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"treads with closer footsteps than any other on the heels of those whisperings of the unseen that never cease to haunt us." To him succeeds the Classical School of English Poetry, as represented by Matthew Arnold, who is incidentally declared to owe part of his charm to the very absence of deep and engrossing feelings in his nature. Mrs. Browning follows-whose poetry "is isolated and sedentary; not isolated in its sympathies, which are as warm and tender as poet's need to be; but her voice comes as the voice of one who has always dwelt apart, and felt for men and admired Nature at a distance, rather than walked familiarly in the common pathways." Then we have the Conversation and Poetry of Rogers-who is pronounced deficient in power of really observing mencurious in the husks of things-provided with plenty of nuts through life, and spending it in cracking them, dilating upon and preserving the shells, instead of eating and digesting the kernels. Thomas Moore, again, is rated considerably below the Holland House standard. Gray is made the text for a discourse on the Theory of Poetic Expression; Crabbe for another on Unideal Poetry; and De Foe for a third on Unideal Fiction. Then we come to an exposition of Mr. Thackeray's characteristics, as Artist and Moralist; and presently to one of Sir E. B. Lytton's achievements, first and last, in the threefold capacity of Novelist, Philosopher, and Poet. The Bronté sisters-we could almost style them the weird sisters-are feelingly and eloquently discussed. Add to these more than one essay on story-books for children—a topic sure to be handled with sense and spirit by a man so fond of children, and so conversant with their ways, and studious of their likings and latent powers, as was the gifted author whose early loss we have, in, the reliques now before us, good reason to lament.

His brother-in-law enlivens the Prefatory Memoir with a few-too few -pleasant specimens of Mr. Roscoe's correspondence, the manner of which is often as piquant as it is easy. There is occasionally an almost Elia touch of humour in the writer's epistolary exaggerations. As where he thus describes-two years before his death, and that occurred before he was five-and-thirty-his feelings of old age and decaying memory; feelings, it would appear, not altogether fictitious or fanciful, as Mr. Hutton expressly takes note of the "very rapidly increasing indications of age in his face and bearing which all his friends observed during the last few years of his life," and which bore token to the frailty of a constitution sadly undermined by asthma in an aggravated form. "As for me," writes this young man of thirty-three, "I have all the sensations of an old man of sixty; I know all he feels. My mind is a chaos as far as knowledge goes. I confound Agamemnon and Achilles in my own mind, believe that Priam was found sitting in the ruins of Carthage and said something to a slave. A dagger is mixed up with it. I believe, and do not believe, that Montesquieu and Nestor were two French prelates, famous, the one for sanctity, the other for funeral sermons. Robespierre was a little man, and broke his jawbone with a pistol-shot. I know they took the Bastille, and this is what I know of the French Revolution. I see all the papers are full of India now: I remember about India. There's a story of the Black Hole of Bombay, and Lord Clive was tried in Westminster Hall about some old Indian ladies' jewellery. There was Warren Hastings too; he was out in India. It was after he came back, I suppose, that that curious scene took place with Richard III.

I know

You remember about his 'baring his shrivelled arm.'

He was executed,

I think; but perhaps there is some confusion." And so on. That last peut-être qualification clause is impayable. One might think the writer was fresh from studying the candidates' papers at some Civil Service Examination. But how Charles Lamb would have "tasted" a correspondent of this sort and have delighted to outdo his confessions by avowing a degree of ignorance incomparably greater.-Elsewhere Mr. Roscoe reminds us, in the matter of irony, of the Opium-eater and his Esthetics of Murder; as where he upholds his favourite dogma that very distinguished professional tact and mental capacity are required for excellence in the pursuit of pocket-picking and housebreaking; maintaining that, "pursued in a scientific and serious spirit," it is not without its strong recommendations; and that, could he himself but have accepted the moral assumptions of that vocation, he should have greatly excelled as a general practitioner. "I should make a very good pickpocket," he writes to Mr. Smith Osler, "and should be sure when transported to be distinguished for my good behaviour. What a splendid convert I should make according to the new plan, and how I should flourish on it!" Pocket-picking, he said, was intellectually the higher branch of the profession, because success in it required so much finer an insight into the mind and countenance of your victims. "Before you can enter into a gentleman's pocket, you must be able to enter into his feelings." There is an amusing letter to Mr. Langton Sanford, on the gross incapacity of ordinary burglars, which is quite instinct with the spirit of the celebrated jeu d'esprit, already referred to, on Murder as one of the Fine Arts.

