Scene 4. Walter and the lady have met beside a river; he tells her a story of a lady and a page, actually again telling his love under this guise, which poem contains itself two or three episodical poems, so that you get as confused as a Chancery lawyer with a complicated intermarriage. At last he has the courage to drop the mask and pop the question. Salts and hysterics! she is just going to be married, and the banns are already out-asked.

Scene 5 sees Walter very

much Werterised, and reproving a peasant

for his happiness, uttering this bit of Byronism:

We are immortals, and must bear with us
Through all eternity this hateful being;
Restlessly flitting from pure star to star,
The memory of our sins, deceits and crimes
Will eat into us like a poisoned robe.

Scene 6, and Walter is in London, again reading a MS. with an episode. Edward, a cynic, enters, and disputes with Walter on optimism. Scene 7, Edward decoys him down into Bedfordshire, describing the beauty of his host's daughter, who seems already to have driven his former love out of his heart.

The 8th opens as the Manor House. They are making a night of it, and several descriptive songs are sung; and Walter pleads hoarseness, and volunteers a story, in which, with his old love of mystification, he tells his own early struggles and desire for fame, but Violet-that is the beauty's name-detects him.

Scene 9 finds him at Violet's feet, no longer mysterious, and actually reading her chapters from his own life, with accounts of former love, as much coloquinteda to the lady, we should think, as the praises of a dead husband to a widow's suitor.

Scene 10 shows him moping about a city late at night, and raving about a love we thought already shaken off.

Charles and Edward talk about Walter, and tell us he has written a poem, and is already famous, having fulfilled his intention:

I'll rest myself, O world, awhile on thee,

And half in earnest, half in jest, I'll cut
My name upon thee, pass the arch of Death,
Then on a stair of stars go up to Heaven.

The 13th, last scene of all that ends this "strange, eventful history," is not second childishness, but good earnest. Walter returns to Violet, declares himself eternally tormented by recollections of his past love, and proves that his heartache was a mere shooting pain by marrying Violet.

We can only say with quaint Touchstone" Truly shepherd in respect of itself, it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is naught." In respect that it is full of beautiful thoughts, it is good; but in respect it is a continuous poem, it is naught-stark naught.

One or two other poems of inferior merit, and some rather pointless sonnets, conclude the volume.

the merits of

Let us now consider the faults, having fairly summed up the poems. A critic is not a despot or an executioner; he shouldn't stab like a masked assassin, or scalp like an Indian chieftain; he should

be a calm, impartial friend, with a wish to discover merit even in the smallest degree, but still a determination to resist indiscriminate admiration, and to point out what errors may be removed, and what are too deeply-seated for such health-giving amputation.

We have already pointed out Mr. Smith's Scotticisms; we must now select some jarring affectations and faults less excusable. Page 78: I saw a misery perched

I' the melancholy corners of his mouth,

Like griffins on each side my father's gate.

A most strained and fantastic image, carrying you no further, and neither suggesting nor illustrating.

Page 79: "Whistling silks." Silks rustle, corduroys whistle.
Page 78:

Hug the earth,

And crack its golden ribs,

Out Herod's Herod. Fat isn't health, or tumidity grandeur.
Page 69:

How poor our English to your Indian darks—

a miserable piece of lisping.

Occasionally we find words of very questionable taste: as "breechless Cupid," "the sky's unwinking eye," "full-blown chest;" or rhymes as indistinct as "vague" and "Lubnaig," or "Ganges" and "ranges," or a line as deadly flat as this incredible common-place:

My heart is in the grave with her,

The family went abroad.

A shaft dissolving in mist is a false and impossible image. In page 27, a poet is thus described:

He was one

Who could not help it.

"Writing pearls" is a new thing, not yet introduced into England, and therefore we must not comment on the phrase.

though a fine image, is prosaically handled, and sounds as dismal prose as Wordsworth's sonnet commencing with that fine outburst:

Dear Jones, when you and I.

In page 28, he describes a spirit accosted on the threshold of heaven by a departed poet, whose first inquiry is if his poem has reached another edition?- a pretty thought to distress a soul's mind.

Mr. Smith is scarcely susceptible of the ludicrous, or he would not use such punnible phrases as the "van of the world," or say,

'Neath dry crusts of dead tongues he found

Truth, fresh and golden winged.

Why, it's for all the world like finding an unexpected bit of egg concealed in a dark corner of a goose pie.

"Love sitting like an angel on the heart" is a painful image; for either Love is heavy, and the heart breaks, or it is slippery, and he will roll off.

“The sun lolling in the west" is vulgar, and so is "rubbing clothes" with Fate or any one else. Fate is generally represented without clothes, so "rubbing noses"-the New Zealand salutation-would be better.

"Veins of mud" is an overstrained simile.

Mr. Smith sometimes repeats his own images. A man may be too fond of his children. In page 20, "a thought rushing past like a blazing ship upon a mighty wind" is repeated in page 186.

In page 88 he has :

In page 94:

A day unsealed with sunset.

Sunset burning like the seal of God
Upon the close of day;

a thought scarcely worth reduplication.

In page 235, Lady Barbara, a sort of faint Imogene, says to her returned lover, with exquisite pathos:

With a wan smile methinks I'm but half blest, Now, when I've found thee, after weary years, I cannot see thee, love! so blind I am with tears. But this beautiful thought becomes trite when we find it used again in the "Drama of Life."

Disembogue" (page 180), applied to the soul, is an ugly word. "Nebula condensing to an orb," is pedantic. We might quarrel with our poet for his marked love for Marc Antony so often repeated, but we will forbear. We might quarrel with such words as "swelter," "squab," "smell," "greenery" or such phrases as "empty soul," "star packed," and "voice of larks;" but let them pass : a fico for the phrase."

