And laugh aloud, and try to come to me
Even from her mother's lap; as she grew up
And 'gan to walk alone she'd take my hand
And stroll for hours about the fields and lanes,
Gathering the wild rose and the eglantine,
As I bent down the branches to her reach.
In all my boyhood's light and stirring hours
There was no sport i' th' green nor chase a-field,
Though well I loved them, gave me half the joy
I found in idling with that soft-eyed child.
And when with feigned reluctance I forbore,
She with her pretty wiles and promised kisses
Would woo me still to be her playfellow.
Then afterwards, in all her school-day troubles,
To me she ran to hide her bursting tears;
In all her school-day triumphs first to me
Would run to show the prize she had obtained;
Nor did she wish for any living thing,
Kitten, or bird, or squirrel from the wood,
To cast her girlish care and fondness on,

But cousin George must seek it. And 'till Walter
Began to train his slight and delicate limbs
To our field labours, and to haunt the farm
With his soft voice and gently flowing speech,
His rhymes of love to suit old scraps of tunes,
His tales of distant lands and former times,
Conn'd from the vicar's books, her kindness never
Knew shadow of abatement or caprice.

But now-I know not-there's an icy power
That severs us; we are not as we were;

Her eye averted never answers mine;

She talks constrainedly with me; speaks of things
Which of slight moment are to her or me;

Calls me no more by kind familiar names;
Withdraws, if chance cast us alone together;

And with her strange indifference breaks my heart.

This speech is given with a true warmth of feeling, conveyed in tenderness and elegance of expression; but, whether it is quite in accordance with the impression which the reader has previously formed of George Saxby in the opening scene in the harvest field, where he urges Walter to fight with him, we say, this we must leave to the author's judgment.

Walter does not deny his love, but says that being an unknown and friendless orphan he had never ventured to disclose it.

WALTER.-I own I love your daughter-fondly love her.

I scarce can think-I never can believe

That any but one orphaned like myself,

And utterly devoid of every claim

Which might divide, and weaken by dividing,

The stream of deep affection ever flowing

Forth from the sacred fountain of the heart,

A tenderness so infinite could yield

As I, from my free soul, do render her.

*

Master Empson,
Bethink you what she is, and what I am!
Oh I never would the sweetest, fairest flower,
The summer bears, its tender root infix,
And shower its blossoms on the barren rock
Which stands in the broad ocean all alone!
Nor would the mild-eyed bird of love and peace
Be from her woodland shelter lured away,
There amid waves and storms to build her nest!
No, there's no hope.

My lonely life

Knows but one solace to admire her beauty;

One wish-to pass devoted to her service.

Mary now appears, and an explanation takes place, which is the only passage that is not quite satisfactory to our minds; when George tells Mary, Till he came hither I'll be sworn you loved me;

and then Mary answers,

Yes, George, I loved you as a sister loves,
And thought that as a brother you loved me.

But when you came

To talk to me of love it chilled and shocked me;
You were so much my brother the words sounded
Wicked for you to speak, for me to hear.

Now this we do not think quite natural, for, in the first place, being cousins, there was nothing that ought to have appeared wicked in Mary's eyes in George's love; and, secondly, there is such a wide difference between the brother's friendly affection and the lover's fondness that surely Mary could not have mistaken them. We feel how utterly absurd it is for a critic to give advice to an author, or for his "clouted shoon" to tread upon the poet's fairy path; but we think something might have been devised for Mary's coldness more natural than this. We should propose that George should have previously trifled, or been supposed by Mary to have trifled, with the affections of one of her female friends, and thus closed her heart against him as a lover of her own, while she was content to have lived with him under the same roof with the feeling of sisterly affection only. However this may be, Mary's father approves of the alliance of his daughter with Walter, and George departs in angry sorrow.

Next comes on the scene the puritanical Vicar of the parish, who in his place as Vicar has entrusted him the annual donation which is sent to him by an unknown hand for Walter's maintenance, and who, in his character as Puritan, has had the mean and low curiosity (a curiosity which belongs now and ever has done to that class of churchmen) to pry into the secret of Walter's birth, and who now informs him that he believes he has discovered it.

I'm more deceived than I was ever yet,

Or they're no strangers to the Lady Ellinor,
The wife of Sir Charles Tracy, who returns
After long sojourn with the court abroad,
To his patrimonial seat at the old Hall;

and he resolves to go to the Hall straight and commune with the lady.
The second Act opens at Long-Ashby Hall, and with the presence of
Sir Charles and Lady Ellinor Tracy, who discourse very prettily "de
summo bono," Sir Charles taking the philosophical side of the question.

Happiness, I'm sure,

Dwells not in lofty places. The lark soars

Up to the skies to carol forth his song,

But builds his nest a-ground. The noontide sun
Shines brightest on the mountain's snowy top,

But only warms the valley at its base.

LADY ELLINOR.-Does your philosophy contemplate, then,

In its next transformation, to reduce

Our state to the condition you admire,
And test their happiness?

SIR CHARLES.-
'Twere all in vain!
The simple bliss enjoyed by simple people,
Once forfeited, can never be reclaimed;
Learning, refinement, arts, inducing wants
Foreign to nature, opening a wide scope
For objects vague, for wishes infinite,
For aspirations after viewless things,
Teach us to scorn the blessings at our feet,
And long for some vast, undefined delights,
Which, if existent, never can be reached;
Knowledge, a doubtful acquisition, shedding
Its light upon our souls, like Psyche's lamp,
Expels the good best suited to their nature,
And yields no reparation for its loss.
He then laments the want of children:-

Did I feel

A father's interest bind me to the world-
Did our halls hear the sound of little feet
Beating their pavements-did young, merry voices,
Ringing with laughter, cheer our garden walks,
And lawns, and alleys-did I leave my home,
A group of clamorous children gathered round me,
Inquiring where I went, how long my stay,
Whose bounding joy would welcome my return,
All had been different ;-life had not proved
A waste I cannot till-a precious gift

I have no purpose for-an instrument

I know not how to employ-Oh! had our children

This touches a tender chord in Lady Ellinor's feelings, which she turns aside, and expresses a wish to leave the lonely sojourn of the Hall; but the colloquy, in which the husband certainly bears the more amiable character, is broken by the appearance of the Vicar, who seeks a private interview with Lady Ellinor, and who commences immediately his insidious questionings to assure himself of a secret he has long suspected, which Lady Ellinor in vain endeavours to avoid.

