refrain from peeping through the crevice of the maiden's heart was about to be given to a curtain. shadow ! Is it so unusual a misfortune, so rare a triumph? By and by Feathertop paused, and, throwing himself into an imposing attitude, seemed to summon the fair girl to survey his figure and resist him longer if she could. His star, his embroidery, his buckles glowed at that instant with unutterable splendour; the picturesque hues of his attire took a richer depth of colouring; there was a gleam and polish over his whole presence betokening the perfeet witchery of well-ordered manners. The maiden raised her eyes and suffered them to linger upon her companion with a bashful and admiring gaze. Then, as if desirous of judging what value her own simple comeliness might have side by side with so much bril length looking-glass in front of which they happened to be standing. It was one of the truest plates in the world, and incapable of flattery. No sooner did the images therein reflected meet Polly's eye than she shrieked, shrank from the stranger's side, gazed at him for a moment in the wildest dismay, and sank insensible upon the floor. Feathertop likewise had looked towards the mirror, and there beheld, not the glittering mockery of his outside show, but a picture of the sordid patchwork of his real composition, stripped of all witchcraft. But there was nothing very miraculous to be seen; nothing-except the trifles previously noticed—to confirm the idea of a supernatural peril environing the pretty Polly. The stranger, it is true, was evidently a thorough and practised man of the world, systematic, and self-possessed, and therefore the sort of a person to whom a parent ought not to confide a simple young girl, without due watchfulness for the result. The worthy magistrate, who had been conversant with all degrees and qualities of mankind, could not but perceive every motion and gesture of the distinguished Feathertop come in its proper place; nothing had been left rude or native in him; a welldigested conventionalism had incorporated itself thoroughly with his substance and trans-liancy, she cast a glance towards the full formed him into a work of art. Perhaps it was this peculiarity that invested him with a species of ghastliness and awe. It is the effect of anything completely and consummately artificial, in human shape, that the person impresses us as an unreality, and as having hardly pith enough to cast a shadow upon the floor. As regarded Feathertop, all this resulted in a wild, extravagant, and fantastical impression, as if his life and being were akin to the smoke that curled upward from his pipe. But pretty Polly Gookin felt not thus. The pair were now promenading the room; Feathertop with his dainty stride and no less dainty grimace; the girl with a native maidenly grace, just touched, not spoiled, by a slightly affected manner, which seemed caught from the perfect artifice of her companion. The longer the interview continued, the more charmed was pretty Polly, until, within the first quarter of an hour (as the old magistrate noted by his watch), she was evidently beginning to be in love. Nor need it have been witchcraft that subdued her in such a hurry; the poor child's heart, it may be, was so very fervent that it melted her with its own warmth as reflected from the hollow semblance of a lover. No matter what Feathertop said, his words found depth and reverberation in her ear; no matter what he did, his action was heroic to her eye. And by this time it is to be supposed there was a blush on Polly's cheek, a tender smile about her mouth, and a liquid softness in her glance; while the star kept coruscating on Feathertop's breast, and the little demons careered with more frantic merriment than ever about the circumference of his pipe-bowl. 0, pretty Polly Gookin, why should these imps rejoice so madly that a silly The wretched simulacrum! We almost pity him. He threw up his arms with an expression of despair that went further than any of his previous manifestations towards vindicating his claims to be reckoned human; for, perchance the only time since this so often empty and deceptive life of mortals began its course, an illusion had seen and fully recognized itself. III. Mother Rigby was seated by her kitchen hearth in the twilight of this eventful day, and had just shaken the ashes out of a new pipe, when she heard a hurried tramp along the road. Yet it did not seem so much the tramp of human footsteps as the clatter of sticks or the rattling of dry bones. "Ha!" thought the old witch, "what step is that? Whose skeleton is out of its grave now, I wonder?" A figure burst headlong into the cottage door. It was Feathertop! His pipe was still alight; the star still flamed upon his breast; the embroidery still glowed upon his garments; nor had he lost, in