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Deep in his eyes the love-lights strove,
He clasped her in a close embrace;
With lips that shook with grateful love,

He kissed her eyes-he kissed her face—
He wept upon that tender brow:

"Dearest, the darkness, leaves me now."

And here we leave them. Wander on immortal children! Your lovely imperfections have made ye ever young. The poet has decreed that always the soft music of your voices shall be heard, and that ye shall haunt his vales, and river-brinks, and lonesome sandy shores for ever!

"The Cripple," and "Mother and Child," are characterised by the same fidelity to Nature-the same sympathy with affliction, and the same exquisite simplicity of diction for which "The Blind Boy" is remarkable. In "The Cripple," the poet's power, in giving a fresh interest to ordinary scenes, is best evinced.

It is to the Parables we turn for examples of the author's humour. "Old Morality" and "Old Souls" are remarkable productions. The humour is a trifle grim, perhaps the sentiment has an occasional flavour of cynicism, even; but it is only a flavour. A kindly and sympathetic teacher is speaking; and where he deplores the lapses of his fellow men, it is not because he despises, but because he loves them. In both of these poems we come suddenly upon unexpected turns of thought conveyed in epigrams, quaint and instructive as the inscriptions on sun-dials; or upon similes, strange but appropriate. They are generally unforced; but sometimes they give pleasure to the ear before the meaning can be caught, and always they are calculated to remain with the memory. There are many current quotations popular by reason of their age, and the universal respect paid to them

-many

jewels five words long,

That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time,
Sparkle for ever,

that are less charged with wisdom, and less felicitously expressed than some of the gems in these parables.

the

Following these two poems are two others, in which a striking contrast is drawn between the effect of country and city life on young soul. We have space only to give an example of the careful way in which our poet goes to work, by quoting the opening verse of each:

THE LILY OF THE VALLEY.

There was a wood, it does not change,

Not while the thrush pipes through its glades,

And she who did its thickets range,

Has willed her sunbeams to its shades.

There still the lily weaves a net,

With bluebell, primrose, violet.

THE DEADLY NIGHTSHADE.

There was a haunt, it does not change,
Not while the fiend its path invades ;

And he who did its alleys range

Has willed his penance to its shades.

There still the nightshade breathes its pest
On fallen spirits not at rest.

We refer those who would wish to follow up the two pictures to the book itself-such poems are not to be described by

extracts.

It has been a custom with poets to give us in verse their ideal bard. To go no farther back, it will be in the memory of readers that Mr. Tennyson has in more than one poem set forth the qualifications and functions of the singer, and very wonderful those qualifications and functions are:

And again:

The poet in a golden clime was born,
With golden stars above.

Vex not thou the poet's mind

With the shallow wit

Vex not thou the poet's mind,

For thou can'st not fathom it.

He regards the gifted creature as a being super-human-at all events as superior to the failings of ordinary mortals-and enjoying a chartered immunity from common frailty-living apart in solemn and contemptuous grandeur-knowing all men but not necessarily sympathising with any "a great and ever glorious demi-god!" It would be interesting to compare the laureat's ideal with that presented in the "Parables and Tales." Interesting for the sake of the comparison itself-and interesting as showing Dr. Hake's attitude as a poet of the day. We can only suggest the comparison.

In the last of these poems, the ideal poet is presented as a man full of years and experience-with a memory well-stored, and an experience ever widening.

A man of heart and aim so matched

They journeyed on as two in one,
The heart and aim each other watched
And ever asked what each had done.

Imagination he has; but imagination governed by a kingly mind. The surrounding multitude is convulsed in political and polemical disputes-and know not the new spring from the one before

But he whom Nature smiled upon
Beheld a trail of light, a ring,
Left in the pathway of the sun;

To him the spring was a new spring
The opening leaves were newly green-
New burnished were the skies between.

He ranged unheeding of the hour

The hills, the glades, the forest's night;
Crossing the path where sunbeams pour
Through walls of leaves a river's light;
Halting some curious sight to see
If but how ivy climbed the tree.

Faint waves of sound would come and go,
Where far-off elms the sunset spanned,
That seemed the rooks, then seemed the flow
Of waves upon a pebbly sand;
While visions floated o'er the woods

Of distant shores and grating floods.

Then is the poet seized with the desire to make others share his bliss, and then the dream of fame, and then the disappoint

ment

Proudly be drifted on-his age

His genius full for fortune's tide.
Then he began his life to gauge,
With his austere and lofty pride.
Yet did the forest hear the sigh,

His great soul breathed when none was nigh.

On the whole we regard this volume-small as it is in compass as a really important addition to our store of poetic literature. Whether this opinion will be largely shared we know notthough it would not in the slightest degree alter our opinion either of the poet or of the public, if the circulation were to be restricted to a select circle of fastidious and thoughtful readers-epicures in poetry. In the Tales there is a tender pathos that makes its way direct to the hearts of the most worldly and careless of us. In the Parables an undercurrent of philosophical teaching which may afford fresh thought even to professional thinkers. Everywhere a delicate humour plays like a sunbeam. We may write of Dr. Hake as he does of his own ideal poet-he is

To Nature true and true to Art.

