RECOVERY OF OUR TOWN POPULATIONS. TERRITORIAL CHURCHES. If anything of importance has to be done, common sense teaches us not to palter with the matter, but to strike right to the heart of it; puny, disproportionate efforts, round and round a thing, but never at it, as they cannot realise their object, so they very often only spoil it for a more hopeful agency. If our battery be feeble, or our guns lie too far off, or no picked men be found to enter into a breach, we may as well point our shot into the air as aim at reducing a fastness. A few pitchers of water may put out a bonfire, with no contiguous piles of fuel to nourish the flame, but it only crackles away the more fiercely if it has already eaten into a wide forest growth. We all remember when, as children, we puddled in some rivulet or eddy of a returning tide, or run of street water, and mimicked larger operations in attempts to dam the stream, how vain were our handfuls of mud, thrown in one by one, without consentaneous and persistent effort, before the rush or pressure of the fluid. Nothing, indeed, ever has succeeded, nothing can, or even ought to succeed, however good the means and object, unless there be some proportion between them. Especially is this true, however, in moral and religious attempts, which must always respect the actor as well as the thing acted on: in the government of God, a strict account is taken of the motives and energies of men; and if bodies or communities of persons trifle with their social wretchedness, whatever general desires of benevolence they may affect, whatever miscellaneous exertions they may put forth, the evil will only the more rankle, until divine Providence be vindicated, and the world own the presence of laws that cannot be violated with impunity. Many attempts have now been made to recover our town populations; and the pressure and prominence of the evil are every day giving rise to fresh schemes, or fresh applications of old ones. Everybody has his theory, while the number of benevolent hobbies, with not one merely, but a crowd of riders on each back, to run down the evils after which they are in chase with hue and cry, is one of our most noticeable characteristics: never, indeed, was philanthropy more active and prolific than in the present times. But means and aspirations are both running to waste for want of a particular principle under which to marshal them: we resemble people suddenly roused out of sleep by calls of succour, and confounded by the strength and imminence of the evils; fire and water are both active for destruction, multiplied in a thousand perplexing forms; and each one betakes himself to the scene with what rude implements and undisciplined force may be at hand. Now, it is of first-rate importance that all this good intention should be economised as much as possible, and so reduced to the regulation of some one primary arrangement, as that each particular effort may fit into the general movement. A box will never come together out of deals shaped upon no uniform plan, and with dovetails which nevertheless do not dovetail into one another, however fine the grain and cunning the work manship; the roughest planks, if only cut after some reasonable sort of mutual fitness, will turn to unspeakably better account. On this principle, if we look around our communities, and estimate the various tracks which benevolence has pursued, we shall find no one into which every other may be so advantageously made to run up, as to a centre or heart, as the Church, conducted on the territorial principle. With it all schemes of reform may work; into it every rivulet of sweet Christian affection, be it the smallest or most intermittent, coming in quick, brief gushes of effort, or be it most closely or most widely accordant with the primary objects of the Church, if only it rise in a wholesome humanity, may flow. For, consider what territorial churches aim at. First, at purging the sources of life: its ideas of God, of the character and objects of time, of suffering, of our existence here as probationary and prospective, of the mission of the soul after the frail tenement in which it here breathes is broken up, and of all that lies out before and behind us; its affections, which constitute our solace or torment; its passions, which fill our sails, and, unless managed, rive our canvass to rags, or founder our hapless skiff. It aims at accomplishing all this; not according to human devices or vague traditions, but in the way of the Almighty, who alone encircles man, so as to know and estimate his wretchedness. It thus comes behind a man, so to say, and rises higher, sinks deeper, looks further and more wisely forward, than himself; it brings divine experience to his aid, along with a divine atonement, to set him once more fairly on his feet, and give him a fresh starting-point; it medicates the affections, that they send forth not bitter waters' but 'sweet;' it fills the large, capacious, ever-expanding heart of poor humanity, longing for an object of absolute love, but bewildered by the hundred paltry idols which seduce and fret it, which constantly baulk it in the end, and throw back contempt upon it, and keep it ever panting, longing, seeking, soaring, yet the more to desolate it, and in the end to hurry its possessors frantic into the