any degree or manner that could be estimated, the aspect that assimilated him with our mortal brotherhood. But yet, in some indescribable way (as is the case with all that has deluded us when once found out), the poor reality was felt beneath the cunning artifice. "What has gone wrong?" demanded the witch. "Did yonder sniffling hypocrite thrust my darling from his door? The villain! I'll set twenty fiends to torment him till he offer thee his daughter on his bended knees!" "No, mother," said Feathertop despondingly; "it was not that." "Did the girl scorn my precious one?" asked Mother Rigby, her fierce eyes glowing like two coals of Tophet. "I'll cover her face with pimples! Her nose shall be as red as the coal in my pipe! Her front teeth shall drop In a week hence she shall not be worth out! thy having!" "Let her alone, mother," answered poor Feathertop; "the girl was half won; and methinks a kiss from her sweet lips might have made me altogether human. But," he added, after a brief pause, and then a howl of selfcontempt, "I've seen myself, mother! I've seen myself for the wretched, ragged, empty thing I am! I'll exist no longer!" Snatching the pipe from his mouth, he flung it with all his might against the chimney, and at the same instant sank upon the floor, a medley of straw and tattered garments, with some sticks protruding from the heap, and a shrivelled pumpkin in the midst. The eye-holes were now lustreless; but the rudely carved gap, that just before had been a mouth, still seemed to twist itself into a despairing grin, and was so far human. "Poor fellow!" quoth Mother Rigby, with a rueful glance at the relics of her ill-fated contrivance. "My poor, dear, pretty Feathertop! There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world, made up of just such a jumble of worn-out, forgotten, and good-for-nothing trash as he was! Yet they live in fair repute, and never see themselves for what they are. And why should my poor puppet be the only one to know himself and perish for it?" While thus muttering, the witch had filled a fresh pipe of tobacco, and held the stem between her fingers, as doubtful whether to thrust it into her own mouth or Feathertop's. "Poor Feathertop!" she continued. "I could easily give him another chance and send him forth again to-morrow. But no; his feelings are too tender, his sensibilities too deep. He seems to have too much heart to bustle for his own advantage in such an empty and heartless world. Well! well! I'll make a scarecrow of him after all. 'Tis an innocent and a useful vocation, and will suit my darling well; and if each of his human brethren had as fit a one, 'twould be better for mankind; and as for this pipe of tobacco, I need it more than he." So saying, Mother Rigby put the stem between her lips. "Dickon!" cried she, in her high, sharp tone, "another coal for my pipe!" THE LAST NIGHT AT HOME. The mystery of the woman's life, The night before she's crown'd a wife! Lo, sleepless in her little bed, She lies and counts the hours till noon. Ere this, to-morrow, she'll be wed, Ere this? Alas, how strangely soon! A fearful blank of ignorance Lies, manifest, across her way, Of home and all accustom'd things. To comprehend the greater gain; All care for other earthly things; To leave for aye her happy nest; Ah, should she, miserable, lose Dissolved by time and marriage dues! O'erfilms her apprehensive eye (The virgin's strength and veiled guide,) She prays, and casts the reins of chance To Love, nor recks what shall betide. The Angel in the House. THE GRANDMOTHER. [Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., F.R.S., born at Somerby, | Maud, and other Poems, 1855; The Idylls of the King, Lincolnshire, 1809; poet laureate. He was educated by his father, the late Rev. G. C. Tennyson, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where in 1829 he gained the Chancellor's medal for his English poem entitled Timbuctoo. Two years before that event, he had published, in conjunction with his brother Charles, a small volume under the title of Poems by Two Brothers.1 In 1830 he issued Poems, chiefly Lyrical; another volume, partly reprints, two years later, and a third in 1842. These were followed by The Princess, 1847; In Memoriam, 1850; Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, 1852; 1859; Enoch Arden, 1864; The Holy Grail, 1869; The Window, or the Songs of the Wrens, 1870, &c. Mr. Tennyson has added repeatedly to the Idylls of the King and the work was not completed until the publication of Gareth and Lynette in 1873. On the death of Wordsworth, he was appointed poet laureate." The Edinburgh Review says: "The particular power by which Mr. Tennyson surpasses all recent English poets is precisely that of sustained perfection of style." He has obtained general recognition as the first of