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mares have been hovering these thirty years and longer. With Ireland on our hands, and the spirit-rappings of the ghostly "Eastern question," the Schleswig-Holstein connection certainly appears undesira

nounced by judgment of the Consistory of Berlin in March, 1849. A happier home was that of the second princess on our list, Wilhelmina of Wurtemburg, born July 11, 1844, the daughter of Prince Eugene by a princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. ble. There then remains only one more Prince Eugene died some five years ago, candidate to complete the list of the sacred and his children are known to be all well seven princesses. This last royal lady is the educated; but the formidable Doomsday- one whom rumor points out as the destined book reveals that there is much " morga- consort of our future king, Princess Alexnatic" blood in this family, and the fact andra of Denmark. Her royal highness that the mother of Princess Wilhelmina is was born December 1, 1844, and is the secrelated to Admiral Sir George Seymour ond child and eldest daughter of Prince would probably act as an obstacle to a Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, heir-expecunion with the royal house of Great Britain. tant to the throne of Denmark, and of The third candidate is Princess Anna of Princess Louise of Hesse-Cassel. She is Hesse, born May 25, 1843, the eldest daugh- described as very accomplished, as well as ter of Duke Charles of Hesse-Darmstadt, gifted with no inconsiderable share of physand sister of Prince Ludwig, who lately ical beauty, standing second only in the married our own Princess Alice. Little is latter respect to the far-famed princess known of this young royal lady; but she of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. The union is said to be very amiable, though not in- seems desirable in all respects, except the vested by nature with the "fatal gift of one that Prince Christian is as deeply inbeauty." Princess Marie of Saxe-Alten- volved in the Schleswig-Holstein maze as burg, youngest daughter of the late Duke his elder brother Frederick. He has shown, Edward, by a princess of Reuss-Greiz, is the however, either more wisdom or more amfourth candidate. She was born June 28, bition by taking the Danish side, and as 1845, and her father dying when she was recompense has been elected, in 1853, to be only seven years of age; she was brought the successor of King Frederick VII. The up in great seclusion. The fifth princess in friends of Prince Christian assert that he is the list is Catharine of Oldenburg, born aiming at something far higher than even September 21, 1846, daughter of Prince the throne of Denmark, and that it is not Peter of Oldenburg, "doctor honoris juris unlikely he will one day bear on his brow civilis" of the University of St. Petersburg, the triple crown of a new empire of Scanand President of the Civil and Clerical De- dinavia. But these are matters not needed partment in the Cabinet of his majesty to recommend fair Princess Alexandra to Alexander II. of Russia. Though probably the notice of the British public, though the the British public would not much object rumor of her selection as the bride of the to the doctorate of the father of this royal Prince of Wales has already put the diplolady, the office in the Czar's ministry might macy of one-half of Europe in movement, prove a stumbling-block. Princess Augusta created immense excitement at Berlin and of Schleswig-Holstein, born February 27, St. Petersburg, and caused a panic among 1844, the eldest daughter of Prince Fred- the Jews of Hamburg, who have been specerick of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg ulating in Schleswig-Holstein scrip. Here Glücksburg stands sixth on the list. The we only ask that our future queen should princess is known to be very amiable and of be a Protestant, her husband's own free charming manners; but her father unfortu- choice, and not entangled with burdensome nately, is mixed up greatly in that never-political obligations,—and all these recomending, still-beginning Schleswig-Holstein mendations, with beauty superadded, seem embroglio over which the Teutonic night-to meet in the princess.

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POETRY.-My Tribute, 98. Garibaldi's Fall, 98. The Battle Autumn of 1862, 98. Farewell, my Son! 98.

SHORT ARTICLES.-Bank of England Notes, 110. Improvement in Lighthouses, 110. Edward Gibbon Wakefield, 120. Saxon Language in England, 125. Mr. Hall's Arctic Expedition, 129. Lady Novelists, 133. Daniel Webster in his Coffin, 144. Pope's Generosity, 144. The Stone of Faith, 144. Earl Godwin's Mother, 144.

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THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862.

BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.

THE flags of war like storm-birds fly,
The charging trumpets blow;
Yet rolls no thunder in the sky,

No earthquake strives below.