other world. Disappointment, indeed, in attempts to solve the problems of life, in our own strength and after our own fashion, is the source of nineteen-twentieths, if not of the whole, of our scepticism. We wish to laugh down the difficulty, to cover our confusion and imbecility in merriment, like the fox with the grapes; while the low grumbling which rises from within, venting itself in sneers and taunts, and vol canic eruptions that seem to indicate a dissolution of the world, unconsciously reveal how superficial is the smile, how deep and bitter the chagrin at being foiled. When Nelson broke the French navy at Trafalgar, Napoleon, turning to one of his officers, said, with apparent sang froid, I cannot be present everywhere!' as if his skill on his own ground needed only to be transferred to the ocean, in order to victory there also. We occupy but a small point in this world of ours, with few resources, and fewer opportunities of rising high enough to survey the system in which we shake out such existence as we have. Yet, there is this peculiar to us, a fearful power-the power, namely, of withdrawing into ourselves, and making sun, moon, and stars circle round us, while we repose on our axle: the whole universe seeming to exist for us, and for us alone, to be explained, to be applauded or despised, to be sniffed at or patronised, according to caprice. Now, into this solitude, where poor man plays the demigod as long as he can, and weaves his fantastic dream of sovereignty every day more curiously, the territorial church pursues him; other churches, as at present constituted, are, for the most part, churches for those already disenchanted and in their right mind, with their families and mixed friends. But Christianity, in the territorial church, is seen more nearly to approximate its original intention-to bring salvation to the lost; it seeks men out, calls them brethren, kills the 'fatted calf,' and bids saint and angel rejoice over the recovery of the prodigal. For our own part, much as we are thankful that, with or without the concurrence of the church, so much has been done for the temperance cause, the clevation of the workingclasses, and other schemes of practical benevolence, yet we know of no evil so great in magnitude as the separation which has so long existed between the church and societies for such objects. What have been the effects of this monstrous anomaly (for anomaly it is, and a monstrous one)? Not to mention the fact that the church has been viewed as an antagonist power, and all the odium rightly or wrongly due to its officers has been transferred to the divine institution itself, the tendency has constantly been to isolate the community into petty companies, each scrambling for as much time, notoriety, influence, honours, and respect, as it could get, without reference to the claims of their objects viewed from one sovereign point, lying above them all, and taking in their connections as well to the world to come as to this present world. Exaggeration of each single idea is not the worst effect of this method; but only think how it will appear to the objects of benevolent effort: messenger thickens upon messenger from different societies, each recommending his own scheme of advantage, and all fall with the same dead weight on one poor man, bewildered amid the helps proffered him: he is standing upon the beach, not knowing how he shall get across the tide, when now a rib is brought him, then a plank, then a knee; keel and rudder follow, mast and canvass, but how is he to get them put together for use, seeing that they have been made by different hands, working on separate plans, giving conflicting counsels, and looking to different seas? The territorial church comes to him like a man of sober, large experience, who has himself traversed the waters, and is familiar with their tides and shoals: everything is reduced to the simplicity of a plan; the haven, first of all, is pointed out; the waters over which he must pass to reach it, with their squalls and groundswells, are described; a chart and compass are put into his hand, and all needful provision for the voyage is anticipated. It is not that such a church, which comes to the poor man without pretension, and recommends itself by the honest simplicity of all it says and does for him, casts discredit on anything which any association for useful purposes can effect: on the contrary, it calls them all into use; but then it arranges them according to their import ance seen from the divine point of view. In this way, nothing is completely lost; for nothing conflicts with the nature of man in relation to his destiny; nothing is suffered to foist its pretensions into the place of the whole, while it is but one wheel, useful and graceful in its motions, when fixed in its right order. Such, firstly, is a territorial church: it begins, in short, with the beginning. But, in the methods of such an institution, we see another peculiarity and excellence of it. It 'stoops to conquer;' this is its glory, its blessedness. It knows that man is a rebel, a fugitive from the divine law and presence; but it runs up with a sweet, kindly eye, beaming hope and consolation, and taps him gently on the shoulder, bidding him look to what has been done and is doing by another for his reconciliation, and