The latter is a poem in four parts, or cantos, containing the author's descriptions of places and things which he saw in that country, and his sentiments and reflections upon them, and which, if it contains some of the obscurest and harshest passages to be found in these volumes, presents also many examples of his highest excellences. It is not certainly ground trodden for the first time; there are few that have not perused the pleasant pages of Mr. Rogers; fewer still who are not acquainted with Childe Harold: with the former the present poem has no similarity, but it is upon the whole, in its plans, only an enlargement of the fourth canto of the latter. Very many of the objects are taken in precisely the same order, and frequently also suggest the same course of thought. It is far from being our wish to accuse the writer of plagiarism, or to urge against him that he should not have attempted to treat of subjects already handled by others with consummate skill and power. Clearly there is the same freedom still to all to wander through these same scenes, and to give their judgments and thoughts concerning them to the world, if they are worth the having. Italy itself can never become hackneyed, any more than any place can, which is hallowed by countless associations and memorials of ages past, and on which the hand of God has poured forth so rich a flood of beauty; and reasonably, also, we may expect that the contemplation of the same object may suggest similar expressions to different minds according as they approach each other in power and activity. We can have no reason, therefore, to murmur that another delineation has been given to us of Florence, of Rome, of Terni, of Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, of St. Peter's, the Pantheon, the Colosseum; but the comparison instantly arises in the mind, between this poem and that of the mighty bard, who has left us more to sorrow for than to admire. Any one who writes of Santa Croce, or of those who there lie buried, of Venice and all its fallen beauty, must be conscious that he is drawing this comparison upon himself, even though he display sufficient originality of mind to exempt him from any further imputation of wearing borrowed plumes. Mr. Reade's plan brings out more fully a defect discernible in a measure in Childe Harold'-abruptness, namely, in passing from one object to another, more especially when these are works of art. There is the Venus de Medici, and the Laöcoon, and the Apollo Belvedere, and the Gladiator, and all with a stanza or two apportioned to them, until we fancy ourselves reading a very musical catalogue in metre. On these several works as on others, the ideas of Mr. Reade show a marked and close agreement with those of Lord Byron; with him he almost adores the Venus de Medici, and bows down before the horrors of the Laocoön. It

is needless here to diverge into a discussion on the scope and limit of Grecian art; it may be hoped that a sounder and more healthful judgment on these subjects is growing up in the public mind, from the admirable criticisms of Mr. Ruskin in his volumes of Modern Painters.' We are forced into comparisons, when we read of the Apollo Belvedere, that

6

'In severe supremacy alone

He stands, ere soaring to the heavenly clime;

A breathing deity in marble shown!

The vision of a god incorporate in stone:'-(ii. 71.)

with the lines on the same from Childe Harold'

'When each conception was a heavenly guest,

A ray of immortality, and stood

Star-like around until they gather'd to a god; '

and even more strongly in the following the former being Mr. Reade's, the latter Lord Byron's.

'Space whirls around him-'tis not the crowd's roar

He hears; the blood from his laxed arteries

Sounds ebbing like the spent waves on the shore.

In the red sands beneath, he sees arise

Green fields and trees, loved forms and speaking eyes,

And kinsmen's beckoning hands: he lifts his head,

A flashing light, home's far realities

Buried in thunder-clouds sink darken'd, fled,

His quivering limbs convulse: life passes; he is dead.'—ii, 68.

The arena swims around him: he is gone,

Ere heard the inhuman shout which hail'd the wretch who won.

He heard it but he heeded not; his eyes

Were with his heart, and that was far away.
He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay.
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother; he their sire
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday.'

An individual thought sometimes recals another in Childe Harold;' the following, certainly, not superior to the one which it resembles :

'Earth cleft asunder in her depths is shown

Tongueing red fires: escaped their cavern'd thrall,
Whirlwinds rush howling, drown'd in the deep tone

Of the far sea, that doth the mountain call,

The thunder's rending blast doth answer back to all.'-ii, 96.

'Far along

From peak to peak the rattling crags among

Leaps the live thunder: not from one lone cloud,

But every mountain now hath found a tongue,

And Jura answers through her misty shroud,

Back to the joyous Alps who call to her aloud.'-Childe Harold.

And again

The Paradise of Italy, the bower

And throne of luxury; where the air breathed love
And passionate feeling, making life's brief hour
One long enjoyment.'-ii. 100.

Clarens, sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep love,
Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought,
Thy trees take root in love,' &c.-Childe Harold.

Or again, of the sea

Thou mirrorest the Infinite on thy breast,

In thy all fathomless depths is typed the Almighty's rest.'-ii. 116. 'Thou glorious mirror where the Almighty's form

Glasses itself in tempest: in all time.

The image of eternity, the throne

Of the Invisible.'-Childe Harold.

We might have been disposed to think that a poet would shrink from handling one or two subjects which have produced some matchless passages of Childe Harold;' yet he does not hesitate to

'Pause, when like a steadfast exhalation,

O'er yon green bank Clitumnus rears his shrine:

Is that all delicate temple the creation

Of human hands? as clasps the elm the vine,

The sculptured leaves around those columns twine.'-ii. 35.

