it without being struck with the ease and law Lucretius, his friend Brutus, and other sweetness of the versification, the splendour and followers, repair forthwith to Collatium. Lupolish of the diction, the concentrated energy cretia meets them in the threshold, relates the of expression in some places and the extraordi- | horrid crime which had been committed, makes nary command of language throughout*-in them first swear vengeance on the criminal, short, with a high state of finish in the style and then, uttering his name, plunges into her and a thorough mastery of the art of composi- heart a fatal dagger in attestation of her innotion, which we rarely expect to find except in cence. The agony-struck husband and father the practised writer. give way to a violent and benumbing grief, from which they are first roused by a sudden suggestion of Brutus. He sees that the critical moment has come, and drawing from the wound the yet bloody steel, made all present kneel, and severally kissing the still reeking dagger, swear by it to expel the insulting Tarquins from the throne and abolish the monarchy. This is the whole story. In the dedication of the Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare promises, if the work proves acceptable to the noble Earl, to take advantage of all idle hours till he has honoured his patron with some graver labour. This promise he | redeemed by the production in the following year of another narrative and descriptive poem entitled "The Rape of Lucrece." This poem is in many respects the fellow and counterpart of the other. It is in the seven-line stanza, or "Rhythm-Royal" which was noticed in a former paper. It is considerably longer than the Venus and Adonis, and is much graver in its cast. It is, like the other, remarkable for its fulness and accuracy in painting minute details. The author takes an incident as free as possible from all complication of plot. There is no unravelling of difficulties, no solving of mysteries, no exciting of curiosity, (which in a tale of fiction is one great source of interest-sometimes the only one,) no multiplication of actors or changing of scene. It is a story which every school-boy knows by heart; a story containing but few actors and few incidents; nor does the author seek to create an interest by multiplying these. On the contrary, he leaves it apparently as bare as possible of all the ordinary sources of interest in a narrative poem. The effect which he seems to seek is that of the painter of nature, who invites attention not by novelty or the glare of his colours, but by the fidelity with which he gives back to the eye a familiar scene. The story is this. Collatinus a noble Roman boasts in camp of the matchless beauty and the incorruptible virtue of his wife Lucretia. Tarquin, the king's son, incited partly by pique and partly by lawless passion, steals away privately from camp and goes to Collatium, to the house of Collatinus. There by the hostess he is courteously and hospitably entertained over night, as became the prince royal and the friend of her husband. His fiendish end accomplished, he returns next day to camp. The wretched victim of his violence, frantic with despair, despatches a messenger to camp with a letter, urging her husband's instant return on account of some deep grief, but without relating what it was. Collatinus, his father-in "A perfect dominion, sometimes domination, over the whole world of language."-COLERIDGE. In respect to the general character of the poem, I said it was in many respects the fellow of its predecessor. And yet, if I mistake not, there is one perceptible difference. They are both paintings; but the one is more a painting of external, visible, material objects; the other, of things internal, invisible, immaterial. In the Venus and Adonis, there is more of what strikes the senses. In the Lucrece, there is the minute, microscopic anatomy of crime and passion. When Tarquin steals along at dead of night on his fiendish errand, we see indeed the torch that lights his guilty path, and the threatening falchion in his hand; but we are made to see still more clearly, with our mind's eye, the workings of his soul, as he is agitated successively by conscience, honour, pity, pride, and passion. And never probably was there such a complete anatomy of grief, as in the description of Lucretia's feelings during those few hours intervening between her injury and her death. These actings of the mind turning inward upon itself, are made by the poet to supply the place of external incident. It is this power of describing minutely the processes of thought, which is, in my opinion, the chief characteristic of the poem. Thoughts, passions, motives, and acts of the mind, are in the Lucrece made to occupy the place occupied in most narrative poems by material and external scenes and actions. The reader who takes up the poem with the expectation of that sort of interest which arises from novelty, or from lively and rapid narrative, will soon lay it down in disappointment. But he who comes to the perusal prepared to feel an interest in tracing minutely the workings of passion, who knows already something of the psychology of crime and grief, and who would receive still farther revelations of its mysteries at the hand of one who has sounded the soul of man through its whole diapason-such a reader will find the Lucrece a poem of abounding and most enchaining interest. MARTHA PRESTON. BY THE AUTHOR OF "MARY BARTON." WITHIN the last few years I have been twice at the Lakes. There is a road leading to Grasmere, on the least known side of Loughrigg, which presents a singular number of striking and dissimilar views. First of all, on departing from the highway to Langdale, you climb a little hill; and there below you, in a sort of grassy basin on the side of Loughrigg, lies Wordsworth's favourite Loughrigg tarn; the "Speculum Diana" as he loves to call it; oval, deep, and clear as her mirror should be. Then you