modern English poets A complete edition of his works is published by Strahan & Co. And Willy, my eldest-born, is gone, you say, little Anne? For, Annie, you see, her father was not the man to save, Willy, my beauty, my eldest-born, the flower of the flock; "Here's a leg for a babe of a week!" says doctor; and he would be bound, Strong of his hands, and strong on his legs, but still of his tongue! I ought to have gone before him: I wonder he went so young. I cannot cry for him, Annie: I have not long to stay; Why do you look at me, Annie? you think I am hard and cold; 1 Wordsworth upon reading this volume at first thought Charles the better poet of the two; but afterwards altered his opinion. *The duties and origin of this office are somewhat obscare. The poet laureate was to furnish the state with a measure of praise and verse twice a year. The Delphic laurel consecrated to Apollo in the mythology of the Greeks, or the garland of oak leaves given to victors in the Roman Capitoline games, probably first suggested the literary distinction of poet laureate, which, with some variations of ceremonies, was maintained until the reign of Theodocius, who abolished it as a remnant of pagan superstition. The title was not used again until it was conferred upon Petrarch, who revived the spirit and studies of the age of Augustus. After Petrarch the title was bestowed on Philelphus, a satirical poet of the fifteenth century; then on Tasso; then on Quezno, the buffoon of Leo X.! and next upon Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini The following anecdote is not without meaning: A poor poet, hoping for some reward. presented a panegyric to Pope Pius III., who sent him an epigram to this effect: The following is a list of English poets laureate, but the appointment of the first two named is considered doubtful by some authorities: John Skelton, who died 1529; Edmund Spenser, died 1598-9; Samuel Daniel, who was appointed to the laureateship in the year of Spenser's death; Ben Jonson, appointed 1619; Sir William Davenant, 1637; John Dryden, 1668; dismissed the same year on account of being a Papist; Thomas Shadwell, 1688; Nahum Tate, 1692; Nicholas Rowe, 1716; Lawrence Ensden, 1718; Colley Cibber, 1730; W. Whitehead, 1757; Thomas Warton, 1785; Henry James Pye, 1790; Robert Southey, 1813 (the laurel was offered to Scott in this year and he declined it); William Wordsworth, 1843; Alfred Tennyson, 1850. The dates given are those of the appointment, which was generally made immediately after the death of the preceding laureate. For I remember a quarrel I had with your father, my dear, I mean your grandfather, Annie: it cost me a world of woe, For Jenny, my cousin, had come to the place, and I knew right well And the parson made it his text that week, and he said likewise, And Willy had not been down to the farm for a week and a day; And I cried myself well-nigh blind, and all of an evening late I climb'd to the top of the garth, and stood by the road at the gate. The moon like a rick on fire was rising over the dale, And whit, whit, whit, in the bush beside me chirrupt the nightingale. All of a sudden he stopt: there past by the gate of the farm, Willy stood up like a man, and look'd the thing that he meant; And he turn'd, and I saw his eyes all wet, in the sweet moonshine: "Sweetheart, I love you so well that your good name is mine. And what do I care for Jane, let her speak of you well or ill; "Marry you, Willy!" said I, "but I needs must speak my mind, So Willy and I were wedded: I wore a lilac gown; And the ringers rang with a will, and he gave the ringers a crown. But the first that ever I bare was dead before he was born, Shadow and shine is life, little Annie, flower and thorn. That was the first time, too, that ever I thought of death. But I wept like a child that day, for the babe had fought for his life. His dear little face was troubled, as if with anger or pain: I look'd at the still little body-his trouble had all been in vain. For Willy I cannot weep, I shall see him another morn: But I wept like a child for the child that was dead before he was born. But he cheer'd me, my good man, for he seldom said me nay: And he died, and I could not weep-my own time seem'd so near. But I wish'd it had been God's will that I, too, then could have died: I began to be tired a little, and fain had slept at his side. Pattering over the boards, my Annie who left me at two, And Harry and Charlie, I hear them too-they sing to their team: I am not always certain if they be alive or dead. And yet I know for a truth, there's none of them left alive; For mine is a time of peace, it is not often I grieve; To be sure the preacher says, our sins should make us sad: And Willy's wife has written, she never was overwise. Get me my glasses, Annie: thank God that I keep my eyes. |