Why address me?-can I assist you, Sir?
VICAR. Can you not, Lady?

LADY ELLINOR.

VICAR.

I!

Excuse my boldness;

I've reason to presume a word from you

Might supersede the need of further search.

LADY ELLINOR.-A strange conceit! I comprehend it not!

I've heard no more than what you've now related.

A child, a boy, found at the vicarage

I well remember. I was then a bride

Sir Charles and I sojourned in Westminster.

All that you know I know, but nothing more.

The Puritan minister, thus baffled, threatens to have an interview with the husband, and proceeds in that base and insolent strain not unusual with low-minded persons, till he tells her that he has identified the messenger who conveys the annual bounty to his hands for Walter with a near kinsman of hers,

Dependent and residing at the Hall.

As he cannot wring the unwilling secret from her, he again threatens to seek Sir Charles till she confesses.

Since you have traced
Our house's near concernment with that youth,

Learn, Sir, the secret's mine. I vainly deemed it

Subtly secured 'gainst all discovery;

A mournful story 'tis, with which the honour
Of a right noble lady, whose fair name
Never reproachful epithet received
From slander's lip, inseparably is link'd.

*

I own I know the parents of young Walter ;
By my advice his home was here assigned,
His mother's fame secured.

The Vicar then informs her, seeing he can extract no more, that his purpose in coming was to inform her that Walter is in love and betrothed to the daughter, the only child, of the wealthiest yeoman in that part of the country. She orders the Vicar to forbid the wedding's further progress, and resolves to remove Walter to "brighter scenes and courtlier company;" and she then expresses a desire to see Walter in the garden for a few minutes' converse.

Waiting the Vicar's arrival from the Hall, a tête-a-tête takes place between Walter and Mary, in such sweet pastoral talk, that has won our heart too much not to let our readers share in it.

Mary, my love, that intercepting curl,

That, while you talk, I may see all your face!
MARY.-Look on the landscape, Walter, not on me;
Upon those groups of scattered cottages

Half seen amid their orchards-on yon grange,
Whose gathered harvests crowd the rickyard nigh;
On Braunston spire, which from its woody knoll
Is ever pointing upward to the skies,

As it would warn us of our higher home.

WALTER. I'm almost fain to say, would we were laid
Where the last sunbeams fall on the green turf,
Within that peaceful churchyard, side-by-side.

*

MARY.

*

Think of other things;

*

Inhale the peace that breathes from all around.
I'm never wearied gazing on this scene:
How quietly upon the upland browze

Yon scattered flock; while in the stream beneath,
Where the tall alders yield them choice of shade,
Stand pensively the kine-delightful all

In its variety of pleasing sights

Till, where the plain in hazy distance fades,
The Malvern hills rise cloudlike to the view;
How beautiful it is!

WALTER.

But not so fair

In the bright midday as it is at eve.

I often think the scenes we most rejoice in Are for their beauty debtors to the heavens GENT. MAG. VOL. XXII.

C

More than the earth. The rarest disposition

Of land, wood, lake, which the wide world can offer,
O'erhung by a dull, leaden, lowering sky,

Is robb'd of all its charm; while the blank moor,
The close-shorn willow on the yellow marsh,

The peatbog, with its square, black, stagnant pools,
Lit by the bright sun of the jocund morn,
Impart a sense of pleasure to the view.

MARY.-May not the beauty be i' the cheerful mind,
Which has the grace to see it, rather placed

Than in the landscape or the o'erhanging sky?

This delicate little strain of fond parleying is first broken by the presence of George, who impatiently informs them that he is going into the wide world, and cannot rest there; and then by the arrival of the Vicar, who informs Walter that the lady would converse with him. This it is evident is the important crisis of the plot, and the most difficult for the poet to encounter, in the strong and complicated passions which must be present at the scene. After some few speeches of involuntary admiration on her part, and of anxious doubt and inquiry on his, Lady Ellinor says,

My task is hard, but it must be performed.-
Your mother, Walter, was of noble birth;
Your father wealthy, and of gentle blood;

And both were young, and both in the esteem

Of their compeers were held the paragons,

Whose presence graced the court. Daily they met
In the town's gayest scenes-the Mall, the ball;

In the same measure danced, in the same madrigals
Mingled their voices. What could they but love?
None saw them, but assigned them to each other.
They fondly, wildly loved.

WALTER.

And could their kindred,

And now the solution of the riddle is imparted, such as Walter little could have foreseen.

LADY ELLINOR.

It is hard to utter

How shall I speak it? There was much delay;
The law is dilatory; noble kinsmen,

Whose presence state demanded at their nuptials,
Were far away and must be waited for.

Oh! apprehend me quickly. In the court

There was much licence, though the king was holy.*

The marriage came at length-a gorgeous scene,

And then, a month scarce past in privacy,

The fairest boy the sun e'er shone upon

Was born; the fact from all the world conceal'd,

Save from one relative.

WALTER.

Yourself, Lady?

*Not quite so holy as the lady seems to imagine; but the subject is a little delicate.-REY.