To the romantic prime belong as of right | When thou art with me every sense seems dull, the sweetest realities of these pages; and And all I am, or know, or feel, is thee; here, too, we have dreams beautifully dealt And my bewildered spirit seems to swim My soul grows faint, my veins run liquid flame,

Or kiss, while thou art sleeping on my breast, My loathsome days, my nights of burning tears,

But utter weariness; oh! to be free
But for a while from conscious entity!
To shut the banging doors and windows wide,
Of restless sense, and let the soul abide
Darkly and stilly, for a little space,
Gathering its strength up to pursue the race;
Oh, heavens! to rest a moment, but to rest
From this quick, gasping life, were to be blest.'
-p. 118.

to who the lady is that Mrs. Butler addresses at p. 52; but we hope we may be forgiven for taking leave of our poetess on the present occasion in her own words :—

TO MRS.

'I never shall forget thee-'tis a word

Thou oft must hear, for surely there be none
On whom thy wondrous eyes have ever shone
But for a moment, or who e'er have heard
Thy voice's deep impassioned melody,
But, not as these, do I say unto thee,
Can lose the memory of that look or tone.

I never shall forget thee :-in thine eyes, Whose light, like sunshine, makes the world rejoice,

There are in this volume a great number of pieces expressing feelings of the profoundest melancholy, dejection of heart and spirit, weariness of life, almost despair. The best and most richly endowed of human beings have their share of sorrow-but we are never in a hurry to accept effusions A stream of sad and solemn splendor lies; of this sort for correct evidence of the pre-Thou art not like the scenes in which I found And there is sorrow in thy gentle voice. vailing mood of a poet's mind. On the contrary, they contradict themselves. How-Thou art not like the beings that surround thee; ever deep a wound may have been, it must To me, thou art a dream of hope and fear; be well skinned over before one begins to Such gifts, to make thee fair, and excellent; Yet why of fear?-oh sure! the Power that lent beat time upon it. Are we wrong in guess-Still watches one whom it has deigned to bless ing that there is a self-rebuke in this sonnet?

Blaspheme not thou the sacred life, nor turn
O'er joys that God hath for a season lent,
Perchance to try thy spirit, and its bent,
Effeminate soul and base-weakly to mourn.
There lies no desert in the land of life,
For e'en that tract that barrenest doth seem,
Labored of thee in faith and hope, shall teem
With heavenly harvests and rich gatherings, rife.
Haply no more, music, and mirth, and love,
And glorious things of old and younger art,
Shall of thy days make one perpetual feast:
But when these bright companions all depart,
Lay thou thy head upon the ample breast
Of Hope, and thou shalt hear the angels sing
above.'-p. 16.

The noblest verses in the book are-like these, the 'Absence,' and the 'Wish'-conceived and written in a brave high tone and style-a style that reminds us—we are sure Mrs. Butler will be pleased with the comparison of the still smaller collection put forth a few years ago under the signature of V.—a spirit such as men call masculine.

'A WISH.

'Let me not die for ever! when I'm gone
To the cold earth; but let my memory
Live like the gorgeous western light that shone
Over the clouds where sank day's majesty.

Let me not be forgotten! though the grave

thee,

With such a dower of grace and loveliness;

Over the dangerous waves 'twill surely steer
The richly freighted bark, thro' storm and blast,
And guide it safely to the port at last.
Such is my prayer; 'tis warm as ever fell
From off my lips: accept it, and farewell!
And though in this strange world where first I
met thee,

We meet no more-I never shall forget thee."

-p. 52.

WHAT WE'RE DOING AND WHAT WE'RE
COMING TO.

BY ANGUS B. REACH.

From the New Monthly Magazine.

SOMEBODY Once remarked, that the day natural phenomenon we could beholdwas coming when the most extraordinary the most singular deviation from the ordinary laws of nature we could witness-would be however, matters go on much longer as a man who had not written a book. If, they are now doing, we shall have a fair chance of seeing an eighth wonder added to the world in the shape of a man who actually, and bona fide, possesses not a single railway share!

