parted on her forehead, and terminated on the sides, in rich luxuriant auburn curls. There was a dove-like look in her eyes, and yet there was a chastened sadness in their expression. Her complexion was remarkably clear, and her high forehead looked as pure and spotless as Parian marble. A calm repose, not unmingled with melancholy, was the characteristic expression of the face; but when she smiled, all traces of sorrow were lost, and she seemed to be but "a little lower than the angels-fitting shrine for so pure a mind!"

It was a happy day for our hero; for the talk was of things which he loved to hear. L. E. L. had invited Mrs. Hemans to London-" a place I never was in," she said, "and never wish to be. My heart beats too loudly even in this quiet place, and there I think it would burst. The great Babel was not made for such as me." Her visiter was able to tell Mrs. Hemans of a secluded churchyard near Bath, where there was a monument of white marble to a young lady that died at seventeen, and engraved on it was a stanza from her poem of "Spring Flowers." Flowers of all kinds were planted round it, for the most part by strangers, and as if in obedience to the poet's mandate.

In referring to her compositions she said, that she wrote more easily in rhyme than blank verse. "My thoughts have been so used to go in the harness of rhyme, that when they are suffered to go without it, they are often diffused, or I lose sight, in the ardour of composition, of the leading idea altogether."

She wore a white gown, over which was thrown a black lace shawl. On her head was a cap of very open net work, without flowers or ornaments of any kind.

At Oxford our traveller meets Crabbe, who promises to show him a pencil sketch of Burke, taken when he made his speech in the Warren Hastings case. He did not call on him afterwards; "for," says he, "I always have felt, and I hope I shall always feel, that the time of literary men is too sacred and too valuable to be frittered away by curiosity, or oddity hunters."

He sees at Oxford, on one of its great days, the Iron Duke presiding in academic dress. A chapter is entitled "Reminiscences of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Lamb." Of Wordsworth, VOL. XXVII.-No. 162.

nothing worth remembering is told. He strolls about Highgate, and falls in with Coleridge before he has an opportunity of presenting him with a letter of introduction with which he had come fortified. That he should not be able to tell us more than we already know of Coleridge is not surprising; for it would appear that their conversation was confined to Coleridge's telling him something about his early obligations to Bowles's poems and other matter of the kind communicated already to the public, by Coleridge, in his "Biographia Literaria." Lamb and his sister he met in the hall leaving Coleridge's, on a Sunday evening, just as he entered. It was, he thinks, on the same evening, that having returned from Highgate to Hampstead Heath, he saw a crowd round the door of a large house. young woman had fallen on the steps, seemingly dead; the servants thought, -and it turned out that they were not far wrong-that it was dead drunk she was. The master of the house came up as they were trying to get rid of her. This was Shelley, who acted with the humanity that might have been expected. He insisted on her being taken into house, and provided for her all restoratives that could be had. As far as we can see, our author did not again meet Shelley, and on this occasion could have seen him but for a moment.

He nexts visits Hazlitt.

A

"He re

ceived me with what appeared shyness, or reluctance to be disturbed, but which I afterwards found to be his habit at first meeting." They sate till late into the night; but we do not find that anything was said worth repeating. The grievances of the poorer brethren in literature are squabbles with editors and printers, and Hazlitt complained of Jeffrey's not printing his contributions to the Edinburgh as soon as they were sent. It is not improbable that there were others who complained with better right that he should have printed them at all.

Southey he met at Cottle's at Bristol.

"The personal appearance of Robert Southey was very striking. He was, as I have intimated, tall and slightly built. His forehead, rather receding, and not, phrenologically speaking, indicative of great acquirements, was surmounted and partially shaded by an abundance of white, silvery hair, combed upwards and 2 z

forming a striking contrast with his jet black, magnificently arched eyebrows, beneath which glowed (that is the best word to express what I mean) two of the most brilliant dark eyes I ever beheld. Their beauty did not consist so much in their brilliancy, as in their deep contemplative expression. His nose was remarkably aquiline, so much so that it approached to the beak formation. But it was in the mouth which, after all, is the most expressive feature of the human face, that the peculiar charm of Southey's looks lay: the upper lip was finely curved, and slightly projected over the lower; but it is in vain to attempt a description of it. Nearly every painter has failed to transfer it to canvas-indeed I have never seen a good likeness of the laureate, for it was no easy matter to catch the ever-flitting lights and shadows which, with every changing emotion, passed over his countenance.

"Tea was announced shortly after my arrival Mr. Cottle's sister (since dead) doing the honours. By the way, I may as well mention that Mr. Cottle and his sister then resided together, much in the same way as did dear delightful Charles Lamb with his beloved Barbara.' In both cases the gentlemen were bachelors, and the ladies happy in single blessedness, and the society of their literary brothers. After pouring out the well manufactured infusion of Congou, Miss Cottle happened to address the laureate asdoctor. My dear Miss Cottle,' said he, do call me Mr. Southey, or Robert, as you used to do lang syne;' but not doctor.' I dislike nothing so much as that, amongst old friends."" pp.164-166.

our meals, and associated together to the last, and I question whether I was more fondly attached to her in her bright days, than in her days of darkness."

