Dread power of knowledge, faintly and afar
Made manifest unsufferably bright,

To eyes that here as yet enfeebled are,
Attemper thy intensity of light;

Nor blind me with the swiftly flashing truth,

The glimmering of whose dawn I scarce dare scan;
For I am but a child of earth-in sooth,
'Mid mortal dimness dwelling but a man;
And twilight forms-of phantasy, perchance-
Have made their twilight habitation dear;
Too lovingly a long familiar trance
Hath bound me, briefly now to disappear:
Its tender thrall thy sudden blaze may break,
But kill the blasted sense it sought to wake."

Said we not that our author possessed, when he chose to put it forth, an ample store of imagery, and who will read the above stanzas and deny the assertion? This querulous repining over the vanity of the objects of men's endeavours is extremely beautiful, and is the most natural outpouring of a disappointed heart, though few there be who can, like Mr. Sandes, so realise them as to put them on paper, yet never degenerate to the commonplace. As we have said before, he sometimes becomes rather too exalted, but never lays himself open to the charge of drivelling. Such instances are, however, so rare, that as we run our eye over the pages for a specimen it is again arrested by passages quite free from the imputation, and which it would be a pity to pass over. Here is one

With all this he has not yet succeeded in killing Hope, though he may look upon her as an agent of the evil one, commissioned to torture his soul. She stands by his side despite of all his hard words, makes herself heard, and wins him over—

"I saw a sunny spot of mountain meadow,

Belted by dark-leaved firs in circling row,
Whose sombre foliage gave relief of shadow
Unto the verdure smiling bright below.

I thought of manhood's guardian love protecting
Woman's fond trust reposing in his care,
A barrier to the world without erecting,

Shielding her weakness from the chill north air.
I saw the colour owned by both in common
Best by uniting tints complete one plan,
And knew the soft endearing faith of woman
Perfecting the consorted strength of man.
Would one were such to me, I thus to her,
As that bright spot, that dark-leaved belt of fir.

What home inhabiting may she abide
The day whose advent hourly I rehearse?
Reads she in stars to my research denied
The glories of our common universe?
Her half-experience deeming skilled to teach
What joy or sorrow wanted in the past,
Through paths by me untrodden shall she reach
The point ordained for both to meet at last?
Or, side by side, explore we in the dark
Through hazards similar one lonely way,
The other's presence powerless each to mark,
Forbidden mutual succour to convey,
Compelled, unconsciously consorted, still
Our solitude's probation to fulfil?”

We think the following lines obscure, though containing a simile drawn from nature :

"The surface-frozen flood's arrested stream

To banks beyond a pathway's breadth shall spread,
Till, midway shattering, winter's waters gloom
In tranquil riplets closing o'er the dead."

This is a complete simile, judging by the punctuation, and loses nothing by want of context, when we have given the theme it was destined to illustrate, which is this

"All hope to fuller certainty but grow
Annihilation's fuller pang to know."

If we are to allow that the word "hope" was misprinted for "hopes," this last couplet is intelligible, otherwise not, and we find no fault with it; but how does the frozen stream, and the pathway, and the dead apply? Again—

"Ye planets, rolling restless as my soul,
Too keenly cold your auguries announce
The worldly fame obeying such control ;
A borrowed brightness I in you renounce-

The stars, the planets, fade—there flames above
One sun in heaven, on earth one woman's love!"

In a general way, this is also intelligible, but we have a right to expect that it shall all be so; and to our poor thinking, the lines which we have italicised are very obscure. Perhaps we could make them out, but it would cost us an effort, and that it is not fair to

expect from us. Come, there are spots on the sun. Farther on in his book Mr. Sandes has written the following lines:

"Twas hard to mark depreciation's tone
Of measured commonplace, a verdict deal
On excellence that could to him alone
Who felt congenially its sense reveal.”

And perchance the want of congeniality of sentiment has caused us to animadvert on these passages. We have nearly filled the space allotted to us with our remarks and "excerpta," as we have known gentlemen to say for whom the word "extract" was too simple; so though we have arrived little further than at "the beginning of the end," we must close our eyes and ears to temptation, lest we linger by the way, and hasten to the concluding portion of the poem, which is entitled "THE FLOWER," and in which is resumed the metre in which the earlier part, or "BLOSSOM," was written, not we think so pleasing a metre as that of the long middle portion. However, that is of course purely a matter of taste, and there may be more people who will think with Mr. Sandes upon the subject than with us. Here, then, we find our "disappointed man" in the enjoyment of "unshackled liberty," which has guided him to Egypt. What he has become in his lonely wanderings-what he has been left by his experiences-what he has found in his long quest, and, above all, what he has yet to find ere he can be simply, in one word, satisfied, must be read in the work itself; we regret we have not space to enter now upon the subject. The narrative goes on :—

"And such, by the discipline taught of Time
Through fitful endeavour yet upward to climb,
Was he who, the halt of his journeying won,
Now stood in the light of that setting sun.