pass between two Westmoreland farm-houses, which shut in the road as it were, and make a little home-like scene, with their gables, and stacks of chimneys, and wooden galleries, and numerous out-buildings, festooned with ivy and climbing roses; which latter straggle through the loose stone wall, and scent the air, already so fragrant with the odours of the wayside herbs. Pass these homesteads, and you seem to have left all human habitation behind, the very fences disappear, as if the moorland and bog were not worth enclosing, until you come to a little glen; a ravine,-a "ghyll," where linger yet one or two of the ancient trees of Loughrigg forest; and, as if they had suggested the idea of planting, in the lower and more open and genial part of this "ghyll," there are many of the more hardy trees of a much later date, say fifty years old; but they have spread out their branches, and grown unchecked and unpruned, till they form quite a wood, of perhaps half a mile long, on the bleak mountain side, through which the soft grassy road passes on the way to Red Bank; where first you see Grasmere, lying calm and still, fathoms below you, and reflecting the blue heavens, and purple mountain tops in its glassy surface. But come back with me to the shady wood on Loughrigg side. We passed a stone cottage there in the more open part, where your attention was called off from more immediate objects, by the sunny peep into the valley between Loughrigg and Highclose. You were so absorbed by this glimpse into the bright fertile little dale on the left, with its "meadow green and mountain gray," that you did not notice the gray, old cottage, just up above the road, in the wood on the right, and yet it was very picturesque; truly "a nest in a green hold," with yet enough of sun to gild the diamond-paned windows, all through the long afternoon of a summer's day; and high enough to command a view through that opening in the trees for many a mile. It was large and roomy, though too irregular and low; and if we had peeped over the stone wall, we should have seen a trim little garden, with pleasant flowerborders under the low windows. This cottage always struck me as being in a beautiful situation, sheltered, but not too much shut in for health; with a bright look out into a distant scene of much variety. But a few years ago, it gave me more a feeling of desolation and hermit-like isolation from the world than it does now. Now there are signs of childhood about, and children's voices blend with the song of the wood-birds,—a child's garden may be detected in this strange little mixture of white pebbles, and fading dandelions and daisies; and while quite enough of house-leek, and stonecrop, and moss, and travellers' joy, are retained about the roof and walls to give it that rich variety of colour you see, yet much has been cleared away that formerly gave it the appearance of a dwelling, which was shrinking back into the green bosom of mother earth. The currant bushes are pruned down into fruitfulness; and the long rose-branches do not trail on the ground any more. Now listen to me while I tell you what I heard of the inhabitants of that cottage during the last thirty years. Sit down on this felled tree, and while the noonday hum of busy insects in the wood mingles with the hum of the bees in yonder hives, I will weave together what I have learnt of "Martha Preston." This house, and perhaps forty acres of land, some rocky and sterile, hardly fit even for feeding sheep, some mere bog, and as such, only good to furnish peat for fuel, and some rich meadow-land, formed the hereditary possessions of the Prestons, Westmoreland "statesmen." For two hundred years, certainly, this nook of land had been theirs; and for nearly as long a time had that house been their habitation, to judge from the initials and date carved up and down on the old oaken screen, the meal and clap-bread chest, the dresser and settle. They were probably made on the spot, out of the remains of some of the old foresttrees; and had been polished by many a housewife, before Jane Preston set her daughter Martha to rub them as her morning's task. Thomas and Jane Preston had two children, Martha and John. The sister was the elder by eight years, and felt like a mother to the little boy, whom she had nursed almost more than his real mother. For Jane had to go to market, to see after the cows and the dairy, to look after the sheep on the fell, and was a busy, bustling, managing woman; the "gray mare" some people said. If she had had time, she would have been fond of her children, but as it was, on week days they were rather in her way. John Preston was reserved and quiet; a man of few words, but sensible, conscientious, and thoroughly upright. He never talked about his duty; people did not in those days; but it might be seen that it was the rule of his life; and as such, it impressed itself upon his daughter's heart. I do not know if you have ever noticed it, but it strikes me that a very active mother does not always make a very active daughter. She does things too cleverly and eagerly herself, to have patience with the awkward and slow efforts of a learner. At least, such was the case with Jane Preston. Martha was too long in going to market with the butter; she would rather go herself. Martha did not know how to get the "afterings" from the cow, and the best milk was lost; so instead of showing her how to do it, she did it herself. Martha made the clap-bread too thick,-the butter with the water not pressed out,-she folded up the fleeces in the wrong way, so that they had to be done over again;-the end of it was, that Jane Preston did all the work in her own quick, sharp, clever manner, and Martha was left to nurse her little heart's darling, and roam about the wood, and dream and think. When she was about fifteen, her mother died,-quickly, sharply as she had lived. It was strange to know her dead, when to the last she had seemed so full of active, bustling life; but