exquisite judgment. The "Traveller's Tale," by Mr. Ritchie, is also a very well-wrought narrative, and is characterised by his usual force of style. "The Woes of Praise" is an agreeable variety in a collection which may be thought by some readers to be too uniThe Honorable Mrs. Norformly of a grave or pathetic character. "It. ton, the poetess, has a tale in this volume, entitled "The Orphan." It. is the first prose article from her pen that we have met with, and it has greatly pleased us. It is remarkable for a chaste pathos, and a simplicity of style, that deserve our warmest commendations. Mr. Galt is an excellent writer of prose fictions, and has favored the Editor with a very interesting American story. The able and learned author of London in the Olden Time is also in the list of contributors,-but really we can particularize the prose articles no further, or we shall never conclude our own.

Among the writers in verse we find the names of Barry Cornwall, James Montgomery, Clare, Hervey, Allan Cunningham, T. H. Bayly, Delta, Tennyson, Kennedy, Motherwell, Mary Howitt, Mrs. Norton, &c. We shall now give a few poetical extracts, and then turn to the embellishments.

OLD AGE, ITS COMPANIONS.

Look,-I grow

By Barry Cornwall.

old. Amidst how many storms
Hath come my winter, leaving on this head
A snow must never melt. Companions have I,
Who will not leave me for the ruddiest lip,
Palsy, catarrh, cold ague; blindness strait
Will come and hide me from the scorching noon,
And deafness will shut out all wild alarms;
And so helped gently to my soft turf bed,
I'll soon lie down and sleep. A day-an hour-
A minute-after the last sigh hath flown,
And where shall I be? Shall I be, indeed,
A traveller swifter than the sun, and pass,
In one small countless breath of vulgar time,
From earth unto the Angels?

Lie down, sad soul, and sleep,

And no more measure
The flight of time, nor weep
The loss of leisure;

But here, by this lone stream,
Lie down with us, and dream
Of starry treasure!

We dream; do thou the same;
We love for ever;

We laugh; yet few we shame,
The gentle never:

Stay, then, till sorrow dies;
Then hope and happy skies
Are thine for ever!

THE THRUSH'S NEST.

By John Clare.

Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush,
That overhung a mole hill, large and round,
I heard, from morn to morn, a merry thrush
Sing hymns to sunrise, while I drank the sound
With joy and often, an intruding guest,
I watched her secret toils, from day to day,
How true she warped the moss to form her nest,
And modelled it within, with wood and clay.
And by-and-bye, like heath bells gilt with dew,
There lay her shining eggs of green and blue.
And there I witnessed, in the summer hours,
A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly,
Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky.

AFRICAN SCENERY.

'Twas pleasant as we journeyed down the glen,
Flanked by romantic hills on either hand,
To see the bosch-bok bound away, and then,
Beneath the bowery greenwood, gazing stand:
Or, where old forests darken all the land,

From the far mountain to the river's side,

To mark the wild bull tearing up the sand;

Or huge rhinoceros, in tameless pride,

Glare forth, then backward shrink into the woodlands wide,

P.

THE CLOUD.

Oh! welcome is the Cloud of Night,
That makes the morrow's dawn more dear;
Or dewy veil that falleth light

The summer's fervid breast to cheer;
The thunder-cloud, though fraught with fear,
Doth in its folds a blessing bring,

And freshens Nature with its shock;

Even winter's wildest blasts but rock
The cradle of the spring.

But ah! far other is the cloud,

That wraps the sickened soul in gloom,
Hangs o'er the heaven its sombre shroud,
And darkens, like a living tomb,
This world of beauty-till the bloom

Of nature withers in its breath;

Till all on earth we prized the most
Seems blighted, or for ever lost,-
And the heart sighs for death!

THE GREEK MOTHER.

By H. G. Bell.

I.

"Nay, shrink not, girl, look out! look out! It is thy father's sword!

And well know they-that Moslem rout→ The temper of its Lord!

He fights for all he loves on earth,

And heaven his shield will be,

He fights for home and household hearth,
For Greece and liberty!

II.

"See! see! wherever sweeps his hand,

Down falls a bleeding foe;

What Turkish spoiler shall withstand

A husband's-father's blow?

He marks us not, yet well he knows,
How breathlessly we wait

The fearful combat's doubtful close,
And deep love nerves his hate.

III.

I'd rather be thy father, child,

In sight of God, this hour,

Than holiest hermit self-exiled
From earthly pomp
and power;

Dead! dead! and what are children now,
And who, or what am I?

Let the red tide of slaughter flow

We will wait here to die."

The embellishments to Friendship's Offering for this year, are, as usual, of great attraction, but they are not, we think, superior to those of the last volume, though the Editor states that they have been selected and engraved with particular care and more than ordinary zeal and diligence. The first is a very finely engraved portrait of Lady Carrington, after Sir Thomas Lawrence, who is said to have finished it with fa tidious pains, and to have considered it one of his best productions. The expression is very amiable, but not very intellectual, and the nose and mouth are by no means pleasing. This, however, is perhaps nature's fault and not the Painter's, and yet it would be more gallant and possibly even more consistent with the truth, (though Sir Thomas was generally a flatterer,) to suppose that his pencil had failed for once to do justice to his original. It sometimes happens with the artist as with the author, that his favorite and most elaborate work is the least successful. The next embellishment is entitled “The Fairy of the Lake." It is from the pencil of Richter and the burine of Finden, and a very graceful and highly finished work is the result of their mutual labours. The conception is exceedingly poetical, and it has been illustrated in a very beautiful poem by Mr. Pringle, who with a generous candour has taken care to inform the reader in his preface of Mr. Richter's claim to the merit of originality. The poetry illustrates the picture and not the picture the poetry. We will not attempt to describe in plain prose what the minstrel has more fitly sung. We, therefore, indulge ourselves in an extract from Mr. Pringle's poem.

"With wondering eye

She sees what seems a downward sky,
Stretching far its depths of blue,
While the stars dim-gleaming through,
Whene'er the sun his brightness shrouds
Neath some veil of fleecy clouds,
And the shadows come and go
Athwart the liquid plain below.

As she gazes, still, behold,

Marvels to her eyes unfold;

Massive rocks and towering mountains
With their woods and sparkling fountains;
In the inverted landscape lie

Pointing to a nether sky.

Suddenly with swan-like flight
Launching from the cliffy height,
On the buoyant air she springs,
(Scorns an elf the aid of wings,)