offering its whole resources for his benefit. The joys and sorrows of miserable wretches, the 'offscouring of all things,' are acknowledged from the lowly level of a common humanity. The camel slackens his pace in the fiery wilderness, and kneels for the reception of the castaway, who feels separated by a whole horizon from his fellows; stretched hopeless on the sands, parched, famishing. Such a church descends from the usual height of respectability at which men are addressed, and, supposing nothing but the few common elements of human nature to commence with, with all the sin and filth that may be found cleaving to them, it sweeps into the midst of its blessings those so low in the social scale as to be forgotten, and seeks gradually to recover them to public recognition. But this in general: in particular, it counts nothing that can act upon the life of its objects, be it work, amusements, clothing, food, housing, conveniences, or whatever else, beyond the scope of its efforts; it breaks down the narrow bounds of a profession, and considers everything which enters into the composition of a man's, woman's, or child's existence, worthy of attention, for its moral effects. It attempts to note every avenue, whether so-called secular or religious, by which temptation can approach, to soil, drag down, sink for ever. In all this it does not essentially differ from other Christian churches, properly organised; but it gives peculiar prominence to the facts alluded to; it goes directly to the work of excavation, and pursues it in at once a lowly spirit and a high, cheerful hope. If territorial churches were quite new things, we should have felt it necessary to enter at greater length into the theory of them; but these being no longer an imagination, but a reality, we feel it peculiarly agreeable to occupy the rest of our space in illustrating the subject from the history of Dr Chalmers's West Port Territorial Church, which has grown in the hands of a very remarkable man, the Rev. W. Tasker, identified with territorialism, not only throughout Scotland, but in Germany, where his work on the subject circulates in translation. The idea is, in somo sense, the birth of Dr Chalmers's mind: at all events, it received shape and consistence from him, and took its origin, as a fact, in his large and eloquent expositions. It is, however, nothing else than the method of Christ, who went about continually doing good of all kinds among the offcast, thrown into the mould of modera necessities. A district of some four hundred families, or two thousand souls, is pitched upon in some specially sunken locality; a minister and teacher are appointed; a staff of twenty gentlemen, and as many ladies, with an allotment of twenty families to each-that is, a lady and gentleman to each family-is added; and the work of preaching, teaching, visitation, kindly and familiar intercourse with the humblest, active assistance towards help ing them to help themselves, is forthwith begun. The congregation and schools, at first held in some common apartment, are eventually gathered out into a fully-equip ped church and class-rooms; ordinances become fully dispensed; and the neighbourhood gradually assumes the aspect of a Christian neighbourhood. Such, while a description of the thing in general, is a history, in brief, of the method pursued in the West Port-a district conspicuous, some seven or eight years ago, among conspicuously infamous districts in Edinburgh, the haunt of Burke and Hare in their days, left to itself, having no hope, and without God in the world.' The grand old man, whose name is borne by the West Port Territorial Church, after a life of stormy agitation, that had latterly increased rather than diminished, at length sought repose in some effort to recover a debased district to the blessings of Christian civilisation. His eye rested on the West Port; on William Tasker as minister; the first, and as yet by far the best embodiment of a territorial minister, Mr Tasker may be practically considered as a personification of the principle; from him, then, his character and labours, let us attempt to diffuse some further light on the general subject. If there is any one thing which more than another marks off Mr Tasker from common men, it is, curious as it may appear, his being a thorough gentleman. No silken manners, no conspicuous polish constitute him this: it is something quite other, lying deep in his nature, a certain nobility of soul, which will neither do anything paltry, no suffer anything paltry to be done to him; a touch of the old chivalry, which delights to try its strength in behalf of the frail and the unfortunate; which exults in detecting the remnants of a high nature in humble disguises, and bringing it again to light; which, in short, loves enemies and friends for their humanity, not for their clothes, or gait, or other appendages, and by a penetrating vision aided by a sharp instinct, catches the gleam of the precious stone, even though it mix in the rubbish at the bottom of the pool, and straightway dives for it. This, we think, resting on a Christian basis, and guided. illumined, elevated by all the broad genialities of our di vine faith, is the most characteristic thing in the West Port minister, and forms the very marrow of his influence From