Our author's next sketch gives us the theatre: first, a concert of Paganini's, and then the first night of Talfourd's Ion, when he saw Miss Baillie and Wordsworth enjoying the triumph of a brother poet.

A sketch of the Montgomeries follows. James, it would seem, is impatient-naturally impatient-at the mistake which is often made between him and Robert: it interferes with his

reputation, and with the sale of his books. Still we think both James and our author, who sympathises with him, unreasonable. It is not Robert's fault that his name is Montgomery, nor can he be blamed if the ladies prefer, on some occasions, the younger man. Ata corn-law meeting, in Sheffield, our ubiquitous friend hears a speech from Ebenezer Elliott. Elliott was addressing the prepared sympathies of his audience, and was heard with the applause which, in such circumstances, opinions already approved of are sure to command, if delivered fluently and with real, or even seeming earnestness.

We find our author as regular an attendant at fashionable churches and meeting-houses as at political platforms. He seems to live in excitement, no matter of what kind; and thus we have pictures of Rowland Hill, Baptist Noel, and Irving; of Pusey, too, and of Sibthorp, on his travels between England and Babylon. The old lady in the red mantle is supposed to be his present love. Scientific men are disturbed by our visiter, who likes to have a sight of a genius engaged in studying mathematics. Surgeons are startled with letters of introduction during their business hours, otherwise we cannnot understand how he should have heard Abernethy's conversation with his patients. From the gallery of the House of Commons he saw Cobbett with his white hat, Hunt with his "matchless blacking," D'Israeli, of whose oratorical powers he thinks highly, and Bulwer, who looks better than could be expected by any one familiar with his face in the print shops.

The volume closes with a few sketches taken in the Upper House. We have not room for them, nor are they very good. Brougham is the best. Lyndhurst and the Duke do not satisfy us.

The book is entertaining, and possesses the only kind of merit that ought to be sought for in such a volume. Its picturing of the individuals is often very perfect. Their

persons are well described, and there is a strong feeling of their true merits. Of anecdote it contains but little, and that little has been in general before the public in other forms. Intimacy, in any strict sense, between our author and any of the persons described did not exist; and the notices are, in all cases, conceived in a generous and kindly spirit. The book gave us, on the whole, great pleasure.

No poet, perhaps, is more generally known and admired throughout Germany than Uhland; and yet it might be difficult to name any one of his fellow-bards whose European popularity is of a slenderer kind. Uhland is the poet of the feelings-not those every-day feelings which are elicited by the constant conflicts, defeats, and successes of human life, and which men must be granite not to experience, but of such as arise from an over-subtle and morbid activity of intellect, acting upon the heart, and colouring its emotions with light or gloom, according to the impulse uppermost in the mind for the moment. You feel, upon first making acquaintance with his songs, that you are listening to a strange voice; and it is not until after you have repeatedly studied them that you can say you have truly ascertained their character. Whether, even after you have attained to a perfect comprehension of them, and of the object which their author appears to have steadily kept in view in every page, every stanza, indeed, we may say every line of them, you will sympathise with their spirit, and feel that the impression they have made on you can never be effaced, will, of course, depend upon something other than the powers of the mere understanding. Our own conviction, that a man must be thoroughly German in soul before Uhland will ever become a favourite with him, is, to be sure, merely an indirect way of stating that Germany enjoys something like a monopoly of whatever depth of sentiment may yet exist in the world. But, after all, the reader will test, not only Uhland's literary merits, but Germany's also, not by any persuasion of ours, but by his own conclusions from the phenomena which both may present to him. He will deal with Uhland just as he would with Coleridge or Wordsworth,

though we may venture to guess that if he seldom care to look into those writers he is not likely to become a very strenuous advocate for the excellencies of the German poet.

In every age of the world, or at least from Plato's down to Shelley's, there have existed men of ardent souls, whose perpetual desire has been to embody the invisible and impalpable, and shadow forth by outward symbols the divinity that dwells in all things. But for the most part those men have been rather embryo than actual poets. They seldom "penned their inspirations.'

"They loved, and burned, and died, but would not lend

Their thoughts to meaner beings: they compressed The God within them, and rejoined the stars, Unlaurelled upon earth."

The secret of their silence lay in the profoundly religious character of their spiritual constitutions. They could not afford to throw away upon the exhausting efforts of the intel lect that godlike energy and intensity of will which they felt had been given them for a far higher purpose than that of "stringing together verses and syllables.' There were exceptions, no doubt, among this class; for instance, Dante, who was at once theologian, psychologist, philosopher, and poet; but while the theology of these few scarcely lent any essential grace to their poetry, their poetry, on the other hand, did not contribute much to the elucidation of their theology. The enthusiast, in short, was under the necessity of choosing between Apollo and a Higher Sovereign, and very often, whatever his decision, he still found that he could not disembarrass himself of a certain melancholy longing after the allegiance he had rejected. He was pious, but he would fain be poetical also. Or he was a poet, and felt desirous, if not