"FOR ALL THAT'S GAINED, OF ALL THAT'S GOOD, WHEN TIME SHALL HIS WEAK FRAME DESTROY,

154

"WHAT STRANGE ART, WHAT MAGIC CAN DISPOSE,-(CRABBE)

GEORGE CRABBE.

On ragged rug, just borrowed from the bed,
And by the hand of coarse indulgence fed,
In dirty patchwork negligently dressed,
Reclined the wife, an infant at her breast;
In her wild face some touch of grace remained,
Of vigour palsied and of beauty stained;
Her blood-shot eyes on her unheeding mate,

Were wrathful turned, and seemed her wants to state.

Cursing his tardy aid-her mother there
With gipsy-state engrossed the only chair;
Solemn and dull her look; with such she stands,
And reads the milk-maid's fortune in her hands,
Tracing the lines of life; assumed through years,
Each feature now the steady falsehood wears;
With hard and savage eye she views the food,
And grudging pinches their intruding brood.
Last in the group, the worn-out grandsire sits
Neglected, lost, and living but by fits:
Useless, despised, his worthless labours done,
And half protected by the vicious son
Who half supports him; he with heavy glance
Views the young ruffians who around him dance;
And, by the sadness in his face, appears
To trace the progress of their future years:
Through what strange course of misery, vice, deceit,
Must wildly wander each unpractised cheat!
What shame and grief, what punishment and pain,
Sport of fierce passions, must each child sustain,
Ere they like him approach their latter end,

Without a hope, a comfort, or a friend!

[From "Tales" (No. x., "The Lover's Journey").-"Such a picture as this, so powerfully painted, yet in such gloomy colours, would almost entitle Crabbe to the appellation of the Rembrandt of English Poetry. Only there are touches in it that remind one of Ostade."]

THE TROUBLED MIND TO CHANGE ITS NATIVE WOES!"-CRABBE.

THEIR USE THEN RIGHTLY UNDERSTOOD, SHALL MAN IN HAPPIER STATE ENJOY."-GEORGE CRABBE,

"THE PERFECT WORK, AFTER LONG YEARS OF PAIN, THE EXPECTANT GLOW,-(ELIZABETH D. CROSS)

FOR SWEET THINGS CHANGE, AND FADE, ANd die,

THE WILD ROSES.

Elizabeth D. Cross.

[MRS. E. D. BULLOCK.]

[MISS CROSS has not been long before the public. Her sole contribution to the poetical literature of the day is one small volume, published in 1868, and entitled, "An Old Story, and Other Poems." She has given sufficient evidence, however, of a charming lyric faculty, and with culture and experience will take her place amongst the foremost of our minor poetesses.

Of Miss Cross's poems an able critic* has remarked, that " they have the essence of lyrical poetry in them,-true simplicity, a liquid movement both of feeling and expression, a pathos that does not burn barrenly at the heart, but suffuses the fancy and the imagination; and, above all, that ' lyrical cry,' as Mr. Arnold calls it, which no one can imitate, which it is neither given to imagination to invent without being touched by a true passion of humanity, nor to the deepest pain or pity itself to utter without an imaginative ear and voice."]

155

NONE WILL REMAIN OF ALL WE SEE. E. D. CROSS.

THE GREAT HEART BROKEN, WAITING FOR THE PRAISE THAT COMES TOO SLOW."-E. D. CROSS.

"THE LITTLE WORD OF TRUTH, SO LONG DELAYED, SPOKEN AT LAST,-(ELIZABETH D. CROSS)

BUT WITH NO POWER TO HEAL THE CRUEL WOUND, POISONING THE PAST."-ELIZABETH D. CROSS.

"WHO LOVES OF LIFE THE GOLDEN MEAN, ESCAPES ALIKE THE SQUALID CELL, EARL OF DERBY'S HORACE)

"STERN WINTER MELTS, AND GENIAL AIRS-(HORACE)

THE PARTING OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE. 157

Earl of Derby.