Doctors may go mad about Mesmerism,

Has clasped its hideous arms around my brow; and parsons about Puseyism, Young En

Let me not be forgotten! though the wave

Of time's dark current rolls above me now; gland may be smitten with temporary inYet not in tears remembered be my name. sanity, touching may-poles and cricketWeep over those ye loved; for me, for me, balls-but old England has become a perGive me the wreath of glory, and let fame Over my tomb spread immortality.'-p. 28. fect monomaniac in the matter of rails and locomotives. We are all railway madWe shall not print a conjecture-though the steam-whistle drowns every other sound we think we could give a shrewd one-as -we hardly think, but of rival lines-we

hardly dream but of contending gradients. shareholders on the other. A man without There is a conspiracy hatching to clap a a share will be rarer than a man without a huge gridiron over England-town is to be nose. Every body is rushing to the market bound to town by iron bands-termini will for "scrip" and "stock"-sinking his orspring up as thick as taverns-stations as dinary avocation in his new career of railpumps-the whole country will be one way speculator. railroad city-the lines crossing and recrossing, and interwining like streets-so that if you ask the way to some place a hundred miles off, the direction will be, "Down the Little Peddlington line first, then the second railroad to the right, turn off at the third to the left, opposite to Mudfog Terminus, and go on to No. 4 Station-you can't go wrong-ask any of the railway police."

Our cheesemonger is an extensive holder in home schemes-our tailor rather inclines to foreign speculations. The dog'smeat man, who comes into our street, talks of a buoyancy in the nor-east-and-by-north lines; and the man who sweeps the crossing at the corner informed us in coufidence, that he feared he should be taken in extensively by the decisions of the Board of Trade.

You hear some slow coaches talking Wherever we go we hear of railroads― about what we have done in the way of whenever we open a newspaper we see colspeed, but all that has yet been accom- umns of railroad meetings-estimates, graplished, is but a faint inkling of what we dients, guages, passenger traffic, branch shall do. The idea of thinking it a feat to lines, competing lines, are for ever rung in breakfast in Newcastle and dine in Lon- our ears. As Brindley opined that Provi. don! antiquated and absurd-not a bit dence intended rivers to feed canals-so do better than the old stage waggons-com- half of our friends seem to imagine that paratively! We look forward to quicker flat countries were created for the convengoing than that. Dine three hundred ience of railroads, and that men and womiles from the place we breakfasted at! men were formed merely to be first, second, why not finish dinner three hundred and third-class passengers. miles from the place we began it at? In days of yore, the dabbler in railway Make the transit-not between the meals, stock was a creature sui generis. His but between the courses. Fly for every thoughts were limited by the sphere of change of dish to the places most celebra-'Change-he haunted Bartholomew-lane— ted for the production of the savory morsel. he lounged at the entrance of Capel-court, Thus you might have your soup in town noisily discussing a bull speculation or a -dash down to the banks of the Tweed for bear scheme-he was to be found in oba cut of salmon fresh from the water-find scure City coffee-rooms, known only to the yourself in five minutes from the date of denizens of Cornhill and Threadneedleits consumption luxuriating upon Welsh street, where he lay in wait to catch the mutton in Carmarthen-hurry up to Dork- first glimpse of second editions of newspaing for the breast of a fowl-and have pers-hinting a shadow of variation in the your cheese either in Cheshire or Glouces- Rentes at Paris, or the Actives at Madrid— ter, as you happen to fancy. he was a well-known, understood, definite Really this seems to be what we are kind of animal-a Stock Exchange man. coming to. Time and space are rapidly But now there are nothing but Stock Exgetting obsolete. The electric telegraph change men. A few have no longer the laughs at them both. Our posterity will blessed monopoly. London is all one big regard the species of deference we paid to Capel-court-Britain only one big Barthem as a curious popular delusion, exten-tholomew-lane.

sively current in the dark ages. And the Formerly, with the exception of the few charm to work these miracles is vapor. who managed, without capital, to play at Rails are the magic wands our modern the game of commercial rouge et noir, sorcerers use, and, as they lay them down, their object is accomplished. Time and space vanish, and every body dwells next door to every body else!