The signs of a life's experience shown

In the traces of passionate tempests o'erblown

Marked an age that, unbroken by trial's rude blast,

From a land of high vantage looked down on the past.

When first had arisen the hope that now

As ever existent he scorned to avow,

Yet shrunk from encountering, turning with dread
From a vista of thought to its presence that led ?”

The Dream in the Desert, at the foot of the Sphinx, contains passages of very impressive writing, whose effect is slightly marred by a fancy which Mr. Sandes-whose mind appears to be imbued with a love for German literature-has for compounding words too frequently, which appears all through this poem, and is calculated to prejudice a reader at first. Thus we have too many such words as "dais-crowning," "glory-showering," "earth-arching," "joy-stirred," "cloud-gathered," "high-floodingly life-fraught," "water-swayed," and "central-spread." This should not be. As we have before said, even beautiful ideas can ill afford to clothe themselves in clumsy garments. This mannerism, and the occasional obscurity before alluded to, will

not prevent Mr. Sandes's graceful fancy from being acknowledged by any who have in themselves a kindred spark of appreciation. From this dream, in which the constant Hope plays her unwavering though almost unnoticed part, and which is tinged by her faint dawn-colour throughout, he awakes

"To the red apparition of Africa's morn
Rising over the desert, the silver Nile
Reflecting the earliest eastern smile,
The Sphinx in unchangeable passionless rest
Projecting its shadow afar to the West.

To the West-be the omen accepted-by her
Who alone its solution hath power to confer
On the wanderer's dream, the enigma be read
Of life for the living or death with the dead."

At

Part II. of "THE FLOWER" lets us into the secret workings of that mighty riddle, woman's heart, as expressed in woman's words. least, as Mr. Sandes has created his heroine, he can of course do what he likes with her emotions, still we feel that he has treated them naturally. While yet she hopes, and fears to hope, the wanderer returns, and their mutual love, blighted for years by a mistake, then chastened by trial, still

"Unmoved by absence, firm in every clime,

And yet-oh, more than all-untired by time ;"

flowers into a happiness of two-fold beauty, as much the child of their trials and adversity as of the simple fact of its being mutual. We have seen it out. Our verdict on the perfect flower is this, that, as we have said in the early part of this paper, the main idea of the simile appears to us somewhat fanciful, but that, putting this out of the question, and conceding a little indulgence to some peculiarities to which we have alluded quite as emphatically as there was any occasion, and which are perhaps more eccentricities than positive blemishes, "Gardenia" has been Mr. Sandes's medium for favouring us with poetry, strictly speaking, of a higher order, and of a more sustained power, than we ever expect to find now-a-days when we take up a volume of modern poetry. We are grateful to him accordingly, and shall welcome his next appearance all the more heartily for our better acquaintance with his style.

Sporting Intelligence.

HYBERNAL RACING, HORSE-TAMING, AND TURF CHANGES. THE English people are, in truth, a most speculative race, in their passion for the Turf far greater than that of any other nation in the world, otherwise they would never expose themselves to the inconveniences of going to such places as Lincoln, Nottingham, and Liverpool, when they can learn all about it much more comfortably in their arm-chair by the fire-side, with Bell's Life in their hand, a Hudson in their mouth, and a glass of something warm by their side. And, in truth, sporting reporters have always struck us as being a very badly treated race of persons; for let the weather be as cold as in Norway, or as warm as in the Desert, there they must be located in their little stands, hustled about on all sides by trainers and jockeys, and procuring with wonderful accuracy the details of the Steeple-chase or the Race for their employers, who live at home at ease, caring little for the exertions of those who render their property valuable to themselves, and interesting. After a time also the novelty of the rapid changes of scene and company wear off, and one race resembles another so closely, that the Reporter appears to care as little for a Derby as a Plate at Hampton, and is careful only of how quick he can get a report away. Taken for all and all, they are a remarkably honest set of men, and being, it is understood, the worst paid of any on the Press, their " "" squareness is the more commendable. We ourselves like deferring our first appear ance until Northampton, when the racing magnates assemble for the week at Whittlebury, Althorp, and other seats in the neighbourhood, and come out and back their respective fancies quite as heavily and eagerly as they do at Ascot and Goodwood, and the Ring invariably reckon on an excellent harvest from them. Still there is something about the Grand National at Liverpool, some hidden spring connected with Abdelkader, Mathew, Peter Simple, and Chandler, that irresistibly led us to throw prejudice on one side and our person into a Eustonsquare carriage, and visit the field of Aintree, consecrated by so many victories.

Our train was but lightly freighted, for the best judges resolved to wait to the last moment, having their suspicions that there was a screw loose with the weather, and preferred being "wired" for, to spending so many hours in the rain, to no other purpose than benefitting the Company's funds. At the intervals of our journey, when we looked up from our rubbers, we owned that the chance of the Steeple-chase being ran became small by degrees and beautifully less, and but for the ridicule of the thing, nearly all would have turned back. However, the hospitable portals of the Adelphi were too near to be avoided, and accordingly we located ourselves under its roof, and by the aid of its

VOL. III

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