And, calm and patient, Nature keeps
Her ancient promise well,

Though o'er her bloom and greenness sweeps
The battle's breath of hell.

And still she walks in golden hours
Through harvest-happy farms,

And still she wears her fruits and flowers
Like jewels on her arms.

What mean the gladness of the plain,
This joy of eve and morn,
The mirth that shakes the beard of grain
And yellow locks of corn?

Ah! eyes may well be full of tears,
And hearts with hate are hot;
But even-paced come round the years,
And Nature changes not.

She meets with smiles our bitter grief,
With songs our groans of pain;
She mocks with tint of flower and leaf
The war-field's crimson stain.

Still, in the cannon's pause, we hear

Her sweet thanksgiving-psalm;
Too near to God for doubt or fear,
She shares the eternal calm.

She knows the seed lies safe below
The fires that blast and burn;
For all the tears of blood we sow
She waits the rich return.

She sees with clearer eye than ours
The good of suffering born,-
The hearts that blossom like her flowers
And ripen like her corn.

Oh, give to us, in times like these,
The vision of her eyes;
And make her fields and fruited trees
Our golden prophecies!

Oh, give to us her finer ear!
Above this stormy din,

We, too, would hear the bells of cheer
Ring peace and freedom in !

-Atlantic Monthly.

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MACAULAY was never unknown. Before

fortune in stepping almost at one stride from eminence in the Union to triumphs in the House of Commons, is the actual realization

of the most dazzling hopes which their wildest fancy can suggest. The feat he accomplished will never be achieved again. No university rhetorician will ever again, under the present condition of English society, turn into a parliamentary orator, and Macaulay will be known as at once the most brilliant and the last of those men of genius whose university reputation opens for them the career of political life. Other men had, before his time, gained a seat in Parliament on the strength of their youthful reputation; but not many stood the rough test of being tried by the peculiar taste of the House of Commons. Macaulay vindicated the judgment of the men who applauded his harangues at the Union. No one can say that, as an orator, he failed. A foreigner, whose testimony cannot be suspected of partiality, bears witness to the extraordinary effect produced by his speeches in favor of Reform, and tells how even the Opposition "joined in the roar of applause," and "the House rung for many minutes with peal on peal of approbation, as the Speaker resumed his seat." Time and experience added to his skill, and not long before his death, Mr. Whitty saw "English gentlemen, collected to hear the celebrated orator, as wild with delight as an opera house after Grisi at ten." The Cambridge Union may look with unchecked pride on the greatest orator it has ever pro

he had ceased to be a boy, his friends and teachers had noted his astonishing talents, his tutor found him the most agreeable of companions for a ramble on a Saturday afternoon, and Hannah More longed for the day when "Tom might be in Parliament and beat them all." Thus at eighteen he began life with a reputation greater than most men attain at the end of a successful career. Nor were his friends mistaken in their hopes and anticipations. Throughout his whole university career he was felt to be a man destined for great things. A few extracts from his speeches while at Cambridge fully justify the admiration of his companions. He was, in his tutor's words, "an extraordinary young man,” and addressed the Union in language which has all the beauties and merits which gained for him the ear of Parliament. He remains, indeed, the last and greatest of the men for whom fame gained at the university has opened the doors of the House of Commons. To pass from the Union to Westminster, to address real members of Parliament, to bow to the decision of a real speaker, to influence by their eloquence divisions which may affect the fate of the nation, is the secret ambition which stirs the soul of the enthusiastic partisans who week by week parody all the formalities of Parliament, in addresses directed to the president and cheered by "the honorable duced. But though Macaulay succeeded as members of the Oxford or Cambridge Unions." But they well know their ambi- him to overcome the bars which keep most an orator, though his reputation enabled tion to be but a day-dream, and that the ad- Englishmen of the middle classes out of miration of a London vestry is more likely office, though his literary fame gained for to lead to a seat in the House of Commons him honors never before conceded to success than the enthusiastic applause of all the un- in literature, every one feels that as a politidergraduates of all the universities in Eng-cian he failed. Canning and Palmerston, Peel or Lord John Russell will be known to posterity as political leaders; no one will ever care to remember that Macaulay occupied a seat in the Cabinet. The fact of the failure is undoubted; its causes are not at first sight easy to discover. But though it will long remain a puzzle to historians how it came to pass that the most popular political writer of his day, and one of the most successful orators who have ever charmed Parliament, with a character pure from all blemish, and almost free even from the at

land. The real peculiarity of Macaulay's position is that he was enabled by the force of his own genius, and by the favor of peculiar circumstances, to achieve exactly that success of which other undergraduates dream and dream in vain. His brilliant essays were precisely what they would write, could they attain the power. His university reputation is the distinction which, of all other distinctions, they covet; and, above all his