when she was gone, the husband and daughter she had often worried and annoyed, missed sorely the head and heart which were always full of thought for others, never for herself. Johnnie missed her the least of the three, Martha was his all-in-all. But Martha had now to try and take her mother's place in the farm; and had to see after sheep and cows, and go to market as well as she could. Johnnie was sent to Grasmere school. his large family made his means more limited, So they went on for several years, till Martha grew up to be a fine young woman, quiet, steady, and calm in her manners, but with a warm, sensitive heart, and a character full of imagination. Heart and character were attracted, (as hearts and characters sometimes are,) by her very opposite; a certain William Hawkshaw, who was engaged as "month's man," (helper for a month in the busy sheep-favourite everywhere for his manly capabilities shearing and hay-time,) by her father. He was one of the many sons of a statesman on the other side of Ambleside; his father possessed more land than John Preston, but then and cheerful social temper; and what faults and temptations he had, known principally to himself alone, as hitherto they had borne no fruit whereby men should recognise them. The next event was the calm sinking into death of John Preston, the elder. He told Martha, a few minutes before his death, what a comfort her engagement was to him in his dying hour; and above all things, charged her to be father and mother to Johnnie, now just sixteen; to see after his worldly affairs, but above all, to bear his soul up with hers to that heaven where the household should meet once more. So for Johnnie's sake she calmed herself in her orphanhood; and for his sake she ruled her daily life, until such time as she should leave him for a home of her own. ran about, after awhile, as if she had not been there, so still and motionless was she through the night of inward agony. When it was light enough to write, she took pen and paper and desired Will Hawkshaw to come to her. She could not express thoughts easily in this unwonted manner, so confined herself to this one request, reserving the reason till he should come. The next Sunday brought him as she had expected, and his quick eye understood the trouble, before she, with her sobbing voice, could put it into words. Then the tares sprang up. The old worldly maxims sown by his father covered and strangled the life out of the wheat. If Johnnie were shut up in an asylum, he and Martha might have the land, and marry at once. Thought of their marriage had been in Martha's mind too, and all bashfulness forgotten in the sense of her exceeding sorrow, she proposed it to him with a calm manner, only as her words struck upon her own ear a maidenly blush covered her face. "If you come here I can do all I need to do, and tend the poor lad too. The doctor gave but little hope; but God is powerful for many things, and I will never cease praying." But Will had other thoughts, the covetousness of his heart was as a mail-clad man, and he be Her share of her father's property was about £80; a bad year or two for stock had made it less than was one time expected. Will seemed a little surprised at this diminution, and for his sake she wished it had been more. The murrain among the cattle must have sprung from some diseased state of the air, for human beings began to be affected. A low kind of fever, (from the account I heard, a sort of typhoid fever, I imagine,) became prevalent; and to Martha's sickening terror, Johnnie caught it. When that danger came, it seemed as if her sisterly love swallowed up all other loves; in his helplessness, and rambling unconsciousness, he was once more the little baby she had carried about with the yearning love of a young mother. Kind neighbours, (neigh-lieved his power over Martha was enough to bours in the Samaritan sense,) came from Easedale and Skelwith, to help her to nurse him for the twenty days of raging illness; the doctor from Ambleside was sent for in distrust of the nearer Grasmere apothecary. And he recovered! But oh, wo! as he recovered, his wandering lost senses were not restored. The neighbours sighed and shook their heads, and looked mysteriously, long before the idea of this sorrow darkened life to Martha. But when he was strong enough to walk out, and when the stupor remained still upon his poor brain,—when the bright blaze of the woodfire called out a wild laugh of delight, at which he looked round affrighted at the noise himself had made, when he came cowering up to his sister for protection against the phantoms of his own conjuring up, then Martha knew the truth in her heart, that her brother was an idiot. The doctor confirmed this with sad gravity. That night Martha never went to bed, but sat alone mutely gazing at the gray embers among which the sparks ran to and fro. There was no doubt in her mind as to her duty, no perplexed struggling of that kind; but before her eyes his life, from his babyhood upwards, was displayed as in a panorama; and that memory of the past and thought of the present, made the tears roll unheeded down her cheeks, and drop unwiped upon her lap. The very mice persuade her to his views; but he was mistaken. She saw a great gulf between their souls that day-a greater, deeper gulf than that between her and the poor innocent who causelessly went in and out with mutterings and laughter, witless of the misery of which he was even then the occasion. Though Martha shrank and shuddered as she first began to understand Will, she hoped for many hours that it might be a mistake-a dream; that he was only joking (at a strange, sad, inappropriate time, to be sure); and the sun set that October day while they were still discussing the matter. I believe Will had no idea but that she would yield if he was relentless and firm enough. He had made many conquests among the farmer's daughters, and had a great idea of his own power; so when they parted