The next census will probably show the whole population divided into two grand classes-railway officers, officials, and constructors on the one hand, and railway

those only invested money in railroads or other schemes who had money to invest. But we have got far beyond such childishly narrow-minded courses of proceeding now. Gentlemen with dilapidated gossamerskept in countenance by seedy coats-supported in turn by boots which would be admirable ventilators, if they did not let in

Every body knows the story of the plaintiff in Westminster Hall blubbering aloud as his advocate told the story of his woes, and declaring in a voice inarticulate with sobs, that he never knew before-never— that he was half so ill-used a man.

So is

water as well as air, are all large railway which we should have been in a state of proprietors that is, proprietors in esse of blessed ignorance-were it not dragged railways in posse. Decent tradesmen, who into day-lugged into notoriety at the end would once never have thought of any in- of a new line of railroad. Vales and vilvestment, other than the savings' bank, lages, rivers and ravines, brooks and bridgempty the till to buy "nor-by-west" stock, es, every day make their blushing appearand "Little Peddlington, with Mudfog ance in the advertising columns of the Branch, Grand Union Central Junction newspapers-new to every body except Railroad" shares-a report having sud- gentlemen devoted to map-making, or dodenly got abroad that the have risen 200 mestic Humboldts in geography. per cent. in ten minutes. City clerks, who formerly laid out all their pocket money in the theatres at half-price, and the Cider Cellars at full, knowingly invest it in DownEasterns, or Up-Westerns, or Through the Middle-Southerns. West-end men think of cutting Tattersall's for 'Change-coun-it with a range of country. Suddenly there try gentlemen write to town agents to be appears an advertisement headed "The on the look out for a good promising line Muddledub, Marshy Vale and Squashton to plunge into-people with money invest Railway, capital 1,000,0007., in 17. shares, it in new schemes, which are at a pre- with an immediate call for ninepence per mium, trusting they will rise higher-peo-share." And then comes the most elople without money invest their wits in quent of expositions touching the extraorshares at a discount, trusting they wil dinary and unequalled advantages of the soar to a premium. For the convenience proposed scheme. Never was there such of those who have no pounds-we hear of an opportunity for investment. No engishares sold by shillings-and probably they will come in time to be retailed for pence. Children will be sent out by their parents for two-pennyworth of "Reduced Direct Northerns," or a three-farthing "York and London."

neering difficulties whatever. (By the way, it is perfectly astonishing how free projected lines are from such disagreeables

until they come to be actually entered upon.) Well, it is proved that twenty per cent. is the least the projectors think of What an utterly unimaginable place a giving you for your money, which will of town without a railroad will soon be. He course be much safer than in the three per will have no small powers of fancy who can cents., considering the general circumconceive such an isolated collection of stances of Europe and the warlike longings houses. A town without a railway! as of the Prince de Joinville. You read with well talk of a town without a shop-a bor- amazement of the extraordinary district ough without a mayor-a mayor without a through which the new line is to wend its mace "Hamlet" with Hamlet cut out. iron way, a cross between an Arcadia and Who would go and live in such a place? an El Dorado, containing-that is so far as The backwoods would be civilization to it can be judged from the geological features -the savages of New Zealand polished in of the country-unbounded mineral riches comparison to its degraded denizens--(mines are to be of course dug hereafter, roads leading to it would be a sort of cul--producing every species of produce, agde-sacs, leading nowhere in particular-ricultural and manufactured that is to people would forget all about it-its name say when the railroad developes its rewould only be found in antique maps-its sources-and peopled with a most enterdescription in mouldy gazetteers.

prising and restless class of inhabitants, But there will be no such thing. Surely who will always be sure to keep movingthere is not a village in the land but is des- that is to say whenever the railroad gives tined to be broken in upon by the thousand them an opportunity. The projectors go and one schemes every day springing up on to hint that the Birmingham Railway, like gourds (or mushrooms-which are or the Great Western, will be comparative more familiar plants) around us. In fact failures to the new line. They are perwe hear ever and anon of the existence of fectly certain of getting a bill-though some place-some, to the world, nameless they have not asked yet. Nature seemed collection of tiles and slates and bricks-of to have intended Marshy Valley for a railthe whereabouts-nay, the very being of way-to have planned it with a special re