this, however, and in harmony with it, grows out a very peculiar composition. Intellectually, he thinks only through life: whatever lies there, straight before him, he goes up to, surveys it, gathers up in all important re spects into his mind, and reproduces it in views that strike deep into its very roots. With this faculty is united a thirst for knowledge of all kinds, especially illustrative of life and manners-a love of travelled men-a love of philosophy, let it lie as much as it pleases out of his own pecu liar walk. Nothing comes distastefully to him that bears the authentic marks of humanity; for he knows, by a deep and most productive instinct, that whatever is a genuine product of life, must, somehow or other, whether he sees it philosophically or not, lie at bottom in connection with everything in which he himself takes the highest interest. Accordingly, with pretensions to nothing, this man faces his neighbour, whatever be his place, history, or profession, with a power of meeting him on some common terms. He catches the moods of his man with wonderful quickness, and adjusts himself accordingly. It is easy to see what a power such a man must acquire over the minds of the humbler classes. If to this description it be added, that his style is a sinewy, bounding, picturesque effusion of Saxon, running every now and then into broad images, broad allusions to common things, and catching the lights and shades of the extremes of society, people will have no difficulty in comprehending his popularity in his own district and over the country. We have observed that he has a subtle consciousness of his strong points, and that he never, on any occasion whatever, quits these this enables him to give a consistency to his efforts, and a certain wholeness, which add very perceptibly to the influence of his character. Another feature worthy of notice is his power of setting other men a-working for him. His motive is always so obviously pure and lofty, that, even though one perceive every stage of his approach upon him, he cannot refuse; he cannot get beyond the reach of his personal power. He seems to come among men, like a boy of superior cleverness among tops, and sets all a-spinning at once to the song of his own work for the time being; and, to use another illustration, if one get restive under his demands, he only gives him a little more bridle, but, in the end, is pretty sure to get his friend to go sweetly. Part of his success, in this as in everything else, lies in his wonderful instinct of what he is really able to accomplish, so that he seldom attempts anything beyond his resources. adjutor in the territorial church. For this reason, therefore, as well as others, we cannot hesitate to recommend the adoption of this method, wherever men are anxious to realise the greatest good with the greatest economy of means. In another paper, we will consider the subject of Homes for the Working-Classes. A MEDLEY. THERE has lately been published, in a neat, warm-looking, little volume, a selection of essays, critical, historic, and biographical, from the Times' newspaper. A healthier, sounder book, it is not often one's lot to fall in with; and a more pleasant evening companion we can scarcely recommend to our readers. Its style is masculine, unaffected, and pure; its subjects are various, and uniformly interesting; and its every page teems with valuable information. The appearance of such essays in a daily newspaper, we cannot but hail as a proof that our time is by no means so out of joint, so hopelessly and incurably diseased, as some of high authority tell us. We are not to criticise this book: it needs no criticism; but we must inform our readers, that we have lately, with extreme pleasure, been sauntering through its pages, and that to it we are indebted for the various topics, or let us say rather the present suggestion of the topics which compose our medley. Fair young gentleman, or fairer young lady, who sit down, with becoming avidity, to the perusal of our pages, what possible excuse can you offer, if you are not a person of extensive, varied, and available information? The Pierian spring, once deemed so hard of approach, and repaying so well, by the gleam of its magic waters, days of weariness and nights of solitary toil, is now, one might be tempted to say, accessible, by a pleasant morning walk, to any delicate-footed maiden. Nay, are there not countless praiseworthy individuals, men of rathe and riper years,' who, in fairly-fashioned goblets, are ever presenting draughts of its waters to your lips, and saying, humbly, days as in those of our fathers-if thorough mental culture and true intrinsic excellence are still, as of old, hard to be won (and, in very truth, there is no if in the question), surely the sources of general information are now open as they never were before-surely the absolute, raw ignoramus should be a rara avis in our generation. This medley of ours could probably have been collected with so little labour, in no previous era of the world; the volume which forms our text-book could not have been obtained by our fathers for thrice its weight in gold; its information would have cost them months of research; and now, the youth or maiden of sixteen may have it for a few shillings, spared from his or her pocket-money, and will