that evening (he had to go to Patterdale to his work the next day), he thought he was only leaving her for a time to digest his words, and expected to be recalled, even with penitence on her part, before the next Sunday. He went so far as to talk of his prospects to one or two companions; but the letter from Martha never came. He had boasted of his power-and his power was defied. Then anger took the place of the love he had had; and at the best of times his way of loving had been very different from Martha's. And Martha lived alone with her idiot brother. She braced herself up to her life, and said that with God's help she would go through | The boasts he had uttered in the early days of it. So she did. Something of her mother's his estrangement of his unlimited power over character came out in the energy with which Martha, cut off the vain man from any chance she devoted herself to the management of the of a retreat from his first avowed determinafarm. She got help at busy times, and always tion; if, indeed, he ever wished to change his the advice of her neighbours was at her ser- mind. But independently of the difference of vice; for though they said little, they felt deep love, arising from the difference of character, respect for her. Johnnie, too, could help a he was a man thrown abroad in the shifting, little, and liked to be employed by her. He vivid scenes of life; she was a woman dwellwas as docile as a child in general, but some-ing alone, with ample leisure during the long, times (old people have told me), he was rest- long nights and solitary days, to nurse up his less, and wild, and irritable, and passers remembrance, or rather the remembrance of through the wood in dead of night heard his what she had fancied him to be. So it was not cries, and Martha's voice soothing him with without a shock, the depth of which was, I singing hymns,-her voice that never stayed suppose, known only to God, who searcheth all for all her anguish and anxiety, but went clear hearts, that, about three years after their last and bell-like up to God. That singing of hers interview, she heard of his intended marriage -that homely loving music used to quiet to the only daughter of a wealthy statesman him; but for all that she might have been doing in Troutbeck. As far as I could make out and bearing through the night, she was abroad from the account, vague as to time, yet graphic as early as ever in the mornings, and used to say as to particulars, given me, it must have been to sympathizing inquirers that Johnnie was close upon this period that the farmer saw her much the same. They respected her uncom- abroad in the fields in such deep distress, after plaining reserve too much to tell what they had one of Johnnie's restless nights. heard; and the poor creature had received such a terrible fright from the proposal made by Will, of sending her brother to an asylum, (or as she phrased it, a " 'mad-house,") that I believe she would have borne anything rather than have made revelations which should give any ground for such a proceeding. What she endured exactly can therefore never be known on earth. Once, I was told, a farmer, rising more than usually betimes to look after a horse that was ill, saw in the summer's dawn Martha walking to and fro in a little paddock, with hasty, agitated steps, wringing her hands; and then he thought he caught words of passionate prayer. But he did not go up to her, and passed on unobserved by the wood-road near the cottage; as he saw the open door, his mind suggested that perhaps there might be some reason for her violent emotion, in some sudden illness of the poor idiot, so he went in softly, and saw Johnnie lying asleep on the settle, with flushed face and disordered hair, as if he had been in great irritation; but he breathed as if in deep sleep (probably from exhaustion), and was tenderly covered up with Martha's Sunday cloak; so the man went on his way, and contented himself with sending his wife in the course of the day, ostensibly on some unimportant errand, but in reality to see how the sister and brother were going on. Johnnie then seemed pretty well, but Martha looked haggard and worn. But to all inquiries respecting her brother she answered so curtly, and unwillingly, that no real information was to be gained. All this time Will Hawkshaw had not been idle in his way of getting through the world. Of course the marriage soon followed the public announcement of such intention; and henceforward Martha's life presented no outward variety for many years. Young children grew up to man's estate,-all was unchanged to her. Girls and boys became old married people; her days and nights had the only variety of Johnnie's being well or ill. At last a change came; the solemn change of life into death. After a day or two of violent illness, Johnnie went to his long rest. Martha thought that in the speechless exhaustion which immediately preceded death she saw sense in his eyes, and a composed intelligence in his face; and certain it is, those poor eyes followed her moving form, as long as life gave them power to recognise her. After the funeral was over, the friendly neighbours came in more frequently than before, when their visits had been so unacceptable. Still the nearest were far away; and their lives were busy: and many and many a day, and many a week must have passed to Martha in solitude. She was asked again and again to the "gaieties" of the neighbourhood; to the christenings at Christmas, the favourite time in that country, the mountain sheepshearings. She was urged to accompany neighbours to the grand dissipation of sales by auction, but all this she steadily refused. Though she was more than a middle-aged woman now, her heart still beat, her face still flushed at the thought that at some of these gatherings she might meet the lover of her youth. She had never been able to displace her ideal by the thought of the man he really was, and as she acknowledged him to herself to |