, and still, and cold,

And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches,
Yet withers on till all without is old,

Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold.

The apostrophe to Buonaparte is touching and true, and the recollection that the poet and the hero have since abided the common lot of mortality adds to the impression which the verses must necessarily make upon every reader:

There sunk the greatest, nor the worst, of men,

Whose spirit, antithetically mixt,

One moment of the mightiest, and again

On little objects with like firmness fixt

Extreme in all things! hadst thou been betwixt,
Thy throne had still been thine, or never been;
For daring made thy rise as fall: thou seek'st
Even now to reassume the imperial mien,

And shake again the world, the Thunderer of the scene!

Conqueror and captive of the Earth art thou!

She trembles at thee still, and thy wild name
Was ne'er more bruited in men's minds than now

That thou art nothing, save the jest of Fame,
Who wooed thee once, thy vassal, and became
The flatterer of thy fierceness, till thou wert
A god unto thyself; nor less the same

To the astounded kingdoms all inert,

Who deemed thee for a time whate'er thou didst assert.

Oh, more or less than man-in high or low,

Battling with nations, flying from the field;
Now making monarchs' necks thy footstool, now
More than thy meanest soldier taught to yield;
An empire thou couldst crush, command, rebuild,
But govern not thy pettiest passion, nor,

However deeply in men's spirits skilled,

Look through thine own, nor curb the lust of war,
Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star.

Yet well thy soul hath brooked the turning tide
With that untaught innate philosophy,

Which, be it wisdom, coldness, or deep pride,

Is gall and wormwood to an enemy.

When the whole host of hatred stood hard by,

To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou hast smiled
With a sedate and all-enduring eye;-

When Fortune fled her spoiled and favorite child,
He stood unbowed beneath the ills upon him piled.

The following stanzas might have been applied perhaps as forcibly to Lord Byron as to the dethroned emperor;

But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell,

And there hath been thy bane; there is a fire
And motion of the soul which will not dwell
In its own narrow being, but aspire
Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore,
Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire
Of aught but rest; a fever at the core,
Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore.

This makes the madmen who have made men mad

By their contagion; conquerors and kings,

Founders of sects and systems, to whom add

Sophists, bards, statesmen, all unquiet things
Which stir too strongly the soul's secret springs
And are themselves the fools to those they fool:
Envied, yet how unenviable! what stings

Are theirs! One breast laid open were a school
Which would unteach mankind the lust to shine or rule:

Their breath is agitation, and their life

A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last,
And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife,
That should their days, surviving perils past,
Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast
With sorrow and supineness, and so die;
Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste

With its own flickering, or a sword laid by
Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously.

At length the pilgrim tears himself from these gloomy subjects, and turns to the more delightful—and, in spite of his sternness, we believe more congenial-subject of the beauties of nature. The scenery of the Rhine awakes all the feelings which in a heart such as his must start, like the notes from a lyre under the sweepings of a master-hand, at the spell of such an assemblage of the beautiful and sublime-such

A blending of all beauties; streams and dells,

Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine,
And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells

From grey but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells.

Of all the poets which England-perhaps which the whole worldhas produced, Lord Byron most excels in the power of describing, in a few expressions of intense force, the picturesque and prominent features of local scenes. His lines are like sketches from the hand of a painter, who has at once feeling and skill enough to embody, in a few hasty strokes, an idea of the real picturesque, as true, and far more beautiful than the most minute and labored transcript of one in whom less of the fire of true genius dwells. A whole volume, describing the scenery of the Rhine, could contain no more than lies in the lines last quoted. An ingot of gold may be beaten into a surface of almost any extent; but leaf-gold is not, therefore, more valuable than the solid metal.

The pilgrim wanders along the shores of this beautiful river, and devotes some of his verses, as he journeys, to the grey ruins which crown its rocky banks, and to the feudal barons who once inhabited them, and whose wars have often discolored the swift waves. Soon afterwards there occurs a passage which has always seemed to us highly de

lightful, as well for its own beauty as for the intimation it gives us that the gloomy wanderer was not wholly without consolation ;—a notion which he did not fail to impress upon some of those people in England, who thought he was entirely miserable, and who, he believed, wished him to remain so:

Nor was all love shut from him, though his days
Of passion had consumed themselves to dust.
It is in vain that we would coldly gaze

On such as smile upon us; the heart must
Leap kindly back to kindness, though disgust
Hath weaned it from all worldlings: thus he felt,

For there was soft remembrance, and sweet trust
In one fond breast, to which his own would melt,
And in its tenderer hour on that his bosom dwelt.

And he had learned to love-I know not why,
For this in such as him seems strange of mood→→
The helpless looks of blooming infancy,

Even in its earliest nurture; what subdued,
To change like this, a mind so far imbued
With scorn of man, it little boots to know;

But thus it was; and though in solitude

Small power the nipped affections have to grow,
In him this glowed when all beside had ceased to glow.

And there was one soft breast, as hath been said,
Which unto his was bound by stronger ties
Than the church links withal; aud, though unwed,
That love was pure, and, far above disguise,

Had stood the test of mortal enmities

Still undivided, and cemented more

By peril, dreaded most in female eyes;

But this was firm, and from a foreign shore

Well to that heart might his these absent greetings pour!

The tenderness of the epistle is exquisite:

The castled crag of Drachenfels

Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine,

Whose breast of waters broadly swells
Between the banks which bear the vine;

And hills all rich with blossomed trees,

And fields which promise corn and wine,
And scattered cities crowning these,

Whose far white walls along them shine,
Have strewed a scene, which I should see
With double joy wert thou with me!

And peasant girls, with deep blue eyes,
And hands which offer early flowers,
Walk smiling o'er this paradise ;

Above, the frequent feudal towers
Through green leaves lift their walls of grey,
And many a rock which steeply lours,
And noble arch in proud decay,

Look o'er this vale of vintage-bowers;
But one thing want these banks of Rhine-
Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine!

I send the lilies given to me;

Though, long before thy hand they touch,
I know that they must withered be,
But yet reject them not as such ;
For I have cherished them as dear,
Because they yet may meet thine eye,
And guide thy soul to mine even here,
When thou behold'st them drooping nigh,
And know'st them gathered by the Rhine,
And offered from my heart to thine!

The river nobly foams and flows,

The charm of this enchanted ground,
And all its thousand turns disclose
Some fresher beauty varying round.
The haughtiest breast its wish might bound
Through life to dwell delighted here;
Nor could on earth a spot be found
To nature and to me so dear,
Could thy dear eyes in following mine

Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine!

After a short tribute to the memory of the young and gallant General Marceau, who fell at Altenkirchen, and a notice of the singular and pic