peruse it, in unconscious indifference, through the whiffs of cigar-smoke, or after the more important piano-lesson has been brought to a close. Our old friend, the Wandering Jew, will see several things in our day to amuse and amaze Lim; we should value his remarks on our cheap literature, and on the electric telegraph; and are by no means assured that his greatest wonder would be excited by the latter. But we must to our work, for we have a good deal before us. The materials afforded are so extensive, that we must restrict ourselves to but a meagre use of them; the biographical parts, and of these the biographical sketches of literary men, shall, with one exception, form our subjects. We have already said that territorialism is no longer a theory, but a fact; and this, not so much because the experiment has in one case been tried and found successful, as because it is now receiving more general attention, and is at present by far the most prominent, as well as most interesting, feature in the efforts being made for the recovery of the populations in our large towns. Glasgow, after Edinburgh, is distinguished above all our towns in the number and energy of its territorial churches-a quite recent movement, however. Aberdeen, Perth, Dundee, are fast following the example; and we have been anxious, in this paper, to diffuse some knowledge of this subject, lying so close as it does to everything which can interest men, as individuals and members of a community. We are de-Drink? If there are not such literary Anakims in these sirous of impressing this great fact upon our readers, that a greater economy must be preserved in our benevolent efforts than heretofore; and that, in order to accomplish this, our efforts must be thorough; they must reach quite down to the bottom of our social wretchedness; they must concur together, so that system may be introduced into them, and the whole be guided by an enlightened reference to what is of most importance, and what is of less in the matter. City missions, so far as they have gone, have been useful; and they may yet be continued as light-armed troops, to bring down stragglers, and come to the timely assistance of more regular forces. But, admirable as are the men, so far as we know, who are engaged in this most honourable and laborious field of usefulness, it is impossible that they should be able to meet the necessity. Resources to which they do not pretend are required. Few men can rise above the mechanical influence of routine, and fewer still, we fear, above such a routine as our city missionaries are exposed to, with so many hours a day of work, and so much jotting of cases in the evening. Better to trust the men, if they are previously declared fit for their difficult duties, than run the risk of introducing into their operations a poor slavish spirit, resisted, we have no doubt, as much in their case as may be possible, and yet more or less inevitable in the circumstances. Such men as Roger Wilson, a rare treasure, lately lost to London, are not to be calculated on; and some method might be discovered, by which the individual skill of city missionaries, together with work after their own peculiar fashion, would be secured, without endangering the regularity of their operations. No centre, it will be obvious, could be found so well suited for keeping every benevolent association in efficiency, without loss of means, as a territorial church. Schools, libraries, savings banks, lodging-houses, popular lectureships, total-abstinence societies, and every institution that aims at practical good, can find an ally and a co Coleridge, Southey, Keats, Swift-of each of these something is said in the volume before us. Concerning the first, we spoke lately at some length; of the others, for the same reason, we have only now a few rambling words to say. In Southey, we have one of the sturdies workers, one of the most unflinching, persevering toilers, that ever corrected proof-sheet. He is a poet, and he can let his imagination soar as free as the north wind; but he is no vacant dreamer; he has a wife and children, and other relatives to support; he will sternly crush down all disposition to rebellious wandering, until he provide for them. He is a literary man; he writes on all imaginable subjects, and extends his studies, far beyond ordinary ken, into the regions of the remote and the recondite, shunning science only; yet he has none of that restive fieriness, that eccentric irregularity, deemed the characteristic temperament of authors; he has all his powers under the eye of his iron will, and he treads with the firm step of a man whose watch word is duty. His marriage was characteristic; illustrative of his calm sense, and also of the swift, decisive energy, which lay like sleeping fire in his bosom. He had been for some time a Pantisocritan; the warm, enthusiastic hopefulness of his nature, and the influence of Coleridge's overwhelming genius, had for a time led him into participation with the dreamy but beautiful scheme of the latter; but his boyish vagaries, like morning mist-wreaths, had taken themselves away, and disclosed his steadfast, rock-like manhood. One relic alone-a precious one-of Pantisocrasy remained, his engagement with Miss Edith Fricker. He was still a very young man, when an uncle of his came