[THE career of the Earl of Derby is a part of modern English history, and our limited space precludes us from attempting even an outline of it. Suffice it to state that he was born on the 29th of March 1799 at Knowsley Park, Lancashire: was educated at Eton and Christ Church College, Oxford; entered the House of Commons in 1821, and speedily obtained distinction as an eloquent and effective debater; was summoned to the House of Peers as Baron Stanley in 1844, and succeeded his father as fourteenth Earl of Derby in 1851. He held the highest offices under the Crown; led for many years the Conservative party in the House of Lords; and served as Prime Minister in 1852, again in 1858-9, and lastly in 1866-8. He was elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford in 1852, and made Knight of the Garter in 1859. He died in 1869. His admirable and scholarly translation of Homer's "Iliad," which bids fair to supersede all other versions in public favour, though unequal to Chapman's in poetic fire, was first published in 1865. A Quarterly Reviewer says of it, that "the diction is forcible, the composition easy and flowing, and that we are carried along through the tale of Troy divine' with much of that cheerful vigour with which the great original has inspired so many generations of readers."]

THE PARTING OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE.

IN haste

Running to meet him came his priceless wife,
Eetion's daughter, fair Andromache,
Eetion, who from Thebes Cilicia swayed,
Thebes, at the foot of Placos' wooded heights.
His child to Hector of the brazen helm
Was given in marriage; she it was who now
Met him, and by her side the nurse, who bore,
Clasped to her breast, his all unconscious child,

Hector's loved infant, fair as morning star;
Whom Hector called Scamandrius, but the rest
Astyanax in honour of his sire,
The matchless chief, the only prop of Troy.
Silent he seemed as on his child he gazed:

THE BALMY SPRING RESTORE."-DERBY'S HORACE.

AND TURMOILS THAT TOO OFT ARE SEEN IN GRANDEUR'S ENVIED HALLS TO DWELL."-DERBY'S HORACE.

"THE BALANCED MIND, IN WEAL OR WOE, ALIKE FOR FORTUNE'S CHANGE PREPARES,-(DERBY'S HORACE)

158

"OUR LIFE'S SHORT SPAN SHOULD MODERATE (HORACE)

EARL OF DERBY.

But at his side Andromache, in tears,

Hung on his arm, and thus the chief addressed :
"Dear lord, thy dauntless spirit will work thy
doom:

Nor hast thou pity on this thy helpless child,
Or me forlorn, to be thy widow soon:

For thee will all the Greeks with force combined
Assail and slay: for me, 'twere better far,
Of thee bereft, to lie beneath the sod;
Nor comfort shall be mine, if thou be lost,
But endless grief; to me nor sire is left,
Nor honoured mother; fell Achilles' hand
My sire Eëtion slew, what time his arms
The populous city of Cilicia razed,
The lofty-gated Thebes; he slew indeed,
But stripped him not; he reverenced the dead;
And o'er his body, with his armour burnt,

A mound erected; and the mountain nymphs,
The progeny of aegis-bearing Jove,
Planted around his tomb a grove of elms.
There were seven brethren in my father's house;
All in one day they fell, amid their herds
And fleecy flocks, by fierce Achilles' hand.
My mother, Queen of Placos' wooded height,
Brought with the captives here, he soon released
For costly ransom; but by Dian's shafts
She, in her father's house, was stricken down.
But, Hector, thou to me art all in one,—
Sire, mother, brethren! thou, my wedded love!
Then, pitying us, within the tower remain;
Nor make thy child an orphan, and thy wife
A hapless widow; by the fig-tree here
Array thy troops; for here the city wall,
Easiest of access, most invites assault.

OUR LENGTHened hope's excess."-DERBY'S HOrace.

SINCE HE, WHO SENDS THE WINTER'S SNOW, HIMSELF THAT WINTER'S LOSS REPAIRS."-DERBY'S HORACE.