The Public Life of Lord Macaulay. By the Rev. Frederick Arnold, B.A., Christ Church, Oxford. Tinsley Brothers.

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tacks of slander, should have failed in with which he held to one political creed as achieving an amount of political eminence the error of his career. This solution of his which has often been attained by men of far failure is, however, untenable. Whether the less talent and of damaged reputation, a doctrines of the Whig school of politicians careful investigation into the circumstances are true or false, they have undoubtedly of Macaulay's public life and the peculiarity been adopted by the mass of the English of his genius accounts for his want of suc- people. Almost every reform which the cess, and throws some curious light on the Edinburgh reviewers advocated has been difficulties which beset the career of an Eng-carried out, and where they stopped short lish politician who attempts to rise to power from the ranks of the middle classes.

in the course of improvement there the nation too has halted. Macaulay's principles Some minor obstacles stood in his way. differed so little from those of the politicians A certain want of tact is apparent in many of his day that they can have been but a of his most trifling acts. This deficiency slight obstacle, if they were an obstacle at caused him to date his address to the Edin- all, in the path of his progress. Two or burgh electors from Windsor Castle, led him three causes acted, we believe, in combinainto a scrape at his first introduction to the tion to hinder his political triumph. He society of Calcutta, and probably was the possessed talent, reputation, and high charcause of a kind of personal unpopularity acter. One thing he lacked, in that he which his kindness of heart and freedom did not possess either rank or wealth. from petty faults would otherwise make This want was his first and greatest hinunaccountable. His rugged independence, drance. The middle class respects high birth whilst almost the most admirable feature in and worships property. For talent it has his career, was not calculated to win popu- no respect, or rather, it has a respect closely larity. As a young man, though burning allied with envy. Hence a politician who to enter public life, he risked his election at attempts to rise without money or connecLeeds rather than court applause by giving tions, is exposed at once to the envy of his his approval to a Bill which he conceived to equals and to the jealousy of his superiors. embody, under a show of humanity, a plan The former give him at any rate no help, the little calculated to do good, and absolutely latter dislike him as an intruder. Literary refused to give an account to the electors of men have, it is true, risen to power; but it his religious opinions. Men respect but do has been in spite of their literary reputation. not love those who treat them with some- Disraeli has been more hampered by his thing like disdain; and the conduct of Edin- novels than by his disgraceful attacks on burgh, which first disgraced itself by mak- England's last great minister. Bulwer, ing its most distinguished representative the though he is a baronet, is looked on with victim of a party of whom one-half were some suspicion because he is an author; fanatics and the other half hypocrites, and, and Macaulay was attacked as "Babblelater, sought by something like servility to tongue" by the Times, with a discourteous regain the glory of being represented by the vehemence which would never have been greatest of English writers, is an exact ex- employed towards a statesman guiltless of ample of the caprice with which the mass of having written epigrammatic sentences. mankind treat leaders whose honesty and The existence of the popular prejudice want of pliancy prevent them from bending against a writer who was not rich enough to their principles so as to suit the popular cry live without using his pen, told we cannot of the moment. Still other statesmen have but think unfortunately on Macaulay's conknown how to rise in spite of faults in man- duct. He wished apparently to succeed in ner and without sacrificing the most punc- political life, to gain a fortune, and to obtain tilious independence, and no account of Ma- a lasting literary reputation. To achieve caulay's career is satisfactory which does not any one of these objects of his ambition give some deeper cause for his want of suc- would have tasked the energy and talent of cess than those minor defects which, though most men. With his powers he might have not without influence, are never the ruling accomplished two out of the three, and he power in a great man's life. Some critics was perhaps right in thinking that if he were would be disposed to point to the tenacity to become a statesman, the possession of

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