home from Portugal, who, taking a kindly interest in his promising nephew, and desirous of leading him finally from radical politics and an 'imprudent attachment,' proposed that he should visit Portugal, and thereafter study law. Southey offered no objections; his warm heart appreciated his uncle's kindness, and his shrewd head discerned the soundness of the proposal. Upon one part of the scheme, however, he had his own opinion, and it was a decided one; it related to his Edith. He knew her to be a high-spirited girl; he knew her to be poor; he feared that her delicacy of feeling would prevent her accepting any pecuniary aid from him, unless he were her husband; he resolved to render himself legally entitled to support her. The day which the cool-headed uncle-no Pantisocritan manifestly-appointed for the departure of Southey, witnessed two ceremonies: the one was his embarkation for Portugal; the other his marriage with his Edith. The young couple separated immediately after the ceremony, not to meet for six months. Southey went forth to toil manfully for her, for himself, and for others; Edith meekly retired to her place of refuge, wearing her wedding-ring round her neck; she lived with Cottle's sisters. We regard this act as a singularly fine display of Southey's clear sense and thoroughly noble nature. We turn to a very different subject-to a very different man. In the reign of Queen Anne, when Harley, earl of Oxford, was prime minister, about the year 1710, there was a man in England whose power was immense. He was courted obsequiously by the highest; his pen smote his enemies into annihilation, amid the loud laughter of all England; his patronage was sought by high and low, and bestowed with the haughty munificence of a prince; he advanced the interests of literature, and kindly assisted some of its toiling votaries; he, it is said, laid the foundations of fortune for upwards of forty families who rose to distinction by a word from his lips. He was withal immeasurably proud; an offer of money by the prime minister was rejected as an insult; no remuneration could be ventured on; he on one occasion publicly sent the prime minister into the House of Commons to call out the first secretary of state, being desirous to convey to that functionary the tidings that he would not dine with him if he meant to dine late; in all points he insisted on being treated on the footing of perfect equality by the highest functionaries of the kingdom. This man was an Irishman; he had been brought up by charity; his name was Jonathan Swift. Intellectually and morally, physically and religiously, Dean Swift,' says our authority, was a mass of contradictions. Look at Swift with the light of intelligence shining on his brow, and you note qualities that might be come an angel. Survey him under the dark cloud, and every feature is distorted into that of a fiend. If we tell the reader what he was, in the same breath we shall communicate all that he was not. His virtues were exaggerated into vices, and his vices were not without the savour of virtue. The originality of his writings is of a piece with the singularity of his character. He copied no man who preceded him; he has not been successfully imitated by any who have followed him. The compositions of Swift reveal the brilliancy of sharpened wit, yet it is recorded of the man that he was never known to laugh.' This must suffice for the character of this wonderful man; we are tempted to extract the whole summation-a very able one of that character, as we have it in the volume before us; but we forbear, and will present Swift to our readers, for a very brief space, in a situation which, we believe, has not a parallel in biography; we refer to his relations with Stella and Vanessa. We miss much, in this volume, a description of the person of Swift; we are left to guess at his handsomeness of face and form, or the reverse, on the most sparing hints. 'From his youth,' we are told, he was a sufferer in body;' and from this we would almost unhesitatingly infer that his features were plain, but farther we cannot go. Our desire to know, arises from the singular power which he possessed with the fair sex. Whether his appearance was prepossessing or the reverse, it is a fact that two women, of gentle hearts, and, for aught we know to the contrary, of strong natures, fell ardently in love with him, pined year by year in their own fierce and almost unfed flame, and at last broke their hearts and died. Swift at one time held a high office in the household of Sir W. Temple. One of the inmates of the house was a young and lovely girl, half ward, half dependant; her name was Esther Johnson. Swift took the superintendence of her education. His age was, it appears, more than double that of his pupil, yet the fascination of his genius was such, the singular unaccountable magic of his powers and demeanour was so prevailing, that the youthful maiden was quite enveloped in the enchantment; and there sprung up in her heart that unquenchable emotion which, when once kindled in a woman's heart, either burns prosperously in wedded life, or consumes into cold ashes the heart wherein it has taken up its abode. Esther Johnson was the Stella of whom all the world has heard. When Swift settled at Laracor, a vicarage in Ireland, to which he had been