66

Let us not part in anger. A mind more deeply poetical than Mr. Smith's we have seldom met with, rhythm more full, deep, and melodious, or blank verse more sweet or more vigorous. His command of language is boundless, and many of his sentences are at once unmatchable and unimprovable. Let him only keep his imagery more subservient to his main subject; let him put a curb on his Pegasus, and, to use the parting words of Lavater to Fuseli, let him " do only HALF he can do."

SECOND SIGHT.

Ir is almost a shame, I think, to speak of second sight, presentiments, auguries, and death-omens, with a bright August sun lighting up the harvest fields, and the waters rippling in upon the beach with the scarce ebb and flow of a full contentment. Such things seem now out of place; and yet, I know not why, there is a chord in the human heart to which the supernatural always strikes home. We are never wearied of prying into these hidden mysteries, though unconsciously we must connect them with gloomy ideas, or we should not always, I think, prefer the twilight for their relation. There is something in the very howling of a November wind, in the intense dreariness and bleakness without, that makes us draw closer around the fire, and there, with hushed voices and startled looks, we are sure to find ourselves rushing at once upon a ghost story. The query is so natural" Do you believe in ghosts ?" and the answer, in most cases, so unvarying: "No, I cannot say that I do; and yet there are some curious things that we cannot account for; if you look upon them even as coincidences, they are very remarkable, and I will tell you an instance that happened to myself." And then, of course, begins some wonderful history. Now is the time that the beating of the rain against the window-panes sound to us as warning knocks, and the shrieking of the tempest is to our prophetic imagination as voice of Banshee bewailing at our doorstead. Now we draw as by common consent into a closer circle, and furtively glance across at the dark shadows nestled so snugly in the recesses of the room. Yes! a ghost story belongs as of right to a winter fireside, but here, in the face of all that is bright and beautiful, what have we to do with it? Why, even the "rapping spirits" in London must find it rather hot work performing for public benefit through the dog days! We cannot help thinking it would be much more congenial to their feelings to float about (as we have no doubt in our own hearts they really do), invisible but permitted ministers of good on the blue ether, whispering better influences and happier thoughts to men's minds, and still, as their guardian angels, leading them forward on the upright path.

No! there is something too matter of fact in these "rapping spirits" to please us; they are too much mixed up with the fashionable excitements of the day to touch that true chord in the human heart of which we before made mention. Of a spiritual nature ourselves, it is not to be wondered at that marvellous agencies and spiritual mysteries should more or less affect all of us, but I think they come closer home in the prophetic dream, permitted vision, or seemingly authorised presentiment, than when we thus coolly pay down our money to take out its worth in knocks from under a mahogany table, according to a Medium's interpretation.

So much, however, for preambulation. The story I am going to relate to you I received by word of mouth from a friend, who was himself an eye-witness of the fact, and by no means the sort of person likely to let his judgment be carried away by his imagination. Vouching thus for the principal features of the case, I must, of course, leave you to draw your own conclusions.

MY FRIEND'S STORY.

I have been fond of the sea all my life, and they say that all sailors are more or less superstitious. That, however, is not my weakness, for I generally investigate things pretty closely, and there are very few of your supposed phantoms that will bear rough handling; though I am not going to deny the existence of supernatural visions. I should just as soon think of entering a protest against the Spirit World. All I think is, that it would be better if men only answered for what they have them selves seen. There was a curious thing that happened to me some years ago in the Highlands, and which left a very painful impression upon my mind. I was staying in the Orkney's, and had made acquaintance there with the captain of a small vessel that traded constantly to a certain sea port town in Scotland. The man's name was Campbell, a tall, fine, stalwart fellow, I seem to see him now, with his Scotch bonnet, open face, and clear, intelligent blue eyes. He, and, indeed, all his family were accounted Seers. This is much more common in Scotland than with us. It is a gift that appears to be handed down from father to son, and most reverently is the power accorded to them held in estimation. I used some→ times, when gazing on Campbell's face, to fancy I could tell when this spell of Second Sight was upon him. He had eyes of that deep and peculiar blue which takes every shade from the reflection of the moment's feelings, and at times, when he was thoughtful, I could see a film steal across them, as though their vision was directed inwards, and for the time being all visible sense of the outward world lost to them. I never used to disturb him in these moods-in fact, I had a sort of reverence for them; something of that hushed, still feeling, which is, I think, inspired by all mysteries above our reach.

I knew, for he had told me so, that he was engaged to a merchant's daughter in the seaport town to which he was in the habit of trading. It had been a long engagement, but now the period of his probation was drawing to a close, and after his next cruise he was to return and marry her. I knew from little things and my own observation how much he was attached to her not from what he said, for the Scotch are a proud people, and not fond of protestations or outward demonstrations of affection, though you may search wide in the world ere you find truer lovers or more attached husbands. There was a pride, however, in the whole man when she was mentioned- -a fearless confidence, and an assured trust that many a noble lady might have been proud of. I have been told since that she was very beautiful, and much devoted to him. Certainly there must have been more than a common attachment subsisting between the two.

I told you that Campbell had to make one more cruise before he returned to his mistress. As the voyage was longer than usual, and over a part of the seas I had not before navigated, I was not surprised at his request that I should accompany him.

We had beautiful weather for the journey; the whole crew appearing to rejoice in their master's satisfaction, and "all went merry as a marriage bell." Still at times there was a nameless depression that appeared to sweep over Campbell; it would come upon him in his brightest moments, and check the light jest just as it trembled on his tongue.