The illustrations by Mr. Hughes are very pretty. Charles Lamb considered it an essential in book illustrations that they should not pretend to emulate the text. Mr. Hughes's pictures fall in with this requirement. The cover is enriched with a quaint and elegant design. If the success of "Parables and Tales" is only half as great as its merits, the book will achieve a large popularity.

BABY VALENTINE;

OR, A VALENTINE'S DAY IN THE GOOD OLD TIMES.

YEARS ago, before mail-trains panted across the country, or the official rat, tat, tat of "Posty" sounded so frequently at our halldoors, then minus the ingeniously inverted Cyclops eye which adorns an orthodox one now-a-days; long before all the trim green and white "fleecing places," with their marine snares and delusions, cropped up along our wreck-strewn shores-in fact, to use a romantic but rather mistaken phrase, "in the good old times," Rylechase Farm, now but a little remnant of unsightly ruins, was one of those snug, roomy old homesteads rarely to be met with at present, and which seemed to realise the ideal of country life. Situated in a charmingly picturesque spot of Kentish coast scenery, far enough from the sea to be safe from the encroachments of spring and storm-tides, yet enjoying all the advantages of its glorious, ever-changing aspect, and the pure, invigorating breezes scudding across the Downs, it seemed to be a very gem set in belt of rich meadow-land and well-trimmed orchards, gradually sloping landward into extensive hop-gardens, which then as now deserved to be called the "gold-mines of Kent."

The house itself, built on a rocky prominence seaward, and quite distinct from the substantial farm buildings snugly ensconced in a little hollow lower down, was square, low-browed, and thickly-thatched, and the small arched windows were so deeply set and narrow as to resemble more loopholes in a fortification than windows in a dwelling-house. Even the chimney-stacks were broad and low, and the whole concern, although clad in pretty clinging climbers, had the trim, stowed appearance of a stormrigged ship. Many a wild wintry gale it had weathered, and only once in the remembrance of its inhabitants did it occur that a small round window exactly under the centre or point of the gable, and sheltered by the deep eaves, was blown in during a fierce north-easter. The damage was very soon made good, however, and the massive but prettily-tinted red and white glass which replaced the shattered one seemed to be the only approach to anything ornamental Rylechase Farm could boast of.

This happened late in autumn, during the first furious outburst of equinoctial gales, and the winter following proved more than usually disastrous, especially to the small and heavily-laden trading craft, and the old, unsafe, and too often insufficiently manned

fishing-smacks trawling about the coast. Fearful were the tales of horror and destruction which sped from mouth to mouth as each night added to the ghastly lists of wrecked and lost. Yet these things did not interfere with the quiet, almost monotonous life which the inhabitants of Rylechase Farm seemed to lead. Its present owner, a middle-aged, powerfully-built, and unpleasantly hard-featured man, trudging about his fields and gardens with the same dogged determined air, and keeping apart with studied indifference both from the high and middle classes, who on such occasions united to relieve as well as protect shipwrecked of all nations, as also apparently from the lawless and rapacious crew of wreckers who traded and throve on the disasters and calamities which befel their fellow-creatures. And yet Jeph Ryle had always been what even in those times was called " a highly respectable man." A successful man of business, hard but strictly just with his dependents, church-going, alms-giving, and prudently reticent concerning his worldly affairs and political and religious persuasions, he invited neither praise nor censure, whilst Dame Margery, his fair, gentle wife, still in the flower of womanly beauty, was universally cited as an example of a pure and blameless life adorned with many and rare virtues.

With her delicate oval face and large brown eyes, luminous with that sort of sad dim light peculiar often to such, her rich auburn hair prematurely streaked with grey, and smoothly folded away under the prim matron's coif of those days, her lithe and still girlishly graceful figure draped in the gravest and plainest of russet gowns, she almost looked like a sad, pale-faced nun clad in a secular garb, and following her vocation as wife and mistress with a dreamily absent yet withal womanly, gentle, and gracious air.

Rylechase Farm, and the rich acres around it, had for many years belonged to Jeph's forefathers, some of whom being wild, reckless men, had from time to time lost large portions of their patrimony, and finally disappeared, after some years of rioting and dissipation, in some foreign land, whither the love for adventure and the hireling's gold had drawn them, whilst some of the more peaceably-disposed members spent their uneventful lives in not altogether fruitless efforts to retrieve the family losses. Jeph's father, a man of irreproachable character, being amongst the latter, but meeting with an accident which eventually cost his life, left his widow, shortly after the birth of a second son, in tolerably easy circumstances, which enabled her to give the two boys a more than usually careful education.

Jeph, however, took no advantage of the latter, and leading, up to his mother's death, which had occurred some ten or twelve years previous to this date, a strange, roving life, having been

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