presented, Stella, who had a small property in that country, came to reside in his vicinity. Scandal was silenced by a stipulation insisted on by Swift, that his lovely charge should have a matron for a constant companion, and never see him, except in the presence of a third party. Esther was in her seventeenth year; the vicar of Laracor was on his way to forty.' Esther, in Ireland, had an offer of marriage; Swift prevented her accepting it; and the devoted Stella was enraptured at the evidence of his own interest in her. And so, clinging fondly to a hope which appeared to have somewhat, at least, of brightness, she lived on. Of love, in the strict sense of the term, we are told, Swift had none, and all our knowledge of the man confirms our belief in the fact; the fierce satirist, the man who was never known to laugh, was not the one in whose heart we could expect the tender impulsiveness, the delicate delicious weakness, of woman's love. Alas, for poor Stella! Swift found life in Ireland too duil; he came, in 1710, to England, to be what we have seen above. He corresponded with Stella; but his letters, towards the close of his residence in England, lost much of the affection and confiding warmth which had distinguished the first part of the correspondence: dark days were coming on Stella and himself. The powerful politician, during his brilliant career, visited at the house of a Mrs Vanhomrigh. She had two daughters; one of them was named Esther, was beautiful, was aged twenty, and was literarily inclined. Swift became her preceptor: the old drama was re-acted; Esther Vanhomrigh, like Esther Johnson, fell passionately in love with her instructor. Truly, the power of genius is wonderful; truly, the freaks of actual life laugh to scorn the circulating libraries. Here was a man, with his hair thickly sprinkled with grey, and many a furrow, we well may believe, on his brow; yet a mild girl, of beauty, of fortune, and in the bloom of opening womanhood-not the first of her sex to feel the same marvellous influence-felt her whole existence, her whole fate for wo or weal, bound up with his, by the ties of enchaining affection. The lovelorn maiden, borne on by the fierce strength of her passion, opened her whole heart to the dean; and all his endeavours to disenthral her proved utterly vain. There was,' says our racy essayist, no help for the miserable man. He returned to his deanery, at the death of Queen Anne, with two love affairs upon his hands, but with the stern resolution of encouraging neither, and overcoming both.' A grim resolution assuredly! It is a perilous game to trifle with the affections; and where is the earthly magician who can still their tempest when once awakened in the soul? The success of the dean in his hazardous adventure seems more than doubtful; let us see. Vanessa (so he styled Esther Vanhomrigh) followed him to Ireland; and no entreaties could induce her to leave the country. Meanwhile, though Swift gave Vanessa no encouragement, his kindness to Stella seemed to decline, and she languished in sore despondency. Days of sad dreamy longing, nights of lonely weeping, sorrowful aching heart, and burning brow-these we may conceive, with assured confidence, in the lot of Esther Johnson. At length her health was manifestly breaking under the trial; and Swift, to save her life, and on condition of secrecy and separate residence, married her. The marriage took place, and immediately afterwards the husband withdrew himself in a fit of madness, which threw him into gloom and misery for days.' Vanessa still lived; the marriage of Swift was kept a close secret from her. In 1720, he paid her several visits, and, in a rural bower, built in a sequestered part of her garden, the strange pair passed many hours of sorrow, strangely tinctured with joy. Swift was cold as an icicle in the light of the moon; the whole nature of Vanessa was absorbed in intensest affection. Of the innocence of their intercourse, there cannot be a doubt.' Vanessa had hitherto a sister, whose society had alleviated her affliction; she died in 1720. In agonised anxiety to ascertain definitely the extent and nature of Swift's relations with Stella, Vanessa now addressed a letter to the latter, asking a full explanation. Stella responded that she was Swift's wife, and in a moment of fearful inconsideration, as we must regard it, enclosed the letter to Swift. The hapless Vanessa was one day seated in her apart ment; suddenly Swift entered, wild excitement and fury in his demeanour; he flung a packet on the table, and departed: it was Vanessa's letter. The poor fond heart could bear no more; the long dreary sickness of hope deferred passed into utter despair; in a few weeks she was no more. Swift, horrorstruck, after wandering, none knew where, for two months, returned to Dublin, and recommenced writing on public affairs. Swift's unowned wife continued for several years to drag on her weary, hopeless existence. At last her worn frame and sorrow smitten mind gave way; the dean hastened over from a visit to England, to find her dying. Till the last moment he continued at her bedside, evincing the tenderest consideration, and performing what consolatory tasks he might in the sick-chamber. Shortly before her death, part of a conversation between the melancholy pair was overheard. 