His biographer writes with fond and natural partiality, but not without solid ground for it, and good cause to show for it, on Mr. Roscoe's rich humour, his singular harmony of character, his social ease and insight, the ideal depth and patient meditativeness of his judgment, his public spirit and manly political interests, the sincerity and trustfulness of his friendship, the refined humanity of his tastes, the perfect veracity and light fresh beauty of his imagination, and the true humility of his faith. These were qualities to make a man loved and lamented. And in various degrees they are manifest in his Remains-with the like effect. It is an enviable destiny, that; even though a poor seven lustres see the destiny wrought

out.

We can find space for but one brief illustration of the poet. The following Sonnet, dated "Richmond, 1852," is addressed to his Motherand there is a tranquil charm about it that attracts us to them both:

As winter, in some mild autumnal days,

Breathes such an air as youngest spring discloses,
So age in thee renews an infant's grace,
And clothes thy check in soft November roses.
Time hath made friends with Beauty in thy face,
And, since the wheeling Fates must be obeyed,
White rime upon thy gracious head he lays,
But whispers gently not to be afraid;
And tenderly, like one that leads the blind,
He soothes thy lingering footsteps to the gate,
While that great Angel, who there keeps his state,
Smiles to behold with what slow feet he moves.
Move slowlier, gentlier yet, O Time! or find
A way to fix her here, bound by our filial loves.
June-VOL. CXIX. NO. CCCCLXXIV.

LOVE-SMITTEN.

(FROM HORACE.)

BY W. CHARLES KENT.

I.

VENUS! mother of the laughing,

Rosy, little Cupid throng; Bacchus! ever blithely quaffing

Goblets brimmed 'mid feast and song;

Thou, too, O voluptuous Leisure!

Haunt of every wanton pleasure,

Bring me back youth's vanished treasureLove that yet may life prolong.

II.

For again am I by glances

Slain, and snared by maiden wiles, Drowned in dim remembered fancies, Basking thus in Glycera's smiles: Parian marble ne'er such splendour Hath as when her features tender Shine with lustrous charms that render Half unseen their latent guiles.

III.

All the Paphian goddess, rushing

Through my breast in rhythmic veins, For my heart's love-fountain gushing, Leaves forlorn fair Cyprus' plains: Songs of Scythian falchions ringing, Songs of Parthian arrows springing From reverted bows-Love's singing Hushes now as worthless strains.

IV.

Reared an altar blooming greenly,
Clothed with sods of turf and thyme,
Crowned by verdant wreaths serenely
Woven at their budding time;
Hence my prayers, like incense soaring,
From my heart's libations pouring-
Venus, won by rites adoring,

Brims with vernal love life's prime.

THE PROTESTANT CHURCH AT METZ.*

THE worthy pastor of the Protestant church of Metz, addressing his congregation as the "faithful of the church of Metz," remarks that they are ignorant of the grievous persecutions by which the adversaries of reform endeavoured to annihilate that which he also terms as par éminence their "Eglise de France," so steadfast in its faith, and so pure in its manners; and that they are unacquainted with the sufferings of its brethren, because nothing has as yet been published upon the subject. It came to his knowledge, however, that a small volume had been printed in Germany by the Sieur Jean Olry, which narrated in the quaint and simple language of the time the misfortunes that befel himself and his family at the epoch of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; and after many fruitless inquiries and researches, he at length succeeded in discovering a copy of this rare opuscule in the library of Cassel, in Hesse, and, struck with the deep and moving interest of the story which it relates, he had it reprinted, in order, he says, that its perusal may attach the members of his congregation still more strongly to the Church of which God has graciously permitted them to be members.