Surely there is not music here equal to the melody which sings of Clitumnus,—

where

'The sweetest wave

Of the most living crystal that was e'er
The haunt of river nymph; '

On thy happy shore a temple still

Of small and delicate proportion keeps,
Upon a mild declivity of hill,

Its memory of thee.'-Childe Harold.

We have not quoted the remainder of Mr. Reade's stanza; we refrain, therefore, from adding the lines of faultless beauty which close that of Lord Byron.

There are many similar instances, as in the stanzas in the Thrasymene, the Falls of Terni, the Fountain of Egeria; but there are likewise pictures of great beauty, which at the same time are entirely original. We are led to Venice, when

'The sun is setting: his last rays are steeping

In golden hues yon clouds that steadfast keep
Their station, on the blue horizon sleeping,
Breasting the sky yet blending with the deep;
Lo! from their braided edges glittering creep

Sharp pointed spires, in blue air faintly shown,
O'er-shadow'd as the sea mists round them sweep;
Away! those shadows are to substance grown,

For Venice there doth sit upon her ocean throne.'-ii. 22.

Again we are standing under the stupendous arch that canopies the Apostle's tomb

The pride, the boast of Rome,

Orb'd as the world, and floating as on air,

In dazzling light expands the mighty dome,
Mirror of heaven, but heaven when she doth wear,
All galaxied with stars her flashing hair.'-45.

Once more

It is the morn, the ever blessed morn,'

and we gaze where

'Silent Naples slumbers; child of mirth,
She sees nor hears the beauty o'er her shed,
Sleeping as sleeps an infant at its birth;

The elements, her handmaids, softly tread,
Attending breathlessly beside her wave-lulled bed.

For like a blue-eyed spirit, the sky above

Bends from its arching throne the earth to greet;
The air sighs over her its breath of love,

The deep-voiced sea breathes music at her feet,
The hills the echoes of her life repeat;

The hues that tint her brow by Iris given,

Caught from yon sun that steals on her retreat,
While gentler still his orbed wheel is driven,

Watching her sleep beneath the holy vault of heaven.'-85.

We must content ourselves with but one extract more from stanzas on the Colosseum. This appears the most powerful part of the poem, and will well bear any comparison with the beautiful description in Childe Harold; we do not forget at the same time the wonderful picture given of the same pile as seen by moonlight, in Manfred.

'Hark! midnight's slumberous air is musical
With the low carolling of birds, that seem

To hold here an enduring festival;

How do their notes and nature's flowers redeem

The place from old pollution: if the stream

And reek of blood gush'd forth from man and beast,

If Cain-like brethren gloated o'er the steam

Of immolation as a welcome feast,

Ages have cleansed the stain, the unnatural strife hath ceased.

'Along its broken edges on a sky

Of azure, sharply, delicately traced,

The light bird flits o'er flowers that wave from high,
Where human foot shall never more be based:
Grass mantles the arena mid defaced

And broken columns, freshly, wildly spread;

And through those hollow windows, once so graced
With glittering eyes, faint stars their twinkling shed,
As if they smiled within those sockets of the dead.

'Lo! there the moon sleeps, flooding that white ground,
Paling with ghastly sheen each column's height,
While the gigantic circle yawns around,

Drear, silent, savage, through which, twinkling bright,
Shine stars like eyes: and strange and solemn sight,
The illimitable space yawns blackly o'er:

Yet who would see that pile in beauty's light,
Be it not silver'd thus by moonlight o'er,

But when departing Day adds there one glory more.
For with that ruin and the dying day,

Are human sympathies man more can feel:

The red light magnifies its grand decay,

Hallowing the wounds which it would not conceal :
Tints that are harmonies then round it steal,

Hues which are Nature's feeling for the past:
Doth she not ever such with time reveal,

And on the wreck her nameless magic cast,

Religion of the place that shall grey faiths outlast?'—69. We hear much of grey faiths elsewhere, stated in so unqualified a manner, as almost to make us suspect that the writer has some notion of the possibility of the Christian faith following the same course. But for the present we must leave such topics.

We have already noticed resemblances between Italy' and 'Childe Harold;' we must speak differently of those which are to be found between the two dramas of The Deluge' and 'Destiny,' and the dramas of Heaven and Earth' and Cain' of Lord Byron, more especially in the former. The whole plan and argument of The Deluge' is so completely identical with that of Heaven and Earth,' the characters introduced speak throughout in so similar a strain, the very order of the scenes is so entirely the same, the very opinions bear so strong a correspondence, that it is most difficult to see what possible motive the writer could have had in composing it. We are not imputing plagiarism, or denying that there are many parts of most exceeding tenderness and pathos; but we must maintain that there is nothing here which is not contained in Heaven and Earth,' albeit at not so great length; and, moreover, that the impression left on the mind after perusing each is, as regards the moral statements contained in them, precisely the same. There are indeed different names assigned; in each, contradicting the account of Holy Writ, one of the sons of Noah is represented as unmarried at the time of the deluge, and moreover as unsuccessful in his love: in Heaven and Earth' he keeps the name of Japheth, in the Deluge' he receives that of Irad; in both there is a friend of this son of Noah, similarly circumstanced, called by Lord Byron Irad, but here Hammon. There are two sisters, one of whom Irad (i. e. Japheth) wishes to gain as his wife, who have chosen as their lovers two angels; these Mr. Reade calls Astarte and Azoara, who in every single feature of