'Well, my dear,' said the dean, if you wish it, it shall be owned.' Stella's reply was given in a few words: 'It is too late.' She died, broken hearted. The latter days of Swift were dark and sorrowful. He survived his wife for fourteen years; but joy seems almost or altogether to have gone out in his soul: he died in infantile idiocy. From the sorrowful contemplation of Swift, we turn to the scarce less sorrowful contemplation of one, whose youthful countenance, mild languid eye, and wan cheek, pictured too well his mournful destiny-John Keats. Chatterton, Shelley, Keats-what a cloud of sorrows, as of weeping angels, encircles these three! Dowered with the richest and the rarest gifts of nature, with genius to unlock the magic bowers of beauty and love, and to point towards them the eyes of men, what, we might be tempted to ask, prevented their long shining in constellation, with the lesser lights in meek and submissive admiration around them? Among the mysterious ways of Providence, none, perhaps, is more mysterious than what seems to us the imperial squandering with which the clearest and brightest lights of genius are often sent, to shine for a very little time, and then to be quenched-in night. The destiny of Chatterton, of Shelley, and even of Keats, is to us inscrutable. Chatterton, the young, the stout-hearted, the gifted, was wrapt, ere he passed the years of boyhood, in a winding-sheet of wo and shame. Of Shelley, whom we may liken to a fair and delicate Peri, standing and gazing wistfully into the light of Paradise, but finding the rude tasks of the lower world too hard, too ungentle, for his mild spirit, we are not here required to speak. We must, however, be excused for quoting part of his own exquisitely beautiful and touching description of himself; it occurs in his magnificent elegaic poem on Keats, styled 'Adonais :' Midst others of less note, came one frail form, A phantom among men, companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm, Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess, Had gazed on nature's naked loveliness, Actæon-like, and now he fled astray, With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.' John Keats forms the subject of one of the essays in the volume referred to; of him we have a few, and but a few, words to say. He was heir to a frame of the most delicate tenderness; the stamp of death had been set on his brow while yet in his cradle. He was tenderly, tremulously sensitive. A more truly poetic soul perhaps never lived; he saw everything through a medium of beauty and mild enthasiasm. He could study well and severely when he chose; but it was in the free expanses of imagination that he loved to dwell. A thing of beauty' was to him a joy for ever;' 'philosophy,' he tells us, with a sneer on his mild lip, would clip an angel's wings!' That his poetry, except perhaps in his latest efforts, attained the highest or very high perfection, we are far from asserting. His mighty powers-for no one who has perused Endymion,' the work of the boy, and Hyperion,' the work of the man, can hesitate in applying the epithet-were never fully developed. His love of, and intense sympathy with nature, he has recorded in tones of soft and immortal music; but he did not live to be the poet of man, of humanity-to tune his harp to the 'loudroaring loom of time.' With the love of the scenes and works of nature, his whole soul was pervaded. It was not that he heard of them, it was not that he studied them, it was not that he viewed them as metaphor and simile stores; it would seem as if he were for ever dreaming away his hours amid woods and meadows, amid daffodils, and weeping birches, and gently rippling rills. It would seem as if he thought, and wrote, and sung in the atmosphere of nature, as if he knew every glade of the pine forest, every aspect of the April sky, every cowslip that grew by the fountain. His fate was mournful. His mother died of consumption; and from his early days the same remorseless sleuthhound had him in track. At last its venomed fangs fixed their deadly hold on his tender frame; and, despite the balmy airs of Italy, he died in his youth. Much has been written on the conduct of the critics to Keats, and his blood for many years, by seemingly universal consent, was laid to their charge. The opinion now generally held almost absolves them from any share in his death; we suspect the truth lies between the two. That 'the' Quarterly' and Blackwood' fell upon Keats as an infuriated bulldog might fasten upon the neck of some lone child,' no one questions; that Keats, but for his peculiarly sensitive nature, would have flung their small irritating criticisms from his soul, as the swan flings from her plumes the sparrow-hail, or would have gone to do battle with them, in the fierce ire of 'the Pythian of his age,' who, almost in his boyhood, when galled by the darts of little critics, rushed forth into the ring, with the simple intent-which he victoriously accomplished-of mauling the whole world, is as unquestionable; but that his delicately-strung soul was torn by the reception his early poem met with, that he felt what he calls the fierce hell of the failure in a great object, and that the disease which lurked in his vitals gained thus a great advantage, and bore him sooner than |