Jean Olry, it is necessary to premise, born at Metz, and christened there on the 21st of July, 1623, was one of a numerous and respectable family long resident in that city. Jean was brought up to the law, and he purchased a business as notary royal of a Protestant-Bourgeois by name-in 1654. He married the same year Judith, daughter of a "noble homme," Jean du Tems du Portail, commissary of war in Lorraine, Germany, and Luxembourg. No less than eighteen children were born of this marriage, and the worthy pastor, who places on record from the books of the church not only their names, but those of their godfathers and godmothers, remarks that these names and their qualities attest what high consideration the family enjoyed among their co-religionaries. Jean Olry himself was elder of the church, and he possessed a farm at Flocourt, as well as his town offices as a notary. Only five out of the eighteen children were alive in 1687, the epoch of the persecution of the church at Metz, and two years after the bigotry of Louvois, who had succeeded to the great Colbert, added to the austere immorality of Madame de Maintenon, had won from a weak, profligate, and imbecile monarch-the same who had once been "le grand monarque"-the infamous revocation of the edict enacted by Henri IV., of glorious, but not untarnished, memory. The five children in question were Jean, Judith, Anne, Marie, and Susanne. Jean had been brought up to the law like his father, but shipwrecked on his way to Ireland, and made a prisoner of war at Dunkirk, he abjured his faith before returning to his native city; Judith, at this signal epoch of persecution and dragonnades, was imprisoned in the convent of the Propagation, and removed thence to that of the Bénédictines, at Besançon; Marie, who had wedded the

* La Persécution de l'Eglise de Metz décrite par le Sieur Jean Olry, accompagnée de Notices et de Notes par Othon Cuvier, Pasteur de cette Eglise. Paris: Librairie A. Frank.

lord of Moichet, appears to have made her escape into Germany; Susanne, after having been, like her sister, incarcerated in the convent of the Propagation, was sent to the convent of the Annunciation, at Vaucouleurs; the mother underwent the same persecutions, and was removed to the convent of the Ursulines, at Besançon. Thus was this once united and pious family broken up in 1687, never to meet together again on this earth. Jean Olry died a magistrate at Cassel, in Hesse, in 1707, having lived to the advanced age of eighty-four.

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One word as to the Protestant church at Metz. The evangelical doctrines, which, in the words of its gentle pastor, the apostolic teaching," took early root in what he is also pleased to designate as the "Messine Republic." It is of no small importance in the present day, when the abrupt dislocation of religious ties, following upon a long social disorganisation, threaten the vast territory of France with proximate changes, to see how tenaciously localities abide by their traditions of old. Humble, quiet, but stubborn individuality is too often overlooked in the excitement and turmoil of politics. We wonder what Savoy is doing upon changing its allegiance, or Switzerland when its liberties and independence, nay, its very existence, is menaced? But we forget to sympathise with the deeply outraged feelings buried in the secret heart of the peasant and the mountaineer. Yet it is of such individualities that the mass is constituted; only in our times the mass is too often led by the nose, and the members follow, imagining, in their ignorance, that they must of necessity pursue the direction taken by their most prominent feature, and the one that is most readily made a handle or a tool of, as occasion may require.

But without going to Savoy or Helvetia, to the Béarnais, the Basque, or the Breton, we have only, and that in our own times, to cross the Vosges, and we become sensible of a local feeling, which is as refreshing as is the wine of the fair Moselle itself. Hence, Monsieur le Pasteur of the church of Metz is very particular in pointing out that the family of Tems du Portail, although Protestant and noble, and enjoying lucrative government and administrative appointments, was not originally Messine, whereas the family Olry, albeit of less import, obtains higher credit in the pastor's eyes as almost indigenous to the place.

The Reformation had some five hundred followers at Metz as early as 1519 to 1521. In 1524, a Cordelier, surnamed le Bon Disciple, a Franciscan, and an Augustine, Jean Chatelain by name, preached the Reformed doctrines publicly, and the latter was so successful, that he attracted the attention of the cruel Cardinal of Lorraine, who had him burnt alive on the 12th of January, 1526. One Jean Leclerc was committed to the flames at the same epoch for having broken an image of the Virgin in the burial-ground of St. Louis, outside the gate St. Thiébaut. William Farel, another of the most distinguished of the early reformers of Lorraine, was driven about from place to place, and upon one occasion his congregation, surprised at Gorze by the Lorrains, had several of their number slain. All meetings were after that held in secret, till, in 1559, a church arose in Metz, having its regular pastors and a congregation, which, in 1561, amounted to some eight or ten thousand souls. Although Metz belonged, as an imperial city, to Germany up to the year 1552, the language of the country was French, and Reform came from that country. Hence the church attached itself from the beginning, in what

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